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While we're looking at Lincoln ...

The new Spielberg movie Lincoln has a lot of people thinking and talking about the Civil War period and America's ongoing struggle to live according to its creed of liberty and justice for all. But it was a radio program about a lesser-known "war" from Lincoln's time in office that woke me from my blogging slumber.

 This American Life's excellent Nov. 23 episode Little War on the Prairie touched on so many of the themes of reconciliation that I used to write about with frequency here that I was finally moved to write again.

The epidose describes the Dakota war of 1862, which ended with hundreds dead, the Dakota people exiled from their homeland and the largest mass execution in U.S. history: the hangings of 38 Dakota men in Mankato on Dec. 26, 1862.

As we approach the 150th anniversary of the event, journalist  John Biewen goes back to Minnesota to figure out what really happened and why Minnesotans didn’t talk about it much after.

What comes out of his report, if we listen carefully and reflectively, is that this tragic part of American history has been (and is still being) repeated countless times around the world.

The parallels to today's terrorism and intractable relationships between various cultures are glaring.

As I listened I heard the familiar themes I've read about and heard in talks with people from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, South America ... :

1) The use of debt, dependence and deception to take land and possessions from people seen as inferior. As I heard how deliberately this was planned and executed against the Dakota I was reminded of the stories of share-cropping injustices my grandmother told me that she and my grandfather had suffered before they finally decided to move (with nothing to show for years of honest, hard work) from Alabama to Ohio.

2) Resentment and violence by some of the oppressed people as a response to injustice. I thought of Nat turner's rebellion, of the ANC in South Africa, of the PLO and Hamas, of Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi, of the IRA in Northern Ireland ...

3) This violence is then seen as justification of stereotypes about the savagery and inhumanity of said people followed by "justified" war and repression to stop their "cowardly, hateful acts." Go through the literature of any conflict between peoples and you will find words like that. Listen to the headlines today and you will hear them again. Read the e-mails and Twitter posts of your friends today, and you will read them even now. 

We see again how quickly the origins of conflicts are lost in violence and repression. Lost, seemingly forever in some cases, is the notion that all peoples have value and thus basic rights. That all people have the same dignity, the same needs for love and respect, for food and water and shelter. 

These elements are buried under fables and myths that we build about our peoples. 

As Tim Tyson, a white southern historian, notes in the report,  "We re-invent a fake history for ourselves that doesn't deal with the complexities.  So that the kind of self congratulatory history that passes for heritage keeps us from seeing ourselves and doing better. There's a delusion about who we were, and that's why we have a hard time about who we are."

He says this after pointing out that lost in the history of the Civil War period is the fact that a third of North Carolinans were pro-union and that a year into the war, 1862, the state elected a governor who'd opposed both slavery and secession.

"And yet there's no memory that white people opposed the Civil War. There's no memory of General Pickett, of Pickett's Charge. He came to Kinston, North Carolina, in 1864. And the first thing he did was he hanged 22 local white boys on the courthouse lawn because they were loyal to the United States government.

"And you go down to Kinston now and you go out to King's Barbecue, and you look down the row of cars at all those trucks and all those Confederate flag bumper stickers. And I just want to say, 'you don't know who you are. They hanged your great granddaddy and you got their flag on your bumper.' That's kind of interesting."

NOT JUST ABOUT THE PAST

But how does this apply to today? How would knowing our history help us in today's conflicts? Have we forgotten details about the not-so-distant colonial period, for example, that might be at the heart of ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa? Might there be something more than Islam and the nature of the peoples that might explain why we often seem stuck there?

Without true historical perspective, we lose the the elements needed for true reconciliation, for true peace: Repentance and forgiveness.

We can't repent (to reject as wrong and correct course) from a past we don't recognize. All we can do is blame the problems on the anger and hatred of our opponent. Likewise, it is difficult to forgive (to not require payment or revenge) when the basic injustice you sense so clearly is not even recongnized by the other. All we can do, in this case, is try to bring the oppressor down to our level by labeling him as inhuman, thus justifying our acts of revenge.

WHEN IT'S DONE RIGHT

Listen to the response of a young Dakota woman today to the truly repentant acts of Minnesota governor Mark Dayton, who said he was appalled by remarks made from his office 150 years earlier and stated flatly that the US used deception and force to take Dakota lands and broke its promises.

"I wanted to cry," said Gwen Westerman, who then told of an exchange she had with a white American on the subject recently.  

"Somebody said, "well, what do you want? Do you want reparations?" And the person who asked the question was almost accusatory. Well what do what do you want, what more do you want? And I said, what we want is acknowledgement that this happened. And so to hear what the governor did, this is a turning point. What we want is to be acknowledged, and here it is."

This is the heart's cry of wronged people all over the globe. They want to know that their ancestors were worth as much as yours were back then, and thus, that they are worth as much today as you are. 

Thanks to This American Life and John Biewen for giving us another opportunity to look honestly into our uncomfortable past in hopes of seeing more clearly our present. 

Avatar strikes repentance nerve

With his epic film Avatar, director James Cameron offers an important but probably undesired gift to Westerners: the ability to feel sorry.

The movie gives Western viewers an opportunity to do emotionally what the movie's main characters do physically: to experience the clash of civilizations from the point of view of the indigenous peoples being invaded. 

 In the film, earthlings take on genetically manufactured bodies of the indigenous Na'vi race found on planet Pandora. Likewise, Western moviegoers get the metaphorical opportunity to enter into the skin of the indigenous peoples around the world who have been so damaged by their encounters with Western civilization over the past 600 years.

