This is the 2nd and final part of my analysis of an open letter from Anne Rice. Part 1 was posted yesterday.

Abortion

Anne Rice spends most of her letter covering this issue, and she starts with an assertion that, to me, shows a lack of consideration of the history of the issue.

I want to add here that I am Pro-Life. I believe in the sanctity of the life of the unborn. Deeply respecting those who disagree with me, I feel that if we are to find a solution to the horror of abortion, it will be through the Democratic Party.

Ms. Rice does touch on these historical issues lightly later on, and I’ll hit them more in-depth then, but even looking at how the abortion issue generally falls between the parties today, I don’t see this as making sense. What I hear from Democrats are things like John Kerry with this sentiment:

I completely respect their views. I am a Catholic. And I grew up learning how to respect those views. But I disagree with them, as do many. I can’t legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn’t share that article of faith. I believe that choice is a woman’s choice. It’s between a woman, God and her doctor. That’s why I support that. I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade.

If one’s commitment to Christianity should be “absolute”, as Ms. Rice has said, there is a big problem with this statement, that is generally the line religious Democrats use when talking about abortion, and that is the canard about legislating one’s religious faith, or sometimes call ramming one’s religion down your throat. Civil rights are very much a moral issue, but does Sen. Kerry have the same problem with legislating that? No, he’s very willing to impose his view on KKK members, and rightly so. It’s right, it’s moral and it’s the law. Legislators all throughout our country’s history, and more so in our early history, based many of their decisions partly or mostly on their religious faith. This excuse is disingenuous.

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The following is a repost of a blog post I wrote over a year ago (August 23rd & 24th, 2007) during the presidential primary season.  It was in response to an open letter by the author Anne Rice on her personal web site.  Ms. Rice is the author of the Vampire Lestat series of books, but, after returning to the Catholic church in 1998, stopped that project. 

I’ve searched her web site for the letter in question and cannot find a page that has it archived, although many of her other writings, going back to 1996, are on there.  It was copied and posted on other forums, including here, so you can read along at home.  (Warning: This is a link to the right-wing Free Republic web site.  If you fear cooties emanating from there, turn back now.)

I think the issues covered in this endorsement of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party nominee are still relevant now, especially how it relates to Christians, how they can and should work through the political process, how Ms. Rice believes her choice of party advances that, and where I disagree with her. 

It was originally posted in 2 parts due to its length, and so it shall be this time. 

This is one of my longer posts, possibly the longest I’ve done on the blog. What happened was, I was reading an open letter from a Christian planning on voting a particular way, and as I read further and further into it, one objection after another kept coming to my mind, and one problem after another regarding the writer’s reasons kept getting in the way. Finally, I realized I’d have to just set aside some of my typical day-to-day blogging of the link-and-quick-comment type, and go in-depth into the problems I see with the author, and Christians in general, who vote Democratic for specifically Christian reasons, and especially regarding the social issues brought up in the letter. Pull up a cup of coffee and sit back.

Anne Rice is a Catholic author. I’ll admit to not being too well-read, but as a Protestant my knowledge of Catholic authors is even more limited. Therefore, I’m not sure how much Ms. Rice’s views are mainstream Catholic, although whether or not they are really isn’t the crux of this post. I do want to discuss the views she espouses, and espouses quite well as an author. That she is a Catholic and I am a Protestant has really no bearing on my criticism of her recent public letter dated August 10. I know Protestants who would agree with her on these issues, so this is not a denominational thing. She professes Christianity, as do I, and we have very similar goals, as far as I can tell, on the topics she discusses, and yet we’re voting differently. Ms. Rice wrote a lengthy letter to her readers on her main web site (no permalink so don’t know how long it’ll stay on the front page) about why she is endorsing Hillary Clinton for President. The reasons she lists for that endorsement, to me, run completely counter to her list of important issues and goals. If she is truly concerned about those goals, I don’t follow her endorsement, nor the endorsement of other of my friends and acquaintances of any Democrat in the current group. I want to address the inconsistencies I see in this post.

Ms. Rice starts out with her Christian and Catholic creds, which I respect and am willing to accept. She talks about how, while the separation of church and state is a good idea, the voter does not have that prohibition, and in fact must consider their vote based on their religion.

Conscience requires the Christian to vote as a Christian. Commitment to Christ is by its very nature absolute.

