Not All Laws are Good Laws

Perhaps you don’t know (or remember) anything about the Butler Act, a new Tennessee law signed in 1925, but you are likely aware of the well-known trial that resulted from that law.

John Washington Butler (1925)

The Butler Act was signed one hundred years ago on March 21, 1925 (which happened to be my father’s tenth birthday), by Tennessee Governor Austin Peay.

John Washington Butler (1875~1952) was a corn and tobacco farmer northeast of Nashville, Tennessee, and a member of that state’s House of Representatives from 1923 to 1927. The bill that bears his name was passed by a lopsided vote of 71-5 without hearings or debate, and then also passed by the state Senate.

In May 1925, John Scopes (1900~70), a high school football coach and part-time teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. His trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, from July 10 to 21, and he was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Dubbed at the time “the trial of the century,” the Scopes trial pitted the iconic Clarence Darrow as the defense lawyer and prominent politician William Jennings Bryan as the prosecuting attorney.*¹ As depicted superbly in the movie Inherit the Wind (1960), Scopes was judged guilty and fined $100.*²

In the trial’s aftermath, Tennessee disallowed the teaching of evolution in the classroom until the Butler Act was repealed in 1967. It was then determined that, after all, the 1925 law was a bad law, as it conflicted with modern science and also increasingly had lost the support of many (progressive) Christians.*³

Many “bad laws” have been opposed by civil disobedience. As stated in an online dictionary, civil disobedience means “the refusal to comply with certain laws … as a peaceful form of political protest.” That refusal is because of the perception that some laws are bad and should not be obeyed.

Here are just a few notable historical examples of such “disobedience”:

* Mohandas Gandhi’s protest against the salt tax in India. This month marks the 95^th anniversary of Gandhi’s historic “salt march” that began on March 12, 1930. It was in opposition to the salt tax levied by colonial Britain, which he saw as an oppressive, unjust law.

* Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s protest against the Nazi government in Germany. The Lutheran pastor was one of the best-known opponents of Adolph Hitler, who was democratically elected but soon gained totalitarian control over Germany in 1933 by means of his laws and the use of the Gestapo.

* Martin Luther King Jr.’s protest against the racial injustices in the U.S. According to Copilot (Microsoft’s AI “companion”) King “believed that moral principles were more important than unfair laws, so he “used civil disobedience not just to make a political statement but to really change society.” This included the march to Selma and “Bloody Sunday” 60 years ago in March 1965.

Civil disobedience to bad laws is often costly for the protesters.

* Gandhi was arrested on May 5, 1930, while on his salt march and sent to jail without trial where he remained until near the end of January 1931.

*Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943 and was imprisoned until his execution by hanging 80 years ago next month, on April 9, 1945.

* King was arrested 29 times and jailed, usually for rather short times, on many of those occasions. His most well-known incarceration was in April 1963 when he wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail, during the week he was there.

Now, by contrast, the U.S. President seems to be a “scofflaw.” While the term originally meant disregard for minor laws, scofflaw now sometimes is used for a person who disregards court orders, thus directly challenging judicial authority.

This is the opposite of disregarding bad laws. It is harmful opposition to good laws, such as protecting people’s civil rights. Since his inauguration on Jan. 20, the 47^th POTUS seems to have made many executive actions harmful to women as well as to LGBTQ and non-White people.

For example, during the past few days, the Trump administration has deported three planeloads of Guatemalan immigrants to El Salvador in spite of a federal judge’s temporary restraining order questioning the legality of that action.

That conflict may be fomenting a constitutional crisis according to the news media, such as this detailed March 17 article on the website of Reuters.com.

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*¹ In 2023, Gregg Jarrett, a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, published The Trial of the Century, which, “calls upon our past to unite Americans in the defense of the free exchange of ideas, especially in this divided time.” The author describes it on YouTube here.

*² In recent years, it is often implied that $100 was just a token fine for John Scopes breaking the Butler Act in Tennessee. According to Wikipedia, however, his fine was equivalent to $1,793 in 2024.

*³ As I point out in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), the Scopes Trial led to the weakening of Christian fundamentalism (2020, pp. 34~37).

