Waffen-SS recruitment poster (detail). See full graphic below.
The young man walked toward me with a smile, shook my hand, and said, "I'm on your side."
His next statement, however, was not reassuring: "Hitler has seen some of your letters."
For an instant, I felt flattered that someone as high up as the Fuehrer had taken notice of me. The next moment I felt the full flush of horror. Wasn't this young man supposed to be part of the Resistance? And what year was this, anyway!?
This dream (in my first night of dreams in 2025) had started innocuously enough. I was on a train, expecting to see a familiar face when I got to my destination, Stuttgart. It was a familiar context: I often have dreams in which my grandparents appear—my father's parents or my mother's parents, depending on whether I'm dreaming of Norway or Germany.
I stepped off the train and went into the waiting room, looking around for my grandmother. She wasn't there. Once again, I scanned the people on the wooden benches, looking for anyone familiar, and that's when the young man approached me.
It was confusing. I had the strong impression that he was indeed an ally, a part of the resistance against fascism, but why did he mention the chief fascist himself? And why did that young man look so strikingly like a stereotypical "master race" poster child?
Before I could untangle my confusion, the dream came to an end. However, unlike most of my dreams, I remembered this one with crystal clarity, so I continued to try sorting it out.
My first question: where did that young man come from? I think the image came from a recruiting placard for the German occupation forces in Norway, specifically for their SS forces and their "Norwegian Legion."I had seen this placard before, most recently at the impressive Norwegian Resistance Museum in Oslo last July. The invitation to join the common fight against Bolshevism is based on a blatant visual appeal to a myth of racial solidarity. The explicit identification of their mutual enemy was "Bolshevism," but, in Nazi usage, that political term often signified "the Jews."
Here are some other influences that probably went into the creation of my confusing dream:
As the 80th anniversary of World War II's end approaches, I've kept up my usual reading habits, which have always included a proportion of books about that war, its roots and its aftermath. After all, that war and its associated deportations and migrations resulted in my hybrid Norwegian-German family. Last week, for example, I read Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, by Volker Ullrich, the most detailed account I've seen of this period.
My recent reading also included the powerful story of Daniel Finkelstein's mother and father, Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family. Finkelstein's mother Mirjam and her family were caught in Nazi Germany's mass brutality and the Holocaust, all of which the author describes in heart-stopping detail. This amazing story is interwoven with the equally miraculous survival of the author's Polish-born father Ludvik, who somehow survived Stalin's mass savagery. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, even though it puts us face to face with the reality of our human capacity for mass cruelty committed by leaders and followers and whole societies who all seemingly could have chosen differently.
Among the factors that seem to have reliably fueled this cruelty is racism in all its demonic forms, of which antisemitism has played a persistent and outsized role for many generations. All of these forms are rooted in the primordial sin of objectification, which to my sorrow and distress as a follower of Jesus, seems to have found expressions in today's white Christian nationalism, and not just in the USA.
The other sources for the "resistance" theme of my dream are no doubt the stabbing heartaches of the daily news: the genocide (as Amnesty International names it ... and I'm persuaded) in the Gaza Strip, committed by the armed forces of a nation that acts with near-total impunity; and then there's the ongoing "special military operation" in Ukraine, committed in the lethal service of a "great power," its leadership, and its "Russian World" mythology; in short, a gang whose other organizing principle seems to be to embezzle money and natural resources from its own population while suppressing most means of protest.
Add to all that: the uncertainties of our post-January 20 USA, with a new administration whose saving feature so far seems to be its own internal contradictions.
I have a feeling that there are going to be some more interesting dreams in my future. I'll keep looking for my grandmother ... and for the resistance.
Latest United Nations reports on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Your tax dollars at work. And since that last OCHA report: Israeli air strikes hit "safe zone."
What are the odds that artificial intelligence will wipe out the human race in the next 30 years? Ask Geoffrey Hinton.
AFSC staff in Gaza have shared horrendous accounts of starvation used as a tool of war. Children in Gaza are starving to death. The World Health Organization predicts that up to 80,000 more lives will be lost to disease and starvation if no immediate action is taken. This crisis surpasses anything many of us have witnessed in our decades of responding to disasters worldwide.
... Immediate action is needed so that killings and suffering can end. That starts with a permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and prisoners, and unrestricted
humanitarian access in Gaza.
We call on the US government to end its military aid of the Israeli government and to fully restore UNRWA funding to aid Palestinians. The US government must stop sending the Israeli military more weapons.
We call on the Israeli government to grant access and safety to United Nations and humanitarian agencies to fulfill their duties. We need immediate humanitarian access for Gaza and adherence to international humanitarian and human rights law.
As the ongoing devastation, bombing, and ground invasion in Gaza continue into their sixth month, Palestinians, including our Palestinian Christian siblings, cry out to the world, asking, “Where are you?” World leaders have responded with empty rhetoric and political volleying about addressing the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza while ignoring the direct causes of the catastrophe. Those causes are the daily bombing and ground invasion by the Israeli military, in addition to the shutting off of basic life-sustaining services to more than two million people who are suffering the consequences of crimes not their own.
... The horrific actions Hamas committed on October 7th in no way justify the massive deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military.
All over the world, faith communities have struggled to put into words their plea to world powers and leaders to respond with some actual effectiveness to the spectacle we witness on a daily basis in the Gaza Strip (and not only there) as Israel destroys homes, hospitals, schools, churches, and people. The three examples above all reflect this plea. Unlike the boilerplate activist rhetoric of some past campaigns, these voices are raw, urgent, as balanced as this terribly unbalanced situation allows ... but so far, it's hard to judge their impact.
All three statements refer to the International Court of Justice and the provisions required of Israel to avoid a judgment of "genocidal intent." Since these statements were published, the International Criminal Court has received a prosecutor's request to consider arrest warrants for major figures of both warring parties. Neither initiative has made any discernible impact on anyone's behavior, but I see the first hints of a positive development: a crack in the trance-like captivity of the major Western powers when it comes to Israel. They've been in a spell for many years; they don't regard international law as having any application to Israel's action, and they collaborate with Israeli propagandists who equate any criticism of this magical status with antisemitism.
