We’d like to draw your attention to an excellent post by Neeraj Mehta over on Sojourners’ God’s Politics blog, calling us to the ideal of Dr. King in being “maladjusted to injustice”:

When a country brutalized by poverty like Haiti is hit by a natural disaster, we should be angry. When a teenager walking down the street in the middle of the day is shot dead, we should be angry. No matter where we live, no matter how comfortable our lives are, no matter how rich or poor we are, these realities should shake us, should affect us, should push us to live and strive for something different. [. . .]

In a lot of ways I think we’ve become brainwashed. Brainwashed into thinking that this is it. Brainwashed into believing we’re stuck with what we’ve got. This is the way the world is. Work hard, follow orders, stay in line, and you’ll get what you deserve, we’re told. But is that really it? Is this the road we want to be on? Is this really the best it is going to get?

In difficult times like these – times that are all the more difficult for progressives, as we see the Democrats we elected choosing to capitulate to the robber barons of the health insurance industry and Wall Street, and their bought and paid-for legislators in the Republican Party – it’s important to keep being maladjusted, to keep being angry.

And it’s important to keep imagining a better world, and keep that vision before us – to never forget that the world as it is isn’t a foregone conclusion or an inevitability, that change is still possible, and that the justice of God and the mercy of Christ Jesus are on our side.

As Dr. King writes, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Let us never be content with the injustices of the world as it is, let us never resign ourselves to platitudes like “the poor will always be with us” as if it’s a valid reason for inaction. Let us continue the good fight.

Five years ago, the United Church of Christ produced an ad with a simple message: Jesus doesn’t reject anyone. But when they tried to put it on the air, they were rejected by CBS and NBC. CBS in particular said the following, according to The Boston Globe:

In the letter from the CBS official to the United Church of Christ, the network said it refuses advertising that “touches on and/or takes a position on one side of a current controversial issue of public importance.”

Now, the news comes out that CBS will be airing an ad from Focus on the Family featuring Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother with an anti-abortion message – during the Super Bowl, the most prominent television advertising event of the year. Certainly, Focus on the Family will be “touch[ing] on and/or tak[ing] a position on one side of a current controversial issue of public importance,” no?

Why reject the UCC’s ad, and accept Focus on the Family’s?

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, in the aftermath of the horrific earthquake in Haiti, Pat Robertson found himself mired in controversy (yet again) when he claimed that the Haiti earthquake was a result of a deal with the Devil gone bad:

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about… They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another.

Robertson’s comments, predictably, elicited a firestorm of criticism, much like his and Jerry Falwell’s blaming 9/11 on liberals – and rightly so. It would have been a rather ridiculous thing to say even if there hadn’t been tens of thousands of people still trapped in the rubble of Port-au-Prince. The fact that it was said only hours after the earthquake made it all the more offensive.

But in a strange way, Robertson is partially right – not in that the earthquake was caused by the Devil, but in that the problems Haiti is experiencing in the aftermath of the earthquake are deeply rooted in that nation’s peculiar history. And in that history, it disappoints me to say, the role of the Americans has usually been one of complicity with those who cause the suffering of the Haitian people. Here is an excellent summary; it will suffice to say that from the beginning of Haiti’s existence as a separate country, we’ve tended to align with the imperialist powers (like France) that sought to keep the Haitian people in subjection rather than with the Haitian people’s desire for freedom, safety, and sustenance. Not only are we passively complicit in Haiti’s abject poverty, as it’s existed so close to our shores for so long; we’re actively complicit in it, as some of our most honored forefathers sided with Haiti’s oppressors against the people of Haiti (to say nothing of our nation’s more recent meddlings in Haiti’s democracy).

Why did it take an earthquake for the American zeitgeist to suddenly notice Haiti, a nation that consistently ranks among the poorest on the planet and sits less than 600 miles from our shore? Why do buildings have to collapse before we see the abject poverty and starvation that exist in a place that’s on our nation’s metaphorical doorstep?

Read the rest of this entry »

(Sorry about the pun there. I assure you that I didn’t realize it was a pun until after I’d started typing it, at which point I decided that it was too good a pun to not leave there.)

A few days ago, we joined in a call for action to put pressure on credit card companies not to charge fees for charitable donations, particularly in light of the recent (and ongoing) social justice disaster that is the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.