Doubt is Better than Certainty

Last Sunday, the 97^th Academy Awards presentations were made at Dolby Theater in Hollywood. I didn’t watch the award ceremony, but early Monday morning, I read the results with interest. I was especially eager to know the results for Conclave, the only one of the Best Picture nominees I had seen. 

Conclave did not win the Best Picture Oscar, and Ralph Fiennes (pictured above) was not awarded the Best Actor Oscar for which he was nominated.*¹ Still, please think with me about the striking words of Cardinal Lawrence, who was in charge of the conclave to elect a new pope.

Lawrence, the Dean of the College of Cardinals so admirably played by Fiennes, speaks these striking words near the beginning of the film:

… over the course of many years, in the service of our mother the Church, let me tell you, there is one sin which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.

He goes on to say,

Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts.

These were perplexing words to most of the Cardinals gathered for the conclave—and they are likely perplexing to many of you also, especially those of you who have grown up as (and still are) “traditional” Christians.

“The Appeal of Certainty” is a short subsection in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020). In the first paragraph, I write that “the claim to certainty is one of fundamentalism’s primary attractions.” That same claim is true for many, if not most, conservative evangelicals today.

Nearly 100 years ago, Reinhold Niebuhr, the eminent neo-orthodox theologian, declared, “Frantic orthodoxy [=fundamentalism] is a method for obscuring doubt.” The foundation of that method was an emphasis upon belief in the Bible, believed to be God’s infallible or inerrant Word.

In 1969, W.A. Criswell, the prominent pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, stressed that the Bible is the literal, infallible Word of God, and then averred, ”If the Bible is the Word of God we have an absolutely trustworthy guide for all the answers our souls desire to know.”

That position is appealing to so many who desire the comforting presence of certainty.

God After Deconstruction by Thomas Jay Oord and Tripp Fuller is a new (2024) book, and one that I highly recommend. The second of the twelve chapters is titled “Certainty Crumbles.” At the end of a sub-section called “The Benefit of Doubt,” the authors write,

Rather than being an enemy of belief, we think doubt is essential. Believers aren’t ‘certainers,’ to coin a word. To believe means to be uncertain. The wise ones among us learn to resist the impulse to seek certain foundations of knowledge (31).*²

Then, in “Bible Conundrums,” their fifth chapter, Oord and Fuller deal directly with how many people leave Christianity when they realize that there are many problems related to belief in an infallible Bible as a sure foundation. They give much good advice on how to take the Bible seriously but not literally.

Throughout their insightful book, the authors insist that doubt is more conducive to a life of faith than certainty.

This is similar to what Anne Lamott (whom I plan to highlight in a blog article next month) wrote in her book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (2005). One of her religious mentors is a Jesuit priest, whom she refers to as Father Tom. Near the end of her book, she writes,

I remembered something Father Tom had told me—that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. (p. 256).

Retired pastor Martin Thielen recently wrote about the benefit of doubt. He said, “Religious doubt can lead to a more authentic and mature faith, including the embrace of divine mystery ….”*³

Yes, when carefully considered, doubt is better than certainty.

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*¹ This was in contrast to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts presentation ceremony held on February 16. Conclave and Fiennes both won the BAFTA awards. 

*² While they didn’t cite him, perhaps the authors had read the eminent agnostic Bertrand Russell, who in 1935 wrote, “The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

*³ In April 2014, I posted a blog article (see here) in which I introduced Thielen, who at that time was a Methodist pastor in Tennessee. After making that post, I found out that he had graduated with an M.Div. degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982 but left the Southern Baptists Convention in 1994. He now publishes articles regularly on his website that he calls “Doubter’s Parish.” The words cited above are from his March 1 post, “Faith, Doubt, and ‘Conclave’,” which I encourage you to read (here).

 

Opposing the Death Penalty

When I was still a teenager, I became a pacifist, and I have remained so for nearly 70 years now. It was perhaps only a little later, and for some of the same reasons, that I became an opponent of the death penalty, and I ask you to consider that position as you read this post. 

The above meme was included in a blog post I made in December 2013. That article, which you can access here, is the only time I have dealt directly with the matter of the death penalty since I started this blog over 15 years ago. But this is an important matter that needs further consideration.

