Protester to Voter

From these days of pandemic and protest, the story touching me the most was that of a man, a black American, and his walks around his neighborhood. He always brings his dog with him, as well as one of his daughters. This way, he hopes, people will see him as a pet owner and as a father first rather than as a black man.

To me, it was amazing what a black man must do simply to walk safely out of his home.

As a white person, I thank the protesters for underlining how much I need to repent of my blindness toward the suffering of black men, women, and children since the first slaves were brought to this country.

Unfortunately, protests alone won’t solve the problem of racism. Also unfortunately, anarchists sometimes take advantage of peaceful protests to hurt us all.

Maybe it’s time to turn protests into voter registration drives. Protesters turned workers could register every American of color they could find.

They could also turn their attention to the voting process itself—checking where polling places will be as well as hours and what it takes to bring every one of their friends and acquaintances to vote.

They could work for voting by mail for those who wish to do so, especially if the coronavirus remains active.

Yes, we need awareness, but change will come sooner if compassionate, honest candidates are elected come this November.

The time is short.

Church and Pandemic and Evolution

“The virus is accelerating a trend away from organized religion.” (“Dechurching; The Sunday Slump,” The Economist, May 23, 2020)

This article chronicles the financial problems of some churches due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Like theaters and other public places, church gatherings have halted because of the risk of spreading the virus. Weekly collections, the main source of funds for many churches, have plummeted for some, creating financial crises for them. A significant number of churches, the article predicted, might close for good.

Church attendance in the United States already was declining. The article predicted that the pandemic’s effects may accelerate this trend.

Interestingly, on the same page in this issue of The Economist is a short article about the scientist Francis Collins, the man who worked on the sequencing of the human genome (“Jesus is not his vaccine.”)

Dr. Collins was born into a secular family but became a Christian at the age of 27 after reading C.S. Lewis and discovering in other writers “a rich vein of philosophical and theological thinking.”

Dr. Collins suggests science answers the “how?” questions while Christianity answers the “why?” questions.

Back in the 1800’s, the church suffered a crisis due to the new theory of evolution and other scientific discoveries. It seemed that the church, many of whose members clung to a literal seven day theory of creation, would eventually die out.

The church did not die but eventually found new life when such theories as evolution actually indicated a magnificent creator, far more complex and awesome than previously imagined.

Indeed, the church has suffered growth, decline, then rebirth over the centuries ever since the Christian missionary preacher Paul began spreading the radical belief that the religion of Jesus was something entirely new, for Gentiles, too, not just another school of Judaic thought.

Who knows what a revived and reborn Christianity might arise out of Zoom meetings and long-distance learning, no longer subject to enclosure by physical buildings?

A New Age for Immigrants

It seems those immigrants we tried to keep out are needed after all.

A moratorium of sorts has been decided against “sending back” some unregistered immigrants. We need them to pick the crops being planted and later to be harvested.

Immigrant labor also has been a mainstay in health care and elder care. We just didn’t realize it, assuming those refugees were only after our welfare benefits.

Now in this pandemic, we realize we need their contributions to our society.

We are reminded of the “Black Death” of the Middle ages, the bubonic plagues that devastated much of Europe at different times. So many people died, that wage earners were scarce. For a time, wages were pushed up.

As time passed and population grew again, things returned to normal. The rich got richer and the others settled into subsistence living.

Perhaps, with better understanding this time, we can develop an ongoing appreciation for the immigrants who enrich our lives and country and culture. Perhaps we can better care for all our workers in those lower echelon jobs, so necessary for our life.

Abortion Babies and War Babies

The issue of abortion is often cited as a reason for Trump’s support by some evangelicals. To be sure, many evangelicals are turned off by Trump’s self-centered governing. They justify their support by a hope that his policies will lead to stricter laws against abortion.

Yet the Trump administration is a strong supporter of the country of Saudi Arabia. That country has used American weapons to bomb hospitals and schools in a war in Yemen, killing innocent men, women, and children.

Wrote Marcia Robiou (Frontline, July 16, 2019): “Trump’s first official foreign visit was to the royal kingdom – an early sign that he would place a high value on his relationship with the House of Saud. As a candidate, he made Saudi weapons deals a campaign issue, promising they would generate American jobs and boost the U.S. economy.

