President Carter ends his book with a summary of his thoughts on where the peace process needs to go. First, he sees two obstacles:
1. Some Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians; and
2. Some Palestinians react by honoring suicide bombers as martyrs to be rewarded in heaven and consider the killing of Israelis as victories.
Then he challenges the US to get back involved in the peace process by promoting these three key points of the Roadmap to Peace:
1. The security of Israel must be guaranteed.
2. The internal debate within Israel must be resolved in order to define Israel's permanent legal boundary.
3. The sovereignty of all Middle East nations and sanctity of international borders must be honored.
Carter readily acknowledges that while these obstacles and goals seem simple, the process to get to them is extremely complex. But it is clear that the US and the other members of the Quartet (Russia, the European Union and the United Nations) need to reengage leadership in this process. And maybe they are. Tony Blair, recently departed from his PM role in Great Britain, is now working as peace envoy for the quartet. He's got some tough choices, like how much (if at all) to work with Hamas, something that Colin Powell apparently thinks he should do, but stuff like this would have to stop.
The Hebrew Bible encourages us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. I think that's a great idea. Let's pray for and work towards a real and sustainable peace that has justice for everyone involved.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Better late than never...
Not to be too "johnny come lately", but I just finished yesterday former president Jimmy Carter's 2006 book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." The book took a lot of flack when it first came out, and after reading it, I can only think of three reasons:
- He used the word "apartheid" in the title. No doubt this was provocative, and on purpose. I remember seeing President Carter on "The Tonight Show" last year, and even Jay Leno was struggling a little with that word. But even though it provokes those feelings, I have no doubt that President Carter believes it's the right word to describe the situation. The Israelis are building walls of separation, both physically and metaphorically, based solely on race, denying Palestinians even basic civil rights and occupying--even encouraging Jewish settlements in--land that does not belong to Israel according to the international community (land they took in the 1967 war and since). While Palestinians and other Arabs must both acknowledge Israel's right to exist and denounce violence (which doesn't help their cause in the long run anyway)--something Carter says several times in the book, Israel has repeatedly agreed in the past to return to their pre-1967 internationally-recognized borders but has yet to do so.
- He's a liberal democrat. Which means that he will not have a good idea in the eyes of conservatives.
- There are those that believe support of Israel should be unconditional based on their interpretation of the Bible. This is particularly true of premillenial dispensationalists like John Hagee and others. However even the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) challenges Israel to treat with justice the aliens living among them, something that is not always the case. Since Carter so strongly encourages the international community to push Israel to fulfill their promises related to releasing occupied lands and providing the Palestinians with their basic rights and self-governance.
In my next post I will talk about Carter's suggested solutions to pursuing peace in the region.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Religious Liberty
A couple of weeks ago I attended the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) General Assembly in Washington, DC. Two highlights of this meeting of moderate, traditional Baptists were worth the trip by themselves: the joint worship on Friday night with participants from the American Baptist Churches USA and Progressive Baptists, and the Religious Liberty Council lunch, which featured a great speech from Randall Balmer. Here's his opening line:
“Dear Sir,” the letter began. “Start looking for a new job. The moral majority is going to put you and President Carter type of Christians out of a job.” This letter, written in August 1980 by a man from Dallas, was addressed to Jimmy Carter’s religious liaison, Robert Maddox, a Baptist. “Any staunch Christian would not support gays, would not support the ERA which contradicts God’s plan for women and would support voluntary prayer in the school. You guys are real bummers. You don’t even deserve to be called Baptists.”
Ballmer, a professor at Columbia and an ordained Episcopal priest, hammered today's most well-known Baptist leaders, particularly those within the Southern Baptist Convention, for their tossing out the window one of the top two or three historical Baptist distinctives--religious liberty. You can read the text of his entire speech (it's worth it!) here...
Probably my favorite lines came about the public posting of religious stuff, especially the 10 Commandments. He says:
Why the Decalogue, first of all? Why not the Sermon on the Mount, for those who want to make the argument that the United States is a “Christian nation”? The Sermon on the Mount, after all, is the highest expression of Christian ethics, although it does contain some of that unfortunate language about peacemakers and those who show mercy and turning the other cheek and loving one’s enemies and storing treasures on earth. It also talks about the dangers of praying in public, after the manner of the hypocrites. Perhaps that’s why we prefer the retributive justice of the Ten Commandments over the ethic of love outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. Still, the soaring aspirations of the Sermon on the Mount surely would comport better with the American temperament than the prohibitions of the Ten Commandments.
