Diana Butler Bass, writing in the God’s Politics Blog of Sojourners magazine, writes:

As the stand off between workers and Governor Scott Walker continues in Wisconsin, religious leaders have weighed in on the dispute. Roman Catholic bishops came out on the side of the unions, urging the governor to protect worker’s rights. Many mainline pastors, including Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and American Baptists have written letters, issued statements, and preached sermons supporting labor, unions, and collective bargaining. In Madison, interfaith prayers and proclamations have upheld and encouraged the teachers, police, firefighters, and other public employees in their resistance to the governor’s plan to break their union.

This is an impressive religious group by any standards — particularly so in Wisconsin where traditional faith still plays an important role in the life of a large number of its citizens. Wisconsin is almost evenly split between the three largest American religious groups: 29 percent are Roman Catholics; 24 percent are evangelical Protestants; and 23 percent are mainline Protestants.

Yet none of these prayers or sermons has swayed Scott Walker. He has steadfastly stayed on his original course, unfazed by the full weight of Roman Catholic authority or the mainline social justice tradition pressing upon him and urging him toward compromise and change.

Scott Walker is neither Roman Catholic nor a mainline churchgoer. The son of a Baptist pastor, born in Colorado Springs, the heartland of the Religious Right, Walker is a member of Meadowbrook Church in Wauwatosa, a non-denominational evangelical church. Meadowbrook’s statement of faith, a fairly typical boilerplate of conservative evangelical theology, includes beliefs in biblical inerrancy, sin, exclusive salvation through Christ, and eternal damnation.

In other words, Scott Walker does not give a rip about pronouncements by the Roman Catholic Church, any Lutheran, Episcopal, or Methodist bishop, or the Protestant social justice pastors. These religious authorities, steeped in centuries of theology and Christian ethics mean absolutely nothing in Scott Walker’s world. His spiritual universe is that of 20th century fundamentalism, in its softer evangelical form, a vision that emphasizes “me and Jesus” and personal salvation.

There’s more in the full article: God in Wisconsin: Scott Walker’s Misguided ‘Obedience’ which I encourage you to read. Diana gives a great overview about how Walker’s religion — which is a kind of Christianity, obviously not reflective of all Christianity - can lead him down the same roads as George W. Bush and others who might talk a good game of religion in order to appease the voters, but who have little interest in the actual life and teachings of Jesus.

Her conclusion is a sharp critique:

Unlike the Roman Catholics and traditional Protestants who have spoken on behalf of the laborers, Walker has no spiritual “check” on him, no authority other than the ones he hears in his own head, and no moral culpability in this situation. He’s the good Christian soldier, just following God’s lead.

And this is why Scott Walker’s religion is actually dangerous in the public square. Because it lacks the ability to compromise, it is profoundly anti-democratic. Many faith traditions actually possess deep spiritual resources that allow them to participate in pluralistic, democratic, and creative political change. But those sort of traditions tend emphasize the love of God and neighbor over strict obedience to an unyielding God. Despite anything Scott Walker might say, the confident dictum of the old hymn, “Trust and Obey” is not the best way to govern a state.

Do check out the entire article. It’s a great one.

Quoting ChristianPost.com:

In a narrow vote, the Texas State Board of Education on Friday approved a controversial resolution that calls for the rejection of textbooks that are “pro-Islamic, anti-Christian.”

I will avoid the low-hanging joke playing off the word “narrow” and “Texas State Board of Education.”

The resolution passed in a 7-6 vote during a reportedly contentious meeting. Although the resolution has no impact on current standards, it sends a warning to publishers that Texas – the nation’s second largest textbook market – will reject all schoolbooks that are favorably biased toward Islam while painting Christianity in an unfavorable light.

“This resolution will ensure upfront that potential biases are taken care of before these books reach the board,” said board Chairwoman Gail Lowe, according to the Dallas Morning News.

It may avoid one kind of bias…

But board member Lawrence Allen, a practicing Muslim, said Friday that the allegations are “baseless” and the resolution is “unfair,” according to Agence France-Presse.

Meanwhile, fellow board member Rick Agosto commented, “This makes us look cuckoo. It’s crazy.”

“We are allowing ourselves to be distracted by this narrow-minded resolution, which is itself biased. We should have taken the higher ground on this.”

I quote this section to show that at least some of the folks there were thinking reasonably on this.

This resolution is the equivalent of voting against legalized wife beating. Anyone who tried to take a reasonable stance against it could be faced with “Oh! So you think it’s fine to be biased against Christianity and favor Islam?!?”

