Can you believe?: pentecostal

Showing posts with label pentecostal. Show all posts

20 February 2025

Enthusiasm and politics

Screenshot from source.

In his book, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening our Democracy, Matthew Taylor documents how two movements overlap: the Christians he classifies as Independent Charismatics, and the political phenomenon that brought victory to Donald Trump in the USA's 2024 presidential election.

It is no surprise that many Americans have not heard of the "network of networks" that compose Independent Charismatics, particularly those centered on Peter Wagner's New Apostolic Reformation. (See this post, Are we agents of Lucifer?, for a brief introduction.) Those of us who just catch occasional glimpses of Pentecostal and charismatic subcultures may find them either absurd or disturbing, especially if we rely on video clips of "preachers gone wild" and the like. We are therefore likely to underestimate the appeal and reach of those subcultures.

Taylor points out that, contrary to some stereotypes, the Independent Charismatic leaders who enter the political realm are ethnically diverse, have women in major leadership positions, and are far from biblically illiterate. Their political significance is rooted in several interrelated theological themes that, as Taylor describes, unite the vast majority of this Christian movement: they believe that their leaders are apostles and prophets, with all the authority that comes from the biblical models linked to those labels; they believe that Christians are (directly or indirectly) to dominate all the major institutions of society, including government; and to get there, they are to confront the territorial demons wherever those demons are in control. Given these beliefs, it is not surprising that this enthusiastic core of Trump's political support are (so far) apparently not disturbed by the blatant authoritarianism evident in the first month of the new presidency.

The largest part of Taylor's book examines the formation and careers of several of the major figures in the movement, and how together they built up the theological pillars of their politics ... and came to identify Donald Trump as the crucial "Cyrus" they were to anoint to high office. Those figures include Peter Wagner (arguably the central figure in the formation of the New Apostolic Reformation), Paula White, Cindy Jacobs, Lance Wallnau, Dutch Sheets, Rebecca Greenwood, Ché Ahn, and Sean Feucht.

Matthew Taylor and others have done a useful job in examining the personalities, theologies, and politics of these and other leaders, along with their congregations and networks. I'm intrigued by something else: the sense of mobilization and enthusiasm among their followers, compared with the rest of the USA's Christians.

Taylor writes,

To be charismatic is to seek fulfillment of two deep and driving desires. The first desire is mostly individual: charismatics want to feel supernatural power flowing through them. This personal desire usually gets discussed under the rubric of the biblical "spiritual gifts." Charismatics want to be filled with the Holy Spirit on a deep, existential level so that they can participate in a world of miracles, ongoing revelations, and a personal sense of closeness to God.
The second desire is more communal and global: charismatics want to be part of an extraordinary work of God in the world. This is usually framed in terms of seeking "revival": a fresh, unpredictable, collective outpouring of God's Spirit in such a way that thousands or millions of people are rejuvenated in their faith. Many Christians in many traditions hope for revival and talk about it in different ways. But I have never encountered any section of Christianity so singularly preoccupied with revival as Independent Charismatics. They pray for revival, prophesy about revival, strategize for revival, study revival history, and hanker for a bracing new work of God.
The steady pursuit of these two desires is what gives charismaticism its remarkable energy and even gravitational pull. For many Christians, the promise of having Holy Ghost power flow through you and seeing the extraordinary outpouring of God's energy into the world is irresistible.

Taylor and other observers of these movements also point out that their worship experiences, including immersive music and inspirational sermons, play a role in building up feelings of "supernatural power flowing through them." They are blessed, not just by their own spiritual gifts, but by each other's.

Source.

With these "two deep and driving desires," it's not hard to see how participating in the enthronement of a supposed Cyrus figure such as Trump would be deeply satisfying. It would not be fair to describe these millions of people as spiritual zombies without wills or minds of their own; many of them have made the deliberate calculation that, to defeat the demons corrupting our country, it is worth the risk of having an authoritarian in charge who is (they believe) answerable to them through their prophets and apostles.

At the same time, it's also important to say that many Christians of a charismatic temperament have not signed up for this. They may share those same personal and communal desires, but work for goals along different lines: revival, yes; but in the meantime, planting churches that love their local communities in practical ways. They are not busy trying to flip presidencies, but they do understand that their local faithfulness will have global effects.

And that brings me to Quakers. When I read about "ongoing revelations and a personal sense of closeness to God," am I not right in detecting desires that we Quakers share? Don't we want to be part of "an extraordinary work of God" in this world where so many suffer from violence, poverty, and degradation of the environment? (Not to mention the principalities and powers, and evil in high places. "The world is dying for lack of Quakerism in action," said Hugh Doncaster in his address to the Friends World Conference in 1967.)