Now the New York Times is reporting that credit card companies will be waiving card fees to certain charitable groups for Haiti donations:

In a statement, Visa said it would not apply interchange fees, through February, to donations made to a select group of major charities — the names of which were still being compiled — that are providing support to Haitian relief efforts. The company said it would also donate any revenue that was generated by charitable donations related to the Haiti crisis through next month.

MasterCard Worldwide said it would wave interchange fees on relief donations made using United States-issued MasterCards to the American Red Cross, AmeriCares, Unicef, Save the Children and CARE U.S.A.

American Express said that through the end of February, it would rebate the transaction fees for charitable contributions made on its card directly to the nonprofit organizations listed on the Agency for International Development’s Web site in support of Haiti relief.

Discover said it was also waiving some fees but did not immediately offer details.

This is an encouraging start – and the credit card companies should be given credit for bowing to public pressure and not charging fees for these donations.

But like I said, it’s a start – just as the newfound discovery by the American zeitgeist of the rampant poverty in Haiti is just a start to the very real social justice actions that need to occur in that country.

Haiti’s problems didn’t start with this earthquake, and they’re certainly not going to end once we’ve cleared the rubble and dead bodies, provided some medical care and temporary shelters, and given them enough food and water to get them through the night. The problems are ongoing – as are the massive social and economic injustices that are occurring on many other parts of the planet that haven’t suffered a catastrophic earthquake in the past 10 days.

Therefore, we call on the credit card companies to make this laudable action a start and not an end – and to not charge credit-card fees for any donation to a non-profit social justice organization. They have the technology now where that could be done with relative ease. Why should Visa get a cut when we donate to World Vision or Heifer International? Why is it that only the victims of a catastrophic earthquake – and not those who are “just” suffering from abject poverty and starvation – should get 100% of the money we donate to organizations designed to make the world a slightly more just place?

It’s a good start, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and AmEx. Time to do the right thing and go the whole way. End all card fees for social justice giving.

For those who don’t know, there’s a proposed bill in Uganda that would criminalize homosexuality – prescribing a life sentence or even the death penalty for those found to be gay or lesbian. This hateful bill, which should be odious to anyone with a conscience, has been pushed by a Christian leader in Uganda, David Bahati. And according to the Uganda Daily Monitor, Bahati is going to be speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast here in the U.S. on February 4 – an event the President also traditionally speaks at.

No matter what differences of opinion we might have on the question of whether homosexuality is permissible for Christians, it’s clear that the proposed bill in Uganda should be opposed by anyone who calls him- or herself a Christian. A bill prescribing the death penalty for gay men and lesbians is completely incompatible with any understanding of the love of Jesus Christ. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Uganda has spoken out against this bill, as have prominent American Christian leaders including Rick Warren. That the author of such a hateful and disgusting bill is being invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast should certainly raise questions about the true agenda of the group organizing the Breakfast – a Christian group called The Fellowship.

We need to stand together as one faith – conservatives, liberals, moderates – and condemn this bill. We need to stand together and demand that the prime mover of such an un-Christian bill not be honored with a prime position at the National Prayer Breakfast. Anyone who calls him- or herself Christian needs to make his or her voice heard – honoring David Bahati is incompatible with Christianity.

Unfortunately, The Fellowship, who organizes the prayer breakfast, isn’t all that interested in receiving input from concerned citizens. They don’t have a webpage, and the National Prayer Breakfast also doesn’t have a webpage. (One would think that any group that was truly acting out of the love of Christ wouldn’t have anything to hide, but that’s neither here nor there.) So we’re going to have to work this from the other end.

Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the White House from this page to call on the President to condemn Bahati and demand of The Fellowship that Bahati be uninvited. Also, members of Congress generally attend this breakfast; call your Representative and Senators and let them know that they need to demand that The Fellowship disinvite Bahati. Finally, call on your denominational leaders or other prominent figures in your Christian tradition to publicly denounce Bahati and demand that he not be invited to this Prayer Breakfast.

The name of Christ is being dragged through the mud by those who would make His banner one of hate and punishment instead of one of love and forgiveness. You have an opportunity to stop that. Will you take it?

No matter what side we might take on some of MoveOn.org’s other political actions, I think we can all agree with them here: Credit card companies shouldn’t be making a profit when ordinary people do things like, say, help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. The credit-card operators make plenty of money; why not waive fees on charitable donations, or at the very least disaster relief?