The Israeli state and U.S. policy, as well as popular opinion in both countries, have not always lined up quite as they do now. Dahlia Scheindlin, in her Foreign Affairs article, "Can America’s Special Relationship With Israel Survive? How Gaza Has Accelerated the Social and Political Forces Driving the Countries Apart," contrasts the comparatively balanced situation during the Jimmy Carter administration with today's complex polarizations. Israeli public opinion, and Israel's strongest defenders in the USA, both prefer a future president Trump over a second term for Biden, despite Biden's fierce loyalty to Israel over his entire political life.
Concerning Israel's right to exist, a huge percentage of USA poll respondents remain strongly in favor. On the other hand, when it comes to the current war, Scheindlin points to a generation gap:
A February 2024 survey by Pew found that 78 percent of older Americans (over 65) see Israel’s reasons for fighting the war as valid, whereas just 38 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds do—a 40-point gap. And although students in the Axios survey overwhelmingly agreed with Israel’s right to exist, nearly half of them—45 percent—supported the campus protests “which seek to boycott and protest against Israel,” whereas only 24 percent were opposed. (The remainder were neutral.) The Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll from April also found that respondents between 18 and 24 years old were almost evenly divided between those who believed that Israel was mostly responsible for “the crisis in Gaza”— 49 percent—and those who held Hamas mostly responsible—51 percent. By contrast, among people over 65, just 14 percent blamed Israel.
What can our well-meaning, even urgent and passionate statements say that can slip through these polarizations and affect hearts? I thought about this question this morning during a Friends' organization's video conference partially devoted to the war in Gaza. We were considering whether to sign on to a statement on this conflict and its human cost. (It was one of the three statements posted above. We didn't consider the other two; I added them here this evening for the sake of discussion.) Ultimately we decided to give this decision more time. Our key concern was simply this: would associating ourselves with this statement and its source complicate our colleagues' and partners' situations on the ground in Palestine and israel?
I'm not close enough to their situation to have a judgment. But if I were to write my own statement from scratch, what would some of my guiding principles be? Are these hopelessly idealistic? ...
No state or organization is beyond accountability. International law and the expectations of human decency apply equally to all. The actions and decisions of international tribunals are judged solely by their adherence to law and due process, not by their supposed "symbolism" or "message" or implications of "equivalence."
No population has the exclusive right to territory based on a religious belief or a sacred book. No person, family, group or nationality can be forced to move from their family/ancestral homes because of someone else's religious claims. Conflicting claims can be resolved through a process that gives conflicting parties equal weight.
There is no theory of "defense" that allows treating occupied territory as a legitimate military target, or that justifies terrorism in any form. (Terrorism is defined as the use or threat of violence for coercive political purpose, regardless of whether it is committed by states or non-state actors.)
Rhetorical flourishes such as "we demand," "we condemn," or "you/they must" should be used very sparingly. The main purpose of a statement is to persuade, to touch hearts, to open a dialogue, not to express hostility, even when that last purpose might gratify one's own emotions or one's own partisans.
The best form of Quakerly neutrality is equal openness to dialogue, equal readiness to listen to all concerned, and a rejection of all forms of exaggeration. Neutrality does not require pretending that all sides are equally innocent or guilty, or have equal access to the resources needed for a fair outcome.
I would hope to make a statement that reflects my own Christian faith, particularly in the doctrine that everyone everywhere is created in the image and likeness of God, and that wars and conflicts take place in a spiritual context where all sides may be caught in sinful systems of principalities and powers and evil in high places. Therefore we should be persistently seeking resolution and reconciliation instead of resorting to carnal weapons and deceptively attractive zero-sum solutions. Ephesians 6:12.
The video: this year's version of "Clothes Line" (Rick Estrin and the Nightcats).
(And here's a link to the Little Charlie and the Nightcats version we used in listening comprehension classes in Russia. It was in good fun; nobody's grade depended on keeping up with Rick's rapid delivery!!)
"Identify, Embrace, Welcome" (mixed media) by Bob Henry graced the front of Indianapolis First Friends Meetinghouse on Christmas Eve 2022. It is what is traditionally known as a triptych. Made of three pieces or panels, it is often used to impart narrative, create sequence, or show different elements of the same subject matter. The three panels highlight how in the Christmas story Jesus’ family identifies with the poor, homeless, and refugee. If you look closely, you will notice that the framework for the three panels is made of refuse, everything from plastic bags to toilet paper rolls—once again making the ordinary into something holy.
(Many thanks to Bob Henry, First Friends' pastor, for the photos and explanation.)
It's hard for me to look at Bob's triptych without thinking about the state of today's world. How is the Body of Christ suffering with those who suffer—whatever their faith—and how are we responding in concert with everyone else who responds—whatever their faith?
Part of that response is providing the resources needed for practical relief and healing. Just about everyone I know is doing that, directly or indirectly. Part of that response is challenging the systems that allow avoidable suffering, misery, desolation, and death to happen. That's where we need to grow. It's not an either/or choice; we need both.
But for so many, our aid and our challenge is already too late.
Nearly 18,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7, of whom about 13,000 are women and children. According to the local ministry of education, as of December 5, more than 3,477 students and 203 educational staff in the Gaza Strip had been killed. Around 85% of the Gaza Strip's population are "internally displaced," some of them several times.
I've dealt with Israeli official justifications for this sort of atrocity a number of times over the years, and others have done so, too, so I won't repeat all that here. If you believe that, as long as a bullet is targeted at a terrorist, it doesn't matter that its path goes through innocent people, you're probably not reading this. If you believe that having terrorists hiding among innocent people deprives those people of the right to live and to be protected by the occupying force, as international law requires, nothing I can say is likely to change your mind.
But even if the shooting stopped this very night, from all sides, almost 20,000 (including victims in Israel and the rest of Palestine) have already died in this cycle alone. These people, the vast majority of whom were not soldiers or terrorists, have already paid the ultimate price for the lethal failure of national, regional, and international leadership to agree on a peaceful resolution of this running conflict and its utterly predictable eruptions, either through a genuine two-state solution or a non-discriminatory one-state solution, or some third path.
Yes, there's plenty of passion among activists and ordinary people in favor of peace with justice, but we have not found a decisive way to make it plain to decisionmakers that we have seen the cost of their inaction and obstruction, and they have lost their moral authority. I wonder if this most recent wave of mass violence in the face of the whole world is finally breaking through.
