Posted by Helen on: 02.19.2008 /
Jim Wallis is in Chicago for a couple of days, talking about his book The Great Awakening at bookstores and churches. (He’s on a national tour - here’s his schedule)
I went to hear him last night at Borders in Oak Park. He spoke for half an hour, took questions for half an hour, then signed books. I took a tiny notebook and took notes - now I wish I’d taken my laptop and not worried whether it would look stupid if I was there taking notes on it. Some other people were taking notes too (I didn’t see any laptops).
They had to put extra chairs out - I think there were about 60 maybe - and people were still standing at the back.
Here are some things he said (somewhat paraphrased and summarized):
Here’s some good news: the dominance of the Religious Right is over [at this there was an enthusiastic response from the listeners]
When politics fails to resolve the biggest moral issues of our time, social movements will rise up to address them.
This has happened in the past to address issues of slavery, women’s suffrage, child labor laws and civil rights. (We call these Great Awakenings and the book looks at them)
There’s never been a successful social reform movement without involvement of people of faith. But it’s never just them - they have no monopoly on morality.
Before a protest march all kinds of Christians and also Jewish people and secular people gathered together in a church - they needed spiritual preparation.
There’s a group on the West Coast called “Spiritual but not religious”.
The two big hungers today are for spirituality and social justice. The world and the new generation are waiting for these two things to be connected.
The election scene is different in 2008 from 2004 because of 2 shifts:
In 2004 people had bumper stickers saying GOP=God’s Own Party. Sojourners interviewed the three democratic front runners recently. You shouldn’t have to be religious to be President of the US - but these three are. Barack and Hillary have held faith forums and Barack had a gospel concert tour. Religion is in play in both parties this time around.
Cizik is focused on addressing global warming. Lynn Hybels said Bono awakened her to the plight of the poor overseas and that’s changing Willow Creek. Joel Hunter said Christians should care about children after they’re born as well as before. That led to him being asked to resign from leading the Christian Coalition.
The Religious Right is being replaced by Jesus - that’s progress! [Another audience cheer]
The altar call was first invented to sign people up to the anti-slavery cause.
There’s a lot of ‘baggage’ associated with the term ‘Evangelical Christian’. The book UnChristian shows how unChristian people perceive Christians to be - judgmental, etc. Maybe this book can be part of rebranding what it means to be Christian.
Jon Stewart asked if I wanted to form a Religious Left. No, the country doesn’t want something else like the Religious Right but on the Left. Instead they want a moral center. Instead of going Right or Left we need to go deeper.
The ‘common good’ is a concept in other religions as well as Christianity. Jewish people talk of Shalom. It’s also represented in Islam and in secular constitutional democratic ideas.
Talking with people who have different beliefs from you is frisky and leads to good conversations.
Politicians ask, are you better off? That’s the wrong question. We need to ask, are we better off? Because that’s what caring about the common good entails.
At the State of the Union address the politicians outprocess Episcopalians. They seem to think they are the center of attention. However, history suggests grass roots social movements that change politics more than politicians.
We have a big task - for example there are three pharmaceutical lobbyists per member of congress.
Sometimes the issues seem overwhelming - like mountains we can’t climb. That’s why we need faith. Jesus said with faith we can move mountains. Social movements do that.
There are 3 billion people who live on $2 a day. Movements with a spiritual engine can bring change.
We must make commitments in order for change to happen:
As well as pulling people out of the river we need to go upstream and see who is throwing them in [I missed who Jim attributed this to - I've heard Brian McLaren say it too]
It starts with grass roots movements. I’ve never seen so much opportunity. This afternoon I met with some very conservative Evangelical Christians. I was surprised they wanted to meet with me and even more surprised at what they had to say [I would have loved to hear more about that - who were they? What did they say? But he didn't elaborate]
People need to bet their lives on change. In South Africa 14 year olds were asked if they were willing to do whatever it takes to make the world a better place for their children and they said yes.
But, can we really have hope?
The big spiritual choice we have to make is between hope and cynicism. Cynics are realists. They are against the bad stuff but don’t think they can change it. Often they are people who have tried, got disillusioned and retreated into cynicism. Cynicism is actually a buffer against commitment.
Hope is a decision.
Hebrews says faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I like to say “hope is believing in spite of evidence and waiting for the evidence to change“.
Religion is never called ‘revival’ until it has changed society.
Questions and answers:
Someone asked if Jesus didn’t get involved in politics is it right for Christians to do so?
Jim: The Kingdom of God changes everything - personally, spiritually, economically, politically. Jesus made political choices - but not those of any of the people around him.
Someone asked if, in interfaith dialog, Jim ever felt he couldn’t go a certain direction because of his personal religious beliefs.
Jim: I never feel threatened by what other people believe. Nor is it a matter of ‘watering down’ what I believe.
One of my friends says “You be the best Christian you can be and I’ll be the best Muslim I can be”.
I was in a protest about legislation concerning the poor once, along with others including Tony Campolo and Michael Lerner (who is Jewish). We were arrested. In jail Tony and Michael began to have a serious discussion about Christology - who Jesus is. I think that’s the way to discuss theology - join together in social justice, get arrested and then talk about it in jail.
Other comments from Jim:
Working with the crypts and bloods prepared me well for meetings with Christians from different denominations.
I quit church as a teenager when I asked about racism and they told me “that’s a political issue, not a church one”.
The struggle for justice without being rooted in spiritual soil becomes narcissism and leads to anger and violence.
My thoughts:
I have heard Jim Wallis a little on the radio and felt that his requirement of spirituality excluded me somewhat. However, hearing him yesterday I could tell that in practice he is very respectful of people who don’t share his faith (or any faith). There was nothing he said which indicates he’s other than delighted to have people who believe differently from him participate in grass-roots social justice movements.
He strikes me as practice-based more than belief-based - which is what Off The Map is, and what I like a lot.
Some of what he said reminded me of what Brian McLaren talks about Everything Must Change. They may be writing their own books and interacting in not exactly the same circles, but there’s a big overlap in the change they’d like to encourage. And probably in their audiences too.
Both of them talk about faith similarly - what seems to be key is that faith means believing we can make a difference, and that needs to be accompanied with a personal commitment to work at bringing about change. For each of them, Jesus is the source of their faith - but they don’t make that type of faith a litmus test. My sense is that they would be happy to join with anyone who has faith they can make a difference - they wouldn’t feel they have to push the issue: “But do you have right beliefs, like me?” They would be happy to leave that up to God and delighted that people with other religious beliefs or no beliefs want to join their social justice movement.
I think it’s fascinating how some Christians use Jesus’ statement “I never knew you!” as evidence he will turn away everyone with ‘wrong beliefs’ no matter how they lived their lives. Think about someone who isn’t a Christian who has been involved alongside Christians in social activism. The Christians know perfectly well what that person did - they worked together for much of their lives. How are those Christians going to feel if Jesus says “No, sorry, he/she can’t come into the gates of heaven - wrong beliefs!” There will be a huge outcry from the Christians, because Jesus is supposed to be just - and that decision would be anything but just.
Anyway so it wasn’t all the words Jim spoke which showed me he has a deep inherent respect for people who don’t share his faith, but rather his evident delight when Menachim asked him a question and revealed “I’m a rabbi”. I am much more swayed by watching the way a person responds to others and treats them than I am by what they say in their talks.
So…I liked Jim Wallis. I hope his book and his involvement help bring about positive change.
Comment by: kathyescobar
1 02/19/08 7:44 AM | Comment Link |hey helen thanks for sharing this. he will be in denver early march and some of us from the refuge are going together for sure. i was looking forward to it, but now you made me want to invite a few others, too!
Comment by: Helen
2 02/19/08 11:39 AM | Comment Link |You’re welcome, Kathy. I think you’ll enjoy hearing Jim Wallis in March.
Comment by: karen
3 02/19/08 3:32 PM | Comment Link |Thanks, Helen. You are really wonderful to put so much time and effort into attending these events and reporting on them!
I like Jim Wallis, I like a lot of what he has to say - and I also disagree with a fair amount.
To make just a couple of points:
I fervently wish this to be true, but I am also concerned that certain aspects of the media and the “intelligentsia” (for lack of a better term) is very prematurely writing off the influence of the RR. I don’t think we can afford to do that, because when they are out of the spotlight they get up to all kinds of mischief and troublemaking.