If so, how do we encourage and express these personal and communal desires as Taylor described them, or reasonably similar desires? What factors get in the way? Do we assume that we are spiritually or culturally superior to those whom Taylor describes? Do we think there is something unseemly about sharing enthusiasm? Or, as in the case of some in my own extended family, have we been burned by communities that emphasize obedience to the apostle or prophet, rather than mutual trust? How do we find a healing that doesn't involve quenching the Spirit in others?

Also: if a political leader rose up who was far more palatable to us than Donald Trump, would we become as starry-eyed on their behalf as his current followers are on his? (Truthfully, I have several candidates in mind!)

16 January 2025

Are we agents of Lucifer?

Source: Matthew D. Taylor, The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening our Democracy.

[Lance] Wallnau dabbed frankincense oil onto foreheads, anointing voters into God’s army. Another speaker said that Kamala Harris would be a “devil in the White House.” Others cast Democrats as agents of Lucifer, and human history as a struggle between the godless forces of secular humanism and God’s will for humankind. [Johan's highlighter.]

—Stephanie McCrummen in The Atlantic, The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows: Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state."

I've been following the mutually exploitive alliance between the segment of Christians sometimes labeled the "New Apostolic Reformation" and all three of Donald Trump's presidential campaigns. About a year ago, I linked to this article by Paul Rosenberg in Salon concerning this movement. The Salon article focused on a book by André Gagné and did a pretty good job in covering the origins and leadership of the NAR.

Then, last week, The Atlantic published Stephanie McCrummen's article on "The Army of God..." from which came my opening quotation. She provides some valuable updates to Rosenberg's Salon article. More importantly, she paints vivid pictures of what the movement looks like on the ground, among people who may not even know that they're part of an academically-labeled New Apostolic Reformation, but have absorbed the goals and culture and clichés of the movement.

Some of this same territory is covered by Keira Butler in the November-December Mother Jones. Her article's title is clearly designed to alarm (as was McCrummen's article!): "Christian Nationalists Dream of Taking Over America. This Movement Is Actually Doing It." Subtitle: "The New Apostolic Reformation is 'the greatest threat to US democracy you've never heard of.'"

Neither Butler nor McCrummen had the space to provide all the details and nuances I might have wanted to see in coverage of the New Apostolic Reformation, but they're among the best surveys I've seen in secular media.

I have a few reflections on all these efforts to wake us up to the dangers of this movement.

What do I mean by "movement"? I'm being purposefully vague. Matthew Taylor, on the Straight White American Jesus Podcast, says that "The New Apostolic Reformation is a network of networks." The diagram at the top of this post shows how he locates the movement within the map of U.S. Christians—nested within the "Apostolic and Prophetic movements," in turn nested within Independent (nondenominational) Charismatics, who are nested within Pentecostal-charismatic movements" (which themselves cross boundaries among Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox lines). To some extent the "networks" are among leaders, and many participants may not know exactly how their church or pastor links up with the larger movement.

How many people, and what proportion of U.S. Christendom, are we talking about? Matthew Taylor's diagram is not intended to be statistically proportional. Paul Djupe at Denison University has gathered some startling statistics, indicating that well over half of U.S. evangelical Christians, plus substantial numbers of non-evangelicals, agree with most of the main ideas held by people in the NAR. For example, the statement "There are demonic 'principalities' and 'powers' who control physical territory" finds agreement among 69% of surveyed evangelicals and 40% of non-evangelicals.

Are there any Quaker ties to this movement? I'm sure there are individuals who identify with it, but as far as I can tell, no yearly meeting or wider association does so. C. Peter Wagner, sometimes credited with giving the movement its name, has been influential among some Quakers in the USA. Our adult Sunday school class at First Friends, Richmond, Indiana, used his book, Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow, back in the early 1980's, and found it very helpful. It was originally published well before he became known for advocating the ideas behind the NAR.

Peter Wagner and John Wimber (montage, source.)

You might wonder about John Wimber (former Friends pastor and co-founder of the Vineyard denomination) and NAR, given the close partnership between Peter Wagner and John Wimber, particularly at Fuller Seminary. Wimber's widow, Carol Wimber-Wong, put it in her own tart way: "John didn't believe any of that crap." In that interview, she went on to say, "And he loved Peter.... But they didn't agree on that one point. John couldn't find it in the Scriptures." This clip of a conversation (less than a minute long) is worth viewing. It might help to explain why I personally have never caught a whiff of NAR in the few Vineyard churches I've visited.