I wonder what the vote would have been on books that are favorably biased toward Christianity while painting Islam in an unfavorable light.

In fact, I’m quite certain that if I was asked to vote on such a resolution, I would have suggested modifying the motion to avoid either unfavorable or favorable bias towards any religion. After all, Texas is still part of the USA, right? And these are public schools, right?

Texas Freedom Network – a group that seeks to counter the religious right on issues of religious freedom and individual liberties – accused the drafter of the resolution of ignoring sections of the textbooks that focus on Christianity. Current textbooks, the network argued, include passages on the Reformation, Christian influences during the Renaissance, the Holy Roman Empire, and church reform, among other topics that the resolution failed to mention.

Good luck and godspeed, Texas Freedom Network.

For anyone who is going to suggest that religious references should be stricken from education at all: I had a seminary professor in Christian History who used to teach “History of Western Civilization” at the University of Pennsylvania. He said the classes were almost identical. Why? Because religion has influenced history. It’s an unavoidable consequence of studying history that one also ends up hearing about religion.

“It is hard not to conclude that the members who voted for this resolution were solely interested in playing on fear and bigotry in order to pit Christians against Muslims,” said Kathy Miller, president of Texas Freedom Network, in a statement Friday.

“This is the 21st century. Education is more important than ever for the future success of our children. Yet board members continue to ignore sound scholarship and mire themselves in every hot button political issue they can find,” she said as she slammed supporters of the resolution.

“Have you stopped beating your wife?” the resolution was heard to ask.

Jonathan Saenz, attorney for Liberty Institute, rejected Miller’s arguments.

He told board members, “The board is doing the right thing to have a resolution before them … to send a message to publishers to prevent any type of religious discrimination or [treatment of a] particular religion in a way that’s not complete.”

Except that’s not really what it sounds like the resolution said. It sounds like the resolution said “you can’t make Islam look good and Christianity look bad” instead of saying “You must be fair and even-handed in your treatment of all religions regardless of your personal biases.”

If that resolution had passed, no one would be talking about this. Well, except for the “WHOA, REALLY?!?! IN TEXAS?!?” comments.

The impact of the SBOE’s decisions is expected to be felt nationwide. Publishers usually cater to the textbook demands of the larger states and offer those schoolbooks to students in smaller states. Texas is the second-largest textbook market in the country, behind California.

Can you imagine the hew and cry if California’s Board of Education started pushing a liberal agenda as strongly as the Texas Board of Education pushes a conservative Christian agenda? I fully expect Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck would explode.

Hrm.

According to Christianpost.com (Instapaper format), there is a group of “at least 100 pastors nationwide” who are going to challenge tax code by “talking politics in their sermons [on] Sunday.”

The law, passed in 1954¹, states that a non-profit organization with tax exemption cannot “participate in, or intervene in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office.” If they do so, they can lose their tax-exempt status.

As I understand it, this law is meant to prevent pastors from speaking directly for or against specific candidates, although pastors have been able to speak freely about issues. Apparently this is not enough for some.

Participants of the third annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday, organized by the Christian legal group Alliance Defense Fund, will use the Bible’s teachings to preach on the positions of electoral candidates or current government officials in defiance of an IRS rule proposed by then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson and passed by Congress in 1954.

To be clear, churches and pastors have had the freedom to talk about politics since 1954. The only issue is whether or not there is any penalty for doing so. The Johnson Amendment brought the possibility of a penalty. So my first question is, “Why not simply give up your tax-exempt status?” The answer, of course, is that the only thing these folks probably like less than feeling like their freedom has been restricted is paying taxes.

“Pastors and churches shouldn’t live in fear of being punished or penalized by the government – in this case, the IRS,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. “ADF is not trying to get politics into the pulpit; we want to get government out of the pulpit.”

That is, at best, disingenuous. If the ADF (and those related to it) did not want to get into politics, this would be a non-issue. And again, if they wanted the government out of the pulpit, they could simply give up their tax exempt status.

It would also be a mistake to think this hasn’t happened already, across the country. Even in our own small corner of the world, I heard from numerous people that there was a pastor in 2004 who told his congregation that if they did not vote for George W. Bush they should not return to church the following Sunday. That may be one of the more explicit examples, but given the state of American politics today it isn’t hard to imagine that a sermon given about “the issues” may not explicitly endorse a candidate, but if one candidate has run on a specific platform (gun control, gay rights, abortion, taxes) and the Sunday sermon addresses that topic from the same perspective as the candidate, it isn’t hard to conclude how the pastor wants you to vote.

