New This Week - "Thinking about Military Service" & "Spiritual Disciplines for Different Personalities"

New Youth Study (Contemporary Issues - Youth)
Thinking about Military Service
This is a study for Christian youth groups about military recruitment in high school. This study also reflects on all options for service to God and humanity.

New Adult Study (Spirituality - Adult)
Spiritual Disciplines for Different Personalities
Perhaps our favorite worship practices are more related to our personalities than to our theological views or faith statements. What kinds of spiritual practices best suit your personality?

Staff Pick
Worship: Why Do We Do What We Do?

Last Week's Top Five
What Happens When We Pray? (Bible and Theology - Adult)
Why Pray? (Bible and Theology - Adult)
Advent Through the Eyes of Those Who Waited (Study Packs - Advent and Lent)
What's Happening with Our Economy? (In The News)
Trick or Treat: What's Halloween About? (Contemporary Issues - Adult)
Worship 101 - (Spirituality - Adult)


Visit us again next week for our new adult study titled "Health-Care Reform."


Click on any of the links above to be redirected to the site for more information.

"What's Happening with Our Economy?" - Special In The News by Brent Waters

BREAKING NEWS (In The News - Adult)
What's Happening with Our Economy?

What is happening on Wall Street? How did this happen and what should we, as Christians, be doing? While this study does not pretend to provide stock market tips or to give answers to an economic disaster that will be analyzed and understood in due course, it does explain in broad terms what is happening and why. Additionally, the author offers basic Christian ethical principles that ALL Christians, from wherever we sit on the political spectrum, must keep in mind as solutions are considered. This study calls you to ask yourself: in this world of globalization and constant change, how can you and your church work to help the poor, be stewards of creation, and work toward being followers of Jesus Christ in our individual vocations?

By Brent Waters

Click on the link above to be redirected to the site for more information.

On freedom and desks

Governor Mike Huckabee is one of last year's U.S. Presidential candidates I'd most like to meet.  The way he integrates what appears to be a sincere, genuine faith into his political life interests me.  He warmed my heart when he spoke of his excitement at Barak Obama's candidacy‹even though they disagree on most issues‹because he had grown up in the racist society and felt glad that the situation in this country had changed enough that a black man could be president.  I also appreciate prominent Christians showing they have a sense of humor and a taste for the absurd‹something Huckabee demonstrated when he invited faux right-wing political pundit Stephen Colbert to be his running mate.

I was thus surprised last month, when Huckabee did not seem to recognize the absurdity of a story he shared in his speech at the Republican Convention. Huckabee spoke of a teacher in Arkansas who would not let the students in her classes have desks until they explained how they earned desks.  At the end of the day, war veterans entered the classroom, carrying desks, and she told the students they did not have to earn their desks; the soldiers had already earned the desks for them.

I am not only frustrated with Huckabee for using images of sacrifice and patriotism to evoke feelings in a way that offends logic; I am disappointed that the media did not comment on this strange story. If you run a Google search on "Huckabee" and "desks", you will find few political analysts pointing out that this anecdote made no sense.  The wars the U.S. has fought have had no connection to whether American students had desks.  Even if we had not fought the Revolutionary War and ended up securing independence like Canada did, our schoolchildren would have had desks.

I also ran some Google image searches and found pictures of children from Uzbekistan, China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Libya seated at school desks.  None of these countries grant their citizens the full range of human freedoms granted to U.S. citizens in the Bill of Rights.

I feel similarly frustrated when politicians and media figures glibly describing all currently enlisted American soldiers as "fighting for our freedom."  Rationally, if one considers the liberties granted by the United States constitution (for which I am truly grateful, having worked in countries where people did not have them), I cannot think of one example that was enhanced by our invasion of Iraq.  Had we not invaded, my right to assemble, to worship, to speak or write what I think would have remained unchanged.  And thousands of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers would still be alive.

When we do not ask whether our leaders, or our society, are saying something true, and are instead satisfied with how words make us feel, we are allowing the Powers that Be to enslave us with their propaganda, to use our emotional goodwill to fuel their schemes of domination and control.  We are also turning away from Jesus, who told us that the truth will make us free‹uncomfortable and unpopular, maybe‹but free.


Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review . More of Kern's "World Neighbor " columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/article_type/world-neighbors/ 


Bible study should be timely. It should stimulate our thoughts about Christian values and how they relate to today's world. The Thoughtful Christian is a Web-based resource center designed to attract and keep participants' attention. Perfect for Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, or individual reflection, the studies encourage class members to share their thoughts and beliefs while wrestling with questions that inform the way we live out our faith in everyday life. For more information please visit http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com/.

"Religulous" Misses Its Own Point

Bill Maher's "Religulous" is exactly the anti-religion rant that it appears to be. He interviews religious people to make them look ridiculous. He takes sensible, caring, mainstream parts of a faith and mixes it indiscriminately with the extremist parts. He evangelizes for his own faith, secular rationalism; then, when challenged, retreats to the claim that "I'm just asking questions." "Religulous" is the film equivalent of Richard Dawkins' or Sam Harris' anti-religious books of the moment.

Maher tells us that his own religious education ended at about 13. His Jewish mother did not attempt to educate her children in her faith, and his Catholic father raised his two children as Catholics until he had a falling out with the church over birth control in young Bill's early adolescence. Maher's strong anti-religious zeal now is a relatively new development, as he was a wishy-washy "recovering Catholic" for decades. Recently, though, he has turned to a faith in rationalism beloved of many adolescent boys, myself included at that age. It is the faith that the vast majority of people on earth on ignorant, superstitious fools, and the world would be a better place if everyone were rational like me.