When Carol died, earlier this month, the church lost a woman of wit, grace, intelligence, and clarity. This tribute to her includes a video interview with her, in which, among other things, she talked about the Quaker context at the beginning of John Wimber's ministry.

Why have many people "never heard" of NAR? To risk a generalization, the loudest and most obnoxious Christian celebrities have done a lot to make our Christian "good news" seem more like "bad news." People may admire Jesus himself and acknowledge the quiet ministries of care and healing carried out over the world in his name, but the whole subculture of theatrics and condemnation described in McCrummen's and Butler's articles must strike many nonparticipants as grotesque or repulsive, if they notice it at all. Some of that inevitably colors their attitude to Christianity as a whole.

The supernatural claims connected with that subculture's Pentecostal/charismatic context are no doubt part of that perceived grotesqueness. That's a loss. Evil does exist; so do principalities and powers, and demonic strongholds where systemic social injustice has become embedded in very specific territories. I plead for the concepts of spiritual warfare and the "Lamb's War" even as I refuse to use these concepts and vocabulary to slander my political opponents. In the Lamb's War, we don't search for enemies, we search for prisoners—and do everything we can collectively to free them.

(Don't we?)

For the record, we Democrats are not agents of Lucifer. (That is, not by virtue of being Democrats!)

UPDATE: Since publishing this post, I wrote a post on Enthusiasm and politics.

Wikipedia's interesting survey of the New Apostolic Reformation.

"I was a bit nervous about using the language of spiritual warfare in this post."

George Fox on overcoming corruption.

Ted Grimsrud: Reading the Bible in light of the Lamb's War.

After five years in Russia, graduation shorts.

On the death of our Friend Simon Lamb.

Sociologist Yevhen Holovakha on how Ukrainians' views of the war have been changing.

Benjamin Wittes and Holly Berkley Fletcher on the theology of the Pete Hegseth hearing: Where evangelical culture and porn culture meet; exaggerating credentials or anointing?; repetition of the phrase "warrior ethos."

Contrarian street evangelist: Trump is the antichrist.

Finally, here is a transcript of Joseph Biden's farewell address, including urgent warnings about oligarchy and the defense of democracy. Alternate link (in case it disappears from the White House Web site in a few days!).

McKinley James with one of my favorite Junior Wells songs:

06 May 2021

Living without lying

Pravda (Truth). Cropped from source.

"One of the hallmarks of the former president was his ability to turn any accusations against him into an attack on his opponents. True to form, this morning he set out to appropriate the term 'the Big Lie' for his own. Rather than meaning his refusal to admit he lost the election, he wants to use the phrase to mean the opposite: that it refers to 'The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020.'" Heather Cox Richardson.

"But they have softer ways, more therapeutic ways of implementing a totalitarianism. And so that's why we don't see it coming, we Americans, because it's all happening under the guise of helping and of social justice and so forth. But these people who saw the same sort of thing happen in the Soviet Bloc, that's why they're trying to warn us." Rod Dreher, source, speaking about his recent book, Live Not By Lies.

"Speaking as an agnostic, here's my question. How can you stand there on Easter with candle in hand, while simultaneously poisoning people and committing robbery on a cosmic scale?" Russian Twitter.

"What is truth?" -- Pontius Pilate.

In the fall of 1973, many of us at the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa were following the fate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had just given permission for his GULag Archipelago to be published abroad. Some of us eagerly pre-ordered copies from the YMCA Press in Paris, and in January 1974 our copies arrived.

For Solzhenitsyn himself, the consequences of his decision to publish his book were not long in coming. On February 13, 1974, the world learned that he had been arrested the day before, and had been expelled that day to West Germany.

As a sort of final shot at his opponents, he had prepared an essay, "Live Not By Lies," and had left instructions that it was to be released in the event of his arrest or death. It was dated February 12 and released on the 13th, the day of his exile.

Solzhenitsyn was -- and is -- a problematic figure for many. A courageous and persistent champion of free speech and the rule of law, he also tended to romanticize the Russian state (not its rulers, especially not Peter the Great and his successor tsars) and bitterly criticized the cultural decline of the consumerist West. Many of Olesya Zakharova's observations in her article "A Linguistic Look at Russia's Human Rights Record" apply to Solzhenitsyn's criticisms.

