“But—brown?” Buddha asked.
“Brown with infinite variations,” said the Lord God. “Taupe, ochre, burnt umber—they’re called earth tones.”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” said Buddha. “I was just noticing.”
– Paul Rudnick, in The New Yorker
“But—brown?” Buddha asked.
“Brown with infinite variations,” said the Lord God. “Taupe, ochre, burnt umber—they’re called earth tones.”
“I wasn’t criticizing,” said Buddha. “I was just noticing.”
– Paul Rudnick, in The New Yorker
Last week I took a lunch break from the dusty vellum manuscripts of eighteenth-century lawyers, and hitched a bus over to Westminster, where I met Dr. Andrew Bradstock, president of the Christian Socialists, for lunch.
Talking to the Christian Left on this side of the Atlantic is one of the true restoratives I know. When one begins to feel the hopelessness of saving Jesus’ teachings from adolescent school-boys obsessed with pints of blood and centurion whips, when one blanches to see teachings of mercy and fellowship somehow converted to the torturing of prisoners and taking pints of milk away from school-children, it’s time to turn to what political Christianity can do in her truer incarnations. And it’s very appropriate for our young, feeble movement for a true political Christianity to take guidance from an older political Christianity that has been working for the poor and outcast in the unbroken work of a hundred and fifty years.
Their office is small: three wee desks squeezed into a basement room, idiosyncratically hidden beneath the grand copper dome of Westminster Hall. On the shelves are booklets on global poverty, welfare, racism, and public education. The pamphlets are authored by names that are famous here: Members of Parliament, famous journalists, and the Archbishop of Canterbury himself.
Like progressive Christianity in the US, Christian Socialism in the UK arrived in mid-nineteenth century, in response to the ‘theology of atonement.’ For a solid two generations on both sides of the Atlantic, evangelical ministers had preached thrift, cleanliness, and obedience – very human virtues with a limited resemblance to Christ’s teachings. By the 1860s and 70s, a new group of ministers were preaching a theology of “incarnation” which stressed the redemptive power of Christ’s love, according to new historical research by Georgetown professor Michael Kazin and Harvard political scientist Richard Parker. Cambridge University theologian F. D. Maurice and populist orator William Bryan Jennings collaborated with grass-roots workers’ activism for political rights and economic representation. Christian Socialists in the UK, and their US equivalent, the Social Gospel Movement, preached that corporate interests were taking rank advantage of the poor in total disregard of Christian ideals. On both sides of the Atlantic, the church lobbied to cleanse government of corporate influence, proclaiming that the primary goal of government was to protect the interests of the people.
Christian Socialism didn’t enjoy its reign of political influence unabated, and its spunk waned severely in the Thatcher years. But the movement saw a rebirth in the 1990s, nourished by a generation of strong leaders from Labour politics and the church. British congregations now stand united on issues of poverty, environmentalism, and peace in the Middle East, capable of serious political pressure in the international realm. Last week, bishops of the Church of England condemned the War in Iraq as a “litany of errors,” and apologized to Muslims for the suffering it had caused. This week, opposition party leader Gordon Brown announced that the leading nations of the world (minus the US) had decided, at long last, to acquiesce to the forgiveness of third world debts lobbied for by the campaign to Make Poverty History, a program of historic proportions, largely engineered by the Church of England and related Christian aid programs in the UK.
In the US, churches have been much less quick to lead initiatives for visionary, global change. Trapped in the Bibles-and-bread foreign missions of the last century, communicating only to their denominational circles, US churches have had few visionaries of the kind that have captured Britain’s heart.
We see right now some developments that could give US Christians a push along equally visionary lines. One sign of change is the number of conferences that appeared this year, organized by the Christian Alliance for Progress in Jacksonville and the Rockridge Institute in Berkeley, among others, where professedly progressive Christians drafted leaders, passed resolutions, and took a firm stand on political issues. Now, in the wake of Katrina, another major event, the Values Conference, is condemning the Bush government for its abandonment of the poor. Sponsored by Episcopalian Sunday School programming developers Via Media of San Francisco, the Values conference will host an array of bipartisanal politicians, journalists, grass-roots leaders, and intellectuals. It takes place October 13-14 at the National Cathedral in Washington.
