A Christmas Message

As the holiday season reaches a crescendo, let’s take a moment in the midst of assembled families and celebrations of faith to evaluate what religion means to us and, moreover, what we mean to religion.  As my brief bio states, “I am non-aligned ... I belong to no one party, religion, or ideology.”  But, not ‘belonging’ doesn’t mean the trinity of head, heart and power doesn’t fascinate me, or that I don’t grant each their due respect.  In fact, they are what I study every day. My doctoral research examines the effects of religious convictions on US foreign policy over the transom of presidential ideology.  And, not ‘belonging’ allows me the advantage of indifference – my interpretations of the historical record and today’s events endure no predestination (sorry St. Augustine). 

            In the American experience, dominated by Christianity, three tenets emerged that inform much of our American identity.  Individualism rose from the Protestant Reformation to grant the individual primacy over institutions. Rights became intrinsic to humans rather than bestowed by monarchs or churches.  Perfectibility, or the belief that humans could make the world right in advance of a Second Coming gave us hope and a reason for the “pursuit of happiness.” And, exceptionalism rose from a belief first uttered by John Winthrop as his ship, the Arbella, approached the coast of modern-day Massachusetts, that “we shall be as a city upon a hill” – a chosen people in a promised land – the new Israel.

            Each of these tenets has found expression in and out of the private, public, and political spheres.  At times, they remain more or less dormant; at others, they seem prominent.  They ebb and flow. Our American religious convictions remained away from the political sphere after they were shamed to the sidelines during the Scopes trial in 1925.  They found new expression in the public sphere during the 1950s as a point of differentiation to ‘godless communism’ and as a center of socialization while the suburbanization of America got underway.  Then, they entered the political sphere in the late 1950s and early 1960s, providing compelling arguments for civil rights and anti-war sentiments. By the late 1970s religion was completely ensconced in the political sphere providing a political whipping-post for casting social judgment and filling the coffers of televangelists.   Finally, more recently, they have provided cover for the hubristic projection of power to remake the world in our own image.

            These tenets can be both beneficial and/or dangerous depending on their application.  They are double-edged swords.  In their benign state – where each is pursued and expressed with both confidence and humility – they act separately and collectively to build stronger citizens and a cohesive, powerful, and compassionate nation.  In the last thirty years or so, they have been twisted and torqued reaching a level of perversion that threatens the future of our country and those upon whom we project our power. Our individualism has morphed into narcissism, perfectibility into entitlement, and exceptionalism into hubris.  Our national self-righteousness has been deluded by its first cousin – self-deception – producing a decade of deceit beyond the values of any religion, or the expectations of any god.

            In this season of celebration and reflection allow me a personal appeal – my hope for you and America.  May we set aside judgment in favor of service, choose reflection over projection, and turn our evangelical zeal inward – that we might be exemplars of our beliefs and convictions rather than agents of their demise.  If we don’t take care of our head, heart, and power our souls may be lost forever.

             Finally, I share with you something I wrote years ago. It seems to still make sense – maybe now more than ever.

Your Gift

            We arrive in this world by circumstance and spend much of our life trying to reconcile the gift.  We endure our struggles and ascribe our lot with the certainty of burden.  Between the jubilation, pain and occasional humility we scrape a path that is ours, alone.  In the seam of these struggles life offers brilliance; the warmth of late summer’s sun quenching our shoulders as we gaze across a horizon of promise; the magical touch of a child’s hand who clasps ours for comfort; the flash of a smile from a heart who loves ours, too.  We are placed here by chance to express a life all our own.  Tear away the wrapping … therein lies the gift.

            Every morning offers beauty.  Every day arrives as a clean slate, if we look past the indelible erasures.  When the sky is dark, the wind unyielding and the news dire, there is reason to smile.  We each possess the promise of greatness; to thrust our spirit into the light where our gift can shine.  The choice is ours, in this moment and every moment that follows.  Look into your own eyes and accept your gift.  Draw those near who nourish your soul.  Let others pass.

