Truth is the First Casualty

“The first casualty when war comes is truth.” Those words are attributed to Hiram Johnson in 1917. He was a U.S. Senator from California (1917-45) and was strongly opposed to the United States entering World War I.

Perhaps it can also be said that truth is the first casualty when there is a political convention. I say this partly because of my reflection upon last week’s Republican National Convention. Unfortunately, the same will probably also be true at the Democratic National Convention this week, although to a lesser degree I hope and pray.

Early in his acceptance speech the Republican nominee declared, “Here at our convention, there will be no lies.” But the next day a Huffington Post article had this headline: “Donald Trump Promises Not To Lie, Right Before Lying A Bunch Of Times.”

Was Trump really lying in his acceptance speech? Perhaps, but that depends partly on what one means by lying. If a lie is something one deliberately says in spite of knowing that it is false and with the intent of misleading other people, then Trump probably did lie about a number of things.

But he may well have thought that what he said was true, for he most likely didn’t look up all the facts and figures used in his speech. The fact-checkers did look them up, though, and many statements were found to be incorrect, misleading, and/or just plain false.

Truth, or the lack thereof, has been an issue with Donald Trump for a long time, as the fact-checkers have abundantly shown. The following chart indicates his and 19 other politicians’ untruthfulness/truthfulness. 

This chart was uploaded on imgur.com (see here) on June 7, but I have not been able to authenticate the accuracy of these figures. Neither have I been able to discover who Robert Mann is. (He may be, or perhaps is not, a journalism professor at LSU.)

It must also be noted that all falsehoods are not of the same seriousness, and this chart deals with only the quantity of the lies told, not with qualitative differences. Still . . . .

If you want to consider only the two presidential candidates, here are figures from a July 1 article in the Washington Post: 

Writing last Friday about the RNC, Jim Wallis averred that “the continual outright lies and vicious personal attacks this week have been extraordinary.”

One of those lies was told by Ted Cruz on July 20: “Our party was founded to defeat slavery. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. We passed the Civil Rights Act, and fought to eliminate Jim Crow laws. Those were fights for freedom, and so is this,” he said.

This false claim that the Republican Party (as well as the Democratic Party) of today is the same as it was in Lincoln’s day is widespread. For example, on his July 22 radio show Rush Limbaugh declared, “The Democratic Party was the Party of the KKK—and it still is!”

(For an excellent explanation of the reversal of the two parties through the years, check out the article linked to here.)

Rush also highly recommended “Hillary’s America,” the new movie by Dinesh D’Souza that opened on July 22. D’Souza spoke at the Faith and Freedom Coalition meeting I attended in June, so I was not surprised to receive a FFC email last week with this headline: “D’Souza reveals the sordid truth about Hillary & the secret history of the Democratic Party.” 

But the “sordid truth” that D’Souza reveals is full of lies. Once again truth is a casualty. 

Reluctantly Remembering Rushdoony

It was 100 years ago that Seinan Gakuin was founded as a small school for junior high boys in Fukuoka City, Japan. June and I have just arrived in Japan to see old friends and to participate in the centennial activities of Seinan Gakuin. I will share more about those events next month.

It was also 100 years ago, on April 25, 1916, that a baby was born in New York City and given the name Rousas John Rushdoony. His parents were recently arrived Armenian immigrants, having fled the Armenian Genocide of 1915. His ancestors had lived for generations in a remote area near Mount Ararat.

R.J. Rushdoony followed his father and many of his ancestors into the ministry. He was ordained by the Presbyterian Church USA in 1944 and later transitioned to the more conservative Orthodox Presbyterian denomination.

In the early 1950s, Rushdoony became a reader of, and then a contributor to, the Christian libertarian magazine Faith and Freedom, which advocated an “anti-tax, non-interventionist, anti-statist economic model” in opposition to FDR’s New Deal.

Rushdoony moved to Los Angeles in 1965 and founded the Chalcedon Foundation. The monthly Chalcedon Report, which Rushdoony edited, began appearing in October of that year. In the early 1970s, his daughter Sharon married Gary North (b. 1942), an economic historian. Rushdoony and his son-in-law worked together, and later separately, on what is known as Christian Reconstructionism.

Rushdoony’s major work, and the foundational book for Reconstructionism, is his 890-page book The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973). His key ideas of theocracy (“government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided,” according to Merriam-Webster) and theonomy (rule by God’s law) are found in that book.

