Religion
David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics and a moderate evangelical, in USA Today:
Never have conservative evangelicals positioned themselves as staunch advocates for women's leadership in political life — until Sarah Palin. It seems only fair to ask these evangelical leaders to think a bit about the implications of their support for Palin. And so I ask them these questions:
- Is it now your view that God can call a woman to serve as president of the United States? Are you prepared to renounce publicly any further claim that God's plan is for men rather than women to exercise leadership in society, the workplace and public life? Do you acknowledge having become full-fledged egalitarians in this sphere at least?
- Would Palin be acceptable as vice president because she would still be under the ultimate authority of McCain as president, like the structure of authority that occurs in some of your churches? Have you fully come to grips with the fact that if after his election McCain were to die, Palin would be in authority over every male in the USA as president? [...]
- Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family? If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?
I'm really wondering how LDS Republicans would answer that last question.
Fred Clark at slacktivist, your source for all things Left Behind, reports on McCain's clumsy attempt to woo Rapture-ready evangelicals:
The point of the ad — the entire and only point of the ad — is to suggest that Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president, may be the Antichrist warned against in the pages of Left Behind. Take that message away and you're left with nonsense. Without the Barack Obama = Nicolae Carpathia subtext, the ad would consist only of something like "he's a famous leader ... but is he ready to lead?" Hunh?
Sadly for McCain, the Left Behind authors aren't playing along:
"I've gotten a lot of questions the last few weeks asking if Obama is the Antichrist," says novelist Jenkins. "I tell everyone that I don't think the Antichrist will come out of politics, especially American politics."
All McCain's left with is a broken dog whistle.
Please, please pick Mitt! (Moonie Times):
Prominent evangelical leaders are warning Sen. John McCain against picking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as his running mate, saying their troops will abandon the Republican ticket on Election Day if that happens.
They say Mr. Romney lacks trust on issues such as outlawing abortion and opposing same-sex marriage and because he is a Mormon. Opposition is particularly powerful among those who supported former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Republican presidential primaries earlier this year. [...]
The Rev. Rob McCoy, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, Calif., who speaks at evangelical events across the country, told The Washington Times, "I will vote for McCain unless he does one thing. You know what that is? If he puts Romney on the ticket as veep."
Digby wonders whether Democrats' attempts to woo regular churchgoers might be like wearing last year's fashions. Since 1991, the number of Americans who don't attend church (or temple or mosque) regularly has nearly doubled, from 39 million to 75 million.
It would be sadly typical of the Democrats to get in on the big church awakening bandwagon just when it's over and miss the opening for engaging people who are looking for meaning, community and service in other ways. Obama has made a good start with them I think, but going overboard on the traditional religious aspect could derail it.
After years of propaganda, everyone believes that the big demographic prize is people who go to church once a week or more. Maybe the Democrats should think a little bit more about the huge and growing number of people — religious and not religious — who never go to church at all, and try to tailor at least some of their their message to them.
Sara Robinson, who also writes about the FLDS, has a new article explaining the historical context of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's theology and why conservatives are so eager to take him down. First, you have to understand the evangelical concept of the "prosperity gospel," also called the "Word of Faith." The following explanation is from Sarah Posner:
I was never very impressed with John Kerry's media skills, but he nails this response to an inane question from an MSNBC reporter (Huffington Post):
WITT: Okay. He said it. A 20-year relationship. Reverend Wright married him. He is the one who baptized a godparent. How personally painful is this for him?
KERRY: Can I say something to you? Obviously it is painful and he said it. You folks need to let go of this. Television needs to stop dwelling on something that is in the past. I thought Barack Obama yesterday gave America his second big presidential moment of this campaign. The first when he spoke out about the issue of race. The second yesterday, when he made it clear, every one of the statements of the minister are just unacceptable. They're not the person that he knew before. Now let's move on to how we'll put people to work. How are you going to give people health care? How are you going to create jobs in America? What Barack Obama is offering
Another in the series on the FLDS from Sara Robinson, who usually blogs at Orcinus. This article looks at the FLDS from the perspective of a 12-point checklist put out by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that helps governments determine when religious or political groups have crossed the line and become dangerous (Campaign for America's Future):
7. Crimes of Intimidation — Groups heading toward violent confrontation usually start with threats and petty violence against members and outsiders who dare to cross them. (Occasionally, these people end up dead — which only makes them a useful warning to others.) Knowing that they can intimidate and silence people raises the leader's sense of invincibility and teaches him that violence works. Both lessons raise the odds he'll resort to more violence more quickly in the future. It also makes life much harder for investigators gathering new information on the group as the risk level rises.