Nevertheless, I continue to admire Solzhenitsyn and his essay, including its advice for life in a time where "truth" has become a flexible commodity. Judging by the Mohler/Dreher interview quoted above (note: I've not read Dreher's book), Solzhenitsyn's essay (or at least its provocative title) may be co-opted by those who are warning that militant leftists and atheists are waging war on Christian civilization -- and that we should therefore be preparing for a totalitarian future.

Unfortunately, a totalitarian future is not out of the question, and the degradation of truth would almost certainly contribute to it. Too many ideologues (some on the left, some on the right, some unclassifiable) insist on their own tissues of half-truth, innuendo, and gauzy mythology, as an adequate standard by which to indict their enemies' alleged lies and conspiracies. In all these blasts of propaganda I see no evidence that actual Marxists are behind critical race theory, for example, nor do I see much Gospel content among those claiming to stand for Christianity. Through all that fog, I still see great wisdom in Solzhenitsyn's advice to those who don't consider themselves militants but who nevertheless yearn to resist the bondage of any oppressive system. According to this advice in "Live Not By Lies" [English; Russian] such resisters will reject service to falsehood, in favor of a commitment that they:

will not sign, write or print in any way a single phrase which in [their] opinion distorts the truth
will utter such a phrase neither in private conversation nor in public, neither on [their] own behalf nor at the prompting of someone else, neither in the role of agitator, teacher, educator, nor as an actor
will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea in which [they] can see a distortion of the truth, whether it be in painting, sculpture, photography, technical science or music
will not cite out of context, either orally or in writing, a single quotation to please someone, to feather [their] own nest, to achieve success in [their] work, if [they do not] completely share the idea which is quoted, or if it does not accurately reflect the matter at issue
will not allow [themselves] to be compelled to attend demonstrations and meetings ... contrary to [their] desire
will immediately walk out of a meeting, session, lecture, performance or film if [they hear] a speaker tell lies, or purvey ideological nonsense or shameless propaganda
will not subscribe to or buy a newspaper or magazine in which information is distorted and primary facts are concealed.

I want to go a step further and think about the implications of Solzhenitsyn's advice for the church. On a theoretical level, could we agree that the church must be a place that doesn't require servile behavior within its community, and also shelters people who take risks for truth in the wider world?

To go beyond theory, I see two contradictory realities in the church communities I know:

The church is the ONLY social institution that must, by its very nature, resist ideological conformity. Once we find our unity in Jesus, we may differ in our understanding of how to live as his disciples and what the ethical consequences of such a life might be, but we are united that we are in this adventure together, and we ultimately are for each other. In any Christ-centered church, there is room for the radical, the conservative, the evangelical, the socialist ... that is, in any church where people actually cherish each other more than than their own angle on the world. The church also has the capacity to distinguish vital theological conflicts from cultural, generational, and temperamental misunderstandings masquerading as theological issues -- should it choose to use that capacity.
The church reflects the distortions and pressures of the larger society. This is inevitable in any church that is actually accessible to the larger community, where people come in with all levels of woundedness and/or maturity. Churches may be (consciously or unconsciously) tempted to build themselves up by forming their identities around something other than Jesus. Those false identities might involve mythologies and common enemy lists that are anti-Gospel, however masked they might be in vague Christian platitudes or stern biblical "teachings" that we're required to take on as a condition of being approved by the church's authority figures. Is it any coincidence that the Quaker meeting over here has practically zero Trump followers, while that one across the state line seems to have a Trumpian majority?

So: to answer Pilate's question, "what is truth?", can we start here? (I'm serious -- let's discuss!)

Truth involves assertions and explanations that can be shared among people of goodwill who can freely make observations and ask awkward questions without fear of political or social rejection.
Truth is never immediately and completely obvious to anyone based solely on their social status or claims of exclusive knowledge.
Truth will never separate people from God's love. Where God's love prevails, truth will never separate people from each other.

First Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, was probably a majority-Republican church in the late 1980's. It was a well-established and respectable institution in downtown Richmond, when its monthly meeting for business received a request to counsel and support several of us who were refusing to pay our income taxes, or part of them, in observance of the Quaker testimony against supporting war. First Friends prioritized Gospel obedience over conventional respectability and supported these law-breakers who insisted that, even when it comes to paying taxes, God, not Caesar, should have the last word.

I'm sure that most members of First Friends did not plan to become tax resisters themselves. Probably the majority had never even heard of such a practice. Even so, they decided to support those who asked for counsel and accountability for their witness, minuting the church's readiness to accompany them to court if it should come to that, and to help them out in practical ways if the path led to financial hardship. For me, this story has always been a case study of a church's ability to accommodate dramatic differences in understanding of discipleship.

