Abortion Babies and Yemeni Babies

Some voters for Donald Trump in 2016 were “single value” voters. That is, they may not have liked Trump, but only one value was important to them in that election. Anti abortionists were one such group.

However, in voting for Trump because he would appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, they elected someone who devalued life in other ways.

Trump went against the will of the U.S. Congress in selling weapons used in the war between Saudi Arabia and the country of Yemen. Saudi Arabia and Yemen have been locked in a power struggle involving Iran for years. The war has resulted in horrific starvation for Yemeni civilians.

The horror led both houses of Congress, including Democrats and Republicans, to vote against selling American weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen.

Trump claimed that the need for Saudis to have weapons for the war in Yemen was an emergency, though Congress plainly did not think so. Further, Trump said, American arms manufacturers needed the money. In declaring an emergency, Trump overrode the will of Congress.

Saudi Arabia used American weapons to bomb hospitals and marketplaces in Yemen and to cut off food supplies to that country. Yemen now is suffering mass starvation.

The question: Are babies killed in Yemen by American weapons less important than babies killed in abortion?

That is the problem with assuming one issue as the only one in a campaign. Moral issues are never simple. Believing one can be solved by one election can lead to horrific consequences.

Lost: A Good Name

Whatever meaning we gain from the Trump years, the rest of the world has lost a good bit of its faith in America.

Since World War II, the United States had been the country to reckon with. Dictators might rail against us, but they had to take into consideration our condemnation. Allies might curse our pride, but they depended on us.

Now, although our allies may welcome us “back” with the Biden administration, they are never going to trust us as they did before Donald Trump appeared on the scene. If we went off the rails once, it can happen again.

Indeed, I’m not sure we can trust ourselves. The fact that our system would allow the election of one so unsuited to the office of president is, to say the least, unsettling.

Something has gone seriously wrong when Joe Biden, who takes his Christian faith more seriously than any president in years, gained so little of the white evangelical vote.

That Donald Trump was actually followed into a coup attempt calls for a period of reflection and mourning.

Ritual Appreciation

Several years ago I discovered the Grantchester mystery series by James Runcie They follow a young British cleric in the years immediately after World War II.

The series delves more deeply into purpose and meaning than many “detective” type stories. We know from the beginning of the series that Sidney Chambers is a veteran of fighting in the war. The stories are more than mysteries. They highlight some purpose or higher meaning.

In the latest book, The Road to Grantchester, Runcie provides the background for Sidney’s decision to become an Anglican minister. As we might expect, Sydney suffered horrible wartime experiences fighting in Italy during the war. The first part of the book recounts those experiences, made more terrible by the minimalist reporting style.

The next part of the book recounts his spiritual journey as he chooses and trains for the ministry, a surprise to his not particularly religious family and friends.

One of the insights of the book is how rituals sometimes sustain us in hard times when we are simply hanging on. Great knowledge or insight escapes us. We mumble the 23rd Psalm or the prayer Jesus taught his disciples.

In those desperate times when we may doubt any purpose in the universe or in our lives, ritual can offer us a way to survive. We overcome feelings with a kind of faith that hangs on to time-refined wisdom, sustaining us as it has sustained generations before us.

The Subversive Dorothy Sayers

Years ago I became a fan of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective stories by Dorothy Sayers. That eventually led me into other writings by Sayers, including The Whimsical Christian, a book of her essays.

I read with interest a recent biography of Sayers by Crystal Downing: Subversive (Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers.)

Sayers, like many of us, groped her way from the Christianity taught her as a child, through rebellion (she bore a child out of wedlock) toward a thoughtful Christian faith.

She is indeed subversive. She speaks for a reasoned Christianity but not a relative Christianity. That is, she accepts Christianity as God’s unique revelation through his entry into the world in Jesus. Wise people may develop wise religions, but the Christian revelation is unique.

She pointed to the dangers of too much relativism in Britain’s experience with Nazi Germany during the 1930’s, Britain didn’t recognize Hitler’s evil for what it was because of a kind of relativism, she said. Hitler was touted by some as simply a national leader with different ideas.

