The Rise of a Disloyal Opposition

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

It isn’t too radical to say that the Republican Party establishment is no longer compatible with the democratic ideals on which our republic was founded. If that shocks you or disturbs you, you are in good company. This isn’t how most of us picture things. For well over a hundred years politicians in both parties have been unquestioningly loyal to democratic principles, to this republic, the Constitution, and the rule of law. This truth is the source of the phrase “the loyal opposition.” Members of the "other side" were always opponents, not enemies.

But politics isn’t static, of course. It evolves, and our understanding of how governments and society have changed must change as well. This is difficult because most changes unfold very slowly. We keep up by taking the occasional mental snap-shots of the surroundings, but the tendency to hold on to these images is strong as we struggle to manage our busy lives. We reconcile our views of events from day to day until one day some event or a crisis comes along that scrambles how we pictured things. We are living in one of those times.

Tracing the details of how our politics changed is too broad a topic. Seeing one essential feature, the decline of majority rule in government, is the point here. To help do that, the rise of the Christian-right in politics provides a helpful starting point. To be clear, these trends and changes impact every aspect of our politics, including the growing tensions now on display in the Democratic primary. But the impact is most obvious in the GOP as the majority of us struggle to understand the Republican response to the current impeachment inquiry.

The political rise of the Christian-right at the end of the Twentieth-century is not in dispute. Of the primary reasons for this shift, their views on legal abortion predominate. The standard means of resolving religious differences involves evangelizing until the majority viewpoint of citizens are swayed. In the 1980s the religious right came to realize that anti-abortion sentiment may never predominate in a modern, pluralistic democracy. That inability to convince the majority to willingly outlaw abortion is what brought the Christian-right into politics. They sought, and still seek to legislate what they cannot attain through indoctrination or persuasion.

But politics and power have a corrupting influence on religion. After gaining political influence and even after gaining positions as elected officials, the Christian-right was still unable to pass their unpopular legislation within a system based on majority rule. They would eventually compromise certain Christian and democratic values to join a coalition of other minority interests and fringe political groups under the umbrella of the GOP. Secular pluralism would come to be seen by fundamentalist Christians as American society’s moral decay, and government by majority rule would come to symbolize evil in the eyes of some fundamentalist Christians.

These same hard lessons about majority rule also frustrated the economic caste of America’s wealthiest elites. In the corporate world where decision making is proportional to one's ownership share (or wealth). One person-one vote was a significant barrier to enacting laws and policies that the industrial elite favored because they are so few in number.

But money is power. The Barrons of industry resorted to buying government influence in order to reshape state and federal rules so they could buy even more influence over time. They corrupted politicians with campaign cash and perks. This is particularly true in the Republican Party where the industrial elite focused most of their attention. Now the Republicans in Congress routinely pass and implement policies favorable to the rich regardless of how unpopular or harmful to the general population.

As stated above, this transition is a feature in both political parties, but it is especially evident in the GOP where frustration with majority rule has passed the tipping point.

Frustration with majority rule has become a unifying feature that transformed the GOP into an odd coalition of minority and fringe interest groups united by their desire to overcome the majority in order to achieve their unpopular agendas. The rise of Donald Trump and his corrupt, authoritarian style of leadership has accelerated this transition.

Just as the Christian-right has had to make some unchristian compromises, so have the industrial elites and every other minority or fringe interest group within the Republican coalition. In the process, the GOP has morphed into an anti-democratic movement that will do whatever it takes towards a totalitarian rule. This coalition of disgruntled minority interest groups will even propagate Russian disinformation talking points if it excites their base and wins over their support. 

The GOP is no longer faithful to democratic principles or even the rule of law. We have lost the consent of the minority to majority rule. Political opponents are cast as political enemies in an all-out battle for Unitarian control. The opposition is no longer loyal.

Understanding the truth is the first step in identifying ways to save our republican form of government.

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Further Reading:

Coup d'état – The Revolution Has Been Televised for Years

On September 19th Donald Trump Declared Himself our Dictator

ALSO: Listen to this interview by Bill Moyer of psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton. His new book is Losing Reality  https://billmoyers.com/story/losing-reality-can-we-get-the-truth-back/

Evolution of Modern Christianity

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

After 2000 years of Christianity, the idea that the Bible is incapable of being wrong first developed among Protestants about 100 years ago. http://j.mp/1oCQrA0.  But it is a mistake to view each and every detail of the Bible as inerrant. Anyone who holds this belief can't possibly be correct since the Bible is so self-contradictory.

