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.

The fact is that women, regardless of their age, race, or class, have been subjected to various forms of the sin of sexism. Women, for the sheer fact that they are women, have been and are abused, stereotyped, taken advantage of, etc., and as we see in the brave and courageous faces of the women of Iran, silenced and subjected to abuse, violence, all because of an age old myth that the God of heaven and earth has ordained that female be less than and subject to male. (Incidentally, this myth has made its mark in many religious traditions). This sinful lie has made its home in our hearts causing all of us to give in and to live in ways that are not reflective of the kingdom which Jesus spoke of.

So, when Sotomayor made this comment she was – may I conjecture – speaking of her experience as a Latina woman who has had to struggle harder to find power in this world than most white males. As a result, her experience as a Latina woman would be different than that of a white male who would have power by the sheer fact that he is a white male. The experience and insight of a person who has had to struggle more for power always has something unique and powerful to offer those of us who have not had to struggle as much to gain power. Therefore, some might be appalled and perplexed by the statement, but we must realize that what we say and what we do always has context; experience will always inform how we think (even those who are interpreting and making and enforcing law).

All that being said, we see the tragic and at the same time inspiring events unfold in Iran as we see the faces of women who are legally 2nd class citizens in that country courageously stand up to the sinful forces that have so cruelly and violently enforced the myth. We see the face of men and women who want to have power for and with one another and not over and against each other. Now more than ever the voices, the stories and the EXPERIENCES of these women are finding their way into our homes and soon, if not already, we will begin – only begin – to realize how some of us are simply given more power than others for the sheer fact that we are male, or that we are American, or this or that, and there is no reason to be defensive, but instead to humble ourselves, especially as people of faith, and ask how we might live in ways that our more reflective and proactive in  destroying the various myths we’ve internalized about women, about Muslims and so on, and cherish one another seeking to have power WITH and FOR each other and not OVER and AGAINST one another.

Finally, in these challenging times President Obama is being urged to take more action as the oppression, suppression, and violence against the Iranian people increases. May we be hard pressed to think and pray for this situation because, as Martin Luther King Jr. has reminded us, “Violence begets violence.” What fruit would an attack on Iran produce? Would it help the survivors of the oppressed in this country?

May God grant the men and women of Iran God’s peace, comfort and continued courage.  Amen.

In other words, sin–the “powers” are both. They exist in the malformed soul and are intrinsically tied up in the ways in which the world and culture are structured. Everything–and everybody–has both good and evil within.

This integrated understanding of sin goes a long way to help understand Von Brunn, where inner and outer “powers” combined to push him toward a form of racial idolatry and personal wickedness that resulted in killing another person. But an integrated understanding of sin also begs the question: Where was I in this story? What do I do to resist these dehumanizing powers? What systems and structures that I am part of perpetuate the evil from which Von Brunn acted? (Talk radio hosts, take note….) . . .

Progressive Christianity is in no way a morally relativistic vision; instead, it is emerging as a morally integrated theology. We need to examine all the powers-at-play in Von Brunn’s reprehensive moral act–to name and resist the Powers is one way to transformation. It is wrong–in every case, everywhere, for everyone, and every institution–to target people and deny them basic human dignity because of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual identity. And equally wrong to let the “little” sins that contribute to the bigger evils to pass unchallenged.

If every matter of public policy is another battleground in the ultimate war between Good and Evil, then compromise anywhere, on any matter, is sin.

Three days later, Dr. George Tiller, a doctor best known for performing late-term abortions, was shot and killed as he served as an usher at his church on Pentecost Sunday. As the dust clears, it’s laid bare a fact that we all know in our hearts from childhood: Violent words lead to violent deeds.