Support for the death penalty is at an all-time low among USAmericans, but still, accord­ing to a late 2024 Gallup poll, 53% of Americans say­ that they sup­port the death penal­ty. And in spite of decreasing public support, in 2024, the number of executions was the most since 2015 (with 2018 the same).

Of the 25 executions in 2024, 48% were non-White. Fifteen of those 25 were from only four states: Alabama (6), Texas (5), Oklahoma and Missouri (4). The average age of those executed was 52, but their average age at the time of offense was 27 (including four teenagers)—a 25-year gap!

Consider these prominent people’s opposition to the death penalty:

** Most prominent is Pope Francis, who changed the wording in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018. It now reads,

… the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

* Far earlier, Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun and the author of Dead Man Walking (1993), became a tireless advocate of abolishing the death penalty since first accompanying Elmo Patrick “Pat” Sonnier (b. 1950) to his execution by electrocution at Louisiana State Penitentiary on April 5, 1984.

From 1993 to 1995, Prejean served as the National Chairperson of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, which was founded in 1976.*¹

* Recently, I learned that John Grisham, the noted novelist, is also an opponent of the death penalty. Last October, I read the three novellas in his 2022 book Sparring Partners. The second, “Strawberry Moon,” is a touching story of a woman who became pen pals with a man facing execution.

Grisham’s main concern, it seems, has been the execution of people who were apparently innocent, and his latest book is Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Conviction.*²

 * Former President Biden also opposes(d) the death penalty. In 2021, his Administration placed a moratorium on federal executions, and on December 23, 2024, he commuted the sentences of 37 individuals on the federal death row to sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.*³

From 1972 to July 2020, there were only three federal executions. And even though there had been no federal executions since January 2021, during the last six months that Trump was in office as the 45^th President, there were thirteen federal prisoners executed, including the first woman in 67 years.

On inauguration day in 2025, the 47^th President rescinded Biden’s moratorium on federal executions. It is widely recognized that conservative White evangelicals favor the death penalty far more than do moderate/progressive Christians, so perhaps Pres. Trump was primarily pandering to his base.

If you would like to know more about why I oppose the death penalty, please read the last part of Chapter 9 in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), even though the discussion there is also too brief.  

Or, please email me or post your questions/comments on the blogsite. I look forward to dialoguing with several of you on this important issue.

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*¹ At the invitation of Jesuits in Japan, Sister Prejean (b. 1939) visited Japan four times. In 2002, when she came to Fukuoka, June and I had the privilege of hearing her speak and then chatting with her. Last Sunday, we watched the 1995 movie Dead Man Walking and were impressed again by Sister Prejean. In the film, she was portrayed by Susan Sarandon, who won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Actress for that performance.

*² Grisham, who celebrated his 70^th birthday on February 8, was interviewed for an article in AARP Bulletin in October 2024. Twelve years ago, he was interviewed by Bill Moyers regarding Grisham’s first nonfiction novel, The Innocent Man. That interview, titled “John Grisham on Wrongful Death Penalty Convictions,” can be accessed here.

*³ Death penalties are usually carried out by state governments, but the federal government imposes and carries out a small minority of the death sentences in the U.S.

The U.S. is Now Far Too Musky

You know the word musty (having a stale, moldy, or damp smell) and also perhaps the term musky (having an odor of or resembling musk). But I am writing here about Musky (referring to Elon Musk). 

Timothy Snyder is a scholar worth knowing about and taking seriously.  He is an American historian and a professor of History at Yale University. During Trump’s first year as POTUS in 2017, Snyder (b. 1969) published On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

Snyder’s book is a short one about how to prevent a democracy from becoming a tyranny (such as Italy did in the 1920s and Germany did in the 1930s) with a focus on modern United States politics and on what he calls "America's turn towards authoritarianism."*¹

On the first page of the Prologue, Snyder states that tyranny means “the usurpation of power by a single individual or group, or the circumvention of law by rulers for their own benefit.”

Snyder now posts regularly on Substack, and “Of course it’s a coup” is the title of his February 5 post, which can be accessed here. In that post, he asserts,

The ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it. Elon Musk was elected to no office and there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing. It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights.*²

Snyder goes on to say, “President Trump … will also perform at Musk’s pleasure. There is not much he can do without the use of the federal government’s computers.”