Rushdoony’s ideas are also known as Dominionism, the belief that Christians following God’s law should have dominion over civil affairs. As Rationalwiki.org puts it “Dominionists are, for all intents and purposes, the literal Christian equivalent of Islamists demanding Sharia law.”

“Dominion Theology” is succinctly explained in Sara Diamond’s authoritative book Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (1995). (See especially pages 246~9.)

A recent and also notable book on the subject is Michael J. McVicar’s Christian Reconstruction: R.J. Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism (2015). In it also there is a brief section titled “Dominion Theology” (pp. 197~201).

As noted in these two books, Rushdoony’s greatest influence was in the late 1970s and 1980s. I briefly wrote about him and his influence in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism (see pp. 48~51). That influence was seen in his contact with Pat Robertson (and his appearances on Robertson’s “700 Club”), with Jerry Falwell, and with Francis Schaeffer, who, to his credit, later repudiated the Reconstructionist movement.

While his influence may not be as great now as it was 30 years ago, neither is it negligible. Among current right-wing politicians, perhaps Sen. Ted Cruz has, partly through his father, been most influenced by Rushdoony’s view of Christianity.

In Christian Nation, the dystopian novel that I wrote about on Feb. 14 (see here), Rushdoony is mentioned repeatedly.

So, because of his historical significance as a “mover and shaker” of the Christian Right, R.J. Rushdoony is someone who needs to be remembered on this 100^th anniversary of his birth. But I remember him reluctantly because of the justifiably negative reactions toward the kind of Christianity he espoused and for his failure to have a more enlightened view of God, the Bible, and the responsibility of Christians in the world.

What about Political Correctness?

In his first inaugural address in March 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Nevertheless, responding to the widespread fear expressed by people across the nation, on February 19, 1942, FDR took harsh measures toward people of Japanese descent who lived in the U.S.

As a result of his Executive Order 9066, approximately 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry, almost all of whom were law-abiding citizens, were evicted from their homes on the West Coast of the U.S. and forced to live in internment camps across the country.

That was grossly unfair to the vast majority of a whole group of people who were peaceable residents in our nation.

During World War I, German-Americans were sometimes accused of being sympathetic to Germany. The U.S. Justice Department attempted to prepare a list of all German aliens, counting approximately 480,000 of them—and more than 4,000 of them were imprisoned in 1917-18.

I don’t know if my great-great-grandfather Hellmann made the Justice Department’s list or not, but he was born in Germany in 1844 and was living in St. Joseph, Mo., during WWI.

Even though his birth name was probably Johann Friedrich, in this country he went by John Frederick. The census records have my grandmother Laura Cousins’ grandfather’s name as just Fred Hellmann, so he probably didn’t suffer much anti-German discrimination.

But many German-Americans did suffer unjustly because of their name and/or their ethnicity.

The term “political correctness” has been used for many years now, often in a derogatory sense. There are, certainly, some excesses related to what is said, or not said, because of what is said to be political correctness.

On the other hand, when used positively political correctness describes the attempt not to use discriminatory or demeaning language about other people, especially about those who are “different” from the one speaking.

Thus, those who want to be fair emphasize politically correctness for the sake of women, who are often denigrated by men; for the sake of people of color, who are often discriminated against by whites; for the sake of gays/lesbians, who are often demeaned by straights; and for the sake of Jews and Muslims and others adherents of other minority religions in this country, who are often looked down on by many, including some Christians.

Tom Toles is the eminent editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post. Even though I do not have his permission to do so, perhaps since I make absolutely no money from this blog he will not object to my using this perceptive cartoon of his:

As I wrote recently, the President has often been criticized for not using the term “Islamic extremists.” His critics say that this is a grave mistake rooted in the idea of political correctness. During the Dec. 15 presidential debate Ted Cruz declared, “Political correctness is killing people.” Earlier last year, Donald Trump emoted, “I’m so tired of this politically correct crap.”

And about a year ago Ben Carson declared, “There is no such thing as a politically correct war.”

But even in times of war, or especially then, people who are not combatants and especially those who are American citizens, need to be protected from hatred and prejudice.

What Does “Jesus Is Lord” Mean?

Earlier this month I wrote about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his highly influential book The Cost of Discipleship, published in a new translation in 2001 as just Discipleship. Bonhoeffer’s emphasis was upon following Jesus as Lord. But what does that mean?

For most of my life I have generally agreed with those who said that the most basic, and most important, “creedal” statement for Christianity is simply “Jesus is Lord.” All people who could sincerely make that profession, and only those who make that profession, should be considered Christians.

