The Little Friar

Okay, so it's an election year in the United States.  And yet again it's time to say something. Michelle Obama has said quite a bit already , and I can't add anything more to her words. But there's something that needs to be said around recent developments involving Donald Trump. The word "flawed" has been bandied about this political season in the US, most notably as a few Christians of significant influence cobble together bizarre arguments for how Americans might in good moral conscience support Donald Trump.  Most prominently, Jerry Falwell drew a comparison between Trump and Israel's King David , and more recently, radio host Sean Hannity added to that comparison .  Their arguments suggest that both Trump and David are "flawed" leaders who either rule over, or might rule over, a great nation.  King David was God's "flawed" man, and on analogy, Trump might be as well.  While Trump is no saint, to expect a saint is ...

MP Jo Cox was shot a killed a few days before the Brexit Referendum.  Of course, she was known for her staunch defense of UK remaining within the EU.  I just read that her killer, Thomas Mair, at his arraignment, when asked his name, answered, "My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain". Nationalism, being what it is, I find it hardly surprising that violence would be its result.  So her death, regardless of what others may claim, came as a result of the political positions she held. So here's the thing:  National elitism is still bad.  And dangerous. Those who hold it might want to consider the extent to which we have a moral responsibility for the emotional reverberations of our rhetoric, the extent to which we point to the "other" as the source of our problems. There are rational criticisms to be made of the EU:  The bureaucratic reach, the entrenched global capitalism, and the reliance on the military industrial complex especially....

My recent reflections toward a theological account of society have quite a bit to say about the recent Brexit vote. I don't imagine most of my American neighbors understand the gravity of the vote -- why it was not only that Britain voted to leave the EU, but also why that was a Very Bad Idea.  (Though it really shouldn't be surprising to anyone -- which I'll lay out here.) For months, Britain has been in the throes of a debate over whether or not to leave the European Union.  To my mind, this had the potential of being one of the most morally consequent public deliberations my UK friends had seen in many years, precisely because it goes right to the heart of the nature of political identity, the basis of political agency and the extent of transnational obligation.  This referendum shares much in common with the same debates that currently embroil the Republican party in the US.   But that's hardly a surprise to those of us who pay attention to the skirmish...

So apparently we need " a return to the spirit of 9/12 ".  I'm glad Hillary Clinton -- who made that observation in the days following the attack in Orlando -- has given us enough time to pause, pray and reflect .  Because, as I remember 9/11, what Americans were in the days following that tragic Tuesday, was awkwardly confused.  I was standing in an airport, waiting to get on a plane, that morning.  I remember watching the flight boards change from "on time" to "delayed".  I remember hearing someone cry out, "They just bombed the World Trade Center!"  And I immediately flashed back to 1993.  As we all stood there, trying to come to terms with the scenes playing out in horror on screens in front of us, we were all left asking, "Should we actually be watching this?  Should we be doing this?  I guess we already are?"  We like to make fun of President Bush, now, in hindsight, for reading My Pet Goat while the attack was occurring, bu...

I've thought long and hard about this Donald Trump presidential candidacy, and here's what I think we Christians should be doing. First, let's avoid any negative characterization of him at all (there's no benefit there, there's plenty already floating around).  Trump has mastered the practice of agonic self-definition -- building himself up by belittling others in such a way that they can't, or won't, respond effectively in kind. Instead (secondly), I think we should aim for sympathy , suggesting that he needs gentle treatment; facts asserted as a matter of record rather than an assault ("it's not fair to introduce his failed business ventures as evidence, because he can always just print more money if he wins the election"); and keeping him associated with the very tiny group whose actual interests he represents ("He brought so many casino jobs to Atlantic City, offering part-time employment to hundreds of desperate citizens a...