Writing further in this passage about Sayers, Downing says, “German Christians caught up in religious fervor for the Fuehrer had supplanted ancient dogma about Christ’s sacrifice for the entire world with political dogmatism : a problem that has marred and scarred Christianity through the ages.”

Hard not to see a similarity in the views of some Christians that Donald Trump is God’s man for the hour. A belief in the use of political power for a Christ who disdained political power.

Evangelical Dissent

“This week we watched an insurrection of domestic terrorists, incited and fomented by the President of the United States.”

So spoke Russell Moore on January 11, after a mob broke into the U.S. capitol and sent member of Congress into hiding. In a soul-searching article on his website, Moore, a white evangelical Christian leader, denounced the attacks in no uncertain terms.

Polls and opinion pieces vary as to whether any significant change in 2020 occurred in the white evangelical support for Trump from 2016. However, the questioning of such support has increased. Christianity Today recently ran an interview on the subject of Christian nationalism. (“Christian Nationalism Is Worse Than You Think,” Morgan Lee, January 13, 2021)

Voting numbers for Americans without evangelical beliefs are almost the mirror opposite of their evangelical counterparts, with Biden holding a commanding 56 percent to 33 percent lead over Trump going into the election.

President Trump’s advantage among evangelicals, however, comes primarily from white evangelicals, among whom he led Biden 73 percent to 18 percent. African Americans with evangelical beliefs overwhelmingly planned to vote for Biden (69% to 19%).

(Numbers are from “Evangelical Vote Once Again Split on Ethnic Lines And far fewer plan to vote third-party in 2020, LifeWay finds,” Aaron Earls – Lifeway Research, September 29, 2020.)

Many evangelicals, it is said, are favorable to Trump for one reason: the abortion question, the sanctity of life. But how far does this sanctity of life go? Only to one group of people? What about babies killed with American bombs in Yemen because Trump said Americans needed money from arms sales to Saudi Arabia? What about American children who need health care which Trump would deny by abolishing affordable health care?

What about a Trump who relishes division over against a Biden who yearns for healing?

When any religious group attempts to force its beliefs, even admirable beliefs, by political power, that group almost always ends up being corrupted by that power and losing any moral authority.

Police Reform: Robert Peel’s “Bobbies”

London’s famous police officers, called “bobbies,” are named for Robert Peel, a British statesman who established the London Metropolitan Police Force in 1829. Apparently the idea of an urban police force, bypassing the military or a private force, was a new undertaking.

The three core ideas of Peel’s policies are:

“The goal is preventing crime, not catching criminals. If the police stop crime before it happens, we don’t have to punish citizens or suppress their rights. An effective police department doesn’t have high arrest stats; its community has low crime rates.

The key to preventing crime is earning public support. Every community member must share the responsibility of preventing crime, as if they were all volunteer members of the force. They will only accept this responsibility if the community supports and trusts the police.

The police earn public support by respecting community principles. Winning public approval requires hard work to build reputation: enforcing the laws impartially, hiring officers who represent and understand the community, and using force only as a last resort.”

These three core ideas of Peel’s policies found on the the website: https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/peel-policing-principles/

Notice the joining of police and community. Rather than abolishing police, we want to change it to a community supported force for good.

Reading JACK While Rioters Rampage

I happened to be reading Marilynne Robinson’s latest novel, Jack, as rioters attacked the U.S. capitol in Washington.

The man, Jack, is the wayward son of a loving family (white) headed by a Christian minister in Iowa. He has appeared briefly in other novels in Robinson’s award winning Gilead series, arriving, then leaving again.

Jack knows his sins, despises himself for them, but seems trapped. He is now further trapped as he and Della, a young colored woman, a teacher, fall in love. This is post World War II in St. Louis, Missouri, when romantic relationships between races are not only forbidden but despised.

