Shock and Awe of Horrible

Update: I originally wrote this on January 3. I thought I'd give this a bump up to the top of the blog where it might get some play now that it looks to have been prescient. I have had a number of people share with me a thought along the lines of , "Give Trump a chance, he intends well" sort of optimism. I find this delusional. I'll be very, very happy to be wrong, but there is every indication that we are about to go through a sort of 'shock and awe' of horrible. Trump not only professed admiration of Assad in Syria, but in particular noted his admiration for him in the context of Assad using chemical weapons on innocent civilians in his own country. Trump thinks of this as a sort of 'necessary roughness.' He not only professes admiration for Putin's treatment of the press (killed 47 journalists in Russia over the last decade or so) but has deep financial ties with Putin. Here's some reading that should give you nightmares: "The-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections" from The American Interest. The collected facts could not be more clear, the dogs of war are howling. The wise are preparing.

Let me put it another way. We are used to fighting over the contours and limits of a liberal society - the scope and nature of a social safety net and so forth. We are entering an age where the battle isn't over the contours of a liberal society but over its existence. Such things as: inalienable rights for all people, free speech, free and fair elections, freedom of press, right to free association and public gathering and so forth. Trump has attacked each of these ideas and has vowed to use violence when necessary to get his way. This is all part of the public record. We all heard and watched all of it, too. We don't have the luxury to ignore it or set it aside. There are no silver linings in the near future. Trump will move fast to destabilize democracy and either find or manufacture as quickly as possible a use of force against the American people. (All my humble, alarmist opinion).

'Carnage' and the Rise of Fascism

Some days ago I analyzed the language Trump used in his inaugural address focusing on the keyword: "Carnage." I argued this would be a pretext for authoritarian moves of force. It is no surprise that Trump's first overt call to use the power of his office in an authoritarian show of force is against the city of Chicago, home of his very successful and popular predecessor, Barrack O'Bama.

My piece on Trump's inaugural address and our Christian and humane response is here

: http://danhuttshadow.blogspot.com/…/the-rise-of-fascism-in-…

To Stand in the Gap

I am convinced that if there is a God (and I am so convinced) that God's concern is much more about our love-ethic than it is about our conviction regarding God's existence or non-existence.

I am convinced if there is a God that God's concern is much more about our care of God's creation than of any religiosity that profanes or neglects creation in the name of 'dominion.'

Bad religion, idolatry, is consistently described by the prophets as against the care of the earth; against care of the sojourner, foreigner and immigrant; against solidarity with the disinherited, the poor, and particularly women and children when they are powerless. Most of all bad religion and idolatry stand for scapegoating which none other than Jesus took upon himself the calling to unmask in his lynching.

Today's America is under the assault of unchecked bad religion and idolatry that has masked itself in the name of Christianity. When the prophets call us to "stand in the gap" the gap they meant was to care for creation, for the poor and powerless neglected by religion and the officials of the land. In this situation the prophets are calling all people of faith "to stand in the gap" so that justice may roll down like a mighty river of life for the disinherited.

The Blues

Listening to Muddy Waters sing, "I am the Blues" and feeling it deep inside. 

I am, ohh I am the blues.
I know the world knows ive been mistreated
And the whole world know ive been misusedI am the moan of suffering women
I am the groan of dying men
I am the last one to start
But I am the first one to begin

Ohh I am, ohh I am the blues
Ooh world knows ive been mistreated
The whole world knows ive been misused
I am the blood of peoples wounds, who play and die
I am the the last one to hide
I am the first one to find

Ohh I am ohh I am the blues
The world knows ive been mistreated
The whole world knows ive been used
Well boys somebody help me.
I am the new generation
A prodigy of starvation
I am the arm beyond the door friend
For a new new night and nation

Yeah the world knows I been mistreated
The world knows ive been mistreated
The whole world knows ive been misused
I am the blues
Oh friends I am the blues
I am friends I am the blues
Yeah the world know I been mistreated
The whole world know I been used.

