John H Armstrong

The Misuse of Free Speech is Harmful

I am a huge defender of free speech. It is a core value and a cherished right of all Americans. I believe it is a double-edged sword but one that should be protected. Now and then we have obvious examples of provocative speech that causes social harm, even death outside of America. The line here is very thin and it is often extremely hard to grasp in terms of distinctions and nuances. It is this particular freedom that the Supreme Court has often had to protect by new rulings and decisions that create more misunderstanding. I am personally thankful that they remain vigilant about free speech.

I thought of this recently when Pastor Terry Jones, minister of a 25-member congregation in Gainesville, Florida, publicly burned a copy of the Qur’an last Saturday, April 28. Jones' public burning followed a personal meeting and intense conversation just one day earlier with representatives of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), including the executive director, Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe. Geoff is a friend that I deeply admire and respect. I believe he acted in good faith in trying to defuse this publicity stunt and to stop Jones from carrying out his ridiculous display of foolishness. 

The World Evangelical Alliance issued a news release about the private meeting between Jones and Tunnicliffe. I urge you to read it carefully.  

One of the great tragedies of free speech is the harmful way some Christians use it to make a statement. Such was the case with Jones' newest episode. But the misuse of free speech doesn't alter the simple fact that it should be protected under law. I do not expect Muslim societies to broadly understand our view of the law (one can pray that the day will come when this changes) but we cannot go back and restrict it in the U.S. or we will become a society that is little different than those presently inflamed by the passions of religious fundamentalism. 

 

The Rise of the "So Whats"

Several recent surveys reveal that an increasing number of Americans are not atheists or agnostics so much as they are people who simply don't care about religion or faith at all. Here are a few examples.

A 2011 Baylor University survey found that 44% spend no time seeking "eternal wisdom" and 19% said, "It's useless to search for meaning." 46% told a LifeWay Research (SBC) survey that they never wonder whether or not they will go to heaven. (I find what seems to be a majority of people, churched and unchurched, who assume some form of life after death but who have no interest in exploring what this means or why they believe it.) 28% told LifeWay, "It's not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose." And 18% scoffed at the idea that God had a purpose or plan for everyone. (Do you see why beginning a conversation with most young people by asserting, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" will not cut it?) The number of totally "secular" people who have no concern for knowing about God or a higher power is nearing 7%. I believe the much greater problem is beneath the surface of this still small number. Hemant Mehta, who blogs at "The Friendly Atheist," calls this rising number of people the "apatheists." 

Marian Edgar Budde, Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., calls these religiously apathetic folks "honest." A 27-year old said, "I would just like to see more people admit that don't believe. The only thing I'm pushy about is that I don't want to be pushed. I don't want to change others, and I don't want to debate my views." 

Christian writer and researcher David Kinnaman says most "So Whats" are like the statement made by the 27-woman I just quoted. Kinnaman says if you strip "the hipster factor" away then he thinks 7 in 10 young adults would say they don't see much influence of God or religion in their lives at all. Cathy Lynn Grossman says, "This trend may have been leaving subtle tracks for years."

I have written about the "Nones" the last few years. It seems that while the category of the "Nones" is growing by 0.5% per year the "So Whats" appear to be an even larger subset of that category. There are, in other words, layers within these layers. This is why the various attempts to say that we should be humanly optimistic about the future of most churches in America is misguided. It could be that as many as half of all young adults are "Nones" and/or "So Whats." The number is growing every day. Meanwhile few churches have a clue about how to live faithfully in a culture that is fast becoming a post-Christendom society in its understanding and practice. 

One thing I do know. If we are not authentic, whole and healthy in our faith (personally and corporately) then all the "attractional" programs that we can throw at this demographic group will do very little to bring them into the kingdom of God. These are not "baby-boomers" and will not fill mega-churches in the next twenty years unless something dramatic happens. Before long it might actually dawn on us that our "cool factor" stuff just doesn't work anymore. We might then actually go back to more ancient paradigms that are also clearly focused on the future, or to what might be rightly called an already/not yet kind of faith that is deeply biblical and profoundly confessional. This calls for missional-ecumenism, which few conservatives are willing to embrace so long as they keep depending on their human programs to attract young adults. 

Climate Science and Evangelicals

One of the true hot-button issues conservatives routinely debate  is climate science and global warming. I have listened to some of the strangest and most confusing debate over this issue. Some of the worst debate over this issue is routinely endorsed by evangelical Christians who laugh at climate science and demonize those who take it seriously. Some even produce impressive looking papers on what is wrong in the ciimate science debate. Much of this makes Christians look rather foolish to those who do rigid research on this problem.

What must be understood in this debate is that there is no doubt that global warming actually exists. The question is not, “Is global warming real?” The question is what causes it and what can, or should, we do about it?