By creating a vivid other world and plunging moviegoers into it in three dimensions, Cameron gives viewers a chance to set aside their defense mechanisms and preconceived notions about justice and history, taking them on the type of experience that I believe is a necessary part of the process of reconciling the West with the Rest.

In learning about and sharing ideas on reconciliation over the past several years, I've learned that both forgiveness and repentance are necessary if reconciliation is to take place.

Forgiveness, quickly stated, means to not require of the guilty party the payment due for an injustice that has been committed. Repentance, on the other hand, means to renounce not only the injustice that was committed but also the core thinking ("I deserve this more than you," "I am better than you") that enabled the injustice in the first place. 

Both forgiveness and repentance must first take place within the individual, but the process takes on social meaning when it moves on to an encounter between offending or offended others in the form of a pronouncement of forgiveness or an apology. It can also involve gestures to repair the wrongs that were done.

BUT, I DON'T FEEL SORRY 

Problems is, the descendants and heirs of those responsible for past injustice often simply do not feel sorry about what was done in the past, because they don't feel connected to it.

How can one be expected to repent and to apologize or repair injustice when one does not feel sorry?

It is only when people see and feel the harm of what was done, even in past generations, that they can begin to reject the wrong thinking they have often unknowingly inherited from their progenitors.

To make matters more complicated, the guilt and pain and resentment between the groups in question make it difficult for them to get close enough to begin to see into each other's experiences.

It is generally only those who develop intimate relationships with peoples who were negatively impacted by injustice who begin to understand the lasting impact of the past on current generations. 

These people who get close (through marriage, close friendship or living among the "others") enter into the skin of the people in question, they feel their pain and begin to grasp the implications of what was done, particularly to the victim group's souls and psyches.

Those who develop these intimate relationships are the people who feel sorry. They are the people who repent. These are the people who, in my own experience, helped me to forgive.

But few European Americans get the chance to live closely and intimately with Native American or Black American culture. Few Europeans experience intimately African cultures that were impacted so negatively by colonization there. 

Few Australians get the chance to enter into the experience of the aboriginal people there.

Few Westerners get the chance to live among Arabs, developing the relationships necessary to understand what the humiliating colonial past meant to Arabs across the Middle East and how that continues to affect the world today ... how that colonial past is deeply tied to the perception and reaction to Israel's existence today, for example.

SHORTCUTS TO INTIMACY

So it's invaluable to find ways for people to experience intimacy that normal life is unlikely to produce any time soon. We need intimacy shortcuts for people groups.

For the Reconciled seminars I have been presenting for the past few years in Burundi, France and in the United States, I've been trying to develop an interactive role-playing game based on the past 600 years of world history designed to help participants understand the impact of culture clashes on today's relations.

The idea was to get people to experience how we are tied to our ancestors and how our own sense of value is tied to theirs. We wanted to help people feel the need to be worth as much as other peoples and the frustration of having that need denied.

But Cameron touches emotions in Avatar that I never could have dreamed of reaching.

HURTING WITH THEM

When you experience the devastation of the Na'vi in Avatar, you have a chance to taste for a moment the pain that so many peoples around the world have felt.  

Few, if any, experiences before Avatar have caused my spirit to grieve for what was done in the name of my country and of my faith, in particular to the Native  Americans.  

As the film reached its climax I felt deeply saddened, humbled and sorrowful. For some reason, I thought of Mt. Rushmore and felt profound shame as I imagined the Lacota Sioux people standing by as dynamite blasts blasphemed the majestic mountain scape they had known as Six Grandfathers, carving out of this holy site the giant busts of men that, in their eyes, had overseen the ethnic cleansing and genocide of their people. 

One scene, in which the stunned Na'vi walk through the devastated center of their culture, with ash falling and floating around them, is eerily reminiscent of Ground Zero in New York, as stunned Americans tried to make sense of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. 

Cameron thus gives viewers the opportunity to connect their own recent trauma with the trauma that others have felt. "Have we caused others to feel the horror of what we felt on Sept. 11, 2001?" 

FROM THE HEAD TO THE HEART

This film experience caused my heart to follow what my head had long since understood. I had known in my head that what was done to Native Americans was horrible. But it had been too easy for me to dismiss this as one of those facts of history that every people on earth has endured. 

"Kingdoms and peoples rise and fall," I might have been tempted to think. "That's the way the world goes." And plus, as an African-American, I had felt exonerated from the need to deal with this issue. It wasn't my problem. My people had nothing to do with it.

But Avatar did not allow me to come to the film as a Black American. It pulled me into the skin of a Na'vi living on Pandora. It built a new world around me that allowed me to forget, to a large degree, the realities of my own. 

I was able to process the experience without the natural defenses and devices we use to deflect the discomfort of guilt and responsibility. 

And so just as the Na'vi in the film found themselves defenseless against the selfishness and ignorance of their intruders, so was my soul without a weapon to beat back the ugliness of what I was witnessing. I felt what it feels like to have everything that matters to me, the very essence of my identity and my reality, ripped up at the roots, as if it meant nothing.

I felt what it was like to realize that nothing about me and my identity mattered. It was a horrible feeling that I knew all too well. But Avatar helped me feel it for others, rather than having it be about me.

