That would be between the reaction of the National Council of Churches and the American Cancer Society to a report from the President’s Cancer Panel, published last week. The panel sounded what the New York Times called “dire” warnings about the carcinogenic effects of chemical use, which the ACS said was overblown and not based on fact:
The government’s 240-page report, published online Thursday by the President’s Cancer Panel, says the proportion of cancer cases caused by environmental exposures has been “grossly underestimated.” It warns of “grievous harm” from chemicals and other hazards, and cites “a growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer.”
Dr. Michael Thun, an epidemiologist from the cancer society, said in an online statement that the report was “unbalanced by its implication that pollution is the major cause of cancer,” and had presented an unproven theory — that environmentally caused cases are grossly underestimated — as if it were a fact.
The cancer society estimates that about 6 percent of all cancers in the United States — 34,000 cases a year — are related to environmental causes (4 percent from occupational exposures, 2 percent from the community or other settings).
Suggesting that the risk is much higher, when there is no proof, may divert attention from things that are much bigger causes of cancer, like smoking, Dr. Thun said in an interview.
But Dr. Thun said the cancer society shared the panel’s concerns about people’s exposure to so many chemicals, the lack of information about chemicals, the vulnerability of children and the radiation risks from medical imaging tests.
The NCC’s Washington Office director Cassandra Carmichael, on the other hand, said this:
We applaud the President’s Cancer Panel for emphasizing the connections between chemical exposure and cancer in a report released Thursday. As people of faith we are called to protect vulnerable populations such as women, people of color, the elderly and children. Our congregations are already working to educate people of faith about safer alternatives to everyday chemicals found in the food we eat and products we use. We hope that this report will help highlight the need to change the way we regulate chemicals.
I had heard about the ACS’s criticism of the report last week, but didn’t really give it that much thought until I saw the NCC response this morning. I thought Thun’s comments perfectly reasonable, especially in pointing out the need for fact-based policy as opposed to theory-based policy (policy that, though Thun doesn’t say this, would be based strictly on ideological presuppositions rather than scientific evidence–the chief criticism of Bush scientific policy-making, if I remember correctly). Carmichael, on the other hand, seems to base her applause of the report simply on the fact that it confirmed her preexisting beliefs. That’s standard practice for the NCC, perhaps more on environmental issues than any other.
Comedy Central, the same folks who recently censored all references to both Muhammad and freedom of expression on an episode of South Park, has decided that the way to restore its reputation for edgy humor is to do a cartoon about Jesus. According to the Washington Times:
Comedy Central has a cartoon series about Jesus Christ in the works.
Titled “JC,” the series depicts Christ as a “regular guy” who moves to New York to “escape his father’s enormous shadow.” His father is depicted as an apathetic man who would rather play video games than listen to his son talk about his new life.
The article goes on to mention that this series is “in development,” which means it may or may not ever see the light of day. But it takes a special kind of nerve to announce something like this so soon after Comedy Central caved into implicit threats from two Muslim extremists who didn’t like South Park making fun of the founder of Islam.
I don’t care if CC does this–as The Anchoress noted, “The Triune God has awfully big shoulders; he can take it.” There’s just something pathetic in a television network that thinks itself bravely transgressive in mocking the faith of millions of Americans, but can’t stand up to a couple of punks on a Web site.
It is not true that nothing good can come out of the “On Faith” column at the Washington Post. I just finished a fascinating article by Omid Safi, a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill religion professor, who eviscerates the myth that Muslims are forbidden from making graphic depictions of Muhammad:
When a pair of adolescent and anonymous Muslim bloggers (“Muslim Revolution”) threatened the producers of South Park for depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit in an April 2010 episode, pundits responded by saying that the “Muslim Revolution” folks were extremist idiots (true) and that they were offended because Islam bans the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad (not true).
When the Danish cartoon controversies broke out in 2005, many pundits–and some Muslims–stated that Muslims were offended because Muslims have never physically depicted the Prophet.
That is actually not the case, and marks yet another example of what is at worst an acute sense of religious amnesia, and at best a distortion of the actual history of Islamic practices: Over the last thousand years, Muslims in India, Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia and Turkey did have a rich courtly tradition of depicting the various prophets, including Prophet Muhammad, in miniatures.