I agree wholeheartedly. But, she also correctly notes, we have only 2 political parties in this country. (She believes, as do I, that a vote for neither Democrat or Republican, whether it’s a non-vote or a vote for a 3rd party, is essentially a vote for one of the two major ones, no matter how you slice it.) In short:

To summarize, I believe in voting, I believe in voting for one of the two major parties, and I believe my vote must reflect my Christian beliefs.

Bearing all this in mind, I want to say quietly that as of this date, I am a Democrat, and that I support Hillary Clinton for President of the United States.

And that last clause is where the disagreement begins.

Charitable Giving

The first paragraph of explanation deals with giving.

Though I deeply respect those who disagree with me, I believe, for a variety of reasons, that the Democratic Party best reflects the values I hold based on the Gospels. Those values are most intensely expressed for me in the Gospel of Matthew, but they are expressed in all the gospels. Those values involve feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, and above all, loving ones neighbors and loving ones enemies. A great deal more could be said on this subject, but I feel that this is enough.

First of all, neither the religious right nor the religious left have a lock on charitable giving. At the same time, as was noted on this post regarding a study by Arthur Brooks, conservatives outgive liberals by quite a significant amount. How does this relate to how the political parties differ in their view of the government’s role in this? Ms. Rice, I believe, falls into a trap by simplistically equating the advocacy of government charity with Jesus’ admonition to the individual to be charitable. Democrats say the government should give more, so by her reckoning thy are more in line with her Christian view. However, it has always made me wonder how when Jesus tells me, personally, to be charitable, that somehow this means that I should also use the government to force my neighbor, under penalty of jail, to be “charitable”. I put “charitable” in quotes because when there’s force involved, there’s no real act of charity. How Democrat Christians get from point A to point Z on this boggles my mind. Another statistic from Brooks’ study brings this point home; People who believe the government does not have a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can’t take care of themselves are 27 percent more likely to give to charity.

On top of this, the bureaucratic inefficiency filter that we’re all forced to funnel our “charitable” taxes through siphons money away from the needy, as does the massive fraud that goes on in a big government program that has little accountability.

Conservatives believe that forcibly taking money isn’t charity, and that it is not government’s role to rob from Peter to pay Paul, and that the way the government handles this creates dependency and causes further problems, like giving fathers a disincentive to stick around. Because of this, conservatives give more of their own money to local charities where the administrative costs are much lower. The Republican party, the current home of most conservative political ideas in this country, purports to support these goals, and while they don’t always follow those principles, they have done better at this than Democrats. An expanded role of government in the area of giving to the poor is not the best way for that to happen, and as a Christian I believe it’s not moral to force others to give when they don’t want to. Again, Jesus asks me to give; He didn’t ask me to force others to.

Ms. Rice, in ticking off a laundry list of values, seems to be falling for the framing of the issue that Democrats have put forth; welfare = caring. There are other ways to care, which can have much better results.

Part 2 tomorrow.

One of the common notions of this age, especially as compared to others in the past, is the supremacy of the individual. That is to say, that notion that oneself is the final and best arbiter of what is best for oneself is dominant. Many if not most of our community has sufficient ignorance of history and the changes in culture that have occurred in the past century or two that by and large there is rampant ignorance that this is in fact a radical departure from the past. While it is a common trite saying that those who forget the past, are doomed to repeat it. It is also the case that those who forget the past can’t understand which choices they make are better or worse than those of prior ages. One might suggest that those who are unaware of the past, will believe anything they do as better than before, alas without any knowledge of whether that is indeed the case or not.
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Bloomberg.com

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world’s financial markets while they “rewrite the rules of international finance.”

“The idea of suspending the markets for the time it takes to rewrite the rules is being discussed,” Berlusconi said today after a Cabinet meeting in Naples, Italy. A solution to the financial crisis “can’t just be for one country, or even just for Europe, but global.”

The Washington Post

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is claiming another casualty: American-style capitalism.

Since the 1930s, U.S. banks were the flagships of American economic might, and emulation by other nations of the fiercely free-market financial system in the United States was expected and encouraged. But the market turmoil that is draining the nation’s wealth and has upended Wall Street now threatens to put the banks at the heart of the U.S. financial system at least partly in the hands of the government.

The Bush administration is considering a partial nationalization of some banks, buying up a portion of their shares to shore them up and restore confidence as part of the $700 billion government bailout. The notion of government ownership in the financial sector, even as a minority stakeholder, goes against what market purists say they see as the foundation of the American system.

Breibart.com

Germany called on Friday for a set of global rules to help tackle the global financial crisis, saying it was time to put an end to ad hoc solutions.