In my Jan. 30 blog article I mentioned that I had started reading Frederic Rich’s book Christian Nation (2013). I have now finished it, and I can’t remember when I have read a novel that has been as disturbing, and thought-provoking, as it.

In Rich’s novel, John McCain and Sarah Palin are elected in 2008, and within a year or so McCain dies (of natural causes). Soon under President Palin there is a move to make the United States into a Christian nation as envisioned by her and those of the Christian Right who agree with her.

The movement toward the Right’s concerted attempt to establish a theocracy is greatly aided by terrorist attacks on 7/22/2012, which are much worse than the attacks of 9/11/2001. Those attacks also facilitate Palin’s reelection in 2012.

Four years later Palin’s successor is her principal advisor, the fictional Steve Jordan. He starts his inaugural speech in 2017 by declaring, “I submit America to Christ.” He then establishes a commission to draw up plans for a specific legislative program to implement his vision of a Christian nation.

Michael Farris, who is a real person (see this link to the Wikipedia article about him), was appointed chair of that commission, which included people whose names you know: John Ashcroft, Rick Perry, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, and David Barton, among others.

The third section of the completed Farris Report is titled, “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of our Lord Jesus Christ.” One provision of that section states, “Only persons who have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior shall serve as federal judges.”

Maybe you can see why this caused me to think deeply about what it means to confess “Jesus is Lord.” Those seeking to establish a Christian theocracy in the U.S. use their belief in Jesus as Lord to lord it over people who are not Christians or who do not agree with their interpretation of Christianity, which I don’t.

Here is why I strongly disagree with them: proclaiming Jesus as Lord never means coercing other people. According to the biblical records, Jesus never coerced anyone to follow him. Accordingly, those who are disciples of Jesus should never seek to coerce anyone to follow him—or to follow explicit “Christian” laws enacted by those who think they are following Jesus.

In Christian Nation, though, blasphemy, all abortion, homosexual activity, adultery, extra-marital sexual activity, and even labor unions are made illegal. Moreover, all American citizens are forced to live under the government’s interpretation of Biblical law—a kind of Christian Sharia.

All of this may seem so fictitious as to be completely implausible. But I think we have to consider the fact that, in the words on the dust jacket of Christian Nation, it could happen here.

The best chance of it beginning to happen here soon is for Ted Cruz to be elected the next President. If he wins the nomination, which is still quite possible, I’ll write then about why I think that.  

Happy New Year of the Monkey

In Japan, New Year’s greetings are never made before January 1, so I am sending this on the morning of New Year’s Eve in the U.S.—but after the New Year has already begun in Japan.

As is common in this country, I am wishing you all a Happy New Year a day before the new year actually begins, and I pray for your health and happiness throughout 2016.

In the countries of East Asia, including Japan, 2016 is the Year of the Monkey. There is a 12 year cycle in the Asian zodiac, and today ends the Year of the Sheep.

(Of course, the Chinese new year, celebrated not only in China but in other Asian countries with strong Chinese influence, doesn’t begin until February 8—and it will be known as the year of the Fire Monkey.)

If you were born in 1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, or 1980, the coming year is a special one for you—or would be if you lived in East Asia—for it will be your ataridoshi, or lucky year, the year with the same zodiac animal in which you were born.

Those born in the Year of the Monkey are said to be “clever and skillful in grand-scale operations and are smart when making financial deals. They are inventive, original and are able to solve the most difficult problems with ease.”

Or according to another website, “Charming, charismatic and extremely inventive, Monkey people are most noted for their intelligence and clever genius in working out difficult problems for themselves and others.” (There are some negative characteristics also, but I will let you look those up for yourself.)

In this country, of course, it is often an insult to call someone a monkey. Sometimes it is even a racial slur. Just last week the Washington Post published, and then had to pull, a cartoon of Sen. Ted Cruz dressed like an organ grinder in a Santa suit with two monkeys on leashes.

Cruz charged that the cartoon was making fun of his two daughters. Actually, Pulitzer prize-winner Ann Telnaes was making reference to Cruz using his daughters in a political ad that began airing early last week.

In that new campaign ad he is reading “timeless Christmas classics” to his two daughters—classics such as “How ObamaCare Stole Christmas” and “The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails.”

Cruz’s daughter Caroline, 7, loudly reads the following line from the latter: “I know just what I’ll do, I’ll use my own server, and no one will be the wiser!”

It was Cruz using his children for his personal gain—like an organ grinder using dancing monkeys—that Telnaes was depicting. Cruz and other Republicans took it that she was ridiculing Cruz’s children by making them monkeys.