But why not post the Decalogue in public places? Because, quite simply, it trivializes the faith and makes the Ten Commandments into a fetish. I was one of the expert witnesses in the Alabama Ten Commandments case, where Roy S. Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, plopped a two-and-one-half-ton granite monument emblazoned with the Decalogue into the lobby of the Judicial Building in Montgomery. Moore, who had run for office as the “Ten Commandments judge” and who claims to be a Baptist, repeatedly refused the requests of other religious traditions to have their sacred texts represented in the Judicial Building. And he also refused to acknowledge other precedents for American jurisprudence: the Code of Hammurabi, the Justinian Code, or the English Common Law tradition. He wanted only the Decalogue.
Religious liberty is important not because the religion diminishes the government, but because the religious principles get diminished when tied to governmental rule! My favorite Balmer zinger:
The lesson of Montgomery, Alabama, is that when religion looks for sanction from the state, religion is diminished. Faith is reduced to a fetish. Some of you may recall that after Judge Thompson ruled, properly, that “Roy’s Rock” violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and workers were preparing to remove it, one of the protesters screamed, “Get your hands off my God!”
Unless I’m mistaken, one of the Commandments etched into the side of that granite monument says something about graven images.
In our zeal for Christian morality, are we often putting aside our own Christian morality?
“Dear Sir,” the letter began. “Start looking for a new job. The moral majority is going to put you and President Carter type of Christians out of a job.” This letter, written in August 1980 by a man from Dallas, was addressed to Jimmy Carter’s religious liaison, Robert Maddox, a Baptist. “Any staunch Christian would not support gays, would not support the ERA which contradicts God’s plan for women and would support voluntary prayer in the school. You guys are real bummers. You don’t even deserve to be called Baptists.”
Ballmer, a professor at Columbia and an ordained Episcopal priest, hammered today's most well-known Baptist leaders, particularly those within the Southern Baptist Convention, for their tossing out the window one of the top two or three historical Baptist distinctives--religious liberty. You can read the text of his entire speech (it's worth it!) here...
Probably my favorite lines came about the public posting of religious stuff, especially the 10 Commandments. He says:
Why the Decalogue, first of all? Why not the Sermon on the Mount, for those who want to make the argument that the United States is a “Christian nation”? The Sermon on the Mount, after all, is the highest expression of Christian ethics, although it does contain some of that unfortunate language about peacemakers and those who show mercy and turning the other cheek and loving one’s enemies and storing treasures on earth. It also talks about the dangers of praying in public, after the manner of the hypocrites. Perhaps that’s why we prefer the retributive justice of the Ten Commandments over the ethic of love outlined in the Sermon on the Mount. Still, the soaring aspirations of the Sermon on the Mount surely would comport better with the American temperament than the prohibitions of the Ten Commandments.
But why not post the Decalogue in public places? Because, quite simply, it trivializes the faith and makes the Ten Commandments into a fetish. I was one of the expert witnesses in the Alabama Ten Commandments case, where Roy S. Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, plopped a two-and-one-half-ton granite monument emblazoned with the Decalogue into the lobby of the Judicial Building in Montgomery. Moore, who had run for office as the “Ten Commandments judge” and who claims to be a Baptist, repeatedly refused the requests of other religious traditions to have their sacred texts represented in the Judicial Building. And he also refused to acknowledge other precedents for American jurisprudence: the Code of Hammurabi, the Justinian Code, or the English Common Law tradition. He wanted only the Decalogue.
Religious liberty is important not because the religion diminishes the government, but because the religious principles get diminished when tied to governmental rule! My favorite Balmer zinger:
The lesson of Montgomery, Alabama, is that when religion looks for sanction from the state, religion is diminished. Faith is reduced to a fetish. Some of you may recall that after Judge Thompson ruled, properly, that “Roy’s Rock” violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and workers were preparing to remove it, one of the protesters screamed, “Get your hands off my God!”
Unless I’m mistaken, one of the Commandments etched into the side of that granite monument says something about graven images.
In our zeal for Christian morality, are we often putting aside our own Christian morality?
Friday, July 06, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
Love as Sacrifice
"You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. No so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
Jesus in Mark 10.42-45 (NIV)
We have said that loving people--even those we perceive to be enemies of the truth--requires relationship, service and sacrifice. Relationship--close proximity--is the basic need for love to happen. I was reminded again this morning as I read about Jesus at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7.36ff). He was willing to go to a tax collector's house or a Pharisee's house. He wasn't concerned with what would happen to his reputation if he associated with a sinful person, whether that person's sin was moral (like the woman who anointed him in this story) or religious (like the Pharisee). Service flows from relationship; those we know we are more apt to take care of. We meet their needs. We do all the things of Matthew 25: feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, take care of the sick, visit the prisoner, etc. when we know the hungry, thirsty, naked...
