I have lots of theological things to blog about in the shadow of this recent election.

I purchased two books and a DVD THursday which signal a shift for me from focusing on Political Issues books from the world of revelations and testimony about the Bush administration

ie,. like:

Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty, Clarke’s Against All Enemies, Woodward’s Bush At War and Plan of Attack, Wilson’s The Politics of Truth, Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud, Graham’s Intelligence Matters, Hersh’s Chain of Command, Kennedy’s Crimes Against Nature, and of course, all the blog conversations

to Theologically centered books that explore the response of Christianity to empire, like:

Campolo’s Speaking My Mind (which I actually already read back in July, as I began reading the other “secular” (*- see the footnote for * below) political books.)
Hauerwas’s Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Non-Violence, and Crossan and Reed’s book In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, and I need to add a classic to that list, John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus

There’s more: Click below

For me, the advancement of a Christianity WITHOUT non-violence as a central staple is bankrupt. It is a theology stripped of its essential element: the life and teachings of Jesus. Somehow, and in keeping with the history of Empires throughout history, we have managed to strip the gospel of the radical non-violence it preaches and substitute a nationalistic “religious” appro[priation of the theology of “stewardship” which asumes that the earth and its inhabitants and their lives should be subsevient to our “way of life”, our politics, our economics, and if they stand in our way, then there will be hell to pay. This is the blasphemous theology of the neoconservative movement. I hesitate to call it a theology becuase it exhibits characteristics of “synthesis” of religious imagery designed to “market” the goals of the neoConservatives — (to “manage” the international scene by bringing first the Middle East under its thumb)– to the religous community.

To look at the methodologies and the realities of their authoritarian and militaristic solutions from a Christian theological perspective is , I believe, absolutely crucial to the integrity of what remains of the faithful remnant of the Chuch.

I have no local community where I can really explore all these realms of “faithfulness”. The Church is so “silent” on the events of our day and the response of a repressive regime embodied in this Bush administratrion, that the people have been left with what seems to many to tbe only “Christian response”, which is to “Romans 13 it”, aka as “God has ordained the government — and in our case, Bush’s government” to “take care of this detour in history” for us. This is nothing less than abandoning the CLEAR call of Jesus to stand against violence. The “nationalization” of Jesus such that he becomes an icon of the Religious Right that does not “get involved in politics” and that when he said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Ceasar’s”, he meant to “let the governing authorities handle those larger issues of defense and governing and see it as “the way I want it to be” or “the way it should be”. I marvel, and I grieve that our Church community has come to this. There’s much more , but this long enoug as 1 post.

*The “secular” books (those written by people involved directly with the Bush administration, or via interviews with them) all provided stories that informed what for me was becoming an increasingly THEOLOGICAL issue regarding a “Christian” response to this administration who have made a name for political leverage of religious communities (to a much larger extent than ever before, although I can say it has not grown in terms of maturity of issue-grasping since its inception with the rise of the Moral Majority of Falwell and Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition).

The narrow focus of these “political action” groups continues after 25 years of activity. Abortion, “Protection of marriage” (ie. anti-gay) , prayer in schools continue as the main planks in this amazingly and dangerously NARROW concept of what the intersection of politics and Christianity looks like.