Yet early in the film Maher makes a different, better point. In a "gotcha" visit to the Trucker's Chapel at a truck stop in North Carolina, Maher admits that his faith is a luxury of the rich. He allows that if, for example, a man in prison said "I've got nothing in here except Jesus," Maher could respect that view. But people who are as favored as Bill Maher -- rich, famous, smart -- have the luxury of rejecting God and religion.

I believe that Bill Maher hit the nail on the head right there, as he sometimes does. He just failed to be as critical of himself as he is of everyone else through the rest of the film.

This post first appeared in The Gruntled Center.


The Thoughtful Christian is as a Web-based resource center designed to attract and keep participants' attention.  Perfect for Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, or individual reflection, the studies encourage class members to share their thoughts and beliefs while wrestling with questions that inform the way we live out our faith in everyday life.  For more information please visit http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com .

Argentinean woman who brought charges against her adoptive parents for kidnapping

Ever since I read Anna Karenina, I've wondered about Tolstoy's assertion, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Most happy families I know have idiosyncrasies that separate them from other happy families. Among unhappy families, I see common patterns of pain woven from mental illness, poor parental role models, selfishness, or an unwillingness to listen and empathize.

In my work with Christian Peacemaker Teams, I have seen how political oppression experienced by everyone in a region can cause dysfunction in families who, under other circumstances, would flourish from the sacrificial love the parents pour out on their children and the delight that family members take in each other's company. When the families are dysfunctional, the political oppression exacerbates all their worst flaws.

I thought of this role that politics plays in family dynamics last month when an Argentinean court sentenced Osvaldo Rivas, 65, and MarÍa Cristina Gómez Pinto, 60, the adoptive parents of Maria Eugenia Sampallo, to eight and seven years in prison respectively for kidnapping. Enrique Berthier‹a former army captain who gave the infant Sampallo to the couple‹received ten years.
Sampallo had brought charges against her parents after discovering in 2001 that her birth parents had been among the 30,000 people who "disappeared" in the 1970s and 1980s because of their opposition to the military junta running Argentina, or simply because they were related to the opponents.


The military removed as many as 500 babies from their imprisoned mothers and handed them over to childless couples friendly to the regime. In some cases, the babies' adoptive fathers may have been the same men who tortured and killed their parents.
An organization of mothers of "the Disappeared" began monitoring supporters of the regime who appeared with babies when the women had not been pregnant.

With advances in DNA testing, these grandmothers have been able to connect eighty-eight children with their birth parents‹presumably murdered, because their families never heard from them again after the army took them away.

Sampallo held a news conference before the court handed down its verdict in which she held up black-and-white photographs of Rivas and Gomez Pinto, declaring, "These are not my parents; they are my kidnappers." Then she held up a photo of her biological father and mother, "These are my parents."


As I suspected, when I read more about Sampallo's upbringing, I learned that it had been stormy. Her mother would tell her, "If it wasn't for me you would have ended up in a ditch," or "Only a child of a guerrilla could be so rebellious." Other Argentinean adoptees with happier upbringings did not want to testify against their parents, preferring to believe that their parents had not known where they had come from, or simply because they wished to spare their parents punishment.

Still, I wonder about these happier families, with parents who believed it was acceptable for fellow citizens to be tortured and killed because of their political opinions. That it was acceptable for babies to be taken away from their pregnant mothers, who then "disappeared." How could that NOT somehow bleed into and irremediably taint the fabric of their family lives?

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.htmlBible study should be timely. It should stimulate our thoughts about Christian values and how they relate to today's world. The Thoughtful Christian is a Web-based resource center designed to attract and keep participants' attention. Perfect for Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, or individual reflection, the studies encourage class members to share their thoughts and beliefs while wrestling with questions that inform the way we live out our faith in everyday life. For more information please visit http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com/.

The gamble of nationalism

Gambling has never tempted me. The thought of losing money for the slim chance of winning a greater amount fills me with dread, rather than anticipation.

I feel the same way about nationalism, because its effects are also unpredictable. It can lead to stirring music, family picnics and fireworks displays or genocide and mass expulsions — sometimes both.

After the United States affirmed Kosovo’s declaration of independence and I saw the Serb hooligans subsequently trashing the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade last month, my first thought was, “Well, at least they’re not attacking defenseless civilians this time.”

I then reflected that I have never known nationalism to make anyone kinder, more just or compassionate. Indeed, far more examples exist of nationalism leading to human rights abuses.

But I also wondered what separated the nationalism of Kosovar Albanians from the nationalism of the Serbs, or the nationalism of the Croats who had also committed atrocities for patriotic reasons during the 1990s after the break up of Yugoslavia.

For that matter, what separates Serb nationalism from that of the Basques in Spain or the Corsicans in France or the Tamils in Sri Lanka or the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria?

Of course, I speak from the perspective of someone whose nationality brings her privileges. Even my criticisms of my government have at their roots a sort of nationalism. Just as I get more upset at family members whose values bother me than I do at strangers holding the same values, I suspect I get angrier at my own country for deterring democracy and supporting human rights abuses than I do at other countries for behaving in the same manner.

But in the end, the United States is the only country in which I feel at home.

So who am I to deny anyone the same sense of security? The Kosovars have suffered much from Serb nationalism, so I don’t blame them for feeling they would be safer as a nation.

Additionally, I have a soft spot for them because of their sustained nonviolent grass-roots campaign against Serb oppression in the 1990s. If the West had supported the nonviolent activists calling for autonomy, instead of ignoring them, I suspect that Kosovar Albanians might not have driven out thousands of Kosovar Serbs in reprisal for atrocities directed from Belgrade. Kosovo might have parted from Serbia on better terms, similar to those on which India separated from England.