I read this novel depicting racism, one of America’s greatest sins, even while a mob of white Americans, some waving Confederate flags, attacked the capitol. They are unable to accept the election of a certain president and vice-president. The president-elect is an older white man. The vice-president elect is a woman of color.

May God show mercy on us and help us find our way to repent of the hatred we have allowed to continually fester within us.

Never Mind Those Scenes from the Capitol . . .

The country managed to overcome the drift toward dictatorship this past election cycle, despite having only 18th century constitutional weapons.

We put up with an election cycle that takes two months to complete, based on how long it took early Americans to travel by horseback to seats of government.

A president who this time lost both the popular vote and the electoral college vote—but still tried to stay in power—was prevented from doing so even by the antiquated system of the electoral college. Despite enormous pressure from the president, enough members of his own party followed their conscience and complied with the law.

We can forever relish those last hours following the attack on the capitol, after senators and representatives had spent tense hours fearing for their lives. They still returned to the task at hand and in the wee hours finished the one remaining task. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were pronounced the next president and vice-president.

Our leaders, it appears, amazingly, are still elected by law.

Now if we could only change those laws to reflect the country as it has become.

My Grandfather and the Night Riders

My grandfather was the sheriff of a rural Tennessee county in the early part of the twentieth century. During his time in office, a group called the “night riders” terrified local citizens with whom they disagreed, including minorities, attacking and beating them up at night.

They were probably associated with a strand of lawlessness active at the time in the western part of Tennessee. The new century brought changes some didn’t agree with.

I grew up on stories of my grandfather’s attempts to bring to justice those locals responsible for the attacks. My father remembered a time as a young child, waking up and hearing the night riders coming through town, shooting as they went. He remembered his father standing with a pistol, lighted by the lamp just before his father extinguished it.

At least some of the night riders were apprehended and jailed, with help from the Tennessee National Guard, whom my grandfather called in. Some of the local citizens resented his efforts to bring justice and order.

Today’s threats from vigilante groups remind me of those stories my father told. Such groups appear when some feel threatened by changing times. Some resent the calling out of old prejudices, people already uneasy with a world they didn’t create.

Measures instituted to prevent the disease Covid-19 are seen as some kind of attempt against personal liberty, rather than simply ways to save us from suffering and death. Rumors spread, this time with the speed of the internet.

Those of us interested in a safer and saner society can remain patient, even as we act in smaller ways to be kind and compassionate.

Losing Elections in America

The United States has held presidential elections every four years since 1792, frequently switching the winning party. If your candidate loses in an election, you can reasonably assume you will have another chance to vote on a change in four years.

The hope of change “next time,” happening again and again for over two centuries means we settle down and accept whoever is elected, our choice or not.

Except this year the candidate keeps trying to overturn the election results. Despite the most openly scrutinized election in U.S. history, the loser keeps trying to overturn what the vote decided and what the courts upheld.

The U.S. presidential election has worked year in and year out, in depression and prosperity, in war and peace, not because it’s a perfect system but because it overcomes the human tendency to keep power once gained.

Monarchy passes to the royal heir for the rest of the heir’s life span, whether they are qualified or not or whether most of the citizens desire it or not.

Dictators grab power through guns or violence no matter if their citizens favor them or not. They hold power as long as they own enough weapons or means of intimidation.

Representative rule, regularly accountable, means we have hope. It is risky in the sense that it depends on the losers to accept their loss.

To be wedded to a fallible human, whether Donald Trump or another, rather than the rule of law, sets a dangerous precedent.

Trump Vote: Thumb in Your Eye

Trump has enthusiastic support among some Americans. They wear MAGA hats and cheer wildly at his rallies. They make up the true believers decrying a “fraudulent” election.

Why go against all evidence and support a man who has stolen from his own charities, failed in business, constantly lies, loves to insult and belittle, and shows concern only for himself?

I think many of Trump’s supporters cheer him because the country’s more favored citizens have abandoned them. Trump appears to accept them.