If the Christian Right’s leaders are telling their followers that abortion is like the Holocaust, and that those who perform abortions are the equivalent of Nazi concentration camp wardens, it shouldn’t be any surprise when one of the followers decides that killing an abortion doctor is a good and wholesome act. And given that there’s a history of violence in the extreme sectors of the movement to criminalize abortion – a history of violence that advocates of legal abortion have for years been linking to violent, demonizing rhetoric – it’s even less of a surprise. We shouldn’t forget that Dr. Tiller himself had been shot in the past by anti-abortion extremists; we also shouldn’t forget that terrorist Eric Rudolph, who set off the bomb during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, also bombed two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar. The assassination of Dr. Tiller is clearly far from an isolated incident.

So what’s the way forward? How do we deal not only with the fact that someone just committed a heinous murder in a church, on Pentecost Sunday, in the name of Christ? What can we do as believers in the Prince of Peace to ensure that no matter where we stand on the issue of abortion, there are no more assassinations like that of Dr. Tiller?

First, we need to tone down the rhetoric. Too often, we demonize people on the other side of the aisle. “She’s pro-choice, so she’s a baby-killer.” “He opposes SCHIP, so he clearly doesn’t care about the poor.” This kind of language presumes bad faith on the part of others and serves to make compromise all but impossible. How could we expect someone who opposes abortion to come to common ground with someone he or she has been told supports a Holocaust, or expect someone who thinks abortion should be legal to sit at a table with someone whom he or she has been taught is a woman-hater? The demonizing rhetoric makes even the simple act of breaking bread – the most basic of human social activities – all but impossible.

Second, we need to have an honest discussion about the issue of abortion. Too often, we’re talking past each other rather than with each other. We don’t trust one another enough to come to consensus solutions or even to talk about the issue. So instead of giving an inch or two here or there, which could lead to good will and good-faith solutions, we entrench ourselves even further in our own positions, believing that any compromise at all with “the enemy” is giving them a beach-head from which to launch an all-out assault. We need to respect that both sides are coming to their opinions out of an honest place of heartfelt concern – and even if we can’t come to a consensus solution (which may, unfortunately, be impossible), we can at least understand one another better, and maybe won’t be so quick to whip out that demonizing language again.

Third, and finally, with that good faith in place, we do need to work towards the common ground we can find. We all agree that regardless of whether or not abortion should be legal, we’d all like to see the number of abortions go down. In a lot of situations, abortion is a symptom of a much deeper social disease – the traps of poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of support that ensnare far too many people in our society. We can come together on things like improving this nation’s rather ghastly foster-care system, which damns far too many children to lives of neglect and abuse.

We can come together on things like improving health care for all children – because even if we differ on whether adults who can work should have a right to health-care benefits, we can all agree that no child should have to suffer from disease or ill-health because his or her parents are poor – no matter where we put the blame for their parents’ poverty. We can come together on things like improving pre-natal care, so that women who are pregnant can have confidence that they’ll give birth to a healthy baby. We can come together and brainstorm ways to reduce unplanned pregnancies – whether that’s through comprehensive sex education programs in the schools with an emphasis (but not an exclusivity) on abstinence, increased access to contraceptives. These are common-sense, common-ground things that we can do to reduce abortion.

Even if we disagree on the particulars of these things – and I know as I write this that we do disagree – we can at least come to the table and hammer out some kind of common ground on the shared understanding that we all want to see abortions decrease. If we start on that basis, if we start with mutual trust and good faith, we’re much less likely to go back to demonizing and hating one another.

But the assassination of Dr. Tiller makes one thing clear – the status quo is untenable. If we go on doing what we’re doing, if we go on making enemies of brothers and sisters, there will only be more violence, more broken hearts, more grieving families, more FBI manhunts. We need to seriously rethink the way we talk about this issue and start trying to see things through the eyes of others. And most importantly, we need to be less Manichaean and more Christian, seeking to follow Christ’s example in putting love before all, in seeing the humanity especially of those we consider to be enemies, in seeking transforming initiatives of peacemaking rather than the perpetuation of verbal violence against one another. Only then will we make progress on this question of deep ethical, moral, and legal import.