‘Saudi Arabia is a big buyer of America product,’ Trump said when NBC’s Chuck Todd asked him about the decision to override Congress and push through the weapons deal.”

Thus, for the sake of money made by American arms dealers, the sale of weapons to a country who uses them to kill innocent civilians, including babies, is justified.

Are babies killed by American weapons less valuable than babies killed by abortion?

Information—New Game Changer

“. . . rival states compete in the twenty-first century as much over information as in any other terrain.” (Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “Making Cyberspace Safe for Democracy,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2020.)

Democracies see the free flow of information as a right of the people. Authoritarian regimes view information as a weapon to control.

Rosenberger believes the United States and other democracies lack a proper understanding of this difference. Thus the U.S. was vulnerable to Russia’s attempt to influence U.S. elections in 2016.

In another example, a manager of the Houston Rockets tweeted support of Hong Kong democracy protests. The National Basketball Association had to apologize to the Chinese government. Otherwise, they would have been refused access to the Chinese market.

While U.S. newspapers are folding at unprecedented rates, Russia and China invest in media outlets in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

The United States must wrestle with tradeoffs: “maintaining the country’s technological competitiveness, and keeping data flows relatively open while preventing that information from falling into authoritarian hands.”

Above all, the American people must guard against the “weaponization” of politics by nondemocratic hard left and hard right forces in our own country.

Rosenberger ends her article by ominously warning: “Democratic leaders who weaponize information and disregard the principles of democratic governance will make their societies less resilient, fail to demonstrate an alternative to the authoritarian model, and accelerate the very degradation of the information space that authoritarians seek. In the information contest, the United States cannot advance a democratic vison if its leaders do not embody it.”

Home Work Plus and Minus

For most of recorded history, economic activity centered in the home or in nearby shops. The industrial revolution changed that. Men left wives and children to work in factories.

Then came the office age, increasingly in city centers. Homes moved to the suburbs, taking women and children away from economic activity, as well as further from male breadwinners.

Schools began preparing children for a more complex world. Over time they added to basic education many tasks once the exclusive duty of parents: social skills, citizenship, and so on.

Now, with the Covid-19 pandemic, those parents fortunate enough to have higher skilled jobs are working increasingly from home. They may add the oversight of their children’s education, lessons now taught over the internet.

Stories abound of frustration as the new order continues (or perhaps a return to the old?)

Parents find it difficult to work and raise children all day and evening. Single parents are increasingly challenged. Grandparents, once part of chores and child raising, now may live in distant places, unable to visit or help out because of their vulnerability to the virus.

A few people, particularly introverts and/or those who want more time with their families, find some aspects of their new work life pleasant.

Nevertheless, no sane individual wishes the situation to continue, forced by a deadly sickness. But perhaps from all the horror, we may learn to better balance our lives and our society.

The times call for the more fortunate to examine attitudes toward career. Too many have seen work’s main purpose as an accumulation of wealth.

Thus, we lost our recent years of plenty as a chance to build up our society and prepare if for the years of famine. We could have increased healthcare and modest housing and a surplus for unemployment programs. We ended up with a society divided between haves and have nots, the have nots strained to the breaking point. Now many are falling into an abyss of desperation.

Well, if nothing else, we can use the lessons learned to change.

We Wait

We wait for return to a job and a paycheck.
We wait for a normal workday at our healthcare jobs.
We wait for the library to open.
We wait for food.
We wait for worship with our friends singing and praying beside us.
We wait for help with our mortgage payment.
We wait for a haircut.
We wait to have our teeth fixed.
We wait for the surgery that keeps being delayed.
We wait for schools to start.

Who knew we have been taking so much for granted?

Lord, please help us learn from this waiting, so that we will take better care of the things that really matter.

That Road to Emmaus

Two disciples of Jesus had business in Emmaus, a town out a little ways from Jerusalem. They were in deep despair,—no deepest despair.

Their teacher Jesus now was dead, crucified by the Romans. Wonderful, shining hope that Jesus was the Messiah, sent to set up the kingdom of God, were dashed. And for three days, continuing despair.