The IRS rule, ADF contends, has in effect “muzzled” pastors from speaking freely in the pulpit. It has also given groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State a “political tool” to advance its agenda to silence the Church in the public square.

It is important to remember that there is a group called “Americans United for Separation of Church and State” for a reason. The Founding Fathers set up that separation, and for good reason. They had seen what the combination of religion and politics had done in their home countries, and they saw what the lack of religious tolerance did in the colonies.

Christians should be wary of the intermixing of religion and politics given that the first example we have of political leaders and religious leaders cooperating in the New Testament led to Jesus’ crucifixion. Those who want to bring religion into the political realm do so with good intentions, but history has taught us again and again and again that those good intentions cannot and do not withstand prolonged exposure to political power.

“Decisions about what is preached from the pulpit of a church should not belong to the government but to the individual pastor and church itself,” wrote Chuck Colson, founder of the prison ministry Prison Fellowship and a former aide to President Richard Nixon, in a column this week.

“That is why I support Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” he said, “in which pastors across America will take a courageous stand and boldly challenge the IRS’s restrictions on their freedom of speech when it comes to political candidates and issues.”

ADF attorneys have vowed to legally defend participating pastors if the IRS tries to revoke their church’s tax exempt status.

The decision does belong to the church and the pastor. But of all the institutions in the world, churches ought to be the ones most acutely aware of the fact that choices have consequences. It’s understandable that the church would want to avoid paying taxes, because, after all, that’s money they can spend elsewhere.

But is it even Biblical? After all, in 3 of the 4 canonical Gospels we have a story where Jesus is asked about paying taxes, and he answers “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” (Matthew 22:15-22. See also Mark 12:13-17 and Luke 20:20-26.)

~ This Isn’t Really The Most Important issue ~

Tony Campolo once said that combining religion and politics is like mixing ice cream with horse manure. It doesn’t hurt the horse manure, but it ruins the ice cream.²

There are many reasons to be concerned about pastors speaking on behalf of particular candidates, not the least of which is the fact that, in practice, this tends to lead pastors to become uncritical parrots of certain “talking points” which the political realm has established as the most important issues of the day. Despite the vast number of passages in the Bible about hospitality, caring for the weak, the dangers of hoarding money and turning a blind eye to those in need, pastors who want to talk about certain political figures don’t usually want to talk about those passages. I haven’t heard many pastors wishing that they could endorse a candidate who is against war, despite Jesus’ very clear stance against violence, going so far as to heal the ear of a man who had come to kill him after one of the apostles cut it off trying to defend Jesus (Luke 22).

You may be a Christian who disagrees with those interpretations… which is my point. When a pastor stands before a congregation, she or he has a great deal of authority. For this person to declare themselves as being for a certain candidate is to potentially put themselves at odds with members of their own congregation. Seriously considering and discussing the various issues is dangerous enough. Explictly endorsing a person or political party as a whole seems destined to make problems for members of the congregation who may be less likely to seek pastoral counseling in a time of need from a pastor who has drawn such a line in the sand.

Are these pastors really willing to risk their relationships with those in their congregation over politics? If a pastor was foolish enough to believe that everyone in his/her church believes the same way about political issues, my question then would be, “Well then why is it even necessary to pronounce it from the pulpit?” What if that is the Sunday a visitor has come into an unfamiliar church, hoping to hear a Word from the Lord. I ask again, are politics worth that risk? Does that sound like something Jesus would do?

~ Footnotes ~

I’ll probably be posting more about my thesis work in the coming months, so I figured I’d outline the process, as well as define my terms. I’m using “thesis” because it’s the more common/familiar, even though it isn’t entirely accurate.

There are actually several steps involved:

1) Project Proposal: I have to come up with an idea of what I want to do, and how I’m going to do it. This is the part that I’ve been trying to figure out for the last year. In June, 2009, I went to a workshop that was supposed to help me “clarify” my ideas with the help of my classmates. We spent 5 days (Monday - Friday) helping one another refine each other’s ideas.

On Wednesday I came into class and said “Ok, so what I’ve figured out about my idea is that I really don’t want to do my idea.” My advisor said “Better to figure that out now than when you’re half-way through it. Don’t worry, something else will come to you.”

