Ideology or integrity?

I wrote the following piece as a response to something a friend wrote in an email regarding the conservative dilemma in the post-Super Tuesday world. If you disagree with me, all the better for spirited conversation but let’s keep it civil.

Hi,
I take it from your email that you don't like McCain, or that you don't feel that he has good character or consistent positions? i would say that is precisely the reason I voted for him in the primary. I like the fact that he has not "pandered" to the conservative or the evangelical establishment and that he has consistently maintained convictions even when they are not popular or politically expedient with the left (anti-abortion, pro Iraq war) or politically expedient with the right (a fair and humane immigration plan, working proactively across the aisle with democrats).

I don't understand why the Limbaugh-Coulter-Dobson crowd hates him so much ...but I suspect it is because, despite actually being quite conservative on many issues, he refuses to cave in to conservatism as an ideology with its “scorched-earth” “take no prisoners” attitude toward all liberals and democrats.

I like Huckabee but I don’t trust him... there were too many ethics questions swirling around about his time as governor... I refuse to vote for another politician because they are "born again" only to be embarrassed and disappointed when they show themselves to be pragmatic politicians who use the “born again” vote for their own benefit. Nevertheless, I certainly liked him better as a candidate than Giuliani or Romney.

I really like Obama ... not so much because of his political positions but because of his seemingly sincere desire to move away from the politics of ”mutual assured destruction” ... 'ideology' on the left, and his attempt to raise the level of civility. Witness the flack he drew for affirming that Republicans occasionlly have good ideas. If Obama faces McCain, I will vote for McCain. If it had been Giuliani against Obama … I would have voted for Obama on the character and conviction issue that you mentioned. Anyone who is concerned with connecting young people to a spiritual life, needs to carefully observe Obama's message and his style.

Also, democracy (something I know that you have reservations about as a system) requires the sharing of power ... periodic alternations of political parties representing interest groups. One party or dominant ideology in power too long ... will almost inevitably become corrupt. In places like Colombia and Spain it has even led to destructive civil wars in the 20th century. If Limbaugh had his way, the democratic party would be totally destroyed and we would have a conservative Partocracy ... probably not a good thing in the long run (in case it does not come through, I am being 'ironic' here ... making a huge understatement of what I actually believe).

A Democratic system require three important values:

-The ability to exercise toleration of opposing beliefs without resorting to violence.
-The ability to peacefully alternate power (check out Kenya)
-Confidence in the overall fairness of democratic institutions.

probably a fourth thing is what is called a civic culture... informed citizens who take responsibility and participate in the electoral process.

What is happening in this election is very healthy and very good for our country and our civic culture... through Obama and Ron Paul, (and perhaps even Hilary) a lot of people who normally don't care about politics have become passionately involved in the political process, especially young people. Thanks to the splitting of the conservative bloc by Huckabee and Romney, the failure of Guiliani and the success of McCain... the conservative power block that was in danger of becoming arrogant bullies (they already are IMHO) and possibly suffering the corruption of power is being broken up and room is created for new ideas and fresh approaches....

my prayer is that the left-right stalemate and extreme ideological polarization in our country can be diminished by a spirited but civil election campaign between Obama and McCain which might help us move the public discourse to a higher more effective level. and may the best "person" win.... (too bad McCain is not a 71-year-old former P.O.W., maverick conservative AND a woman... but I guess we cannot have it all in one election!).

if the contest is between Clinton and McCain ... that’s another story for another day and another post.

In any case, it is time for us who call ourselves followers of Jesus to humble ourselves and pray and repent for putting our faith in faulty and incomplete political ideologies as the ultimate answer for our country and recommit to loving God and loving our neighbor and building bridges instead of walls. And whoever is elected, from whichever party...let us commit to pray for him or her before we begin to criticize.

j

We are told to "go"

here are friends of ours who are going in Costa Rica...they have a burden for helping poor disadvantaged kids ... recently a young prostitute who was nearing a spiritual commitment was killed.



