The First Followers of Jesus

Jesus is Placed in his Mother's Arms

See the complete set of paintings at Church's "Anti-War" Paintings Draw Fire

"'Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker' (Prov. 14:31). But the hard question is, how are the poor to be helped - by charity or by justice, by voluntary contribution or by legislation? In the book of Acts we read of the first Christian communities: 'There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them...and distribution was made to each as any had need.' Acts 2:44-45...Human nature is sinful, and therefore the virtue of the few will never compensate for the inertia of the many. Rich people and rich nations will not voluntarily open their eyes to see the biblical truth that the poor have ownership rights in their surplus. This they will see only in retrospect, after their surplus is taken away - by legislation, hopefully, not by violence. Given human goodness, voluntary contributions are possible, but given human sinfulness, legislation is indispensable. Charity, yes always; but never as a substitute for justice. What we keep forgetting in this country is that people have rights, basic rights: the right to food, the right to decent housing, the right to medical care, the right to education." - William Sloan Coffin. Since these goods are rights, it is fitting that they should be provided by government, whose job is not merely to execute criminals, but to defend the rights of those who have no other protection. This job cannot be carried out effectively by private individuals, but must be organized and systematic since it is a question of social duty, not individual impulse. To put the matter succinctly, "Charity is a matter of personal attributes; justice a matter of public policy. Charity seeks to alleviate the effects of injustice; justice seeks to eliminate the causes of it." This is what the fundamentalists have lost touch with - justice as a matter of society as a whole as embodied in government. If it's Old Testament dispensations you need, you might want to take a look at the words of Isaiah, whose conscience was stricken far more by social sin than individual sin.

The Sacredness of Human Dignity

Jesus Speaks to the Weeping Women

See the complete set of paintings at Church's "Anti-War" Paintings Draw Fire

"We need to name torture for what it is -- sin," said Glen Stassen, professor of Christian ethics at the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary. "It is the sin of usurping authority and making yourself the replacement for God, the sin of dominating the powerless, the sin of violating God's creation." National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), Jan 13 - 15, Princeton, N.J.

For the first time in modern history, a government has demanded the right to openly and legally commit torture against those whom it deems terrorists. That government is the United States of America and its supposed "right to torture" must be opposed by everyone who considers him or herself a Christian. The following article in Christianity Today summarizes some of the main points: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/002/23.32.html

1) Torture violates the dignity of the human being. I would argue more strongly than the author of this piece that human dignity requires an absolute ban on torture, that no interrogatory torture can ever be justified. Any intentional infliction of pain on another human being must be considered anathema to a Christian, the opposite of the Gospel.
2) Torture mistreats the vulnerable and violates the demands of justice.
3) Authorizing torture trusts government too much. The author is correct that we should not trust the government (or anyone else) with the right to torture, but I would go farther. The author seems to imply that some ideal agency may be trusted to torture, but that as fallen creatures, we cannot be permitted such dominion over other human beings. I would argue that no agency can ever be permitted to torture - that the act of doing is intrinsically corrupting and therefore impermissable.
4) Torture dehumanizes the torturer. Once again, the author portrays this as a matter of trust. In fact, if torture is inherently degrading, principally to the torturer, then the ban must be absolute.
5) Torture erodes the character of the nation that tortures. I certainly don't know that we are "better than our enemies" in the words of John McCain. The evidence seems rather strongly in the opposite direction. Yet, clearly, torture not only degrades the torturer, but the nation of "Christians" whose silence countenances it.

In sum, these arguments seem pragmatic rather than fundamental and based on derivative principles. But perhaps they can serve as the starting point for a more penetrating discussion.

Maladjusted

Jesus Nailed to the Cross

See the complete set of paintings at Church's "Anti-War" Paintings Draw Fire

Part of my work as an antiwar activist has been to help returning soldiers cope with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which will affect some 50,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, according to predictions. Yet the more I contemplate this "personality disorder", the more I have come to believe that it is no "disorder" but rather the spirit's shriek of protest from a sanity that refuses to die. In the words of one who has lived within this agony of moral clarity, "Post-traumatic stress is not a disorder. Calling it that earns it a place in the DSM IV, professionalizes and medicalizes this very accurate perception that the world is not safe, and that life is not a comforting film convention. Calling it an individual 'disorder' cloaks the social systems responsible for experiences like Vietnam and Iraq." Stan Goff, "Returning Home Alive", trouthout, Jan. 20, 2006. He is refering to Douglas Barber, an Iraq veteran who blew his head off with a shotgun on Jan. 16, 2006, in the words of Goff, to "quiet the chaos in his head". Too many Christians have made their peace with this chaos, the deep chaos of believing in a nonviolent Jesus while the Douglas Barbers of the world suffer the chaos our silence has inflicted.

Stan Goff once again: "And it renders invisible the fact that Douglas Barber was not merely a suicide. Douglas Barber was nurtured on the illusions that secure our obedience, but when the real system needed to demonstrate to the rest of the world just how unsafe our nation could make them as the price of disobedience, the vile carnival barkers of the Bush administration, like administrations before them, did not recruit the children of Martha's Vineyard or Georgetown...They went, as they have always done, to places like Lee County, Alabama, where simple people have formed powerful affective attachments to the myth of our national moral superiority. When that world view, that architecture of meaning, collapses in the face of realities like convoy Russian roulette, and women holding babies up to prevent being shot, and daily stories of slaughter by the people one sleeps with, the profound betrayal of it is not experienced as some quiet, somber sadness. It is experienced like bees swarming out of a hive that has been broken, as a howling chaos. So we quiet it with marijuana, alcohol, heroin, and even shotguns."

The women holding up their babies to prevent Americans from slaughtering busloads of Iraqis attempting to go about what's left of their business refers to the following incident in Douglas' tour of duty in the War for Democracy, "When Doug was in a traffic jam one day, feeling very vulnerable, and the US units dismounted to clear the traffic jam - angry and afraid and waving weapons at the civilians - a woman in a bus held up her baby for them to see ... like that window-sign we see in cars on American highways, 'Baby on Board.' Only she wasn't cautioning other drivers to be careful. She was trying to prevent an armed attack that could kill her child."

What inner compromise prevents us from questioning the god of "Christians" who let babies be murdered so that we can safely rape the planet? Is the failure to be adjusted to this "Christian civilization" a psychological disease to be banished by numbing the inner scars of our warriors with drugs?

As Christians we should celebrate our maladjustment. "[The prophets] were maladjusted to the quiescence and obedience that passed for good social order, an order of mass impoverishment and copious bloodshed. They were abnormal in their refusal to join in the endless rounds of compromise of spirit and conscience. In short, as Abraham Heschel described it, the maladjustments and abnormalities that beset the prophets were actually a form of 'moral madness.'" Lee Griffith, "The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002, p. 116.

When the priests were about to kill Jeremiah, he spoke as follows, "Yahweh himself sent me to say all the things you have heard against this Temple and this city. So now amend your behavior and actions, listen to the voice of Yahweh your God...For myself, I am as you see in your hands. Do whatever you please or think right with me." Jeremiah 26: 12 - 13. Where are the Christians who refuse to believe that their faith is a therapy of adjustment to empire?

The Father of Lies

"…Sacred Scripture, in its very first book, Genesis, points to the lie told at the very beginning of history by the animal with a forked tongue, whom the Evangelist John calls 'the father of lies' (Jn 8:44). Lying is also one of the sins spoken of in the final chapter of the last book of the Bible, Revelation, which bars liars from the heavenly Jerusalem: 'outside are... all who love falsehood' (22:15). Lying is linked to the tragedy of sin and its perverse consequences, which have had, and continue to have, devastating effects on the lives of individuals and nations. We need but think of the events of the past century, when aberrant ideological and political systems wilfully twisted the truth and brought about the exploitation and murder of an appalling number of men and women, wiping out entire families and communities. After experiences like these, how can we fail to be seriously concerned about lies in our own time, lies which are the framework for menacing scenarios of death in many parts of the world." Pope Benedict XVI, Message of Peace, Jan. 1, 2006.