For FLDS members, the cultural atmosphere has always been one of dawn-to-dusk intimidation. As noted, men who don't comply will simply lose everything. Women risk being sent away from their families, reassigned to other households or colonies, or committed to mental hospitals. Children have no choices about marriage, work, or education. Whatever the Prophet says, goes — and God have mercy on you if you dare to refuse.
The New Times account strongly suggests that Warren Jeffs was rapidly ratcheting up the overall level of intimidation within the group — and hinting strongly at violence — before he was arrested. His growing paranoia led him to purge dozens of men from the church as suspected enemies, banishing them and seizing their wives on a scale no prophet had dared attempt before. Removing him from the picture may have slowed the group's acceleration toward violent confrontation; but if he comes back — or another leader takes up these same themes — the group could once again move into the danger zone. After all: they live their lives on the edge of that line.
Score: 4 out of 5
Sara Robinson at Orcinus is starting a series about the FLDS that includes reporting from Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven and the new book The Secret Lives of Saints by Daphne Bramham. Here's Sara's series so far; check back at Orcinus periodically for more.
- Are FLDS women brainwashed?
- The Secret Lives of Saints
- What We're Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS
One of the things we need to understand is just how the FLDS managed to stay so far under the radar for so long — and what twisted consequences were allowed to follow from that lack of oversight. Bramham shows that they did a stunningly effective job of building their own self-sufficient infrastructure of community institutions — hospitals, police forces, courts, financial trusts, schools, and employers — that allowed the church to function without interacting with the outside world any more than necessary. Most of the group's institutions were designed to mimic and supplant outside authority well enough to keep the group (and especially its treatment of women and children) hidden from the prying eyes of outsiders. And, for 60 years, those who were responsible for providing higher-level oversight for all these institutions have almost always been somehow induced to look the other way. [...]
Like African-Americans in the slavery era, women who tried to run were captured by these police and returned to their husbands for punishment — or taken to the hospital for the dreaded mental health evaluation. The police force's main job is to be the muscle that enforces the Prophet's control of the entire community. When the Prophet decides that a man no longer deserves his home, these are the cops who enforce the eviction. Appealing to the FLDS judges has been useless: due process as we understand it doesn't even enter into the conversation.
There is progress on this front. The state of Utah began to move against the Hildale police force in 2005, revoking the certification of its polygamous chief. Sam Roundy admitted that he'd investigated over 25 sexual abuse cases in the past decade — including one that involved the rape of an eight-year-old — and never reported it to child protection authorities. (He pleaded ignorance of all mandated reporter laws.) However, Roundy was replaced with another polygamous officer who immediately sent Warren Jeffs a letter pledging his loyalty, and I found no word that he's left office since. Later that year, the Utah Supreme Court also disbarred the local polygamous judge, which paved the way for reform of the local courts.
But the Saints are now in many places besides Utah; and officials in these other states shouldn't be surprised if they try to hijack cops and courts and replicate this system wherever they go. In Utah, decades of failure to attend to this effectively deprived tens of thousands of people of their civil rights. It can't be allowed to happen again.
Returning to presidential politics, Powell condemned controversial remarks by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor of 20 years, as "deplorable" but complimented the Democratic candidate for his speech on race that followed in the aftermath.
"Rev. Wright is also somebody who has made enormous contributions in his community and has turned a lot of lives around," Powell said, "And so, I have to put that in context with these very offensive comments that he made, which I reject out of hand."
Powell added that he does not know Wright, and praised Obama's response.
"I think that Sen. Obama handled the issue well ... he didn't look the other way. He didn't wait for the, for the, you know, for the storm to go over. He went on television, and I thought, gave a very, very thoughtful, direct speech. And he didn't abandon the minister who brought him closer to his faith," Powell told [Diane] Sawyer.
Via Raw Story:
[W]e have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the OJ trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina — or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. [...]
I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.
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