Some are saying, correctly it seems, that Trump is a PINO (President in name only), and now U.S. executive power is really in Musk’s hands. Time magazine’s recent provocative "cover" puts Elon Musk behind Trump’s desk. 

So, this is why I am saying that the U.S. is now too Musky. While perhaps no one else is using that last word, there are a multitude of Democrats and an appallingly few Republicans who agree with my assessment.

Elon Musk needs little introduction, but there is much about him that most of us don’t know. Briefly, he was born in South Africa (in 1971) and became a citizen of Canada in 1989 and of the U.S. in 2002. He has been married and divorced twice and has fathered 12 children with three women.*³

Until recently, Musk has been best known for founding (in 2002) and being the CEO of SpaceX, for being the CEO of Tesla, Inc. (since 2008), and for being the owner of Twitter (which he bought in 2022 and changed the name to X in 2023).

Also, as is widely known, Musk is considered the wealthiest man in the world with an estimated net worth of over 40 billion US dollars. And now he has become the most powerful person in the U.S. federal government other than (or even more than?) the President.

Musk’s political power comes from his being the head of DOGE (The Department of Government Efficiency). DOGE is not a Cabinet-level department; it is, rather, a temporary contracted government organization created by President Trump’s executive order on the day he was inaugurated.

According to Wikipedia, “DOGE's stated purpose is to reduce wasteful and fraudulent federal spending, and eliminate excessive regulations.” Further, it was “created to ‘modernize federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.’" 

On February 11, the President hosted reporters in the Oval Office, but as Heather Cox Richardson reported, “Elon Musk held center stage,” for the event was Trump signing another executive order, this one essentially putting DOGE in charge of the U.S. government. 

Having someone other than the President in charge of the government and dismissing the place of Congress certainly sounds like it is a coup. In a lengthy, informative piece by eminent journalist Anne Applebaum (b. 1964) in the January 14 issue of The Atlantic (see here), Musk is leading a “regime change.”

If these assertions about the U.S. now experiencing a coup or an illegal regime change are true, which I’m afraid are accurate, surely it is also accurate to say that the U.S. is now too Musky! Aren’t we going to speak out forcefully against that?! 

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 *1 That book topped The New York Times bestseller list for paperback nonfiction in 2017 and remained on bestseller lists as late as 2021. On March 12, the Vital Conversations group in Kansas City's Northland will discuss tyranny, using Snyder's book as the basis for conversation. (Those of you who live in the area are invited to attend this gathering which meets in the Antioch branch of the Mid-Continent Public Library in Gladstone.)

*2 The day before Snyder made his post, Joyce Vance (whose husband is no kin to VP Vance) posted Is It Really a Coup? on her Substack blog (titled Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance). On February 12 her post was titled Call it what it is, reiterating that what Musk is doing through DOGE is, indeed, a coup.

*3 Actually, he married and divorced his second wife twice. In 2020, his “romantic partner” gave birth to a boy they named X Æ A-Xii. On February 11, “Lil X” (as his father calls him) was pictured with his father and the President in the Oval Office.

Remembering John Cobb and His Transdisciplinary Theology

 Several months ago, I intended to post a blog article today titled “Happy 100^th Birthday, Dr. Cobb!” He was alive and well at that time, but sadly, he passed away about six weeks ago. Still, I am remembering him today/tomorrow and I hope you will enjoy learning a little more about him and his theological thinking. 

John Boswell Cobb Jr. was born on February 9, 1925, and passed away on the day after Christmas. He was a “missionary kid” (MK), born in Kobe, Japan, to parents who were Methodist missionaries.

Until age 15, John lived primarily in Kobe and received most of his early education in the multi-ethnic Canadian Academy in that central Japan city. (Several of the Baptist MKs I knew in Japan, including the two children of Dickson Yagi [introduced below] went to high school at Canadian Academy.)

Dr. Cobb taught theology at the Claremont School of Theology (in California) from 1958 until his retirement in 1990. In 2014 he became the first theologian elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his interdisciplinary work in ecology, economics, and biology.