Any thoughts or questions about this? What can you do?

Pope John XXIII: A Spiritual Biography

Christian Feldman profiles Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (1881-1963) who became the 262nd pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He will forever be remembered as the man who humanized the role and opened the door to the renewal of the church. He explained: "We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to tend a blooming garden full of life."



One of my favorite anecdotes that demonstrates the humility and faith of Pope Roncalli is the following: On the evening when he announced the opening of the Ecumenical Council, the first one since 1870, he couldn't get to sleep. Finally, he called himself to order: "Angelo, why aren't you sleeping? Who's running the church, you or the Holy Spirit? So sleep." And he did.

Pope John XXIII began his mission by promising to be "a good shepherd." He was the first pope in history "to pay tribute to the part played by women in public life and to the growing awareness of their human dignity." Best of all with the convening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII set in motion a spirit of reform that took seriously the wild abandon of the Holy Spirit. In September of 2000, this son of Italian peasants was beatified.

Jewish sociologist and political scientist, Hannah Arendt, dedicates a respectful chapter to Pope John. She recalls a Roman chambermaid who, when Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli lay on his deathbed, told her in stunned surprise: “Madame, this pope was a real Christian. How is that possible? And how could a real Christian ever get to sit on St. Peter’s chari? Didn’t he first have to be made a bishop, then an archbishop, then a cardinal, before he finally got elected pope? Didn’t anyone have any idea who he was?” (Feldman:115).

One of his favorite sayings (ahead of chaos theory) was, “Without a breath of holy madness the Church cannot grow” (Feldman:132). An example of this holy madness was the way in which he launched Vatican II. He was talking with some cardinals when suddenly he blurted out, “So why don’t we have a Council?” And when someone objected that a thing like that would be impossible to organize by 1963, as the pope had suggested, John laconically replied: “Good, then we’ll have it in 1962!” (Feldman:129).

And finally, this can’t be said often enough: He trusted the Holy Spirit. If it was God’s will, the bishops gathered in Rome would just take of the freedom that was theirs. “Who is actually organizing the Council?” the Belgian Cardinal Suenens, a “liberal” mentor, asked the pope, in some cnocern. “Nessuno,” answered John.ba “Nobody.” (Feldman:138).

On October 11, 1962, 2,540 Council Fathers marched across St. Peter’s Square to the opening of the Council. For the first time in history the Church Universal was actually gathering in Rome, with Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans from the young churches of the Third World (Feldman:139).

"Don't Know much about History" 1959 to 1962

Here is my current theme song: Don't much about history ... don't know much about the French I took...

The video below represents the period of time I am doing my Ph.D. research on: Catholicism from 1959 through the opening of Vatican II in October 1962 and the role of Castro and the Cuban revolution in influencing John XXIII and global Catholicism that they needed to come to terms with modernity. The main characters of this story? Fidel Castro, Pope John XXIII, John Kennedy, Nikita Kruschev...



...Cardenal Luis Concha Cordoba in Colombia, Cardenal Arteaga en Cuba, Archbiships Enrique Perez Serentes and others in Cuba... President Janio Quadros en Brasil was lurking in the background as was Vicepresident Joao Goulart. Enjoy Sam Cook's song and this historical video clips...

Revolution! 1968

hi friends,

this blog has been inactive for a while. I plan to come back to this, sometime in the future when I have more academic/spiritual friends who are interested in discussing Faith and Reason ... but for the moment, the theme does not seem sexy enough and I only use this blog for posting and storing some of my ideas.

Our conversation has moved over to my other blog (or at least one of them) and we are having a lively and stimulating conversation with a young crowd about what it means to get out of the fish bowl into the ocean ... we also have some cool Beatles music video's on there!


KAIROS REVOLUTION

Where Kairos represents the Greek word for "the decisive time" (or the fullness of time) and Revolution means a total, radical paradigm change.

join us to talk about the Agape Revolution!

