Right You Are

I recently finished reading Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter. He states, straightforwardly and incisively, the ills to which this country have fallen since the inception of the current administration. I do not express things with the nobility that he does. Nor do I offer solutions as he does. As I’ve observed, re-grettably, I am much more adroit at afflicting the comfortable than comforting the afflicted.

Bush and his gang have climbed to power with the aid of the fundamentalist religious right wing. This is my reading of how President Carter sums up that faction — “a more intense form of fundamentalism” — in his book, as follows:

(1) Their leaders are dictatorial males who deem themselves superior to others and dominate their sect — especially females.
(2) Although they quote ancient authorities as infallible, requiring unquestioning submission, they exploit modernity when it is expedient for them to do so in order to achieve their ends.
(3) They sharply exclude all who disagree with them, declaring themselves the only true believers and flatly branding their disputants as ignorant and evil.
(4) They militantly fight anything that challenges their beliefs, resorting to verbal and physical abuse of their opponents.
(5) They become ever more narrow in defining and isolating themselves from the “secular” society.

I would add to that last item that, although they exclude and isolate, they have sought ever more boldly to rule all of their perceived enemies through the agency of the Republican party and through seizing as much of the three branches of our constitutional government as they can — moving us ever closer to a church-state. Thus, their goal is becoming less and less a matter of isolating themselves from others and more and more seeking to engulf and devour them.

This is only from the first chapter of the book and I hardly do it justice stopping there. It’s one of those books I’m proud to say I’ve read and I heartily recommend it.

I’m not pious but when I focus on ideals such as justice, meaning, and ultimate purpose, I’ve been motivated by the teachings of Jesus. In such a spirit, I recently sought to volunteer for Prison Fellowship, the ministry founded by Charles Colson. I might be accused of seeking the broad, easy path — the one that leads to destruction, I suppose — by applying to be merely a pen pal rather than visit folks in prisons. Ink is easier to come by than gasoline these days, and I write better than I speak, I reasoned.

Looking through the website, I looked at the picture and bio of Chuck Colson. The picture and text are imposing: captain in the Marines, aide to a US president, … Many years ago I read Born Again, his account of his conversion to Christ while he was in prison. He was there for his part in Watergate, his role having been Nixon’s dirty-tricks man. In the book, written soon after his prison term, he was convincingly contrite about how badly he had behaved.

To his credit, he founded his estimable ministry to prisoners and has headed it for three decades. Chuck earned the respect of Jimmy Carter, among others, because it appeared that he had repented, forsaken politics, and humbly begun to serve God through his prison ministry. When friends lumped him in with those who “took a nose dive with the Hallelujah boys” in order to improve their public images, I defended him as “authentic” and dedicated to the social gospel.

In the past year, I was dismayed when I read an open letter to Chuck from Jim Wallis, Christian evangelical author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It and tireless worker for social justice. Wallis took Colson to task for distorting Jim's stance on abortion.

I was further perturbed at the appearance of Chuck on “Justice Sunday” last year at a Louisville megachurch, a televised demonstration for the appointment of conservative federal judges. Colson was there with the likes of Albert Mohler, under whose presidency of Southern Baptist Seminary all women were kicked off the faculty, the men were mandatorily sworn to a fundamentalist creedal state-ment, and the abolishing of a pastoral counseling studies program, for which the seminary had long been praised and revered, and replacement of it by “Biblical” counseling. Also present were James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, and Bill Frist, Senate Majority (Republican) Leader.

It appears to me that Colson has abandoned his renunciation of politics. The saying about fools and dogs returning to their baser ways seems regrettably apropos (Proverbs 26:11). As a former behind-the-scenes master “ratfucker,” Chuck might be hoped to denounce his vile counterpart of today, Karl Rove. He is instead, either by commission or omission, a supporter in the most corrupt federal administration yet.

But the words of Jesus are there in Matthew 25: “I was in prison and you visited me.” And when was that? “Just as you did it to one of the least of these…, you did it to me.” So with those words in mind, I sought to become a pen pal with somebody by means of Prison Fellowship. I completed the online application, almost. Then the creed came. The one that I had to endorse in its entirety with the click of a mouse. I could not subscribe in particular to these two statements:

(1) We believe that the Bible is God's authoritative and inspired Word. It is without error in all its teachings, including creation, history, its own origins, and salvation. Christians must submit to its divine authority, both individually and corporately, in all matters of belief and conduct, which is demonstrated by true righteous living.

(2) We believe that all people are lost sinners and cannot see the Kingdom of God except through the new birth. Justification is by grace through faith in Christ alone.

When I left the box unclicked, the program kicked me back to it, saying I’d left it blank and it must be completed to be accepted. Not wanting to dissemble, and apparently having the option to write an email, I did so, saying the following:

(1) I'm a recovering alcoholic. (2) I am not a member of the Christian right-wing. Although I admire Chuck Colson for his social gospel ministry, I deplore his association with the ultraconservative Republican party.* (3) I am not a fundamentalist and therefore cannot endorse with a click of the mouse every clause (e.g. 100% Biblical inerrancy) of the "Statement of Faith." Do you have any use for me? If you do not, will you tell me why?

(*I was appalled when Chuck appeared with James Dobson, Bill Frist, and Albert Mohler on the notorious "Justice Sunday" Louisville megachurch broadcast.)

Well, I’m a naïf. I thought I would actually get a reply. Perhaps the email was dumped automatically by an artifice of the computer program and nobody ever saw it. But I tend to think the silence is related to the points of President Carter about the religious right — their debating with me, an out-of-the-closet non-fundamentalist, is not an option. It’s beneath contempt. “God said it, I believe it, and that’s that,” say the fundies. Chuck, the former gyrene officer, says that you salute, holler “SIR! YES SIR!” and move out. You don’t question orders. (Come to think of it, he would have had to feel that way, had he any scruples then, in doing the bidding of Nixon. But I grant he confessed he did not.)

So I think I’ve been cut dead by the Religious Right. (So what is new?) If you dare to question their brand of religion, you just don’t have it. You aren’t “saved” and you are cast into the outer darkness, whereas they are in the light. (Whoops! Tic! That verse from Psalm 139 just occurred to me — I suppose I’m just grasping at straws, of course — “Even if I make my bed in hell, Thou art there.”)

But being rejected is really a dilemma for me, because I really would like to minister to prisoners in the spirit of Matthew 25, flawed as I am, and I can’t get Prison Fellowship to discuss it with me like an adult (Damn it, I hate to keep bringing it up, but I’m 66! And I’ve been a Presbyterian elder). There are other internet agencies for making pen pals, but those are all prisoners looking for chicks (other guys, whatever).

Going on to the matter of being “saved,” we recently looked at the DVD of the movie, Saved! Yep, I’m depraved — I loved every minute of it. I watched it twice, once with the commentary by its two writers, and I believed that it had a “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” (which I put in quotes and upper case because those apt words happen to be a contemporary Christian song title, by the way) that transcended the mordant look at religious hypocrisy.

I wondered what the reviewers at "Christian Spotlight on the Movies" had to say about it and, yep, they declared the movie evil and wrong and included links to debrief all who might see it with the Christian facts (their version of "Christian" and "facts," of course).

I rant about my frustration with these folks. I tried to engage them last year and, with the prospect of one more spring in Indiana, I'll try to dream the impossible dream again and engage them. But I'm not feeling terribly hopeful at the moment.