Many Americans lost out when our traditional manufacturing culture shifted to a more tech oriented society. Some also are suffering whiplash from a changed society in which more young Americans leave organized religion.

These, the disdained, find their champion in one who sneers at the rules and thumbs his nose at the politically correct. He rails against liberal media who appear to his followers as opposed to their beliefs and way of life.

In her book, Strangers in Their Own Land, Arlie Russell Hochschild writes of Republican voters who dislike the party’s favoritism of big business. Nevertheless, they vote Republican because they believe this party favors God and family.

Trump, the personification of the spoiled rich grifter, provided rallies for those pushed out of the mainstream to vent against the America they believe has turned its back on them. They equated his behavior as opposition to the system that failed them.

Trump was a disaster and was voted out of office. Those who decry false accusations of a “stolen” election must accept one of the most certain election results in U.S. history

The winners, however, cannot ignore those who put Trump in office in 2016, many of whom voted for him a second time. Come January, we may experience a very divided government: president of one party, congressional power split, Supreme Court with a majority appointed by the other party.

If the government is going to function with such divisions, we must begin by respecting those who differ from us. That is to say, greatly differ: over everything from gender rights to police power.

The only way we will survive the possibility of stalled governing when we face such great divisions is by accepting that each side will win sometimes and lose other times—even lose on issues dear to them.

We must lose in good grace, then work to change the situation through persuasion and the next election.

In addition, worker training, fairer wages, basic healthcare, and a host of other issues must be
addressed soon.

To Community

Community has no official verb form. Someone I know said we should invent the verb form “to community.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us many things, but one stands out: the need “to community.”

Families and singles are locked down, connecting by Zoom and Facebook. Schools are closed as are gathering places: restaurants, bars, and churches.

Families suffering grief over the death of loved ones must postpone funerals and memorial services.

We can’t interact with our hair stylists or barbers. We dash in for pickup of food, not stopping to chat with staff.

We are born to community, to be part of a group: our family, relatives, and friends. Yet, in the age past, we put community behind things—making as much money as possible, buying as many gadgets as possible, putting tax breaks ahead of community services like health care.

We pay minimum wages to care givers who work with our elderly, as the virus spreads, and to the janitors, so important in a new age of cleanliness.

Have we learned to change our ways? After this pandemic passes into history, as please God it will, what changes will we make?

What will we do, for example, to strengthen that first community, the family? Healthcare, decent housing, education, and time to spend on nurturing?

Have we learned anything?

Advent by Zoom

A long time ago, last Easter, in fact, we could watch the Easter service streamed live from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Indeed, many of our Easter services last spring came to us via our screens.

Places of worship were reacting to the spread of a new sickness, Covid-19. Many closed their physical spaces of worship, as other gathering places did, to prevent contagion.

Back then, this new disturbance seemed more innocent, softened by kindness. Surely, the virus would go away as other viruses had, without causing widespread harm.

But it didn’t. Simple acts to protect oneself and others, like mask wearing, became political statements. Public health took a back seat to a presidential campaign.

And so the virus spread, far more than it should have. And now many Christians are celebrating Advent by Zoom.

Our church has advanced from listening to Sunday services via a link taped earlier by a few, socially distanced individuals to an improved group experience with newer software.

Not the real thing, no, when we held our first Zoom worship, but we could talk and respond in real time. No matter that we still hadn’t worked out all the bugs of congregational response.

It was for some of us a weepy moment.

I can’t imagine what it might be when, God willing, we are again able to meet in person.

Divine Nationalism

In his book The Immoral Majority, Ben Howe coins the term “divine nationalism.” This is his name for the political battles waged by many evangelicals for Donald Trump.

He discusses one of their names for Trump: a “divine vessel.” Howe says they are “claiming a divine approval for him that he’d never claimed for himself.”

Howe talks of an unsettling aura in the white evangelical embrace of Trump. “Trump evangelicals have taken this earthly object of their adoration and quantum-locked him to God’s will.”