I’ll wait and see what happens in this election and the next couple elections before I really buy the idea that they’re losing much of their power.
Or maybe the church was the easiest and most convenient place to do announcements and gather? I doubt that the secular people needed “spiritual preparation” to do a protest march, though they may have needed information, support and encouragement.
Comment by: Mike Clawson
4 02/20/08 11:22 AM | Comment Link |Depends on what you mean by “spiritual” Karen. I would say that “support and encouragement” is “spiritual preparation”.
Comment by: Helen
5 02/20/08 1:09 PM | Comment Link |Karen, I think Jim probably meant ’spiritual preparation’ in the same sense as Mike Clawson does.
I’ve been realizing lately that I tend to react quite negatively to the word ’spiritual’ because of how it was used in the circles I used to move in - yet many Christians don’t use it in the exclusionary way I’m used to. I’m still adjusting to this. Anyway I sent an article to the Virtual Treehouse which ties into that…if Beth posts it I’ll post a link to it from here.
Comment by: karen
6 02/20/08 3:55 PM | Comment Link |Well, when he links “church” with “spiritual preparation” it sounds to me like he’s assuming they all needed a supernatural boost. If that’s not what he meant, than I stand corrected.
Comment by: Helen
7 02/20/08 6:30 PM | Comment Link |Karen, it’s really hard to know what Jim Wallis meant since he didn’t elaborate - I wondered about it too. (Maybe he goes into more detail in the book)
It was his demeanor in general and the rest of what he said that would lead me to think he probably meant something like Mike C meant.
Comment by: Mike Clawson
8 02/20/08 10:18 PM | Comment Link |Perhaps he believes that they all receive a “supernatural boost”, even if some don’t recognize it as such. Personally I don’t think someone has to necessarily believe in God to be affected by her. IMHO, God is at work whether we recognize it or not - and that might especially be true when people of any belief are engaged in acts of justice and compassion.
Comment by: karen
9 02/21/08 11:51 AM | Comment Link |Yes, that’s how I took it, and that’s similar to things I’ve heard from him before.
Certainly it’s his prerogative to believe that everyone gets a supernatural boost from being in church (or whatever). But if I were participating in the march, I’d feel rather condescended to if I were told I needed that boost or was getting one by proxy whether I recognized it or not.
At best I might feel amused; at worst rather disrespected.
Comment by: Helen
10 02/21/08 1:18 PM | Comment Link |Karen, I’ve been thinking about this and thinking I’d probably feel the way Christians would feel if atheists said “Whether we recognize it or not, nothing ’spiritual’ is going on here because there are no gods out there watching over us or helping us”.
It’s up to people what they believe but I don’t think it’s the best relational move to push these ‘whether we recognize it or not’ beliefs in a mixed group.
Comment by: karen
11 02/21/08 6:57 PM | Comment Link |I agree, Helen.
It’d be like having a mixed group gather at a Hindu temple and having the leader say that he was glad everyone got a needed blessing from Krishna, even though the Christians and Jews and agnostics in the group didn’t “recognize” the mighty hand of Krishna at work. I’d imagine those folks might feel a little uncomfortable (at best) with that characterization.
Comment by: Helen
12 02/21/08 8:33 PM | Comment Link |Thanks Karen - great analogy.
Comment by: R.M. Schultz
13 02/22/08 1:48 AM | Comment Link |I saw Jim Wallis on Tuesday at Forth Presbyterian Church and I was much less than impressed. I found him to be full of chestunuts and bromides like: “We need to find common ground by going to higher ground.” One the one hand, how can you disagree with that, but on the other, what the hell does it mean?
So, when it came time for questions, I asked him: “I’ve read your book, I’ve heard you speak, and I still feel that I don’t know what your program is. What measures, exactly, do you favor?” He then offered these issues that he wanted to see addressed:
1] Abortion is a divisive issue with people of faith on both sides of the issue, but we can all agree that it would be a good thing to decrease the number of abortions. So he favors better access to birth control, easier adoptions, more support for single mothers.
2] The British government has vowed to reduce poverty by 50% over the next ten years. We should do that.
There he is, ladies and gentlemen, Jim Wallis on the record trying to bridge the gap between right and left and lead us up to higher ground. Is this really a new path, or just more Bourgeois Liberalism? Let’s see …
Abortion: Okay, reducing abortion is a laudable goal, one that just about everyone would sign on to. But these measures: aren’t they all liberal measures? Where are the conservative measures like parental consent laws, bans on late-term abortion, or rigorous enforcement of statutory rape laws (as a high percentage of teenage pregnancies are caused by older men)? And, aren’t all of these measures like pushing on a string? Aren’t they all let’s do this and then hope that people don’t have abortions?
Poverty: Yeah, poverty’s bad and, hey, I’m against it. But so is welfare. Wallis isn’t very clear here and that makes me suspect that what he’s calling for is more government hand-outs (like that aforementioned “support for single mothers”). Being working class myself, I favor full employment as a cure for poverty. That’s right: government public works and make-work programs. I think this is much more in line with the Biblical injunction “if any man will not work, neither let him eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10) than doling our way out of poverty.
To conclude: I have always found that whereas conservatives are blind to issues of social justice, liberals are blind to issues of personal sin. Poverty, for instance, is caused both by an unfair economic system that exploits the working classes and personal irresponsibility. Conservatives never acknowledge that the system is stacked against the worker, while liberals never admit that even in a perfect world numbers of people are simply shiftless and don’t deserve to be prosperous.
Which pattern does Jim Wallis fit?
I think it’s clear. Far from advocating a third way “above right and left,” Jim Wallis is simply a bourgeois liberal of the old school who has dressed up the same old tired nostrums in Christian garb.
Comment by: Helen
14 02/22/08 8:17 AM | Comment Link |Thanks for dropping by and commenting, RM Schultz.
I don’t know enough about politics to respond in an informed way.
Rather than ignoring personal sin my sense about Jim Wallis was that he advocated we start by addressing our own sin (of failing to get involved in addressing injustice and other pressing issues). Which as I recall was Jesus’ advice too.
Comment by: David H
15 02/22/08 6:38 PM | Comment Link |While facts appear to support this, the issue of enforcement of pertinent laws has quite a bit to do with reporting of the crime Perhaps more pertinent to this discussion is the association between teen pregnancy and poverty. Many studies note that while the age of first sexual activity in the US dropped dramatically for white males and females during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, the highest rate of teen pregnancies today remain among poor, under-educated minorities. Many experts insist there is a direct correlation between poverty and teen pregnancy.
Maybe that would work. Now all we have to do is get our government to give it a try. However, the closest we ever came was FDR’s New Deal. Most conservatives these days consider that a political sin.
So what do we do in the meantime? Advocate programs that fulfill the biblical admonition that there should be no poor in the land? Or should we simply fall back on that other nostrum: Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
Maybe we should just stick with the old chicken and egg arguments. What comes first, a just society or people who deserve to live in a just society?
I don’t agree with everything that Wallis says or advocates. But I do find him far more Christ-like in his concerns then the vast majority of politicians out there and, perhaps more importantly, many of the Christian leaders (James Dobson as one example) who are attempting to mix faith and politics.
Comment by: R.M. Schultz
16 02/22/08 9:00 PM | Comment Link |I really don’t see how “failing to get involved in addressing injustice and other pressing issues” are personal sins in that way that greed, envy, consumerism, or gluttony are. As far as I can tell, Jim Wallis never really seems to address the issues of personal salvation, just as I never seem to hear James Dobson address the idea of social justice.
As an example, I just saw this by Jim Wallis on the Huffington Post:
Now, is there anything easier to do than this? How tough can it be for me to “repent” of something that I have been against from the beginning, had no part in accomplishing, and hasn’t benefited me in the least? Gosh - it must be fun to wallow in guilt for something that you’re not responsible for. All of the histrionic release of repentance without the lingering sadness of actually having done something bad.
On second thought - I have done a few things over that last year that really are my fault, that really do need reparation, and might just be standing between me and reconciliation with Jesus. I think I’ll repent of that instead.
Look, I’m pretty hard left. My program would be one of socialized medicine, full employment, and an end to imperialistic adventuring. How left is that?
