I Know My Rights

How did come to this?

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CHRISTIANITY UNMOORED

The Growth of US Hate Groups from 2000 to 2017

A two-minute overview of the growth of hate groups in the US from from 2000 to mid-2017, courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center and The Atlantic.

The Atlantic writes:

According to research by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups has been increasing rapidly since 2000. Heidi Beirich, director of the Center’s Intelligence Project, links the rise in recruitment to the 2000 census that predicted whites would be a minority by 2042. Beirich says there’s been another spike following the election of Donald Trump, particularly among alt-right organizations who have attached themselves directly to the current president. In an interview filmed at the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival, Beirich says that Trump’s limited commentary on hate crimes shows his lack of concern.

Anything + Everything | Who is my neighbor?

I've been thinking a lot about folks who say, "We will do anything to get others into heaven," while doing everything to keep them out of the country.

Perhaps this is one of those domains in which it is hard to be a Christian. I hesitate to put words in the mouth of G.K. Chesterton—even his own words—but I keep recalling his line: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." [1]

Mr. Chesterton's difficult Christian ideal included, in 1910, religious practitioners who didn't manage to live up to the promise, in part because, he wrote, "the princes conquered the saints." And then: 

....My point is that the world did not tire of the church’s ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. [2]

In a similar way, church is the last place some of my friends would look for a Christian—but, then, they're not at all clear where, or when, or why, they would look for a Christian. They're glad, as far as it goes, if they hear that a church hosts a feeding program, or gets involved in flood relief, or whatever. But they think of such gestures as table stakes for an operation that benefits from local infrastructure without sharing the tax burden. As long as nothing goes terribly wrong at a local church, they're content to keep their distance and be left well enough alone. Beyond hearsay, these friends are not particularly clear about who constitutes the membership of these churches, or what draws and binds the members together. 

As long as we're in the way back machine, I'll call up an address to Christians from M.K. Gandhi, quoted in 1930 by his good friend, Charlie Andrews:

When I began as a prayerful student to study Christian literature in South Africa in 1893, I asked myself again and again, 'Is this Christianity?' And I could only say, 'No, no. Certainly this that I see is not Christianity.' And the deepest in me tells me that I was right; for it was unworthy of Jesus and untrue to the Sermon on the Mount.....In spite of your belief in the greatness of Western civilization, and in spite of your pride in all your achievements, I plead with you to exercise humility. I ask you to leave some little room for honest doubt. Let us simply each one live our life; and if ours is the right life, where is the cause for hurry? It will react of itself. By all means drink deep of the fountains that are given to you in the Sermon on the Mount; but then you will have to take up sackcloth and ashes also with regard to failure to perform that which is taught in Christ's Sermon. For the teaching of the Sermon was meant for each and every one of us. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.... [3]

I think it's difficult to refute Mr. Gandhi on this point. I think we are — all of us who propose to know anything about Jesus — responsible to answer a question from Jesus recorded by Luke:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

There's the question: "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" This, apparently, is something Jesus wants to know.

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ ; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” 

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two [days wages] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’  

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”  

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”  

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” [4]

It seems to me that everyone who asks, "What is required of me?" faces the question in return, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" Apparently, our answer to that question makes a difference.


[1] G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, Part I, chapter five, Dodd and Mead, 1910, p 48

[2] ibid, pp 46-47

[3] C. F. Andrews, Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas: Including Selections from His Writings,  Macmillan, 1930, pp 94-95

[4] Luke 10:25-37, The Bible, New International Version

yes ... but | on behaving like Donald Trump

My primary reaction to the candidacy of Donald Trump is revulsion.

I have found nothing praiseworthy in the arc of his life, his values, his demeanor, this ideas, his words....

Having said that — and I expect to say it again — I am also revulsed by the actions of people who express their opposition to Donald Trump by behaving like Donald Trump.

I live in a creative world where we frequently add-to and improve each other's work by saying, "Yes, and what about this...."

Watching people harass folks leaving a Trump rally — menacing and dehumanizing them, treating them very much as I imagine Donald Trump might treat people he regards with contempt (if he thought he could get away with it) — I cannot say, Yes, and ... I have to say, Yes, but....

Yes, I am revulsed in every way by Donald Trump's behavior. But, I am also revulsed by your behavior.

If you act like Donald Trump then, in that sense, you are following Donald Trump.

And that's no good at all.

total embarrassment two | how it maybe came to this...

How did Jesus become an embarrassment to the Christian faith? Perhaps this snapshot tells part of that story…

My friend lamented, among other unsettling developments, the taking down of 10 Commandments displays in public spaces - as if most, or even many, of us care the tiniest bit about keeping those commandments personally or collectively. 

I said, “I think, if you care about the 10 Commandments, then live them out. Be the public display, carved in flesh and bone." I didn't mean to be glib... at least not entirely. 