Lament American Genocidal Christianity

When we whitewash our history we are blind to the evil we embrace. The KKK first used the term "America First" as a rhetorical device when they were in their ascendency during the Woodrow Wilson era. Trump's father was a noted member of the KKK and was arrested in 1927 for assisting a lynching. Of course Trump knows what it means to make "America First" one of his chief slogans. It's family history for him.

Even in an age where the truth is under assault by power it remains a historical fact that the KKK is the quintessential American Christian terrorist organization. During the anti-reconstruction era mainstream Christian theology developed a literalist hermeneutic of slavery and white supremacy that provided the ideological backbone for its rise. That Christians now are rallying behind "America First" and the scapegoating and threatened expulsion of Mexicans and Muslims that comes with it, is not out of line with our history. Indeed, it is a sad commentary on long-held and deeply felt American conceptions of what it means to "Make America Great Again" and to put "America First." I am encouraged to see so many Americans waking up to this history and beginning the work of dismantling the genocidal make up of our national DNA. Yesterday's march was significant. However, today I mourn the fact that for the most part, conservative Christian America is resistant to and outright hostile to this work, and indeed, continues to embrace our worst genocidal instincts. For this, for American genocidal Christianity, I continue to lament.

On Saying "No!" to Unreality

There seems to be a great deal of confusion about what authoritarianism and fascism does to a society. It doesn't enforce rigid already-accepted norms, it shatters them. It doesn't stop people from thinking outside the box of reality, it destroys the possibility of objective reality, of truth. And so reality as we once knew it is is replaced with a new reality not rooted in what we have experienced, but in what we are told.

Today in the first full day of Trump's Presidency Sean Spicer, in his official capacity as White House spokesperson, actually yelled at the media that in fact Trump's inauguration crowd was the largest ever and that's final. Reality had no say.

This is not extreme spin. This is not, "both sides do it." Trump is waging an all out assault on 'our' reality, the reality we all up to now assumed to be true. By creating his own 'truth' if we are to be governed by him we must begin to operate by his rules, his reality. And so the struggle isn't over truth, but of power. Trump must make us submit to his reality.

But if we refuse? Our refusal to cooperate with Trumpist reality explodes the fascist game of nihilism. When we say 'NO!' as we have today we assert our right to truth, to reality. We will not live in Trump's fevered dream of chaos in which "I alone can fix it!" in which everything is permissible to power. Today, by marching and resisting we looked Trumpism straight on and said, "No. Not now, not ever."

Jesus and Religion

The key to understanding Jesus' life and teaching is to see that Jesus called us out of a conventional blind religiosity of tribalism and scapegoating, of manipulating the divine order so as to gain divine beneficence, and into a genuine love-ethic. This is a call out of idolatry and its manipulation of God, out of hatred, fear, or mistrust of the 'other' and into true religion where there is love that knows no boundary.
Jesus was patient and deliberate in his teachings concerning love's boundaries throughout his life. But nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the parable of the Good Samaritan, addressed to a person steeped in religion but blind to the things of God and of the love-ethic of Jesus. Jesus cast no one into the realm of worthlessness. There are only people who are incapable of being like the infidel in Jesus' story, the Samaritan. When Jesus said, "Go and do likewise" it was not to the infidel, to the prostitute, to the criminal on the cross, but to the ones steeped in righteousness and religion.

Put into concrete language for today: It appears there is very little in white American Christianity that is free of the idolatry Jesus called us to leave behind. Indeed, the theological foundations of white supremacy and ethno-nationalism that now afflict the world are specifically the fruit of key branches of American Christianity - a full throated idolatry that is based on fear and resentment of 'other'. Even the the most innocuous forms of prosperity gospel and the gospel of personal salvation that plague our practical spirituality, our experience of church and worship, are forms of idolatry.

