The Little Friar

I spent the better part of my academic career studying Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- his theology in its context, with the hopes of articulating a peace-making theology for the twenty-first century.  I never intended that study to become pastorally relevant in our own historical context.  But it's proven to be. Today I made the claim that modern America looks nearly identical to Weimar Germany. For those who don't understand the comparison, first some background. The Weimar Republic was the short-lived experiment in German democracy between the great wars of the 20th century.  It emerged from Germany's loss in World War I, and was brought to a crashing end by the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.  The Weimar period was marked by political, economic, and social instability, and intense cultural creativity as well as decadence.  Weimar was time in which the center didn't hold, and extremism took over the imaginations of many Germans, especially the young. ...

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 ...

Apparently President Obama now fears future American presidents will wage perpetual covert drone wars.  On the surface of it, such fears are well-grounded.  President Obama himself has embraced controversial covert counterterrorism programs began by George W. Bush:  The rendition and harsh interrogation (including torture) of terrorist suspects, and the use of drones to kill terrorist suspects outside of traditional battlefields. Two days after taking the oath of office Obama signed an Executive Order , which revoked the Bush-era directives authorizing torture, and reemphasized international conventions and federal laws prohibiting torture.  The following day, Obama authorized two CIA drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan, which, combined, killed an estimated one militant and 10 civilians, including between four and five children. Whereas Bush authorized approximately 50 drone strikes that killed 296 terrorists and 195 civilians in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, ...

As we continue to reflect upon how the treatment of the demonic in the Bible mixes the political and the spiritual, I want to revisit something I used to emphasize in my Intro to New Testament courses.  So this is something about which some of my readers have already heard quite a bit. Lucifer, as I've already insisted, referred to a political reality -- a Babylonian king -- imagery that was used by the New Testament authors to describe a spiritual reality, Satan as a star falling from heaven. In this post we revisit another name for Satan to make a similar point:  Beelzebul or Beelzebub . This draws on an argument I used to make in my New Testament classes:  In the Synoptic Gospels Beelzebub is described as the "Prince of Demons",  a prince Jesus associates with Satan: And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons." So Jesus called them over to him ...

In Daniel 10 Michael the Archangel comes into conflict with the national deity of Babylon, a territorial spirit described as the "prince of the kingdom of Persia".  Here we see how a demonic spirit is associated with a political entity. We see this exact same connection when we consider one of the most famous names for Satan. Lucifer. Here's a shocker to most folks:  Satan is never actually named Lucifer in the Bible.  The name "Lucifer" comes from the King James Version translation of Isaiah 14.12: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! Modern translations translate the Hebrew word helel here as "day star" or "morning star".  The meaning can also be "bringer of light" as the "morning star" (Venus) was considered to be a bringer or herald of the dawn. The Latin for "bringer of light" is "luc...

I think politics, to be understood Christianly, have to be approached spiritually.  Which means that oppression and idolatry, in under to be understood Christianly, cannot be separated. That seems hard for us to do that.  When it comes to evil, conservatives tend to spiritualize the issue, looking for demons behind every door and under every rock.  Liberals, by contrast, tend to politicize evil, reducing spiritual warfare to the political fight for social justice. Throughout the Bible the spiritual and the political are interconnected and woven together.  The political and the spiritual form a gestalt , a bigger picture greater than the sum of the individual parts.  That's what I want to explore over the next few days. One way to see the interconnection between the spiritual and the political is to examine the way demons develop in the Bible. Specifically, in various parts of the Old Testament we get the notion that when God created the world and set...

Back in 2000, Barbara Ehrenreich published a book called Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America .  In it, she chronicled her year spent attempting to survive on low-wage jobs in America.  Her experiment didn't go well, but the subsequent book sold more than a million and a half copies and "fueled nationwide campaigns for a living wage".   Campaigns which, of course, worked perfectly.  Because poverty in America has been eradicated.  Obviously. I remember teaching a class in 2004 entitled "Church and Community Ministries".  Ehrenreich's book was required reading that semester.   It sparked a campus conversation on living wages at the college.  So I know how powerful this book can be. That's why I would love to make this book required reading for every high school junior/senior who's taking economics.  But that'll never happen, so instead, I want to offer an extended quote from the book. This quote is fairly important....

If there were any one, particular struggle I have these days with being a Christian, it's politics.  Since it's an election year fraught with so much division over so many would-be (false!) American messiahs, I find it hard to take the Church seriously when the Church wants to endorse any one of those particular false messiahs.  I've been thinking about this for days now, and I'm quite glad that the Church doesn't have a response to those cronies, other than to point to the real Lord of lords and King of kings. Which leads me to say this:  Perhaps the one thing the Church can give American politics is prayer.  I mean that. Prayer is disruptive. The divine voice interrupts our egoism and selfishness with a still small whisper to remind us that we are not the center of the universe.  As the Church, we pray for our enemies and those who mistreat us.  That is what I mean when I say that prayer disrupts.  Egoism makes us seek revenge.  Praye...

Okay, so it's election season in the United States.  I've seen any number of Christians lamenting that the current candidates for President presents them with a choice between two evils.  In that scenario, they say, you choose the lesser of the two evils.  And depending upon one's perspective of which evil is "lesser", then that's the particular candidate they put forward as the "obvious" choice. For years, I've urged Christians to take their obligations to their neighbors seriously and therefore not to take a particular vote every four years with the kinds of seriousness that border on idolatry.  One vote on one day every four years is far less significant than the decisions we make every day -- the votes we cast -- with our time, money, and attention.  "Policies" on the economy, war and peace, justice and the like are made every day, in myriads of ways, not just one day every four years in November.  So if we want to take our votin...

A friend was pushing back today on my reflections on how I think a Christian might vote in this upcoming presidential election.  It's no surprise to those who know me best, that I really don't get into American politics all that often.  I stand when folks say the pledge of allegiance, but I won't say it .  (This recently made for lots of looks when Kendra and I attended the local county commission meeting.)  Back when I did vote (the last election I participated in was 2008), I was a true "swing vote" -- I've voted Democrat or Green in every election in which I've participated, save one (1992).  Most of my votes have split along party lines between federal and local/state elections.  As I write, I couldn't tell you which party I'd vote for if I were voting.  And the last thing on my mind is to influence another's vote, so I wouldn't tell you even if I could tell you.  I do, though, think that folks who identify themselves as Christians sho...

I've never really understood why citizens of the United States love firearms.  Even in the aftermath of the most-recent mass shooting in Orlando, there seems to be no widespread desire to enforce tighter gun laws or abolish private ownership of firearms.  As a Christian committed to Jesus and his way of nonviolence, I still find it very difficult to believe that Americans generally can't see that fewer guns in the hands of the general public would lead to fewer shootings.  Granted, if a person tips over the edge so much that all s/he wants to do is slaughter, that person is likely to find a way to do so by whatever means available:  Gun, knife, homemade bombs, intentional hit and runs, and so on.  But guns and rifles are quite easily available to the average American, and so mass shootings seem to be more common in the United States than in other Westernized countries -- though there are notable exceptions, as the recent killing sprees in Norway and France prove...

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...