Here’s the text of their petition:

No Fees on Charitable Contributions

As the tragedy in Haiti unfolds, Americans are generously donating millions of dollars to aid organizations. But when they donate with their credit cards, the credit card companies take a big cut.

It’s outrageous and wrong–and it needs to stop.

Can you sign our petition to the major credit card processors telling them that they should waive ALL fees on charitable contributions from today going forward.

A compiled petition with your individual comment will be presented to the CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover.

Please sign the petition here… and watch this space for more reflections on the earthquake in Haiti, what you can do to help, and the just response of Christians to this tragedy, which has only exacerbated the man-made problems (abject poverty, colonial oppression, etc.) that country already faced.

This is Part IV of a series reflecting on Christmas, consumerism, religion, politics, and Kingdom economics.
Part I: Black Friday
Part II: Who Gets the Gift?
Part III: O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Okay, so I promised the fourth installment a week ago, and didn’t ever get around to writing it. Sometimes life catches up with you; I apologize to all who were waiting with bated breath. But I think this delay can be good; I promised that the rubber would meet the road in this installment, and I don’t intend to disappoint. But we can let our “Christmas spirit” get so wrapped up in Christmas that we forget that it’s something we should be cultivating year-round, and maybe continuing this conversation through the twelve days of Christmas could counteract that to an extent.

One of the old practices of Christmas – and one that I think we in America particularly feel the loss of – is the tradition of wassailing, when the poor of the community would go to the houses of the rich, sing carols, and ask for the rich to share their food and drink in exchange for a blessing. The more I dig into the tradition in my mind, the more I think that covered up in there, in the schmaltz of Christmastime, is a powerfully prophetic practice.

To put it quite bluntly, I think it’s time that Christians start standing up, speaking in the name of Jesus Christ, and making some demands of the rich. And as a good rhetorician, I think it starts with the words we use. In short – I think we need to banish the word “charity” from our vocabulary.

God says throughout the books of the Old Testament prophets that it is an injustice to live in luxury while the poor starve. God says throughout the books of the Old Testament prophets that it is an injustice not to use the power one has been given to help the oppressed, the widowed, the orphaned, the foreigner. One of the most insidious lies of the moneyed class has been rebranding what should properly be called justice, as charity.

The difference, I think, is in the obligation. Charity is something extra one does if one has some money left over that one doesn’t need. Charitable giving isn’t expected to cut into one’s lifestyle in any way. If you have the choice between living more simply and giving your excess income to the poor, or living a lavish lifestyle, the frame of charity makes the latter an acceptable choice.

Justice does not. Justice is an obligation. If you are not practicing justice, you are taking part in injustice. If your holding on to your money or your using your power for your own gain are a source of injustice, it is a moral wrong to continue to use them thus. Charity leaves the status quo intact and skims a little off the top; justice demands a radical redistribution of wealth from rich to poor.

That’s a loaded phrase, so let me explain. I think we can differ in whether or not we believe that government should do the redistributing of wealth, but I don’t think there’s any ambiguity in Scripture about the fact that redistribution of wealth is a demand from God. If our neighbor is poor – and in our interconnected world, every single human being on the face of the planet is our neighbor – God demands that if we have the means, we use them to help our neighbor. As Christians, following the example of Christ who gave all, this demand comes even at the cost of our own well-being.

I’ll be even more plain about it: If we American Christians were doing our job, we wouldn’t be having a debate about a public health care option, about how much foreign aid to issue, about what to do about poverty in our nation. We wouldn’t have a homelessness problem or a joblessness problem. We have the wealth and the power to solve all of these problems. Our problem isn’t means – it’s the will to do it.

Is this a hard teaching? Undoubtedly. It challenges me every day as I go to the office, as I eat my meals, as I sit in my warm home. And I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t do nearly as much as I should. I should be cutting back on luxuries to ensure that others have necessities. But I don’t, because as Paul writes, knowing what I should do and actually doing it are two different things.

It’s an insidious lie of the moneyed class – and one that’s unfortunately found a great deal of purchase in the soil of American culture – that those who are poor deserve to be, that if they’d just work harder or get the right attitude or be better people they’d be middle-class too. Let me be emphatic: That is in no way a Christian value. The Christian value toward poverty is simply this: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

All I have is from God. It was God who caused me to be born into a middle-class home in suburbia; God who gave me the gifts of intelligence and the opportunities to make the most of that intelligence through education; God who’s given me a healthy body; God who put me in a place where I could take advantage of those opportunities and have a stable job that provides for my needs. It’s a fallacy for any of us to pretend that we’ve pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps; it’s God who put us where we are. All the hard work we’ve done to get to where we are, we’ve been able to do because God has given us the means and abilities we need to do it.