Or maybe not, given the shared border. Maybe, given that the European Union now makes economic and military decisions for its constituent countries, no reason exists for the Basques, Catalonians and Corsicans not to have their own nations within that union.

Or maybe the separation of these aspiring nations from Spain and France might cause a crumbling of the Union, if the French and Spanish governments use their militaries to crush these nationalist movements. Maybe the 40 million Kurds, if given a nation of their own, would drive out the Arabs, Turks and Persians in their region.

Maybe the Quebecois, if they voted to secede from Canada, would abrogate the minimal treaty rights Canada’s federal government granted First Nations like the Mohawks.

That’s the thing about supporting nationalist impulses. It’s a gamble.


For more information on the Kosovars' nonviolent movement, see Stephen Zunes' "Kosovo and the politics of recognition," http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5006.

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.html
Bible study should be timely. It should stimulate our thoughts about Christian values and how they relate to today's world. The Thoughtful Christian is a Web-based resource center designed to attract and keep participants' attention. Perfect for Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, or individual reflection, the studies encourage class members to share their thoughts and beliefs while wrestling with questions that inform the way we live out our faith in everyday life. For more information please visit http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com/.

Barack Obama's Church Home

Around the age of eight, I began making up serial stories in my head when I was bored. Thus, I rarely got past the first two minutes of any sermon before exiting to fantasyland. I do remember one sermon, however, because I was sitting next to my father and saw him getting upset. The pastor was talking about bullies in his childhood who would twist the arms of weaker boys and make them cry "uncle." He then said the U.S. needed to do that to Vietnam‹at which point, my father told my siblings and me to stay put and left the sanctuary. The post-sermon hymn was "Onward Christian Soldiers." My mother and several other choir members did not stand to sing it. We attended the Presbyterian Church in town for a while.

I bring this up because of the furor created by Barack Obama's refusal to disavow his association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright after sound bytes of him preaching "God Damn America" replayed endlessly in the media. I write these words the morning after I watched 60 Minutes interview a German man of Turkish descent, Murat Kurnaz, whom the U.S. military kidnapped, tortured, and incarcerated for five years, despite German and U.S. intelligence reports written shortly after his detention saying that he had no connection to a terrorist infrastructure. How, I wonder, would he have viewed Wright's "God Damn America" sermon? How would the first Christians have felt about a sermon condemning Rome? We know from certain Psalms and prophetic writings that the Israelites and Judeans were pretty happy when Assyria and Babylon fell.

The scriptural focus of Wright's sermon, Luke 19:37-44, speaks of Jesus saying that Jerusalem had condemned itself because it did not recognize the "the things that make for peace." Essentially, Wright built on these words, saying that America had also brought condemnation on itself, for promoting slavery, slaughter of the First Nations and warmongering.

But aside from the content of Wright's sermon, most of which rings true for me (and would ring true for many American Christians if they read the entire text, I suspect), I am puzzled why Obama is receiving pressure to leave Trinity United Church of Christ, which most Chicagoans agree is a great force for good in its neighborhood. When did pastors become the church, instead of the congregations? When did a few sentences become the sole indication of who a pastor is?

My family returned to the College First Church of God, because it belonged to a denomination in which several generations of my relatives had heavily invested. Eventually, I found my true church home among the Mennonites and liked some of the pastors better than others‹but I've never considered those pastors to be "the church." I've never thought that a pastor's sermons are sum total of who a pastor is.

William Sloane Coffin told a story of a politically conservative friend who attended a church with a liberal pastor. When Coffin asked why, his friend said "This pastor held my wife's hand in the last 24 hours of my wife's life and then he held my hand in the 24 hours that followed her death. I'd come to hear him preach if he just read the Yellow Pages."

For a transcript of Wright's sermon, see
http://www.sluggy.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=315691&sid=4b3e97ace4ee8cee02bd6

For insights into Wright, Obama, and African American attitudes toward Israel, see
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9427.shtml

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's
"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.html

Bible study should be timely. It should stimulate our thoughts about Christian values and how they relate to today's world. The Thoughtful Christian is a Web-based resource center designed to attract and keep participants' attention. Perfect for Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, or individual reflection, the studies encourage class members to share their thoughts and beliefs while wrestling with questions that inform the way we live out our faith in everyday life. For more information please visit http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com/.

Collective punishment in Gaza--and Dallas?

At the end of January, Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery wrote a column about Gazans breaching the wall between the Palestinian and Egyptian sections of Rafah, comparing it to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He described events preceding it, Israel preventing food, medicines, and fuel from entering Gaza in reprisal for Palestinian militants firing Qassam rockets into Israel. Noting that he had earlier written a satirical article describing the situation in Gaza as a "scientific experiment" designed to find out how long one could impose hellish measures on a civilian population before they surrender, he wrote, "It has been said before that it is dangerous to write satire in our country—too often the satire becomes reality."

Avnery's article got me thinking. What if the citizens of Dallas, which has a population roughly similar to that of the Gaza Strip, voted the Republic of Texas—a group that wants Texas to secede from the U.S.—into city office? Because of group's violent history, the U.S. Federal government built a fence around Dallas and regulated the flow of goods in and out. Militant groups affiliated with the Republic of Texas began firing crude, inaccurate missiles into the Dallas suburbs and the surrounding countryside. In the space of two years, a dozen Texans died from these missile attacks and many traumatized residents fled the region, unable to live with the uncertainty of when the next missiles might fall.