But I’m also a Christian, a Catholic to be exact, who attends mass each week at a Latin Mass Parish. (How conservative is that?) And when my fellow parishioners hear me talk about politics, they ask: “What about abortion?”
I tell them that I’m against abortion, but that 2/3 of the American public thinks abortion should be legal, and you can’t get buck that big a majority. I don’t dodge the issue with a lot of claptrap about “abortion reduction,” I just acknowledge that the situation is hopeless and urge people to vote on issues where they can make a difference.
And when my fellow parishioners ask: “What about gay marriage?”
I tell them that I’m opposed to it, not just because it goes against Christian morals, but because government support should be restricted to actual families with children, not just any two people who decide to live together. I don’t try to trivialize the issue by pretending that Jesus had little or nothing to say about sexual morality, or to shift the topic to a discussion of poverty. I just acknowledge flat-out that most of the candidates who are right on social justice and the war are simply dead-wrong about gay marriage and that I’m just going to have to hold my nose when I vote.
In the short term, yes, that’s true. Women who have job prospects, educational opportunities, and are in general well brought up don’t become pregnant teens.
But the long-term trend is much more about the decline of Christian morality in our culture. Birth control, “comprehensive sexual education,” and abortion were all sold to us as remedies for “unplanned” pregnancies and unwed motherhood, yet they have largely had the opposite effect. Bastardy rates in 1960, before these trends took root, were about 6%, now they are at 37%. This is a dreadful social trend, one that I am at quite a loss about how to reverse.
Thank you for providing this forum. It’s nice to be able to express my opinions on this subject and my friends are all either communists (who despair of my religiosity) or Latin Mass Catholics (who despair of my even listening to someone so liberal as Jim Wallis) and neither of them would give me any kind of feed-back that would cause me to think.
BTW - my friends call me Dutch.
Comment by: Pete S.
17 02/22/08 9:26 PM | Comment Link |R.M. Schultz:
You say that you are a hard left Catholic. That makes me think of the Catholic Worker movement. Are you familiar with it?
I have greatly enjoyed reading Jim Wallis for many years, and as far as I can tell, he’s an honorable man. He is a Christian pastor, so he obviously will mention spirituality, and say that the Church should be a part of the solution to the world’s ills and problems. He is not supportive of the tactics or spirit of the Religious Right. But he does not discount spirituality that is based in a radical identification with Jesus of Nazareth: healer, deliverer, compassionate shepherd, and the Lord of life.
Comment by: David H
18 02/23/08 12:16 AM | Comment Link |Is it possible that the supposed decline in Christian morality has something to do with what can only be called a falseness from those who push it the hardest? They quote Jesus in saying: “Love your neighbor,” then condemn those who don’t march outside abortion clinics. They say: “Do good to those who hate you,” then advocate preemptive strikes, self-serving economic policies, and character assassination towards anyone they deem to oppose them. They say God is omnipotent and then advocate a military that can dominate the world, weapons that can destroy everything, extraordinary surveillance so we can discover who to distrust, and torture so they will be forced to talk to us.
Maybe the decline in Christian morality is because so many recognize the loudest voices on that topic to be liars. And hateful liars at that. Maybe Jesus did have moral standards he believed should be practiced by others, but he didn’t begin with them. Moreover, he seemed convinced it was better to die for what he believed than to kill for it. A lesson that seems lost on so many nominally Christian leaders from this country.
Perhaps Christian morality would regain some traction in this country if it was practiced and preached by people who lived Christ’s love rather than continually demanding God’s judgment.
Having grown up surrounded by Christians I am convinced that American morality is not “declining” despite the morality I was taught but because that morality, in one sense, has become what it is all about. But the bigger-picture morality, the one Jesus outlined in the Beatitudes, is ignored, denigrated or consigned to some hereafter where God will have put an end to all of our enemies so that we don’t have to anymore.
Maybe if Christians acted more like Jesus and talked less like “God” the issue of whether others met our moral standards — whether those involved 10 commandments or only 2 — wouldn’t be so pressing.
If there is a decline of morality in this country, in this world, it is not the problem. It is merely a symptom. The sickness, if you believe Jesus, is a lack of love. People don’t love themselves and/or they don’t love their neighbors, so they certainly can’t love God. And Christians shouldn’t be blaming everyone else for that. If you believe Jesus, that is what we — his followers — should be showing and teaching to everyone else.
That is also where I probably diverge most significantly from Mr. Wallis. I don’t believe there are political solutions to the problems in the world. Politics can launch a civil rights movement (that is useful, no doubt) but it can’t make an Alabama redneck (my dad’s kin) love his black neighbor. But I think imposed morality that focuses on sexual practices is at least as unlikely as politics to provide any useful answers or policies.
Here is a long-term solution for the ills of the world. I will love my neighbor as myself for all my life without expecting them to do anything to deserve that or that it would change them in any way. I will be willing to sacrifice anything in doing that, even my own life. If I can do that, I will have insight into the mind and heart of God and his son. I will be what my religious label would suggest, a little Christ. Then my neighbor might actually welcome my thoughts on their morality.
Sorry for the diatribe, but the moral decline of America is something I have heard my whole life laid at the feet of unbelievers, liberals and other wrong-thinking or un-Godly folk. If there is such a thing and it is now a “hopeless” landslide, then those “leaders” who have claimed the highest moral ground need to ask themselves why fewer and fewer are following them there.
Comment by: Helen
19 02/23/08 10:00 AM | Comment Link |RM Schultz/”Dutch” thanks for the response.
Where did Jesus ever speak against gay marriage or even come close to addressing the issues involved? As I recall, Jesus’ comments about sexual morality focused on the immorality of adultery i.e. unfaithfulness in marriage. Am I forgetting something he said? What words of Jesus can you point to which indicate he would be against two people of the same gender making a commitment to be faithful to each other?
I don’t have time to look for where Jesus’s words relate to issues of poverty, except here’s one where Jesus directly denounced people who take advantage of power to perpetuate inequitable distribution of resources (Matthew 18:23-34). One reference already means he’s focused on it more than he focused on issues relating to gay marriage - and I think there may be others if I had time to look. In general the Bible says a lot about taking care of the poor.
Comment by: R.M. Schultz
20 02/23/08 1:55 PM | Comment Link |Very much so. I have a number of Worker friends, subscribe to the newspaper, and think that the canonization of Dorothy Day is long overdue.
I think it’s just foolishness to pretend that there is not a moral crisis in the entire Western world that began in the 1960’s. One look at the content of films from 1940 vs. today would instantly indicate a complete change of zeitgeist. There is statistical confirmation of this as well in the rates of bastardy, child abuse, sexual assault, divorce and abandonment, and venereal infection, all of which have gone up dramatically in my lifetime.
The point that David H. seems to be making is that social conservatives frequently ignore Jesus’ message of forgiveness and that is quite true. But it is equally true that liberals usually ignore Jesus’ call to repentance. That is to say that just because Jesus objected to stoning the woman caught in adultery this didn’t mean he approved of her sin.
Well, I guess he didn’t. But of course you and I both know that Paul was pretty explicit in condemning sexual consumerism of all sorts [try Romans 1:26-27 and Corinthians 1:6]. Until the Seventh Lambeth Conference of 1930, no Christian denomination (except the most wildly heretical Gnostics and Albigensians) accepted any form of sexual consumerism as being valid. Sexual consumerism was rejected by nineteen hundred years of Christian tradition and to put that into question now requires, I think, some kind of positive confirmation, not just the argument from a vacuum that Jesus didn’t condemn one or two of these things explicitly.
Well, I guess I can’t, but neither can I see Jesus accepting sexual consumerism any more than he accepted material consumerism.
Also, much overlooked, is the cost to society of allowing gay marriage. The whole point of state benefits to married couples is that they are generating and caring for the children that are the future of society. I am no more in favor of state subsidy for barren homosexual unions than I am for barren heterosexual unions.
Yes, absolutely, and I will behave that way at the ballot box. Social justice is obviously the proper sphere of government, not regulating the morality of the citizens.
Comment by: karen
21 02/23/08 4:35 PM | Comment Link |Oh, c’mon. Films used to be heavily censored and therefore hampered from reflecting what was going on in real life, no? What has changed is not the real world, but a cinematic dedication to producing films that reflect reality, and a public grown up enough today to accept that, rather than cling to the childish fantasies of the ’40s where soldiers never cursed and married people slept in separate twin beds.