True, some women claimed the tomb where Jesus’ body had been placed was empty. Something also about angels around the tomb. But they were just women, no doubt in some kind of hysteria over all that had happened.

Well, life had to go on. They had business in the town of Emmaus, out from Jerusalem.

Then this stranger suddenly showed up and started talking to them as they walked.
Even then, they were slow to understand.

When they stopped at Emmaus, the stranger made as though to keep going. When they suggested he stop and eat with them, he agreed.

God, after all, doesn’t force himself on us. We have to invite him in.

Jesus had to break bread with them, before a—what—quiet gesture of bread breaking, life breaking—startled them. Suddenly, like that—finally—they knew.

And they were never the same again and neither was the world.

Your Money or Your Life

Governors of various states are faced with a stark choice: Lock down the economic activities of their states or watch hundreds, sometimes thousands, of their citizens die in a pandemic.

Social distancing is the term for greatly reducing human contact to avoid spreading the Covid-19 virus, the main way it is spread. Since buying and selling products and services require much personal contact, economic activities are greatly curtailed by social distancing.

This painful social distancing, including lock downs is, however, slowly decreasing the number of new Covid-19 cases.

People hurting from job and income loss are understandably impatient for their jobs and incomes to resume. We can entertain differences of opinion about how long and how strictly we enforce social distancing.

What is dangerous, as well as absurd, is using the social distancing as evidence of some wild plot.

No governor wants to use social distancing. Every governor wants a strong economy for their state. It is absurd to encourage wild calls for “taking back your government” when social distancing is reluctantly taken to protect citizens.

We don’t need to make it harder for those on the front lines to stem the pandemic. State governors are on the front lines.

This past Sunday, I listened to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo address the people of New York about the Covid-19 situation in his state.

He didn’t gloss over the horror still happening: lots of people still sickening, some dying, loved ones in mourning. But he gave hope because he was feeling what his people were going through.

How different from those who knock down governors and health experts and others fighting to heal and overcome and find the right path.

Governor Cuomo did not use the address to pander for political gain. He wanted his people safe and free from the horrible sickness.

The man in the White House could take some lessons.

Living Free for How Long?

We tend to think in terms of our personal experiences, our personal lifetimes. But the short span of the current generation is hardly typical of the world as it has been throughout human history.

“Homo Sapiens has been around for about 8,000 generations, and for most of that time, life has been rather unpleasant,” Stephen D. Krasner, a professor at Stanford University, reminds us. (“Learning to Live with Despots,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020)

Only in the last few centuries have a few nations attempted participatory democracy, rule of law, and other practices we in developed nations tend to think of as normal.

“The experience of people living in wealthy industrialized democracies since the end of World War II, with lives relatively free of violence, is the exception,” writes Krasner.

For that reason, we who still live in such places should not take for granted that they will continue. Quite likely, the only reason for their continuance might be our realizing how precious they are.

We came close to losing our recently-found democracies during the last century. During a time of terrible economic troubles, some nations followed leaders who spoke to prejudice and fear and were allowed too much power.

Especially in a time of fear and confusion, as with Covid-19, we also may be tempted to give in to rumors and plays for power by a selfish few.

Read carefully and wisely. Vote at every opportunity. Support traditional institutions: family, small businesses, local newspapers. Care for your neighbors. Ignore those who would use these times to fan flames of racism or hatred.

Covid-19 and Americans Overseas

In a recent press conference, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said U.S. missions in foreign countries had overseen the evacuations of more than 45,000 American citizens back to the U.S. due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A thousand things have to be considered in evacuations. In this case, what airports are still open in the different countries? If commercial flights have been halted, special flights must be set up.

Is the country in lock down? Where are U.S. citizens located—in urban cities or in remote areas?

How many Americans want to leave? Some citizens keep changing their minds. American officials must deal with filling empty seats when some suddenly decide to stay.

I watched a video of the U.S. ambassador to Algeria thanking the Algerian government for their help in evacuating American from that country. One of the benefits of American missions to foreign countries is that lines of communication are already set up between American and foreign officials.

Each U.S. embassy and mission in the world draws up emergency evacuation plans. They can vary in how up-to-date they are. Obviously, evacuations from Japan would differ from evacuations from Tibet.