At least 25 years ago, Dr. Cobb moved to Pilgrim Place, a retirement home in Claremont. Thinking Friend Dickson Yagi was a faculty colleague of mine at Seinan Gakuin University in Japan. Not long after Dickson returned to the U.S., Dr. Cobb invited him to retire at Pilgrim Place, which he did in 2002.

Last August, I wrote to Dickson regarding Dr. Cobb. Dickson responded, “John Cobb’s brain is as sharp as ever. ... He lives in the partial nursing quarters now, so I don’t see him very often. But he still speaks in public .... He is a very courteous and pleasant, intelligent man.”*¹

John Cobb has been influential in a wide range of disciplines, including biology, ecology, economics, social ethics, and theology. I find his thought and writing quite valuable because of how he sees these disciplines as being interrelated and overlapping.

As Wikipedia correctly states, “Although Cobb is most often described as a theologian, the overarching tendency of his thought has been toward the integration of many different areas of knowledge.” Indeed, this sort of integration is what theology ought to be but so often hasn’t been.

Ecological themes have been pervasive in Cobb's work since 1969 (!), when he turned his attention to the ecological crisis. He became convinced that environmental issues constituted humanity’s most pressing problem. His book Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology was published in 1971.

In 1973, Cobb and his colleague David Ray Griffin (1939~2022) co-founded the Center for Process Studies (CPS) at Claremont.*² Three years later, they published Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, a book of singular importance.

In the Foreword, the authors reject much of the traditional theistic understanding of God, according to which “God seems to be the archetype of the dominant, inflexible, emotional, completely independent (read “strong”) male. Process theology denies the existence of this God” (p. 10).*³

Cobb published Becoming a Thinking Christian in 1993. The first paragraph of the Preface states that the book is for people who are lay Christians “in one of the oldline Protestant churches.”

Cobb perceived that many intelligent people in the churches “are still operating out of a simplistic view of faith. Too many have been led to assume that faith is incompatible with intellectual challenge and integrity. … that is the problem to which this book is addressed.”

I fully agree with Cobb’s expressed purpose for that book. In fact, it was just the following year that I started writing a somewhat similar book provisionally titled “Christian Faith and Intellectual Honesty.”

Because of soon being elected to heavy administration responsibilities at the educational institution where I had taught university and seminary classes since 1968, I was, sadly, unable to make much progress on that writing project.

My strong desire, as well as Cobb’s, is for all Christians to be thinking Christians—as well as for all those who are no longer, or never were, Christians to be thinking people. Most of my blog readers are, thankfully, such people, and many of them are on my Thinking Friends mailing list.

I hope some of you will now go to a library or to Amazon.com (or elsewhere) and obtain a copy of Cobb’s book. (There are several “very good” used copies available at Amazon for less than $7.00, including postage.)

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*¹ I heard Dr. Cobb speak in Japan (in 1995) as well as in the U.S., and I visited with him personally on both occasions. In the 1980s when I taught at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Cobb attended an academic meeting there.  At the close of the meeting, I had the privilege of driving him to the Kansas City International Airport and much enjoyed the conversation we had on that occasion. I fully agree with Dickson’s closing words about him.

*² In 1974, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki (b. 1933) received her Ph.D. degree at Claremont Graduate School. A few years later, she authored God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (1982, 1989). After teaching in various universities, she was a faculty member at Claremont School of Divinity from 1990 until her retirement in 2002. During that time, she was also a co-director of CPS. At an academic meeting in 2006, I had the opportunity to hear her speak and to have a private conversation with her.

*³ The paragraph on the previous page where they reject the idea of God as a “controlling power” is very similar to the fundamental idea of Thomas Jay Oord, whom I introduced in my January 10 blog post.

Note: Dr. Cobb’s last book was published in 2023, shortly after his 98^th birthday, and much of that book was written in 2022. It is titled simply Confessions and is a very personal—and timely—book. I bought the $10 Kindle version last year and carefully read the 200+ pages. I highly recommend it. 

Serious Concerns about the Short-term Future of USAmerica

A week has now passed since the 47^th president’s first full day in office, and it is hard to express adequately how calamitous these days since his inauguration have been for the country—and the world. Consider the following list of Trump’s troubling decisions and two additional serious concerns. 

Here are six of the worst changes begun by Trump’s “executive orders” and shifts in government policies that have occurred since January 20. (A whole article could easily be written about each of these.)

