April 28, 2006
Conservative WORLD
Thanks to Austina for this.
A friend of mine gave me a subscription to WORLD magazine, the conservative Christian weekly that Republican pundit Marvin Olasky edits. It is pretty amazing how WORLD offers its readers an alternative universe of facts from that of TIME or NEWSWEEK or BBC or just about any other major news source in the West (except, of course, FOXNEWS). And they revel in it—in the current issue, Hugh Hewitt gives this slant on the generals who have recently criticized Donald Rumsfeld: “The amplification of their comments by the mainstream media is troubling.” Hewitt then makes the “MSM” (“Main Stream Media”) into left-wing conspirators that are “eager to take down Mr. Rumsfeld as part of its never-ending campaign against President Bush.”
A recent cover story featured a smiling John Bolton, offering the softer side of our UN Ambassador than what his critics have offered us (there's a reason that President Bush made Bolton a recess appointment in order to skip around the criticism).
Last week’s cover story on Global Warming (“Greener Than Thou”) was infuriating. In an article that pretended to be an unbiased news story, the predispositions and backhanded putdowns were in just about every paragraph. It was a calculated opinion piece seeking to undermine the credibility of the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI), signed by more than 85 evangelical leaders, including bestselling Purpose-Driven Life author and pastor Rick Warren, Foursquare Church president Jack Hayford, World Vision president Rich Stearns, Salvation Army national commander Todd Bassett, Christianity Today editor David Neff and executive editor Timothy George, Wheaton College president Duane Litfin, and former National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson. The article tried to make the case that these leaders were duped into signing something they didn’t understand—that they failed to recognize the implications of ECI’s statement that climate change “is being caused by human activities” and advocates “national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.” Uncritical readers are led to believe that anyone who signed this initiative are either ignorant or stupid. World is among the few conservative Christian institutions that are absolutely unwilling to believe the scientific findings of the majority of the world's experts on climate.
Olasky’s “WORLD” is a conservative fantasy-land, in which the old battle-lines remain drawn between Conservative Christians (who believe in an individualistic gospel of personal salvation and personal responsibility) and Liberal Christians (who believe in a gospel that changes society and public responsibility). In Olasky’s most recent commentary, he eulogizes the famous advocate of the Social Gospel, William Sloane Coffin, Jr. After talking about Coffin’s "hip sermons" that pleaded for churches to help the poor and to overturn social classes and traditional institutions, Olasky shares his personal story of when, while in college, he personally embraced Marxism. Olasky’s pendulum has seemingly swung the extreme other way. He now writes that when Coffin died this month, “that’s what has happened to the social gospel as well. A few Coffin epigones talk on in an attempt to keep that ol’ time religion alive, but evangelicals rely on the most important change agent of all: the grace of Jesus Christ.” Olasky attempts to build that old, stale wall between the “Jesus Christ Gospel” and the “Social Gospel.”
But I have news for Olasky: That ain’t gonna play anymore.
What I’ve witnessed in the last three to four years is a revival of social concern among evangelicals (especially among the younger generations). They are critically concerned not only about issues like ABORTION and MARRIAGE, but also about issues such as WAR and PEACE (and people like Rumsfeld who lead powerful nations into unjust wars), CREATION CARE (and the effects our exploitation of the earth has had on climate change), the POOR (and economic policies that favor the rich and hurt the oppressed), and many other social issues. Olasky seems oblivious to the resurgent rise in popularity of those who advocated an evangelical version of that “ol time social religion”—people like Ron Sider and Jim Wallis. He seems dismissive of evangelical leaders like Rich Cizik, The National Association of Evangelicals’ Vice President for Governmental Affairs. And he seems to not even know about the whole new generation of leaders who make up “the emerging church” that see themselves as “post-conservative and post-liberal,” refusing to say it must be "either-or," but rather "both-and." These emerging leaders are more appreciative of a Gospel that focuses in on “The Kingdom of God,” which has implications not only for our personal lives but for society as well. It is almost a revival of the theology of Walter Rauschenbusch, who made the Kingdom of God the basis for his “Social Gospel,” in which “humankind [is] organized according to the will of God.”
April 27, 2006
Poor and Weak Citizens
A relevant passage from a book I'm still working through:
"...God even held pagan kings responsible to see to the needs of its poor and weak citizens. For example, Nebuchadnezzar is denounced for not giving "mercy to the poor." Joseph became high ranking civil magistrate in the pagan state of Egypt..."
"The problem with "conservatives" is that they tend to establish conditions immediately, denying mercy to people who are [deserving]. By contrast, "liberals" may never attach conditions to further aid."
