jonathan stegall

There is an interesting interview with Rick Warren that took place after the presidential forum that was held at his church. In it, the interviewer stops just short of saying that Dr. Warren endorses John McCain, and then later states that he will not make an endorsement. Fair enough. I’m sure the same could be said of many others who are not making endorsements.

But there is a quote that I find odd, and that I feel is worth a look:

But the other important distinction Mr. Warren notes is the candidates’ approaches to government, which he says are “totally opposite.” “McCain is more of a limited government guy and Obama sees government as the solution to major problems in society.”

This is, of course, a classic argument between conservatives and liberals. Since I began to have my own political views, I have been somewhat troubled by the thought that I could be a person who “sees government as the solution to major problems in our society.”

However, in recent days it has become clear to me that this argument is no longer valid in 21st century politics. There are many valid arguments between conservatives and liberals, but this is not one of them.

For an example, watch the beginning of this episode of The Daily Show. In it, you can see a look at various media responses to this ad from John McCain, likening Barack Obama to a celebrity. Which is fine. And the media responses look at whether Obama is an elitist, whether he makes unrealistic promises, and so on. All of this is also fine. They should ask these questions.

However, the implication of course is that John McCain is not an elitist, and that he does not make unrealistic promises. The beauty of the above linked episode of The Daily Show is that it shows the other side. By 2013, apparently, McCain will lead us out of Iraq, give us economic growth, a secure Southern border, a balanced budget, $100 million in tax breaks (of course, mostly to “the wealthy” who make $5 million or more each year), and any number of other things.

And this is a small government that does not see itself as the solution to major problems in our society? Hello? Is there anyone who sees these kind of claims, whether or not they are valid, as representative of a small government? Is there anyone who still believes that George Bush runs a small government? The sweeping intrusions into civil liberties alone should keep anyone from believing that, even without looking at budgets, or taxes for people who are not wealthy, or military engagements, or political intrusion into the Justice Department, or …

So. I propose that the question of United States politics, from where we currently stand, is not whether we will have a small or big government. The question is what kind of big government we will have.

For the past few days, the country has been abuzz with talk about Rick Warren’s forum that took place at Saddleback Church, in which Barack Obama and John McCain answered some of the questions of evangelicals.

During this event, I was on a flight from San Francisco to Atlanta, and thus was able to use AirTran’s in-flight XM radio to listen to some of it. I heard most of the questions asked of Obama, and a few of them asked of McCain. Interestingly, most of the flight aside from this was spent reading Jesus for President and discussing culture, Jesus, politics, Shane Claiborne, and theology with an artist/activist sitting next to me.

I have written occasionally about my support for Senator Obama, and still maintain this though I have not written about it recently. I have noticed the rise of the Matthew 25 network, and Brian McLaren’s support for this network and for Obama. Certainly I think this is a much more balanced approach, biblically and theologically, to an attempt at following Jesus with one’s politics compared to what we have seen from conservatives. But I’m still not planning to join this kind of thing.

In this faith forum, I thought Barack Obama gave some great answers to some great questions. I especially loved his answer to the problem of evil, especially in contrast to that of McCain. Obama’s, at face value, was much more centered on justice and help for the poor and oppressed, while McCain’s was, of course, entirely centered on bin Laden and the rest of the fight against terrorism. Terrorism, of course, is an idea. It can be defined, shaped, and twisted to fit the person who is speaking against it. Darfur cannot.

In addition to this, after he had given his response to evil, Obama stressed that it is not human responsibility to get rid of evil in the world: it is God’s. This is a refreshing statement. Most of America’s politicians believe that, not only is it humanity’s responsibility to get rid of evil, it is the specific responsibility of the blood-stained righteous hands of the United States to get rid of evil. McCain, of course, believes that it is the responsibility of the United States to kill bin Laden.

Do you see the contrast in this? I had hoped that many evangelicals would see this, and it may prove that they will. A quick view of many of the responding blogs and articles, though, would suggest that they don’t. Most conservative evangelicals were entirely won over by McCain’s unelaborated reference to prayer, his unquestioned description of himself as being pro-life, offshore drilling, and going after bin Laden. Wow.

Now. I mentioned that I was reading Jesus for President on this flight. I plan to write a couple of posts about my thoughts and experiences in reading this book, but at the moment when I was listening to all this there was a single thing that stuck out to me. Note that Shane Claiborne is not endorsing a candidate. In his book, he spends a lot of time talking about the honest call of Jesus to nonviolence, and how that works itself out in the life of a believer. It is a challenging, illuminating thing that I would encourage you to take seriously.