* Changes from prosecuting the January 6, 2021, wrongdoers to pardoning them and persisting in promotion of the “big lie” regarding the 2020 election.

* Changes from policies to combat climate change and ameliorate the growing ecological crisis to adopting those that will accelerate harmful global warming.

* Changes from accepting asylum seekers and other immigrants seeking to protect their lives and well-being to rejecting even those currently in the U.S.

* Changes from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion of all citizens so there can be social justice for all to fostering dominance by White males.

* Changes from honoring past treaties with Panama to threatening to use force if necessary to gain control over the Panama Canal again.

* Changes from a government of, by, and for all the people of the country to one definitely tilted to a government of, by, and for billionaires.*¹

The “idolatry” surrounding President Trump is one of my main concerns. In his inaugural speech, which even prominent conservative columnist George Will said was one of the worst in U.S. history, the 47^th POTUS said he was spared by God from the assassin’s bullet in order to make America great again.

What hubris for the President to claim that God saved him on the same day the nation was honoring MLKing Jr., who was killed by an assassin! He also referred to “our God,” whom he seems to think wants the U.S. to be greater even though that would be detrimental to most of the rest of the world.

This “idolatry” is fostered by conservative evangelical Christians such as Franklin Graham, who in one of the inaugural prayers intoned, “Father, when Donald Trump’s enemies thought he was down and out, You and You alone saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by Your mighty hand.”

Trump seems to gloat at the fact that many conservative Christians consider him as the “savior” of a failed nation, and in his inaugural speech he referred to January 20 as “Liberation Day.”

Trump’s alignment with Christian nationalists is also a troubling concern. Two of his nominees for prominent offices are outspoken in this regard.

Russell Vought is Trump’s choice to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought, who was highly involved in the production of Project 2025, has called Trump “God’s gift” to America who was elected to restore the nation’s Christian calling “as a nation under God.”*²

Pete Hegseth is another highly questionable Trump appointee. Last Friday in a tie Senate vote that was broken by VP Vance, Hegseth was approved as the new U.S. Secretary of Defense, and he assumed that office on January 25.

Six weeks before the inaugural address on Jan. 20, the New York Times posted an article titled “Pete Hegseth and His ‘Battle Cry’ for a New Christian Crusade” (see here). That seems to have been more than just a figure of speech.

In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth wrote, “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must.” In that book, he also suggests the possibility of future violence: “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.”

There are many reasons why Hegseth is unfit for a seat in the President’s cabinet. But I agree with Robert P. Jones, who objected primarily to “his support for Christian nationalism, “a set of beliefs that undermine the bedrock principles of a racially and religiously pluralistic democracy.”*³

Jones and I agree that there should be peace and justice for all USAmericans.

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*¹ At the end of his inaugural address, Trump mentioned the “golden age” of America that has “just begun.” Trump’s love for gold is well known, but it needs to be noted that in nearly all cultures, gold represents luxury and wealth as well as greed and excess. So, it is no surprise that most of Trump’s top appointees are billionaires, which reminds me of the old twist of the meaning of the “golden rule”: those who have the gold make the rules.

*² See this January 7 post by Baptist News Global is titled “Russell Vought: The gung-ho Christian nationalist who helps Trump be Trump.”

*³ Jones (b. 1968) is the founder and president of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Here is a link to Jones’s instructive January 16 article about Hegseth.

Note: Even though quite long, I recommend reading this GoodFaithMedia January 27 post titled Pete Hegseth: Religious Extremism in a Brooks Brothers Suit by Jemar Tisby, PhD, Professor of History at Simmons College of Kentucky, a faith-based HBCU. 

Celebrating 500 Years of Anabaptism

“The Martyrdom of Felix Manz” was the title of a blog post I made in January 2013. In that post, I noted that on January 21, 1525, “a group of people met in the house where Felix lived with his mother, and they formed a new faith fellowship” based on baptism after an open confession of faith in Jesus.

Today and in the weeks/months ahead, the 500^th anniversary of that January 21^st gathering is being widely celebrated by Anabaptists around the world. 