The outcry worked, and the newspaper removed the cartoon in question. But Cruz will likely continue using the ad with his daughter criticizing Hillary Clinton over something that his daughters don’t understand at all.

In East Asia, though, there is no stigma for being born in the year of the Monkey—or the year of the Rat, as were two of my children. There are good and bad characteristics for all twelve of the animals that are signs for each year of the cycle.

So, if you were born in the year of the Monkey, enjoy your special year. And, regardless of the year in which you were born, I do pray that 2016 will be a good one for you.

Who Are "the Crazies"?

He probably wished later he had used a different word, but last month the President made reference to “the crazies.”

According to Associated Press,

At a Democratic fundraiser Monday night [Aug. 24] in Nevada, Obama declared himself ready for the challenges he faces this fall in dealing with a Republican Congress that disagrees with him on the budget, energy policy, education and much more.

Obama said that as he’d ridden to the fundraiser with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, they’d done some reminiscing and spent some time “figuring out how we are going to deal with the crazies in terms of managing some problems.”

He didn’t identify exactly who the two of them had defined as “crazies.” 

Although he was by no means the only one to do so, Missouri 6th District Representative Sam Graves took it personal, for he thought the President was referring to those who opposed the Iran nuclear deal.  

In his September 14 email to his constituents (of which I am one), Rep. Graves wrote, “A few weeks ago, President Obama said that those of us who oppose his Iran deal are ‘crazies.’ What’s actually crazy is that our President trusts Iran with a nuclear weapon.”

Well, the opponents of Iran deal may or may not have been who the President had in mind, but that is not what he said. But it is clear, and disturbing, what Rep. Graves said.

According to the whitehouse.gov website,

After many months of principled diplomacy, the P5+1 — the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia and Germany — along with the European Union, have achieved a long-term comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran that will verifiably prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful going forward.

So, on what basis does Rep. Graves, and his many Republican cohorts in Congress, say that the President trusts Iran with a nuclear weapon?

And why would we think that a farm boy from northwest Missouri (as I am also) knows more about this deal than the President, the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Chancellor of Germany, and the presidents of China, France, and Russia?

In addition, the Iran nuclear deal has been praised by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as well as 29 of “the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control” (according to the New York Times).

Of course, maybe “the crazies” the President had in mind are those, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, who (again) are threatening to shut the government down next month—this time because of opposition to Planned Parenthood.

Cruz and most of the Republican presidential contenders, especially Carly Fiorina, are so opposed to Planned Parenthood because of their opposition to abortion.

But according to Planned Parenthood’s 2013-14 financial report, more than 95% of their expenditures went for STD/STI testing and treatment, contraception, cancer screening and prevention, and other health services.

Three per cent of their expenditures went for abortion services, but none of the funding for that came from the federal government. 

Planned Parenthood's 2013-14 Financial Report

So maybe those who want to shut down the government over this issue can be thought of as “the crazies.”

Or, perhaps the President was thinking of those who still, after all these years, think that he is a Muslim and not born in America. According to a recent poll, 29% of the U.S. population—including 43% of Republicans and 54% of Trump supporters—believe Obama is a Muslim.

There is, sadly, no shortage of “the crazies.” 

Combatting Global Warming

"We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.”

President Obama spoke those words on August 3 as he announced the final rules under the federal Clean Power Plan. (You can listen to his full speech here and read an overview of the Plan here.)

In the overview, the EPA states, “The Clean Power Plan will reduce carbon pollution from power plants, the nation’s largest source, while maintaining energy reliability and affordability.”

The EPA document goes on to say, “Fossil fuels will continue to be a critical component of America’s energy future. The Clean Power Plan simply makes sure that fossil fuel-fired power plants will operate more cleanly and efficiently, while expanding the capacity for zero- and low-emitting power sources.”

The day following the President’s announcement, a coalition of Christian leaders issued a statement (see this article) calling on the presidential candidates to address climate change in the first presidential debate on August 6.

They didn’t do that, though. There was not one mention of global warming or the President’s Clean Power Plan. Most of them will likely oppose the President’s plan, however.

The day before Pres. Obama’s broadcast, Senator Ted Cruz was one of five presidential contenders who attended the Freedom Partners forum held in a southern California resort hotel. (Freedom Partners is composed of around 200 members, each paying a minimum $100,000 in annual dues; it is partially funded by the Koch brothers.)

At that 8/2 meeting, Sen. Cruz expressed “full out denial” of global warming, saying that “the data and facts don’t support” the claim that humans are causing climate change. He also criticized the Clean Power Plan on that day before its final details were made public.