            This season, take a morning walk in the silence of new-fallen snow; lift a child upon your knee and tell him/her a story about your grandfather; sit outside at night until the sky throws a star your way.

Listen.

Love.

Laugh.

Celebrate.

The Uh-Oh Years in 7 minutes

Taking Stock: The Uh-Oh Years

In June 2002, I wrote an essay titled “The Uh-Oh Years” that was later published in my collection, American Avenue: Rhythm & Reason (2007).  “Uh-Oh” was my duo-toned neume to represent a double-zero decade that appeared to be headed in a perilous direction after the dot-com bust and 9/11.  At the time I wrote:

I fear the pain is just beginning.  Our capital markets drift lower still; world leaders listen to our counsel with blank stares while their people learn it’s okay, perhaps even stylish, to hate America.  Lessons in humility are painful, but we were long overdue.  Since the mid-1980s we have been perfecting our swagger, dispatching it with greater flare each year, cocksure we had earned our arrogance while unaware of the slimy trail our flowing robes left behind.  All the evidence is there, anywhere you dare look – in politics, religion, business, sport, and entertainment – Americans have lost their sense of right and wrong.  Volume, vanity, violence, and vice are the values that guide us.  Dante would be proud.

            Seven years have passed and we all know the story.  Unfortunately, “Uh-Oh” proved an understatement.  A medley of hubris, fear, and avarice squandered America’s hard-won preeminence and placed America in crisis, both financially and morally.  However, I sense a turn – (hopefully) for the better – as we come to terms with our collapse of exceptionalism in often personal and painful terms.  We are, as Americans are so apt to do, reinventing our identity around new terms of fulfillment.  We are forging new relationships with new knowledge and remodeled identities that allow us to persevere and prosper.  We are realizing that a life of abundance – a full life – is not as fulfilling as being full of life. 

            The last two lines of a poem, written by Michael Earnest Henley in 1875, are on a stamped piece of metal that hangs on a chain around my neck – together with a compass rose.  The poem speaks volumes to me.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

           

            As we face the holiday season and year-end with all its disorientations and pretense, we must remain forever vigilant about whom we are and what we mean to others; we must take stock of the year and past decade and take our share of responsibility.  It is only then that hope can manifest its promises.  It is only then we can master our fate, and captain our soul.

           

Human Rights: War and Righteousness

Human rights scholars and advocates were busy last week.

            While President Obama reconciled security, morality, and human rights in his speech in Oslo, members of Congress were tied to an effort to incarcerate and/or execute homosexuals in Uganda.  In Obama’s remarks at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, he identified one of the principal tensions our leaders must wrestle with as they uphold their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States: between assuring our security and protecting human rights. Throughout most of American history security has held primacy over morality as the modal framework of foreign policy. As a result, human rights, based in a moral precept of liberty, have been occasionally compromised to achieve security. But, as Obama pointed out in his elocution of the contradiction of waging war to achieve peace, “We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.” He argued that the “United States of America must remain the standard bearer in the conduct of war” to serve its dual aims of security and morality.[1]  In these words he rejected the advocacy of realpolitik prominent during the Nixon-Kissinger era, as well as the hyper-exceptionalism of the George W. Bush era, for a nuanced hybrid of realism and idealism – waging war with moral compass in-hand – an ideological approximation of Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Christian realism.”[2]

            Meanwhile, a few senators and congressmen waged their own war against Ugandans by supporting its leaders who are about to pass an anti-gay law that would deprive suspected homosexuals of their freedom and, under certain circumstances, their lives.[3]  Why are these senators, who presumably have a grasp of the American concept of human rights, supporting leaders in Uganda who are trying to legalize the incarceration and execution of homosexuals?  The short answer: because they can.  Their motive and means reveal the dark side of a network of powerful fundamentalists – of a dubious and power-centric theology – who wield influence saturated by righteousness and bigotry. Their common bond with the president of Uganda: they are all members of “the Family.”[4]

            The Family is an informal network of Christian fundamentalists that has existed in the United States for many years.  They are also referred to as the “Fellowship,” or “Fellowship Foundation” and sponsor the annual National Prayer Breakfast, attended each year by numerous politicians including the President of the United States.  They own and operate residences in the Washington DC area for the care and fellowship of members, including members of Congress.  Their “man in Africa” according to Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family, is Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda. The relationship between Museveni and the Family dates back many years and includes business and moral ‘development.’ 