Anabaptist World Inc. is a “journalistic ministry serving the global Anabaptist movement.” Danielle Klotz, the Executive Director of that ministry, calls this month’s edition of that magazine a “special issue for a big milestone.” And indeed, a 500^th anniversary is a big milestone.*¹  

The combined membership of all Anabaptist churches comprises a very small percentage of Christians worldwide. According to the centerfold of the publication just mentioned, the “approximate number of baptized Anabaptist church members around the world is 2.13 million.”

Only 22 countries have more than 10,000 Anabaptist church members, and surprisingly, Ethiopia is the country with the most, nearly 515,000. The U.S. is next, with 456,000. It can be argued, though, that Anabaptists have had influence through the centuries that outstrip their relatively small membership.

Anabaptists are “the most radical reformers” in Protestant Christianity. The quoted words are the title of a major article in the above-mentioned magazine. The author, Anabaptist scholar Valerie G. Rempel, avers, “Appealing to scripture alone, Anabaptists broke with tradition to follow Jesus literally.”

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 with the ideas and activities of Martin Luther in Germany. In 1518, soon after becoming the priest of Grossmünster, the prestigious church in Zürich (Switzerland), Ulrich Zwingli began a similar reformation of the Roman Catholic Church there.

Both of those reformation movements, however, preserved the basic rituals of the Catholic Church. The sacrament of infant baptism was deemed especially important. But the Jesus-followers who met in sight of Grossmünster Church on 1/21/1525 could find no biblical support for such baptism.

Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel were young men who agreed with Zwingli’s reformation activities, but they thought his work was too slow. So, rejecting infant baptism (which they denied as being true baptism), the small group gathered in Manz’s home performed and accepted “believer’s baptism.”

Their “radical” reformation put them at odds with both the religious and civic leaders in Zürich —and they were soon considered heretics by both the church and the state. Manz was executed by drowning on January 5, 1527, and in the following years, thousands of Anabaptists were imprisoned or killed.^*2

From the beginning the Anabaptists emphasized discipleship. They believed that following Jesus meant living according to his teachings as found in the Gospels.*³ Jesus’ command, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43) was taken literally. To kill in the name of Jesus was unthinkable.

There are many differences among Anabaptists today. Progressive Mennonite churches, such as the one I am a member of, are far different from the various conservative Mennonite groups and the Amish. But from the beginning until the present, pacifism has been a core belief of all types of Anabaptists.

As I wrote in a blog post in 2012 (see here), “I decided while still in high school that pacifism is the position I should espouse because of being a follower of Christ.” So, I was long a “closet Anabaptist” until joining Rainbow Mennonite Church in July 2012.

The Southern Baptist Convention (that I was closely related to for nearly 50 years) as well as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (that I was later a part of for over 10 years) agree with the Anabaptists on believer’s baptism, and until SBC’s swing toward fundamentalism, on the separation of church and state.

But neither of those Baptist groups endorses pacifism, and the former especially has traditionally emphasized the New Testament writings of the Apostle Paul (and the “Roman road”) even more than the four Gospels. They tended to proclaim the Gospel about Jesus more than the message of Jesus.

Currently, 500 years after its beginning, the Anabaptist understanding of the Christian faith is still badly needed—and maybe more so in the U.S. now than ever because of the growing emphasis on Christian nationalism in this country.  

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*¹ Dawn Araujo-Hawkins is one of the nine members of Anabaptist World’s Board of Directors. She is a member of Rainbow Mennonite Church, where June and I are also members.

*² The name “Anabaptist,” meaning “re-baptizer,” was initially used in derision of the first participants in the “radical reformation” which began in 1525. For more detailed information (and a couple of pictures) about the beginning of Anabaptism, I highly recommend “Five Centuries of the Radical Reformation” (see here), the Jan. 16 Substack post by Thinking Friend Brian Kaylor.

Also, John Longhurst, an Anabaptist journalist who since 2003 has been the faith page columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press (the oldest newspaper in Western Canada), is the author of the informative Jan. 18 column, “2025 marks the 500th anniversary of Anabaptism.”

*³ Although Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran, his best-known book, known in English translation as The Cost of Discipleship, was first published in German (1n 1937) under the title Nachfolge, which literally means “following.” Since its publication in English translation in 1948, it has been highly appraised by Anabaptists as well as by many in other Christian denominations.