In the presidential faith forum, Dr. Warren asked Obama what justification would lead him to take the country to war. The response was reasonably consistent with Just War theory, which of course was constructed by the fourth century church to justify its allegiance with the State. One of the statements he made was related to the idea that it is necessary for us to consider what, as Americans, we are willing to die for.

Of course, the implied answer is that we are willing to die for liberty, freedom, justice, and so on. Fairly standard talk, and the question of what we will die for is incredibly relevant to the person who seeks to follow a man who died on a torture device to offer forgiveness to his killers. But the question that no one asked, or will ask, is what we are willing to kill for.

Evangelicals tend to dismiss the peace-promoting words of Jesus in the ways that we vote, the things we expect from our country, and in our own private hypothetical situations, illustrating Dallas Willard’s statement that we may like Jesus, but we don’t believe he is very smart. My hope is that things like Jesus for President will resonate with more people, like it did with my neighbor on my flight, and that we will have to devote the energy to learning how to live like Jesus rather than learning how to justify not living like him.

Currently, I’m attending UX Week 2008 in San Francisco. Should you happen to be there, feel free to post a comment.

Anyway, as a brief update, we have this gem from Stephen Colbert, regarding the issue of human rights violations in China:

What are they thinking doing it on their own soil? Isn’t there an offshore military base they can use?

On a more serious note, I think it is incredibly important to be aware of the profundity that is in shows like The Colbert Report. When he says things like this, he is using the art of comedy to speak to us, and hopefully to evoke change.

Great cartoon about some presidential economic trends. Certainly, the cartoon is entirely based on raw data and the data can be interpreted in very partisan ways for both sides, but in any case the data still stands. You can click the cartoon to see a larger version.

At Cornerstone Festival this year, the Jesus for President tour made a stop on July 4. As Shane Claiborne’s recent article says, we then had an alternative celebration.

I have only recently picked up the book Jesus for President, and have not yet had time to read it. Even so, the tour is amazing, and is more than worth going to even if you have not read the book. Dates are on the tour’s website, and the event is free.

Essentially, the tour presents the message of Jesus, put within its actual cultural and political context, which over the centuries has been forgotten at best and manipulated and hidden at worst. The fact that the message of Jesus is always anti-imperialistic, whether he stands in contrast to Roman emperors or American presidents, is not a popular thing to say, but it is essential.

For myself, I often struggle with the implications of my belief in pacifism. It is a complex issue, and it is further complicated by the fact that cases of effective pacifism in the face of extreme evil, like the atrocities of imperial Rome, Nazi Germany or communist Russia, can be difficult to find. They do exist, but the various cultural and political frameworks of our time do not view them favorably.

Nazi Germany is usually the example thrown in the face of a person in today’s Western world who professes pacifism. The idea is that if pacifists had had their way in the United States, or the United Kingdom, or Russia for that matter, Hitler would have taken over the world and there we would be to this day.

Further complicating the issue is the fact that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a strong proponent of Christian pacifism for most of his life, was arrested, imprisoned and tortured, and finally executed for taking part in a plot to assassinate Hitler. At face value, then, it would seem that he finally gave in and saw the truth of Just War and Christian violence, and that we who resist the war in Iraq, or the saber rattling in Iran, or other military operations, should do the same and support our commander-in-chief ¹.

On the Jesus for President tour, a different stance is presented. Through studying the life of Jesus and the beliefs and practices of the church before the time of Constantine, the extent to which Jesus stands against nationalism, imperialism, and the kingdom of the sword is demonstrated.

In John 18, when Jesus is arrested, Peter cuts off the ear of one of the servants of those arresting Jesus. Jesus promptly puts it back. One of Shane Claiborne’s statements that stuck out to me the most was that the early church, in its writings and its way of life, viewed the incident in this way:

“When Jesus disarmed Peter, he disarmed all Christians.”

It is a beautiful thing to watch parts of the Church gradually wake up to the reality of entirely separate kingdom of Jesus, and what it really means to be a part of it.

¹ For further information, see the brief document, Bonhoeffer’s Pacifism by Ronald Osborn.

I believe passionately that the church loses its power and its prophetic nature when it baptizes and blindly endorses a political party, or a political candidate, or even a political idea. We have seen this occur in the United States over and over, and every time it does it blows up in our faces.