NOT SO EXAGGERATED

Some might argue the villains in the film were cartoonishly simple in their greed, ignorance and sense of superiority. Others might feel a need to defend their forefathers as being much less ignorant and cruel than those represented in the film. But it is important to note that their perception in the eyes of their victims is often very much as the movie portrays.

In our seminars we encourage people to seek to confront the ugliness and heaviness of the past rather than seeking to avoid it, rationalize it and push it off on others. We encourage people to face the discomfort, guilt and sorrow head-on.

If we don't understand the reality and impact of our past, we can't feel sorry. We won't reject and turn from the thoughts and practices that led to injustice. 

We won't work to repair the injustices of the past and to seek justice in the present. 

We will never understand why people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab are willing to blow up airplanes filled with people. We will just look at people like him and decide that they are the only problem. And so, the cycle of misunderstanding and vengeance will continue. 

Of course Avatar cannot cause us to think or act differently. But for a moment at least, this movie gives us a chance to feel something different. Perhaps, for some of us, these feelings will be the beginning of a new journey.

Here comes the judge

Our letter closes with statements based in perhaps the most important of all cultural influences on the American church.

This is something I didn't understand until I left the country 13 years ago and began meeting Christians from other nations. There exists a decidedly American world view that goes something like this:

* God has chosen America out of all nations because it was founded by Christians seeking to follow Him.

* In the past, the country was blessed because it honored Him and tried to follow his ways.

* In recent years, the country has begun moving away from Him, taking prayer out of schools and other public venues, approving of abortion and becoming tolerant of homosexuality and sexual immorality in general.

* If the country continues on its current path, it will lose its blessed status and incur the wrath of an angry God.

We won't go into detail, but there are a few main problems with this thinking.

1. America is not Israel. The Bible never says anything about America being specially blessed or chosen for the purpose of blessing the world. This is a culture myth that has been repeated across time and across the world. The Romans thought this way.  Hitler spoke of Germany as a special place with a divine calling. The list goes on. People naturally seek divine justification for their very human desire to be superior to others. Americans don't realize how much more Roman they are than they are Biblical when they fall into this thinking.

2. Even if it were true that somehow God had chosen America as a special place, can we honestly look at our history and believe that the country was morally better in the past than it is now? This is where most African-Americans, though often socially conservative, differ decidedly with white America.

Was America following God in massacring the Indians and enslaving Africans and others? Were people god-honoring through years of publicly approved lynchings, discrimination and subjugation of a people?

We could go on to consider the treatment of women, of immigrants, of the poor in general during the industrial revolution ... Was America following God better in those days than it is now?

Did God look the other way on these issues because we may have prayed in school back then or because homosexuality was kept quiet and hidden?

Just what was better about back then? This totally depends on your cultural glasses.

BACK TO THE LETTER

You will notice this general line of thinking in the closing parts of our letter.

So what does all this mean for the nation?

In the past when the Lord brought someone with the beliefs of Obama to lead a nation it meant one thing - judgment.

Read 1 Samuel 8 when Israel asked for a king. First God says in 1 Samuel 8:9 "Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."

Then God says

1 Samuel 8:18 " When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day." 19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles." 21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. 22 The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."

Here is what we know for sure.

God is not schizophrenic

He would not tell one person to vote for Obama and one to vote for McCain. As the scripture says, a city divided against itself cannot stand, so obviously many people are not hearing from God.

Maybe I am the one not hearing but I know God does not change and Obama contradicts many things I read in scripture so I doubt it.

For all my friends who are voting for Obama can you really look God in the face and say; Father based on your word, I am voting for Obama even though I know he will continue the genocidal practice of partial birth abortion. He might have to nominate three or four Supreme Court justices, and I am sure he will be nominating liberal judges who will be making laws that are against you. I also know he will continue to push for homosexual rights, even though you destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for this. I know I can look the other way because of the economy.

REPENT, OR ELSE

First off, you will see that fear of judgment is a major motivation in this cultural interpretation of faith. It's based on the idea that God judged Israel in the Old Testament when they didn't follow his ways as prescribed.

But what are those ways? If you come from a certain part of American culture, you will assume, as has our writer, that this pertains to abortion and homosexuality.

In the passage listed in our letter, God was warning Israel (a special nation with a special calling in God's plan) that they should not have a king. Period. Any king.

They were supposed to follow God directly so that God could reveal himself to the world in a special way through this peculiar nation that would be unlike any other.

His goal was to bless the entire world through this nation and they were messing it up by trying to be like everyone else.

WHY DID GOD DESTROY SODOM?

The writer mentions Sodom and Gomorrah and the often repeated idea that God destroyed these cities because of homosexuality.

Again, culture informs us here more than Scripture. If we read the texts again, we see simply that God says that there had been an outcry against evil in these cities.

It never specifies that that evil was homosexuality. We see elsewhere that there was violence and bloodshed in these cities. And then we see that a gang wanted to have sex with the men (angels, in fact) who were visiting Lot.

So we assum that God's judgment was about homosexuality. We completely miss the evil of a gang forcing sex on anyone, regardless of whether it was homosexual or heterosexual behavior. Lot was willing to offer one of his daughters for the mob of men. Could God have been angry about that, too?

The assumptions we make about why God destroyed the cities are of course not entirely illogical.

Except for the fact that Scripture removes any reason for assuming.

Look at Ezekiel 16:49:

"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."

Wow. Arrogant, overfed and unconcerned with the poor and the needy. Does this sound like Western society in general? It does not mention homosexuality here. Is it biblical to say that economic justice issues are not important compared to homosexuality and abortion?