"We need global rules for the markets," German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck said.

Is this all seeming a little end-times-esque?  If we wind up with a truly global economy, or one far more global than we even have now, is it so hard to believe a step or two down the road is a card, and then an implant, that you must have to buy anything? 

Are we watching the foundation laid for the events in the book of Revelation?  Or am I just paranoid?

When sexual abuse in the Catholic church was uncovered, the national mainstream media was all over the story, as it should have been.  But when it’s a public school system that is involved in the same thing — including sending known offenders back in to work with kids, and trying to minimized the issue — their silence betrays their bias.  Then, there was outrage and daily reports on the evening news.  Now, local reporting but not much else.

Dave Pierre of NewsBusters chronicles the issue here (back in May) and here (last week).  The national media ignores a government program but wallops Christians over the same issue.  Yeah, no bias there, right?

As my wife and I talked about the bailout failure, she wondered if there would be the catastrophe that pundits were predicting would come about.  I mean, some were giving the impression that the next day we’d be in The Great Depression 2.0.  The Dow Jones drop yesterday was a large absolute number, but it was just a little over 6%; less than a third of the percentage drop in ’86.  And over the past week the market has taken wide swings as emotion rather than reason has put it on the roller coaster.

But as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reminds  us; don’t panic.

There are two reasons not to panic.  The first is that God is still in control, He knows what’s coming, and if we’re trusting in Him we don’t have to worry.  “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)  Those “all things” may not all be pleasant and cheerful, but they’ll all work for good.  Likewise, this doesn’t mean we don’t have plans if disaster strikes — I have a savings account, a retirement account, and I backup my computer; this verse doesn’t tell us not to be careful — but whatever events come our way we need to trust Him to get us through it.  Panic, as human and as understandable as it may be, is a lack of trust.  A good article, “Fearing the Future”, is here at Crown Financial Ministries’ web site.  Don’t panic.

The second is that panic makes us do foolish things that calm consideration may warn against.  We react instead of respond to the events of the day.  Take the fuel shortage hitting my neck of the woods.  If every car in metro Atlanta were to top off their tank on the same day, we’d have a fuel shortage even if all the stations had gas to begin with.  But, true to (human) form, when we heard that hurricane Ike slowed the flow of gas into the southeast, and the governor said not to panic, Atlanta did anyway.  Worried about gas lines and higher prices, Atlantans created and implemented a self-fulfilling prophesy.  If folks with 7/8th of a tank all hadn’t decided to top off during the same few days, we may have been able to ease through it.  There would have been some disruption, no doubt, but not to the point where some folks trail gas tankers to their delivery locations. 

The stock market lost 6% yesterday?  Then today’s the day to jump in.  Other people panicked and bailed out of the market, creating bargains.  Some folks have dumped stock of companies that aren’t going to be affected, or affected little, by this situation, so their stocks are now artificially low.  This podcast episode from Crown Financial Ministries deals with this specific issue.  (And I recommend picking up the feed in your podcatcher of choice.  Good advice all the time.)  Don’t panic.

But could we actually wind up in The Great Depression 2.0?  Only God knows, and that’s not a cliche.  Whether we experience some pain now or if we kick the can down the road, it’s still all known to God.  Trust Him, and don’t panic. 

The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be: Taking a Stand for True MasculinityBy Kevin McCullough / Harvest House Publishers* From radio commentator, syndicated columnist, and MuscleHead Revolution author comes a bold message for 21st-century men! McCullough probes the undermining of manhood over recent decades and speculates why both sexes are reluctant to address the problem. Citing God’s blueprint in Scripture, he challenges Christian men to behave with dignity, act with clarity, and lead with conviction! 224 pages, softcover from Harvest.

This morning I had the opportunity to chat with Kevin McCullough. His book is a wake up call to men (and women) everywhere that it’s time for men to start living the way that God has designed them. It’s both a very personal and immensely practical book and one that I heartily recommend to everyone. I’ll have a more complete review here soon.

Click on this link to hear the interview.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kevin McCullough for the link!

The theme/question for this quarters CoCR by our host at The Cross Reference is:

I guess I’d be interested in hearing perspectives on what obstacles are presented by the varying liturgies (high/low, sacramental/non-sacramental, rubrical/freeform) and how they might be possible to overcome. I don’t necessarily want to get too doctrinal (although the law of prayer and the law of belief go hand-in-hand, as far as Catholics are concerned). And the issue of liturgical reform would be open for discussion as well.