But God demands that we use these things God has given us not for our own gain, but for others – for the sake of justice. God has given to us the ability and the riches, that we might redistribute these riches for the sake of the Kingdom. This requires an attitude that’s 180 degrees from the “traditional American values” of acquisitiveness and selfishness, of poverty as a sign of moral failure – values that have, unfortunately, been promulgated and propagated by the church as well as society as a whole.

And the change in attitude starts with a change in vocabulary. So no more charity. Let us banish that word from our vocabulary. Giving to the poor, fighting oppression and disease, opening our churches and homes to those who need a warm place isn’t an act of charity. It isn’t optional. It is nothing less than a demand from God on those who have the means. It is a matter of justice – and if we’re not doing everything we can, we’re doing injustice.

Let’s go wassailing.

I’ll be continuing my series on Christmas, consumerism, and social justice in a few days – I’m still a Ph.D student and it’s finals week, so I’ve dropped the ball on this a bit – but I wanted to highlight this excellent blog entry from a WordPress user named dritta called “Stand Up for ‘Christmas’?”. (Just a warning: For those who are averse to strong language, the original post has a bit of it):

The last time I checked, spending lots of money at christmas wasn’t a big priority of Christ. Neither was all of the hoohaw about saying/doing/looking holy from the “religious” people in his day. Christ cared a lot about the oppressed, poor, neglected, and rejected. He didn’t give a %^&* what the most religious people of the day said was important; in fact, he called them a bunch of hypocrites (and got killed for it). [ . . . ]

You know what offends me? It’s not whether someone says “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas”. It’s when I read that L.L. Bean, Pier 1, and Walmart are known to be actively and intentionally using slave labor in their products. I don’t give a $%^& how many “Merry Christmas” signs they have in their store, as if that makes one flying $%^&’s worth of difference when they are participating in the enslavement of women, men, and children who are created in the image of God. Focus on the Family gives them 12-14% offensive ratings, and 52-71% friendly ratings. No mention of child slavery. No mention of beating or firing workers trying to unionize to protect themselves. No mention of the workers who have died at the factory making the cheap furniture you bought at Ikea. How does “Standing for Christmas” have ANYTHING to do with Christ?

The entire entry’s worth a read.

I’ll be posting another entry in my series on Christmas in the next few days or so.

This is Part III of a reflecting on Christmas, consumerism, religion, politics, and Kingdom economics.
Part I: Black Friday
Part II: Who Gets the Gift?

One of the things that frustrates me most about this time of year – particularly as I’ve been getting more and more into liturgy (having grown up in mostly non-liturgical churches) – is that we call everything between the day after Thanksgiving and December 25 “the Christmas season.” The lights go up, the Santas appear at the malls, everything’s red and green, and immediately it’s Happy Time!

What’s lost, of course, is that liturgically, the Christmas season starts on December 25 (and ends with the Feast of Epiphany on January 5). The time before Christmas, as we all know from having opened the little doors on the calendars, is Advent.

What we lose, though, isn’t just a liturgical season; it’s an entire frame of mind. Christmas is a time of victory, of exuberant celebration – the Christ has come into the world! It’s no wonder the corporate interests want to advertise this, because it gives them another opportunity to say “spend spend spend!”

Advent, though, is about longing. It’s about hope. It’s about the achings of a people who’ve lived under foreign occupation and foreign oppression for half a millennium, who’ve struggled to maintain their identity and their homeland against all odds, who are just waiting for something good to happen for once.

It’s about a people disappointed in leaders like the Hasmonean Dynasty, who had led a successful revolt against the Greek occupiers in the second century BCE, only to descend into civil war and ultimately sell out to the Romans in exchange for a secure throne and a gravy train. (King Herod was one of their descendants.)

It’s about a people who are proud of who they are but unsure about how that’s supposed to work in a rapidly-changing world, a people suffering under oppression and occupation by an army that only barely tolerates their culture.