New discussion blog

hi friends,

this blog has been inactive for a while. I plan to come back to this, sometime in the future when I have more academic/spiritual friends who are interested in discussing Faith and Reason ... but for the moment, the theme does not seem sexy enough and I only use this blog for posting and storing some of my ideas.

Our conversation has moved over to my other blog (or at least one of them) and we are having a lively and stimulating conversation with a young crowd about what it means to get out of the fish bowl into the ocean ... we also have some cool Beatles music video's on there!


KAIROS REVOLUTION

Where Kairos represents the Greek word for "the decisive time" (or the fullness of time) and Revolution means a total, radical paradigm change.

join us to talk about the Agape Revolution!

The People themselves become priests and kings

“Protestantism is a democratic-federative movement. The Christian Protestant world is a vast federation of churches, governed democratically in conformity with the model laid down by the primitive church. The life of the local congregation is intense and greatly contributing to the incorporation of evangelical ideals into the life of the community. It tends to the creation of a people who themselves become priests and kings. The people themselves exercise the ministry of the altar... Roman Catholicism, in its organization, follows the model of an absolute monarchy....”

Manuel Carlos Ferraz, distinguished Brazilian jurist and President of the Appellate Court of Brazil speaking in an interview in 1944.
cited in Penyak, Lee M., and Walter J Petry, eds. Religions in Latin America: A Documentary History. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006: 227.

The Pioneering Protestants

Abstract:
According to cross-national research, Protestantism has significantly contributed to global democratization. While Protestantism does not inevitably cause democratization, it often generates social dynamics that favor it. Some of the most important of these are:

1) the rise of religious pluralism;
2) the development of democratic theory and practice;
3) the development of civil society;
4) the spread of mass education;
5) printing and the origins of a public sphere;
6) the reduction of corruption; and
7) economic development.

The article explores how Protestant groups, including Protestant missionaries, have promoted these dynamics in the past. It also argues that contemporary Protestant movements -- particularly Pentecostalism -- are continuing to do so in the present, though with less dramatic results.

Excerpt:
"The authority of Christ," wrote the Scots Calvinist divine William Graham in 1768, "removes all civil distinctions, and all superiority founded upon such distinctions, in his kingdom. All are upon a level equally, as they shall soon be before the awful tribunal of the great Judge." This stirring fusion of theology, eschatology, and politics not only characterizes Scottish Calvinism but also says much about the relationship between Protestantism and democracy. As an egalitarian religion profoundly opposed to hierarchy, Protestant Christianity would seem to enjoy a powerful affinity with democracy.

If the affinity between Protestantism and democracy is powerful, however, it is not automatic or uncomplicated. History and social science show that Protestantism has contributed to the development of democracy, yet they also show that the connections are often far from straightforward. After all, Protestantism has at times countenanced the establishment of brutal regimes and antidemocratic movements: The "righteous" dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell enjoyed the overwhelming support of English Puritans; the Dutch Reform Church of South Africa theologized in defense of apartheid; and while some German Protestants (especially in the Confessing Church) fought Nazism, many others gave Hitler their warm backing. Recently, Protestant evangelicals in the Third World have lent their support to "godly" authoritarians such as former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba.

In other words, opposing hierarchy and liberating individual consciences in religion does not automatically make one a foe of authoritarianism and a friend of liberty in politics. ... We argue that there is nonetheless compelling cross-national evidence of a causal association between Protestantism and democracy. At the same time, we emphasize that the association is not direct or automatic but mediated and contingent.

LINK: http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2072/pub_detail.asp

The Pioneering Protestants By Timothy Samuel Shah, Robert D. Woodberry Posted: Friday, April 16, 2004

ARTICLE Journal of Democracy Publication Date: April 15, 2004

This is a statement on the limitations of democracy taken from a 1981 paper on Christianity and Democracy issued by the Institute for Religion and Democracy. IRB was formed by a group of Roman Catholics and Protestants.