“Bastardy”? That’s an outdated and, frankly, offensive term, Dutch. It puts an onus of shame on a child whose circumstances of birth are no fault of his/her own.
But what’s really happening here? Was there really no single motherhood back in the great old days, or were women shamed into silence and sent away to homes where their “sin” was hushed up and their babies quickly and quietly adopted, never to have a chance at discovering their biological heritage?
Was there no child abuse in the marvelous Catholic church before the last 10 or 15 years, when the unfair stigma of being a child sex abuse victim was finally, finally lifted (thanks to our modern zeitgeist that permits more openness about sexual conversation) and men and women started streaming out of the woodwork to talk about what really happened when Father Joe took them back into his room? Sorry, but child abuse has been going on forever and ever. The only way to stop it is NOT by hushing it up but by bringing it out, talking about it and punishing not only the perpetrators but also their “spiritual superiors” who facilitated their crimes.
Reporting of things like abuse, pregnancy and veneral disease has gone up over all of our lifetimes, absolutely. But is it really due to our loose morals, or are the statistics finally being reported widely and fairly instead of being whispered about and hidden?
And why do you call homosexuals who want to commit to loving relationships “sexual consumerism”? Where’s the material transaction there?
Comment by: David H
22 02/23/08 9:55 PM | Comment Link |Let’s look first at the concept of a moral crisis that began in the 1960s. Prior to then black people were segregated in large sections of this country. In those sections it was common place to see them as less than human. Black men could be lynched for looking at a white woman and, if the perpetrators of that crime were caught they were often acquitted when tried. Likewise women were largely expected to remain with abusive husbands, child abuse went virtually unreported, and divorce was so stigmatized by “Christian” society that many women would endure almost any indignity to avoid such an outcome. Perhaps we should blame the Civil Rights movement for the moral collapse of western society. Or maybe it is just another symptom going hand-in-hand with things like accepting gay people as normal human beings.
A century before the 1960s slavery was accepted in most of this nation, prostitution was a common vocation for single women in frontier areas (because they were deemed unsuited for any other kind of work), and you could sell the scalp taken from an Indian woman or child for more than some animal pelts.
King Solomon wrote that there is nothing new under the sun. All “sins,” if that is the word we want to use for these things, are old. In the time of Paul there were cities with temples dedicated to prostitution and homosexuality. Hence his reference to some of those practices in his letters. Heck, in the days of Solomon himself here were nations that worshiped deities that demanded parents sacrifice their children in ceremonial fire. How’s that for enlightened. Show me a time in human history when people weren’t competing to maintain standards of depravity and I’ll show you a time when religious leaders of that day censored history.
I’m not trying to say that the woman caught in adultery wasn’t doing anything wrong, I’m just tried of hearing the “saved” shouting: stone her. If we want to talk about sexual consumerism, then let’s define it in the fashion that Jesus would have. Anyone who lusts after another isn’t pure and holy even though their activity doesn’t get anyone knocked up or transmit any social diseases.
There is no moral high ground. All bad things are the same, none are new, and everyone is doing them. This world is as it ever was, just with a few more people. So, yes, if Jesus were around today he would probably still be talking about repentance — just as he was then. And he would probably still be telling the moralists of this world to stop pointing at the “sins” of everyone else and focus on their own. Likewise, he would probably spend far more time healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and showing love to those in need than campaigning for laws and constitutional amendments to outlaw immoral practices.
I’m tired of hearing from the holier-than-thous who want to recast the past as a purer age, so they can advocate turning back the clock rather than embracing people as they are here and now. I grew up hearing that from my father, who stood behind his pulpit and decried the activities of all the hell-bound perverts in the world. He ranted about the end-times and the fraying social structure of this country that could only be shored up with hard laws and harder attitudes toward all he deemed sinful. But he had a dungeon in his moral castle where he tortured his children and raped others. (Obviously he wasn’t a Catholic priest, he was a Southern Baptist minister.) The point is that I my father is not an anomaly, he is just an allegory of sorts. He is the lie that has always lurked inside religion, just lived out in the worst possible way.
By the way, my dad began his life’s work of abusing children in the early 1950s. So he was either ahead of his time or he makes a mockery of the argument that things were better back then.
Comment by: R.M. Schultz
23 02/23/08 10:04 PM | Comment Link |Do you really think it’s better that Hollywood no longer practices self-censorship and puts out zombie films, slasher films, and “realistic” films like Pulp Fiction and Fight Club? Do you think that films like Dead End, The Best Years of Our Lives, or Sunset Boulevard were “immature?”
I do not hesitate to show my kids any film made before 1960, even ones targeted at adult audiences, and they are much better for it. Now we have “adult” films that are wholly adolescent in their fascination with sex and violence, and truly inane films for children.
My point, I think, stands. Back in 1940 the American public would not have stood for a broadcast television show like Family Guy, and I think we were a better country for it.
Fair enough. I got the term from doing historical research on changing sexual mores. Among historians they regularly refer to the “bastard rate,” one of the most reliable statistic we have since it was maintained in parish records.
You are absolutely right that the term “bastard” unfairly stigmatizes the child when, obviously, it is the parents who are being irresponsible.
Again, birth certificates are legal records and thus pretty reliable. Rates of unwed motherhood were reliably under 10% before 1960 and they have skyrocketed since. And, yes, those children were usually adopted. And this was probably for the best since every statistical indicator shows that children do best in stable, two parent homes.
Hey, cheap shot at my being Catholic! Rates of abuse are higher among Protestant ministers, ya know!
The pattern of abuse in the Catholic Church emerges in the 1970’s, exactly when there was “more openness about sexual conversation.” And rates of abuse in the general population of children has been going up, as demonstrated by rates of venereal infection among children. Doctors have been required to compile these figures in most states since the 1930’s and so they represent a pretty good measure of a general trend. Of course, venereal infection can be hidden by the simple expedient of not going to the doctor ever, but then it shows up years later as sterility (in the case of gonorrhea) or tertiary syphilis, neither of which can be easily hidden.
What do you call an activity whose sole purpose is self-gratification? Heterosexual sex at least has the possibility of generating and unifying a family; once this possibility is out of play then there is no higher purpose other than mutual pleasure. Now, we live in a free country and if that’s the way someone wants to spend their lives, I have no objection. But to equate an actual family with two people who just like sleeping with each other, and to extend the same social benefits to this effete union can have no moral or practical justification.
Having answered you objections, I feel entitled to ask: what sort of moral climate do you favor? Do you think that consumerism (whether sexual or material) should be glorified? Do you think that intact families are no better than “single parents?” Do you think that the kind of movie Hollywood produces now improves our morals or merely normalizes obscenity and violence? Are women better off now that pornography is widely accepted or are they increasingly objectified by men? Was society better off when the vast majority of people accepted a generally Christian standard of morality, or are we better off now with our wide disagreements over what is good and right?
Comment by: cipher
24 02/24/08 2:23 PM | Comment Link |I also have misgivings about Wallis & company, but for different reasons. Although I admire him for his emphasis on social issues, I have never, in the ten years or so that I have been aware of him, heard him make a definitive statement about the “salvation” of non-believers. His friend Tony Campolo goes so far as to say, “We don’t know”, which I find unsatisfactory - but at least he addresses it. I’ve never heard Jim talk about it one way or the other.
I am a 51 year old secular Jew, and I have spent my entire life listening to evangelicals tell me that I’m going to hell for not believing a set of doctrines that I seem to be inherently incapable of believing, and find utterly appalling, in any case. I’m at a point at which the doctrine of salvific exclusivism has become the line of demarcation for me - if you think I’m going to hell, tell me up front, because I don’t want to waste my time or yours. And, if you do think so, I’m not at all interested in “common ground”. After all these years, I have yet to hear Wallis declare himself. And Dr. Campolo’s fall-back position of “we don’t know” simply isn’t good enough.
Also, I agree with Karen that the idea of the end of the dominance of the Christian Right is premature and reflective of wishful thinking. I don’t see any evidence for it; on the contrary, as far as I can see, they’re still in full throttle: the push for the teaching of creationism in the public schools, aggressive evangelism in the military, Christian universities graduating scores of lawyers each year who subsequently become involved in their own brand of “judicial activism”, and, of course, the fact that Huckabee has taken virtually the entire South.