That breakthrough might bring some comfort to those grieving for those 20,000 and counting. I take comfort from Martin Luther King, who referred to the Book of Deuteronomy in a speech on the evening before his assassination: "I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land." (My italics.)
"We as a people..." is all in fact we're promised, not individual safety. The Bible is brutally direct about that, from the drowning of earth's population in Noah's time; to Pharaoh's soldiers, just following orders; to Ezekiel's shock and awe; to Rachel, weeping for her children, and on, and on. Jesus refers to a news item in his own time: "... those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no...." [Context.] Counting ourselves among Jesus's followers isn't insurance either: "... The time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God." (From John 16:2.)
Now we await the birthday of the Prince of Peace. As Simeon told his mother Mary about her newborn baby, Jesus will "be a sign that will be spoken against, ... and a sword will pierce your own soul too." [Context.] For us in the Body of Christ, there may be no better way for us to understand God's intention for us "as a people" in the face of avoidable suffering than to realize that God's own son was not exempt. Jesus became the collateral political damage of Roman dominion ("We have no king but Caesar!"—John 19:15), but he promised that he will not abandon us. It's not any illusory assurance of my own safety that I cling to, but this very promise.
I don't pretend to know exactly how, regardless of our individual fates in this world of violence and all-too-frequent indifference, "we as a people will get to the Promised Land." In my fantasy life, I see those innocent victims of Holy Land violence pouring through the gates of Heaven, and being welcomed into God's arms. And I envision a world where people in the millions all finally mobilize to block the brutal solutions that, over and over, dismiss innocent lives as collateral damage.
Jesus, thank you for coming to live with us, and for taking on the risks of life and death in a world that keeps clinging to the ways of violence. Help us to see each other as you see us, and to accept no less from those who claim to lead us.
"Killing an Arab": Rico G. Monge's meditation and plea, on Camus, antisemitism, colonialism, dehumanization, and Gospel imperatives. (This is the article that led me to Bryce Haymond's double icon above.)
My point is that any position on Israel-Palestine that is not grounded in a consistent stance will lead one to make grave errors. Standing with all Palestinian liberation groups indiscriminately will lead one to alignment with groups with an explicitly antisemitic ideology (such as Hamas) and/or who explicitly and despicably target civilians. At the same time, a person concerned with the horrors of Hamas’s activities, but who does not remain consistent, likewise can become an unreflective supporter of the atrocities committed to found and maintain the nation-state of Israel. Consistent commitment to justice cannot include support for the Israeli government’s racist laws and policies (more on this in the next section), its military’s indisputable willingness to target civilians (including those hiding for refuge in one of the world’s oldest Orthodox churches), or the audacious and repeated claims (of some of the highest ranking Israeli officials) that there are “no innocents in Gaza”—a vile claim that is not new and has now been repeated for years.
What then should we do? Reject the binary of picking a team and then justifying their crimes. Stand with Christ. Stand with the Gospel. Stand with humanity and the least of these no matter what it costs, including friendships—and more. If this seems too costly, I assure you the alternative is far more devastating.
Today is my 70th birthday. Just for fun, here (above) is the book prepared for me by colleagues and students of the New Humanities Institute in Elektrostal, Russia, for my sixtieth birthday. Not so long ago, but so much has happened since.
For the online version, I added the English-language translations and the explanatory page two. Coincidentally, the cover theme with Shurik is drawn from the same movie that was the source of last week's illustration: Operation Y and Other Adventures of Shurik.
Over the past thirteen months of this blog, I've felt free to lament the incalculable losses of the Ukrainian people, and the consequent postponement of "the beautiful Russia of the future." But nothing can take away my wonderful memories of the community that gave me this birthday book.
Regarding, part four: closer to home.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes how the death of Christ shapes our lives and ministries: (2 Corinthians 5:16-19, context)
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
In this text, biblical commentators often focus on our ministry of reconciliation, a ministry that is very congenial to Quakers. Not only do we try to reconcile "enemies" with each other, we also seek to reconcile the whole human family to our Creator.
Stepping backwards in the text, this all seems to be made possible because when we’re in Christ, we’re new creations, and everything has become new to us. Among those things that have become new is the way we look at things.
Before we ourselves were in Christ, we may have seen this man Jesus as all sorts of things: a legendary ethical teacher, the central figure of a powerful myth, a man whose title, Christ, became the name and brand of a religion. These observations are not wrong. If we try to project ourselves back to Jesus’ own time, we might add “wonder worker, exorcist, itinerant prophet, charismatic leader," and finally, political hot potato who had to be stopped.
Once we realized that Christ was God-with-us, reconciling us with our Creator and continuing that reconciliation through us, how could we continue regarding ourselves and others through that purely human point of view?
In my first post on the theme of "regarding," I applied this question to our experiences living in Russia. In the second post, I applied it to the way we saw Donald Trump's election as U.S. president. In the third, just weeks before the full-scale war in Ukraine began, I wanted to challenge "the grip of power politics on the world's imagination."
Today I want to apply Paul's teaching about "regarding" a little closer to home. For example, how would learning to regard "not from a worldly point of view" apply to the way we see our own meetings and churches?
Here's a story I've told before, but maybe not in this context. When Judy and I moved to Richmond, Indiana, back in 1982, we had no car, and Richmond's public transport on Sundays was minimal, so we looked for a Friends meeting within walking distance. That turned out to be First Friends Meeting, which at the time still gathered for worship in its enormous downtown edifice. Though many (most?) members of the meeting were twice as old as we were, or older, they immediately made us feel at home.
One Sunday we stayed for meeting for business, and the talk turned to the subject of the meeting’s decline. In living memory, it had had 1500 or more members, but by 1982 it was down to two or three hundred. Looking at Judy and me, one Friend said, “What we need are more young couples.”
As I thought later about that comment, it occurred to me that the first thing they needed was to see themselves as God saw them. As I tried to do that, I saw a community that was full of life-long experiences as people of faith. Frances Peacock, then 80 years old, had a lifetime of concern for racial justice and reconciliation that we only found out about accidentally. Jim Rupe sold cars and was known for his honesty, ethics, and generosity. Helen Alexander watched over the nursery with apparently infinite love. The meeting was probably predominantly Republican and certainly very respectable, but when a few of us asked the meeting to consider supporting our stance of not paying the military portion of our income taxes, they barely blinked an eye. To make a long story short, what they needed was to see themselves as God saw them, and to be a bit more forthcoming about the gifts they already had.