In reprisal, the U.S. bombed and strafed neighborhoods in Dallas from which the militants were launching missiles, killing 650 citizens of Dallas, more than half of whom were civilians and 126 of whom were children. The mayor and city council offered to negotiate with the militants to stop the attacks in exchange for ending the siege, but the U.S. said it would not negotiate with the democratically elected city government. Soon, the U.S. made the blockade absolute. Without fuel, hospitals could no longer run incubators for premature infants or dialysis machines; people could no longer cook meager rations of rice and beans donated by the Red Cross.

One day, the hungry civilians in Dallas blew up a retaining wall, cut through barbed wire surrounding the city, and poured into the suburbs to find food. Although the U.S. military warned the suburban police to stop the outflow, most suburbanites, who had watched with horror what was happening to fellow Texans in Dallas, eagerly sold or gave supplies to the people who had fled their quarantine.

***

I often wonder if people in the U.S. saw English-speaking men and women dressed in jeans and t-shirts suffering the calamities that Arabic-speaking people dressed in robes and headscarves do whether they would feel more outrage. I know that if gunmen were shooting at police from my neighborhood, the police would never bomb or strafe all the nearby houses on the street where I live. If such an event occurred, most Americans would condemn such tactics. Brighton, the suburb of Rochester, NY where I live, would for decades be remembered for the civilian deaths in my neighborhood, the way Kent State is associated with the deaths of four college students.
Perhaps considering this possibility will help us see what the Arabic-speaking world sees, when it watches the forced starvation and bombings of people in Gaza.

For the text of Avnery's full article see http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1201278309/

Bible study should be timely. It should stimulate our thoughts about Christian values and how they relate to today's world. The Thoughtful Christian is a Web-based resource center designed to attract and keep participants' attention. Perfect for Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, or individual reflection, the studies encourage class members to share their thoughts and beliefs while wrestling with questions that inform the way we live out our faith in everyday life. For more information please visit http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com.

Catholic Lose Big, Hold Steady

On the Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 3

The Roman Catholic Church has been the largest denomination in the United States for five generations. Catholics make up about a quarter of the population. Yet the Catholic Church shows huge losses over a lifetime in the new Pew survey. Asking adults what religion they are now, and what they claimed as a child, the RCs show a 24% loss. Yet they remain nearly a quarter of the population. How is that possible?

Part of the answer is conversion. While 7.5% of the population reports that they once were Catholics but now are not, another 2.9% of the population made the shift the other way, making up almost 40% of the loss.

The other part of the answer is immigration. Almost half of all immigrants are Catholic. Immigrants make up nearly a quarter of the Catholic membership in this country - double the percentage of Americans who are foreign-born.

The Pew survey does not tell us when the exiting Catholics departed. It seems likely to me that there was a spike of departures in the wake of the recent priestly pedophilia scandals. If so, then the rate of departures is likely to slow down soon.

Still, for a group with such massive losses, the Roman Catholic Church is surprisingly and steadily robust in the United States.

Originally published in The Gruntled Center

Bible study should be timely. It should stimulate our thoughts about Christian values and how they relate to today's world. The Thoughtful Christian is a Web-based resource center designed to attract and keep participants' attention. Perfect for Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, or individual reflection, the studies encourage class members to share their thoughts and beliefs while wrestling with questions that inform the way we live out our faith in everyday life. For more information please visit http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com.

Two nations in one territory

In mid-December, I got a mailing from a Latin American newslist announcing that the Lakota Nation was unilaterally withdrawing from its thirty-three treaties with the U.S. government

"We are no longer citizens of the United States and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," Indian rights activist Russell Means proclaimed at a December 20 news conference in Washington DC.

The Lakota would not force non-Lakota inhabitants to move from their territory, but the new country would issue its own passports and driving licenses to Lakota living in the region. They would not have to pay taxes if they renounced their U.S. citizenship.

The group at the press conference cited the repeated violations of treaties their nation made with the U.S. as a reason for withdrawal. They also offered these sobering statistics:

€ Lakota men have a life expectancy of less than forty-four years

€The Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the U.S. average.
€ The tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S. national average.
€ 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line.
€ Unemployment rates on reservations are approximately 85%.
€ Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S. national average

€ The Lakota language is on the verge of extinction.

Given that Article 6 of the U.S. constitution states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, Means said the withdrawal is legal. "It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the U.S. in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent."

A friend who has lived among the Lakota told me that other Lakota activists he knew did not view Means as their representative and were not paying much attention to the Lakota Declaration of Independence. This assessment seemed borne out by research I did of online Native news sources. Only one, Indian Country Today, posted something different from the Agence France Press article that was circulating about the December 20 news conference. The writer of the ITC article wrote of the event with asperity, noting Means reference to Vichy Indians likened some tribes to the collaborationist French state under Nazi occupation. What would Means say to Indians who might argue that over the course of 150 years, 'collaboration' should be viewed as something else again: a genuine necessity of survival, for instance?''

Still, I was intrigued by this declaration. Like most Americans, I continue to benefit from the land that my state government stole from a First Nation, in my case, the Seneca Nation. I wonder what the mechanism would be for acknowledging this theft and willing the land back to the Seneca.

The idea of two nations existing in one space also ties into the conviction that my principle citizenship is in the Kingdom of God and it supercedes the laws of the United States. However, I also live in the United States, and happily obey all laws not antithetical to the Gospel. I even set my cruise control at 65 mph on the highway. But ultimately, God is my Sovereign. I think I would be okay living in a space shared by three nations, too: God's, the U.S., and the Seneca's.

[People wishing to know more about the "Republic of Lakotah" may visit http://www.republicoflakotah.com/]

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.html

TheThoughtfulChristian.com has various studies on Contemporary Issues. For more information please visit TheThoughtfulChristian.com.