Look in Isaiah 1 when the prophet speaks of Sodom and Gomorrah.

"... learn to do right!
       Seek justice,
       encourage the oppressed.
       Defend the cause of the fatherless,
       plead the case of the widow."

Some have argued for defending unborn children here. I can see that. But I see nothing about homosexuals.

I understand the Bible does have something to say about homosexuality. We're not debating that here. But should we be afraid of judgment because of its existence?

WHICH GOD DO WE BELIEVE IN?

Regardless of whether homosexuality is a major concern of God's, we have to ask a more basic question.

Do we believe, as we like to preach, that Jesus has paid the price for sin and that God is now primarily concerned with inviting people, as they are, to enter into relationship with Him?

Or do we believe that God is primarily concerned with bringing all of humanity into conformity with his laws and punishing sin and sinful nations?

It seems that many American Christians are afraid of this coming judgment on their nation. That may be legitimate, but I would ask Christians who believe this way to consider whether God might have just as much grace today as he had on their forefathers who committed many of the injustices mentioned above.

If we realized how graceful God has been to us and our ancestors despite some pretty horrible actions, perhaps we would be more amazed at this God than we would be afraid of Him.

And perhaps we would be much more willing and ready to extend that same type of grace and love to those we think are violating God's laws today.

A great teacher I read about said something about how those who have been forgiven little love little.

If we live under a myth that says we were good in the past, we won't seek forgiveness for the past. And it stands to reason that we would stand in superior judgment over others in the present.

FINAL PRAYERS

On this election day, I hope more American Christians will step back from one culture group's narrow list of Biblical morality issues into a broader vision of what "His will on earth" includes.

I pray that they would then decide which issues matter most to them and then freely, humbly and gracefully choose the candidate whom he or she believes best represents the best chance for the nation and our world to be shaped and impacted by God's love and grace.

I pray that they would not be motivated by fear or by selfishness but by a true desire to see His will done on earth as it is in heaven.

I pray that they would recognize that while God is not schizophrenic, we are severely limited in our ability to discern clearly what comes from him and what comes from our culture.

Thanks for joining me over the past week or so and for reading all I've spewed your way. Thanks as well for all of your comments. It was challenging and fun. I hope it stretched you as much as it did me.

Go vote!

When two wrongs make a Wright

OK. What do we do with Jeremiah Wright?

While he has largely disappeared from the headlines recently despite some renewed political ads from the Republican side, Wright is an important part of the letter we've been examining.

Again, the writer makes a strong argument that should make any reasonable person stop to think about this pastor, his church and what influence it has had on Obama's thinking.

Obama tells us he has good judgment but he sat under Jeremiah Wright teaching for 20 years. Now he is condemning Wright's sermons. I wonder why now?

Obama said Jeremiah Wright led him to the Lord and discipled him. A disciple is one in training. Jesus told us in Matthew 28:19 - 20 "Go and make disciples of all nations." This means reproduce yourself. Teach people to think like you, walk like you; talk like you believe what you believe etc. The question I have is what did Jeremiah Wright teach him?

So he's going to point some things about Rev. Wright and his church that should make us wonder about the effect it had on Obama. Sounds logical. Except for the fact that we shouldn't have to wonder about what Obama thinks about race issues.

Not only has he written two books that touched on all of the factors -- including this church -- that shaped his views, but he also gave a 37-minute speech after the Wright ordeal originally crested back in March.

Why should our questions about what he might have thought about Wright over all those years matter more than what the man says now? His life and his campaign speak of building bridges between races and groups.

But still, let's look closer at what the writer shares because we can find some of the key issues that make it difficult for us to understand one another:

Would you support a White President who went to a church which has tenets that said they have a

1. Commitment to the White Community
2. Commitment to the White Family
3. Adherence to the White Work Ethic
4. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the White Community.
5. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting White Institutions
6. Pledge allegiance to all White leadership who espouse and embrace the White Value System
7. Personal commitment to embracement of the White Value System.

Would you support a President who went to a church like that?

Just change the word from white to black and you have the tenets of Obama's former church. If President Bush was a member of a church like this, he would be called a racist. Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton would have been marching outside.

This kind of church is a racist church. Obama did not wake up after 20 years and just discovered he went to a racist church. The church can't be about race. Jesus did not come for any particular race. He came for the whole world.

A church can't have a value system based on race. The churches value system has to be based on biblical mandate. It does not matter if itʼs a white church or a black church it's still wrong. Anyone from either race that attends a church like this would never get my vote.

Here we find a basic idea that bogs down reconciliation efforts today. It goes something like this. 1) All people groups and races are equal. 2) The only fair and moral way to respond to people groups and races, then, is to treat and judge them in the exact same way.

So, as the writer argues, if it would be racist and unacceptable for one group to do something, it must also be true for the other.

In a perfect world, this would be true. But the world is not perfect. And, when it comes to cases where reconciliation is needed, it is almost always true that the groups in question are not on equal footing.

Why is this important? Because when you study reconciliation, you see that typically those in the best condition tend to support a solution that involves forgetting the past and simply deciding that everyone, from now on, is equal and on equal footing.

We don't have time to get into all the reasons why this is not a fair or reasonable way to deal with past injustice. But again we understand it much more when we take a similar example from a different cultural setting.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE

So, a writer could reason like this:

What would you think if we were to create a nation in the middle of Africa just for White people? We will take the land from existing countries and establish this homeland. White people from all over the world will be able to come and have citizenship there.