This is Your Freedom

Jesus is Laid in the Tomb

See the complete set of paintings at Church's "Anti-War" Paintings Draw Fire

"In a May 7th (2004) dispatch reproduced by IBC, New Standard correspondent Dahr Jamail reported that “rows and rows of fresh graves” occupied by civilians killed by their American “liberators” “filled the football stadium in Fallujah. Many of [the graves],” Jamail noted, “are smaller than others. My translator Nermim reads the gravestones to me: ‘This one is a little girl.’ We take another step. ‘This is one is her sister.’ Next to them is their mother.”

“We walk,” Jamail continued, “slowly under the scorching sun along dusty rows of humble headstones. She continues reading aloud to me: ‘Old man wearing jacket with black dishasho, near industrial center. He has a key in his hand.’ Many of the bodies were buried before they could be identified. Tears are welling up in my eyes as she quickly reads: ‘Man wearing red track suit.’ She points to another row: ‘three women killed in car leaving city by American missile.’”

Jamail quoted an Iraqi man who “’saw American snipers shoot a woman while she was hanging her clothes’

“Another man” interviewed by Jamail pointed to a mosque and recalled that “Marines entered the mosque before they bombed it and slit the throats of refugees. This,” the man asked Jamail, “is their democracy? This is their freedom?’”

"One of the bodies brought to the [Falluja] clinic," wrote Jamail on April 14th, 2004, "was that of a 55-year old man shot in the back by a [U.S.] sniper outside his home, while his wife and children huddled wailing inside. The family could not retrieve his body for fear of being shot themselves. His stiff corpse was carried into the clinic, flies swarming above it. One of his arms was half raised by rigor mortis” (www.iraqbodycount.org/resources/falluja/index.php)" - "Thomas Friedman and the Murder of Civilians", Paul Street, ZNET, Jan. 5, 2006.

The resort to war is not written in stone. These crimes, and we are speaking specifically about violations of the Geneva Conventions which enshrine the principle that persons who do not take part in armed hostilities are entitled to specal protection and humane treatment, are the result of decisions by this administration that show no regard for the life of Iraqis. Our temptation as resisters of these crimes is to despair of the goodness inherent in both a corrupt and Godless administration and a public anesthetized to the point of inanity. For Americans in particular, it would seem, to act without, not just immediate success, but even the realistic prospect of success, violates the worship of success which our culture has long incarnated. As war resisters, the culture that uses war as a first resort and, with the fall of any economic alternative to "savage capitalism", encounters no rival on the world scene, seems beyond challenge as it more and more openly violates the moral principles regarding torture, war, and fundamental human rights. Domination of the media has led to a sense that the current world order is beyond question, that we are staring into the "end of history", in the memorable words of one neoconservative. As Christians, we must remember that it is not and never will be until Christ comes again.

As Christians, our primary duty is to the truth, which is also love. We must recognize that we are living in a country that has placed itself outside the laws of humanity. This is now officially recognized in Europe, "Dick Marty, the Swiss lawmaker leading the probe on behalf of the Council of Europe, said there was no question the CIA was undertaking illegal activities in Europe in its transportation and detention of terror suspects. 'The strategy in place today respects neither human rights nor the Geneva Conventions,' Marty said at a news conference in the Swiss town of Burgdorf. 'The current administration in Washington is trying to combat terrorism outside legal means, the rule of law.'" "Investigator believes CIA flouted law in Europe", AP, Jan. 14, 2006.

Once we recognize the beast in whose belly we live, our duty, as Christians, is to resist with whatever weapons God has granted us, to the limit of our strength, leaving all prospect of success in His all-caring hands. Success will come first in the form of a newly-formed heart.

Incanting Anemic Souls into Heaven

An essay by Chuck Gutenson, which can be found here, punctures the smug assumptions of much neoconservative religiosity, which dutifully fulfills its role as "moral ballast", in the words of Wendell Berry, by "incanting anemic souls into heaven." In the piercing formulation of Budde and Brimlow's Christianity Incorporated, "Our primary assertion is this: to the extent that capitalist formation succeeds, Christian formation fails." It is precisely the view of Christianity as corporate cheerleader, whose major job is to ameliorate the required excesses of globalized competition, that seems incarnated in the recent essay by Joe Loconte which epitomizes the pseudo-balance of contemporary journalism while reinforcing the requisites of the principalities and powers that underlie corporate domination.

Laconte's underlying assumption is that Christianity can, as long as it behaves itself, be a useful bit player in propping up our unquestionable way of life. Again from Christianity Incorporated, "Indeed, for Christianity to be relevant today, it must do for the whole of society what chaplains do in the armed forces - meet spiritual needs and personal crises, provide legitimation and explanation for the way things are, and generate loyalties to the collective and its purposes."

Though I may be accused of op-edism, I think the best counter to George Will, who wrote that "Jesus can be lord, but only small l and only in your private life." is the poem of Paul in Colossians 1:16 - 17:

For in him were created all things
in heaven and earth
things visible and invisible
whether thrones or dominions
whether rulers or powers -
All things were created through him and for him.

"All things" would seem to include that nasty little patch known as politics, which, while I would be the last to say it might "usher in the kingdom of heaven", will, I believe, one day be redeemed.

They Thought They Were Free

Milton Mayer was a Jew that struggled to understand what had happened in Nazi Germany. "An American Jew of German ancestry, and a brilliant reporter, Mayer went to Germany 7 years after Hitler's fall and befriended 10 Nazis. This book is, in large part, his story of that experience. Intertwined through it -- written in 1955 -- are repeated overt and subtle warnings to future generations of Americans -- us, today." from a review by Thomas Hartmann.

In the beginning, the Nazis did not seem to be the shocking monsters which subsequent perspective has made them. As Mayer describes the process of Nazification happening in Germany, the parallel with our own time is unmistakable, "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security." The big surprise of 9/11 has become the governing metaphor for each subsequent major decision by this government, accompanied by the same mystification of their decision-making process. Once again, Mayer: "This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter..." Yet I do believe that we are still free, though not to the degree of even a few years ago. What I fear is that we are proving unworthy of our freedom, that we are letting it go bit by bit to grasp promises that will never be fulfilled.

I'll let Mayer have the last word: "You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. ...

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked - if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jew swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in - your nation, your people - is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God." Milton Mayer, They Thought They were Free, 1955.

Torture Memos

Article 3 of the UN Conventions: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Friends of democracy and freedom in action: "At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services."

While the media titters about Karl Rove back in the saddle and our President looks the other way, children are being tortured in our name. One phone call could put an end to these well-documented tortures, but in the name of protecting Christian civilization from "evil-doers" he won't make that call.

Where does sanity lie? "The will to embrace - love - sheds the light of knowledge by the fire it carries with it. The eyes need the light of this fire to perceive any justice in the cause and actions of others. Granted, there may may in fact be no justice to perceive there...But if there is any justice in their cause and actions, only the will to embrace them will make us capable of perceiving it because it will let us see both them and ourselves with their eyes. Similarly, the will to exclude - hatred - blinds by the fire it carries with it. The fire of exclusion directs its light only on the injustice of others; any justice they may have will be enveloped in darkness or branded as covert injustice - a mere contrived goodness designed to make their evil all the more deadly...The clenched fist hinders perception of the justice of others and thereby reinforces injustice; the open arms help detect justice behind the rough front of seeming injustice and thereby reinforce justice." Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, Abingdon, 1996, p. 216.

God is not asking us to conquer and destroy the evildoers: "Do all you can to live at peace with everyone. Never try to get revenge; leave that, my friends, to God's anger. As scripture says: Vengeance is mine - I will pay them back, the Lord promises. But there is more: If your enemy is hungry, you should give him food and if he is thirsty, let him drink." Romans 12: 19 - 20.

Lord, forgive us the blind "justice" that refuses Christ's sacrifice, who did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but humbled himself and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. Let the cry of the tortured children reach God's ears and let him put an end to such "justice".

While You're Sitting in the Pew

While you're sitting in the pew, please spare a thought for those currently living in terror in the black sites created by the United States to torture those who are considered the enemies of freedom and democracy, those who have lost the claim to human rights. More prisons like the following are being discovered every few weeks:

"Accounts from detainees at Guantánamo reveal that the United States as recently as last year operated a secret prison in Afghanistan where detainees were subjected to torture and other mistreatment, Human Rights Watch said today...The detainees offer consistent accounts about the facility, saying that U.S. and Afghan guards were not in uniform and that U.S. interrogators did not wear military attire, which suggests that the prison may have been operated by personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency.