But service cannot stop at the meeting of basic needs and still be called Christ-like. Jesus' last statement in the Mark passage is that he came to "give his life as a ransom for many." This raises a challenging question for me: what am I willing to give my life for? Who am I willing to give my life for? "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dar to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5.7-8)
Now obviously this whole line of blogs about "loving your enemy" applies to this reality: loving your neighbor. In other words, everyone who crosses my path or whose path I cross as I follow Jesus. How then does the community of Jesus-followers apply this to loving the gay community?
Relationship--we need to know them.
Service--we need to meet their needs.
Sacrifice--it is time that we gave up trying to manipulate the world into acting right outwardly so that we're not uncomfortable, and work at loving them for who they are. The love of God working through men and women will not leave any of us the same as we were. It profoundly changes us, inside and out.
It is time that we gave up on using worldly power the way that Jesus said the Gentiles do, lording even good things over people.
It is time that we sacrificed our own agenda for the sake of others, not in some milquetoast passivity that lets sin and evil rule the world, but that overcomes sin with love and evil with good.
Can the church in the US go there?
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
More on Christian Art...
Awhile back I posted some thoughts about Christian art. Menachem Wecker on a blog called "Iconia" picked up on what I said and we had a little conversation here.
Well, tonight I was back on Menachem's blog and found this posted. Great thoughts!
Abigail Ellis Says
I’m an artist and an Evangelical Christian, and I have to say I don’t like the bulk of self-proclaimed Christian art and music. I’ve tried to like it, but still I have the same reaction. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why.(Btw, I agree with the definition that Christian art is any art that comes from a person of Christian faith, and does not have to be religious art, which is a different thing.)
Here’s my conclusion about why Christian art can sometimes be so dire:It’s too self-concious.
As an artist I find self-conciousness to be the deathknell of creativity, and the stymie of the process of making art. The best work I do is the most intensely private stuff that I do only for myself (and don’t want to show!). I’ve spoken to other artists, writers and musicians and so many have observed the same reaction in themselves.
Evangelicals, in my opinion are not always very good at being unselfconcious when it comes to their faith. Like most protestants (as compared to Roman Catholics, etc.), we are required to display our personal religious beliefs in public in order to be accepted in our religious communities. We are obligated by our communities to live up to moral standards and levels of evangelistic efforts in order to be accepted as trustworthy, despite what we believe in our hearts about being saved by Jesus alone. This is how a lot of Evangelical communities organise themselves: it’s just the way it works.
So it follows that a lot of self-proclaimed evangelical christian art has to be OK’d theologically for other people. Whatever standard get’s applied (like you said, is it OK just to mention Jesus, or does it have to have a call to faith in it?) that’s self-censure. It’s self-concious by nature, and it’s exactly what gets in the way of making art.
If I’m looking for my art to be accepted in the Evangelical community I have to worry about all the criteria I have to live up to. Not only does my art have to be about good things, which show praise to God with dignity, they have to be respectably presented, and conform to basic modesty. I also have to lead a pure life (at least post-conversion), where any sign of personal struggles and failings are non-admissable.So what’s left to tell? If my art comes from my heart unself-conciouly, it’s going to be filled with uglyness and shame, but also truth. This isn’t respectable, and many people in the Evangelical scene won’t accept this. Art that talks about suicidal thoughts from a Christian perspective isn’t always Kosher.
BUT my faith tells me that the truth, though ugly, is clean and purifying, and that God is in the business of turning brokeness and imperfect lives into even more beautiful things. Why shouldn’t my art reflect this too?!I think the problem is that a lot of Evangelicals are afraid of the ugliness and messiness of the truth of their own lives. So they try to conform their lives (and art) to what they think it _should_ be. That’s self-concousness.But this isn’t new: it was something John Wesley wrangled with, and this way of doubting has been passed on in Evangelical churches as a legacy.
The reason much of Christian art is unispiring, is that there’s a theological issue playing out into the ethics of how we treat ourselves, each other and our art, which makes us self-concious and ashamed of ourselves. That makes for bad art.
thanks.
Well, tonight I was back on Menachem's blog and found this posted. Great thoughts!
Abigail Ellis Says
I’m an artist and an Evangelical Christian, and I have to say I don’t like the bulk of self-proclaimed Christian art and music. I’ve tried to like it, but still I have the same reaction. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why.(Btw, I agree with the definition that Christian art is any art that comes from a person of Christian faith, and does not have to be religious art, which is a different thing.)
Here’s my conclusion about why Christian art can sometimes be so dire:It’s too self-concious.
As an artist I find self-conciousness to be the deathknell of creativity, and the stymie of the process of making art. The best work I do is the most intensely private stuff that I do only for myself (and don’t want to show!). I’ve spoken to other artists, writers and musicians and so many have observed the same reaction in themselves.