This makes it all the more wonderful to see the changes, however slow they may be, that are beginning to happen in American evangelicalism. People are beginning to realize that following Jesus does not coincide with following a party line of any kind. People that follow Jesus, ultimately, should not altogether be on any one’s side, because no one is altogether on our side (if you catch the Tolkien reference there, good for you).

In the last few weeks, I have been encouraged, annoyed, and angered by various ways that Christian engagement in politics, and the view that the rest of culture has of Christian engagement in politics, has played itself out. The Washington Post had a great interview with Brian McLaren the other day, where he simultaneously accepted and rejected the labels of conservative and liberal in favor of the message of Jesus, and it was a beautiful thing. Also, An Evangelical Manifesto was recently released, and stood firmly against aligning evangelicalism with partisan politics. While I don’t think the variety of voices within evangelicalism was given fair treatment, I appreciate many of the stances that were taken and hope that it will lay groundwork for further developments.

But the beauty of the Manifesto and of McLaren’s interview, with regard to politics, is that they retained their power to be a prophetic voice to politics without getting bogged down in blind allegiance on the one side, or in divisive statements on the other side. I don’t expect McLaren, or the signers of An Evangelical Manifesto, to publicly endorse a candidate. This is an incredibly wise decision for them, and will help to keep their voices as free from political garbage as possible.

Then, though, there is the continuation of Barack Obama’s struggles with his faith community. I hear the things that Jeremiah Wright has said, and I agree with many of them. I hear the things other ministers associated with Obama have said, and here is the issue: by continuing to speak about Obama specifically, or to speak in other politically charged ways at the same time that they are trying to speak in potentially divisive ways, they could be contributing to the end of Obama’s chances at the White House.

Obviously, if these ministers help Obama lose the White House they have missed the practicality of supporting a cause by helping to bring about its defeat. Obama took Jeremiah Wright’s comments from before the campaign (surrounding 9/11 and so on), and was able to talk to Americans about race as though they are adults, while still embracing his faith community and the core of what it stands for. I was incredibly pleased by this.

But as the saga has continued, these ministers have continued to talk in ways that 1) make it seem like Obama does, in fact, agree with what they are saying, and 2) are incredibly divisive to large numbers of Americans who otherwise might be united against many of the problems that these ministers are against. My gut feeling is that Obama agrees with some of what these ministers say, but is no longer free to speak in this way because he knows that he would then be associated with all of it, which obviously would hurt him.

Currently, there are negotiations in place concerning an international treaty that would ban the use of cluster bombs. The reasoning is that these bombs kill an inordinate number of civilians, and they can explode months or years after they are dropped (similar to land mines).

The three biggest producers of cluster bombs are the United States, Russia, and China. All three of them oppose banning cluster bombs, and all three have veto power on the U.N. Security Council. Worse, none of them have representatives present at the current negotiations.

From the AP:

A senior U.S. official [an assistant secretary of state] said Wednesday that a proposed treaty banning cluster bombs would hurt world security and endanger U.S. military cooperation on humanitarian work with countries that sign the accord.

Imagine that! Humanitarian work is used as the excuse to justify cluster bombs, which children mistake for toys!

In this election, I’ve observed that Americans don’t like honesty in politics. I feel pretty confident that we like it more than we did four years ago, but we still don’t like it. Especially if it challenges our feeling of optimism, or worse our global supremacy.

I’m often reminded of the episode of Family Guy where Lois runs for Mayor. She tries to be honest with the people, talking about issues and problems the city is facing, and no one cares what she has to say. Then, she simplifies. Every time someone asks a question, the answer is “911.” Or something to do with terrorism, or Jesus.

I feel like this business over Obama’s comments about some blue-collar voters is like that. From Obama:

“It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

From Hillary:

“I think it’s very critical that the Democrats really focus in on this and make it clear that we are not (elitist). We are going to stand up and fight for all Americans.”

Obama’s trying to deal with a real issue. Hillary realizes that Americans don’t like to deal with that kind of issue, so she is trying to bring things back to easy sound bites that won’t offend anyone, but don’t really say anything either. All politicians use those sound bites, including Obama. But he has consistently tried to get past them.

The problem with trying to get past them will be that they are a dangerous test of the openness of Americans. We’re not known for being open, especially to criticism. I’m interested to see if people will realize what he’s trying to say and offer on complex issues like this, or if they will just brand him as elitist and give up (whether it happens in the primary, or in the general election).