The unfortunate thing is that there are as many Muslims as there are who either 1) don’t know this, or 2) don’t care, and are willing to use stuff like the Danish cartoons as an excuse for violence. I appreciate Dr. Safi setting the record straight in a very public forum, and hope that Muslims, as well as Christians and others, are listening.
The PCUSA’s Offices of Interfaith Relations and Theology and Worship have two reports that are supposed to be dealt with at the upcoming General Assembly. They are entitled: “Christians and Jews: People of God” and “Understanding Christian-Muslim Relations.” According to Viola Larson, he San Francisco Presbytery has sent in an overture that asks that consideration of them be postponed. Since I haven’t read them, I don’t know whether that’s a good idea or not. But at Viola’s urging I did have a look at a short paper that is attached to the overture. It comes from the Israel-Palestine Mission Network, an official PCUSA organization, and it is a doozy.
It starts off with affirmation–they reject “anti-Judaism” and accept the Old Testament as “Christian scripture” (how nice of them to declare without hesitation that they aren’t Marcionites!)–but they quickly get to what they call “fatal flaws” in the report. We can’t compare the two (I’m too cheap to buy the report, and can’t find it online), but just taken by themselves the IPMN objections tell you all you have to know. First, there’s this:
Separation of Theology and Ethics: …The origins and history of the conflict, the United Nations resolutions regarding the conflict, the U.S. vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and the ongoing breach of international law and human rights that has characterized the conflict are passed over in silence, as if this had nothing to do with Jewish-Christian relations in the contemporary world.
What is the omission to which the IPMN objects? The recent unpleasantness in Gaza and the 2009 Goldstone report. The 1948 invasion of newly-independent Israel, the planned 1967 invasion, the 1972 Olympic massacre, the Lod airport attack, hundreds if not thousands of terror attacks and attempts inside Israel since 1967, the 1973 Yom Kippur attack, the Hamas rejection of Israel’s right to exist, the daily Hamas rocketing of southern Israel, Hezbollah rocketing of northern Israel, the Palestinian rejection of a state-granting settlement on at least two occasion–apparently none of that is worth mentioning. Only Israeli transgressions are worthy of consideration. But it gets worse:
By neglecting the reality on the ground, this report would “make nice” with certain American Jewish organizations to avoid unwarranted charges of anti-Semitism. These are the organizations that have provided financial and political support for the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands since 1948, and used threat and intimidation to censor debate about Israel within and without the Jewish community.
Usually these people are more veiled in their goals. Referring to “the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands since 1948″ is another way of saying that they agree with Hamas that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel itself is “occupied terrritory,” and that the PCUSA should support the liberation of the Holy Land from the Jews. And American Jews should be blamed for their racist support of their co-religionists:
A report that confesses Christian guilt for the past and calls for changes in our theology and practice but neglects to mention the contribution of American synagogues to the oppression of Palestinians over the past six decades appears to us as inauthentic interfaith dialogue.
Yeah, American Jews supporting the Jewish homeland against invasion, war, and terror for sixty years. What could they have been thinking? And note again that we have the reference to “six decades,” again all but stating that the mere presence of Israel in the Holy Land is oppressive of Palestinians.
“A worldwide increase in Anti-Jewish Rhetoric and Actions”: This statement needs to be contextualized. This “anti-Jewish rhetoric” does not arise out of a vacuum, or some inchoate reservoir of anti-Semitism. In fact, the case can be made that it is a reaction to the actions of the state of Israel. And that this is related to the American Middle East wars, which, combined with the U.S. defense of Israel internationally, fuels anti-Jewish stereotypes and some classic anti-Semitic beliefs.
A statement like this sends a genuine chill up my spine. Anti-Semites have been using this trope for centuries: “The only reason we burned your towns, locked you up in ghettos, put legal restrictions on you, expelled you from one country after another, sicced the Inquisition on you, instituted pogroms, looked for a “Final Solution”…is because you made us!” It fails to account for Arab massacres of Jews in the Levant before 1948, fails to account for the widespread support among Arabs for Nazi Germany (the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a Berlin favorite), it fails to account for the rejection of the UN resolutions establishing Israel and the subsequent invasion–all undertaken before there was an Israel to which to react. This repulsive kind of “blame the victim” mentality would never be tolerated in the PCUSA if it was directed at African-Americans, women, gays, American Indians, or any other minority. So why isn’t the IPMN recognized for what it is, and repudiated? Sorry, you only get one guess.