Would that be considered racist and unacceptable? Not after WWII it wasn't.

The movement for a Jewish nation in Israel gained steam in part because more people realized that persecution and attempted destruction of the Jewish people made it necessary to actively work to preserve and protect their culture.

People recognized that there were special circumstances that required special action -- not equal action. Special circumstances created a problem; special action was needed to remedy it.

We're not here to debate how good a solution was found in the creation of the modern Israeli state. The point is, we can see a reason for unequal action in this case.

And I would argue that the description of Rev. Wright's church is not at all shocking if one understands the desperately frustrating context that blacks have lived in for most of American history (including a huge percentage still today).

CULTURAL FILTERS

As Obama explains in the speech embedded on this page, the anger, hopelessness and destruction of self-esteem brought about by constant reminders of inferiority from mainstream society brought many people and even churches to the conclusion that they had to make a special effort to combat those effects.

When one understands this, the idea of being committed to the black community, black businesses and neighborhoods, developing a black work ethic, etc. ... is not so shocking.

Though the parallel with the fictional white candidate with a church focused on the white race sounds logical when you are wearing a certain cultural filter, change your glasses and it doesn't ring true at all.

When one has the filter shaped by the frustrating black experience we mentioned above, Wright's church does not seem racist at all. Racism would exist if they were claiming that Blacks were better or more important than others.

What this church is doing seems no more racist than John McCain's campaign seems nationalist when it stresses "America First."

People close to black and inner-city culture tend to understand that this is a decision to concentrate on the advancement of a people group that is trying to catch up and re-establish a sense of value that years of slavery and segregation have worn down.

Rev. Wright any many other Christians moved to this approach in large part because they saw no sign of repentance or commitment from the majority culture church to do anything about the results of years of injustice.

BOOTSTRAPS

Many did something very American, actually. They decided they would have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, if you will, as did waves of immigrants they had watched come to this country and advance to one degree or another.

Italians, Irish, Hungarians, Poles and later different Asian groups had pulled together in their communities and helped one another with the idea that they would be able to secure a better future as a group in America.

If you understand the effects of our national race history on black culture, your filter helps you understand why a local church would consider it consistent with its Christian understanding to lift up the people of its community.

You might also understand why those wearing this filter might sense a need to speak prophetically about injustices in the majority culture that might harm its people and others in the world.

They might even understand it even when these words go too far, or take on a tone that hurts more than it helps.

THE OTHER FILTER

But that is how it is seen from within the context.

The majority culture context has another filter.

It is a filter of bruised pride and frustration at being cast as the bad guy all the time even as it sees its grip on power sliding away. It is a filter of fear, wondering whether there will be revenge in store because of those past injustices.

It is a filter that tries desperately to detatch its people from the evils of the past so that they, too, can enjoy a strong sense of value again.

It is a filter that leads to a sense of injustice and victimization when confronted with the complaints of the other group. 

The majority of the American Evangelical church is culturally linked to the part of American society that sees through this filter.

And, as we have noted in earlier posts, though our writer is black he is still culturally linked to this part of the church as well as its filter. He is one black man with a certain cultural approach to Obama.

ANOTHER BLACK MAN'S REACTION

Now, let me share with you the reaction of another black man.

I don't consider myself radical or racist. I have a white spouse and attended a white church in the States before coming to France, where I still work in a largely white context. And none of the people I know would consider me radical or anti-white.

(If they disagree, they will be writing comments on this blog to tell me so.)

But listen to this: Nothing about Rev. Wright's famous "God damn America" speech shocked me.

I wouldn't have used the words because I am a bridge builder. But my filter leads me to understand the basic idea he was conveying. And had I been in the church that day, I don't think I would have stormed out in protest.

This does not mean I am comfortable with everything that Wright says and does. Not at all. But my filter, and perhaps it is similar to the one worn by Obama, does not see people as good or evil, but a mix of imperfection and perfect creation that makes up this maddening world we are hoping to see change.

Tomorrow, we'll hit on the overall topic of Christian fear of judgment to close this series. 

My world in 2008

Timeout from the letter.

I hadn't seen Focus on the Family's Letter from 2012 in Obama's America before starting this series of reports. Had I done so, I surely would have wanted to use it as my base letter.

But Jim Wallis has a pretty tough response from another Christian point of view so I won't bother adding to the mix.

Dobson's letter is a good example of the kind of thinking that develops when people isolate themselves and surround themselves with others who are like them.

But is sad for me to see how one-sidely political Focus on the Family has become. Has it changed or have I?

Surely we both have.

I have changed because I am surrounded by people who think differently from myself. I can't avoid it.

I realized it was useless to try when my Facebook friend list started growing and I realized I could no longer keep my extremely diverse circles from perceiving one another.

And nor did I want to anymore. If it's been healthy for me to be confronted with all of these people, the same could probably be said for all of them.

I know that this blog is read not only by my conservative Christian friends from Ohio and Chicago, but also by my aethist and agnostic friends from Paris. It is read by black friends and family from the inner city and the suburbs ... by white friends from every economic level ... by Arab and North African friends like Samia who shared her comment yesterday ... by gay and lesbian friends and socialist friends, even a few communist friends ...

All of these friends -- truly friends -- make it impossible for me to be closed in my thinking. They don't let me get away with that.

