The Reformed Pastor

The mainline church-supported U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation sent a representative to talk to the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People earlier this week. Speaking on behalf of the United Methodist Church, the American Friends Service Committee, and other mainline affiliates of the USCEIO was…well, let’s let her speak for herself:

That would be Judith LeBlanc: vice chair of the Communist Party USA and steering committee member for the USCEIO. I hope all the Methodists, Quakers and other mainline Christians whose offerings help support the work of the USCEIO are proud of their voice at the U.N.

You can not say anything (critical) about Israel in this country.

–Former White House reporter Helen Thomas, complaining about being unable to criticize Israel during a Detroit speech in which she criticized Israel, and further contended that Wall Street, Hollywood, the White House and Congress are “owned” by Zionists

(Via Newsbusters.)

“Hysterical” would also have been an appropriate heading for this post. It seems that Duane Shanks, the “senior policy advisor” of Sojourners, believes that failure to pass the START treaty now before the Senate will mean The End of the World As We Know It–and he’s not feeling fine about that:

In just the past few days, the U.S. Catholic Bishops have reiterated the moral case for the New START treaty as “a modest step toward a world with greater respect for human life.” The secretaries of state for the past five Republican presidents have reiterated the national security case for “an agreement that is clearly in our national interest.”  And Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that if the treaty is held up, Russia will “have to react” and may increase the number of its nuclear weapons rather than reducing them.

The argument from authority, which is trunmpeted ad nauseum by treaty supporters including Sojourners, doesn’t really answer the question of whether the treaty is, in fact, in the best interests of the United States, though it may well be. As for Putin, that line cracked me up. The fact is that the treaty places a limit on Russian nuclear weapons that is higher than what is currently in their arsenal. That means that even if the treaty is passed, Moscow can increase the number of weapons it has, and is under no compulsion whatsoever to reduce them (that burden belongs strictly to the United States). So Putin’s “threat” is meaningless, except to American leftists who don’t know the facts, and so are easily alarmed.

And the Republican response?  All 42 Senate Republicans signed a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid vowing to block any legislation except extending the Bush tax cuts and financing government operations.

There’s a reason for that vow, of course: START could just as easily be passed in January or February, whereas the government will shut down in a matter of days if nothing is done, and the tax cuts will expire on January 1 if nothing is done. So the GOP senators said that those two items have to be dealt with first, and then other business. Shanks’ paragraph–which says that Senate Republicans won’t deal with any other legislation under any circumstances–is simply incorrect: The New York Times article Shanks links to says “until,” a word that Sojourners spelling checkers must reject.

This “if you don’t play my way then I won’t play” attitude is now threatening the future of the world. Taking another step toward reducing the number of nuclear weapons is too important for partisan games. [Emphasis added.]

And here Chicken Little goes into full falling sky mode. This despite the fact that U.S.-Russia nuclear armaments are hardly the most pressing nuclear issue facing the world, and haven’t been since the fall of the Soviet Union. Sure, there’s still the worry that a Russian nuke could fall into the hands of terrorists, but there’s nothing in the START treaty that would prevent that from happening except, possibly, the verification regime, and that’s something that could have been renewed without any of the other provisions, which are if not irrelevant to the nuclear issue facing the world, then way down the list of what’s really important–like, say, dealing with Iran and North Korea in forms that amount to more than just “real pressures and effective incentives,” whatever that means.

I don’t have any strong feelings about this treaty one way or the other, as a citizen with a long-standing interest in defense and specifically nuclear matters (if you want to see how long-standing, check out Baylor University’s Perspectives in Religious Studies, Summer 1985 and my article “Nuclear Weapons in the Ethics of Reinhold Niebuhr”–if you can’t get it from Baylor, let me know, and I’ll send you a copy). There is both good and bad in it, from both American and Russian perspectives. I don’t think that grave harm will be done to American defenses if it is passed, though there are some provisions that I’d like to see changed, if that were possible. In any case, however, the failure to pass this doesn’t mean the end of the world, any more than failure to pass the Kyoto Treaty (phew, that was a bullet dodged) meant the end of the world. If the people at Sojourners want to be taken seriously as players in Washington’s public policy debates–and I know they do–they would do well to dial back the apocalyptic rhetoric, and instead concentrate on dealing with reality.

My friend Viola Larson has written to Carol Hylkema, the moderator of the PCUSA’s Israel Palestine Mission Network, to raise questions regarding the links IPMN has given to Veterans Today and James Wall. Her answer amounts to “ain’t nobody here but us pure-as-the-driven-snow activists”:

Thank you for your letter expressing your concern regarding our network’s endorsement of James Wall and his writings. From where we stand, James Wall is a beacon of light in a place where debate has produced more heat than light.

Mr. Wall’s reference to other writers are his choice, not ours to make. As far as your concern on articles not referenced by James Wall that appear on a website that he has referenced, we feel uncomfortable practicing guilt by association. The Israel Palestine Mission Network never condones anti-Semitism and does not believe that James Wall is anti-Semitic. His record of speaking out against racism and human rights violations in the world speaks for itself and we support his work in this regard.

Hylkema, like Wall himself, tries to play the “guilt by association” card, thinking that that ends the discussion. The problem is that she doesn’t understand what the term means. The issue with Wall isn’t that two odious web sites happen to take blog posts of his and use them for their own purposes. The problem is that he is tightly connected to the sites in question. He’s a contributing writer for My Catbird Seat, and has publicly embraced Veterans Today in his last post, despite the fact that VT’s articles on the Middle East are full of Jewish conspiracy theories, anti-Israel propaganda, and outright anti-Semitism.

If the IPMN actually refused to condone anti-Semitism, it wouldn’t be linking to Veterans Today articles or to the articles by those who embrace it. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for anyone from IPMN to recognize that.

I can’t resist a challenge. So when I read this in the Tennessean newspaper, I knew I had to leap into the fray:

There are 24 shopping days left till Christmas.

And 171 days left until Jesus’ second coming.

That’s the message on 40 billboards around Nashville, proclaiming May 21, 2011, as the date of the Rapture. Billboards are up in eight other U.S. cities, too.

Fans of Family Radio Inc., a nationwide Christian network, paid for the billboards. Family Radio’s founder, Harold Camping, predicted the May date for the Rapture.

Tom Evans, a spokesman for Family Radio, insisted the predictions are true, and he and other Family Radio supporters want to save their friends and neighbors from God’s judgments. The billboards are also up in Louisville, St. Louis, Detroit, Little Rock, Omaha, Kansas City, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Bridgeport, Conn. In cities with Family Radio-affiliated stations, the message is on the air.

The latest prediction comes from a verse in Luke 17: “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.”

It’s a matter of simple math, said Evans.

According to Camping’s prediction, the Rapture will happen exactly 7,000 years from the date that God first warned people about the flood. He said the flood happened in 4990 B.C., on what would have been May 21 in the modern calendar. God gave Noah one week of warning.

Since one day equals 1,000 years for God, that means there was a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture.

“We hope that anyone would get a Bible out and try and prove that this is wrong,” he said.

So I sat here pondering this question. Is there anything in the Bible that would prove this wrong? Where could it be? I thought and thought, bringing all of my limited knowledge of Scripture to bear. And then, approximately one-tenth of one second later, it hit me:

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Jesus, in Matthew 24:36)

Any questions?

(Via Mark Shea.)