This same meeting had young people who once challenged the meeting, through a Sunday School teacher, "Some of you have been Quakers for 60 years. Why can't you tell us more about why you became Friends and what you've learned about God in those years?" One of the responses was: "Our generational culture is very private." That privacy was not something to be ashamed of, but it needed to be worked on.
I think God would love for more people to see our communities the way God sees them. When God looks at your congregation, what sorts of ideals, legacies, struggles, and visions might God see that would give you new hope and new realism?
Another case study is so close to home that I hesitate to share it, but maybe you have a similar story, or know of someone who does. It involves my mom, and how God might regard her.
The flesh-and-blood memories of her that I have from my growing-up years, especially my teenage years, are painful. To avoid making an inventory of what caused that pain, I’ll just say a couple of things: one, she referred to me by several insulting nicknames; she was openly racist and antisemitic; and when I finally told her I’d had enough, a few days before my high school graduation, she threw me out of the house.
Who was my mother, really? In the normal way of regarding her, I saw an angry alcoholic woman who didn’t seem to be on my side at all, who rejected her pre-teen daughter for having a Black friend, and who seemed to neglect her younger daughter altogether.
For most of my life, that's what I saw and what I recalled. What did God see?
As the years have gone by, I have gained some clues. As a girl growing up in Kobe, Japan, my mother went to a German school that received support from the Nazi party, and where Nazi ideology was part of the daily program. She saw her city bombed by American planes. After the war, the U.S. occupation forces deported her and her family to Germany, where they had to begin life all over again.
Somewhere she began medicating all that trauma with alcohol and Librium. She became incapable of dealing with any references to mortality, sickness, or religion. None of this could possibly have been God’s intention when God created her in God’s image. But the face she turned to me in my pre-teen and teenage years, the face of my memories, was often a face of anger and insult.
Last summer I had a dream about her, which I wrote about here. Most of my dreams about my mother have featured something that was burning. For example, in one dream, the ceiling above us was burning. In another, the wall behind her was in flames. But in this most recent dream, I was looking down at the street through the second-story window of our childhood apartment. I saw her walking down the street, heading for the front door of our apartment building. I had to decide: do I wait for her to come into the apartment, or do I hide and avoid her altogether? I think I caught a glimpse of her entering the apartment, but I woke up before deciding whether to risk being in her presence. Risk or avoid? ... the question has lingered. I know that if I do meet her, I have to meet the person God envisioned her to be.
Here’s another difficult case for me: How do I regard Tyrone King, the man who kidnapped and murdered my fourteen-year-old sister Ellen, and was convicted of the murder?
For years, I’ve had just one question for him: why? Why?!
I never wanted him to face the death penalty. Aside from my convictions about capital punishment, I figured that, being a career drug dealer, he would not have great prospects once he was released back into the population, if he even survived his sentence. But I had little hope that he would be forced to answer my question and take responsibility for taking my sister, my co-conspirator in surviving a toxic family, away from me. To make things worse, King was Black and I’d been involved in interracial projects at school, so my mother was convinced that I was partly responsible for my sister being killed by a Black man. In regarding Tyrone King, I was in a stuck place for many years.
However, in 1995, shortly before my father died, he said something to me that began to change my heart. We were sitting in his hospital room, recalling the death of my sister and the trial of Tyrone King, which he had attended. During that trial, my father was approached by Tyrone King’s mother, who gave my father a Gospel tract and talked to him about Jesus. As I've said before, I don't know that her outreach to my father had an effect on him that day (though he remembered the story!) but maybe it was a step on the path that led to his eventual conversion through friendship with a Greek Orthodox chaplain.
That story made Tyrone King real to me as nothing else ever had. Before all else, King had once been a baby, made in God’s image, and certainly not created to do violence to people, not created to sell narcotics, not created to kill my sister. What had happened to him on his path? Don’t get me wrong; I never want to avoid the fact that he could have chosen not to pull the trigger, and yet he did. But I still desperately want to know why he did, and I believe that God does know, and this faith gives me a place to rest, at least for now.
Finally, what has 2 Corinthians 5 added to the way I regard myself?
I look at myself in conventional ways as a sort of normal bag of skin, containing a not unusual mix of gifts, quirks, strengths, weaknesses, sensitivities, blind spots, and so on. But as a member of the body of Christ, charged with collaborating with our whole global family in reconciliation, I can have a peculiar mixture of authority and humility as I relate to that family. For example, when the Pussy Riot punk musicians sang their anti-Putin song in a Moscow cathedral thirteen years ago, and the church establishment called for severe punishment and jail time, I didn’t see the issue in primarily political categories, nor did I think I had to keep my mouth shut because I was a guest in the country. I was a member of the Body of Christ no less than those hierarchs who were calling for the book to be thrown at those women, and I had the humble authority to say they were wrong.
Recently, when I saw the film Loudmouth about Al Sharpton (see this post for my responses to the film), I suddenly realized that my relationship to him was not as a political observer, or through all the complicated categories of race. It was not for me to assess his status as a celebrity, either positively or negatively. Al Sharpton is a minister of the Gospel, and so am I. Al Sharpton and I are partners in ministry, as far-fetched as that may seem in real life, especially since he’s a lot more visible than I am. He’s done some things well in his ministry, and he’s made mistakes, too. Same with me! God regards us both as ministers of reconciliation, and it’s an honor to share this wonderful and complicated vocation with Al Sharpton, and with Tyrone King’s mother, and with you.
I based this evening's post on a sermon I originally gave at Spokane Friends Meeting last Sunday. As I ended the message, I proposed three sets of queries, in case they were useful for anyone during the period of waiting worship that followed.
How have we come to “regard” Jesus? Having listened to the voices around us (persuasive or skeptical) who want to tell us who Jesus is, what happens when we let Jesus tell us himself, by the Inward Light he placed in our hearts?
We may not always be able to reconcile outwardly with those who have treated us unjustly, or cruelly. Can our path toward some possible healing, even healing we can’t yet foresee, begin by asking God to help us regard them as God regards them?
Are you humbly aware of your own authority in the church as a co-reconciler alongside your diverse global family of faith, no less than others with more fame and visibility?