Do you want some examples? Try taking this New Testament biblical quiz: [ http://exchristian.net/3/ ]. It is a very humbling experience.

The Bible may be the inspired word of God, but it certainly was not written in a day. It was drafted over more than a thousand years. The New Testament was likewise drafted over the course of nearly 200 years, starting about 50 years after Jesus' death. It was written by mostly anonymous authors in various locations, none of whom were eye witnesses to the events in Jesus' life.

If you wanted to read the New Testament in the order it was written, you would have to start with the letters of Paul, probably beginning with Thessalonians. The remarkable aspects of these earliest writings of Paul is that he never quotes Jesus nor provides any biographical information about him. This couldn't have been because the words of Jesus were well documented, since these were literally the first documents written.

The first Gospel of the New Testament was the book of Mark, written some 20 years after Paul's letters. This was the first draft of the life, times and sayings of Jesus. Some scholars believe that Mark served as a template for the later works. Written 70 plus years after Jesus' death, the author of this Gospel is unknown. It has the fewest biographical details about Jesus and the least amount of red ink (direct Jesus quotes). This account begins with John the Baptist at the start of Jesus' ministry. It tells us that his family thought he was out of his mind while others thought he was possessed by the devil. It ends with his crucifixion, resurrection and being "taken up into heaven". In addition to having fewer details than subsequent accounts, it also has certain details that are missing in later Gospels. For example, Mark very specifically states that the cross of Jesus was carried by another person.

"A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross."

In the other Gospels, Jesus carried his own cross, falling down several times under the burden, etc. The point here being that details are fluid and sometimes contradictory, as would be expected given the generations over which the New Testaments were written.

The Gospel of Matthew is believed to have been written sometime between 80 and 90 years after Jesus' death. It was later named after Matthew, who was certainly not alive to write this text. And then, surprise, the Book of Revelation and the Gospel of John followed, probably in that order, but who knows exactly? The last of the four Gospel's was the book of Luke. It may have been written as late as 120 years after Jesus died.

The last book written in the New Testament is 2 Peter, believed to have been written between 150 and 200 CE.

Of course there were very many other scriptures and texts written during the first and second century about Jesus and the early Christian church. The task of sorting all this out to come up with a single version of the New Testament began in earnest in the 4th Century, concluding around the middle of the 7th Century. However, even today there remains differences in what constitutes the Holy Bible. For example, the Old Testament Book of Wisdom is included in the Catholic bibles but not the Protestant bibles. Most Christian fundamentalists today rely on the Protestant version for their sources. They do not accept the Book of Wisdom, for example. Add to this the fact that every different translations leads to different interpretations.

I believe it is fair to say the New Testament was written by many people over a number of generations and refined into the several versions we have today over the course of many centuries. It was not created in a day. It evolved,  Just as the Christian understanding of its means and the whole Christian experience have evolved over time. The Catholic Church today certainly doesn't act on many of the beliefs it held in the 13th or 14th Centuries. Over the millennium many different sects and permutations of Christianity formed and dissolved. Each group has pulled from different details, translations or interpretations to create unique constructs. Each group has, in turn, been challenged or even attacked by other Christian groups doing the same. In this way, what it means to be Christian has evolved, and it will continue to do so well into the future.

There is plenty of room for doubt when interpreting bible passages. In fact, there is plenty of room to doubt the legitimacy of the whole Christian faith if you are inclined to do so. The existence of God, after all, cannot be proven or disproven. This is what distinguishes faith and knowledge.

But the leap from faith to a fundamentalist dogma that the Bible is the inerrant word of God is another matter. Religious faith need not require the rejection of reason nor intellect. Belief in what is, or can be known, and faith in what we cannot know, are not mutually exclusive until we cross the line into religious fanaticism. Religious fanatics reject empirical facts that contradict any of their religious claims. The rejection of empirical reality is, in fact, what defines fanatic beliefs. In this regard all religious fanatics are alike. They require a fidelity to tenants of faith that directly contradict the natural world of the Creator God they worship.

In the long arch of history, those who reject the evolution of Christian faith, those who try to deconstruct our present knowledge or force conformity to an unsustainable Christian understanding will ultimate fail. The only question is what damage will they do along the way. Who will suffer and for how long before the latest versions of religious fanaticism become extinct.