That was a year ago. Over a year ago, actually, and nothing had come to me. Well, some ideas came to me, but they were things that I couldn’t really figure out how to research, or wouldn’t work for other ideas. Or I just hated the idea after a matter of hours.

I recently signed up for the not-at-all-pretentiously-named World-Changing Writing Workshop and after the first week I was doing one of the writing exercises and came up with a topic (overly-broad at this point and needing to be narrowed down) of wanting to examine what people mean when they call themselves “Spiritual But Not Religious” and what leads them to that position. What is it, specifically, about organized religion that turns them off (since that seems to be a core part of “religion” vs “spirituality”).

The two books that I’ve started reading are Spiritual but Not Religious: A Call to Religious Revolution in America by Sven Erlandson and Spiritual, but not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America by Robert C. Fuller. Fuller teaches at college in Illinois. Erlandson is a life coach who seems to live near Dayton, Ohio.

2) The Project Itself: Once the project proposal is approved (and I’ve found two people to serve as advisors), the Project itself will begin, hopefully sometime this fall. What will actually be involved in the project is yet to be determined, but there’s some kind of practical/research component required.

3) The Project Report: The write-up of the project (what was proposed, what was researched, what was discovered, etc). Several sections about 20 pages long, totally about 100-120 pages. This will need to be done by next March/April.

4) Project Evaluation: This is where the advisors look at your work and determine whether or not you’ve “done the job” and if you’re ready to graduate.

This is not for a Ph.D. but “Doctor of Ministry” degree, commonly abbreviated D.Min. and yes, it’s pronounced very much like “demon,” in fact, when I first told one of our friends that I was “thinking about pursuing a D.Min.” she thought I said “pursuing a demon” which lead to a very wide-eyed look that I mistook for “What? Are you crazy? Going back to school? I thought you hated school, and do you have any idea how much time and energy that’s going to take?” when really she was thinking I had “gone ‘round the bend” mentally and was going to start trying to do exorcisms.

So that’s where I am, and where I’m headed.

It is generally accepted that there are — at most — about 7 verses in the Old and New Testaments which deal with gay/lesbian people (although there are many who would argue that what is described in some of the passages had more to do with prostitution than sexuality).

For 7 verses, we certainly hear a lot about them.

Today I wondered, “How many verses are there in the Bible about ‘aliens’?” I don’t mean the X-Files kind, I mean the kind folks are worried about in Arizona and other places. The kind who work in the USA because they get paid better than they would in Mexico, for example.

There are over 100. Here is a representative sampling:

You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22.21)

You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 23.9)

You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19.10)

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. (Leviticus 19.33)

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19.34)

there shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you. (Exodus 12.49) (also Leviticus 24.22). Oh, and Numbers 15.16))

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 23.22)

The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. (Leviticus 25.23)

As for the assembly, there shall be for both you and the resident alien a single statute, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you and the alien shall be alike before the Lord. (Numbers 15.15)

You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy labourers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns. (Deuteronomy 24.14)

You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge. (Deuteronomy 24.17)

‘Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen!’ (Deuteronomy 27.19)

Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. (Jeremiah 22.3)

do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. (Zechariah 7.10)

Then I will draw near to you for judgement; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow, and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 3.5)

You will note that there’s no passage in scripture which differentiates between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants (a term which has been created by the descendants of people who came to this country and took it over by violent oppression of those who were “here first”).

God has a singular and united opinion on how God’s people are supposed to treat aliens: as equals. The weakness of social status means that they should be protected, not exploited, by those who claim to follow God. And those who do injustice to the aliens are to be cursed.

Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee. (source: Augustine’s Confessions, Book 1, chapter 1. See also the footnote.)

Part of this self-given title is quite literal: I am restless most days. It is currently 3 a.m. and I am not the least bit tired. When I fall asleep, I sleep as soundly as anyone I know, but I have trouble getting to that point. Neither therapy nor exercise has helped me achieve a consistent sleep pattern, although I would like to have one. I often feel like I am less than 100% during the day because I have not slept as much as I should have the night before.

Part of it is existential/metaphysical: I am ill at ease with the state of the world in which we live, particularly the country in which I live currently led by a man quite willing to invoke God whenever it suits his purposes. Lining up behind him are a long line of faithful Christians who are upset about all the wrong things. They go on TV and claim to represent Christians and Christianity, and yet I hear very little in their words that sounds like words Christ spoke.

It is here in these pages that I hope to work out my salvation with fear and trembling in ways that I hope will be useful (or at least interesting) to others.