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry recently suggested that the flow of grants has led to a growing body of research arguing for human causes of global warming. In the September 26 issue of USA Today, Republican Bob Inglis, a two-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1993-99, 2005-11), laid waste to this form of reasoning when he noted that scientists do not make a name for themselves by parroting consensus by rather by finding ways that challenge it! If you know anything at all about scientific research, and about how research actually works, you know he is right. You don’t get a theory named after yourself, or a prestigious award given in your honor, for writing papers that say, “Yes, just as he/she said!” You become famous, and make real breakthroughs in science, by demonstrating new insights and by providing new understanding to the scientific community.

What conservatives have done is create an appearance of uncertainty about the science of this issue when little uncertainty presently exists among working scientists. 97% of climate scientists have concluded that the planet is rapidly warming as a result of human activity. 97%! But only 15% of the public knows this to be true. And most of them care very little about this issue. I can count on one hand the number of conservatives I’ve heard in the last year who took this issue seriously at all. Most reason, “It doesn’t impact my life right now so why should I care that much about something that will only impact people decades from now?”

Conservatives sometimes admit climate change is real but then quickly assert that human activity has little or no part in it. And if there is some human element they will then argue that the costs of correction are just too heavy, especially in bad times like now.

Bob Inglis tackled this proverbial response of conservatives when he noted that when they argue that the markets will deliver innovation and ultimately correct the problem they are right but they do not actually practice their own beliefs. This theory about the market is what has been argued about our dependence on foreign oil since 1973 but things have not fundamentally changed. Why? Inglis cogently argues that if we passed along the “real costs” of petroleum (the national security risks, the costs of protecting the supply lines from the Middle East, the cost of pollution from the tailpipes of our cars and the cost of taxpayer subsidies) then we would soon be made aware of our real problem! Markets can and would respond but not when some  fuels continue to escape accountability. Markets work best when they are most freed of interference. This is just good economic sense.

Inglis concluded his opinion piece in the September 26 issue of USA Today on how to engage climate science politically with a credible call to action:

Conservatives can restore our objectivity by acknowledging that Americans are already paying all the hidden costs of energy. We can prove out commitment to accountability by properly attaching all costs to all fuels. We can prove our belief in free markets by eliminating all subsidies and letting the free enterprise system sort out the winners and losers among competing fuels.

Or, more cynically, we can attempt to disprove science, protect the fossilized and deprive America of a muscular, free enterprise, no-growth-of-government alternative to cap and trade.

A New Form of Excommunication

The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has been embroiled in deep controversy for many years. It reached the breaking point for thousands of devout Anglicans in 2003 when an openly partnered gay bishop, Gene Robinson (born 1947), was consecrated as Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson is widely known for being the first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be ordained as a bishop in a major Christian denomination that believes in the historic episcopate. Now, eight years later, the church is even more deeply split.

Even before the consecration of Bishop Robinson numbers of Episcopalians had begun to leave, forming several different Anglican church communions. Most of these early churches and priests submitted to the oversight of African Anglican bishops. I have several friends who followed this course and I’ve had the joy of speaking to a national gathering of these Anglicans.

Since Robinson’s consecration many, many more lifelong Episcopalians have left their church. Among these are even more of my friends. And numbered among those who have not left the Episcopal Church are other good friends. The sad fact is that to openly admit this creates tensions on every side in the midst of such a heated battle.

This historic breakup is genuinely tragic. On both sides there have been rash and hostile actions taken in debate. Though my sympathies are clearly aligned with those who believe that consecrating a bishop who is living in open immorality is wrong I cannot defend some of the actions my conservative friends have taken. The reproach of separation, and what often follows such action, clings to many of their otherwise fine efforts for the kingdom. Those friends who most encouraged me remained as long as possible (conscience is never a humanly uniform guide) inside the Episcopal Church but many of them finally left with tears and great sadness in a spirit of Christian love and humility. They are, to put it mildly, sick about this breakdown in Christian relationships within their beloved church. They did not leave because they hated someone or because they loved a good old fashioned ecclesial fight. They left because they felt their own call to ministry demanded they leave once their church had taken a moral stance that was not defensible biblically or historically. And almost everyone I know in this category continues to be in cordial relationship with many of their brothers and sisters who did not leave. Friendships can survive even ecclesial battles if the love of Christ prevails!

I often criticize conservative Christians for their penchant to divide and create new schism in the church. Today I grieve over the schism and tragic commitment to destruction that has been taken in the liberal Episcopal Church in the United States. This is especially true with regard to the leadership of Katharine Jefferts Schori (born 1954), the 26th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Let me explain.