Finally, Helen, I must disagree with you when you say:
How are those Christians going to feel if Jesus says “No, sorry, he/she can’t come into the gates of heaven - wrong beliefs!” There will be a huge outcry from the Christians, because Jesus is supposed to be just - and that decision would be anything but just.
It reminds me of something I heard Brian McLaren say recently - that he thinks Christians don’t really think about the consequences of their beliefs. In his opinion, if evangelicals really pictured, in their minds, their unsaved relatives, friends and acquaintances being thrown into hell on the day of judgment, they’d either go insane or end up hating God. I think that this is fantastically generous toward them, and I couldn’t disagree more. I’m quite convinced that the idea of the people they dislike being tormented forever is a huge part of the attraction for them. I think it’s a fantasy that makes them feel empowered. At best, I think they’d be perfectly content to take a laissez-faire stance. In fact, in their world view (substitutionary atonement, etc.), the damning of non-believers would be the ultimate act of justice and fairness.
This is what has finally caused me to give up on humanity. I can see no way in which beings who are utterly willing to abandon billions of their human siblings for all of eternity can solve their problems, and it is this that has convinced me, far more than any other social phenomenon or moral evil, that humanity is a terminal species, and that we probably haven’t got much time left. And I’m afraid that nothing Wallis and co. have said so far has dissuaded me.
Comment by: Helen
25 02/24/08 4:32 PM | Comment Link |cipher, thanks for your comment.
It seems to me you’re giving up on humanity based on a belief about humans which doesn’t fit any humans I know. The people I know don’t ‘dislike’ billions of other people, nor do they want them to suffer now or after death. People who have been through something awful like having a loved one murdered, sometimes wish to see the murderer suffer. But that’s just one person, not billions. And it’s quite clear why they feel so strongly about that one. People don’t tend to have a ‘generalized dislike of humanity’.
I think Brian is right.
Comment by: cipher
26 02/24/08 4:38 PM | Comment Link |I didn’t say “generalized dislike of humanity”. That’s somewhat different. However, I do think that evangelical theology is based upon a dislike of oneself, projected outward.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. I’m convinced that millions of conservative evangelicals positively relish the idea of being part of a small, exclusive “club” of the saved. The minister described in the post immediately following this one refers to this mindset:
We seem to prefer a sparsely populated heaven that proves our rightness, instead of a vastly populated one that proves God’s mercy.
Comment by: Helen
27 02/24/08 6:06 PM | Comment Link |cipher wrote:
cipher, all I can go on is my experience and that wasn’t my experience nor how my friends felt when Iwas a conservative evangelical. Were we glad we were saved? Absolutely. Were we glad there were lots of people who weren’t saved? Absolutely not.
Comment by: cipher
28 02/24/08 6:14 PM | Comment Link |Let’s say you’re correct. It doesn’t seem better in my view; in a way, it’s worse. You’re describing people who have the innate moral sense to be troubled by the prospect, but they still aren’t willing to give up the belief. This goes back to what I said earlier - it’s an utter willingness to abandon the vast majority of humanity to an indescribable fate. We have to be sacrificed, for all of eternity, so that they can have the security blanket for a few brief decades. I’m sorry; I think it’s appalling. It’s the ultimate manifestation of selfishness.
Anyway, my original point was that I’m not so terribly impressed by the Sojourners crowd. Let them rework their theology to dispense with hell, instead of this waffling, “maybe yes, maybe no” - then they’ll have my respect. Of course, I realize that my opinion is not a major concern for them!
Comment by: Helen
29 02/24/08 6:30 PM | Comment Link |I’ve dispensed with hell, anyway. I agree with you about how abhorrent the doctrine of hell is.
Comment by: cipher
30 02/24/08 6:42 PM | Comment Link |I’ve dispensed with hell, anyway. I agree with you about how abhorrent the doctrine of hell is.
Yes, I knew that about you. I’m glad of it.
Another thing - I don’t know how vehement Wallis is in his “opposition” to the conservative factions. He wants to bring them to the table; I’ve heard him say as much. He’s organized meetings (at least one, anyway) between the National Association of Evangelicals and the World Council of Churches. He describes it as being like trying to bring together the Crips and the Bloods - and, of course, everyone laughs when he says this.
The problem is that conservative evangelicals don’t really do dialogue well; with them, it tends to turn into a monologue. He wants to walk a middle path. I don’t believe it can be done. And I think he has a sentimental attachment to that subculture, in all of its variations. Ultimately, when the conservatives put their wagons in a circle, as they always do - where will he be?
Comment by: Mike Clawson
31 02/25/08 12:01 PM | Comment Link |Just speaking personally, but this wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. Why should I feel offended if atheists give their interpretation of common experiences based on their particular worldview? I already know they think this anyway, so why would I care if they expressed it?
Comment by: karen
32 02/25/08 2:47 PM | Comment Link |Yes, to the first question; no to the second. ;-) I’m not a film critic, but I’m a fan of freedom of expression and an opponent of censorship of all kinds.
I guess that’s where we disagree. Like I said, I’m not a film critic, but I think there are many marvelous, highly creative films being made today, along with many crappy ones, of course. In general, it’s my prerogative which films I want to watch or let my children watch (though they are old enough now to pretty much decide for themselves!). I’d rather exercise my own judgment than have censors decide what I can and can’t see.
Can you point to any controlled studies that show cause and effect between increased rates of child abuse and the sexual revolution of the 1960s? I have never seen such studies, but I’d be interested if you know of any.
It seems to me that child sex abuse goes on in any society where pedophiles have easy access to unprotected children in settings where reporting that abuse is discouraged. C.S. Lewis and others who went to English prep schools in the early 20th century write about a tradition of sexual encounters between male students and teachers. Clergy sex abuse has probably been going on since the Middle Ages, if not before. Until very recently, there was no “childhood” after adolescence. Once a child reached puberty s/he was considered ready for sexual activity.
It seems to me that in an open society where sexual abuse is not seen as something shameful to be hidden by the victim, there’s likely to be more reporting of abuse and better efforts to stop it. What we do in the long term to guard against entrenched pedophilia, which seems to affect a small minority of people and be very difficult - if not impossible - to control, is a bigger question.
Oh man, what a set up line! ;-)
Let’s see: A biological imperative? A perfectly natural part of being a human? Without getting too graphic here, are you suggesting that all sexual activity that doesn’t result in procreation is somehow immoral?
Well, that’s a pretty fine higher purpose, as far as I’m concerned.
I know several heterosexual couples who either cannot have children due to health issues, or have chosen not to have children. Are these couples not real families, by your definition? Are they “effete unions” that have no justification and don’t deserve the protections of law that we grant to people who reproduce?
I’m not interested in dictating morality to anyone, Dutch. I’m far more interested in how I can cope with today’s reality and help others do so than I am in cluck-clucking over whether morals have been lost or how one defines “what is good and right” in this world.
In general, I would say that I’m okay trading today’s cruder, more openly sexual society for yesteryear’s acceptance of institutionalized racism, second-class citizenship for women and ostracization of gay people.
Just as the information age gives us more access to pornography, it also gives us more access to understanding our fellow human beings and being able to engender compassion for the poor and oppressed around the world.
As David H. said, there is good and bad associated with every era. I don’t think it does any good to idealize the past based on some arbitrary concepts of morality that we pull out of our hats.
Comment by: karen
33 02/25/08 2:55 PM | Comment Link |cipher:
I wouldn’t agree with you that it’s the majority who feel this way. Most CEs worry about all the people going to hell and their efforts to convert are primarily motivated by seeing these unfortunates “saved” from damnation.
However, I do think there is a minority who take some egotistical, secret delight in being “the chosen ones” and who figure if god’s in charge, it’s his problem if a majority of people wind up in hell.
For example, last fall we visited some old friends who are fundamentalists. The talk turned to the election and specifically to Mitt Romney. Of course the subject of his Mormon religion was raised. The wife said, “Too bad they don’t have fire insurance!”
I couldn’t understand what she meant, at first. Then I realized she was, in effect, gloating over the ultimate fate of Mormons going to hell. She said this with a smirk on her face, just as my stomach was turning. I was so taken aback, I didn’t even respond.