If such an idea is intriguing, we know from the British success story that there are at least three key ingredients. First, local volunteers must be motivated to work towards education within the local churches: the campaign to Make Poverty History came only after ten years over which motivated volunteers distributed leaflets to congregations, personally corralled preachers, and visited one Sunday School after another to talk about the Christian message as they understood it.
Second, a national campaign must coordinate the goals of individual congregations at a national level: the Christian Socialists were united around a common conversation about what their highest priorities were. While some fought racism and others lobbied for political power in Parliament, it was only their unity at a national level that allowed the campaign to Make Poverty History to have such effect.
Third, a powerful and articulate leadership must speak effectively for organized action by the churches and the congregations. England has seen leaders in the church and in Parliament lobbying for justice and social responsibility in the name of an articulate, rampantly progressive Christianity. Will America see the same?
Technorati Tags: england, anglican, prochrist, christian,
politics,
episcopalian,
activism,
poverty,
stratego
Last week I took a lunch break from the dusty vellum manuscripts of eighteenth-century lawyers, and hitched a bus over to Westminster, where I met Dr. Andrew Bradstock, president of the Christian Socialists, for lunch.
Talking to the Christian Left on this side of the Atlantic is one of the true restoratives I know. When one begins to feel the hopelessness of saving Jesus’ teachings from adolescent school-boys obsessed with pints of blood and centurion whips, when one blanches to see teachings of mercy and fellowship somehow converted to the torturing of prisoners and taking pints of milk away from school-children, it’s time to turn to what political Christianity can do in her truer incarnations. And it’s very appropriate for our young, feeble movement for a true political Christianity to take guidance from an older political Christianity that has been working for the poor and outcast in the unbroken work of a hundred and fifty years.
Their office is small: three wee desks squeezed into a basement room, idiosyncratically hidden beneath the grand copper dome of Westminster Hall. On the shelves are booklets on global poverty, welfare, racism, and public education. The pamphlets are authored by names that are famous here: Members of Parliament, famous journalists, and the Archbishop of Canterbury himself.
Like progressive Christianity in the US, Christian Socialism in the UK arrived in mid-nineteenth century, in response to the ‘theology of atonement.’ For a solid two generations on both sides of the Atlantic, evangelical ministers had preached thrift, cleanliness, and obedience – very human virtues with a limited resemblance to Christ’s teachings. By the 1860s and 70s, a new group of ministers were preaching a theology of “incarnation” which stressed the redemptive power of Christ’s love, according to new historical research by Georgetown professor Michael Kazin and Harvard political scientist Richard Parker. Cambridge University theologian F. D. Maurice and populist orator William Bryan Jennings collaborated with grass-roots workers’ activism for political rights and economic representation. Christian Socialists in the UK, and their US equivalent, the Social Gospel Movement, preached that corporate interests were taking rank advantage of the poor in total disregard of Christian ideals. On both sides of the Atlantic, the church lobbied to cleanse government of corporate influence, proclaiming that the primary goal of government was to protect the interests of the people.
Christian Socialism didn’t enjoy its reign of political influence unabated, and its spunk waned severely in the Thatcher years. But the movement saw a rebirth in the 1990s, nourished by a generation of strong leaders from Labour politics and the church. British congregations now stand united on issues of poverty, environmentalism, and peace in the Middle East, capable of serious political pressure in the international realm. Last week, bishops of the Church of England condemned the War in Iraq as a “litany of errors,” and apologized to Muslims for the suffering it had caused. This week, opposition party leader Gordon Brown announced that the leading nations of the world (minus the US) had decided, at long last, to acquiesce to the forgiveness of third world debts lobbied for by the campaign to Make Poverty History, a program of historic proportions, largely engineered by the Church of England and related Christian aid programs in the UK.
In the US, churches have been much less quick to lead initiatives for visionary, global change. Trapped in the Bibles-and-bread foreign missions of the last century, communicating only to their denominational circles, US churches have had few visionaries of the kind that have captured Britain’s heart.