In 2009 the breakaway Episcopalians in the U.S. and Canada formed the Anglican Church in North America. I’ve been in conversation with leaders on both sides of this breakaway over the last few years. Again, I have friends who chose differently about how to respond to the moral crisis they see within the Episcopalian Church. The Anglican Church in North America reports 100,000 members in nearly 1,000 congregations. (Remember, there were large numbers who had already left or moved to other contexts before 2009!) What makes the Anglican Church in North America different is that it has been formally recognized by many Anglican primates outside the United States. And various Anglican bishops are working internationally to preserve the unity of the church as much as possible. As of this writing 22 of 38 provinces in the Anglican Church have declared themselves to be in “broken” or “impaired” communion with the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Yet in spite of all this global unrest in the great Anglican communion Bishop Schori says this new Anglican group is encroaching on her church’s jurisdiction. As a result of this belief she has authorized dozens of lawyers “to protect the assets of the Episcopal Church for the mission of the Episcopal Church.” On the surface this stance might seem to make sense but consider what she is really saying. Alan Haley, a canon lawyer who has represented a diocese in one such case, says the Episcopal Church has dedicated $22 million to legal actions against departing clergy, congregations and dioceses.

But it doesn’t stop there. The Episcopal Church has increased these attacks in recent months. It has decided that any church which breaks away, and buys its property from the Episcopal Church, must disaffiliate from all other Anglican groups.

In September a well-known Pittsburgh congregation, All Saints Episcopal Anglican Church, walked away from its building, inhabited since 1928. The congregation called the Episcopal Church “mean-spirited” and said it had denied them their “freedom of religious affiliation.” Having read both sides of this debate, and followed it with growing sadness, I have to agree with All Saints Church in this case. It seems liberal Christians are liberal only up to a point. Then it seems that it is OK to be “mean spirited” in the same way they rightly charge of some conservatives.

Some churches have opted to disaffiliate rather than spend years in expensive litigation. Two congregations in Pennsylvania and two in Virginia have promised they will not affiliate with other Anglicans for five years after they bought their property. But affiliation with a bishop, by definition, is essential to Anglican identity. This position leaves the church unable to work with local and national church bodies on things like disaster relief, youth retreats, educational seminars, clergy insurance and pension programs, etc. (Many ministers are losing their insurance and pensions as this tragedy unfolds!)

In 1 Corinthians 6 the apostle urges Christians to not settle their church issues before the courts. I have seen this text randomly applied in ways that suggest no Christian should ever use the courts to settle a true legal grievance with another believer. I find this interpretation weak at best. But what is clear from Paul’s counsel is that a church should not sue a church. The Episcopal Church is telling Christians where they can and can’t worship and whether or not they can remain Anglicans. They are clearly using the courts to fight churches and ministers who want their freedom of conscience. Other denominations who have trended in this same progressive direction on sexual practice have maintained that they will not follow this legal and spiritual pattern. They say they respect the freedom of conscience. I hope they really mean it and do not follow the Episcopal Church in this regard. Time will tell since religious battles like these are often unsettled and messy.

What does Bishop Schori have to say about this complete capitulation to the tactics of opposing churches and leaders in secular courts? “We can’t sell to an organization [note what she calls a church here] that wants to put us out of business.” Read her sentence again. She is really saying that this struggle is a kind of holy war within her church and one side must defeat the other! By calling these congregations “an organization” she may mean what she says; i.e., these are not churches! No fundamentalist could have said this with more prejudice and fervor. She adds that her job is to assure that “no competing branch of the Anglican Communion impose on the mission strategy” of the Episcopal Church. What mission strategy is this?

In this instance actions do speak much louder than words. Bishop Schori, as recent cases plainly demonstrates, could not be clearer in her intentions. When Good Shepherd Church in Binghamton, N.Y., left the Episcopal Church the congregation offered to pay for their building. In return the Episcopal Church sued the congregation to seize their property. What did the Episcopal Church do to reflect the “mission strategy” that Bishop Schori speaks about? They sold the property for a fraction of the price the congregation would have paid them and today the church building is a mosque! So much for a mission strategy.

Bishop Schori openly expressed the conclusion that the Episcopal Church would rather sell property to Muslims, Baptists, or even barkeepers, than fellow Anglicans who disagree with the Episcopal Church. Remember, this is war and she is packing the weapons of her warfare in both her language and actions.

Bishop Robert Duncan (born 1948) was deposed from his ministry by the Episcopal House of Bishops in 2008 by a vote of 88 to 35 in a closed meeting in Salt Lake City. This action removed Duncan from ordained ministry on the grounds of “abandonment of the communion of this church.” This “abandonment” amounted to Duncan’s support of Anglicans who disagreed with the Episcopal Church’s actions on sexual practice. Today Duncan is an archbishop in the Anglican Church in North America. He says his group has no intention to replace the Episcopal Church in the United States. I have many friends who know Bishop Duncan well. He served the Episcopal Church faithfully and was bishop of Colorado and then the bishop of Pittsburgh. He is a noble and generous Christian man. These Anglicans, like Archbishop Duncan, are not trying to destroy the Episcopal Church. They disagree with her actions so deeply that they feel compelled to follow their conscience into the ecclesial wilderness. But they are not out to destroy but rather to build and do Christ’s mission. More giving and activity in mission has been generated by these new alignments than by all the efforts of the Episcopal Church before this schism. Sad but true.