It should be noted, especially on controversial issues like this, that Matthew 25 Network bloggers speak only for themselves; the opinions they express are not necessarily the official opinions of the Matthew 25 Network as a whole.

Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.

That is not just a beautiful promise – though it is that – but, I think, it can also be read as a charge to Jesus’s followers. Let us be the (partial) fulfillment of the promise of Jesus, and commit ourselves to comforting the mothers – and the fathers, and the brothers and sisters, and the sons and daughters – whom Jesus joins in mourning for the victims of the injustices of this world.

And let us commit ourselves to the long, hard, impossible-without-God task of working to end these injustices, so that fewer mothers mourn in the future.

So, founded on Christian principles by Christian forbears? Sure. Yet, are not many of these same principles also principles found in many of the other religious traditions in the United States?

Even more, is the fact that a majority of the population cites Christianity as its religion enough to argue that a nation is Christian or Muslim, or Jewish, etc.? If so, then we all must ask ourselves what this might mean; for Christians in a supposedly Christian nation it may mean that if we say we are a Christian nation that we might believe that we need to be the dominant population, the dominant ideology, etc., yet, is this a Christian perspective? Also, if we say we are a Christian nation, then does that mean that our government is Christian and that we then consider our legislative policies, such as our past or even our current policies on torture, to be Christian?Doesn’t and hasn’t the claim that we are a Christian nation meant that we have somehow allowed ourselves to believe that we are entitled to a certain status in this world? Doesn’t and hasn’t the notion that we are a Christian nation allowed ourselves to believe that we are granted a special blessing from God? Isn’t that in many ways idolatrous?

Or, is being a Christian nation acting and living according to the so-called Christian principles we were founded by? Lest we forget that many who said we were a Christian nation also claimed slavery and segregation were “Christian” and that Martin Luther King, Jr., during the Civil Rights era, noted that while the United States espoused certain principles, it certainly did not live up to these principles.

So, what exactly makes a nation a “Christian” nation?

Regardless of our answer, the fact is that as Christians the questions that surround this issue are complex; as Christians do we desire our religion to be the religion of the “empire”? Or, do we maintain a distinct identity that is not tied to the empire? The issues may be complex, but as Christians we can and we must, at the very least, recall the sin of nationalism and what Scripture has to say to us about this particular sin.

Also, we have to ask ourselves what is at stake behind any desire to be called a Christian nation. Is there any desire for a special blessing from God behind this claim? After all, the fact remains that we can never claim that we are “blessed” in a particular way that suggests that this blessing is beyond that which any other nation might be blessed by God. To suggest we as a nation have a particular blessing because of certain principles we espouse or a certain population we are composed of would be to suggest, for example, that that the people in African nations are suffering from drought, famine, endless murder, rape, and genocide, because they are not particularly “Christian” enough. Not very Christian, is it?

May God have mercy on our claims to blessing and our notions of what it means to be a “Christian nation.”

February 17, 2009

 
To whom it may concern,

President Barack Obama, this letter is for you, but it concerns all of us, especially those distressed by the condition of America’s soul. A great opportunity has arisen out of your historic election. We all must act in our own way to better America, and you can do your part as President.

The crucial struggle for power remains only an illusion; it gives us the sense that we need no one, only ourselves. Power offers false security in a world that is ever-changing and challenging our perceived supremacy. An illusion, nevertheless, causes real cycles of injury, poverty, and death.

One of your most impactful speeches stated: “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.”

We have the opportunity with Afghanistan and Iraq. I believe you can help the country become aware of its steady march to wars, highlighting that it’s usually not people in general that ask for combat, but those in positions of power. You can work more closely with Congress to provide more oversight for wars currently being waged and ignite a national discussion on morally responsible ways to end them. A re-envisioning of the War Powers Resolution, not as some bureaucratic regulation but a principled method of information for the people, should occur.