I was in Saudi Arabia during both Gulf wars and participated in constant meetings to review and revise emergency plans as situations changed. The eastern part of the country was targeted by Iraqi missiles during the first war, and wartime restrictions created an added barrier.

U.S. officials often must deal with the stress of caring for their own families. They also must deal with reduced staff as missions are drawn down to essential personnel.

Covid-19 and Fear

I was overseas with the U.S. State Department when the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took place. My post was in Saudi Arabia.

We suffered confusion, fear, a changed game plan in the time after it happened. After a while, though, those of us at the U.S. mission began to draw closer and pull together. We developed a purpose, a reason for living, tasks to carry out.

I don’t think the fear ever left us, especially after the war with Iraq began, and our posts closer to Iraq began suffering scud attacks. We learned to respect that fear, but our purpose and our friendships helped us deal with it.

The sudden realization accompanying the growth of the Covid-19 virus reminds me of those times. At first, perhaps, a denial, or telling ourselves that it’s all going to be over with soon, no problem.

But, of course, regardless of how long this particular sickness lasts in its current form, our world is changed forever. We will have choices to make, hardships to deal with. We will have to deal with them and with losses, not only of friends but of old ways. We face the fact that we could die—any of us.

Of course, that’s true any day of our lives, but the current pandemic outlines that truth for us.

I think the degree of health of our communities will determine whether we win or lose this challenge. How well we are able to come together with our families, religious gatherings, small governmental bodies, and the like will, I believe, be the key.

Viral Awakening

We might consider Covid-19 as a wake up call. Or as a another kind of New Years Day. An opportunity for change.

The virus suggests a different set of values than we’re used to living by. What’s important now?

Family and friends, of course.

A safe place to shelter, not housing as investment.

Food and grocery stores.

Care givers for the sick and the elderly and the young. Those who rescue and protect.

The workers who perform tasks that must go on if civilized society is to continue: sanitation workers, farmers, grocery store clerks, janitors.

A reshuffling of our values might prod us toward a society which better rewards care givers and child care workers. Perhaps we might revisit our penchant for seeing housing as investment and instead see it as a universal need.

We could, in addition, build places of refuge and growth for the mentally ill and for those crushed by addiction.

We could revisit the ways we use our country’s wealth. Higher wages for the ordinary worker? Housing they can afford to live in? Affordable medical care? Education and job training?

Happy New Year!

The World Slows

We take more walks now, my husband and I. The local beach or a local trail is probably about as safe as anywhere else in this time of pandemic.

Even outdoor on the sidewalks, where we greet neighbors from time to time, seems reasonably safe.

My husband and I share more conversation, too, and read more books. We find time now to think and write. We lack the pressure of a certain hour to attend a meeting, much as we miss our various gatherings.

I increase my emailing with family and friends, including those living without family members close by. It’s a sharing which, despite its electronic distance, may bring back a bit of the old neighborliness, the checking in.

I find more time now to pray for those who have no time, the health professionals, other emergency personnel. People who cannot work from home. The laid off workers with too much time who wonder how they’ll buy food and pay rent. The homeless, the mentally ill.

More time to pray for many things without hurry.

Even from something as horrible as mass illness and death, we snatch good things we had not known for a while.

When this time passes as God willing it will, may we keep the good things we are learning.

Political Righteousness

When I lived in Saudi Arabia in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, some American citizens living and working in that country enjoyed raising their children there. Drugs and crime were much less than in the States. Of course, religious gatherings of Christians and any religion other than Islam were forbidden and had to be carried out discretely.

X-rated movies weren’t allowed, but neither were films like depictions of the Narnia tales or The Lion King or Charlotte’s Web.

Pornography might be punished by flogging, but one who dared criticize the country’s rulers risked the same punishment.

Richer citizens could escape the publicly strict moral code by paying smugglers to bring in whatever they wanted—liquor, x-rated movies, even maids to abuse. The religious/political alliance that ruled the country often led to outward piety, pleasing the religious, but encouraging corruption among the elites.

In this country, the recent marriage between the Trump presidency and the anti-abortion cause illustrates the danger of a religion hitching its wagon to a particular political movement for the sake of one cause. In this case, it risks supporting a political establishment that might commit killing small or unborn children in other ways.