Vilifying Ten Thousand Villages

A non-Mennonite friend recently e-mailed me her concern about an article in the Jewish paper based in her region of New Jersey that vilified a recently-opened Ten Thousand Villages store, and by extension, Mennonite Central Committee.

The news did not upset me as much as it would have twelve years ago. In 1995, when I began working in the West Bank with Christian Peacemaker Teams, and speaking about what I witnessed there, one American Jew told me dismissively, "Quakers and Mennonites have always been anti-Semitic."

This remark pierced my heart. Herald Press had recently published my book, We Are the Pharisees, which detailed a thousand years of murderous treatment of Jews by Christians and examined how Christians had used Jesus" teachings on the Pharisees to justify pogroms and genocide. I really wanted Jews to think well of me.

Today, I have many more Jewish friends and family members than I had in 1995 - largely because of my work in the West Bank - and thus feel less upset when attacks on Mennonites for supporting the human rights of both Palestinians and Israelis fly from partisans of Israel.

(I use the term "partisan" rather than "pro-Israel," because many Israelis believe that being pro-Israel means the supporting human rights of Palestinians.)

Nevertheless, I looked at the article in question, which claimed,

"Ten Thousand Villages is owned by a large Mennonite organization that accuses Israel of apartheid, advocates a one-state solution, and supports organizations that accuse the Israeli government of metaphorically crucifying Jesus, blame Israel for suicide bombings, and refer to the existence of "Israeli concentration camps.' "

The criticisms of MCC in the article really relate to the fact that it regards the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as illegal, according to international law, acknowledges that the 1947-48 Israeli war for Independence drove thousands of Palestinians from their homes, and maintains that violent oppression results in violent resistance.

Since most of the rest of the world, including many Jews, agree with these positions, the article resorts to smear tactics, such as guilt by association.

These include an attack on Sabeel, a Palestinian Christian organization, whose director, Naim Ateek, recently came under fire for comments he made at a conference in which he "figuratively" said that Jews were "Christ-killers."

I know Naim, and know that he cares about the well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians. Thus, when I looked up sources for what he actually said, I was not surprised to find that he applied crucifixion imagery to both peoples: "As we approach Holy Week and Easter, the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine. The number of innocent Palestinians and Israelis that have fallen victim to Israeli state policy is increasing."

I could rebut the other charges against MCC in the article, but it would take many more words than I am allotted for this column. I hope the Ten Thousand Villages Store in New Jersey does not close because of a Jewish boycott; I hope Jewish customers who care about supporting artisans in developing nations will continue to shop there. And I hope my Jewish mother-in-law likes the Ten Thousand Villages soaps in the brocade bag I bought her for Chanukah.

To read the Jewish State article in question, see http://thejewishstate.net/nov910kv.html.

For a progressive Jewish debunking of the scurrilous attacks on Sabeel and Naim Ateek, see http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2007/10/27/dexter-van-ziles-fraudulent-campaign-against-sabeel/

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's
"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.html

TheThoughtfulChristian.com has various studies on Contemporary Issues. For more information please visit TheThoughtfulChristian.com.

The Late Great Planet Earth

Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth was popular among my Sunday school teachers in the church where I grew up. Rather than fearing the apocalypse they told me would happen in my lifetime, I remember thinking the Second Coming would be pretty cool, because I really wanted some answers from That Guy (whose affection for me I truly felt every time I sang "Jesus loves me.")

Later, when I read Lindsey's book, (which was before I understood how he abused prophetic texts) I remember feeling disappointed. Even as a child, I could see that pointing to every recent disaster as a sign of impending Judgment Day was flawed logic. I had read about Krakatoa and Pompeii. I knew that widespread famine, wars, and plagues had afflicted human beings for centuries and the world had not ended after these calamities.

I got onto this train of thought recently after I got a mailing from a representative of the Israeli settlers in Hebron, who sees Condoleezza Rice's twilight push for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a threat to Israeli settlements, particularly the ones in Hebron.

David Wilder wrote, "What have Ms Rice and Mr. Bush forgotten? Following the expulsion from Gush Katif [the Israeli settlement bloc in Gaza] the Americans suffered a tremendous catastrophe in New Orleans. Tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes due to the storms and flooding waters of Katrina. That was AFTER some 10,000 people were expelled from Gush Katif and the [northern West Bank.]"

He then wrote that the catastrophic fires in Southern California were a warning from God to the U.S. not even to think about removing settlements:

"According to media reports, authorities in California are looking for arsonists who intentionally set the hellish blaze. Those really responsible are planning the next cataclysm out of the White House: George W and Condi."

People who regard natural disasters as heavenly signs that bolster their theology are missing the actual signs of doom easily scried by anyone with a sense of history. Economic collapses can make nations vulnerable to dictatorships and even genocide, such as happened in the former Yugoslav Republics, Rwanda and the Third Reich. When a dominant power systematically oppresses people on the base of race, class, religion or ethnicity, some people from these groups will resist the oppression violently. When one nation treats another nation as a colony, eventually, the colonial nation will want independence‹and when one powerful nation, or bloc of nations, or treats the rest of the world as part of its empire, eventually that empire falls.

Jesus in Luke11: 28-32 tells his listeners that no sign would be given to his generation except the Sign of Jonah, who inspired the people of Nineveh, citizens of the brutal Assyrian Empire, to repent. That sign applies to our generation as well. We have no control over the shifting of tectonic plates, but God has given us the ability to repent and become reconciled to the Creator's divine purpose. We can look at the earthly, even profane, signs of our times, open our eyes to see where they could lead, and make efforts to rescue the future from what they portend.