The detainees said U.S. interrogators slapped or punched them during interrogations. They described being held in complete darkness for weeks on end, shackled to rings bolted into the walls of their cells, with loud music or other sounds played continuously. Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible to lie down or sleep, with restraints that caused their hands and wrists to swell up or bruise. The detainees said they were deprived of food for days at a time, and given only filthy water to drink...The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night.... Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off...J.K., another detainee (name withheld at attorney’s request), also alleged that he had been held in the dark, shackled to the wall and subjected to weeks of sleep deprivation and constant loud music and noise, as well as being beaten during interrogations. “People were screaming in pain and crying all the time,” he told his attorney." Human Rights Watch, "U.S. Operated Secret ‘Dark Prison’ in Kabul", Dec. 19, 2005.

While I was sitting in the pew, envisioning those living in darkness, imagining what it would be like to live every minute waiting for the torture that is sure to come, I thought of the words of Jurgen Moltmann, "We have lost God, and God has left us, so we are bothered neither by the suffering of others which we have caused, nor by the debts which we are leaving behind us for coming generations. We see all this, but it doesn't touch us. We know it, but it leaves us unmoved...Knowledge is no longer the revelation of our power; it is the revelation of our powerlessness. Because this growing apathy...is becoming more and more universal, it has to be based on an objective alienation from God. God has hidden his face and is far from us." Jurgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society, Minneapolis, Mn.: Fortress Press, 1999, p. 16 - 17. How can we pretend to believe in God when we ignore His face in those we have tossed into the dungeons of our mad fears? Only by being moved by the face of the suffering one can we allow God to recover us. We can pray and sing in the pew all we want, but he remains far from us until we bring mercy to those who wait in darkness for the torturers we have hired.

The Revolution of Prayer

Civil Disobedience for a Moral Budget

Let us raise a prayer of thankfulness for the actions of the true religious leaders of our country, those who joined Jim Wallis and were “arrested in front of the Cannon House Office Building while kneeling in prayer to protest the immoral budget and tax agenda which slashes spending on the poor to finance tax breaks for the rich.” Sojourners, Dec. 15, 2005. When I contemplate their action within the light of the cross, I am filled with joy that the Holy Spirit still stirs our hearts. This willingness to suffer for the sake of the poor is precisely what Jesus came to show us. In the words of John Howard Yoder, “The willingness to suffer is then not merely a test of our patience or a dead space of waiting; it is itself a participation in the character of God’s victorious patience with the rebellious powers of creation.” John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1971, p. 209.

To be silent in the face of such a strike against human dignity is to be complicit in contributing to the suffering of millions of the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. As Christians we are not only under no obligation to “submit” to a government that carries out such violations of basic human rights, while wallowing in massive corruption, but are directly obligated by our Christian vocation to resist it to the limits of our strength. Yoder shows how Romans 13, often invoked by fundamentalists as banning all resistance to the governing authorities in fact shows that those authorities are ministers of God only to the extent that they carry out his will. “We should then read ‘they are ministers of God to the extent to which they busy themselves’ or ‘in that they devote themselves’ to the assigned function…But we can judge and measure the extent to which a government is accomplishing its ministry by asking namely whether it persistently … attends to the rewarding of good and evil according to their merits.” Yoder, p. 205.

They can arrest us, detain us, torture us, crucify us, but they cannot stop the flood that pours from the fountain of the Spirit. Though we cannot resist with the weapons of the Powers, our insubordination is the more total for that very fact. “The conscientious objector who refuses to do what government demands, but still remains under the sovereignty of that government and accepts the penalties which it imposes, or the Christian who refuses to worship Caesar but still permits Caesar to put him or her to death, is being subordinate even though not obeying.” Yoder, p. 209. We submit to the sovereignty of Caesar not because we accept his justice, but because we fundamentally reject the system maintained by the Powers of this world.

Torture and Truth

Jesus Falls for the First Time

See the complete set of paintings at Church's "Anti-War" Paintings Draw Fire

"Torture not only degrades the victim, it also ultimately degrades the torturer," said Kimball, who served in Iraq and now teaches history at West Point. "We already have enough soldiers dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder after legitimate combat experiences. But now you're talking about adding the burden of willfully inflicting wanton pain on another human being. You tell a soldier to go out there and 'waterboard' someone" - strap a prisoner to a board, bind his face in cloth, and pour water over his face until he fears death by drowning - "or mock-execute someone, but nobody is thinking about what that's going to do to that soldier months or years later, when it comes to dealing with the rationalizations and internal consequences. We're talking about serious psychic trauma."On Torture, III: Brutality and Sadism as National Policy, and the Monsters of Our Time”, Once Upon a Time, Dec. 11, 2005.

“[Bush Administration] officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.” “Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim”, New York Times, Dec. 9, 2005.
Though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denies rendition for the purpose of torture, “The State Department's 2004 human rights report on Egypt said that despite legal safeguards, there were numerous, credible reports that security forces tortured and mistreated detainees.” William P. Strobel, “Rice defends U.S. handling of terror suspects”, Knight-Ridder, Dec. 5, 2005. According to Human Rights Watch, “The notion that the Syrians won't torture some one because they (the United States) get a promise from the Syrian secret police is laughable," he continued. ‘They know perfectly well what is going on.’ (from the same article).
According to the Independent, “The rationale behind Washington's ‘rendition’ of terror suspects has been called into question by a senior al-Qa'ida operative, who says he made false claims to Egyptian interrogators about the group's links with Iraq in order to escape being tortured.” “Al-Qa'ida operative lied about links with Iraq to avoid torture”, The Independent, Dec. 10, 2005.
New revelations about extraordinary rendition continue to emerge: “Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator…A senior US intelligence official told The Observer that the CIA is now in 'deep crisis' following last week's international political storm over the agency's practice of 'extraordinary rendition' - transporting suspects to countries where they face torture. 'The smarter people in the Directorate of Operations [the CIA's clandestine operational arm] know that one day, if they do this stuff, they are going to face indictment,' he said. 'They are simply refusing to participate in these operations, and if they don't have big mortgage or tuition fees to pay they're thinking about trying to resign altogether.’” “MI6 and CIA 'sent student to Morocco to be tortured”, Guardian, Dec. 11, 2005.
International law is quite clear and specific about such activities. The Convention Against Torture, signed by the United States 21 years ago to this day, on December 10, 1984 states that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” Convention Against Torture And Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, United Nations, Dec. 10, 1984.
Codicil for Christians: “Anyone with knowledge of illegal activity and an opportunity to do something about it is a potential criminal under international law unless the person takes affirmative measures to prevent the commission of the crimes.” Brecher, Cutler, and Smith, In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond, New York: Henry Holt, 2005. p. 13. Our silence in the face of this monstrosity makes us complicit in the crimes of this administration.
I end with the words of a mother explaining to her children that the U.S. does not torture: “Everything is connected, and each time I turn on a light switch, I need to think about where that energy comes from and if the way it was produced hurts or benefits life. If I extend that question to everything I consume, it won’t be possible to use plastic without knowing the consequence might be the murder or mutilation of a child in Iraq to protect my “right” as an American to petroleum products…There is no path, no blueprint, no road map to peace; the path is peace. Act peace, be peace, buy peace.” “How Can I Tell My Children the U.S. Doesn't Torture?” BuzzFlash, Nov. 30, 2005.

Witnesses to Peace

On the cross, Christ disarmed the Powers, the Powers that now wrap us in the warm certainty that violence always wins. “The weapon from which they heretofore derived their strength is struck out of their hands. This weapon was the power of illusion, their ability to convince us that they were the divine regents of the world, ultimate certainty and ultimate direction, ultimate happiness and the ultimate duty for small, dependent humanity. Since Christ we know that this is illusion. We are called to a higher destiny: we have higher orders to follow and we stand under a greater protector. No powers can separate us from God’s love in Christ. Unmasked, revealed in their true nature, they have lost their mighty grip on us. The cross has disarmed them: where it is preached, the unmasking and the disarming of the Powers takes place.” John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972, p. 147 – 148.
By their witness to the unarmed Christ, the four Christian Peacemakers now awaiting their fate in Iraq have triumphed. By walking into the grip of the Powers, they, like Christ, have unmasked the secret of violence and revealed its pathetic weakness.