What's more, even as we are drowning in idolatry often the church's response is to compound the situation by feeding the weight of guilt for not being properly zealous for religion. When Jesus talked about taking on his yoke and burden which is light and coming to him for rest, he was talking specifically about the need to rest from false religion in which the Pharisees loaded people with religious burdens of self-righteousness and idolatry. In such a state is it any surprise that so many Christians rarely experience what it means to follow Jesus by centering their experiences on congregational life? It is virtually impossible in the life of most congregations to come to a place of authentic solidarity with the disinherited of the world and to find oneself in the places Jesus asked us to follow him. It would seem to me that escaping the trap of bad religion is a key step for many in the journey to align one's self with Jesus' life and teaching.

Now We Must Rise

During the election it became evident through court documents that Trump read and studied Hitler's speeches. I have not had the stomach to read and study Hitler's speeches. I have, however, been pouring over classic texts on the rise of authoritarianism and fascism, in particular Hannah Arrendt's 'The Origins of Totalitarianism." What's more, thanks to the miracle of Twitter, I have taken the opportunity to dialogue with dissidents and historians who have been engaged in the rise of authoritarian regimes in Russia, Eastern Europe, and in the Arab Spring.

One thing that is abundantly clear in all of this research is that the rise of fascism is predicated on societal dysfunction and chaos. So, the more successful Trump is in leading us into carnage the greater the possibilities are for authoritarianism. What is shocking to me, and portending great darkness, was the language Trump used in his speech today. Thanks to the work of some good folks at the Washington Post we can see in stark relief the tone of carnage and dysfunction in Trump's address. This is the necessary pretext of force - of which Trump also promised much.

Check out this following bit of evidence about Trump's designs on chaos and carnage: the first quote is from an interview Trump gave to Fox News in Feb. 2014, the second is a revealing graph from a profile of Steve Bannon, chief White House strategist.

 

The answer to the rise of fascism, then, is to resist the siren call of carnage and instead rise to the standard of human dignity, compassion, resoluteness, creativity, truth, collective peaceable action and above all a love-ethic so strong that it weeps even for the enemy trapped in the role of an oppressor. This was perhaps the deepest truth that Dr. Martin Luther King uncovered. For while the Civil Rights movement was a protest movement against racism, let us not forget that for black America the experience of slavery, share-cropping, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration has been nothing less than the endurance of an overtly fascistic white supremacy at every level of society. When MLK went to battle against racist fascism he did so linked arm in arm, with songs, letters, sermons, poetry and scriptures and he did so in a black suit and tie. He taught the world how to look fascism in the face and say, "No. Not now, not ever again. I will not participate even as a victim." As Trump scripts a backdrop of chaos and carnage, a United States in utter ruins of which, "I alone can fix it!" remember that this script is a lie that he will do all in his now immense power to turn into a reality. This is what we must resist. We have been shown how to rise. We have the tools. Now we must draw upon the best of us, morally and spiritually, and rise. Now is our time. In solidarity let us rise.

#MLKLives

"They never told us to keep honoring their work, they told us, 'continue it.'" Rev. William Barber.

The choices facing each of us today and in the coming years could not be more plain. Who will be my leader? What path will I walk and with whom will I walk?

I pledge this day to continue the work, with every fiber of my being, of #MoralResistance. #MLKLives

Get involved here: https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/

Inauguration Day - A Malediction

Today I am heavy hearted as we begin our journey through the night. In this moment I am compelled to share this word the prophet Ezekiel heard concerning the wall in which the religious people of his day and their false prophets placed their hope: "I will tear down the wall you have covered with whitewash and will level it to the ground so that its foundation will be laid bare. When it falls, you will be destroyed in it; and you will know that I am the Lord. So I will pour out my wrath against the wall and against those who covered it with whitewash. I will say to you, ‘The wall is gone and so are those who whitewashed it, those prophets of Israel who prophesied to Jerusalem and saw visions of peace for her when there was no peace, declares the Sovereign Lord.’” (Ezekiel 13:14-16)

Jesus Before the People - Douglas Blanchard

Dorothy Soelle's 'Credo'

I came across this poem/statement of faith early this morning from Dorothy Soelle, a wonderful mid 20th century Christian theologian shaped by the prophetic tradition.  After spending some time with it, I wanted to share it.
(hat-tip http://moltmanniac.com/ @moltmanniac)

CREDO
I believe in God
who created the world not ready made
like a thing that must forever stay what it is
who does not govern according to eternal laws
that have perpetual validity
nor according to natural orders
of poor and rich,
experts and ignoramuses,
people who dominate and people subjected.
I believe in God
who desires the counter-argument of the living
and the alteration of every condition
through our work
through our politics.