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's
"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.html

TheThoughtfulChristian.com has various studies on Contemporary Issues. For more information please visit TheThoughtfulChristian.com.

Foreign fighters in Iraq war

When CPT Director Emeritus Gene Stoltzfus visited Iraq soon after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, he was impressed by the energy and vision of the Iraqi grassroots organizations he met there. “I discovered endless expressions of generosity, hard work, reasonable hopes for community and humor,” he wrote. “I discovered partners--not the kind of partners that far-away funders require that you have; I found real partners who share a vision for our ages. Like people who live with an eye to the future everywhere, they have long practiced reaching across lines into the neighborhoods of others where the stuff of negotiations begins.”

Stoltzfus wrote this reflection to address the issue of “foreign fighters” in Iraq. When the U.S. government and media speak of such fighters, they are referring to Al Qaeda operatives or militants from other groups fighting U.S. forces. Stoltzfus noted that the Blackwater mercenary forces, to which the military has contracted out responsibility for protecting diplomats, are also foreign fighters‹as are the American soldiers in Iraq. None of these armed groups bothered to consult with grassroots organizations about the fate of their country. As Iraqi citizens, members of these groups would have had a better chance of building democratic structures than non-Iraqi armed groups, and could perhaps have prevented much of the daily carnage happening now.

Stoltzfus was thus encouraged when the current Iraqi government demanded that the U.S. remove Blackwater's foreign fighters from the country after they killed eleven civilians on September 16, 2007, including a father, mother and toddler who died from a blast into their car and Iraqis who tried to rescue them from their burning vehicle. Before September 16, the Iraqi government had already complained to the U.S. about six other incidents this year in which Blackwater contractors killed a total of ten Iraqis. On top of actions causing these civilian deaths, Blackwater personnel have generally behave like untouchable bullies on Iraqi streets and have even come to blows with conscientious American soldiers trying to stop this behavior.

A 2004 regulation established by the Coalition Authority then running Iraq, granted U.S. private security contractors immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. Under U.S. law, however, federal prosecutors are taking legal action against Blackwater employees who smuggled arms into Iraq that ended up in the hands of militant groups. Two employees have already agreed to testify under the terms of a plea bargain that could land them in jail for ten years. Despite the unsavory information that keeps bubbling up from the Blackwater pool, however, as of September 21, Blackwater had resumed its regular duties in Iraq.

In the conclusion of his reflection, Stoltzfus wrote, “The occupation tore Iraq apart. Iraqi people will have to put their own country together again.

It is going to be hard and it will help for them to have friends who cheer them on instead of enemies who do not respect their borders. They don’t need friends who force their leaders to have instantaneous responses to the election cycles of distant lands. They need friends who understand the power of space…space to fail and space to succeed. They need friends who understand that boundaries create the possibilities for real friendship.”

To read Stoltzfus’ reflection, “Asleep at the fence,” go to http://www.gstoltzfus.blogspot.com/.

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's
"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.html

TheThoughtfulChristian.com has various studies on Contemporary Issues. For more information please visit TheThoughtfulChristian.com.

The Largest Congregation Led By a Woman?

The Religious Research Association, a fine organization of denominational datawonks (of which I am a member), had an interesting exchange recently trying to find the largest mainline congregation headed by a woman pastor. The results (so far):

Rev. Jo Gayle Hudson, Cathedral of Hope, in Dallas, has an attendance of 1500+ and membership of 4500+. This is now a United Church of Christ congregation, but began as a Metropolitan Community Church. Indeed, it was probably the leading MCC congregation. This also explains how there is a UCC – that is, Congregationalist – congregation with the very un-Congregationalist name of "Cathedral." The MCC, a homosexual-oriented Pentecostal denomination, is not mainline, but the UCC is.

The next largest woman-led UCC congregation (the largest with a direct Congregationalist history) is Community Church UCC, Vero Beach, FL, led by Rev. Casey Garrett Baggott. It has a worship attendance of 1612 and membership of 2080.

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, The Rev. Deanna M Wildermuth is Senior Pastor of Sharon Lutheran Church in Grand Forks, ND with a reported baptized membership of 4,781 and average attendance of 907.

In the Presbyterian Church (USA), my denomination, the largest church with a senior solo pastor is First Presbyterian Church in Lake Forest, IL. This church had 1,762 members and an average worship attendance of 478. In addition, First Presbyterian Church in Boulder,CO, with 2,204 in membership and 1,614 in attendance, has a female co-pastor.

A Southern Baptist added that, though the SBC is not mainline and is nearly universally opposed to calling women as senior pastors, First Baptist in Decatur, Georgia recently called Julie Pennington-Russell as senior pastor. Last year the church reported 2,671 members with 483 in average worship attendance.

What of the Episcopalians, America's ruling class denomination of old? I find it amusing that the Episcopal entry in this parlor game did not count membership size, but used a different scale:
"I DOUBT THAT THEY ARE LARGER, BUT ST JAMES IN NYC IS PROBABLY THE SECOND RICHEST (NEXT TO TRINITY, WALL STREET). IT HAS A WOMAN RECTOR."

Beau Weston (Originally posted on The Gruntled Center.)

TheThoughtfulChristian.com has a study entitled, "What Do Episcopalians Believe?". You can learn more about it and other studies at http://www.TheThoughtfulChristian.com.

An unknown air war in Iraq

I spend about four hours a day reading and listening to news. From most media outlets, my fellow information junkies and I have learned the following:

The U.S. was unprepared for an extended military occupation of Iraq.

U.S. soldiers are constantly under fire from insurgents’ mortars and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs.)

Extended deployments have wreaked havoc on our men and women in uniform, especially those in the National Guard and Reserves.