Mostly, though, it’s about a people who are waiting, hoping, praying for a Messiah to rise up and inaugurate the Kingdom, a new David to reunite Israel, right all wrongs, throw off the oppressors (both the Romans and the puppet leaders they’d set up among the Israelites) and return Israel to its rightful glory.

What we lose when we ignore Advent is the longing and waiting: the sense that the world isn’t what it’s supposed to be, that there are oppressors. When we skip to Christmas, we get caught up in the celebration, and forget exactly what it is we’re celebrating. Advent gives us an opportunity to look for the oppression in the world and stand alongside the oppressed and occupied, to feel their pain and tell them to keep holding out hope.

Perhaps more importantly, Advent gives us the opportunity to examine ourselves: Are we standing with the Israelites of the first century, oppressed, hungry, and waiting and longing for the Messiah? Or are we standing with those who are oppressing them? Who are the oppressed in the world today, and who are their oppressors? And what can we do, as citizens of the most powerful nation in the world, to stand with the former and against the latter? We ask ourselves about what we consume, about the costs of that consumption, about the arrangements our nation makes in our names in order to uphold our lifestyles.

No wonder the corporations want to skip it.

But the message of Advent is ultimately hope. The verses of the quintessential Advent hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” are all about longing and suffering, but the chorus rings the point of Advent:

Rejoice, rejoice; Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Stay tuned for Part IV, where the rubber meets the road.

This is Part II of a ???-part series reflecting on Christmas, consumerism, religion, politics, and Kingdom economics. Click here to read Part I: Black Friday.

Yesterday I reflected a little bit on Black Friday and the irony that is celebrating the birth of a humble Savior by engaging in orgies of consumption and stress that only make the rich richer and the poor poorer. My basic question was this:

Shouldn’t Christian believers – those who take the story of the Advent and Christ’s birth to heart – be offering another way? When the world is crying out for justice and compassion, isn’t God calling us to sacrifice of ourselves to make this happen?

So today, I think I’m going to get down to brass tacks: What’s the alternative? What can we as Christians do during the Christmas season to offer a true witness to the one who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty, as Mary sings in the Magnificat?

I’m going to suggest here that we, as American Christians, need to seriously rethink what we’re doing during the Christmas season. The metaphor I’d like to play around with today is this: If Christmas is a celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ, shouldn’t He be getting all the presents?

No, I’m not talking about taking all the money you’d spend on gifts this year and giving them to your local church – though if that’s where you feel led, go do so and be blessed. But for the rest of us, we have to ask ourselves: if we can’t literally give of our material gifts to Christ Himself, shouldn’t we give them to the people Christ identifies with? The Gospels make it clear who Christ declares to be His chief concern during His life on earth: the poor, the meek, the oppressed, the outsiders, the peacemakers, the widows and orphans and foreigners in our midst.

Note, if you will, who’s absent from that list, who receives (directly or indirectly) Christ’s proclamations of woe: the rich, the “high priests” (whether religious or political), the money-changers, the oppressive and occupying Roman authorities. When the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, He tells him to sell everything he owns, because it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom.

So I think we should be asking this question: Who’s getting gifts from us this year? Of course we’d answer, “Well, my friends and family are, obviously.” Sure, but who else? I had to buy that sweater or that Blu-Ray player or that iPod somewhere – who got the money? Was it the miner who mined the raw material, or the worker who put it together in the factory, or the trucker who drove it across the country, or the person in the retail uniform who rung it up for me?

And if it wasn’t these people – the people who actually did the work to get what I bought into my hands and into the wrapping paper – then who did get my gift?

Do we as Christians have a responsibility to ensure that we only patronize businesses and companies that pay their workers a fair wage, that give their workers ample time off in order to have lives outside of work, that have basic safety standards? Do we have a responsibility as Christians to look for the union label, to inform ourselves about the business practices of the companies we buy from, to look at reports on things like CEO pay and corporate governance and factory conditions and outsourcing?

Further (and I don’t know if I can make a theological case for this), do we as American Christians have some kind of responsibility – call it patriotic, call it looking out for your neighbor, whatever – to make an effort to buy from companies that pay American workers a fair wage?

And finally, returning back to the metaphor we started with here: If, on the celebration of Jesus Christ’s birthday, we’re going to give our presents to the people He identifies with, should we as Christians be buying more stuff for ourselves and one another at all?

More questions, fewer answers. We’ll continue tomorrow or Monday.