Was the Viet Nam-era peace movement more effective than we realized? Watch for this episode of American Experience on USA's Public Broadcasting: The Movement and the "Madman." (Thanks to David Finke for this news.)
Not looking forward to some task or meeting? Feeling disempowered? Try Wess Daniels' hat trick or let him know if you have similar devices of your own....
Liz Oppenheimer surveys how technology, from the printing press to the Internet, has (or hasn't) served Friends in gathering us as beloved and inclusive communities. Underneath all the specifics:
It is a form of spiritual violence to hold disdain toward someone who yearns to belong and to be in deep community with others and then to press them to conform, change, or go away. It is a form of spiritual generosity, on the other hand, to express care for someone who yearns to belong and then welcome them into deep community with us.
The Middle East Dialogue Quilt at Ramallah Friends Meeting, Palestine.
Dialogue Quilt Description:
In 2006, Jimmy Carter may have been the first prominent American politician to use the word apartheid in connection with Israel's relationship with Palestinians. He faced accusations of antisemitism and was criticized for supposedly abandoning the neutrality he displayed by hosting the Camp David negotiations in 1978.
Since then, this word, apartheid, has often been regarded as an incendiary charge intended to attack Israel. Is this fair? Mark Braverman of Kairos USA defends the term in its literal and legal meanings, and says that its importance goes beyond the particular case of Israel.
The argument extends beyond the case of Palestine. To denounce apartheid affirms Palestinian experience and motivates the international community to explore, embrace and strengthen the framework of international law in a time when it is being eroded though systems of racism, authoritarianism, and other oppressions based on economic, patriarchal, political, and military power—including antisemitism.
Braverman's article marks the publication of A Dossier on Israeli Apartheid, which seeks to reinforce the use of that word as technically and theologically appropriate to the Israeli/Palestinian case. The "dossier" then goes on to confront the various reasons that churches (and here I would include Friends) give for not actively opposing Israel's apartheid policies. It's an effective list; I've heard many of these excuses myself over the years.
Perhaps the most frequent excuses for not participating in Palestinians' search for justice can be grouped under the heading of "preserving neutrality." Here's what the dossier says about neutrality:
How will your church, council, conference, region or synod respond? The biblical answer is clear. The theological answer is clear. Neutrality is not a faithful response. Denying or ignoring the reality of Israel as an Apartheid State according to the definitions of international law and ethical discernment is not a faithful response. Complicity with a situation of systemic oppression in the name of interfaith solidarity is not a faithful response. Theological and or biblical justification of oppression and injustice is both sin and heresy.
One of the reasons that some Christians have been reluctant to abandon neutrality is the cost in relationships. The Kairos dossier frankly admits this risk:
“Burns bridges and stops dialogue with partners”
It’s true. By taking a clearly expressed stand against systemic injustice, bridges will be burned. Treasured ecumenical and interfaith relations may be broken, especially with those who benefit from the status quo. But to seek to be more “diplomatic,” to seek conciliatory approaches in a situation grounded in asymmetrical power imposed economically and militarily, is to avoid the harsh reality of Palestinians. We can expect that taking a prophetic stance will be disruptive to the dynamic of traditional dialogues. Yet, it is faithful: “Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue… (Deuteronomy 16:20).” Churches are called to trust, in times like this, that new dialogue partners will emerge, that former partners may be fruitfully challenged, and that conversations—rooted in truth, compassion, humility and integrity—will realize the promise in Psalm 85:10 “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.”
I very much appreciate this paragraph, especially the prospect of fruitfully challenging former partners. Some aspects of neutrality would have to be abandoned as we acknowledge asymmetrical power and the asymmetrical suffering that results; but other principles of neutrality would not be abandoned. For me, those continuing principles would include:
No objectification or demonization of those whom we disagree with; no flattery or romanticizing of those whose just cause we seek to advance; no assertions that anyone involved is without flaw;
No use of inflammatory rhetoric whose main utility is to gratify those on "our side" rather than advance justice and genuine dialogue;
A recognition that the deeper context of any conflict may involve principalities and powers that seek to dominate both sides. Antisemitism has been—and continues to be—a blot on human history. What would happen if the forces opposing antisemitism and the forces opposing all apartheid everywhere joined hands?
It has been fifteen years since Jimmy Carter tried to use the term apartheid to break open the stalled conversations on justice in the Israeli/Palestinian context. Could the Kairos dossier help us make new efforts?
In 2009, I published these two posts on Quakers and neutrality. I'm linking them here rather than repeating all the points that came up at the time....
More on neutrality (in conversation with Norwegian Friends Barbara and Marius Berntsen).
Please tell me what you think, in the comment window below, or on Facebook or Twitter. I hope that we can distinguish the features of genuine neutrality that are worth guarding, and learn when faithfulness is more important than neutrality. Also: how do you feel about the Kairos document?
Finally: Three years ago this summer, I was preparing for my September departure to serve with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron, Palestine. Here's a summary: Praying without ceasing in Hebron. And here's how Ramallah Friends Meeting—and a pair of kittens—helped me keep my balance.
Being Black mattered to Pushkin—his own words attest to it. As another contributor, the Pushkin scholar David M. Bethea, put it: “Blackness was for Pushkin both something real, given (he cared about surfaces), and something styled, something to be worked with.”
Viktor Orban and more evidence on the spreading popularity of christian nationalism and its variants. This relatively "neutral" Web site, RFE/RL, doesn't mention Orban's popularity among some in the USA's right wing. (PS: Orban is still coming to Texas. Dana Milbank on Orban's "true colors.")
Here's a fascinating (to me, at any rate) time capsule gem, 27 minutes of The Johnny Otis Show from 1959, with wonderful performances by Lionel Hampton among others. I remember when television looked like this; even the cheesy ads felt familiar.
Germany's political parties are busy assembling possible coalitions to take over the government, but one thing is certain: Chancellor Angela Merkel's time as a central figure of European politics is coming to an end.
In Germany, as in most of Western Europe, Christian politicians do not wear their faith on their sleeve. Merkel is not exactly an exception, but she is more willing than most of them to express a connection between faith and public practice.
And in one particular moment of time -- the refugee crisis of 2015 -- she did not take the despicable path too often pursued by publicly Christian politicians, linking faith with nationalism and cultural "purity." She went a very different direction, one with great political risks: she linked Christian faith with hospitality to refugees, regardless of their religion.