Much of American worship experience when compared to that 5 or 10 centuries earlier is very much less liturgically and bound in ritual and movement than it was then. Charles Tayler in A Secular Age recounts the development of the secularization of modern Western society. The move away from the ritual and formal liturgical expression was one intended to concentrate the spiritual focus of the worshiper away from externalities and to turn inwards concentrating on ones heart and mind to focus on God. As a result many churches and expressions in churches have become less liturgically bound. I suggest that many who reject, or “don’t get” liturgical expression also don’t really appreciate it. Likewise those who cherish liturgical worship don’t “get” or have a real appreciation for good non-liturgical worship.

I will admit up front, that I have always been part of a liturgical worship environment. I grew up in a Lutheran church … and have now ended in a Eastern Orthodox church, which is arguably about as “high” liturgical as you can get in the modern church. So I have a definite bias on the place of liturgy in worship. But, I’d like to pose a question for the non-liturgical church members.

One of the things liturgy and liturgical cycles are good for is memory. Passover and Pascha (Easter) are memories of two very significant events in the Hebrew and Christian churches. These are marked liturgically. The rest of the church year is marked out with a variety of other liturgical events … which in part are to help us remember and mark those as important. These can also mark other historical events. Recently, the church I attend has added to its liturgical calendar a service to remember 9/11. Americans remember July 4th and certain other Presidential holidays. We remember Pearl Harbor a lot less well. Why? Because, there is no secular “holiday” or secular liturgical event (if you will) to mark that day. 9/11 currently also has no such secular liturgy remembering that day. In 50-75 years in the absence of such a marking, like Pearl Harbor, 9/11 will fade from our public consciousness. The point is, liturgy and ritual make a connection not just in our mind, but in our whole being, our nous if you will, between us and events which we … as a church, find significant.

My question is how do you non-liturgical churches hold precious and fast to the important events in Church history in the absence of liturgical remembrance?

Dan Trabue, in our conversations on monastic life, offered that celibacy is un-Biblical. Huh?

Explain then (1 Corinthians 7 ESV):

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. 9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

It seems to me the plain meaning of this is that St. Paul offers that unmarried devotion to Christ is preferred to marriage hence the “I wish all were as I myself am”, to whit unmarried and celibate (this chapter offers more support for that view as well).

Secondly, for 1500+ years the Christian church always held that unmarried celibacy, such as the monastic life was a higher calling than marriage. Today, many Protestants reject this. Why? On what basis? I honestly have no idea what is the basis of that rejection.

As noted in the introduction to this series, I’m blogging on two short works on Poverty, the first is Ched Myers The Biblical View of Sabbath Economics and the second is the 14th oration by St. Gregory of Nazianzus entitled “On Love for the Poor” (note I misquoted the title in the prior essay as well as Mr Myers first name). In this short essay, I’m going to attempt to precis the basic thrust of the two works. The current plan is follow this short summary with some critical assessments of the two works. The introduction was here, and the overview essay here.

Reading Mr Myers pamphlet is a little disconcerting. For that which he argues, that concern for the poor, charity, and turnings one heart and aspirations to God instead of the material transient world are all well known and established virtues in Christian living. This where he concludes, where he is driving and this conclusion is not wrong. But it must be admitted, that it is very rare to use the validity of a conclusion to justify an argument … and alas Mr Myers reasons and arguments are very very bad. Mr Myers, as noted in the introduction, follows a unusual hermeneutic for extracting meaning from Scripture. That is he views Scripture via a lens of economics … with a caveat on that description that one must note that his views of economics themselves are also somewhat unusual. Read the rest of this entry

The Strategy Page calls it “an image problem”, but they’re description of the result of the problem goes deeper.  I think the next generation is embarrassed by them.  So much so that they are becoming less convinced of the religion behind it.

Hamas has an image problem, and it’s getting worse. It’s gotten so bad that the 30 year old son (Mosab Yousef) of one of the Hamas founders (Hassan Yousef) has not only renounced Hamas, but has become a Christian. Mosab is fed up with the terrorism/”destroy Israel” approach the Arab world has embraced over the last sixty years. Mosad notes, as have many other Arabs, that this has not worked.