We see right now some developments that could give US Christians a push along equally visionary lines. One sign of change is the number of conferences that appeared this year, organized by the Christian Alliance for Progress in Jacksonville and the Rockridge Institute in Berkeley, among others, where professedly progressive Christians drafted leaders, passed resolutions, and took a firm stand on political issues. Now, in the wake of Katrina, another major event, the Values Conference, is condemning the Bush government for its abandonment of the poor. Sponsored by Episcopalian Sunday School programming developers Via Media of San Francisco, the Values conference will host an array of bipartisanal politicians, journalists, grass-roots leaders, and intellectuals. It takes place October 13-14 at the National Cathedral in Washington.
If such an idea is intriguing, we know from the British success story that there are at least three key ingredients. First, local volunteers must be motivated to work towards education within the local churches: the campaign to Make Poverty History came only after ten years over which motivated volunteers distributed leaflets to congregations, personally corralled preachers, and visited one Sunday School after another to talk about the Christian message as they understood it.
Second, a national campaign must coordinate the goals of individual congregations at a national level: the Christian Socialists were united around a common conversation about what their highest priorities were. While some fought racism and others lobbied for political power in Parliament, it was only their unity at a national level that allowed the campaign to Make Poverty History to have such effect.
Third, a powerful and articulate leadership must speak effectively for organized action by the churches and the congregations. England has seen leaders in the church and in Parliament lobbying for justice and social responsibility in the name of an articulate, rampantly progressive Christianity. Will America see the same?
Technorati Tags: england, anglican, prochrist, christian,
politics,
episcopalian,
activism,
poverty,
stratego
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My curiosity about where to find black bloggers on Katrina was first vented here, then responded to by the Kossacks, and then received an extremely worthy reply at Negrophile.
The Negrophile response is really uplifting to me (they found us, we didn’t go after them!) — ask and the door shall be opened, indeed. Thanks, Negrophile, for helping to keep alive this important line of social questions.
My curiosity about where to find black bloggers on Katrina was first vented here, then responded to by the Kossacks, and then received an extremely worthy reply at Negrophile.
The Negrophile response is really uplifting to me (they found us, we didn’t go after them!) — ask and the door shall be opened, indeed. Thanks, Negrophile, for helping to keep alive this important line of social questions.
An article on religious bloggers notes a world-wide explosion of blogging about faith and values.
Strange to say, from this blogger’s perspective, that religious blogging won’t do the Religious Left much good. But then, over here, we’re feeling exhausted. In the last three weeks, the three-person publicity team for the Progressive Values Conference has been emailing as many of our progressive blogger colleagues as we could reach, reducing the admissions fees, offering free wireless and shoulder-rubbing opportunities with the senators and journalists, begging the community of lefty religious bloggers to help spread the word. Result? two responses (Philocrates and Bene Diction, thank you sincerely, you are awesome) (actually, to be fair, we got *three* responses, if you count StreetProphets).
Frankly, discouraging. Seems sometimes as if the more bloggers there are, the harder it is to get consensus about any one action, and the harder it is to spread the word around any given community.
I was complaining to Meg, my economist friend in LA, about this, when she called last week.
“Sounds like the problem you’re trying to solve — of unifying a disunified Religious Left — is the very problem that’s holding back your registration numbers.”
How true.
An article on religious bloggers notes a world-wide explosion of blogging about faith and values.
Strange to say, from this blogger’s perspective, that religious blogging won’t do the Religious Left much good. But then, over here, we’re feeling exhausted. In the last three weeks, the three-person publicity team for the Progressive Values Conference has been emailing as many of our progressive blogger colleagues as we could reach, reducing the admissions fees, offering free wireless and shoulder-rubbing opportunities with the senators and journalists, begging the community of lefty religious bloggers to help spread the word. Result? two responses (Philocrates and Bene Diction, thank you sincerely, you are awesome) (actually, to be fair, we got *three* responses, if you count StreetProphets).
Frankly, discouraging. Seems sometimes as if the more bloggers there are, the harder it is to get consensus about any one action, and the harder it is to spread the word around any given community.