1. Because there was nothing else to do, I said to myself, I will read Hemingway and drink wine and think only of Paris.  So I sat that afternoon and read A Moveable Feast , Hemingway's memoir of life in Paris, and drank wine and thought of Paris.  It was 7th of July, 2005. 2.   I remember my few days in Paris as a student.  I stayed in a really bad motel and it was a disappointment.  The more irritable my host became, the more mad I responded.  But that's how it was.  Still, puny moods and attitudes were no match for Paris.  I walked along the Seine.  I roamed the boulevards.  I looked at paintings and old buildings, loafed in cafés.  I went in and out of shops along the rue St-Dominique, buying nothing.  I ate fruit and croissants and dipped them in my coffee -- I only drink coffee in Paris.  A gypsy girl begged me to let her draw my portrait. 3.   The city, of course, is older than Christianity...

Yesterday, I made this comment in a thread on Facebook: I find it very interesting, though, that, if Ms Davis were a Muslim limiting marriages because they do or don't fit a certain reading of the Qur'an, nearly every Kentucky resident would be looking to lynch her.  American Christians (by which I mean folks who are more American than Christian) demand to be so entitled.   That's the opposite of Jesus' way. The background, lest anyone has been out of the news cycle this week:  Kim Davis, Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, has been jailed for her defiance of a court order to process marriage licenses for same-sex couples.  Her view is that, by refusing to process any marriage license for anyone, she is engaging in an act of civil disobedience based on a position of Christian conscience. That seems like a modern American stance to take, more so than a Christian one. Ms Davis' decision to close her office door to LGBT citizens (and, soon after, to al...

By now, nearly everyone is aware of the horrible violence perpetrated against the congregation at Emanuel AME Church in historic Charleston, South Carolina.  I've seen a few responses to this evil on Facebook that bear some push-back. 1.  This was not an act of " senseless violence ".  Calling the violence "senseless" implies that the shooter has no moral agency.  What occurred on Wednesday night was not "senseless violence" -- it was a cold, calculated, act of racial hatred.  (While I love Anderson Cooper and watch his news program nearly every day, he's really dropped the ball here.) 2.  Some have suggested that the shooter "obviously" suffers from some " mental illness ".  Thing is, mental illness doesn't make us kill one another .  Mental illness demands to be treated with compassion.  When we call this event "senseless violence" or attribute some "mental illness" to the shooter, we blur the ...

The Ascension , by Salvador Dali Most of us do really well functioning as the examiner of Scripture.  We love to pose questions to the text, expecting the text to respond with our questions in just the right way. But have you ever noticed how often Scripture asks those questions of us ? I say this because last Sunday was Ascension Sunday.  And as we move toward Pentecost, I'm left pondering a question that's asked of the disciples -- that's us, by the way -- by two men in white robes: Why do you stand here looking into the sky? (Acts 1.11). The disciples have just spent what amounts to the last few minutes they have with Jesus on earth asking questions of him:  " Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?"  But Jesus, in typical Jesus style, glosses right over their question and proceeds to announce: It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Hol...

In the debates about pacifism within the Christian tradition, many Christians have justified the use of violence and killing by making an appeal to Jesus' temple action, the time when Jesus flipped the tables of the moneychangers and dove sellers and drove people from the temple courts with a whip. I agree with the many other Christians who think that this is a horrible argument.  It's quite a stretch to go from Jesus' temple action to killing people.  Of course if Jesus, say, stabbed somebody to death in the temple then we might have something to talk about.  But that's not what happened.  To be sure, the word "violence" could be used to describe Jesus' actions, but that's a far cry from giving us a warrant to kill. And yet, there is something much less talked about and debated regarding Jesus' temple action. One of those activist communities must be left to ask, after the recent riots in Baltimore, is if it's ever okay to bre...

Today, my tears are shed for Baltimore.  My tears are shed for all those communities who have known such violence and destruction that accompany that violence.  There are so many of them. This morning, Baltimore is part of a tragic American pattern: I weep as Jesus himself wept, and for the same reason: And when Jesus drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, " Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!   But now they are hidden from your eyes.  For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.  And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation" (Luke 19.41-44). Why did Jesus weep?  Jerusalem had failed to learn "the things that make for peace".  And because Jerusalem had failed to re...