Many of the wounded are receiving terrible medical care at home.

The recent “surge” of troops sent into Iraq has begun to turn the situation around, but most Americans think we should withdraw from the Iraqi quagmire.

What I have not gleaned from all the news in my life is that U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft dropped 437 bombs and missiles in Iraq during the first six months of 2007.

These air strikes represent a fivefold increase over the 86 used in the first half of 2006, and three times more than in the second half of 2006, according to Air Force data. In June 2007, bombs dropped at a rate of more than five a day.

I found that information from an Associated Press article that most media did not pick up. I learned of the AP article from a piece that a friend wrote for the Syracuse Peace Council¹s monthly newsletter: “Beyond the Rhetoric of Withdrawal: Our Unknown Air War Over Iraq.”

Ed Kinane — a Peace Brigades volunteer who has crossed paths with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Haiti and Iraq — notes in his article that the Iraq air war may be the longest such war in history. For sixteen years, beginning with the first Gulf War, it has been killing and maiming Iraqis as well as destroying life-supporting infrastructure, such as water treatment plants.

Air strikes between March 2003 and 2006 have killed over 78,000 Iraqis. They have caused half of all violent deaths of Iraqi children under the age of 15.

To explain why the 2007 bombing runs in Iraq have not received wider coverage, Kinane writes:

“Because most U.S. journalists in Iraq are embedded, they cover the war from the perspective of the US soldiers they accompany. ‘Embeds’ seldom accompany chopper or fixed-wing pilots and never accompany unmanned Predator drones — ­those robot planes that spew death with no risk to those guiding them from afar. So embeds can tell us little about such operations and their consequences.”

Given the casualties piling up from these bombing runs, Kinane criticizes the antiwar movement¹s use of the slogan, “Support our Troops; Bring them home.”

“ ‘Bring them home’ must be accompanied by other messages that, among other things, expose the air war,” he writes. “Otherwise, when those soldiers seem out of harm’s way, people here may move on to other concerns — leaving the air war as robust and off the radar as ever.”

I have edited CPT releases coming out of Iraq and spoken with colleagues who have worked there, so I think I am better informed about the situation in Iraq than most. I am thus discouraged that I had to find out about these massive bombing raids from a Central New York peace group's newsletter.

I wonder what else I am missing.

For the complete text of Kinane's article and his sources, see, http://vcnv.org/beyond-the-rhetoric-of-withdrawal-our-unknown-air-war-over-iraq

Photo: AP Photo/Bilal Hussein

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's
"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.html

TheThoughtfulChristian.com has various studies on Contemporary Issues. For more information please visit TheThoughtfulChristian.com.

Not what Democracy looks like

Democracy in its various forms works like this: A country holds elections. People vote for candidates to represent them. Once the winning candidates take power, they appoint ministers and advisors, while those chosen by the losing candidates move on.

The most recent Palestinian attempt at democracy worked like this: Palestinians, in a 2006 election that international monitors declared free and fair, chose Hamas to represent them. The United States, Israel, and other Western nations told Palestinians they had made the wrong choice.

Israel withheld tax revenues that Palestinians had paid and Western nations withheld desperately needed aid.

The U.S. and Israel then told the Fatah political party that lost the election to "share" power with Hamas. Hamas agreed to do so, even though it had won the election, because it wanted to avoid economic sanctions. Thus, more than a year after the elections, Palestinian police stations and other government buildings were still in the hands of Fatah rather than the elected government.

In July, Christian Peacemaker Teams activist Rich Meyer wrote about the violence between Hamas and Fatah militias in Gaza:

"What happened [in June] was the election results of last year finally taking effect after a considerable U.S.-imposed delay. Tragically, twenty-five people were killed in this stage of the transfer of power. . . .Fatah needs to do what any political party does after a drubbing at the polls - accept the judgment of the voters, regroup and reform, clean up their act and prepare for the next elections."

Instead, Fatah has moved to the West Bank and become a quisling government, accepting tokens - a few political prisoners released, a few more Palestinians permitted to work minimum wage jobs in Israel - from the Israeli government, which has made no commitment to stop the confiscation of Palestinian land or end its military occupation of Palestine.

As for Hamas, Palestinian-American activist Ali Abunimah writes:

"Hamas has the choice to articulate an agenda that can live up to the aspirations of Palestinian society in all its diversity, or it can leap into the traps that are being set for it. . . .It must begin to articulate a vision for the future that takes into account the reality of 11 million Israeli Jews and Palestinians living in a small country. We know what Hamas is against, but no one is clear what it is for."

When asked what I see as the solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I always say that I am in favor of whatever option results in the fewest dead, traumatized and exploited people. I do not see a Hamas government bringing that outcome. However, Hamas has declared a 40-year ceasefire if Israel withdraws to the 1967 border - as international law obligates it to do.

In the unlikely event that Israel chose to follow this law, I suspect after forty years, Palestinians and Israelis would do just about anything not to return to the current state of savagery, just as the Protestant and Catholics of Northern Ireland decided they were finished with killing each other after several violent decades.

British journalist Johann Hari adds another compelling reason why Hamas should be allowed to govern: "Every time the Israeli government rejects a Palestinian leader because he is too hard-line, they do not get a cuddly Gandhian moderate in his place. They get somebody more hard-line still."

For an eyewitness view of recent events by a resident of Gaza, see http://gazagardens.blogspot.com/

Reprinted with permission from Mennonite Weekly Review. More of Kern's
"World Neighbor" columns are available at http://www.mennoweekly.org/STANDARD/kern-index.html

TheThoughtfulChristian.com has various studies on Contemporary Issues. For more information please visit TheThoughtfulChristian.com.