Trump is freed even from “the burden of accountability.” Indeed, Howe says, Trump has become an idol to his evangelical followers. The same evangelicals who denounced Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern are perfectly okay with Trump’s affairs.

Perhaps this seeming moral relativism is one reason the number of evangelicals appears to be declining while the religiously nonaligned are increasing.

When is debt an investment?

Education is free for American schoolchildren, but salaries for teachers are paid for by taxes. They are part of the public “debt.”

However, most of us would agree that the country benefits from an educated population. Isn’t the money we pay for those free schools more of an investment than a debt?

After secondary school, education generally is not free. In fact, over the past few decades, colleges and university have grown beyond the ability of many American families to afford.

Writes novelist Marilynne Robinson: “As state financing fell, tuitions rose, involving many students in burdensome debt. For generations people had, in effect, prepaid their children’s and grandchildren’s tuition and underwritten the quality of their education by paying taxes. Suddenly the legislatures decided to put the money to other uses, or to cut taxes, and families were obliged to absorb much higher costs.” (What Are We Doing Here? Essays)

Learning, Robinson points out, no longer fits into the economic equation.

But, of course it does. It’s one of those long term costs not addressed when only material costs are calculated.

Polluted streams in Montana are a cost passed on to ordinary people. If they drink the water, they will sicken, perhaps die. If the government pays to restore the streams, the costs are passed to citizens in the form of higher taxes. The companies, who mined but did not pay for preventing pollution. get off with more profit now paid for by citizens.

Mariana Mazzucato, author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy writes: “For too long, governments have socialized risks but privatized rewards: the public has paid the price for cleaning up messes, but the benefits of those cleanups have accrued largely to companies and their investors.” (“Capitalism After the Pandemic,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2020.)

Mazzuecato suggests a long term view for our economic policies. Stakeholders in our economy, the workers, who also are consumers, need help to weather economic downturns and again be able to both work and consume.

In these and other instances, government “debt” is more of an investment.

The Loner and the Pandemic

No doubt most of us, including myself, an admitted introvert, are craving an end to our pandemic isolation.

For our children, we desperately want to open our schools. We want to bring them back to a classroom, learning under the physical presence of a teacher. We want them to interact with other children. Indeed, one of our most pressing needs, whenever classrooms do return, is dedicated help for those children who lacked the resources for learning away from the classroom.

I suspect, though, that a few children may have learned a bit better at home, with remote supervision. These are the decided introverts, who tend to be distracted in the presence of others.

Even as some workers would like to continue at least some working from home when the pandemic ends, so perhaps would a few children.

This is not a plea for either children or workers to always learn or work in isolation. Children, even inward turning ones, benefit from social interaction.

However, one gain out of this deadly time may be an understanding that we work and learn and grow in different ways with different surroundings.

Perhaps we can encourage varieties of both working and learning.

We Fear the Unworthy

We are afraid that unworthy Americans will receive entitlements they don’t deserve. Food, perhaps. Or medical care. Or housing.

In my own life, I have received many good things that I did not, in fact, do anything to earn.

I was born into a loving household. We were healthy and needed no unusual medical care. I was born at a time when unemployment was low. Both my parents were able to work and afford comfortable housing for their family.

At the time, a college education was still possible for those of ordinary means. My brother and I profited from four years of college.

Again, I came of age in boom economic times and never wanted for employment—with health insurance—whenever I needed to work.

Thus, I’m not bothered by the fact that in a wealthy country no one would go hungry. I’m not thinking of steak dinners—just basic food for all who are hungry.

I wish all working Americans had access to affordable housing, including janitors and home health aides. I’d like to see adequate resources for the mentally ill and help for the drug addicted to recover meaningful lives. I wish no child to suffer homelessness.

I wish all America’s children had access to adequate education, no matter their parents’ standing in life.

I wish all Americans could receive basic health care.

I’d like to see a fairer tax system—one that taxes wealth as well income—to underpin meeting these basic needs.

Of course, these views are selfish. Healthy, educated, well-housed Americans ultimately benefit the entire country, including me.