James L. Powell (b. 1936), who holds a doctorate in geochemistry from MIT and has served as president of two colleges as well as the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, has assembled every peer-reviewed study published in 2013 that addressed the issue of climate change. The total was 10,885 essays/articles.

Of those 10,885, just two peer-reviewed studies challenged anthropogenic climate change. (See more about that here.) So what does Sen. Cruz know that the writers of 10,883 articles acknowledging human-caused global warming don’t?

It is embarrassing for many of us Christians that Sen. Cruz is so outspoken about his Christian faith.

In responding to the question on August 6 about whether he had received any word from God, Cruz said, “I am blessed to receive a word from God every day in receiving the scriptures and reading the scriptures. And God speaks through the Bible.”

Unfortunately, Cruz seems not only to ignore what most scientists say about global warming but also what the Bible says about caring for creation.

In contrast, Interfaith Power & Light (IPL) is a religious organization whose mission “is to be faithful stewards of Creation by responding to global warming through the promotion of energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.” (See IPL’s full statement here.)

The IPL has organizations in 40 states, and an August 3 press release by the Kansas IPL applauded the President’s announcement of the final Clean Power Plan rules.

Earlier this summer Pope Francis issued a significant encyclical on climate change. That 184-page document emphasizes that the problem is urgent and calls for “a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet.”

I truly hope a steadily increasing number of people will join the Pope and the IPL, and the President, in combatting global warming—before it is too late.

What Ever Happened to Southern Baptists?

"What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” is a highly acclaimed 1962 black-and-white movie. June and I enjoyed watching that psychological thriller for the first time last Friday evening.

Baby Jane was an adorable vaudeville performer in 1917 as the movie begins, and after a few scenes in 1935 most of the movie takes place in the present (1961) when the former Baby Jane Hudson has become an ugly villain, impressively portrayed by Bette Davis.

Please don’t misunderstand: I am not comparing the evil Jane Hudson, or the movie, to Southern Baptists in most ways. But there are, unfortunately, some similarities.

During much of my lifetime, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was a vibrant, generally attractive, growing denomination. Figured as the percentage of the total U.S. population, SBC membership grew by more than 30% from 1950 to 1980.

But things began to change, and the percentage of SBs decreased by nearly 15% from 1990 to 2010. There were multiple reasons, but during that time the SBC, like Baby Jane, had turned rather ugly under the leadership of fundamentalist-leaning leaders.

Consequently, from 1950 to 2010 I personally changed from being a proud (in the good sense of that word) Southern Baptist, to a wary SB, then to an embarrassed SB (as I wrote about in my book “Fed Up with Fundamentalism”), and finally to being a former SB.

The Southern Baptist Convention has long been the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. According to the 2012 "Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches," the SBC has 16.2 million members, more than twice the number of the second place United Methodist Church with 7.8 million.

And yet a recent article in the Wall Street Journal points out that Baptists are departing from the religious traditions of their childhood faster than any other Protestant group.”

LifeWay Research, a polling firm tied to the SBC, even projects that the church’s membership will fall by half, to 8.5 million by 2050, returning to the level of the mid-1950s.

Decline in membership, of course, is not only a Southern Baptist phenomenon. Diana Butler Bass’s book Christianity after Religion (2012) documents the notable decline of membership in most U.S. Protestant denominations. But the decline in the SBC is among the most pronounced.

There are several possible reasons for the downward trend. Let me suggest just a few:

·   An inability, or lack of desire, to keep up with the changing mindset of the times. Like the aging Jane Hudson, many SBC churches and institutions seem to want to live in the heyday of the past (the 1950s) rather than seeking to cope with the new realities of a new generation.

·   A retroactive stance toward women. Recently Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite posted a provocative article, “Five Christian theologies scarier than Halloween.” One of the five: “women should 'submit’”—such as was called for in the Baptist Faith and Message as amended in 1998.

·   A marked alignment with conservative Republicans. In contrast to Jimmy Carter, the most famous SB politician of the 1970s, we now have Sen. Ted Cruz at the leading SB in Washington. In addition to Sen. Cruz, all five of the Southern Baptist U.S. Representatives who took office in January are conservative Republicans who last month voted against the bill to re-open the government and raise the debt ceiling. No wonder many people look askance at SBs!

Baby Jane couldn’t restore her previous attractiveness. But such would be possible for Southern Baptists, and I hope that it will happen—and pray it will happen long before the end of the projected 50-year decline.