Hollywood Torture Is Still Torture; and It’s Still Wrong

I’m through with “24,” the ground-breaking, real-time suspense thriller starring Keifer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, protector of home and homeland. Done. Finished. It may seem strange to hear this from someone like me who often writes, teaches, and preaches about the spiritual value of popular culture. It’s also true that some of my favorite movies and TV shows, including ones I write, teach, and preach on, are violent ones. But what I’ve discerned is that, although there are many things I like about it, spiritually “24” is bad for me. Jack Bauer is on my naughty list, he’s not getting off it, and that’s after watching just two shows into Season Two.

I hear it gets worse, but I won’t be around to see it.

Since I am a writer, teacher, and preacher, my calendar is pretty full. I’m generally a late adopter when it comes to TV series, and I’ve usually been reading about something for years and there are several seasons—or six—out on DVD before I get around to watching. That’s how it was with “24.” And I have to admit, I watched the entire first season with interest as Jack fought to protect both his family and presidential candidate David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert). The show was well-made and exciting. Jack broke the rules, but he didn’t do so sadistically or with unnecessary force, and I could believe that he was violent but essentially a good person.

Then came the second season, post 9-11, and although we’d been told that everything was different after the terrorist attacks, I wasn’t prepared for how much Jack Bauer had changed. He too had suffered incredible losses, and like us, he had become different, capable of things I would not have imagined before. In the first episode, immediately after being called back to work to uncover the location of a nuclear bomb on American soil, he executes a bad guy who’s turned state’s witness and cuts off his head so that he can infiltrate a criminal organization that might help lead him to the weapon. In the second episode he behaves with such casual brutality that even though I understood he was supposed to be undercover, a bad guy among bad guys, I had to turn it off.

I had to say, “Enough.”

Although I understand better than most that what I am watching is “entertainment,” a dramatic story and not reality, I am through with “24.” It’s true that I’m also not partaking of the latest wave of terror porn, movies like Saw, but there’s an essential difference here, a point very much worth making. Like the Halloween and Friday the 13th pictures of a generation ago, no one is suggesting that the horrific violence in Saw or its sequels and compatriots is in a good cause.

No one is arguing (or inferring) that the murderer or torturer is a hero defending America.

Jack Bauer is not defending any ideal of America I hold dear, and all I can say is that if what we have to do to survive as God’s Chosen Nation is to act like the people who terrorize us, then God had better choose someone else who hews a little closer to God’s directions. In the passion narrative of Matthew, Jesus once and for all, definitively, rejects violence as a solution, even when he himself is in personal danger, even when he himself could save his life by using it: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53 NRSV) As I’ve written elsewhere, twelve legions would have been more troops on the ground in Palestine than the occupying Roman army. So what Jesus is really saying here is, “I will not use violence to free myself. And I will not use violence to free you.” In the passion narrative of Gospel of John, where Jesus essentially controls events, we can even say that God consciously chooses weakness rather than strength. John’s Jesus allows himself to be killed, although he has the full power of God to prevent it.

“24” has, of course now become a part of our national discourse on the war on terror, and on the use of torture, and has even become a filter question asked of presidential candidates: If there were a bomb in an American city, would you authorize torture to try and locate it? It’s a popular show among our military in Iraq and Afghanistan (perhaps too popular, judging by some of the reports of torture and casual brutality we’ve uncovered over the past four years) and among the current president’s circle, and its creator, Joel Surnow, boasts a close relationship with conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. But this decision is not a political question for me, although I have a different vision of America. It is purely religious. I am not giving up the rest of “24” because I disagree with the politics of its creator, or because I think it’s aesthetically unpleasing; I am giving it up because I am a follower of Christ who cannot allow himself to identify with someone who tortures another human being, whatever good cause he (or the viewer) imagines it serves.

Since 9-11, our fear has led us to do many things we now regret—an unnecessary war that has cost us (so far) half a trillion dollars, killed and maimed untold thousands of soldiers and civilians, and served as a recruiting tool for the terrorists who hate us; checks on our civil liberties and expansion of the government in ways we would never endure without the specter of attack looming ghostly above us. It has led us to renounce the Geneva Convention, and by all reports, to hold and torture suspects—or to allow them to be transferred to and tortured by nations with even fewer scruples than ourselves. But these things are wrong—as wrong, at least in my mind, as identifying with and even cheering on a hero like Jack Bauer who tortures and kills in our name and on our symbolic behalf.

In my new book The Gospel According to Hollywood, I quote Thomas Merton on peace. And I’d like to quote him here (and myself, a little) as some final spiritual thoughts on the questions of torture and war:

“Thomas Merton wrote that although Christians know that they live in a time of fierce struggle, ‘this combat is already decided by the victory of Christ over death and over sin. The Christian can renounce the protection of violence and risk being humble, therefore vulnerable . . . because he believes that the hidden power of the Gospel is demanding to be manifested in and through his own poor person.’ [1]

The peace that Christians desire, pray for, and receive from God has nothing to do with the security of our bodies, our homes, or our nation.

But everything to do with our souls.”

Greg Garrett is the author of The Gospel According to Hollywood, the memoir Crossing Myself, the novels Free Bird and Cycling, and lessons for The Thoughtful Christian on films, church polity, war in the Middle East, the execution of Saddam Hussein, and many other topics.

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[1] Thomas Merton. “Blessed Are the Meek.” Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. 18.

TheThoughtfulChristian.com has an outstanding study on this topic entitled, "Is Torture Ever Justified?". You can learn more about it and other studies on Contemporary Issues at TheThoughtfulChristian.com.