Creaky Democracy

We sometimes forget that our American democracy is the beta test for modern democracies, the early model.

The U.S. Constitution was ratified in the last decade of the 18th century. Men were still wearing waistcoats and breeches. Women wore long dresses and caps.

The idea of the people completely ruling themselves still wasn’t trusted even by the writers of the Constitution. They appeared to hedge their bets on this new form of government, with straitjackets that still constrain us today.

The direct election of senators wasn’t allowed by the Constitution until 1913. Women couldn’t vote until 1920.

Many of us have been shocked in the past few elections to learn that we the people do not directly elect our president and vice-president. The person sitting in the oval office directing our domestic and foreign affairs may rule by favor of a minority of voting Americans.

Writes Larry Diamond: “Our election systems were not built for the modern era.” (“When It Comes to Democracy, the U.S. Is Showing Its Age,” The New York Times, 1 Nov 20)

How do we move to a more democratic form of government? How develop a judicial system freer from political favoritism?

These are questions we must wrestle with if we want a truer democracy in the coming years. How do the people obtain the power when a minority will have to cede that power?

That Abortion Question

Many evangelical Christian voters would never consider voting for Donald Trump if he hadn’t taken them hostage with the abortion question. Many of them otherwise despise much in his personal life and in his administration.

Now he’s appointed a judge to the Supreme Court who may upend the decision many evangelicals hate: Roe v. Wade.

However, even a judiciary sworn to overturn all abortion will not stop abortion any more than the 18th amendment (the only amendment to be repealed) stopped the drinking of alcoholic beverages.

Abortion is becoming easier. Soon an abortion pill or two, guided by advice over the telephone may mean the end of abortion clinics with marchers attempting to shut them down.

Abortion pills can be passed to those desiring them much easier than bootleg liquor was passed to those overcoming the prohibition of alcohol.

Jesus, whom evangelicals profess to follow, refused to accept the political way of bringing in his kingdom. He refused the crown. He chose the much harder path of discipline and sacrifice.

Throughout the centuries, when Christians have chosen to use state powers to advance their religion, this choice has led to the corruption of Christianity and its loss of both followers and moral power to change society.

Evangelical Christians have chosen to fight abortion too late in the game—after a baby has been conceived.

Young women and men have been lured by our current self-centered entertainment trap. Sexual decisions are governed by the same lifestyle that gives us the obesity trap: eat all you want of whatever you want.

Discipline of physical desires is not the condemnation of physical desires but the better use of them.

Passing through the school of self discipline is not a belief in “someday you will enjoy a mate and have it all,” but something far more meaningful. A few are called to be celibate for life; most are not. All young people, however, need a period of learning and growth and discipline.

Young women, especially, need to find their directions in life irrespective of their relationship with men.

What if English Loses Out?

English is the language most Americans have been speaking for centuries. Due to many factors, including the country’s success in both war and trade, that language has become a world language.

Immigrants have flocked to this country both to escape persecution and to find jobs. Those jobs have included fruit picking in Washington state, tech jobs at Microsoft, and prestigious teaching jobs in universities.

American students have benefitted for decades as students from other countries have paid full tuition to gain a degree from a U.S. university.

A significant percentage of American winners of the Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, and medicine have been immigrants to the United States. According to a study cited in Forbes magazine (October 14, 2020), over a third of these prizes since 2000 have been awarded to immigrants to the United States.

But what happens if the United States closes its doors to the immigrants who have contributed so greatly to its success?

Nicholas Ostler has written a history of languages, Empires of the Word. Beyond question, English is at present a world language. But, as Ostler shows, no magical reason exists for the major language of the United States to continue in its current position.

Writes Ostler: “A language does not grow through the assertion of power, but through the creation of a larger human community.”

Americans been slow to realize how much they owe the country’s strength to the foreigners who have contributed to its businesses, its universities, and its influences.

The advantage that Americans enjoy because their major language is a world language is not a given.