I must think about how I am saying things and how different people will understand what I am saying.

More than that, I have learned from all of them. I have learned that none of them are out to harm me. They all want basically the same things in life, even if they disagree about how to go about seeking it.

With that in mind, we can continue looking at the Brown letter. We've got three more days to get this done!

The gory truth? Considering abortion

OK. Now that we've laid the groundwork, let's touch on some of the specific concerns brought up by our letter writer. I won't be going into theological or moral debate or quoting Bible verses.

There are plenty of people doing that all over the Internet. You can Google them to find out what you want.

Our focus here is to show that everything depends on the way you approach an issue.

ABOUT ABORTION

The the writer goes on to talk about one of the results of being a horrible liberal, which the culture with which he identifies has determined is akin to being anti-God and anti-America.

There is a reason he voted No on banning partial birth abortion. There is a reason he voted No on confirming Justices Roberts and Alito. These two judges are conservatives and they have since overturned partial birth abortion. The same practice Obama wanted to continue.

Let's take a look at the practice he wanted to continue

The 5 Step Partial Birth Abortion procedures:

A. Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist grabs the baby's leg with forceps. (Remember this is a live baby)
B. The baby's leg is pulled out into the birth canal.
C. The abortionist delivers the baby's entire body, except for the head.
D. The abortionist jams scissors into the baby's skull. The scissors are then opened to enlarge the hole.
E. The scissors are removed and a suction catheter is inserted. The child's brains are sucked out, causing the skull to collapse. The dead baby is then removed.

God help him.
There is a reason Obama opposed the parental notification law.

This is of course a powerful image and one we should not avoid considering. We need to consider the reality of what we are doing.

I have been greatly challenged by the gruesome pictures of aborted babies and it is difficult not to be moved by them.

On the other hand, I have also been greatly moved by the stories of women and girls struggling with pregnancy. I, like many people, am torn by this and am sensitive to the passion on all sides of the issue.

BEING CONSISTENT

At any rate, does this gruesome description, or even the gruesome photos, make this a clear-cut case that no Christian should ever support abortion rights or support a candidate who does?

What if we handled war the same way?

One could describe the effect of a cluster bomb ripping through a child's kidney ... the searing pain, the slow, painful death. One could describe the mother holding her child in agony, helplessly watching the child die.

We could show equally disturbing photos of war victims.

(I Googled images of both abortion and war victims and decided against showing either here, though I have provided the links).

Someone who stands against the death penalty could describe what happens when someone is electrocuted:

Witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner "cringes," "leaps," and "fights the straps with amazing strength."

"The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands."

The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and "rest on [his] cheeks."

The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. "The body turns bright red as its temperature rises," and the prisoner's "flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking."

Sometimes the prisoner catches on fire, particularly "if [he] perspires excessively." Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound "like bacon frying," and "the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh" permeates the chamber.

This "smell of frying human flesh in the immediate neighborhood of the chair is sometimes bad enough to nauseate even the Press representatives who are present."

During the execution, the prisoner almost literally boils: "the temperature in the brain itself approaches the boiling point of water," and when the post-electrocution autopsy is performed "the liver is so hot that doctors have said that it cannot be touched by the human hand."

The body frequently is badly burned and disfigured. There is considerable evidence suggesting that death inflicted by electrocution is anything but instantaneous or painless.

One could legitimately see images of war or an electrocuted man and still conclude that this destruction of life was a necessary evil of sorts.

So, once again we see that what seems so clear is much less clear when we take a step back and see from a broader perspective.

OPENING OUR EYES

When it comes to gory details, we tend to be exposed only to those supported by the group with which we identify.

And the powerful emotional strength of those details tends to push us to believe with even more passion that our group's point of view is correct.

This plays into the tendency we mentioned earlier to believe in a sort of divine endorsement of our point of view. How could God not see these images and feel what we are feeling?

A HIGHER VANTAGE POINT

Again, this is human. Everyone does it. People on the right and on the left. Anti-abortion people as well as Vegans and animal rights activists.

But again, I am addressing these posts largely to Christians because they claim to have access to something that goes beyond human reasoning. They claim to be able to tap into God himself.

If they are going to do so, however, they are going to have to step back from their culture group quite a bit more than they think.

They will have to humbly recognize that they are indeed human and prone to the same deception and narrow point of view as everyone else.

Then, they need to admit that they need help from above if they are going to see clearly.

Those who want to be peacemakers and reconcilers in this world have to take several steps:

* confess their own narrow-minded pride

* recommit to listening for truth from above

* commit to listening to others from different social groups, religions, countries, cultures, political perspectives and to consider all of these people as children of God like themselves rather than demonizing them.

If we can do this, we have a much better chance of seeing more clearly and in representing not only Christian positions but also a truly Christian attitude toward others.

Differently biblical?

So why did I spend two days talking about the influence of culture on our points of view?

Because the whole of the standard American Evangelical opposition to Obama and other left-leaning candidates is based on a series of assumptions, or established truths that this community has come to believe are non-negotiable.

Rick Warren, during the debate at his Saddleback Church, based many of his questions on this list of issues that Christians should use to determine whether a candidate can be supported.

We find some of these issues in the beginning of the letter we are examining.

The writer, in explaining that issues are more important than race for him, says this:

200 years from now I won't be asked if I was black or white. I will be asked if I knew Jesus and accepted Him as Lord and Savior. 