If we were talking about taking down public displays of The Sermon on the Mount, I might have to think a little harder, but there's no danger of that. Nobody wants to be reminded of what Jesus said about how we are to conduct ourselves - the behavior and motives of those who learn his way. This is where Jesus is an embarrassment to the Christian faith. He prohibits exactly what most people seem to relish and demands exactly the sort of things almost no one likes or wants to do. He forbids retaliation and revenge, commands us to love our enemies and persecutors, and make peace with them or die trying. He calls us to be merciful, to forgive those who wrong us, to give up anger, to negotiate and reconcile, to settle out of court. Jesus commands us to love God as if nothing else matters, and he commands us to treat everyone we encounter with the loving kindness we want for ourselves. Christians hate this stuff so much we almost make it disappear by never talking about it, or talking about it only to explain it away. Most folks don't know how disagreeable the demands of Jesus are, because we've hidden them away where they can't do us any damage - or do us any good either... 

The rollup to Christmas has long been dedicated to considering and expressing our longings. What I long for this Christmas looks something like being the sort of person, and living in the company of people, who might be willing to love Jesus as Jesus is; not as we have attempted to remake him in our own image. I say "attempted" because the effort has failed so spectacularly that even a child - perhaps especially a child - can spot the fake a mile away (which is about as close as many of our neighbors want to get to anything like "church"). 

I want to welcome the embarrassing Jesus, and anyone he brings with him, to the feast of Christmas this year. To me, rest of it sounds like noise.

too much to ask? | I know what you've heard, but...

blinded by...what? | a week in denial observed

This week, E.J. Dionne wrote:

Do Obama’s critics think that Christians reduce their credibility by acknowledging their imperfections? Is it disrespectful of Christ to admit that Christians regularly fall short of His teachings?
....
The prayer breakfasts draw many decent souls, I know, but if expressions of contrition and humility are off-limits and acknowledgments of our own limitations are unacceptable, are these gatherings really about praying to a merciful God or are they just celebrations of ourselves? 

This week, Bill Moyers wrote: 

The victim’s name was Jesse Washington. The year was 1916. America would soon go to war in Europe “to make the world safe for democracy.” My father was twelve, my mother eight. I was born 18 years later, at a time, I would come to learn, when local white folks still talked about Washington’s execution as if it were only yesterday. This was not medieval Europe. Not the Inquisition. Not a heretic burned at the stake by some ecclesiastical authority in the Old World. This was Texas, and the white people in that photograph were farmers, laborers, shopkeepers, some of them respectable congregants from local churches in and around the growing town of Waco.
....
When the flames died away, Washington’s body was torn apart and the pieces were sold as souvenirs.
....
Jesse Washington was just one black man to die horribly at the hands of white death squads. Between 1882 and 1968 — 1968! — there were 4,743 recorded lynchings in the US. About a quarter of them were white people, many of whom had been killed for sympathizing with black folks. 

This week, Jamelle Bouie wrote:

I should emphasize that blacks of the era understood lynching as rooted in the Christian practice of white southerners. “It is exceedingly doubtful if lynching could possibly exist under any other religion than Christianity,” wrote NAACP leader Walter White in 1929, “No person who is familiar with the Bible-beating, acrobatic, fanatical preachers of hell-fire in the South, and who has seen the orgies of emotion created by them, can doubt for a moment that dangerous passions are released which contribute to emotional instability and play a part in lynching.”
....
The only Southern Christianity united in its opposition to lynching was that of black Americans, who tried to recontextualize the onslaught as a kind of crucifixion and its victims as martyrs, flipping the script and making blacks the true inheritors of Christian salvation and redemption. It’s that last point which should highlight how none of this was intrinsic to Christianity: It was a question of power, and of the need of the powerful to sanctify their actions. 

This week, Jonathan Merritt wrote: 

I have deep disagreements with President Obama, and I have written of them on several occasions. But at the National Prayer Breakfast, the President was right. Sadly, many Christians participated in needless hysteria that robs them of an opportunity for honesty and humility.

Thirty-five years ago, Annie Dillard wrote:

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead—as if innocence had ever been—and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been. There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day.

—Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, Harper and Row, 1977 p 56-57

And, sometime late in the first century, John wrote:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. 

—1 John 1.8-10, New International Version

Poised now at the threshold of Lent, in the face all we have done — and all we've failed to do — what will we write (and value, and believe, and say, and do, and…)?

"This is the white flag." | the difference in being white + black in America

A remarkable exchange with Phillip Agnew Marq Claxton + Chris Hayes, August 12, 2014

in the wind | tweets from the space ending 08.02.14

once more with feeling | this land is mine
jimhancock.blogspot.com

Kids Count | best states for raising children + a whole lot more http://bit.ly/WNa5Da

hope without optimism 
http://thebea.st/1Amrm5r 

light the night | Energize Africa 
jimhancock.blogspot.com

you are not late | @kevin2kelly on why Now is such a good time to start 
http://bit.ly/WT35Ff 

off the top of his head | Stephen Colbert Q+A jimhancock.blogspot.com