It is one thing to tell a congregation that you cannot have the property that you worship in each week because it belongs legally to the diocese. It is another to tell them to abandon what they believe or face legal action. Bishop Duncan says that the ongoing litigation is “scandalous” but what is worse is that the Episcopal Church is now saying you must abandon the tenets of your faith or we will punish you in court!

Many of you might say, “If these leaders and Christians believe they are following the Bible and conscience they should simply leave and get over it.” If you this think this then you show that you do not understand either Anglican polity or principle. What was always the “middle way” of gracious, orthodox generosity has become a way that now demands radical conformity beyond imagination. The Episcopal Church says to fellow Christians, who are Anglicans in faith and practice, if you do not agree with us in our liberal doctrinal and political stances then we will sue you and make you conform or we will drive you out! We will make sure you cannot be Anglicans! And we suggest that Catholics have abused power.

This practice needs to be seen for what it is—a new form of excommunication employed by progressive and liberal Christians who have always been the first to speak against other forms of excommunication. This is more than an irony. It is great tragedy!

“Say It Ain’t So Joe!”

This famous line in my title comes from the infamous Black Sox baseball scandal that occurred early in the twentieth century. As the story goes a young lad, who loved “Shoeless Joe” Jackson of the Chicago White Sox, could not believe his hero has cheated. In the movie version of “Eight Men Out” the boy plaintively said, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

That’s about how I felt last week as we watched the Joe Paterno story unfold through every news medium possible. In this case even a sports story became a national tragedy. Not only did the actions of a famous coach (or his non-action in this sad case) make global news but it galvanized a whole new conversation about sex abuse. And well it should. But how could Joe Paterno, a decent and good man by every account, have failed to deal with this tragedy and thus allowed children to be molested by a predator? How could he not report this crime when he had clear eyewitness information about Jerry Sanduksy’s behavior? We will not know for sure until we hear from Joe. And we may not hear from him for days if the attorney he has hired tells him to remain silent. That is truly sad because I want to think the best about Joe. I also want to grasp how he could have failed to do what was obviously the right thing to do.

One of my favorite opinion writers, the conservative Ross Douthat of the New York Times, concluded in a brilliant article he penned last week:

It was precisely because Joe Paterno had done so much good for so long that he could do the unthinkable, and let an alleged child rapist continue to walk free in Penn State’s Happy Valley. Bad and mediocre people are tempted to sin by their own habitual weaknesses. . . . But good people, heroic people, are led into temptation by their very goodness — by the illusion, common to those who have done important deeds, that they have higher responsibilities than the ordinary run of humankind. It’s precisely in the service to these supposed higher responsibilities that they often let more basic ones slip away.

For now I believe Douthat has explained Joe’s behavior as well as anyone I’ve read or heard. A good man, but a man just like you and me, had high responsibility and was always on his guard in the big moments he faced. The danger is that he, and we too, could let down our guard and the most basic ones can slip away. The Song of Solomon 2:15 says:  “Take us the foxes, THE LITTLE FOXES, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.” In Joe’s case it seems that what appeared like “little foxes” were much bigger than he knew and his judgment was seriously impaired. The results are tragic.

Attacking Banks Is In

Attacking banks is in these days. Except for stock holders and employees at banks it is easy to bash them. After all the government bailed out several Wall Street banks with TARP money. (We don’t hear much about the fact that this money was returned.) But what followed the bailouts was a spending spree meant to help the economy. There is no evidence it did anything to truly change our economic mess. For this reason the president and his administration have a love-hate relationship with banks in general. While he has expanded government’s role in monitoring banking he has also approved the money needed to rescue the banks. This makes his friends on the left very nervous.

The government’s bank bailout has made them an easy target for angst. I even found myself complaining as I left my own bank a few weeks ago. Why the new fees? Wasn’t this service free in the past? How soon I forgot that the bank has every right to run its business as it pleases. And it runs its business in order to make a legal profit. And I have every right to not use the bank if I choose.

Banks generally provide financial contributions to both political parties. Why? It makes sense to cover your bases. But squeezing the profit margins of banks through tougher regulations and price controls is neither good economic policy nor good politics.

Let me state what should be obvious but is clearly not understood by many younger Americans—healthy banks are needed for a long-term recovery of every aspect of our economic life. Yet banks bear the brunt of people’s anger. Who owns these banks? A large portion of the middle class is the real answer! Anyone with savings in a 401(k) plan is invested in equity mutual funds which are connected to banks and have suffered with the banks. Banks have stock holders and these include many more people than the super rich.

Punishing banks and banking because of a few thousand wealthy, greedy Wall Street bankers and traders who intentionally and illegally abused the system during the meltdown is not the way to help America. It hurts ordinary citizens and it hurts the creation of jobs.