Living without lying, part two.

Division of labor, part one, part two.

Love and truth and religion addiction.

Publishing Truth -- ethically!

Olga Misik updates Solzhenitsyn for the year 2021.

Julia Duin on covering Pentecostals who exalt Trump: "... There's a lot of America that feels this way. And most journalists are utterly missing it."

Roger E. Olson asks where God is in this pandemic.

Bill Yoder interviews Peter Epp on Siberian Mennonites.

Steven Davison considers "that of God" -- and the language of Light -- in the gathered meeting.

Keith Richards removes a string.

Billy Branch and friends in Chicago: "Help Me."

14 January 2021

Collateral damage, part two: Noah and the flood

Edward Hicks, Noah's Ark (1846), source.

Part one, part three, part four.

Some at the window, some at the door,
Some cried, "Brother Noah, can't you take on more?
But Noah cried out, "Uh uh, my friends.
The angel's got the key and you can't get in."

("Didn't It Rain," as performed by Sister Rosetta Tharpe -- see end of post.)

With the New Year, my Bible reading cycle starts all over again. Back to Genesis, where God creates us and everything else, and says, "It's all good."

Of course, before long the Serpent tricked us into craving control (that's my non-inerrant interpretation of the forbidden tree episode). We found ourselves excluded from the Garden of Eden.

Cain and Abel were brothers but their relationship came to a tragic end. Cain took offense at God's apparent favoritism toward Abel. God gave Cain a very interesting warning: "Why this tantrum? Why the sulking? If you do well, won’t you be accepted? And if you don’t do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it’s out to get you, you’ve got to master it."

Cain doesn't master it at all; he kills Abel, and things go downhill from there. By the time Noah comes around, God has had it up to here with us humans and our violent ways. Having decided on a reboot of the entire landside animal kingdom, including us, God makes an exception for Noah and his family, because Noah seems exceptionally righteous. God shares the divine plan with Noah -- "It’s all over. It’s the end of the human race. The violence is everywhere; I’m making a clean sweep." And God commands Noah to build a huge teakwood ark to preserve a set of humans and animals (both clean and unclean) with which to restock the earth after God uses a flood to wipe out anything that can't survive submerged.

I've read this story annually for decades without thinking much about it. This year, for some reason, it hooked me. It's not the logistical problems that gave me pause -- for example, how the animals and birds were persuaded to board, how they were provisioned for a year, how heaven and earth supplied sufficient water to inundate the planet to a depth of 20 feet above the highest mountain, and so on. Nor was I troubled by similarities with two or three other worldwide floods in literary sources even older than Genesis.

However, there is one aspect I found it impossible to reconcile with my belief in divine mercy: Isn't this flood the ultimate example of collateral damage? Are Noah and his family literally the only innocent creatures (human or animal!) on the face of the earth? Did God have no other option than to cause everyone else to suffer the fate of Pharaoh's horses and riders, thrown into the sea?

Honestly, when I encountered this story this year, I was actually hooked by something I was feeling that day: a sensation of being flooded in our own time by the sheer deluge of challenges hitting us. We have a global public health emergency; the resulting massive economic dislocations; the widening gulfs between idealists and cynics, between wealthy and poor, between populist cults and their angry critics; and, not least, everything that conspires to draw our attention away from the environmental crises that promise actual floods. In the light of all these challenges, it seems reasonable to take another look at Noah and the flood. Here's what struck me:

God's plaintive voice. I think I got this insight from Walter Brueggemann. God warns the disobedient Adam, Eve, and Cain, that because of their rebellions, things are going to be tough from then on. They'll suffer physical privations and social oppression. It would be hard to blame them for feeling discouraged. "My punishment is too much," says Cain. But it isn't long before God also feels regret. In The Message's retelling, "God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that [God] had made the human race in the first place; it broke [God's] heart."

How did God evaluate the results of the flood solution? Upon disembarking from the ark, Noah takes some of the limited stock of animals and sacrifices them, resulting in a sweet aroma that seems to please God, who responds: "I’ll never again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age, but I’ll never again kill off everything living as I’ve just done." It's a powerful paradox: the sovereign God, powerful enough to kill off everything, seems to rethink God's own response to human evil, already acknowledging ("I know they have this bent...") that evil will persist.