Evangelicals, in my opinion are not always very good at being unselfconcious when it comes to their faith. Like most protestants (as compared to Roman Catholics, etc.), we are required to display our personal religious beliefs in public in order to be accepted in our religious communities. We are obligated by our communities to live up to moral standards and levels of evangelistic efforts in order to be accepted as trustworthy, despite what we believe in our hearts about being saved by Jesus alone. This is how a lot of Evangelical communities organise themselves: it’s just the way it works.
So it follows that a lot of self-proclaimed evangelical christian art has to be OK’d theologically for other people. Whatever standard get’s applied (like you said, is it OK just to mention Jesus, or does it have to have a call to faith in it?) that’s self-censure. It’s self-concious by nature, and it’s exactly what gets in the way of making art.
If I’m looking for my art to be accepted in the Evangelical community I have to worry about all the criteria I have to live up to. Not only does my art have to be about good things, which show praise to God with dignity, they have to be respectably presented, and conform to basic modesty. I also have to lead a pure life (at least post-conversion), where any sign of personal struggles and failings are non-admissable.So what’s left to tell? If my art comes from my heart unself-conciouly, it’s going to be filled with uglyness and shame, but also truth. This isn’t respectable, and many people in the Evangelical scene won’t accept this. Art that talks about suicidal thoughts from a Christian perspective isn’t always Kosher.
BUT my faith tells me that the truth, though ugly, is clean and purifying, and that God is in the business of turning brokeness and imperfect lives into even more beautiful things. Why shouldn’t my art reflect this too?!I think the problem is that a lot of Evangelicals are afraid of the ugliness and messiness of the truth of their own lives. So they try to conform their lives (and art) to what they think it _should_ be. That’s self-concousness.But this isn’t new: it was something John Wesley wrangled with, and this way of doubting has been passed on in Evangelical churches as a legacy.
The reason much of Christian art is unispiring, is that there’s a theological issue playing out into the ethics of how we treat ourselves, each other and our art, which makes us self-concious and ashamed of ourselves. That makes for bad art.
thanks.
This makes me laugh!
My friend texasinafrica posted a link to this on her blog, and it made me laugh so hard I had to put it here too...
Monday, May 21, 2007
Love as Acts of Service
One of my good friends asked me recently, his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, why I was calling homosexuals "the enemy." I've tried really hard to figure out how to write this post without doing that. I don't believe that the gay community is my enemy, or the enemy of the church or of morality or whatever. As we discussed last time, it's not that simple. There are enemies of good in every community, inside and outside the organized church and the organized homosexual community. Evil is real. "Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you..." said God to Cain in Genesis 4.7 (NIV). Evil is in the world. And wherever it is, it can only be overcome with good.We have been saying that love involves at least 3 things: relationship, service, and sacrifice. Today I want to write a little about service. Let's start back with the words of Jesus that originally launched this discussion:
"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you." Luke 6.27-31 (NIV)
Our culture demands getting even. But Jesus radically says that getting even cannot be the Way of the Jesus-follower. The Way involves serving even those who mistreat you. When someone hits you, physically or emotionally or whatever, don't hit back and get even. Offer another opportunity to display the radical love of Christ. [I'm not here talking about relationships of abuse--that's not what Jesus was talking about either. He's talking about those who are treated poorly because they do good.]
So, those who follow the Way of Jesus need to figure out how they can serve the homosexual community in the name of Christ. And it should be radical. It will be criticized by those who believe the stance of morality is to try and use every means possible to stamp out or marginalize sin. Evil can only be overcome with radical good, which means acts of service.
How do we do this? Well, it starts again with relationship. We need to be with gay and lesbian people and build relationships with them and love them. What kinds of acts of service should we do? First, we should do the things we do for anyone we have a relationship with. Invite them over for dinner, give them gifts on their birthday, include them to family activities. Don't shun, don't ostracize, don't ignore. If you get called names, respond with love and service, not anger and hatred.
Second, as a community of followers of the Way of Jesus, we need to serve the gay community when it is mistreated. If a person is beaten up or mistreated because they are gay, it should be Christ-followers who are first to point out this evil. We should be involved in promoting laws that protect all those among us, regardless of what we think about their lifestyles. We should carefully consider how we can promote the liberty of all, not excusing evil in any form.
Only good will overcome evil. Only service to others displays true love. Even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
May my life be a river of service to the world.
A Special Thanks...
As I (finally) started working on the next blog post on loving your enemies, I just wanted to say "thanks" to those of you who still read and respond to what I write. With the weeks in between posts, it's a wonder that I'm not the only one reading!
Monday, May 07, 2007
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