The following from Is Bush the Antichrist? by Tim Appelo via Seattle Weekly News
is good stuff that segways nicely into Jim Wallis’ exploration of the post 11/2 landscape in God’s Politics, just released this week.
As a self-scrutinizing Christian, isn’t Lang in danger of succumbing to hate?
“Yeah, I’m there. I have a physical, visceral reaction to Bush, to his image, to when he speaks. I mean, I think the guy is evil. They are willfully deceptive people, and I’m very angry. But . . . hatred is not a very useful strategy of resistance, nor is it very useful to create an alternative.”
Bawer preaches that the alternative must not employ the church as a weapon. “For liberals to join in the right-wing game of bashing one’s opponents with the Bible only further erodes the wall between religion and government. This, to me, is a major concern—and Bush’s reckless contribution to this erosion is, for me, a major offense. It’s especially offensive in light of 9/11, which was the work of people who hate the West because it is secular, tolerant, inclusive, and democratic. What distinguishes America and the West from most of the Muslim world is those values. I wish we had a president who recognized this fact and helped Americans recognize it, too.”
So does Lang. But he thinks the secular left has to inspire its own flock—with better ministers than dull, brainy Parson Kerry of the Church of God’s Frozen People. “Even though I don’t like him, Bush is probably a funner person,” Lang admits. He insists that the Christian left has its own work to do in saving what he calls “the nation with the soul of a church.” “The right has won. I mean, they’ve seized the language of the church. So against Bruce, I would say, no, the progressive wing of the church has got to reclaim its language and redefine those words. Turning the other cheek wasn’t passive, oh, hit me, it hurts so good—it was a form of resistance. You’re turning your cheek to strengthen your backbone.”
Lang is convinced that secular efforts alone can’t reverse the Antichrist tide. “Evangelical churches have a sense of urgency about the doing of ‘good’ in the world that the mainline church has lost. If the church can’t show a positive, enticing, seductive vision of the future, where people fall in love with God and fall in love with this community, then it really doesn’t have anything to say.” Revelation teaches us what happens to lukewarm Christians.
Sojourner’s Jim Wallis is one who has a track record of being truly “beyond politics”. Those who would banish him to the label of “liberal” or “radical left” are the same who wish to do the same to the gospel messages that clearly call us to respond to the issue of the poor, to peace, and to the ethic of absolute love and “love your enenemies”. I heard some callers on a local talk show talk about how they didn’t think that God is against the use of war as a solution; effectively transplanting their own image into that of God; seemingly unable to distinguish between the prevailing Religious Right/NeoConservative philosophy and their concept of God. Of course , this is a universal problem in history; to properly dileneate the call of the Gospel from the philosophies of Empire, and its efforts to “placate the masses” with theological language that feigns support for them, even while they work in the back rooms against the interests of all but the elite.
I have been reading A People’s History of the United States (which , I assume brands me as a “radical wacko”) which chroncicles the manipulations of Empire in American History. Interesting stuff. Zinn sugests that the pre-Revolution elite classes that controlled the colonies, under the direction of England, began to see a way to break free of England’s rule by crerating a buffer zone in the Middle Class by employing the language “liberty and eqaulity”, which could “unite just enough whites to fight a revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality” (pp. 57-58, A People’s History of the United States). Today , it is a matter of a buffer not between elite and slaves, but elite and “economic straits” being erected against “the rest of us” that are being slowly erected (and this process , in my view, is being accelerated to unprecedented levels by the Bush administration) to keep “non-elites” placated and subdued by media power the likes of which we have never seen before. This machine of persuasion, manned by the likes of Karl Rove, and gleefully forwarded and advanced by meida outlets such as Fox News, and pockets within mainstream media, backed by elites in those mainstream outlets.