The paper can be accessed in FIRST THINGS archives at the following link:

http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9610/articles/documentation.html.

"We readily acknowledge that democratic governance is unsatisfactory. Everything short of the consummation of the rule of Christ is unsatisfactory. For Christians, it is precisely the merit of democracy that it reminds us of this truth and sustains the possibility of humane government in a necessarily unsatisfactory world. There are tensions and contradictions within democratic theory and practice. Especially problematic are relationships between the individual and the community, between formal process and substantive purpose, between popular participation and power elites. We do not deny these and other problems. Rather, believing that democratic theory and practice is still developing, we would encourage in the churches a lively examination of the problems and their possible resolutions. Such an examination only begins with the basic outline of democratic governance set forth in this statement and should be informed by the maxim framed by Reinhold Niebuhr: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."'

Why I believe in Democracy

Recently there was a pejorative (and undoubtedly playful) reference in one of our blogs to egalitarianism and democracy in local congregations. This motivated me to go back and restudy some of my material on Christianity and democracy.

I believe, along with Weber and Hegel, in the importance of ideas – ideas of cultural consequences. Weber showed in 1906 how ascetic Protestantism, particularly Calvinism, helped facilitate the rise of capitalism (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1958). British sociologist David Martin (Tongues of Fire, 1990) carries Weber’s analysis further in his study of industrializing England and the Weslyan Methodists. Some scholars are analyzing how the current Pentecostal explosion will alter the political and economic cultures of Latin America over time. Someone should be studying the same phenomenon in China.

The idea is that political culture of a nation is formed from pervasive religious beliefs over historical time. This political culture greatly influences the political structure of the nation and the corresponding values help determine the choices of the actors within this structure.

One of the reasons why the United States has had a successful democracy and a “democratic” political culture was the inability of any one state “Church” to establish its political “theocratic” preeminence in 1776. Roman Catholics in Maryland, Anglicans in Virginia, Puritans and Congregationalists in New England and Baptists in Rhode Island were forced to concede to separation of church and state because none of them had sufficient power to establish their own religious monopoly in the newly formed United States (not that they didn’t desire it). This religious “pluralism” forced the churches into a position of mutual respect, tolerance for opposition and the willingness to dialogue through the political process – all prerequisites for democracy. One might say, they were forced to take seriously Jesus’ instruction to “love their enemies.

In our church circles, it has always been fashionable to say “the kingdom of God is not a democracy.” Because we recognize Jesus is Lord, we have tended to also emphasize sovereign authority and to some extend dismiss democracy as a crass form of government of the people.

The more I study political cultures and belief systems, democratic and authoritarian, the more disturbing I find our easy dismissal of democratic values. The tendency among conservative Christians toward fundamentalist authoritarianism is a sign of our times, a reaction to the breakdown of modernity. Karen Armstrong, in The Battle for God, traces the rise of Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalism and shows that all three stem from the same dynamics – the desire for control and certainty in the face of accelerating cultural and technological change.

I hope we will stop casually dismissing democracy and take a serious look at the congruency between the teachings of Jesus (especially the Sermon on the Mount) and democratic values of respect for the other, tolerance of opposition, willingness to limit and share power and the protection of human rights.

I have posted for discussion a document issued in 1981 by the Institute on Religion and Democracy on our Covenant Thinklings google discussion group, called Christianity and Democracy.

http://groups.google.com/group/covthinklings/

(go to the "FILE" link and select First Things Christianity and Democracy.doc)

It can also be accessed on-line at:

http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9610/articles/documentation.html.

Our ideas have long term consequences. Do we really want to dismiss democratic values in the name of authoritarian theocracy? Do we really want to give some religious hierarchy the power to determine the Will of God for State and Society? Lets think this over. That is exactly what we are opposing in the Middle East and particularly in Iran.

j