Jarring Metaphors: This report makes use of two New Testament metaphors to describe the theological relationship between Christians and Jews: “. . . to share the rich root of the olive tree . . .” [Romans 11:17] (p. 3) and “. . . and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.” [Ephesians 2:14] (p. 6) In the present context, the use of these metaphors is jarring—even offensive—unless reference is also made to the way in which actual relationships in the Holy Land deny this theological affirmation. Since 1967 Israel has uprooted over one and a quarter million Palestinian olive trees; since 2002 Israel has constructed a 25-foot high Separation Barrier which has been condemned by the International Court of Justice.
Wouldn’t you know that lousy Jew Saul would be anti-Palestinian, too? How dare he use expressions like those? How dare anyone ever cite those passages in the presence of Palestinians? Why, the churches on the West Bank (and the few that might remain in Gaza after Hamas drove most of the Christians out) have torn Romans and Ephesians right out of their Bibles, and refuse to acknowledge them until Victory Has Been Won!
Palestinian cruciform interpretation of their suffering and death: Christians and Jews states: “Some expressions of Christian liberation theology tend to describe the Palestinian experience as oppression by “Jews” or “Zionists” rather than by Israeli state authority….” (p. 14) We believe this statement is inaccurate.
Really?
Before the creation of the State [of Israel], the Old Testament was considered to be an essential part of Christian Scripture, pointing and witnessing to Jesus. Since the creation of the State, some Jewish and Christian interpreters have read the Old Testament largely as a Zionist text to such an extent that it has become almost repugnant to Palestinian Christians […] The fundamental question of many Christians, whether uttered or not, is: How can the Old Testament be the Word of God in light of the Palestinian Christians’ experience with its use to support Zionism?
–Rev. Naim Ateek of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Justice, and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation
[E]spousing the nationalistic tradition of Zionism, [Jews] have relinquished the role of the servant that they have claimed for centuries, becoming oppressors and warmakers themselves. This has been a revolutionary change from the long-held belief that the Jews have a vocation for suffering.
–Rev. Naim Ateek in Justice, and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation
The narrative Israel tells of itself on its 50th anniversary suppresses, distorts and essentially tries to destroy the Palestinians’ narrative of their own history. The history of Zionism has demonstrated that in order for an Israeli narrative to continue in Palestine, the Palestinians’ narrative must end. If there is to be an Israel, there can’t be a Palestine….
–2006 Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, from Sabeel web site
You get the point.
Zionism: Christians and Jews rightly cautions against the portrayal of Zionism as “monolithic or univocal.” What the report fails to recognize is that expansionist forms of political and religious Zionism have been major ideological forces behind the confiscation of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by every Israeli administration since 1948. The literature on this subject is vast and the reality undeniable. The push by the current government of Netanyahu for recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” is one example of this ideology.
And from the footnote that concludes this paragraph:
The common denominator of most forms of Zionism is the demand for a Jewish State. As the past six decades have demonstrated, this ideology, when put into practice, has resulted in on-going ethnic cleansing and legally sanctioned discrimination against non-Jews.
So much for the “inaccuracy” of the statement that “Some expressions of Christian liberation theology tend to describe the Palestinian experience as oppression by “Jews” or “Zionists” rather than by Israeli state authority,” eh?
I think at this point that it has become crystal clear what the IPMN stands for. Jews who are so foolish as to desire to live in the historic homeland of their people should be at the mercy of the Jew-haters who dominate most of the nations that surround them. The claims of the Jewish people on that homeland are to be rejected, Israel’s right to exist denied, and the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state advocated. In order to facilitate the achievement of the goal, Israel is to be accused of “crimes against humanity,” “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” “racism,” and anything else they can think of, no matter how ridiculous. The history of Arab aggression against Israel is to be ignored, and terrorism treated likewise if not explained away.
Until such time as the PCUSA disbands this disgraceful organization, it will continue to be accused of anti-Semitism and shunned not only by Jews, but people of decency no matter what their faith.
[W]e also need faith communities to move beyond their traditional “non-marital chastity” ethic, so that we can engage unmarried adults seeking to make moral decisions about their sexuality. As a 30-year-old single man recently said to me, “Rev. Debra, how can I be a good Christian and still be sexual?”
–The Rev. Debra Haffner, director of the Religious Institute and Unitarian minister, who I suspect didn’t have the humility to respond to the young man with, “how the heck would I know?”