I was complaining to Meg, my economist friend in LA, about this, when she called last week.
“Sounds like the problem you’re trying to solve — of unifying a disunified Religious Left — is the very problem that’s holding back your registration numbers.”
How true.
Conspiracies of name-calling are getting the Christian Left in trouble now more than ever. For high conspiracy theorists of the Left, a proclaimed life-long Leftist is guilty if he sometimes has dinner with military officials — no question about whether they’re related, old school friends, if the particular officials are dissidents within the structure, or if Chomsky was merely playing spy in his own way, buying dinner for a gimp in order to get more information about what the military is doing next! I’d hate to see what these people would do with my own chequered past.
Speculation about cabals and conspiracies might be fine if it were confined to local banter on blogs, but the divides of the Left then get into the media at large. Leftist fractions feed a media machine programmed to exploit the first signs of failure.
Hence the Church of England, which just condemned the War in Iraq (this is huge, considering that Blair is technically head of the Church), is guilty of being hypocritical if — as was the case here — the Church once made a deal allowing telecoms to use church steeples as programming towers. Witness, all of you: the Church that condemns Bush and Blair’s war is hypocritical if some of its clergy at any point know military people/invest in military stocks/ are ex-military themselves. They “have connections” to the war they condemn. They are guilty by association.
Headlines in England: “Clergy criticise the Church over links with British weapons firm”,“Church of England accused of hypocrisy over links with arms firm.” As if the Church, now condemning the war, were secretly, unbeknownst to its parishioners, manufacturing in each of its crypts and Sunday-school rooms, hives of bombs for nursery-schools in Baghdad.
Headlines in America have barely stressed this major resolution from a major conservative Christian body, condemning Bush (here’s a single link from a Virginia paper and another from CrossWalk; major US news sources didn’t pick up the headline, although, thank Providence, many in the Middle East did).
Shh, don’t listen to the Church of England, nobody hates the War in Iraq except crazy people who eat their own children. Now, back to how Pat Robertson is saving the victims of Katrina…
We don’t need leftists in Britain to play tough by picking off their friends. We do need a united front of progressive Christians capable of holding fast to a political message and keeping its positive reaction in the news. What if the Bishops, having passed this resolution, had made a publicity tour of hand-shaking with the Middle Eastern journalists who received the invitation so well? Certainly bishops can do at least as well as politicians. The game is simple: keep your own story in the news as long as possible. Don’t let your fantastic proclamation fizzle out three days later to accusations of “hypocrisy” from within. But frankly, at the game of keeping a unified voice in the media, the religious Left sucks.
At this game, progressive American Christians are even worse off than their European counterparts. What we also need is a body of progressive American Christians with the organization, unity of voice, and unity of action of the house of bishops in the UK. None exists. The Episcopal Church USA will never pass such resolutions, terrified of having the conservative “Network” of Republican churches flee with part of their money. Until we summon up the courage to speak with one voice, to hold the tongue of inner dissent among the Left long enough for real action, we can look forward to all our marches, all our conferences, and all our fine blogging, vanishing like grass.
Conspiracies of name-calling are getting the Christian Left in trouble now more than ever. For high conspiracy theorists of the Left, a proclaimed life-long Leftist is guilty if he sometimes has dinner with military officials — no question about whether they’re related, old school friends, if the particular officials are dissidents within the structure, or if Chomsky was merely playing spy in his own way, buying dinner for a gimp in order to get more information about what the military is doing next! I’d hate to see what these people would do with my own chequered past.
Speculation about cabals and conspiracies might be fine if it were confined to local banter on blogs, but the divides of the Left then get into the media at large. Leftist fractions feed a media machine programmed to exploit the first signs of failure.
Hence the Church of England, which just condemned the War in Iraq (this is huge, considering that Blair is technically head of the Church), is guilty of being hypocritical if — as was the case here — the Church once made a deal allowing telecoms to use church steeples as programming towers. Witness, all of you: the Church that condemns Bush and Blair’s war is hypocritical if some of its clergy at any point know military people/invest in military stocks/ are ex-military themselves. They “have connections” to the war they condemn. They are guilty by association.