Take credit cards as an example. The government decided to interfere in interest pricing and fix a problem. This naturally led to banks raising their costs for service and the rationing of money for loans. If banks lose money in one place they will obviously seek to make it back in another. This is the way business works in a free market. Only someone who is naive or who opposes economic freedom would claim otherwise. One thing is quite clear. Bring down the banks and you will bring down the whole economy. We’ve been there before and it seems that many young people never got that lesson if they got any lesson in basic economics at all.

The Increase of Other Faiths and the Future

Kevin M. Schultz, in his insightful social history of religion in modern America, notes that “a final factor changing America’s religious sociology, one that has yet to supplant the liberal-conservative divide, has been an increase in the number of faiths practiced in the United States. Changes in immigration law since 1965 have allowed a variety of new immigrant populations to come to the United States, especially from Asia, Africa and Latin America” (Tri-Faith America, 202). Each of these new immigrants brings with them their own religious traditions. These include Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and many, many more. These simple facts make it increasingly difficult to talk about a “Judeo-Christian” America. President Obama, in a April 2009 statement at a press conference in Turkey said that the United States did not consider itself “a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens bound by ideals and a set of values” (cited in Tri-Faith America, 202).

Now it seems quite obvious to me that the president is right. Only religious conservatives, and those of a certain ideology for that matter, can still speak of a “Judeo-Christian” America. The truth is clear—it does not exist! It did exist, at least as a Protestant America, and then as an America of liberals and conservatives who defined the country by their version of faith. But it does not exist any longer.

As this “tri-faith” religious context evolved it is not surprising, adds Schultz, that many Catholics and Jews felt less compelled to retain their religious identities, Adds Schultz, “Success and acceptance had bred indifference” (Tri-Faith America, 203). To give but one example, Fr. Andrew Greeley’s sociological studies have shown that Catholics have used the post-war years to achieve economic, educational and social parity with white Protestants. By the 1960s Catholics were more likely to go to college than white Protestants. This was a huge social shift. The sense of prejudice that existed between Catholics and Protestants was almost gone by the last few decades of the twentieth century. Who cannot genuinely celebrate this social and religious change?

Jews were succeeding as well. By the early 1960s Jews could hold most prominent positions in society and education that had previously been closed to them.  The number of political leaders who were Jewish increased dramatically and major corporate leaders in America were Jewish by the 1970s and beyond. Today it makes little or no difference if you are a Jew in most parts of American society.

But both Jews and Catholics now face their own “identity crisis.” This is often discussed within their own communities. I have discussed this with Catholic bishops and priest as well as Jewish rabbis. Take Catholics as one example. Prior to the modern era part of Catholic identity was nourished by a certain antipathy towards Protestants and Protestantism. This prompts Catholic writers to wonder if Catholicism in America has “sufficient inner resources to survive and flourish” (Daniel Callahan, cited by Schultz, 206) despite the positive changes in culture. The jury is out on this question as Catholics, just like Protestants, are losing members faster than they can retain them. Another Catholic writer, Francis Canavan, questioned Callahan by saying this new situation had given Catholics a “new pluralism” that was decidedly opposed to their faith and church (quoted by Schultz, 207). What is the future of Catholic identity in a pluralist (and secularized) American context?

Honestly, this last question (about Catholic identity in a pluralist and secularized context) should be asked of all Christians and Jews in America?

Tomorrow: How Shall We Deal with Our Identity Crisis?

How Shall We Deal with Our Religious Identity Crisis?

The success of what Professor Ken M. Schultz has called “tri-faith America” there remain problems. One is the identity crisis I wrote about yesterday. Catholics and Protestants are no longer sure why they are Catholic or Protestant, at least to a significant degree. Few understand the theological debates and most do not live in the tensions of the past. How do Catholic and Protestant institutions self-identify when they have been so successful that they are losing their way? This question is as old as antiquity if you know the Old Testament.

The religious right has posed serious opposition to this new version of public expression Schultz calls “tri-faith.” But, he rightly concludes, “the success of the tri-faith idea shaped American life during the second half of the twentieth century and has continued to do so well into the twenty-first” (Tri-Faith America, 208).

This new public expression of faith in America helped to formulate new principles of group communalism, group rights, and religious privacy. While some conservatives debate the ultimate value of these principles I am one that welcomes them as a better way than that of our pre-civil rights past. Schultz notes, “It helped usher in the second disestablishment of religion in the United States, which still stands as the law of the land” (Tri-Faith America, 208). While this may be despised by some who long with nostalgia for an older America I believe it is the fruit, generally speaking, of our best ideals and principles as a people.