Perhaps the most difficult argument to deflate these days is that Islam is, by its nature, essentially violent/militant.  I hear this so regularly from Americans that I have to wonder if it's not a matter of selective memory (Americans, in case we've forgotten, can be pretty violent and militant, too).  But it's perhaps the most difficult argument to reject precisely because there are images flashed at us on a regular basis (twenty-four hour news cycles will do that to a person) like this: The problem here, of course, is that the folks making this argument are Americans first, and Christians second.  Which is to say, they've forgotten the Apocalypse of John from the end of the New Testament.  What I hear most often from American Christians who see these images:  It just doesn't seem right!  Those twenty-one orange-clad Egyptian Copts herded out on the beaches of Libya to be beheaded by practitioners of a repugnant ideology ... and it's impossible t...

We're hopefully coming to the end of what's been one of the coldest winters I can remember.  Between the ice and snow storms, it's been a long, chilly, snowy winter. So, one of the things I'm hearing lately is, "So much for global warming!" to which I respond right away, "Climate change doesn't mean 'always warmer', just 'always weirder'."  I'm tired of people regarding one day's weather, or one location's season of weather, as a putative rebuttal to the mountains of data from around the world -- though that does help explain a number of other political phenomena. So, no, Mr Trump, this winter isn't an argument against global warming .  In fact, it's precisely the kind of thing we'd expect to see.

Recently, Duke University announced that it would begin allowing Muslim students to use the Chapel tower for the adhan -- the Muslim call to prayer -- every Friday afternoon.  I was excited for the idea and supported it. As an alumnus, I know what Duke Chapel means to that community.  I know what it means to me.  As a student, I regularly sought refuge in its nave for daily prayer every 5 p.m., as the bells tolled.  A former classmate and friend, Sam, climbs those stairs everyday to chime the bells in an act of Christian devotion and love for his alma mater.  As a student, I served as the Faith and Arts Intern at the Chapel, and learned so much about ministry alongside others. So it may seem odd that I supported the idea of Muslims calling for prayer from atop my beloved Chapel.  But for those who care enough to hear me out on this, here's my reasoning. There's something else I know quite well:  The recent attacks in Paris and Pakistan and ren...

This is the tweet in question: Now, I realize that seems "harsh" and even, to some ears, very "unpatriotic".  I'm certain there are other things I "could say" in potentially "better ways".  But, that's what I said because that's what I meant.  There's a connection to be made here between the violence of yesterday's explosive revelation of exactly the type, means and ends of the American CIA's use of torture in the so-called "War on Terror".  The demonic brutality depicted in that report is just that -- demonic brutality .  CIA leadership and the political administrations that suppoted them are guilty of Nazi-style brutality ( Verschärfte Vernehmung , anyone?).  (If you think I'm exaggerating, that the logic and practices of American torture are substantially different from the Nazi practices, try a re-reading of Kogon's Theory and Practice of Hell .)   Make no doubt about it, this is news of how fallen an...

Over the past weeks and months, I've heard a tiresome response from certain brothers and sisters, used when I highlight the American sin of racism, and how that sin is destroying fellow children of God, those made in God's image in Christ:  "More Black Americans kill one another than White Americans who kill Black.  So, surely violence isn't racist". So, repeat after me:   Racism  is institutionalized White-on-Black violence, even if that violence is internalized by Blacks.  In 1619, the first twenty Africans were brought over as labor for the new colonies.  Within one generation the white majority had defined black people as permanent slaves and non-human property.  This created a social order in which black people were only valuable for their ability to support a white dominated society that was economically prospering off of the stolen land of Native Americans and the stolen labor of African Americans.  Consequently, a system of White-on-Black ...