Though I cannot speak for them, I can speak to what their sacrifice signifies to myself as a follower of Jesus. Unarmed, they have walked into one of the most violent situations on the face of the earth, not to reap the $300,000 salaries of the hordes of mercenaries we have hired to sow terror, but “…to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.” Reflection by Tom Fox, one of the kidnapped Christian Peacemakers in Iraq.

Note in particular that he does not say, “We do this to make the enemy love us.” or “We do this because these enemies will become humanized.” In the words of Bonhoeffer, “The will of God … is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.” This is not meant to be an easy or “fulfilling” choice. Freed from the domination of the “enemy” stereotype, our behavior is no longer enslaved to that dead standard. We are free to treat others, even those who hate us, as we have been treated by Christ. “His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus…By our enemies Jesus means those who are quite intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love, who forgive us nothing when we forgive them all, who requite our love with hatred and our service with derision, … Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it.” And who in the current scene need it more than the Iraqi people?

This is not idealism, but hard, concrete Christian realism. The Powers revel in human dehumanization and the witness of 20 centuries has not ended their reveling. In fact, they have grown clinical in their dehumanizing strategies. But the Christian Peacemakers have conquered the Powers by their unswerving witness to God’s love. In the words of Jon Sobrino, “What does Jesus’ cross really say? It says that God has irrevocably drawn near to this world, that he is a God “with us” and a God “for us.” And to say this with the maximum clarity he lets himself be a God “at our mercy…reason will continue to ask what use a credible but impotent love is, and the answer is anything but easy…Years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it: ‘Only a suffering God can save us.’… There is something in a pure and credible love, even if it is impotent, that – paradoxically – generates hope in the power of love as such.” Jon Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 231 - 2. Or in the words of the Catholic catechism, “The Christian is not to be ‘be ashamed of testifying to our Lord.’ In situations that require witness to the faith, the Christian must profess it without equivocation…We must keep ‘a clear conscience toward God and toward men.’ Catechism of the Catholic Church, article 2471. May the power of the love of the Christian Peacemakers fill our own hearts with the courage to bear witness to the faith we profess.

Pray for the Christian Peacemakers Kidnapped in Iraq

Please pray for the 4 Christian Peacemakers that are currently being held by kidnappers in Iraq. You can sign a petition calling for their release by going to the following URL: http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/freethecpt.

Now that the Tide is Turning

Jesus Takes Up His Cross

See the complete set of paintings at Church's "Anti-War" Paintings Draw Fire

As Christians, it seems that our duty is to dig deeper than the merely pragmatic concerns now being raised about the war in Iraq, valid as these may be. Our first concern should not be success, but whether our national projects advance the Kingdom of God. No matter how successful or otherwise the war in Iraq might be, we should struggle against it if it contradicts that Kingdom and the laws that should govern it. Perhaps a few more words by John Howard Yoder might bring this point to it's head, "He who resorts to blows confesses he has no better arguments. Violence is weak not only in the motivation and the moral resources which keep out the enemy but cannot create a wholesome society. It can aggress but not defend; it can revolt but not build. It can eliminate a specific abuse but cannot bring social health. If a regime established by violence is to survive, this can only be by demonstrating its capacity to increase progressively the areas of freedom and of orderly legal process. The one thing you cannot do with bayonets, as the dictum has it, is to sit on them." John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacificism, Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1971, p. 167. The failure in Iraq goes far deeper than incompetent execution. The spirit that prosecuted this enterprise emerged from a culture of death, as Pope John Paul II so often described it.

John Paul II's attitude toward this war can be fairly summed up in his statement made on January 13, 2003 in an address after the American Congress authorized the use of force, "NO TO WAR! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity." The culture of death in which this war was gestated can be characterized in the following passage from John Paul II's Gospel of Life, "This reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable 'culture of death'. This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency." This is the culture that justifies war as long as it can be successfully spun, but turns against it and its promoters once they are perceived as ineffective. It then becomes painfully clear that it is the ineffectiveness that is condemned, not the naked aggression involved in invading a sovereign country based on lies. The Tribunal at Nuremberg stated, "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." This is the evil that Christians should, in my opinion, be focused on, not the fact that the aggression is not going well. It would be far worse if this deeply sinful plan were actually working. I also see an analogy here with Yoder's insight that the church should rejoice in her weakness, that her duty is not to make the powerful more effective, that we Christians need "no longer hold ourselves to be morally or psychologically obligated to tailor or moral standards to the needs of the people who are running the world", or running it into the ground in the current situation.

Contested Formation

Jesus Condemned to Death

See the complete set of paintings at Church's "Anti-War" Paintings Draw Fire

On this first Sunday of Advent, may we peer carefully into our hearts to discern whom we are allowing to form them. Just as the Eucharist knits us into the Body of Christ and breaks down the isolation and alienation of consumer culture, so we constantly need to be alert to those social forces readying us for the slaughter. In the words of James, "Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like a fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days...You have lived on the earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter." James 5: 1-3, 5. The days of slaughter are upon us in Iraq. While churches looked the other way as Iraqis were offered up to knock a few cents off the gas price for our SUVs, we fatted our hearts. Our hearts grew encased in layer upon layer of lies and self-flattering images to which we gladly lent our ears and eyes. We know that we are being shaped, yet we are too flaccid to exercise the muscles that would form us in the image of Christ.

Most of us know where our real loyalty lies and it is not to the Church. In the words of a recent study, "...the church is (or should be) about being the new creation, a gathering of disciples that heralds the kingdom of God. As persons made in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26), human beings ought not tbe formed into tools that serve lesser gods like the firm, but instead the full unfolding of the human person is realized in communion with Christ and the redemption of all creation. The church is meant to be God's social laboratory in the world, a prototype of human community that crosses all the world's divisions and holds together without killing and exploitation as its glue - as such it is meant to prefigure the kingdom of God, not a lean-production capitalist firm in which the few dominate and exploit the many inside and outside the firm." Michael Budde and Robert Brimlow, "Christianity Incorporated: How Big Business is Buying the Church, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2002.

On Being Sheep

"As long as we are sheep, we overcome and, though surrounded by countless wolves, we emerge victorious; but if we turn into wolves, we are overcome, for we lose the shepherd's help. He, after all, feeds the sheep not wolves, and will abandon you if you do not let him show his power in you." St. John Chrysostom, Homily on St. Matthew.

St. John Chrysostom goes on to speak in the voice of Our Lord, "I could have managed things quite differently and sent you, not to suffer evil nor to yield like sheep to the wolves, but to be fiercer than lions. But the way I have chosen is right. It will bring you greater praise and at the same time manifest my power. That is what he told Paul: My grace is enough for you, for in weakness my power is made perfect."

Freedom of the Eucharist, pt. 2

To discover a sane alternative to the “myth of redemptive violence” which fuels the apparatus of the corporate state, we turn to St. Augustine, whose City of God draws the line between the practice of the Roman state and the laws that govern God’s city. As Rowan Williams puts it, Augustine “is engaged in a redefinition of the public itself, designed to show that it is life outside the Christian community which fails to be truly public, authentically political.” (Rowan Williams, “Politics and Soul: A Reading of the City of God,” Milltown Studies, no. 19/20: p. 58). The church does this not by the imposition of coercive power, but by means of sacrifice, not through the infliction of pain on other bodies, but through suffering our own pain in sympathy with that of others’. In the words of William Cavanaugh, “To participate in the Eucharist is to live inside God’s imagination. It is to be caught up into what is really real, the body of Christ…In the Eucharist, Christ sacrifices no other body but His own. Power is realized in self-sacrifice; Christians join in this sacrifice by uniting their own bodies to the sacrifice of Christ.” (Ibid, p. 279). Or in the words of Augustine, “This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ. And this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God.” (Augustine, The City of God, X, 6.) This is the true politics based in the sacrifice of the Eucharist, which embodies a power which is not power, “God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.” (I Cor. 1: 28).