The tri-faith movement also “softened the ground for the civil rights movement” (Tri-Faith America, 208). This set the terms for all future debate about American diversity. This changed the landscape for women, homosexuals and others who have been socially and politically marginalized in various ways in America’s Protestant past. With this change the church now faces major concerns. Who are we? What makes us distinct? How do we become inclusive without losing our way morally and spiritually?

It is here that I end this brief series of comments about America and the role of religion in our public life. What is the role of missional-ecumenism in tri-faith America? I believe it is the only appropriate response to this change given the great mission field which is now America. American Christendom is dying, if not dead. How will we pursue the kingdom of God in America when America is no longer closely linked with that kingdom in the perception of most people? This is the question that gets me up in the morning and drives me to teach what I call missional-ecumenism. America is not going back to what it was. I, for one, am grateful. The question really is clear: “What is our role as Christians (not as Protestants or Catholics first) in this new context?”

Peron’s Argentina or Ancient Rome: How Should We Respond to Time’s of Great Unrest?

The more I watch the young idealists (yes, some of them are my age for sure) who occupy Wall Street in protest the more I “listen” to their cobbled together assumptions about life and modern society. This supposedly spontaneous movement, now four-weeks old, continues to grow in other major cities around the world.

One of the striking facts about this movement was recently heralded through its occasionally published newspaper, the Occupied Wall Street Journal. (The irony here is delicious I know.) The paper said, “In the great cathedral of capitalism, the dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their police army.” Who are they kidding?

Gordon Crovitz, writing in the Monday (October 16) Wall Street Journal, seriously asks, “How did protestors manage to take over Zuccotti Park, a half-acre plot a few blocks from Wall Street?” (This is where they camp and live.) It seems that this land-use by the protestors came about through old fashioned crony capitalism, not the social media. The occupiers selected a park site that is not New York City land but rather privately owned property. Since Zuccotti is not a city park, with city restrictions on overnight sleeping, protestors remain there. There are about 500 privately owned public spaces in New York that were created by the city as part of zoning deals made with real estate developers. This is why Crovitz says “crony capitalism” provided the space for the protestors. These are, simply put, quasi-public spaces. It remains unclear who is responsible for what. Mayor Bloomberg said, “Kids have come from all over the country for a big party in our park.” Not so fast Mr. Mayor. This park belongs to a private corporation, Bloomfield Properties. Concludes Crovitz, who lives near this park, “Political extortion created Zucotti Park and it [now] allows protestors to remain despite the noise, filth and stink.” I wonder who will clean up when the protest ends? City officials paid by tax-payer money sounds likely to me.

Occupy Wall Street promises an Arab Spring of regime change. What on earth does this mean? The Arab Spring looks less and less promising every day if you follow what is really happening!

Behind the young idealism of the core leaders of this protest movement is a series of assumptions (some were mentioned by my friend Monte Wilson last week) about society and its long-term direction. This movement, which some have taken to calling an “American Autumn,” seems for the life of me to believe that its demands (which are still not entirely clear) are reasonable for one reason—those who protest were born in America. One leader, Sonia Silbert, herself a longtime political activist, said in Washington, DC, “We are not going to make demands. We are not going to become a political party. The second we start making demands, we start splintering and we are no longer the 99%.” Wow, that will create change! There are, in spite of what  the media has told us, considerable differences between this movement and the tea-party movement. The tea-party began with a clear, though not well defined, view of reducing government spending. It then found its big issue in President Obama’s health-care plan. It then organized and actually helped to elect members of Congress.

Marshall Ganz, a longtime civil rights and union organizer, says “we’re sort of in a period here where we’re searching for what the focal point is going to be. Just because it’s not being articulated now doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be one down the road.” Ganz argues that Occupy Wall Street has already shifted the debate to a focus on how to rein in government. He says we have heard from the right on this issue and now the other side is speaking loudly. Really?

What is quite clear to me is that this one month-old movement is rooted in a vague and ill-defined discontent with our present economic situation. And it is more specifically focused at wealthy corporations and Wall Street banks. Can this protest become an influence upon politics? Some Democrats hope so as they slowly test the waters to see if they should embrace this movement. They had best be careful since the potential here is to grab a live wire that could alienate the middle-of-the-road vote that they need to win again.

But even without clear focus this movement still spreads, now starting new protests over the weekend in Europe, parts of Canada and even Asia. (In Rome violence broke out.) In America 175 protestors were arrested in Chicago. It was the first mass arrest in the U.S. In Tucson 53 were arrested overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning.

Lee Forsythe, a 26-year old protestor in New York, said he was distressed that the middle class is “just gone” and that corporations wield too much political power. Forsythe left the Air Force a year ago and hasn’t been able to land a steady job, working three irregular ones: pizza delivery, cable installation and disc jockey. (That doesn’t sound incredibly awful to me, except for the “steady” part!) Forsythe said, “I will feel personally successful when you see a global change in the mindset of corruption. Policy will definitely have to be part of it, but it has to be cultural change.”