In addition, you can establish a clearer protocol when a President does decide that there is a real threat to the United States. The goals of our mission to Afghanistan should be clearly addressed, the “Dover Ban” should be lifted, and the Iraq War should come to an end. It is the ultimate sign of our struggle for a false security, as we sacrifice the lives of people to enjoy our consumption at home and “force democracy abroad.”

Unlike some traditions in the Christian faith that have articulated a theology of total depravity, I believe in the God-given value and dignity in each human being.  We have something good, in each of us–however far we have strayed or fallen–to return “to ourselves,”  as in the Prodigal Son (or daughter) model, repent of our ways, and begin to heal the American condition. Our national soul depends on it.

Best regards,

Edwin R. Estevez

“They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

— Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3

Though, since World War II, our nation has tended toward more of a Joel 3 relation to military spending

“Beat your plowshares into swords And your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, ‘I am a mighty man.’”

- Joel 3:10

Evidently, George Bush governed through a Joel 3 mindset. He called upon us to come together not for the great task of peace but for the task of war. Both, in my opinion, have their seasons. Yet, only peace should be sought.

Defense Spending Since 2001

Barack Obama hopefully will be an Isaiah 2 president. One who does not seek peace through strength alone, yet through community, care, and brotherhood. Due largely to the Cold War – and the out spending the USSR to bring about its end – much of our common rhetoric concerning defense and national security centers on peace through strength language. We take pride in having the greatest military on earth, the most well-developed arms, the expertise of weaponry. These are important things. Although, our pride should not lie in our weaponry yet in our ability to craft peace.

For this reason I found a recent Fox News Report that President Obama has called for a 10% cut in Defense Department Spending quite encouraging. It is a gutsy task to cut defense department expenditures in a time of war – nevertheless two wars – but a much needed one.

48 years ago Dwight Eisenhower left the office of the Presidency in a much different manner than George Bush. He left with a degree of regret, with many successes in his tenure, and with a warning to the coming generation. The warning of Eisenhower in his final address rings with even more truth today:

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

As Church people it is my belief we have a unique role to play in addressing the national security mentality of this nation. Because the trouble is not simply one of military industrial lobbyists and Congresspersons attempting to secure bases and industrial plants in their districts. The trouble lies in a society which glorifies military violence over peacemaking. Simply turn on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, Military Channel, or check out last year’s top-grossing films and you will find ample evidence that we are in many ways a Joel 3 society – ripe with militarily violent fetishism. Though, let me be clear, that the military is not the problem here. The troops completely give of themselves to our nation and our community and for that we are extremely greatful. The problem is two-fold; one of scare resources – financially, and of mis-ordered desires – socially.

ABC’s This Week well illustrated this delimma on Sunday when Rep. Barney Frank suggested that there was a link between spending problems and the Iraq war. Frank was attempting to make the point that health-care, roads, schools, etc. come from the same pot as military spending. His debating counterpart would hear none of it. It was, in many ways, a classic swords vs. plowshares moment.

So what is our task in this climate? I believe it is to speak out for peace and a mindset of peace. To advocate that we not only equip ourselves militarily but as members of a largely peaceful global community. Obama once said that he doesn’t “want to just end the [Iraq] war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” If we do not speak out in our local communities – to our local congresspersons – against the strength being peace frame the mindset will not end.

Swords into Plowshares - Outside the UN

Theologians, perhaps beginning with Augustine, have long commented about our mis-ordered love for violence and destructiveness. When we begin to needlessly favor defense spending well beyond what is necessary, placing it over health care, schools, roads, childcare, and welfare something is terribly mis-ordered. Augustine would have a word for that – sin.

The story of Obama’s anticipated cut in defense spending has not fully broken. But, undoubtedly, Obama will be called “weak” by his political opponents. Though we can testify to a greater truth. The truth that peace does not come from being great at strength; yet, strength comes from being great at peace.

Update: So this is what I get for using Fox News as a source.  The administration has requested 527 Billion in defense spending next year which is an 8% increase.  Although none of this is near final.  We will see what happens next.