April 18, 2006
Way Upstairs, Downstairs
The Way We Live Now
Way Upstairs, Downstairs
New York Times
April 16, 2006
By WALTER KIRN
There are studies that prove it, but I don't need to read them. I've seen the prices on the menus. I've also seen the pay stubs of the cooks. I've stood in the mansions, let in by the maids, and listened to the string quartets, whose players I've met in the coat aisle at Goodwill. I know what's going on. As predicted, but much faster than anticipated, the rich in America are getting richer (at rates that favor the very rich and the superrich). And at the same time, as wasn't quite predicted but still seems faster than anticipated, the nonrich are getting almost nowhere.
What I didn't know was that my knowledge shouldn't bother me.
Not according to John Snow, still, at this writing, secretary of the U.S. Treasury, who nonchalantly told a journalist recently, "What's been happening in the United States for about 20 years is" a "long-term trend to differentiate compensation." "Long-term," when used this way by this sort of official, tends to mean "fundamentally unstoppable." And, in this case, inexplicable, like a sort of financial global-warming process that may be man-made or (who knows?) a natural cycle that we would welcome if only we knew its function. Snow, a trained economist and former corporate C.E.O., doesn't pretend to be able to explain what's causing this whole compensation differential. Nor does he seem tortured by his ignorance. "We've moved into a star system for some reason," he said, "which is not fully understood."
As a nonrich noneconomist, I don't know why what's happening is happening either. But I can remember when it wasn't happening, at least not so rapidly and spectacularly. Time: The 1970's. Place: The countryside north of Minneapolis. I'm attending public grade school and junior high, watching what little TV there was to watch then and bumping into rich folks on occasion. At school, in my social-studies classes, I'm learning about a condition known as "poverty," which mainly exists, my textbooks indicate, in two obscure locations: "Appalachia" and "the ghetto." (It's a terrible situation, but it's improving some.) From television, on "Gilligan's Island," I'm learning about tycoons. (They wear blazers and speak in nasal voices.) And from actual rich people, whom I know are rich because I've heard my parents whisper about them, I'm learning that having lots of money means driving renamed Fords and Chevys called Lincolns and Cadillacs. They possess more leg room than Fords and Chevys, but mechanically they're the same, my father says.
Such innocence. Such miniature wisdom. Poverty: Bad, related to geography and something we're rightly trying to end. Tycoons: A ridiculous species of the rich. The rich: What Lincolns are to Fords. Conclusion: We're all Americans, mechanically.
But then came the dawning of the long-term star system, a phenomenon so extensive and mysterious (even to educated Treasury secretaries) that I sense it may soon become immune to human cognition in the manner of the vastest things. Gravity. Time. The national debt.
It doesn't help that the vocabulary of wealth and poverty hasn't been adjusted for inflation since the heyday of dimwitted 1960's TV comedy. We still call the very rich among us millionaires, even though lots of them are closer to billionaires. Words fail reality at the other end too. In 1974, I knew exactly what the grown-ups meant when they called a person "poor." They meant he could barely feed or clothe himself. Today that's still what I think poor means, but to friends of mine in their 20's and early 30's, it seems to mean something more like "short on cash." Their favored terms for passers-by who appear to be living on the edge are "practically homeless," "doomed" and, sometimes, "psycho" — words that refer less to having less than to somehow being less. The condition once described by "poor" — having nothing in a chronic fashion and not because of a temporary money crunch caused by lavish spending; and having nothing for many possible reasons, but not necessarily or chiefly because the person is damned or insane or a social untouchable — has been orphaned by ordinary speech. It's a simple idea without a simple word now.
Meanwhile, the nonsimple words are taking over. The words with 11 bedrooms and 7 baths that are larger and finer than rich folks needed before the "differentiation" — which isn't merely an economic trend but a style, an aesthetic. "Since the early 1980's on," Secretary Snow said, "we've seen a rise in inequality, but we've also seen parallel to that a continuous rise in living standards." To know what he means, you would have to read the studies, but to know how he feels, you just have to hear his diction.
To my ear, the man sounds satisfied. And convinced that his listeners should be satisfied too.
But my ears are small, predifferentiation ears, their canals wide enough for only simple words and simple ideas. "Rich." "Poor." "Unfair." My eyes have a similar limitation. I see a person wearing jeans, and I can't imagine that he's a millionaire. I see a person I'm told is worth a billion and wonder why he's not wearing a tie. I see his Bentley and mistake it for a Lincoln, which is really just a Ford, and then out of that Ford steps a major movie star. I see a Cadillac, and I find out that it belongs to an immigrant gypsy-cab driver who shares it with his two brothers-in-law and parks it in the garage where all of them live.
The Treasury secretary may have a point, though. It's all mysterious.
In the limited sense of confusing, it sure is. But on "Gilligan's Island," if the Skipper or the Professor deemed some occurrence "mysterious," what I remember him doing next was to quiver and then run off and warn the others.
Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor, is the author, most recently, of "Mission to America," a novel.