In an election there are many issues to consider but when a society gets abortion, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning (to name a few) wrong, economic concerns will soon not matter. 

We need to follow Martin Luther King's words, don't judge someone by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The basic idea here is that the writer's opinions don't come from culture but rather from Jesus and the Bible, independent of culture. As we have noted the past few days, the writer's views may be independent of race, but they are not independent of culture. His Biblical ideas line up with those of one part of the church.

And then he says that a person's character (remember the discussion on value from the other day?) can be determined by how he or she stands on these issues. The unsaid but clearly understood idea is that if one does not agree with the basic points being made, then that person's character is to be doubted.

THE BIG ISSUES

The key issues: abortion and other issues concerning the unborn and then homosexuality. Economic matters are dismissed as unimportant morally.

This is one point of view. It is the point of view of much of the Evangelical community. But it is not at all the only way of seeing things.

Jim Wallis, who writes at Sojourners shared his personal faith priorities for this election on his blog. You will notice in his priorities quite a different view coming from someone who reads the same Bible and believes in the same God and savior as the writer of this letter.

Wallis writes:

I am in no position to tell anyone what is “non-negotiable,” and neither is any bishop or mega-church pastor, but let me tell you the “faith priorities” and values I will be voting on this year:

• With more than 2,000 verses in the Bible about how we treat the poor and oppressed, I will examine the record, plans, policies, and promises made by the candidates on what they will do to overcome the scandal of extreme global poverty and the shame of such unnecessary domestic poverty in the richest nation in the world. Such a central theme of the Bible simply cannot be ignored at election time, as too many Christians have done for years. And any solution to the economic crisis that simply bails out the rich, and even the middle class, but ignores those at the bottom should simply be unacceptable to people of faith.
• From the biblical prophets to Jesus, there is, at least, a biblical presumption against war and the hope of beating our swords into instruments of peace. So I will choose the candidates who will be least likely to lead us into more disastrous wars and find better ways to resolve the inevitable conflicts in the world and make us all safer. I will choose the candidates who seem to best understand that our security depends upon other people’s security (everyone having “their own vine and fig tree, so no one can make them afraid,” as the prophets say) more than upon how high we can build walls or a stockpile of weapons.
• “Choosing life” is a constant biblical theme, so I will choose candidates who have the most consistent ethic of life, addressing all the threats to human life and dignity that we face — not just one. Thirty-thousand children dying globally each day of preventable hunger and disease is a life issue. The genocide in Darfur is a life issue. Health care is a life issue. War is a life issue. The death penalty is a life issue. And on abortion, I will choose candidates who have the best chance to pursue the practical and proven policies which could dramatically reduce the number of abortions in America and therefore save precious unborn lives, rather than those who simply repeat the polarized legal debates and “pro-choice” and “pro-life” mantras from either side. ...
• Every human being is made in the image of God, so I will choose the candidates who are most likely to protect human rights and human dignity.

I would urge you to read the entire post to get a better picture of his thinking, but you can clearly see that what our letter writer and so many of our Christian friends passionately see as the clear-cut proper Christian position is actually only clear-cut when we clearly cut ourselves off from broader points of view.

Wallis tries to help us see that while Obama's views on abortion or some other issue might be troubling to Christians, the Republican stance on a host of issues is not in line with Scripture either.

How does one decide that it is on abortion and homosexuality that God is going to judge the character of a person? I would argue that we decide based on our culture and who it is that is influencing us.

African-Americans and others close to the inner city (or perhaps people like me who have become closely acquainted with the effects of our foreign and economic policy in Africa and elsewhere) predictably are more likely to tune in to the Bible's voluminous references to poverty and justice issues.

Just as many suburban Evangelicals are able to overlook or downplay  these issues in favor of those that strike them as more pertinent, many other Christians may legitimately do the same with stem cells, abortion or gay marriage, for example.

Is it fair to label them as unbiblical or to challenge their character? I would argue that we should consider them "differently biblical" and show them some humility. Perhaps we should even listen to them and seek to learn about these issues that they see as vital. Perhaps we will actually become more biblical Christians in the end.

We'll get more into the specifics of some of these issues in the coming days.

A spin-free opinion?

Huntley Brown's letter has been circulated by many who seem to think that because he is black Mr. Brown's opposition to Obama on the basis of his faith has more credence or impeccability than would the same arguments from a white man.

Kind of like Colin Powell or Scott McClellan endorsing Obama, as Republicans who worked in the Bush administration, apparently carries more weight than, say, an endorsement from Ted Kennedy.

But we must all remember that no one comes to a point of view without the influence of culture. Mr. Brown is a black man, as am I. But his point of view is his own. He has a set of social circumstances all his own that have allowed him to come to his conclusions.

And, though I don't know Mr. Brown, his biography suggests that one shouldn't be surprised if his views might be aligned more with suburban American Evangelical thinking than that of many other black Americans.

As a native of the Caribbean and then as a student and professional largely in the white Evangelical context (Judson College, Billy Graham, etc.), I would expect one's views to be more in line with that context than that of, say, an inner city African-American.

I say this as a black man who also has lived most of my adult life in the context of the white Evangelical church. My home church back in the States is a white, rural Ohio church. And I work in the context of a para-church organization based near Mr. Huntley's home in the NW Chicago suburbs -- one of the hubs of Evangelical Christian thinking.

It's an area dominated, from the Christian perspective, by Moody Bible radio, Wheaton College and a host of successful churches like Willow Creek, etc. These all have one thing in common: they represent, to one degree or another, the standard white American Evangelical approach to theology and faith.