Now, not all my fundy friends would have that attitude by any means, but I know that it exists.
Comment by: Helen
34 02/25/08 3:54 PM | Comment Link |I think it’s an unwise thing to say from a relational point of view. What can it do except risk offending the more offendable Christians present than you? Why push the point “I think your beliefs are wrong”? It seems needlessly provocative and disrespectful - or at best, insensitive - to me.
Most people would rather not have disrespectful things said to them even if they do have the choice to overlook them and not take offense.
Comment by: cipher
35 02/26/08 6:34 AM | Comment Link |Karen:
My experience leads me to believe that the mindset you’re describing is much more ubiquitous than either you or Helen realize. And, as I said in a subsequent response - even if it isn’t, to me, the mere fact of their willingness to accept it as a reality is just as bad, if not worse.
In any case, again - I didn’t mean to make this a conversation about my personal issues with evangelical Christianity. My point was that I find the Sojourners people vague on the issue that is of greatest importance to me - salvific exclusivism. I want full disclosure. After half a century of listening to this stuff, I wouldn’t trust an evangelical as far as I could throw him - and I throw like a girl!
Comment by: David H
36 02/26/08 4:51 PM | Comment Link |Wallis gets it from both sides on this issue. If he doesn’t come out clearly on the side of exclusivism then many evangelicals write him off as unsaved, apostate, unsupportable. If he doesn’t come out clearly against it, then (it would seem) others will write him off as just the same old wolf trying to hide in sheep’s clothing.
Comment by: R.M. Schultz
37 02/26/08 8:02 PM | Comment Link |Okay, true enough, but that’s just about the only real moral improvement we’ve seen, but that was largely a development of the period 1955-1965,
before the moral decline I speak of began in the late 1960’s. Most of the real gains of the Civil Rights movement had been achieved by 1965 when de jure segregation was a thing of the past, the voting rights laws were in place, and discrimination of most kinds was illegal.
That’s a very one-sided characterization of the change in women’s roles in society and I think we would do well to look at the other side of the coin before coming to any conclusions.
While careers open to talent has been a boon to bourgeois women (who can afford “quality day care”) the expectation that women ought to work outside of the home has been a catastrophe for working class women. Whereas in 1970 most wives didn’t have to work outside the home, by 1980 working class wages had eroded to the point where a decent family income could only be maintained by two income couples.
Daycare has, of course, proven to be far inferior to a mother’s care, as study after study has confirmed and undoubtedly contribute to rising rates of child neglect and abuse. No fault divorce too has proven to be a bane to children whose homes are sundered.
And, because our best-educated women are now wasting their talents on vulgar commerce, their fertility has dropped. College educated women are not reproducing their numbers while post-graduate women are, as a class, very nearly sterile. This is a disastrous demographic trend.
And, for all of the feminist “progress” of the last forty or so years, why are women less happy than they were in the 1950’s? Not only do the relevant studies show that the typical woman was happier back then, but married women of the era had a lot more sex than their “liberated” daughters of today.
So ” your point is that by 1960 things had gotten much better?
Really? You see no variation in the quality of human morals over time? Germany under Adenauer was just as bad as Germany under Hitler? Our revolution was no better than the blood-baths of the French or Russian revolutions? The Mongols in Russia were just as bad as the British in India? Christianity didn’t bring a substantial, measurable improvement in morals to the Roman Empire and to its barbarian foes as well?
That’s really the height of moral relativism.
Wow! Are you really that cynical, or are you just a sociopath?
And I’m tired of hearing from totally secular people who think that there was nothing good about this nation when it embraced a more Christian morality. Many good things about the past have been lost and we would do well to learn from what we have lost rather than to dismiss it as being old news. I know we can’t turn back the clock, I know the genie is out of the bottle, but I also know that when you’re on the wrong train, every minute takes you further from where you want to be.
I’m sorry about your father, but he does represent a statistical aberration. Reliable data confirm that rates of abuse have indeed gone up dramatically since the 1950’s. His religiosity does fit a certain pattern however, as criminals of all sorts usually try to hide their activity by portraying themselves to the world as being exactly the opposite of what they are.
As we are both well aware, we live in a free society were free expression is (supposed to be) protected by our constitution. I’m certainly not calling for censorship, but I think that my point is still valid:
America was a better country before movie producers were so blinded by the profit motive that they lost sight of their social responsibilities.
I don’t really have to, do I?
After all, it was the promise of people who pushed for sex education, contraception, and abortion that if we embraced their program that “every child would be a wanted child” and that bastardy, child abuse, and poverty would go away or at least be much ameliorated. Instead, subsequent to the introduction of these practices, each one of these social trends has gotten worse.
It seems to me that the burden of proof is upon those who still favor these failed policies.
You mean ” like in day care?
Statistically speaking, the safest place for a child to grow up is in the home of their natural father, yet over the past forty years we have put in place policies that have caused fewer and fewer children to live there.
Let’s see if we can reason here by analogy.
Eating is of course a biological imperative, you have to eat to live. People enjoy eating, and there’s nothing wrong with having a good appetite and savoring your food. But when you eat to excess, this is called gluttony, and it’s an abuse of the purpose of nutrition. (At least it used to be.)
We could say the same thing about drinking. When we drink to conviviality that’s good, but when we drink to forgetfulness, it’s called drunkenness and it’s a an abuse.
This is all pretty straightforward, isn’t it?
And, of course, there is a biological imperative to having sex because if you don’t reproduce the race will die out, and if you don’t form a close and loving relationship with your spouse then your kids will grow up in a broken home. And, like eating or drinking to excess, any time we thwart either of these mutual ends, we are abusing the very purpose of sexuality.
Now ” we live in a free society. And if you want to be a glutton, or a drunkard, or a sexual libertine, well, that’s your business. Mere sinfulness is really a private matter and the government has no business telling you how to live your life.
But, on the other hand, whereas the government has and interest in subsidizing the formation of families, it has no business subsidizing effete couples who are only together for their mutual enjoyment.
So, let me see if I understand this. Are you really saying that self-indulgence counts as a ”higher purpose?” Or, did I miss something?
Nice how you lump together two morally different examples. Whereas a couple who cannot have children are deserving of our sympathy, a couple who will not are simply shirking their duty to society. Of course, those shirking their duty have no moral claim upon society and their accepting benefits constitute an abuse of the system. The morals of this are pretty clear, but how we could effectively dis-allow this abuse is not readily clear.
BTW: “effete” is simply Latin for “infertile.”
Curious, is it not, how my comments on Jim Wallis have been addressed? My point was never that Christian morality was right or better, or that things were better in the not so distant past, but just that Jim Wallis has dressed up the essentially secular Bourgeois Liberal agenda of 1972 in Christian garb as a way of selling it. A genuine address to this point might be that Wallis’ equation of Christianity with Bourgeois Liberalism is correct, or that Wallis’ opponents on the religious right were mistaken in applying their Christian faith to politics. Instead, my critics have attacked traditional Christian morality itself, while failing to mention how this relates to Wallis at all. Would this not indicate that, as Wallis’ defenders attack me from a secular standpoint, that Wallis’ political position is itself essentially secular?
Comment by: David H
38 02/26/08 11:50 PM | Comment Link |Just to be clear: I will go with it is a mistake to apply Christian faith to politics, at least in the way those on the religious right would see that. I will likewise contend that Wallis sees himself as a balance to those on the extreme right. And finally, that Wallis isn’t “dressing up” his liberal agenda in Christian garb. I would contend that he believes — really believes — that his effort is about trying to help create a more just society. His faith enters the picture purely from a motivational perspective. Striving for justice, he would probably argue, should be a primary job of Christians. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., he probably believes Christians should be a conscience for the nation in that way.
By the way, Dutch, for someone who isn’t saying that Christian morality is right or better, you seem to draw an awful lot of your examples for the failure of American society straight from that conservative playbook. I would also hazard you haven’t spent much time living in societies outside the US, where they don’t have the luxury of discussing stuff like this because their roles are often defined exclusively be the need to survive. If women don’t work it is because they are not allowed. When they do work, it is often in the worst of jobs simply so they or their children can survive. As an aside, the rates of teen pregnancy in many of those countries is far higher than in the US. But I’m sure that is not because of poverty or ignorance, just a lack of Christian values.