I believe in Jesus Christ
who was right when he
“as an individual who can’t do anything”
just like us
worked to alter every condition
and came to grief in so doing
Looking to him I discern
how our intelligence is crippled,
our imagination suffocates,
and our exertion is in vain
because we do not live as he did

Every day I am afraid
that he died for nothing
because he is buried in our churches,
because we have betrayed his revolution
in our obedience to and fear
of the authorities.
I believe in Jesus Christ
who is resurrected into our life
so that we shall be free
from prejudice and presumptuousness
from fear and hate
and push his revolution onward
and toward his reign

I believe in the Spirit
who came into the world with Jesus,
in the communion of all peoples
and our responsibility for what will become of our earth:
a valley of tears, hunger, and violence
or the city of God.
I believe in the just peace
that can be created,
in the possibility of meaningful life
for all humankind,
in the future of this world of God.
Amen.

MLK Day

Hat-tip to Dave Ihmels for this quote:

"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of [people] and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial." 
-MLK

Living in the Borderland of Love and Rage

If you are not living on the edge of seething rage it is because you have not begun to live with love and solidarity with the disinherited. This rage is located right on the edge of a deep love that is able to endure indignity and to respond with a broken heart not only to those who are marginalized, broken, disinherited and oppressed; but also for those who orchestrate oppression.

This is what Jesus meant when he taught us to love our enemies. He taught with the following in mind: That when we live in solidarity and love for the disinherited we *will* have enemies, in fact, we must have enemies. If we don't have enemies we aren't doing it right. Keep in mind, Jesus was teaching when he overturned the tables in the temple. Jesus was teaching when he called the religious leaders of his society hypocrites, snakes, and children of Satan. Jesus was showing us how to live in the borderland between rage and love in solidarity with the disinherited. Jesus taught us that the Beloved Community can be birthed in a world of evil only through fierce conflict that is empowered by love.

So. It's time to get our rage on. It's time to get our love on. Keep building #Solidarity.

'Drain the Swamp' - It Isn't What You Think

It is essential that we dispel the confusion over the term 'Drain the Swamp.' How can Trump insist that he is 'draining the swamp' while putting the likes of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a position of special power and so forth? Most people have yet to understand what is meant by 'the swamp' and in our confusion we allow our resistance to Trump to be uninformed. "Hey Trump, you can't have business interests while President and drain the swamp!" All the while Trump's formation of an anti-rule of law, anti-ethical governance is precisely what is meant by 'draining the swamp.'
It turns out when Trumpists use the term 'the swamp' it means anything resembling a society governed by rule of law and individual human rights. Below are a couple of quotes from an essay entitled, "Swamp and Fire" by Alexander Dugin. I will not post the link, but if you ask me I will share it. But here is the key and why it hits close to home for myself and most of the people I know: for all of us who believe in individual human rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, anti-racism, anti-fascism, and/or multiculturalism the closing sentence is especially for us, "So all we need now is the Fire." In other words, we are the swamp and we are to be purged in the cleansing fire. This is precisely what it means to 'Make America Great Again' in the Trumpist/Putinist world.

The Search for God in an Age of Idolatry

In the prophetic traditions of Judaism and Christianity the essence of idolatry is when bad religion masks itself in righteousness and proclaims it to be the worship of the true God. When this condition of idolatry becomes normative the only recourse is to become immersed in the prophetic tradition and recognize that God is now hidden, the realization of union with God is shrouded in darkness. When this happens perhaps those agnostics and atheists who have carefully rejected bad religion, idolatry, are deeper in the walk of spiritual truth than those who wrap themselves in the cloaks of religion.