This last statement is what intrigues me most. Who can’t agree with it? But I suggest that behind Forsythe’s frustration is a deep expectation that our birthright is to live in the middle class if we were born in America. We want to create a society where all you have to do to survive and get good money is to be born in this affluent land.

This being said middle-class America is dying if you are paying any attention to the numbers. The job-market is flat or in decline. College fees are rising and the property market is in the tank. And the new health care legislation has already raised my own monthly costs by nearly 50%. The policies we now have are more restrictive and invasive than we’ve ever known. And more and more of us middle-Americans are noticing what is happening. My grandparents, who ran a family farm, faced a less precarious future than do my grandchildren who will likely get a college education but find out by 2025 that it was worthless.

But poorer Americans have it much, much worse. Their prospects are truly bleak. Consider the statistics for obesity, childhood diabetes and much more. Says columnist Mark Steyn, “Potentially, this is not decline, but a swift devastating downward slide, far beyond what post-war Britain and Europe saw and closer to Peronist Argentina on a Roman scale.”

Ironically, Mark Steyn, a strong political and social conservative, sees the overall problem more clearly than those who are protesting on Wall Street. This led him to write, “There is a strange lack of boldness in most of their proposals.” He concludes that they are stuck in their own sense of entitlement and believe they are owed something because they were born in America.

Is this a Peronist moment? Are we actually on the verge of a social (and economic) collapse that could bring even deeper challenges for all of us, personally and collectively? I have no idea how to answer that question (Steyn is quite sure this is the case) definitively. But there surely is growing evidence of such a culture-wide slide. While I do not read this moment in terms of some kind of biblical apocalypse I do see this time in history as tragic evidence that we are mindlessly falling into a social milieu in which few seem to understand the significance of what is really going on. And most of the solutions are shallow and thoughtless.

As a result of thinking about this growing protest movement I was drawn again to Paul’s counsel to the church in Rome. Please read the whole of this text and pay careful attention to verses 11-14 at the end. Remember, the context of Paul’s counsel was not a modern democracy or some kind of socialist state. He was living in the time when imperial Rome controlled the world around him. This is why I believe this is clearly God’s word to us for this unusual time of social and political upheaval.

Romans 13:1-14 NIV

Submission to Governing Authorities

¹ Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. ² Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. ³ For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. ⁴ For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. ⁵ Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

⁶ This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. ⁷ Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Love Fulfills the Law

⁸ Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. ⁹ The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰ Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The Day Is Near

¹¹ And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. ¹² The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. ¹⁴ Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Protesting Wall Street

Today’s post is a guest blog by my friend, Dr. Monte Wilson. Monte might express some of the points that he makes here with more of a sharp polemical edge than I am comfortable with in my own posts but I deeply agree with his central arguments. His humor will not attract you if you believe the answers to our present economic problems lie in taxing business more heavily.

Personally, I do not have the time to compose a response to the marches and public events that are currently unfolding day-to-day in these ill-defined protests against Wall Street so I turn to a good friend and asked him to add his thoughts on my site. Monte is not a heartless capitalist or a hater. He is a man deeply committed to directly attacking poverty and caring for the weakest and most needy people on the planet. He is a man who is tolerant of diversity and counts as friends people across the whole spectrum, just as I do. He is no ivory tower conservative who simply talks about these issues. This brother invests his life in real solutions in some of the most dangerous places I know about in Africa. You should know him and his work. He is a man of deep compassion. But, as you will see, he is a man with a wit and strong views about common sense and the market. 

I suppose that some in this present movement decided to begin an anti-Tea Party demonstration, or so it seems to me. I welcome opposition to the Tea Party since I am not a big fan of this populist movement either. But this new anti-Wall Street movement is anything but a thoughtful and helpful response. Sometimes things this bad should be mocked with a degree of humorous realism. Monte does that in this post. If you are offended that is not my intention in posting it. If you like it then do not use it to laugh at your friends who might believe this movement is to be taken as a serious reform effort. 

One last comment. While I am not a defender of capitalism (a term actually coined by Karl Marx), at least as commonly understood by the masses and particularly by the Wall Street protest, I do believe in the free market. A highly-controlled economic market is bad for people and the economy. This is Monte's primary point if you read his words carefully. What role government does have in the market is a subject that requires great care, not political sound bites. But these present protests make a mockery of workable solutions. I expect this movement will soon die out. Time will tell. I thought the Tea Party would soon die out too but it clearly helped to elect a significant number of new members in the 2010 Congress. This reaction could create a new movement that lasts and has a direct impact on politics. Buckle up for 2012. The race is on and both sides will work hard to make points. Politics in America is a contact sport so we had better be prepared or find a way to shut the noise out for the next 13 months or so. 

 

Protesting Wall Street

Monte E. Wilson III

Ah, but the great advantage of mass moronization is that it leaves you too dumb to figure out who to be mad at.