You’re obviously not black.
Some of these examples would seem to argue against you’re premise that the era prior to the sexual revolution was better. But maybe I’m missing the point. Is the real issue for you that things were better in the United States and that this country is something special? And just like Rome, it was the barbarians at the gates — not the gatekeepers — that brought about the great nation’s decline. Oh, but according to you Christianity actually helped uplift the morals or those barbarians. That would make the Dark Ages, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition a statistical aberration.
I’m not sure you should or would trust my response. But from my limited viewpoint, I’m neither. I’ just a guy who has heard the same crap you are spouting since I was a child. It was a lie then, to serve a specific agenda, and it is a lie now. For my part, I try not to let how I feel about someone’s morals be what determines my response to them. I like to think Jesus pretty much dictated how I should act when he told about the good Samaritan. That may damn me for relativism or just as a friend to sinners. But if my job as a Christian is simply to act as a moral compass for everyone else, then I will gladly be a sociopath. One thing of which I am sure, there are no good excuses for leaving someone in a ditch.
After reading some of your blog, I find you frankly indecipherable. You talk about health-care for the poor, but seem to believe their lack of morals (or maybe just a national lack of morals) is what made them sick. You seem to acknowledge that there are starving people in this nation, but are divided as to whether that is because society disenfranchises the poor or that they have brought that on themselves (if a man doesn’t work, neither let him eat). You’re enlightened view allows you to write off people for being unable to care for themselves or unworthy of your concern. Maybe they just need to be properly sorry for their sinful lives, then you will help them with their bootstraps.
Perhaps you are just above it all. Forget about the offensive people (pregnant teens, gays, working women, etc.) — those people are beyond hope. I’ll solve all the problems that can be solved at the ballot box. Jesus never said: Blessed are those who vote for what they want. You know why? Cause they already have what they will get.
Good luck with what you believe, Dutch. And as the barbarian hordes overwhelm you, you will at least go down knowing that if this nation had kept women in the kitchen and Jack Valenti at the MPAA then things could have been so much better.
As a postscript on the issue of child abuse:
The Times, in 1989, noted that “18 states [now] require professionals and anyone else who knows of abuse to report it.”
A couple of other tidbits from various scholarly publications:
• In the 1890s Sigmund Freud wrote about child sexual abuse, saying he found memories of it in all of his patients. He later completely repudiated his theory, claiming reports of abuse were merely incestuous fantasies.
• It was in the mid 1960’s when Dr. Henry Kempe referred to the “battered baby syndrome” but it took many years for it to be widely accepted that parents, particularly mothers, could inflict such injuries on their children.
• Child sexual abuse was ‘re-discovered’ in the 1940s by social scientists conducting large-scale studies of sexual practices. They are known as the Kinsey studies, in which 30% of women who took part reported having had a sexual experience as a child with an adult.
• In 1956, a study by J. Landis noted that 30% of men who took part also reported having a sexual experience as a child with an adult, most typically a male.
• Child maltreatment is not a recent phenomenon, nor is it unique to certain nations and cultures.13 It appears children have always been abused and neglected.14 A number of studies of the history of child maltreatment have begun with the now familiar quote by psychohistorian Lloyd De Mause:
History seems to bear out De Mause. Evidence of infanticide (the practice of intentional killing of a child condoned by parents and society), for example, exists in much of ancient history. Infanticide had been an accepted procedure for disposing of undesirable children.16 Robert Ten Bensel notes evidence of infanticide in 7000 BC with the finding of remains of infants interred in the walls at the city of Jericho. Siculus, a Greek historian of the first century, reported the putting to death of weak, infirm and those who lacked courage. A second century Greek physician instructed midwives to examine children and dispose of the unfit. The Roman Law of Twelve Tables prohibited the raising of defective children. Infanticide, which existed as late as the 19th century in parts of Europe, was justified in two ways. First, because children were considered parental “property,” parents, as property owners, were entitled to destroy that property. Second, infancy (historically — birth to age seven) was by definition a period of time before the right to live vested.17 Illegitimacy is another historical cause of child maltreatment. Many societies outlawed illegitimacy, and illegitimate children were ostracized, abandoned and killed.18
• In 1860, French physician Ambrose Tardieu conducted a study of 32 children whom he believed died of child abuse. Tardieu’s findings described medical, psychiatric, social and demographic features of the condition of child abuse as a syndrome.
• In 1962, following a medical symposium the previous year, several physicians headed by Denver physician C. Henry Kempe, published the landmark article The Battered Child Syndrome in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Through the article, Kempe and his colleagues exposed the reality that significant numbers of parents and caretakers batter their children, even to death. The Battered Child Syndrome describes a pattern of child abuse resulting in certain clinical conditions and establishes a medical and psychiatric model of the cause of child abuse. The article marked the development of child abuse as a distinct academic subject. The work is generally regarded as one of the most significant events leading to professional and public awareness of the existence and magnitude of child abuse and neglect in the United States and throughout the world.22
Comment by: David H
39 02/27/08 1:41 AM | Comment Link |Just couldn’t let that pass.
While he is an abomination, he is not an aberration. In fact, my father is a perfect example of why some people can continue to pretend that child abuse — physical and sexual — is a relatively short-term phenomena.
While he has admitted, verbally and in writing, to abusing more than 60 children not including his own (names and dates as evidence he isn’t just self-aggrandizing). My father has no criminal record. He used 30 years as a public school teacher and a longer time as an itinerant preacher to provide access and opportunity. He was caught on several occasions and dismissed from teachings positions and pulpits. But not a single act was ever reported to the authorities by anyone. None of the schools that dismissed him even recommended against his employment at subsequent institutions.
The pervasive climate of pretense and denial not only contributed to his continued activities (nobody did anything to stop him) it also prevented him and most of his victims from getting any help. Hell, in some of the states where he operated, my Dad could have single-handedly multiplied the number of reported abuse cases for a year.
And while it might be comforting to believe he occurred in situ, a sort of bad seed, if you will. The reality is my father was the product of an ostensibly Christian (extremely moral Southern Baptist) family from the hills of Alabama. They didn’t have a TV and were not permitted to watch movies of any kind. But while his father was away, working as a share-cropper or long-haul trucker, stay-at-home mom sexually and physically abused her sons. Mom herself had long-term mental illness (never treated or even acknowledged, because that type of problem was also largely ignored in that day and age) and a background that probably also included sexual abuse.
What happened beginning in the 1960s was not an explosion of abuse, it was that people finally started to open their eyes to what had been happening all around. My father got away with quite a bit because no one wanted to admit that people like him even existed because they thought it would make them look bad.
I am not attempting to lessen his responsibility in any way. He is a monster who had many opportunities to make different choices. But without all the pretense and denial around him he would have done far less damage because someone would have arrested him or put him in the ground.
It is the height of willful ignorance or negligent naiveté to suggest that child abuse, phsyical and sexual, is new. Cursory research would reveal that premise for what it is.
Comment by: R.M. Schultz
40 02/27/08 2:40 AM | Comment Link |Well, I can’t argue with that, now can I?
You’ve basically taken your own experience as the norm and discounted any published statistical analysis, so there’s really no refutation I could offer that you would accept as valid. You have essentially set up a closed system where your claim is not falsifiable.
You win.
(Of course, most philosophers and scientists would maintain that an hypothesis, proposition or theory is scientific only if it is falsifiable, but don’t let that stop you!)
Just the same, let me ask two questions, if you will:
1] How does this tangent have anything to do with Jim Wallis being either a genuine Christian or just a Bourgeois Liberal?
2] Do you bring up your history of abuse in every argument, or just ones that you can’t win otherwise?
Comment by: cipher
41 02/27/08 3:25 AM | Comment Link |David H:
I agree with this, actually. And if there were an opportunity for Wallis to tell me, privately, “Listen, I’m actually more liberal than I appear to be, but I have to be careful about what I say publicly”, I’d understand. Of course, that will never happen, so I have to go with the data with which I’m presented, as well as with past experience. Evangelicals, as a group, have given me no reason to trust them, and every reason not to.