The face of Christ is not the face of satisfied wealth, a church fed fat off the suffering of billions, with its mouth taped shut in the face of an illegal war inscribed with the lie that “everything changed after 9/11.” By assuming the church’s interest in political matters to be confined to issues of personal sin such as sexual morality and personal responsibility defined as if current economic structures were simply a unquestionable given, such churches well fulfill the role designated for them by the corporate state, that of “chaplains to capitalism.” Such a church is far different from the one that emerged during the persecutions of the Roman Empire or the Chilean dictatorship, when Christians believed “that there exist mysterious channels which can make the solidarity of friends reach those who languish in the deepest dungeons…those who are being tortured are united in the tortured body of Christ. ‘Conditioned by the knowledge of those “mysterious channels”, their bodies are transformed into powerful flesh for the sacrifice in which they lovingly commune [comulgan, receive the Eucharist] with those who suffer.” (Ibid., p. 277).

God does not empower those who imprison detainees in neoliberal dungeons which let us play sick videogames in the state’s imagination. God’s power is not found in the technology of pain and death, nor can His purposes be advanced by it. The screams of the victims of Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, and the newly revived gulags of Eastern Europe are the screams of our Lord, who died to bring us a new discipline, one that breaks the disarticulation of the individual which optimizes the conditions for corporate profits. In opposition to a church that exudes the spirituality of what John Paul II described as the “culture of death”, resistance to the powers that thrive on the myth of redemptive violence is built into the sufferings of the cross, and embodied in the bread that knits us into the body of Christ. In the words of William Cavanaugh, “The true ‘discipline of the secret’ calls Christians to become the true body of Christ, and bring to light the suffering of others by making that suffering visible in their own bodies.” (Ibid., p. 281). This commitment is deep as the commitment to our own bodies, whose silence is complicity with the torturers, those whose non-negotiable need for comfort and security justifies the pain of those in whom He lives.

Addendum:

The litany of torture techniques used in Chile, with the exception of electric shock, though instances of that in the current Iraq conflict are documented as well, closely resemble those in Rumsfeld’s memo posted on a column outside Cellblock 1A in Abu Ghraib, as described by Colonel Janis Karpinski, “it discussed interrogation techniques that were authorized. It was one page. It talked about stress positions, noise and light discipline, the use of music, disrupting sleep patterns, those kind of techniques.” (Democracy Now!, Interview with Col. Janis Karpinski, Oct. 26, 2005). By the way, I don’t think the current administration is literally copying the techniques used in Chile and other Latin American countries during the 70’s and 80’s. If anything, the Chileans probably learned the techniques from us, trained as they were in the School of the Americas, but I argue merely that similar goals often call for similar means: the goal in this case being the opening of the Middle East to economic liberalization.

Freedom of the Eucharist

Torture seeks to script our bodies into a drama of fear, to place the mark of the state upon us so that we willingly accept our slavery to its purposes. The Eucharist breaks the drama of fear and gives birth to the freedom of the sons of God, not by the domination of a material counter-power to the power of the state, but through the “weakness” of love. “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (I Corinthians 1:25). This weakness is stronger than the power of the state, and requires a deeper discipline than the discipline of torture.

What we believe was born in pain, the pain of Jesus on the cross. Those who torture Iraqis seek to isolate them in their pain, to disarticulate the victim’s bonds to others, those intermediate social bodies which would challenge the new state power that seeks to extend its neoliberal grip. In their suffering, we can see the face of the suffering Jesus, just as “the theologian Jose Aldunate says, ‘Torture is the most vehement attack against the body of Christ’; according to Aldunate, it is Christ himself who is tortured.” (William T. Cavanaugh. Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1998. p. 257). Torture removes the intervening layers of society that buffer the individual from its raw power. The sexual humiliation which we witnessed in the photos from Abu Ghraib represent a technique that has been refined over decades, particularly in Latin America, which induces the degradation necessary to force acceptance of the state’s drama of power. “The goal of torture, in effect is to produce the acceptance of a state discourse, through the confession of putrescence.” (quoted in the study referenced above on p. 31). Far from simply being a desperate attempt to wrest information from unwilling subversives, “We misunderstand modern torture, however, if we fail to see that enemies of the regime are not so much punished as produced in the torture chamber. Torture does not uncover and penalize a certain type of discourse, but rather creates a discourse of its own and uses it to realize the state’s claims to power over the bodies of its citizens.” (Ibid, p. 31). This is not sadism or “stress relief”, it is science, a carefully refined tool used to fragment all social sources of identity other than the corporate state, a mode of governance which targets the springs of spiritual identity, as we see in the desecration of the Koran, just as Pinochet targeted the Church in Chile.

What torture represents in its extreme form, the disintegration and disappearance of all that rivals the corporate state, inhabits the society that practices it as a pervasive atmosphere of fear and fragmentation. What is remarkable about the post 9/11 era is how disciplined the “coalition of the willing” has been in “scripting our bodies into a drama of fear.” (Ibid, p. 33). Their purpose is not directly to repress, but to induce a sense of chaos from which they can rescue us, to produce the drama of a new era, in which “everything has changed”, most notably the rules against “cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment.”

The society that enters into this drama is one in which intermediate organizations, churches, unions, parties, those units of what the Catholic Church calls subsidiarity, which as originally articulated in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, counter the “…injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order” that assigns “to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.” QA, paragraph 79. After the fall of Baghdad, Bremer’s economic policies were described by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, as “an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world” (Klein, Naomi, “Baghdad Year Zero”, Harper’s Magazine, Sept. 24, 2004.) The same form of “shock treatment” required similar social measures in Chile during the 1970’s, as “Los Chicago Boys”, Milton Friedman and his fellow travelers, were called upon to restructure that economy. The all-too-familiar results, atomized unions and soaring unemployment arise from an ideology in which “only individuals can have moral obligations”, in the words of Friedman (Milton Friedman, “Good Ends, Bad Means” in the Catholic Challenge to the American Economy, ed. Thomas M. Gannon, S.J. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1987, p. 105). To support such “therapy”, an economic “grill” was needed. In Chile, a detainee described the “grill” as follows: “…immediately I was taken to the torture chamber. There they made me undress and with my hands and feet tied to the metal frame of the lower part of a bunkbed they began to apply electric current to me. This is the ‘grill.’” (Ibid, p. 24). This “grilling” was the logical counterpart to the “shock” to the economy applied by the Chilean dictatorship and almost exactly parallel to the one ordered by Paul Bremer in Iraq. Torture can effectively aid the required atomization of society. “The disarticulation of worker’s organizations through the strategy of torture was an essential component of the neoliberal economic model imposed in Chile and other Latin American countries.” (Ibid., p. 39).

Stations of the Cross

See the complete set of paintings at Church's "Anti-War" Paintings Draw Fire

Melting Skin for Peace

In case you haven't been following the white phosphorous controversy, there are two facts that most news coverage is completely missing. First, the accusations of white phosphorous usage are not new, but were documented at the time of the second attack on Fallujah by unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail based on interviews with Fallujah refugees. These facts were commented on rather extensively here at Nonviolent Jesus. Secondly, and this is what should aid any anti-war actions or speeches that your group may be carrying out - the Army has admitted that it uses white phosphorous as a weapon. Here is the relevant section from the March Field Artillery magazine: "WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

The Italian film from RAI which can be viewed here: http://movies.crooksandliars.com/fallujah_ING~1.wmv extensively documents the weapons use with eye-witness accounts. In fact, if you look at the material collected by Daily Kos, http://www.dailykos.com/tag/White%20phosphorus, it's clear that even at the time, such radical left-wing publications as the Washington Post documented the use of white phosphorous as a weapon, which the Army did not dispute at the time.

White phosphorous is a weapon of terror, which burns the skin of its victims to the bone and can't be extinguished with water. The teaching of the Church on operations such as razing the city of Fallujah and treating every person in the city as an insurgent is clear: "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons-especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons- to commit such crimes." Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2314.

I have to admit I'm often afraid that I'm speaking to the void, a voice crying in the wilderness that no one hears. Yes, there are blogs that speak about these things, but hardly ever from a Christian perspective. Where are my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who see Christ's face in the massacred inhabits of Fallujah? Where is the outrage among Catholic bishops over the destruction of a city and the use of chemical weapons to melt away the skin of innocent men, women, and children? Yes, there will probably be commission one day that will conclude, long after the witnesses of the time have died or moved on, that perhaps it was a crime that was committed in 2004. Why were these voices silent in the year 2004 when they might have saved a life or two?