The political powers might suggest, for example, beginning a war against Iran with the potential to kill thousands, including pregnant mothers and small children.

Or decreasing funds for healthcare for American children.

Or supporting a war in Yemen leading to starvation and disease that kills still other children.

A close alliance with any political power risks being coopted by that power for its own selfish goals.

Water to a Stranger

Is it wrong to give a thirsty stranger a drink of water?

An American teacher was charged with a crime for feeding and sheltering two needy people. The teacher’s actions were similar to ones mentioned by Jesus as a sign of those who follow him (Matthew 25, New Testament). Apparently, however, these kinds of deeds are crimes if the people so helped are undocumented immigrants.

The right to secure borders should not preclude actions like dropping off water bottles to human beings dying of thirst or taking sick ones to a hospital.

Jim Wallis, of Sojourners, has said of the charged teacher (later acquitted): “He is being prosecuted for following the command of Jesus, which is to feed the hungry, refresh the thirsty and invite in the stranger.” (Quoted in “I can do no other,” Economist, June 15, 2019.)

It’s the Institutions, Stupid

That’s the title of an article by Julia Azari in Foreign Affairs (July/August 2019). The American political system, she says, has disappointed us because of a growing mismatch. The country’s political institutions no longer match political realities.

We operate under a system devised in the late eighteenth century, something of a dysfunctional dinosaur today.

Our system developed in a time when, for all practical purposes, “country” to the average American meant local or state governance. Few Americans traveled beyond the next town or read (if they were literate) anything other than the local paper.

Paulette Jiles’ novel News of the World paints a picture, even after the Civil War, of small town citizens willing to pay a fee to hear world news read to them. They knew little of the outside world, much less enjoyed our instant communication.

Today we move from San Francisco to Houston or Indianapolis to Nashville or across the country to other urban areas all the time. Some small towns and rural areas have been depopulated while cities are weighted down with massive growth. Yet we still tie our elections to the states through our constitutionally mandated electoral college.

Until we have the courage to change our system to represent the actual reality of our national concerns, Azari indicates, our government will continue to flounder.

Community in Small Acts of Grace

“ . . . confronted with the possibility of genuine community, people become fascinated, captivated, entranced. That’s because we humans know that living as isolated individuals or families is not how it’s meant to be.’”
(Brandon McGinley, “Small Acts of Grace: Building Urban Community in Pittsburgh,” Plough Quarterly, Winter 2020)

A few individuals may feel called to the path of the desert mystic. Most of us, however, are community creatures, compelled to gather in groups of one sort or another.

Some groups are decidedly unhealthy: criminal gangs, ethnic groups bent on destruction of other groups, drug cartels, and the like. If we lack the nurture of healthy groups, we may search for it in unhealthy ones.

Community in developed countries needs repair. We have substituted politics for care, group drunkenness for sharing over a meal, rants of hatred instead of listening to each other.

What’s the antidote? Probably no one answer suits the need for community among disparate individuals: introverts and extroverts, doers and thinkers, political and apolitical.

But each of us can seek out healthy group interaction. The article writer wrote of several families in Pittsburgh who moved into the same community, voluntarily, to be close to each other. It’s not a communal type of living, but rather for them “a rebirth of community-based Christian witness for decades and generations to come.”

They comfort when a an expectant mother suffers a miscarriage. They care for each others’ children. They share smaller gifts: walking to each other’s house for cookouts or birthday celebrations, or a game of cards. In the author’s words, they are “simply living as genuine friends.”

Welfare Versus Opportunity

My son benefitted from the educational benefits given to veterans. He served a few years in the U.S. army, then received help with his tuition after he entered college. The vocation he now follows is possible because of that aid.

After World War II, millions of veterans took advantage of the “G.I. Bill of Rights” to receive aid for education and vocational training. That generation spurred the economic growth and unprecedented prosperity of the United States in the years following.

Welfare programs to meet basic needs are a part of any humane society. However, we would do well to give special attention to programs that enable ordinary people to find meaningful, rewarding work.

Ann Gaylia O'Barr

Culture and World Events from a Christian Perspective