Since 2015, when I originally wrote the post that follows, we USA citizens have had our own literal come-to-Jesus experience with public Christianity. The results have not been pretty.
Back to 2015 ...
Redeeming Germany?
One reason I have such a visceral dislike of racism and antisemitism is that I grew up with that poison. My German mother believed that she was born into the master race, and that others' inferiority was obvious.
(Her special brand of racism had an unusual asterisk: having been born and raised in Japan, she freely admitted that the Japanese were, if anything, perhaps slightly superior to Germans.)
When my mother left Germany to live and study in Chicago, she did not leave behind this master-race mentality. I can tell you first-hand what it was like to grow up in this family micro-culture, in which any neighbor who didn't match her Teutonic ideal was dismissed. In this way I experienced some attenuated version of the mentality that seduced a whole modern nation into total war and premeditated mass murder on an industrial scale.
Maybe this explains why I'm so moved by German chancellor Angela Merkel's persistent and intelligent defense of her refugee policy, even as some pundits point out the political risks involved. Today the BBC quoted her telling an interviewer, "I'm proud that we are receiving refugees in a friendly and open manner. I don't want to compete to be the country which does best at scaring off refugees." I can't help wondering what my mother would say to that.
What's even more remarkable to me, especially in view of the too-frequent American correlation of conservative Christianity with anti-immigrant views, is (as the BBC article points out) her associating generous refugee policies with Christian faith. In defending her policies, for example, "she claims she's simply exemplifying the Christian values of the CDU" -- referring to the political party she leads, the Christian Democratic Union.
Although her party has no religious restrictions on membership, its intellectual DNA has strong connections with both Catholic and Protestant social ethics, some of whose proponents were in the anti-Nazi resistance or in prison during Hitler's reign. Merkel herself grew up in a Christian family in a politically hostile context, communist-run and USSR-dominated East Germany, where her father was a pastor.
Almost all prominent politicians in Europe are far more reticent to emphasize faith in their public behavior than their American counterparts, and Merkel is usually no different. But refugee and immigration controversies seem to have struck a nerve with her. I found her comments at her European Parliament caucus, as reported by Politico, fascinating and inspiring ... and even redemptive. Quoting the article,
In the party meeting, Merkel was especially tough on European countries that have portrayed the acceptance of refugees as a threat to religion. "When someone says: 'This is not my Europe, I won't accept Muslims...' Then I have to say, this is not negotiable."
European leaders, she said, would lose their credibility if they distinguished between Muslim and Christian refugees. "Who are we to defend Christians around the world if we say we won't accept a Muslim or a mosque in our country. That won't do."
Given my own childhood memories, maybe you can understand the healing effect of hearing such sentiments in a German accent.
Another instance of Merkel's linkage of immigration and faith happened about a month ago [that is, in September 2015] in Switzerland, where she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern. Her comments on the refugee crisis were widely reported in the English-language press (example). According to McClatchy's Matthew Schofield, "During a news conference Thursday in Bern, Switzerland, Merkel said it was both an honour and a moral obligation for Germany to take in 'die Fluechtlinge,' the refugees."
However, most English-language reporters seem to have ignored her comments on Muslim immigration and Europe's Christian heritage. I found several references in Russian-language news sites. Drawing in part on a Polish source, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic diocese of Novosibirsk headed an article on Merkel's news conference in Bern by quoting her: "You don't want the Islamization of Europe? Go to church!"
She went on to explain, "I would like to see more people who dare to say 'I am a Christian,' who are brave enough to enter into dialogue," noting that she also supports the guarantee of religious liberty in Germany.
[The University's own coverage of the event quoted Merkel in the question-and-answer period following her acceptance speech:
With regard to the question as to how Europe can be protected against Islamisation, Merkel emphasised: “Fear is not a good adviser. It is better that we should have the courage to once again deal more strongly with our own Christian roots.”]
I find it refreshing (in the American context as well) to hear Christians challenged to go deeper into their own faith, and prepare for honest dialogue, rather than be corrupted by fear, identity politics, and searches for enemies. I think that is a reasonable interpretation of Merkel's words; I hope, but can't be sure, that this was the motivation for publishing her words here in Russia, where Islamophobia is also a sad reality.
Merkel, "Faith in God makes many political decisions easier."
Fast-forwarding to the present (somewhat reluctantly) ...
Nick Turse on our forever wars and the memorial-worthy names we'll never know. (Hint: they're not Americans.)
Christians and dementia: At the University of the West of Scotland, PhD student Tamara Horsburgh is researching "the impact of holding the Christian theologies of hope and suffering, when one is first diagnosed with dementia." She would like to conduct interviews with people "who have been newly diagnosed with dementia (the past 6 months or so), hold their faith closely, and would feel empowered by the opportunity to discuss how they feel about their diagnosis and their faith." Contact Tamara at Maragal16@outlook.com for more details ... and please pass along this invitation.
John Shelby Spong was not my favorite theologian, but I've been interested to read the responses of Quakers and others to his recent death. Here's an appreciation of sorts from getreligion.com: Death of a post-theist shepherd.
Spring comes to the Northern hemisphere. This year I feel it more deeply than usual. I'm not exactly sure why, but it may have something to do with another feeling that has been unfamiliar in recent years: normalcy.
I don't want to exaggerate this normalcy -- aside from a massive container ship causing unprecedented traffic jams in the Suez Canal, we have many of the usual signs of official overreach, bad planning, indifference, or incompetence in high places -- whether we look at refugee children on our own USA borders; Brazil's COVID crisis; Russian authorities' gratuitous cruelty toward Aleksei Navalny; or the fractured humanitarian horror in Yemen. Here in the USA, we're reliving May 25, 2020 in excruciating slow motion, as a court in Minneapolis, Minnesota, tries Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.
Nobody I know claims that the USA's new president, Joe Biden, is perfect, but he is manifestly fulfilling the role of a president in time of crisis. He is assembling a cabinet of people who actually respect government, who seem to appreciate the agencies they serve, and are good at it; his administration communicates daily with the press; he serves as an effective communicator of his own policy initiatives; and those initiatives seem scaled to the challenges faced by an ailing and very fragmented superpower that is suffering from deferred maintenance at every level.