What We Have Lost

The Bush administration is now seeking to openly justify the torture it has carried on semi-clandestinely for the past three years. This represents one of the few innovations that the current administration has managed to achieve. The wise inhibitions of our forefathers regarding torture are now being shed, and the fact that it is being done by those who wear their evangelical faith on their sleeve, if not their forehead, makes it all the more disheartening to those of us who struggle to follow the non-torturing Jesus. The silence of the mainstream churches in the face of this blatant violation of God's image is one more sad argument that they have indeed become mere "chaplains of capitalism" as a recent study Christianity Incorporated by Micheal Budde has argued.

" In an interview for National Public Radio he (Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff) charged that Vice President Cheney's office--and new chief aide David Addingtoon--was responsible for directives which led to U.S soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wilkerson said he had some hard evidence: a trail of memos and directives authorizing questionable detention practices up through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office directly to Cheney's staff. The directives, he said, contradicted a 2002 order by President Bush for the military to abide by the Geneva Convention rules against torture." - "More Fodder for Press: Wilkerson Charges Cheney Responsible for Prisoner Abuse", AP, Nov. 4 , 2005.

In direct support of his contentions, Cheney is currently making direct personal appeals to endorse "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" of detainees. "Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to allow exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody, according o participants in a closed-door session." "Cheney Seeks CIA Exemption to Torture Ban", AP, Nov. 5, 2005. This Christian uses his power not to seek comfort for those souls who have fallen into his clutches, but open and unprecedented freedom to degrade and torture them without limit or oversight. Not even Pinochet's Chile demanded such an open right.

Yet still the silence of the churches continues. Let us pray that we might be forgiven our own silence and inaction while our brothers and sisters are tortured to keep us safe.

Abandonment of the Poor

At the risk of being a bit stark, I would say that if you don't care about the poor, then you might as well stop attempting to call yourself a Christian. Of course, virtually all of our Christian brothers claim that they do care about the poor. But caring about the poor can't be merely theoretical. For many neocon Christians, their faith tells them that the best way to help the poor is not by actually doing anything to lighten the burdens of the poor. That, they fear, would only reinforce their sinful tendencies and further loosen the discipline that has brought them to their plight. No, much as it might wound their delicate consciences, they must increase those burdens so that the poor might build the character which is the true ticket to respect. In other words, we help the poor not by actually helping them, but by making their lives so miserable that they become like us.

Of course, many types of addiction are widespread in this society for rich and poor. Along these lines, I would like to suggest a definition for the poor: first, there are the economic poor, in the Gospels, those who hunger and thirst, the sick, those in prison, and so on. Secondly, there are those despised by the ruling society: sinners, publicans, prostitutes, who are not necessarily economically oppressed, but denied dignity. These two usually converge in our society. The self-righteous Christianity I've been critiquing here says that the poor are in the state they are in because they lack the motivation and self-discipline to raise themselves up. Drug addiction is part of the syndrome that causes their poverty. It results from repeated, morally culpable self-indulgence that leads to enslavement to drugs. Part of the good news that Jesus came to bring might be that the lack of dignity and self-esteem which drive the poor (and rich) to this enslavement is not only the result of personal sin, but also social sin that reinforces negative self-images in order to encourage an economically lucrative indulgence.

Who I Am, What I Believe

Those of you who have been following this blog for a while have probably wondered about the philosophy that animates us here at Nonviolent Jesus. At the top it says, "An unofficial blog by a member of the Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi", but what does that actually mean? Basically, it means that one who has studied the social teaching of the Church for many years is wondering why, amidst the explosion of blogs over the past few years, there has not be a single one that focuses on war and peace issues from a Christian perspective. Of course, there are Christian and Catholic blogs and they mention the war in Iraq from time to time, but we Christians often seem to suffer from an unexamined distinction between politics, which inhabits an amoral sphere unreachable by the gospel, and the personal sphere, where the vast majority of attention focuses. The interaction between these two, which has been the subject of intense scrutiny over the past thirty years, has apparently made no impact on the blogosphere. As a Catholic deeply interested in issues of war, peace, and social justice, I would have been satisfied merely to find a blog that regularly dealt with the war from a gospel perspective, but I was unable to find anyone doing that. Since then, I have come across the able and incisive blog by Chuck Gutenson, http://imitatiochristi.blogs.com/imitatio_christi/, which deals with many social issues from a Christian perspective, but I still have yet to find a Christian blog that focuses on war and peace specifically. If anyone out there knows of one, please let me know as soon as possible. So my intent here is to create a forum to reflect specifically on these issues by those who have committed their lives to Jesus Christ. Anyone who has read this blog knows that the perspective matches that of the Catholic Peace Movement, so if you support the Bush administration's war policies, you'll be in for some lively debate. But this voice crying in the wilderness would like to hear other voices and connect to any ongoing debate from Christian perspectives on the war on Iraq. Is there anybody out there? Please use the comment link below to tell me who you are and what you believe about this war.

The Inner Price of Corruption

Corruption eventually turns on its creator. "...a politics which Libby and others inside the executive branch acted to corrupt, and which is now turning upon them." Stirling Newberry, "Deconstructing the Indictment", truthout, Oct. 28, 2005. The makers of corruption never understand the nature of the process which they unleash. Cynically, we are inured to corruption in daily life, how much more in politics, yet we still believe, and will continue to believe that purity is possible. We have to, it's what keeps us alive. Those who open the stream of corruption never fail to believe that it is controllable. It would be so easy, they think, simple to choke it off when it gets risky. A lie is always an attempt to avoid risk. But opening oneself to risk is ultimately what cleanses the heart. And when we refuse to clease ourselves, then God and nature take us in hand and the shower begins. All I can advise those who must suffer indictment and trial, and our prayers must be with them, is that as we open our hearts to the suffering which honesty invariably brings, we will taste the bitter herb which Oscar Wilde spoke of, and perhaps we will learn, as so many of us who have committed less visible crimes, that "Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rock where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole." Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis"

Every Good Man is Free

William Sloan Coffin recently provided a trenchant analysis of why we have become weakened in our ability to resist hatred and war: "Something happened to our understanding of freedom. Centuries ago Saint Augustine called freedom of choice the "small freedom," libertas minor. Libertas Maior, the big freedom was to make the right choices, to be fearless and selfless enough to choose to serve the common good rather than to seek personal gain.

That understanding of freedom was not foreign to our eighteenth century forebears who were enormously influenced by Montesquieu, the French thinker who differentiated despotism, monarchy, and democracy. In each he found a special principle governing social life. For despotism the principle was fear; for monarch, honor; and for democracy, not freedom but virtue. In The Broken Covenant, Robert Bellah quotes him as writing that "it is this quality rather than fear or ambition, that makes things work in a democracy."

According to Bellah, Samuel Adams agreed: "We may look to armies for our defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free where virtue is not supremely honored." - William Sloan Coffin, "None of Us Have the Right to Avert Our Gaze", CounterPunch, Oct. 22, 2005.

Such words would make a fitting epitaph for the Bush Administration, whose slogan seems to be "Force creates honor." None of us, he says, and he is speaking particularly of those who profess Christ, "none of us have the right to avert our gaze" from the face of war. To do so does not make us more spiritual, but less human. We do not have the right to ignore the consequences of our obsequious silence in the face of the crimes ongoing in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. May the fresh air of freedom fill our hearts with the power to say "No!"

Defending Torture

"These so-called ill-treatments and this torturing... were not, as assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual leaders, subleaders, and men who laid violent hands on internees... It is obvious that there were elements among them who would ill-treat internees, but this ill-treatment was never tolerated." Nazi Auschwitz Kommandant Rudolf Hoess during the Nuremberg Trails.

While the pragmatic arguments against torture, best understood and summarized by the military and incorporated into their field manuals, are virtually unanswerable, as Christians we must penetrate more deeply and understand why torture is always a violation of God's law. According to the Catechism: "Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity." Catechism, #2297. God calls us not merely to respect the dignity of others, but to grow every day more deep in our appreciation of that dignity, which in the end is our own dignity as well. Degrading others degrades ourselves even more thoroughly and wounds our humanity, making us less able to love others and the Lord. The purpose of social life is to create a world where such abuses are no longer possible.

Penetrating even more deeply, the Catechism characterizes using God's name to justify torture as blasphemy. "It is also blasphemous to make use of God's name to cover up criminal practices, to reduce peoples to servitude, to torture persons or put them to death." Catechism, #2148. Those who use God's name to justify torture, as the current administration is doing by their veto of the bill which simply codifies anti-torture rules that have been a part of military code for decades, commit mortal sin.