On a side note, Hillary referred to John Kerry’s 2004 campaign as elitist. I think this is the way some people perceived it, but I don’t think that’s the reason he lost. I think he lost because he didn’t really have a strong message. He changed a lot. His consistent message was that he wasn’t Bush (it’s significant that without any other strong message, he still got close to 50% of the country to vote for him). In lacking that strong message, he fell victim to a trap that has bothered evangelicals in recent years: we are known more (or only) for what we are against, and no one knows what we are for.

For some time, it has been clear to me that business is the future of activism. I want to say that again: business is the future of activism. It’s a shocking statement, if you really think about it.

Many people throughout the 20th century (and before) on all sides of the political spectrum believed, and still believe, that governments are the drive behind large scale activism. It has been a common belief that large-scale societal change cannot happen without government intervention.

We can see evidence of this in the rise of the Moral Majority, in which fundamentalist Christianity tried to achieve its various goals through achieving influence in government. Essentially, it failed in this. Lasting change that reaches beyond superficiality (and meets their goals) did not occur in society, and instead of influencing the Republican Party, conservative Christianity has spent the last several decades in blind acceptance of the Republican Party.

The political left also shows examples of this kind of thinking. Movements have tried to influence government for a great number of things in recent years, from nuclear disarmament to climate change. Essentially, it also has failed.

The interesting question that should arise from my statement is why business would want to be a catalyst for large-scale social change. The goal of business, at its core, is to make money. Business doesn’t exist to make the world a better place. Governments certainly don’t either, but it can be argued that they should do so better than businesses do.

I’m not entirely sure how to answer the question about why business would want to do this, but there is significant evidence that it does. Businesses of all sizes are finding it very desirable to put their resources behind causes that will not, at least in the immediate future, bring them a financial return. Issues from poverty to the environment to fair trade are being drastically changed by businesses.

Businesses are devoting their resources to causes from Kiva, where they can help other businesses in developing countries, to the Millenium Promise, where they can help end extreme poverty in the poorest of poor countries. Businesses of all sizes have the skills to achieve these goals. They know how to organize, they know how to get people behind something, and they know how to get passionate about an idea. Once these things happen, there isn’t a government on earth that will choose to accomplish the same things that are possible with these businesses.

I say all these things to mark a shift that has occurred, especially in the last decade or so. The business world endured a shock with scandals like Enron, and it was unclear if there could be a fast recovery of any kind. Businesses of all kinds, though, have begun to cause that recovery. Google has google.org, Steve Jobs wrote about a greener Apple, Microsoft has, among other things, made possible the Gates Foundation, and all kinds of companies have launched endeavors like Coke’s Corporate Responsibility strategy. I have no interest in white-washing large business. Certainly there are horrible things that continue to go on, and many businesses that don’t care at all about social responsibility, but the fact is that it is becoming a part of the business world to an extent that it never has. It’s a great thing to watch.

Along with much of the country, I have been aware of the issues surrounding Barack Obama’s former pastor, and his church. Through my education, I have at least a decent understanding of liberation theology (in various forms). I resonate very strongly with a lot of the beliefs that are common to this kind of theology.

However, I do feel that many of its proponents have missed out on actually encountering the risen Christ, through only emphasizing the solidarity that God has with the poor and suffering. Of course, as I have said before, evangelicals are at least as guilty on the other side, often only emphasizing personal spirituality.

In any case, liberation theology grasps powerful truths, and it can have a powerful voice in speaking to those who are in power. I’ll go ahead and say this: I don’t believe Jeremiah Wright was wrong in the statements we’ve all been hearing. Certainly, God stands against the many injustices that stain the hands of the United States, just like he was against the many injustices that stained the hands of ancient Israel. Certainly, the injustices he mentions are very real, and there are other injustices that could be added.

Even though I agree with many of the things Wright says, I have a vast amount of respect for the way Barack Obama addressed the issue and his disagreements with Wright in his speech yesterday.

While the speech is over 30 minutes long, it is entirely worth watching, as it is easily the most significant speech addressing issues of race and racism that a public figure of his caliber has made in my lifetime in the United States. In stating his disagreement with the statements of his former pastor, and yet also stating his strong support of his ministry, he was able to involve and challenge all of us to really examine the issues that are at hand.