Occupying Jesus and His Church

This post comes from my favorite investigative journalist site, ConsortiumNews.com. Robert Parry is amazing and if you have never visited his site, or read any of his books, I would recommend them to you. - Brian

December 18, 2011

It is an inconvenient truth for mainstream and right-wing Christians that Jesus was crucified for taking his protest against income inequality to the power center of Jerusalem, where he challenged how money had perverted religious principles. Now, that tension is returning with the Occupy protests, Rev. Howard Bess says.

By the Rev. Howard Bess

St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is a magnificent building. Visitors swarm to visit this 400-year-old architectural wonder that is known as England’s Cathedral. Until recently people did not take note that it was located in London’s financial district, where it seemed God and mammon existed quite comfortably next door to each other.

Then came the protesters. The Occupy Wall Street movement has not simply spread all across America. It is a worldwide protest movement that covers the globe. More and more people of conscience do not believe that the wealth of the world should be controlled by a relatively small group of greedy, selfish super-rich.

In Christian teaching, greed is one of the seven deadly sins. From a more secular point-of-view, few believe that billions should live in poverty while the elite rich live in flagrant luxury. When the protesters arrived in The City (as London’s financial district is known), their banners read “Occupy London Stock Exchange” – and they encountered London police, who protected the banks and trading houses, as expected.

However, when the protesters took over the spacious courtyards of England’s Cathedral, another dynamic emerged. After all, Jesus was a protester in the courtyard of Jerusalem’s great Temple where he disrupted the business of the money-changers. Now, two millennia later, a new tension between Christianity and excess wealth was arising. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Would Jesus Join the Occupy Protests?”

It takes a lot of money to support an operation like St. Paul’s. The Cathedral collects fees from it visitors and sells them memorabilia of their experience, clearing about $25,000 a day for those sources of income. In an unintended consequence, the protesters shut down the entire operation, sending losses of income into hundreds of thousands of dollars. The graffiti they painted on the walls of the Cathedral was very upsetting, too. Probably as disturbing as Jesus overturning the money tables in Jerusalem’s Temple.

Should England’s Cathedral resort to calling in the London police? Should the Episcopalian authorities try to negotiate with their newest neighbors? Should their uninvited guests be allowed to use the Cathedral’s restrooms?

The Cathedral’s vacillation is recorded in their daily news releases. The Dean of the Cathedral has resigned. So also have other staff members. For the present, the Cathedral has decided to allow the protesters to stay through the end of the year. The final chapter has not been written. The conflict between God and mammon can become very real. (A similar standoff is developing between the ousted Occupy Wall Street protesters and Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan over a potential new protest site on church-owned Duarte Square.) 

I confess that I would not have taken any note of the drama in London were it not for a friend of mine, Owen Vigeon, a retired Episcopal priest, who lives in London. Owen is a very fine poet who occasionally sends me some of his work. I like poetry, but I love poets.

I am reminded that almost all of the Old Testament prophets were poets. Poets can effectively speak truth in a way that mere preachers or politicians can never master. They say things so very nicely until you really think about it.

Owen sent me his latest poem. It is obviously inspired by the occupation of St. Paul’s. I am privileged to share it with you all:

MAGNIFICAT OF THE PROTESTERS 2011

A Song of the Word Made Flesh

“And the word was made human, and he pitched his tent among us.”  John 1:14

When I pitched my tent in the human race

And stirred in my mother’s womb,

Her soul was roused to prophetic grace

As she warned of impending doom.

When the mighty will lose their seat and power

And the meek and humble joyfully flower.

When the rag tag and bobtail pitched their tents

On St. Paul’s Cathedral holy gate

To register their discontents

With an un-egalitarian state,

My Clergy seemed somewhat perplexed

To know what ought to happen next

And truth to tell the English nation

Showed both disgust and admiration.

Yet in Cathedrals everywhere

There hung on the November air

The echo of My Mother’s prayer

That tells what Heaven thinks is “fair.”

Each waft of Chorus Evensong

Conveyed God’s sense of right and wrong

Who stuffs the hungry with bonus pay

While the rich he is sending empty away.

This, as My Dad confirms to me,

Is what life is like in eternity.

Til then I fear My Mother’s vision

Will still be met with indecision.

But those whose banner now display

The motto “WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY?”

Had better learn the gospel truth

Which I have practiced since my youth.

Whatever the questions you may have selected,

My answers will always be quite unexpected.

OWEN VIGEON  2011

Merry Christmas to all.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska.  His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net