Finally, he is not a source of daily embarrassment and scandal. Maybe that's what feels like normalcy.
Christ; Mark Antokolsky; State Tretyakov Gallery; source.
Holy Week, by the Western calendar -- it's a time when I particularly feel the contrast between human cruelty and the infinite mercy of God, a contrast made so acute by God's son's treatment at the hands of people. He was arrested, tried, treated as a political football and framed as a challenge to the Roman empire, mocked, and subjected to a humiliating execution.
He is God's answer to whatever it is in the human heart that resorts to cruelty. Wherever that impulse -- to bind, humiliate, torture, and kill each other -- continues to grind on, we Christian people, as his body in the world, ought to be getting in the way. Some of us are best at analyzing and strategizing, others at teaching and mobilizing, others at direct action, others at prayer, still others at evangelizing in broad and narrow channels to everyone still bound by the mythologies of violence. Thank you for whatever you might be doing to challenge cruelty.
I've written before about the importance of radio in my youth, and specifically about disk jockey Ron Britain, whose weekday and Sunday radio programs on WCFL in Chicago were my reliable havens in a chaotic and sometimes violent family life.
Britain's program was a riot of humor and spontaneity -- in addition, of course, to the Top 40 tracks that were the station's bread and butter. (This interview touches on some of these antics and how they were arranged. Here's a sample show.) He even read commercials in the same style, with the same sound effects, and apparently the advertisers loved it. One of my favorite memories of Ron Britain was his visit to our high school in 1971, to be interviewed by our television production class. His biggest influence on my life was introducing me to the blues, for which I wrote and thanked him a few years ago. I was delighted to get King B's courteous response.
Two days ago I learned that Ron Britain died last October 25. After 62 years with his wife Peach, her unexpected death on October 19 apparently undid him. He ended his own life the day before her funeral. Now he is buried beside her.
One of the high points of my years in Russia was participation in a Russian Orthodox-Protestant conversation group. This Zoom conversation under the care of the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative brought back some of the memories of those meetings.
The next event on the Quaker Religious Education Collaborative's calendar: April 20 and 22, on collaborative Quaker youth ministry.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism provides a working definition of antisemitism that is not simultaneously a means of suppressing criticism of Israel as a nation or of its policies with respect to Palestine. Here are two commentaries from Mondoweiss: mainly positive, and somewhat more critical.
Another rendition of last week's track, "Walking Blues" -- this time the musicians are Liz Lucas and luthier A.J. Lucas.
Three days ago, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made headlines by announcing a new U.S. government policy concerning Israeli settlements. The heart of his statement: "The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law."
As you can imagine, some of us who care about international law felt kicked in the teeth. Among the Palestinian responses were these words from Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian Christian and graduate of the Ramallah Friends School, quoted by the WAFA news agency:
"The US neither has the right nor agency to rewrite international law and deface the rules-based international order based on its perverse ideological leanings," said Ashrawi. "Israeli settlements are a grave violation of international law, including international humanitarian law."
Pompeo seems to be arguing that it's useless to rely on international law if a dilemma is essentially political. (See the full statement.) The dangerous implication of this argument is that international law becomes irrelevant any time one side obtains an advantage by force and succeeds in keeping that advantage by force. The occupiers would simply have to maintain that control long enough to create an appearance of permanence for its treatment of the territory and people under its control.
His statement seems to promise that the status of individual settlements and the West Bank as a whole will be determined by internal Israeli legal processes and by Israeli-Palestinian negotiation. The problem is that any such expectation ignores the power imbalance between Israel and Palestine, the history of the USA's contributions to that imbalance, the Israeli legal system's pervasively discriminatory treatment of Palestinians, and the long-term strategy of the Israeli government (though not of all Israeli citizens) to reclaim all of the occupied territory.
Pompeo's caveat that "our decision today does not prejudice or decide legal conclusions regarding situations in any other parts of the world" implies that Israel and Palestine constitute an exception to the normal process of determining legality. But there's no logical reason to believe that any outcome anywhere that is obtained and maintained by violence, especially if the violator is powerful and has powerful friends, could not become another exception. International law exists precisely to outlaw unjust "exceptions."
The word "settlement" itself is deceptively simple, as if we were dealing with some benign version of gated communities. Their existence has huge consequences:
first, their territories are often seized by force (we're not talking, after all, about honestly purchased non-segregated real estate -- about such deals there would be no controversy);
they get priority access to scarce water;
they have a history of hostility to their Palestinian neighbors, whose farms, homes, and schoolchildren often come under attack from settlers;
at the same time they are protected by soldiers, who often do not protect Palestinians suffering from settlers' attacks;
they require secure roads, many of which are built on land seized from Palestinians, who then may not have the right to use those roads.
Both the USA and Israel signed the Fourth Geneva Convention. That treaty clearly outlines the legal status of occupied territories and their populations. Any people under any occupation by any power anywhere must be able to appeal to these basic principles. Otherwise, millions of people would simply disappear into special extra-legal zones where their rights are determined at the point of an occupier's gun -- the situation already faced by too many in this part of the world.
Nobody denies that, inevitably, politics are involved in arriving at solutions. Pompeo says, "... arguments about who is right and wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace." He has a point; after all, being "right" in light of the Geneva Convention's articles on occupation has not yet been a decisive factor in Palestine's favor. However, international law shapes the vision for a fair outcome and adds the weight of global consensus on the standards to apply to that vision. Otherwise, "politics" in a situation of gross power disparity is just a polite term for the law of the jungle.
Dismissing international law feels like just another part of a growing anti-democratic trend -- a revolt against the rule of law and due process, in favor of rule by authoritarians. International law and human rights are things those effete diplomats care about, whereas we ought to trust in authoritarians who awe us by their ability to create "facts on the ground." Christians have a different mandate altogether: to care for those in bondage, and to confront the occupiers -- the powers and principalities and evil in high places -- who bind them.
A few words about two loaded terms: terrorism and antisemitism.
As a follower of Jesus, I can't agree with the use of violence in any situation, no matter how tempting the incentive. Using violence, even on behalf of justice, signals to the "enemy" that you are a legitimate target according to the ancient logic of self-defense and retaliation. (Arguing about who struck first just leads us back to Cain and Abel.) It follows that terrorism is never an acceptable choice.