(Understand that when I stress the "white," it is not to say that there is something racist about this approach. It is simply to point out that it is an approach that is attached to a culture and its history. People from other cultures adhere to its point of view as well, of course.)

Mr. Brown and I are not less authentically black than blacks who live in the inner city. We are black. Period. But it is no surprise at all that our experience and point of view differs from many others African Americans from different backgrounds.

My point of view, originally formed in the Black American church and then altered by many years in a white Evangelical context, has changed even more after 13 years in France and various exposure to African and other cultures. So, though I may offer an opinion on Obama as a black man and as a Christian, that opinion is just as influenced by my cultural settings as anyone else's.

Being black, being Christian, being in France ... all of these things affect my views on this election. That is normal. Each of these factors has an effect on the others. I may think my faith is free of influence, but I have seen all-to-clearly that it is not.

Faith informs my blackness and my status as an ex-pat in France. But these factors also inform my faith and my interpretation of faith and its application to political positions.

RESPECT TO MR. BROWN

So this is no knock on Mr. Brown. As he stresses in the letter, he definitely is not judging Mr. Obama on the basis of his race. He is definitely making his opinion based on his perception of Biblical truth.

But we need to understand that his views are not more or less valid than they would be if he were white. The source of his views are not any more correct or incorrect than they would be had a white person given them.

Indeed, African Americans who attend suburban Evangelical churches tend to be much more likely to hold the same views of their suburban church brethren, just as white American Christians who live and worship in the inner city tend to see faith and politics much more like their inner city  brethren there.

I know three white Evangelical men, two of them accomplished theologians and writers within the Evangelical community. And guess what? Many of their views align more with the standard inner-city Black approach than with the larger, white Evangelical approach.

You can read about this in excellent books like Divided by Faith if you want more details. The data is pretty indisputable.

Mr. Brown, from what I can tell in his comments on the link above, is an honorable person who is seeking to honestly and consistently live out his faith and points of view. He didn't seek to have his letter used this way. So, in using it, I am not seeking to put him down in any way.

I will try to avoid using his name from now on because this really is not about him.

The point is for us all to learn that others may be honestly and consistently seeking to live out their faith while coming to conclusions that differ from a certain portion of the Evangelical Christian community.

Don't worry, we're getting to the meat tomorrow!!!

The Election: Underlying issues

Before we get into the specifics of the Huntley Brown letter we need to lay down a few underlying basics that we have learned while working through reconciliation.

* We all have a vested emotional interest (personally or as a group) in being right. (I had originally planned to write about why this is, but it's a bit too complicated and beside the point, so we'll leave that for those who want more information later.) The main idea is that our sense of personal value and worth is tied to the correctness and moral superiority of the group to which we identify.

* The values and standards set forth by one's group will have a huge effect on the way that person interprets life.

* Group values often become solidified in the group by the process of divine endorsement. In other word, over time, the people will attribute the group's views as having been confirmed and endorsed by a higher power or authority like the Constitution, God, the Bible or the ancestors (the "founding fathers" in the case of America).

Of course, determining this is extremely difficult because of the first point. If we interpret things according to our group, how can we be sure about the way we are interpreting our divine endorsement?

* These principles play out EVERYWHERE and with EVERYONE. This happens in Africa, Europe, Asia, with Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists ... EVERYWHERE. EVERYONE. And everyone believes that his or her case is different. "The others are influenced by all these factors. But in our case, we really ARE seeing things correctly. We really ARE only representing God's views."

This is all extremely important to understand because it affects the way we see ourselves and others. I am not claiming, as some may think, that there is no truth or divine standard.

I'm simply stating that no matter where we go, we see the same factors in play, and so we can expect that it will also be true for us. And, thus, we should be extremely careful and wise as we look at our divine truths and interpretations.

It used to be divinely true that Black people were under the curse of Ham, for example. And the slaughter of certain peoples, or the exploitation of other was considered to be divinely endorsed as well.

Some of the people whom we claim are the source of evil in the world today (terrorists, etc.) also believe they are divinely endorsed. You get the picture.

* Equal value: Finally, we want to remember the basic Biblical idea that all people inherently possess the same value. They may have different skills, different attributes, different beliefs, different abilities, and they may have acquired different status, education, etc., over time. But the inherent value or worth of each person and/or people group is no more or less than any other.

Biblically we can pull this principle out of many places, but perhaps most clearly when Jesus quotes the Old Testament command to love God with all of our heart and soul, and then to love our neighbor AS ourselves.

The Biblical idea is that the value of all people comes from the fact that they are linked to one creator who created them in His image. Nothing changes this fact. Nothing -- not even their political or religious views -- can take away from the value that God has given to his created ones.

Believing this is huge. It changes how I see myself and how I see others. And it helps me overcome a basic temptation to establish my worth in relation to others instead of in relation to my creator.

It is essential in helping us think through issues in a humble, grace-filled way rather than one that communicates and, I would argue, betrays our pride and insecurities.

I know we have only one week left before the election, so I promise to get to the meat starting tomorrow.

About that photo

Just making sure that everyone understands ...

The photo with the poster about beheading those who insult Obama was used to demonstrate the sort of thing that we hope to avoid.

I hope no one has seen it as somthing that I endorse.

I thought the photo showed that ugliness is not confined to one side or the other in this campaign.

OK?

More soon