Let us pray for those who blaspheme the image of God and justify war as Bush recently did by saying, "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …' And I did."

The God of Life

God is the spirit of life. His graces bloom in ever-expanding spheres of truth and value. Nationalist Christianity seeks to encase that spirit in an unchangeable idol which requires torture and murder to control those resistant to its rule.

Why don't the current leaders of the Christian denominations speak out? Some do, but many are still chained to the distinction between the personal and the political. Much of the power of religion comes from its personal nature. It is a personal commitment that requires constant cultivation and grows ever deeper with that cultivation. The political is an external reality that impinges on us in ways that we cannot control. It may be an area of interest or even passion, but it is not part of our interior in the same way as our relationship to God.

Contrast this with the personal nature of the relationship between soldiers and their "Persons Under Control" or PUCs: "The torture of detainees was so widespread and accepted that it became a means of stress relief for soldiers. Soldiers said they felt welcome to come to the PUC [Person Under Control] tent on their off hours to 'Fuck a PUC' or 'Smoke a PUC.' 'Fucking a PUC' referred to beating a detainee, while 'Smoking a PUC' referred to forced physical exertion sometimes to the point of unconsciousness." Human Rights Watch, September, 2005.

Is this a personal or a political relationship? It seems to me that this is actually both simultaneously. Detainees are tortured and humiliated as a means of social control in a way similar to the organized torture carried out in Chile in the 1970s and 80s. The evidence for this is the meticulous documentation from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International which demonstrates that in most cases torture is not being carried out for information. Most detainees have no worthwhile intelligence about the insurgency since their incarceration is the result of random roundups by clueless officers. The torture documented by HRW serves two primary purposes - relief of stress and social control, goals which are mutually reinforcing. It also exemplifies how questionable is the distinction between the personal and the political. Many of the soldiers are committed Christians, yet they participate in torture as reported by Capt. Ian Fishback, not merely breaking a man's legs with a metal Louisville slugger as a means of stress relief, but obeying orders to torture fellow children of God.

In the words of Capt. Fishback, "Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment. I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses in both Afghanistan and Iraq." And later: "Others argue that clear standards will limit the President's ability to wage the War on Terror. Since clear standards only limit interrogation techniques, it is reasonable for me to assume that supporters of this argument desire to use coercion to acquire information from detainees. This is morally inconsistent with the Constitution and justice in war. It is unacceptable." "A Matter of Honor", Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2005.

In response to Capt. Fishback, as well as the many other cases of torture and abuse, Sen. McCain has repeatedly tried to enforce the rules of the Army Field Manual regarding torture with this result: "Ninety senators, backed by an array of former admirals and generals, voting in favor of an amendment to a military appropriations bill. Their bill provides clear guidance to American troops, banning the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in U.S. custody. It establishes the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for interrogation of detainees." "Torture: An American Story", Alternet, Oct. 12, 2005.

Yet once again, a vast silence grips the Christian leaders of America, whose voice now could be decisive in ending the torture. Please urge your bishop or pastor to speak out about this issue. To be silent now is to participate in the torture and abuse of innocents.

Body and Soul

"Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Matthew 10:28.

"On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC (Persons Under Control) tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all U.S. soldiers. One day [a sergeant] shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a metal bat. He was the fucking cook. He shouldn’t be in with no PUCs." Human Rights Watch, "Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division", September, 2005.

Soldiers in Iraq feel at the mercy of an unfeeling and incomprehensible power that has thrown them into the pit of darkness. At any moment, one of the PUCs or the brother/cousin of a PUC could end their life. They have been trained to feel invincible, yet they know they are slaves in the service of a power that doesn't care for their life or death. These psychological conditions are pre-requisites to the real purpose of the powers controlling the situation - to turn soldiers into torturers. Torture has long been found to be one of the most effective devices for the enforcement of social control.

The following applies directly to the production of insurgents in Iraq through torture - "We misunderstand modern torture, however, if we fail to see that enemies of the regime are not so much punished as produced in the torture chamber. Torture does not uncover and penalize a certain type of discourse, but rather creates a discourse of its own and uses it to realize the state's claims to power over the bodies of its citizens. Torture plays out the dream of a certain kind of state, the production of a type of power/knowledge which I will call the imagination of the state. To speak of imagination is not, of course, to imply that state power is "merely imaginary," a disembodied thought. The imagination of the state has a tremendous power to discipline bodies, to habituate them and script them into a drama of its own making...Torture is rather both the production of that threat and the response to it, and thus the ritual site at which the state produces the reality which its pretensions to omnipotence consist." William T. Cavanaugh, "Torture and Eucharist", Blackwell, 1998. p. 31.

Just like the Chilean dictatorship of the 1970's and 80's, the current Bush administration is deliberately producing "insurgents" through the use of torture. The recent Human Rights Watch report, "Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division" gives direct eye-witness testimony from Army officers to the continued use of torture in Iraq. It is also clear that this torture is not being used to extract information in most cases, but to terrorize and degrade the Iraqi populace. The fact that soldiers are "allowed" to work out their frustrations by breaking detainees' legs with a baseball bat demonstrates the purpose of this treatment. It is a mechanism of social control and at the same time a means of justifying the continued presence of the U.S. in Iraq. "The security of some states is made to depend on the insecurity of its citizens. The citizens then become self-disciplining, which is far more effective than the use of brute force." Torture and Eucharist, p. 46. In addition the torture is most effective if it is vaguely known to the citizens but denied by the powers that be so as to create a sense of total powerlessness and anxiety and thereby strengthen the levers of control.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, I strongly encourage you to read the whole report, which can be found at http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/.

When we are silent in the face of torture, we internalize the will of the masters who have ordered the torture. In effect, we aid in the process of bringing the Iraqis into subjection to the will of the master country by inwardly brutalizing our own souls. The harm that is done to the Iraqis, the Persons Under Control that we are now torturing, is little compared to the damage that we are doing to ourselves. In the words of Juan Cole, "The first reason to get the ground troops out now is that they are being fatally brutalized by their own treatment of Iraqi prisoners...The brutalization of the US military and of its prisoners is a brutalization of the entire American public. It is an undermining of the foundational values of the Republic. We cannot remain Americans and continue to behave this way routinely. The some 15,000 Iraqis in American custody are all by now undying enemies of the United States. Some proportion of them started out that way but perhaps could have been won over." Informed Comment, Sept. 23, 2005.

In the next few weeks, I intend to extend these observations by examining the uses of torture as revealed in past U.S.-sponsored regimes that relied on torture as a means of social control. But I would like to end by remembering the words of Jesus quoted at the beginning: "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Matthew 10:28. The torturers are weak, they can only harm the body - they cannot command the soul. When we discover and root out the torturer in ourselves, then we will have the power to stop the brutalization of Iraqis. Please read the report.

The Citadel

“Evil has insinuated itself into our very souls and rules over us from the very citadel erected to guard us against it.” Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996, p. 89.

This citadel often manifests itself in the form of smugness radiating from our Christian identities. When we become addicted to comforting lies our vision of the world devolves into cartoonish battles of enlightened civilization and dark swarms of “terrorists” engendered from the marshes of perverted beliefs, beliefs moreover that mirror our own. The religion of Christ becomes the sickly sweet expression of our church leaders which scent calls for the assassination of our enemies, those who own resources we covet.

Walter Wink describes the mirror image of the true church in the following words:
“The myth of redemptive violence is nationalism become absolute. This myth speaks for God; it does not listen for God to speak. It invokes the sovereignty of God as its own; it does not entertain the prophetic possibility of radical denunciation and negation by God. It misappropriates the language, symbols and scriptures of Christianity. It does not seek God in order to change; it claims God in order to prevent change. Its God is not the impartial ruler of all nations but a biased and partial tribal god worshiped as an idol. Its metaphor is not the journey but a fortress. Its symbol is not the cross but a rod of iron. Its offer is not forgiveness but victory. Its good news is not the unconditional love of enemies but their final liquidation. Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy. It usurps the revelation of God’s purposes for humanity in Jesus. It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous.” Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992, p. 30.