Noah's limited righteousness. The pre-flood Noah pleased God, but commentators have pointed out a stark contrast with his descendant Abraham. The latter protested God's plans to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah: "I can’t believe you’d do that, kill off the good and the bad alike as if there were no difference between them. Doesn’t the Judge of all the Earth judge with justice?" Maybe I shouldn't argue from silence, but Genesis records no such protest from Noah. Of course it may be God's promise not to repeat this extinction event that provokes Abraham's protest six generations later.

Noah's behavior after disembarking from the ark is also a bit dubious. One of his first priorities, it seems, is to plant a vineyard. He then gets so drunk on his product that he passes out naked. In his hangover, instead of apologizing for his indiscretion, he blames his son Ham for having seen him naked -- and goes on to curse Ham to eternal servitude to Ham's brothers! In one of history's all-time grossest abuses of the Bible, defenders of chattel slavery somehow justify their race-based institution on this curse. As God seems to have anticipated ("I know they have this bent..."), evil and violence roll on.

God's direct instructions to Noah and his family. Despite God's misgivings about human weakness, God promises never to perform another lethal reboot. Crucially, God does not require the flood's survivors to wallow in shame. Not at all! It's God's explicit instructions that I want to carry with me into this new year: Reproduce! Flourish! Bear fruit! Live bountifully! (Drawing from Genesis 8:15-9:17....) God seals this command and commitment with the rainbow sign -- visible to God and to us. I'm led to believe that God intends these instructions to humanity as a whole, not just a lucky few.

If we let our primordial inclination toward evil to win out, this is how we will know: we will use violence to make sure our own flourishing is at someone else's expense. When we binge, we'll find someone else to blame. Instead, let the rainbow remind us to learn how to flourish together, so our planetary ark will have enough provisions for all. Maybe then we'll have the best reboot of all: as George Fox envisioned, we would find ourselves back in the Garden of Eden, once again equal and once again unashamed.

The Noah story from beginning to end. I originally wrote parts of this meditation as a sermon for Spokane Friends Meeting, and I wanted a conversational tone, so I chose Eugene Peterson's paraphrase, but the online text can be switched to another translation if you prefer.

Walter Brueggemann on Noah.

Alexei Navalny's upcoming return to Russia on Pobeda (Victory) Airlines lights up the Russian Internet. (And RFERL's analysis.)

Speaking of RFERL, the turmoil at its parent agency continues.

William de Arteaga on false prophecies concerning Donald Trump's second term. De Arteaga is the author of Agnes Sanford and Her Companions.

David French on church and insurrection.

Jay Marshall on centrifuges, the Ungame, and the concept of enough.

Quardricos Driskell looks at the attacks on Raphael Warnock's faith.

Nancy Thomas on the best books she read in 2020.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Didn't It Rain" and "Trouble in Mind" (from Granada TV's "Blues and Gospel Train," 1964.)

12 November 2020

Inadequate

Perennially sarcastic Dmitri Kiselyov. Source.

When I think about Donald Trump's response to losing the 2020 election, a certain Russian word pops into mind that is difficult to translate into English: неадекватный, pronounced nye-adeKVATny. It's a partial cognate for the word inadequate, but it has particular nuances in Russian that seem sadly applicable to our graceless president.

As Michele Berdy explains, the word refers to "someone whose thoughts, behavior or emotions are inappropriate to the situation or are out of touch with reality." A "neadekvatny" person isn't just being petty and petulant at a given moment, but could be incapable of ever rising to the occasion. And what occasion is more important than that crowning achievement of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power?

It's not just that Trump wants to dispute the results in certain states because his team detects significant irregularities; they could raise those concerns in a calm way, through well-defined complaints conveyed through the court system and the election bureaucracies of the states involved. Naturally, they would also want to get publicity for their complaints -- even that is not out of the ordinary.

What is absolutely beyond the pale is their resorting to inflammatory accusations, charging unambiguously that the Democratic Party is a "mob" that is hell-bent on electoral sabotage to accomplish a socialist coup, despite a) lack of evidence, b) success of many local Republican candidates, and c) the fact that much of the vote-counting bureaucracy is under Republican management. More than that, their allies in the fringes of white evangelicalism are trying to convince their audiences that the opposition to Trump is nothing more nor less than opposition to God.

Am I exaggerating? After all, some of Trump's allies in Congress speak in measured tones to the press, urging us to allow the lawsuits, recounts, and certification processes to unfold until the formalities wind up. It sounds like sweet reasonableness, despite their disregard for the normal practice of conceding when it's credibly determined that the 270-vote electoral college threshold has been passed. Given the lack of normalcy in this pandemic year, maybe we could allow some modest delay to check on actual irregularities.