Mark Steyn, American Autumn

Over the last week I have received quite a number of emails asking for my reactions to the “Wall Street Protesters” and their demands. So, I crafted the following over the last few days and was about to post this when I decided to search the Internet and see what others have been saying. Wow. Much of what I have written here has already been stated, and in many cases, far better than my musings. At first, I was tempted to forget the post but then it hit me: isn’t that the nature of reality, the nature of the obvious? I mean, it’s not like the socialistic demands of these protesters have not been asserted and then proven both fallacious and disastrous for well over 2,000 years!

So, in the spirit of Me Too! -- here are my thoughts.

First of all, as I watch and read the news, I can’t help but wonder if the parents of these people are thinking about suing the schools their children attended! If there was ever a perfect example of why we need a complete overhaul of our nation’s system of Public Education, this movement provides it. Whether it is a working knowledge of our nation’s Constitution and the nature of our inalienable rights, the differences between a free market economy and crony capitalism, or a rudimentary understanding of logic, these people appear to be utterly uneducated. (By the way, “inalienable rights” are God-given rights, not Government granted freedoms.)

Second, I am not sure many of these people even know what it is they are protesting, besides hygiene. Big Business? OK, which ones? What constitutes a Big Business? Fortune 100? 400? Any business that makes more than . . . how much? And is everything these businesses are doing evil? And how precisely do they define “evil”? And what about all those iPhones that I keep seeing you guys use: Apple is certainly in the category of Big Business, eh? Do you even feel the slightest bit of hypocrisy?

Anyway, because it doesn’t appear there is a single voice for this movement, it is almost impossible to say, “This is what the movement is demanding.” I say “almost” because there is a list of demands circulating that many of these people either implicitly or explicitly seem to support.

1 Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” through re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market so we can level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations have alrady done that are dumping cheap products onto the American market and have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is to raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour.

As many economists have been pointing out for decades, if we assert that importing goods across international borders is axiomatically a job-killer, then logic demands that we say the same thing about importing goods across state borders. You guys up for California taxing all the fruit that comes into the state from Florida?

And what’s up with the $20 minimum wage? These guys are obviously thinking way to small. Why not have Congress raise the minimum wage to $100! WooHoo!

2 Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to Wall Street investors.

Yeah. That’s the ticket! Give the Fed’s a monopoly on healthcare. After all, it did so well with the Postal Service.

3 Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

And you would choose to work because …? Somebody? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? (Please note that I used a perfect imitation of Ben Stein, here.) And exactly where does the money come from to support all these people who will choose to not work?  -- This will be a common refrain throughout the rest of this post. I hate being redundant, but the point obviously needs to be made, over and over again. From where do these people think the money for all their demands is going to come?” Ew, Ew, I know! Taxing the Evil Corporate Bastards." Yeah, that sounds so cool, so like Sticking it the Man. And what do you think Corporations will do to make up for the loss of revenues? They will pass that cost along to their customers . . . or go out of business. (Reference: Bank of America and new monthly charges for using debit cards.)

4 Free college education.

So you don’t want to pay for your education: you want me to pay for it through higher taxes, eh? Sorry, kids, Economics 101: There is no such thing as a Free Lunch.

5 Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Great. No problem. But the problem here is Big Government. When it stops interfering in the market place with its massive regulations, when it gets out of the way of our nation’s entrepreneurs, we will begin to see progress here—and not before.

6 One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Again: this money is going to be provided by whom? The Government? And where does the Government get this money? Besides, spending on infrastructure is right at 2.5 percent of the GDP. That’s the highest it’s been in 60 years.

7 One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.

Let’s see, now. The EPA is spending around 10 billion a year, so this means he wants 100 years of spending over a period of . . . how long? And where is this money going to come from? And if we get rid of dams and nuclear power plants, this will mean we have to rely more heavily on coal and natural gas: how does this square with Number 5? Think people, think!

8 Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

See what I mean? Go read the 14^th Amendment, son.

9 Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” your terrorists, and your diseased yearning to bring this nation down. Whoa!

10 Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

OK. No problem here, except I think all he needed to demand was honest vote counts. Computers can do this, unless he just has a thing against technology.

11 Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

This is a great strategy for doing away with lending altogether.  These people are not only ignorant of the laws of economics; they are clueless as to the nature of human beings.

12 Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Sure. The credit agencies were major players in the housing bubble, but the only way they could get away with lying to their customers was the fact that Big Government protected them from the laws of supply and demand but did not protect customers from fraud. This is crony capitalism at its “best.”

13 Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

How about the Government requiring secret ballots where neither management nor unions can place undo pressure on workers to go with either group? This way, they can do what they believe is in their best self-interest without fear of being smacked down by management or the unions. 

If any of you know someone all caught up in this mob, send him or her some early Christmas gifts:

Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, Ludwig Von Mises

The Law, Frederic Bastiat (You can get a free online copy of this book)