How do we become aware of the evil that grows within us? Sometimes it is only by confronting the bodies of those we seek to dominate, “Three U.S. army personnel—two sergeants and a captain—describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have broken a detainee’s leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers also applied chemical substances to detainees’ skin and eyes, and subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation, and extremes of hot and cold. Detainees were also stacked into human pyramids and denied food and water.” Human Rights Watch, “New Accounts of Torture by U.S. Troops”, Sept. 24, 2005. As good Christians, we hold ourselves aloof, untouched by the torture committed in our name by our born-again President and his prayerful Cabinet. To allow in the cries and screams of our victims would be too painful, yet it haunts us like a sin we can barely remember. Our continuing silence and the silence of our Christian leaders makes a powerful contribution to those screams and cries, but the citadel is far too comforting to leave.

Brutalizing the Soul

In the words of Juan Cole: "The first reason to get the ground troops out now is that they are being fatally brutalized by their own treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Abu Ghraib was horrific, and we who are not in Congress or the Department of Defense have still only seen a fraction of the photographs of it that exist. Sy Hersh learned of rapes, some of them documented. Human Rights Watch has documented further prisoner abuse by US troops in Iraq. Sometimes the troops just go in and break arms or legs out of frustration. It has long been obvious that the Abu Ghraib scandal was only the tip of the iceberg, and that the abusive practices were allowed and encouraged by Rumsfeld and high officers, and weren't some aberration among a few corporals. (Even Senator Frist may be involved in a cover-up of the torture.) There is also no reason to think that the abuses have ceased. The denials of the US military, based on its own internal investigations (which apparently involve looking at official reports filed and talking to officers in charge) are pretty pitiful. The brutalization of the US military and of its prisoners is a brutalization of the entire American public. It is an undermining of the foundational values of the Republic. We cannot remain Americans and continue to behave this way routinely. The some 15,000 Iraqis in American custody are all by now undying enemies of the United States. Some proportion of them started out that way but perhaps could have been won over. Some of the detainees were probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. After a time in US prison camps, they will hate us forever. And they know where thousands of tons of hidden munitions are." - Informed Comment, Sept. 25, 2005.

What is the effect of torture on our Christian spirit? To what extent does our silence in the face of ongoing brutalization of Iraqis in the name of our "safety" cause us to become brutalized? To what extent are we brutalizing our Lord when we break the legs of Iraqis with baseball bats? I would really like to start a conversation on these questions because I don't see any conversation about torture and Christianity happening on other blogs. If you know about such a conversation or blog, please let me know.

The Ignored One

The crucified Lord is one of those aspects of reality that seems so eminently ignorable. It is the “still small voice” that we instinctively bypass in the rush to the impossible fulfillments promised by our death-driven civilization. Yet he is inescapable, just like commitment and anger and humiliation and the death we all want to avoid. He is ambiguous like life – we can’t embrace him and we can’t leave him behind. When we grasp for him, he disappears, because he can’t let himself be treated as a thing, as one more datum in the stream of our lives that we can add to the sum of our redemption. He is like the core of our childhood which we will carry forever, but which will grow ever fainter.

Our Lord is crucified with the people of Iraq - he stands with them in mute authority while they are degraded as he was degraded - to prove the omnipotence of the truly degraded. May we pray for a love like his and the ability to act on it.

Inside the Wire

One of the most important responses we can make to current natural and unnatural disasters is to look deep within our hearts and admit that we are guilty of the situation that has led to this. Is this not what we are asking Bush to do? Then why can we not show the path by doing the same ourselves? For we too have formed a deliberate fog of ignorance about ourselves, obfuscating the obvious truth that we are rich Christians in a world where 50,000 people a day die of hunger. We have told ourselves many comforting lies and partial truths to justify our uneasy conscience, but it has never rested.

Spiritual Revolution

When are we going to realize that material, no matter how enhanced with intelligent bits, can only take us so far on our journey to freedom? And beyond that point, which is a relatively shallow one, becomes a positive impediment.

How many times have we given ourselves permission to be a little materialistic, just this one time? We deserve it, just like Bush deserves his bike rides. And maybe it's true that first time, but soon the tenth and twentieth time have long since passed and we've ceded the right to permanent selfishness, establishing a new level from which to devolve further. And suddenly we find ourselves imitating attitudes we secretly despise, but the secret grows more and more hidden until we no longer recognize it as our own.

To share God's life is to encounter a level of being that calls humanity to ever higher levels. These days it is often very difficult to distinguish spiritual and material processes, so debased has our understanding of humanity become through technical dominance. This dominance enslaves our understanding of the meaning of compassion. We break this slavery only through love for the least among us.

The Failure of a Generation

As James Moore recently put it (American Recessional), "We have what we asked for. And New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are the consequences of our choices." The Bush approach (or non-approach) to the welfare of the poor epitomizes the anti-Christian regression from the "preferrential option for the poor" to the current blind trust in the richest which has taken place over the past 30 years. The tremendous effort by some during the 60's and 70's to reach within and find a way of living beyond the consumerist matrix was too difficult for most of us to sustain. With one excusable and "insignificant" surrender after another, we slipped back into idolatry, until we were indistinguishable from the selves we once so vociferously rejected.

James Moore once again, "The water has washed away the scales from our eyes and now we have seen where our decisions have led us. Every vote we have ever cast for every charlatan selling tax cuts and less government has had an affect on lives in New Orleans." Indeed, much has been washed away and it is time for us to gaze steadily at what the generation of the 60's and 70's has become. The fads that caked like toxic mud on our consciences are all starting to dissolve and soon the core of our ideals will reveal its emptiness. For a thousand reasons that seemed incontrovertible at the time, we accepted mini- and then micro-substitutes for those original ideals. How many of our generation managed to convince themselves that the high-tech revolution of the 90's was the fulfillment of the ideals of the 60's?

James Moore: "The fault is ours; those of us who gave two terms to the PR president by casting our votes and believing we could get something for nothing...Our silent support and inattention to detail makes possible illigitimate wars and corrupt contracts." Like the PR president, we needed to live balanced lives, without reflecting on who would pay the price for that balance. The balance always came by feeding off the capital of past generations. That capital has worn thin and may soon wear out like the ozone layer that protects us from the radiation burns of our folly.

James Moore: "New Orleans is a symptom of something far greater than simply inadequate federal response. Our government, and all of the great institutions that have maintained our democracy, is dying. And we have let it. We have not listened for the truth." We always owed ourself more than to listen to the truth. Indeed we have enjoyed ourselves - we have lived the good life.

How is it that the generation that prided itself on its honesty and self-insight has become incapable of admitting error? Before you start to explain away what I have said as "guilt tripping", please explain to me what real guilt would look like.

"The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion." Let us ask for forgiveness for the times when the false religion of wealth and power has entered our hearts and we accepted it gladly. And let us ask that George Bush repent of and be forgiven for his neglect of the poor and the defenseless and that in this forgiveness he may find the blessings which come from service to the poor in spirit.

On Not Listening

The moment comes, the moment always comes, when what we have become strikes with the force of symbol. Katrina has shown what decades of me-firstism, of paper stock booms, of let-the-market-sort-it-out ultimately leads to. Jesus taught us that he who would be first must become the servant of all, but Jesus is not the beacon of this society, particularly not the part that wears glittering crosses. We can hear our own hollowness rattle around as we listen to the pleas that should have been heard years ago, but were ignored because their source was not the one which shone with power, from people who weren’t funny or clever or entertaining. Alexander Cockburn put it succinctly, “So collective effort goes out the window, and soon the society forgets how collective effort works. Tens of thousands of poor people standing on roofs in the Delta and they haven't the slightest idea how to get them off. The ones they have brought to dry land they dump on the highway, where they stand as the Army trucks roll by.” Cockburn, Alexander, “From Mitch to Katrina: Nature is Politics”, CounterPunch, Sept. 3/4. (http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn09032005.html). If nobody’s profiting, then everything grinds to a halt.

To be a Christian means to accept an inescapable responsibility to the poor. The scenes along the Gulf Coast are the result of the systematic abandonment of this responsibility. The people in charge of this government don’t believe in government and so it is logical that they can’t carry out effective government policies. For them, dependence on government assistance is the result of personal moral evil and must be expunged, or else the weak themselves must be expunged.

Let us pray that God will hear the voice of the poor.