Which is not to say that I think he’s an old-fashioned exclusivist. I don’t. I just don’t know that he’s as inclusive as I’d like him to be. I do agree that he’s trying to create a more just society - but I can’t simply leave aside the issue of salvific exclusivism. The evangelicals have been torturing me with it for decades. It’s become the key issue for me. When other Jews tell me, “Why do you care if they think we’re going to hell? We don’t believe it. As long as they support Israel.”, I’m just floored. I don’t even really know how to respond any longer. For me, the issue is basic. If you think I’m going to hell, if you even accept the possiblity of it - don’t even bother trying to talk to me.
Comment by: karen
42 02/27/08 2:45 PM | Comment Link |I call foul on that one. That’s really an incredibly mean-spirited and uncalled for remark.
David H. spent the time to research and set out all kinds of stats and studies to back up his points - something you’ve completely neglected to do - and you respond with a low blow like that? You should be ashamed of yourself.
Comment by: Helen
43 02/27/08 5:25 PM | Comment Link |R.M. Schultz wrote:
Dutch, I’ve only seen David mention the abuse where it’s relevant. And he gave lots of data on comment #38 about abuse - he wasn’t just relying on his own experience.
Comment by: karen
44 02/27/08 7:17 PM | Comment Link |Their “duty” to bring children into a world where overpopulation is a serious issue and our natural resources are already strained? Their “duty” to bear children for whom they cannot care responsibly either due to financial or physical limitations? Their “duty” to pop out unwanted children whom they feel unable to care for emotionally?
That’s just patently ridiculous. I don’t know whether you’re arguing honestly, or just trolling for attention, but either way I’m done with this conversation.
Comment by: David H
45 02/27/08 8:14 PM | Comment Link |Dutch, four words to free your mind.
CHILD ABUSE BEFORE 1960
Copy that. Paste it into a Google search. Read what comes up. You will find lots of articles and official documents that say: There are no reliable statistics for child abuse prior to 1960.
As for the issue of “winning an argument.” That was not my intent. I didn’t even believe I could make you see things differently. I just have a personal rule, I must respond when aware of someone saying something patently untrue. If I don’t I am passively endorsing the wrong being spoken by that person.
Why this tangent? Read what you wrote.
As a good attorney would note, you opened the door for rebuttal by making statements for which you refused to provide any backing. At least one of them I knew to be patently false. See, besides personal knowledge on the issue, I also have some professional knowledge. I have interviewed victims and experts on the subject of child abuse. I have also written about it more than once during more than 20 years as a reporter.
How many victims of child abuse have you ever met, Dutch? How many have you ever spoken to? How many books have you read on the subject? How many experts have you interviewed that back your position? Do you have a factual basis or should we simply be swayed by the “truthiness” of what you say?
How does all this relate to the original discussion regarding Jim Wallis? Only in that your opinions on all of these other subjects should inform the regard others give your opinion on Wallis.
And BTW, my Dad would like you. He also believes the world was a better place before 1960.
Comment by: David H
46 02/27/08 8:24 PM | Comment Link |I wish I could argue against this, but I also grew up in a home and attended churches where there were, at times, almost gleeful things said about what would happen to the unsaved after death or with the second coming. As an adult I have become very troubled by the attitude I mindlessly accepted as a child. My siblings are very troubled that I no longer believe it’s all about being saved and escaping hell. More than once they have tested me to see if I am really a Christian.
That is probably apropos of nothing. I don’t know where Wallis stands on this issue.
Comment by: cipher
47 02/28/08 2:09 AM | Comment Link |This is what I’m talking about. It’s part of the process of continually and mutually reinforcing the belief system. McLaren would say that they don’t really think about what they’re saying, that they aren’t really picturing the scenario in their minds. I would disagree, and, in any case - it’s utterly appalling. I think one has to sacrifice a huge chunk of one’s humanity in order to assimilate such a belief, and the fact that hundreds of millions of people (billions, perhaps, if we factor in the Islamic fundies as well) believe it, and that many are perfectly comfortable with it, is what has caused me to give up on humanity. It’s this utter lack of compassion, this consummate obsession with one’s own eternal security and happiness at the expense of billions of other human beings, that has led me reluctantly to conclude that we cannot solve our problems.
Comment by: R.M. Schultz
48 02/28/08 4:06 PM | Comment Link |Oh? But how am I to respond? David H. has made it clear again and again that no statistics I could provide will trump his anecdotal evidence:
And, if you look at it, he’s the one that brought up sexual abuse of children:
Do you see anything about the sexual abuse of children in that list? I think not.
So what is he saying? That instead of dealing with the main theme of my comments on Jim Wallis, he is going to nit-pick on an issue that I didn’t even bring up in the first place!
So what about my claims?
As for bastardy and divorce, legal records confirm my statement and are, I think, really beyond question since they are legal states which can in no way be “under-reported.”
Of course, David H., could make the familiar liberal, and unfalisifiable, argument that child abuse, sexual assault, abandonment, and venereal infection were just as bad back in 1960 as they are now, except that because of social stigma they went largely unreported.
But the fact remains. Every statistic, whether reliable or not, shows a deterioration of the social situation since 1960. Bastardy continues to rise, as do reports of child abuse and rates of venereal infection. Though they have come down somewhat in recent years, rates of crime of all kinds, of rape, and of divorce, are all substantially higher than they were in 1960.
Of course, many anti-social behaviors that were illegal in 1960 are no longer even counted as being crimes today. Gambling, prostitution, pornography, right-turn-on-red, and abortion are, to some extent, legal today, to the demonstrable detriment of society.
Drug use too, has skyrocketed. Most people simply wink at illegal drug use nowadays, and whole categories of dangerous psychoactive drugs (e.g. Thorazine, Prozac, et. al.) are now even considered to be “therapeutic.” (Were you surprised that the crazed gunman who shot up NIU last week was on “medication?”)
Anecdotally, virtually anyone over fifty will tell you that incivility of all kinds has become pervasive in what was once a fairly polite society. I doubt that statistics are kept on things like road rage, profanity, slovenliness, or tawdry clothing, but most people are of an opinion that all of these anti-social behaviors are on much more prevalent today than in 1960.
Most liberals simply do not want to admit that with the acceptance of pre-marital sex, bastardy is bound to rise. Or that when divorce becomes socially acceptable, a sense of duty diminishes among parents. On the whole, they would say that it is a good thing that “stigma” has largely disappeared from society.
And yet, three of the few good trends that have emerged in the last twenty years are the products of changing social stigmas! Rates of drunken driving, smoking, and littering are all down ” largely because these activities now carry a social stigma!
No comment about this cheap shot?
These two statements are wrong, and wrong for the same reasons.
Rome was not brought down by the barbarians, who could never actually defeat a capably led professional Roman army in the field, but by a demographic crisis. The Romans were simply not replacing their numbers. Augustus himself was decrying the infertility of the Patricians and Equites (knights) at the beginning of the Principiate. By the time of Diocletian there was a severe manpower shortage throughout society, and barbarian federates (mercenaries) were being accepted into the army. Vast areas of the Western Empire were no longer populated or under cultivation and so whole tribes of barbarians were allowed in to settle these lands. Only in the East, where the Issurian highlands of Anatolia continued to provide a continuous stream of hardy soldiers, did the Empire survive this demographic crisis.
In the West today we are faced with exactly the same crisis. Nations that were once the very home of our civilization are collapsing. Italy, Spain, Germany, the Low Countries, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, are all reproducing at below replacement levels. Worse still, within these countries the more education a woman has, the fewer children she has, so it is the best, most valuable, classes that are being hollowed out.
My position is really pretty straightforward: I’m working class.
Since 1972 American wages have fallen by 30%, unionization has been cut in half, and industrial capacity is down by 35%.
From 1977 to 2005, family income for the top 1% of Americans went up 465% while in the same period median income rose only 22%. And that 22% is largely fraudulent anyway, since most families now have two incomes while many fewer did in 1977, so it really means 22% more income for twice as much work!
Our factories are being shut-down, our jobs are being shipped overseas, or unions are being busted, the rich are getting all manner of tax giveaways, and the costs of housing and health care are skyrocketing.
These are the issues that I want to see addressed by our politicians.
And Jim Wallis’ program of more give-aways to “the poor” is not going to solve the problems of the working-class.
My political blog may be found at:
http://torgprom.blogspot.com/