The conversion angle is something Moslems are trying to keep quiet. Mosab Yousef’s father pleaded with his son to keep quiet about the conversion (which took place 18 months ago). The elder Yousef knows that this is not an isolated incident. Many young Moslems are abandoning Islam. Most do so quietly. In Iran, the clerics that run the country are shocked at secret police reports about a growing number of young Iranians who have, in effect, abandoned Islam. This sort of thing is happening all over the Moslem world, but especially in Arab countries. The people who switch to Islamic radicalism get all the headlines, not the larger numbers who just walk away from Islam are largely ignored. In the Palestinian territories, there is also a growth in the number of Sunni Moslems who are switching to the Shia version (as championed by Iran). But many other Moslems are openly distancing themselves from the conservative forms of Islam (like the well funded Saudi Wahhabism). One reason this trend is kept quiet is because Islamic militants are inclined to kill such traitors, if the switch is done too openly. Thus the elder Yousef’s plea that his son keep quiet, lest he attract the murderous attention of Islamic radicals out to impose the death sentence on apostates.

The move to Christianity, and even moves just away from the more radical versions if Islam, can only be a good thing for the Middle East, and frankly the rest of the world, too.

As noted in the introduction to this series, I’m blogging on two short works on Poverty, the first is Ched Myers The Biblical View of Sabbath Economics and the second is the 14th oration by St. Gregory of Nazianzus entitled “On Love for the Poor” (note I misquoted the title in the prior essay as well as Mr Myers first name). In this short essay, I’m going to attempt to precis the basic thrust of the two works. The current plan is follow this short summary with some critical assessments of the two works Read the rest of this entry

A frequent commenter and blogger (his blog is here) Dan Trabue graciously sent me a copy of a book (that arrived with me away on vacation) that he finds to be a significant work describing his view on how Poverty and the Christian relate. In a short series of essays I’m going to compare, review, and contrast this pamphlet The Biblical View of Sabbath Economics by Chad Myers with a somewhat older work on basically the same topic. The the latter part of the 4th century St. Gregory of Nazianzus gave a lengthy oration “On the Poor”. It is these two works I’m going to compare.

Chad Myers according to the frontispiece has “worked for three decades in the field of non-violent activism for social justice, church renewal and radical discipleship.” Mr Myers has degrees in philosophy from UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union (also in Berkeley).”

St. Gregory of Nazianzus on the other hand was the most accomplished rhetorician of the 4th century Church. The piece “On the Poor” is the 14th oration that has been passed on from his era. His most famous orations, the so called 5 “theological orations” given in just a short interval from just outside of Constantinople was a major turning point forever cementing the Nicene tradition in the Church over the more popular (at the time) Arian heresy. If you today hew to the Nicean statement of faith … in part you owe it to the brilliant rhetoric of St. Gregory. It also should be noted that St. Gregory unlike his friend St. Basil (the Great) took a different approach to asceticism. He personally eschewed the monastic and extreme asceticism practiced by St. Basil and others around him. His asceticism was a more literary (and spiritual) asceticism of contemplation without embracing all or perhaps many of the rigors of the monastic life. It might be noted however, that he did take at an early age a vow of celibacy which he maintained throughout his life.

Both of these pieces have some similar conclusions. Both stress that charity is a primary virtue. However their methods, arguments and ultimately their conclusions are very disimilar.

I will also admit up front that I have a lot of difficulty giving Mr Myers work a fair reading. Stylistically he makes blanket assertions about, for example, the nature of the free market society which at best are a caricature of the market economy as told by a Marxist. In short, a lot of false statements are made about economic truths and conditions in markets and in pre-market, i.e., early Bibilical societies which need disentangling from his main argument. What is left after the dissection … is a question I can’t answer at this point of this study. It is indeed one of the questions that will need to be answered in this short series.

The Catholic church has had to correct the thinking of some Democrats in the past in reference to the church’s position on abortion.  (Well, they’ve spoken out in the past; there’s no evidence yet that the actual thinking was corrected.)  Most recently, the Speaker of the House herself has come under fire for misrepresenting Church teaching in order to buttress her own views.

Politics can be treacherous. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi walked on even riskier ground in a recent TV interview when she attempted a theological defense of her support for abortion rights.

Roman Catholic bishops consider her arguments on St. Augustine and free will so far out of line with church teaching that they have issued a steady stream of statements to correct her.

The latest came Wednesday from Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik, who said Pelosi, D-Calif., “stepped out of her political role and completely misrepresented the teaching of the Catholic Church in regard to abortion.”

It has been a harsh week of rebuke for the Democratic congresswoman, a Catholic school graduate who repeatedly has expressed pride in and love for her religious heritage.

Enough “pride” and “love” for her to, y’know, accept her Church’s teaching?  Apparently not.  The “steady stream” of corrections don’t seem to do much.  More below the fold…

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