However, first of all, election officials around the country seem agreed that, in terms of both logistics and security, the 2020 elections went remarkably smoothly. Secondly, the Trump campaign itself has been the very opposite of sweet reasonableness. I am on the Trump-Pence campaign e-mail list, and just sixteen minutes ago I got another e-mail entitled, "Proof of Election FRAUD" -- but with no proof at all in the body of the e-mail, nor even an allegation. It was the eleventh e-mail I received from them just today. I received eight yesterday, including one entitled "📎234 pages of sworn affidavits" (with the paperclip implying attachments, but there were none); and 22 arrived the day before, all begging me to "step up and join your fellow Patriots in the fight against the Left-wing MOB."

A thirty-six-hour harvest of donaldtrump.com e-mails

So whom should I take more seriously -- the calm operatives who speak to the press, or the campaign that is working overtime to alienate its audience from the democratic process?

It is clear which of these sources is being picked up by the government-sponsored media in Russia. Dmitri Kiselyov, the sarcastic presenter of flagship news program Vesti on Rossiya-1 television, is delighted to tell his audience that the USA, fond of lecturing others on democracy, couldn't even pull off its own 2020 elections. (Of course, under Trump, no such lectures have been forthcoming. No doubt some in the Kremlin will miss him. As for national elections in Russia, they do have the advantage that no one is in doubt about the results.)

Those in the Trump-Pence campaign audience who are Christians, particularly prophecy-oriented charismatics and Pentecostals, are getting special attention from their celebrity prophets. (See Julia Duin's post at GetReligion.org, "Who's covering this? Are charismatics and Pentecostals behind Trump's refusal to concede?") I see multiple layers of danger here:

First of all, there are the intended and unintended consequences of using the powerful language of faith to build or expand a hard-core disconnected and embittered subculture that is totally available for future mobilization using the same manipulative tactics.

Secondly, those watching this spectacle from the sidelines -- particularly non-Christians -- can be excused for seeing it as a circus. On the plus side, maybe it all reinforces healthy skepticism about religious theatrics, but it might also confirm theological and class biases among those who already look condescendingly on what we might gently call the more enthusiastic flavors of Christianity. It might be easy to dismiss these brothers and sisters in Christ as "neadekvatnye" (so please don't!), but at the moment I'm reserving that term for the ringmaster himself, Donald Trump, for those who could tell him to pack it up but don't, and those who give him cover by publicly pretending that he's just looking for justice.

More about those Trump-Pence campaign e-mails.

"A new con" ... is this a fair assessment of what Trump is actually looking for? Maybe it's a bit severe, but do you have any argument to the contrary? Clearly, Trump makes no concessions of fairness to his opponents; I'm way past giving him any benefit of the doubt.

Jennifer Rubin on the intersection of religious affiliations and political preferences.

The Kremlin and the rise of the zombie voters.

GetReligion also covers a new kid on the news media block, sponsored by a controversial sect. I guessed who it was ... I bet you will, too.

When a global pandemic interrupts your careful mission plans, what you say and what you're thinking might differ. Marilyn has no easy answers.

When our kids were growing up, we loved watching Bob Ross, and went to Muncie once to meet him at a public television event. Now, in that same location, there's a Bob Ross museum.

Another gem from Taj Mahal.

05 November 2015

Short prayers

My relationship with prayer began before I became a Christian. A few years ago I told the story (towards the end of this post) of how, in my mid-teen years, I used to listen to the radio broadcasts of the First Church of Deliverance in Chicago. Growing up in an atheist family, I had no exposure of any kind to church culture before listening to these Sunday evening broadcasts, which happened to be on the radio station that played my Top 40 hits the rest of the week.

My mother was especially allergic to any mention of religion, so I kept my mouth shut about my Sunday evening habit. I certainly could not have explained to her or anyone else how my heart was warmed by these broadcasts and specifically by pastor Clarence H. Cobbs' weekly prayer for the sick, the shut-ins, and "all those who love the Lord."

Source: Brother Sun, Sister Moon

This sheet was what I posted on my factory workspace. Source.

A scene from my daily walk to work.

Shortly after I arrived at Carleton University, Franco Zeffirelli's semi-fictional biography of St. Francis of Assisi, Brother Sun, Sister Moon was released, and a college friend invited me to see the film with him. I was extraordinarily shaken by that experience, which confirmed my desire to live a simple and contemplative life.