I wasn’t going to bring the subject of Arizona’s immigration law up again so soon, but the latest column by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite in the Washington Post just demands a response. She starts off this way:
“Reasonable suspicion” as the pretext for law enforcement deciding whom to investigate relies on the idea that it is OK for our primary approach to our neighbor to be one based on distrust, before that neighbor has done anything that might be considered wrong. This is a disastrous attitude for a democracy to develop because it will erode the very cement that holds us together as a people.
“Reasonable suspicion” is a legal term that has a specific meaning. It very definitely does not mean that “our primary approach to our neighbor” should be one of “distrust.” In the Arizona law, furthermore, “reasonable suspicion” only comes into play when a police officer has made a contact (typically a traffic stop) where a legal infraction has taken place. So Thistlethwaite is already viewing with alarm a problem that exists primarily in her own mind.
This new Arizona immigration law is morally corrupting of who we should want to be as an [sic] Americans who live in an open society and cherish freedom and democracy. It’s more like the closed and suspicious societies behind the “Iron Curtain” that we decried so much during the Cold War.
This whole line of thinking–the reductio ad Sovietum–is all the rage on the left. It’s hard to believe that allegedly well-educated people could think this an effective argument, but it is typical of people who are unwilling to make a case for what they actually support. More on this in a moment.
I went to a church meeting in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The organizers of the conference were peace activists I knew through church contacts and through anti-nuclear organizing. Of course I had to carry my passport and other papers indicating I was in East Berlin legally–one would expect that in a foreign country. But the East Germans had to constantly have documentation. This really struck me as so different from the U.S.
This is simply inane. First problem: it has been required that all resident aliens in the United States carry proof of legal status on them at all times since the administration of FDR. Second problem: American citizens are not required to have such documentation on their person the way East Germans were. Third problem: illegal aliens fit into neither of the first two categories, because they are in the country illegally. Why is this so hard for some people to understand? Those whom this law is aimed at have already broken the law by virtue of their presence in the country. Their problems isn’t that they don’t have their papers on them; it’s that they don’t have them at all. In other words, there is no comparison with life under Soviet totalitarianism. Oh, and the Berlin Wall? It was meant to keep people in, not out. That’s another little detail that people such as Thistlethwaite seem to have a hard time grasping.
Loving one’s neighbor as oneself isn’t some abstract ideal that would be nice if we could get it, but really doesn’t work in practice. It is actually quite a practical notion since it’s based on the solid recognition that it’s very likely what you do to others will be done to you, so you’d better try to treat other people decently.
No question about that, but look where she goes with it:
It’s a practical notion because as Rep. Luis Gutierrez has said, building trust with the Latino/a community is critical for law enforcement to be able to get tips on drug deals and terrorists from within the group of those most likely to know who is who, and what is what. “[W]hat is going to happen is–the eyes, the ears, that the police need so much of the community in general, so that they can combat crime, they’re going to–they’re going to cause a division between the people in the population and the police department.”
Leaving aside the fact that the drug dealers and terrorists are also illegals, there’s no question that there needs to be trust between police and the Hispanic community. But what does it say about the latter that the price of that trust is to essentially demand that the police don’t enforce the immigration laws of the United States? It is not a matter of “loving one’s neighbor” to give them a pass on laws that might adversely effect them. Rather, I would contend that the loving thing to do would be to say to Mexicans who want to come to the U.S. that they should do what so many of their countrymen do every year–follow the legal process for admission as residents, rather than coming here in defiance of the laws of the nation they want to live in, and then hide behind phony charges of “racism” to try to avoid the due penalty for that defiance.
What Thistlethwaite won’t say, but which I think is implicit in everything she and so many others on the left have been saying, is that the United States should open its borders to any and all who wish to come. That’s a respectable position–I used to be a proponent of open borders myself. Open immigration helped make America great, and in a way is a unique expression of the genius of the American experiment. But people on both the secular and religious left know that they have no chance of convincing the electorate of that given the current economic climate, so instead they demand its functional equivalent of zero enforcement. The problem is that, while the result might be the same in terms of immigration, decrying any enforcement of immigration law has the effect of bringing all law enforcement into disrepute. That’s hardly the best way to go about loving your neighbor.
UPDATE: If you want to see what the real answer to illegal immigration likely is, check out this article by Mario Loyola.