            Uganda has become the sandbox of righteousness for members of the Family who believe their particular interpretation of the Bible is supreme to the laws of man. Their ‘life equation’ according to their leader, Doug Coe, is Jesus + 0 = X.[5] Jesus plus nothing is everything.  Jesus is all you need.  And, not surprisingly, homosexuals are evil.  In Uganda, they have twisted the concept of God’s love with such abandon they have morphed it into hate. Personal liberties, as conceived by the Founding Fathers, are no match for their righteousness. Their concept of separation of church and state is a “myth” that, when ‘properly’ interpreted, only prohibits the state from influencing the church.[6]  Their concept of human rights includes the ‘right’ to imprison and execute ‘humans’ who don’t conform to their beliefs.

           

            Human rights are likely more safe than they were under Bush with Obama’s contemplation of foreign policy.  But, human rights remain in peril every day as religious fundamentalists, like those who claim membership in the Family and occupy seats in Congress, operate as rogue warriors waging hate.

           

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[1] Barack Obama, December 11, 2009, “Obama’s Nobel Remarks,” New York Times, www.nytimes.com.

[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.)  

[3] Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has been on this story for several days now. See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34345821/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/

[4] For a comprehensive study of the Family, see Jeff Sharlet, The Family (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008).

[5] Ibid., p. 58.

[6] Ibid., p. 339.      

The Delusion of Choice

Freedom of choice is a basic American liberty fought for by generations of Americans who had little choice themselves.  As America rose to super power status and won the Cold War, freedom of choice took an interesting turn to what sociologist Barry Schwartz termed the “paradox of choice”: an abundance of wealth gave us so many choices we became paralyzed by “anxiety and perpetual stress.”[1]  Today, however, we have reached a new locus in the evolution of choice in America: the delusion of choice.

            Choice, once scarce, achieved ubiquity as our fight for liberty colluded with natural resources, technology, and luck to produce unimaginable fortunes that assured a seemingly endless range of options.  America arrived at a place where the impossible became mundane and each roll of the dice faced less and less risk.  However, consequences are also ubiquitous, even though they seem to disappear in the fog of wealth.  Too many choices not only produce stress, as Schwatrz observes, it slowly degrades our capacity for critical thinking – of discernment.  Firing our guns requires less aim when both ammunition and targets are abundant.  And, the illusion of permanence – of never-ending limitless options – finds easy residence in the lap of denial. 

           

            For the first time in roughly twenty-five years we are facing, once again, limits of choice.  Preferred options are unavailable due to scarcity of resources and will.  Yet, we face healthcare reform with the stubbornness of a spoiled child – we are determined to spend more and cover more without facing the reality that the system remains unchanged … financially and morally unsustainable.  We delude ourselves that the so-called ‘reforms’ will actually reduce the deficit and result in no new taxes.  We double our bet in the intractable quagmire in Afghanistan while having no definition of victory and no prospective government to steward our investment once we leave the table – a bet, incidentally,  financed by an emerging loan shark called China.  We read reams of data on climate change and chant “Drill, baby, DRILL!” Popular illusions are quickly becoming delusions.

            Our freedom of choice became a paradox of choice and, finally, our favorite delusion.  Discipline, discernment, and responsibility will return in time, however, as crisis wins its arm wrestle with denial.  Each of us need to question decisions made, votes cast, and resources expended to reign in delusion.  We need to face the obviousness of our circumstances with a renewed commitment to curiosity, humility, and resolve to wrest our future liberties from those who unwittingly place them in peril.

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[1] Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice, (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). See also, Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox, (New York: Random House, 2003).