After my first year of college, I went back to the USA, to the Western Electric telephone factory assembly line in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where I'd worked during the year between high school and university to earn my tuition money. At my work station, where I spent all day taking apart old touch-tone phones to be refurbished further down the line, I pasted a copy of the prayer attributed to St. Francis, "Make me an instrument of your peace." I know that this added to my reputation as a somewhat strange factory worker, but I often found comfort in repeating those seven words.

I had to walk eight miles a day, through beautiful rolling Pennsylvania countryside, to and from the point where I had a ride between East Brandywine Township, where I was living, and King of Prussia, so I had plenty of time to repeat those words, "make me an instrument of your peace." Though I had not yet made a Christian commitment, I think those seven words qualify as my first prayer.

Not long afterwards, at age 21, I did make that explicit commitment, as a result of an encounter with Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. (Details here.) Not long after that, I came upon the place in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, where he basically says "Jesus is the Yes to all of God's promises." (That's my paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 1:20; context.) From that comment of Paul's I drew the one-word prayer, "Yes." For years, that one word was the prayer I used to center myself whenever I felt distracted or uncertain.

(That "yes" prayer perhaps inevitably led me to think about what we needed to say "no" to. Those thoughts, along with the example and support of a dear colleague, Gordon Browne, started me on the path to war tax resistance -- the refusal to pay taxes for the military part of the national budget.)

For years, I had heard about the so-called Jesus Prayer, but hadn't paid much attention. Then, on one of my earliest trips to Russia, I found copies of Anthony Bloom's amazing collections of radio talks on prayer, entitled О встрече (On Meeting) and Беседы о молитве (Conversations on Prayer). I've quoted from these books several times over the years. Bloom was one of the first writers to open up the Jesus prayer and help me apply it to my life. The shortest version of that prayer ("Lord Jesus, have mercy") became my next short prayer, and I cherish it to this day. I've found that the classic writers on this prayer are right; after you've been using this prayer for a while, it begins to pray itself, and you can actually imagine coming closer to that place where you begin to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:17; context.)

One of Bloom's discussions of the Jesus Prayer is here.

Finally, just a couple of weeks ago I was revisiting a post I wrote some time ago about introducing Quaker open worship to newcomers. A quotation from Psalm 90 leaped out at me with fresh power: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations." I'd just been thinking about what it meant for us to claim God's constant care and provision for us. I don't think an honest believer can pretend that the "dwelling place" mentioned in the Psalm is some kind of bunker or lifeboat in any normal sense, protecting believers from the hazards of life. As Emmanuel Charles McCarthy says, history is a butcher's bench, and believers are no safer than anyone else from natural disasters, ruthless tyrants, or bombs on airplanes. I've converted the first verse of this psalm into a prayer of honest desire: "I want to dwell in you." Just in the last week or so, I find myself constantly resorting to this simple prayer when confronting despair or distraction.

As always, when I write about prayer, I don't want you to be fooled: I'm absolutely no more pious or spiritually accomplished than anyone else you're likely to run into in the Christian life. I write not to show off but because I find it helpful to learn how others pray, and would like to return the favor. Today I wanted specifically to focus on short prayers we can resort to at any conscious moment when we might need a Godward reorientation, which for me happens more often than I'd like to admit.

Make me an instrument of your peace.

Yes.

Lord Jesus, have mercy.

I want to dwell in you.

Here's a Guardian article that links directly in with last week's point about "disaster evangelism": Giles Fraser writes about the fact that not all asylum seekers may be describing themselves totally honestly ... but should this awkward fact change our response to asylum seekers?

I sought out a friend, himself a refugee from Iran. And what he told me I really didn’t want to hear. Claiming Christianity, he said, is the No 1 justification for dodgy asylum applications from Iran. It’s the best way of getting into Britain.

U.S. political candidate Ben Carson and the Bible: Pete Enns thinks that maybe Dr. Carson should get a second opinion.

The U.S. public seems to be becoming less religious, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Archbishop of Canterbury congratulates and thanks the Elim Pentecostal Church on the occasion of their centenary. (I remember the Elim Christian Life center about half a block from Selly Oak Quaker Meeting in Birmingham, UK. I loved attending worship at the Quaker meeting during my Woodbrooke year, and also loved visiting the Elim church, whose actual social and ethnic diversity seemed to embody the ideals of inclusivity that Friends theorize about so well.)

Katie Comfort of our church talks with Yazan Meqbil on the documentary Detaining Dreams.

Confession of a Russian Internet provider.

Here's a blues to make me truly homesick!

Can you believe?