Headlines in England: “Clergy criticise the Church over links with British weapons firm”,“Church of England accused of hypocrisy over links with arms firm.” As if the Church, now condemning the war, were secretly, unbeknownst to its parishioners, manufacturing in each of its crypts and Sunday-school rooms, hives of bombs for nursery-schools in Baghdad.
Headlines in America have barely stressed this major resolution from a major conservative Christian body, condemning Bush (here’s a single link from a Virginia paper and another from CrossWalk; major US news sources didn’t pick up the headline, although, thank Providence, many in the Middle East did).
Shh, don’t listen to the Church of England, nobody hates the War in Iraq except crazy people who eat their own children. Now, back to how Pat Robertson is saving the victims of Katrina…
We don’t need leftists in Britain to play tough by picking off their friends. We do need a united front of progressive Christians capable of holding fast to a political message and keeping its positive reaction in the news. What if the Bishops, having passed this resolution, had made a publicity tour of hand-shaking with the Middle Eastern journalists who received the invitation so well? Certainly bishops can do at least as well as politicians. The game is simple: keep your own story in the news as long as possible. Don’t let your fantastic proclamation fizzle out three days later to accusations of “hypocrisy” from within. But frankly, at the game of keeping a unified voice in the media, the religious Left sucks.
At this game, progressive American Christians are even worse off than their European counterparts. What we also need is a body of progressive American Christians with the organization, unity of voice, and unity of action of the house of bishops in the UK. None exists. The Episcopal Church USA will never pass such resolutions, terrified of having the conservative “Network” of Republican churches flee with part of their money. Until we summon up the courage to speak with one voice, to hold the tongue of inner dissent among the Left long enough for real action, we can look forward to all our marches, all our conferences, and all our fine blogging, vanishing like grass.
My favorite conspiracy site has been harping on the ANSWER coalition and its fragmented politics as the reason why marches on Washington don’t go so far.
But I have a history lesson and a complaint about Leftist politics in general: why they tend to fragment, why coalitions are hard to build. The Left, Leftist journalists, Leftist historians, all of us, love a good conspiracy story. But as a result, we tend to fall into the hermeneutics of suspicion — seeing conspiracies even within our own ranks. Lumping in a thousand different messages at the anti-war march. (and then, if you run with it, accusing the thousand different messages of the anti-war march of being enemy plants by Republican spies.
The origins of this way of thinking, historians think, go back to Karl Marx trying to figure out why the Revolution didn’t come in France in 1848.
1848 was actually a true conspiracy between different monarchical and bourgeois factions, cleverly getting rid of the proletariat barricades and swiftly moving the country in a direction where memory of revolution could never come back. But Marx’s essays on 1848 became really influential among the Left — still are — and they’re all about figuring out how somebody’s not on your side by the fact that they marginalize your interests.
So that logic applies in the case of 1848, where there’s clearly a takeover of some sort going on, and a lot of aristocrats promising one thing but doing another; but in many, many other revolutions, you simply have true believers (some of them aristocrats) who are trying to make practical deals with other interests (rather than necessarily evil deals), or simply sideline their other affiliations in order to present a coherent image of the movement to the public.
Anyway, the result is that the Left tends to resort to proving its earnestness by constantly proving that its affiliations are pure and diverse. Hence the “out of Palestine” signs at ANSWER, if you want my guess; probably one of the friends of ANSWER was a pro-Palestine activist who said something like, ‘you’d be exploiting all of our dedication to your cause if you don’t bring up the *true* issue here. What are you, a bunch of anti-Palestine conspirators? Suppressing the truth?’
I’ve had similar poisoned fractions pulled so many times on the Religious Left. ‘How can you call yourselves progressive Christians unless you’re lobbying for gay marriage?’ — well, I’ve spent plenty of time lobbying for gay marriage and will again, but I was trying to have an event where we invited moderate Republicans *just to admit* that Christ hates the fact that we’re mean to poor people.
It ought to have been the easiest liberal coup to pull. But pulling coups at all would require a kind of coherence and collective action that our movement rarely has.