However, "terrorism" is practiced by many people who don't fit the usual sinister stereotypes of ideological fanatics and conspiratorial groups. Under the definition of terrorism as the use or threat of violence against civilians to achieve political goals, this evil tool is used by governments and militias of all kinds, not just our own favorite villains. In situations of occupation where human rights are weak or nonexistent, people live in conditions of continuous and systemic terrorism.
Israel, like all other countries, is right to want to protect its citizens from terrorists. That defense is a legitimate police function within the rule of law and its equal protection for all, and not a reason to put whole populations under an oppressive occupation.
I have a special hatred for antisemitism, because I see what that spiritual poison did to a whole country, Germany, including my mother's own family. My father's family in Norway, however, worked to get some of Norway's Jewish citizens safely into Sweden during World War II. That war had antisemitism as one of its major inspirations, and it cost us 52 million lives.
However, many people insist on a clear distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinians. I share that view. We are no more antisemitic than Americans who criticize slavery and the USA's treatment of Native Americans are anti-American. No matter how I feel about Palestine and the occupation, I will maintain a testimony against antisemitism.
Your weekly kitten photo and update... Both kittens seem happy, lively, and affectionate, but the brother on the right seems to be growing faster than his sister on the left. Another visit to the vet (perhaps for worm medicine) may be next on the agenda.
Rowan Williams and "one of the most extraordinary mysteries of being Christian," in Mike Farley's Mercy Blog.
We are in the middle of two things that seem quite contradictory: in the middle of the heart of God, the ecstatic joy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and in the middle of a world of threat, suffering, sin and pain.
Adria Gulizia on walking the path of the perpetrator.
One reason I have such a visceral dislike of racism and anti-Semitism is that I grew up with that poison. My German mother believed that she was born into the master race, and that others' inferiority was obvious.
(Her special brand of racism had an unusual asterisk: having been born and raised in Japan, she freely admitted that the Japanese were, if anything, perhaps slightly superior to Germans.)
When my mother left Germany to live and study in Chicago, she did not leave behind this master-race mentality. I can tell you first-hand what it was like to grow up in this family micro-culture, in which any neighbor who didn't match her Teutonic ideal was dismissed. In this way I experienced some attenuated version of the mentality that seduced a whole modern nation into total war and premeditated mass murder on an industrial scale.
Maybe this explains why I'm so moved by German chancellor Angela Merkel's persistent and intelligent defense of her refugee policy, even as some pundits point out the political risks involved. Today the BBC quoted her telling an interviewer, "I'm proud that we are receiving refugees in a friendly and open manner. I don't want to compete to be the country which does best at scaring off refugees." I can't help wondering what my mother would say to that.
A first taste of winter
Yesterday's snow. Bulat Okudzhava monument, Arbat, Moscow.
Photo by Vladimir Filonov, The Moscow Times. Source.
What's even more remarkable to me, especially in view of the too-frequent American correlation of conservative Christianity with anti-immigrant views, is (as the BBC article points out) her associating generous refugee policies with Christian faith. In defending her policies, for example, "she claims she's simply exemplifying the Christian values of the CDU" -- referring to the political party she leads, the Christian Democratic Union.
Although her party has no religious restrictions on membership, its intellectual DNA has strong connections with both Catholic and Protestant social ethics, some of whose proponents were in the anti-Nazi resistance or in prison during Hitler's reign. Merkel herself grew up in a Christian family in a politically hostile context, communist-run and USSR-dominated East Germany, where her father was a pastor.
Almost all prominent politicians in Europe are far more reticent to emphasize faith in their public behavior than their American counterparts, and Merkel is usually no different. But refugee and immigration controversies seem to have struck a nerve with her. I found her comments at her European Parliament caucus, as reported by Politico, fascinating and inspiring ... and even redemptive. Quoting the article,
In the party meeting, Merkel was especially tough on European countries that have portrayed the acceptance of refugees as a threat to religion. "When someone says: 'This is not my Europe, I won't accept Muslims...' Then I have to say, this is not negotiable."
European leaders, she said, would lose their credibility if they distinguished between Muslim and Christian refugees. "Who are we to defend Christians around the world if we say we won't accept a Muslim or a mosque in our country. That won't do."
Given my own childhood memories, maybe you can understand the healing effect of hearing such sentiments in a German accent.
Another instance of Merkel's linkage of immigration and faith happened about a month ago in Switzerland, where she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern. Her comments on the refugee crisis were widely reported in the English-language press (example). According to McClatchy's Matthew Schofield, "During a news conference Thursday in Bern, Switzerland, Merkel said it was both an honour and a moral obligation for Germany to take in 'die Fluechtlinge,' the refugees."
However, most English-language reporters seem to have ignored her comments on Muslim immigration and Europe's Christian heritage. I found several references in Russian-language news sites. Drawing in part on a Polish source, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic diocese of Novosibirsk headed an article on Merkel's news conference in Bern by quoting her: "You don't want the Islamization of Europe? Go to church!"
She went on to explain, "I would like to see more people who dare to say 'I am a Christian,' who are brave enough to enter into dialogue," noting that she also supports the guarantee of religious liberty in Germany.
I find it refreshing (in the American context as well) to hear Christians challenged to go deeper into their own faith, and prepare for honest dialogue, rather than be corrupted by fear, identity politics, and searches for enemies. I think that is a reasonable interpretation of Merkel's words; I hope, but can't be sure, that this was the motivation for publishing her words here in Russia, where Islamophobia is also a sad reality.
Merkel, "Faith in God makes many political decisions easier."
Grevel Lindop (author of Charles Williams: The Third Inkling) describes Williams as a teacher ... and his impact on the Oxford University students who were fortunate enough to hear him lecture.
Charles King on the dangerous decline of international studies.
Given that no one can know where the next crisis will erupt, having a broadly competent reserve of experts is the price of global engagement. Yesterday’s apparent irrelevancies—the demographics of eastern Ukraine, for example, or popular attitudes toward public health in West Africa—can suddenly become matters of consequence. Acquiring competence in these sorts of topics forms the mental disposition that J. William Fulbright called "seeing the world as others see it"—an understanding that people could reasonably view their identities, interests, politics, and leaders in ways that might at first seem bizarre or wrong-headed. It also provides the essential context for distinguishing smart policy-specific questions from misguided ones.
