My Charter School Dilemma

After several years of frustrating delays, on Feb. 18, Eastern University received final approval from the Philadelphia School District to open its charter school in the Fall of 2009. At that same meeting, Arlene Ackerman, Superintendent of the Philadelphia School District, announced her proposals for school reform, which included granting many more charters and turning over some schools to the management of for-profit companies. In the same vein in his address to Congress on Feb. 24, Pres. Obama announced his plans for education reform, which included the starting of more charter schools across the country. So it seems that charter schools are all the rave, and for many political leaders, central to addressing the underperforming public school system particularly in economically depressed urban and rural areas. In fact when Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, approached the Chancellor of the New York City Schools about taking over a couple of public elementary schools in Harlem, he was advised that he would do better to simply start his own charter school than try to revive the failing public schools.

According to U.S. Charter Schools, charter schools are given public money to run programs independent of the existing public school system tailored to meet the needs of a specific group of students. In exchange for the freedom to innovate, charter schools are held accountable to provide students with a level of education equal to or above national standards. While charter schools cannot “select” their students (enrollment must be open to all), they often do not have the special needs programs required of regular public schools. Thus, by virtue of the fact that they are not designed to meet these needs, charter schools by default screen out children with some of the most difficult academic and behavioral problems. Also, because families must choose to apply to a charter schools, those children from the most dysfunctional families often don’t even know of the charter schools option. Also, charter schools usually can avoid teachers unions and some of the power politics involved in public school education. Thus, it is understandable why parents, students and politicians are attracted to the charter school option, as it avoids many of the problems and barriers faced by a people involved in the public schools.

As the Philadelphia and New York examples illustrate, the CEOs of large urban public school districts seem to have given up on the very system they have been charged to lead. Therein lies my dilemma. If the leaders of our public school systems and the President of the United States no longer believe in the public education system, what hope is there for true public school reform?

This issue has taken on a very concrete manifestation for me. Over the past 18 months, I have been involved with a group called the West Philadelphia High School (WPHS) Community Partners, a group of students, teachers, community members, business folks, and concerned professionals seeking to promote innovative changes to a vastly underperforming urban high school. Essentially, we have been asking that WPHS be given the same flexibility to innovate as a charter school, but have been informed thus far that our proposals are too expensive, and unrealistic.

As positive as they are, charter schools pose a significant challenge to overall fabric of communities. Charter schools’ focus is usually not geographical, so they draw from across a wider area than a regular community based school. Sociologists point out neighborhood schools are essential to the overall health of a community. Families with small children consider the quality of schools a major factor in choosing where to live. If schools are underperforming, parents will often send their children to private or parochial schools (if they have the means to do so), or move to a community with a better public school. Charter schools are a form of the private/parochial option without the cost to the family. While this option serves the individual students and family well, it undermines the potential of a community by draining the local school of capable students and involved parents. While this phenomena is most pronounced in economically depressed areas, I see it happening in my suburban school district as well. Nearly 35% of school age children in our suburban district attend a non-public school option. Moreover, this district continually faces the opposition of tax-payer groups not wanting to support the local school. If this trend gains strength, even in this middle class suburb, public school quality will continue to decline. Charter schools, like private and parochial schools, serve the needs of individuals but often at the expense of the wider community.

So, when a community group, such as the WPHS Community Partners, asks to innovate their local high school, why are they rebuffed? Essentially, our proposal has been to convert WPHS, a school of 1200 students, into four “small schools” within one building. Each school would be comprised of 300 students, have a particular focus (Performing Arts, Business, Auto Mechanics, Urban Leadership) and be led by its own principal who would have freedom to innovate. By sharing the same building the schools could cooperate in use of facilities and large group programs such as music and athletics. This model has proven successful in urban areas such as Providence, RI and South Bronx. While there are greater costs at the leadership level, those costs are more than made up in reduced need for security, discipline, and following up on drop outs. Students in small schools don’t “fall thru the cracks” and become a caring learning community. While we are stilling hoping for a more positive response, I suspect the reasons the Philadelphia district is hesitant get down to teacher union intransigence, intra-district politics, the traditional school distrust of community groups, and a fear if the model works, it might put pressure on the district to replicate the model in other schools. However, if the model works, and strengthens a community in the process, perhaps such a change is necessary.

Please don't misunderstand; I am not opposed to charter schools. I am only concerned about the trend they represent. My concern is if public school districts simply farm out their problems to independent groups, the very purpose of public education (to equitably educate citizens for the common good) will be undermined. Avoiding the necessary reform of the very core of public education cannot be accomplished by working around that system. To do so is to relegate many potential star students, dedicated teachers, concerned parents, and community residents to a second class, inadequate education. We will serve the interests of individuals but further undermine the health of struggling communities while we are doing it.

Reflections From a Jail Cell

Nearly a month has passed since I was arrested for blocking the entrance to Colisimo’s gun shop (see January 18 blog). In terms of the overall experience getting arrested was easy; the difficult part was the 25 hours I spent in jail. Many people have asked me what it was like to be in jail, and until very recently, I have not been able to talk about it because the experience showed me some things about myself that I am still trying to come to grips with. Even so, I will try to describe what that experience was like for me.

Fred Kaufmann, Kemah Washington and I were arrested around 3:30 pm on Friday, January 16, handcuffed, and taken in a paddy wagon to the Philadelphia Ninth District Police Station. Over the next 25 hours I saw the inside of a jail from the vantage point of a prisoner, and got a tiny glimpse of the degrading, dehumanizing nature of the criminal justice system.

“Therefore I urge you… to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God…” (Romans 12.1)

I am not a mystically oriented person. Praise, prayer and worship for me are largely outward, physical acts. So for me, participating in the civil disobedience action that day was an act of faith and worship to the God of peace I seek to follow. As such I was generally prepared for the physical discomfort of the jail cell.

Fred, Kemah and I were put in a cell about 6 feet by 10 feet, with battleship gray walls on three sides and bars in the front. There was an open toilet on one side of the cell and a hard metal bench on the other. A narrow passageway ran in front of the bars across from which there was a rough gray-stone wall. A radio played softly all the time on a station that give neither time nor news nor weather. A few dim lights lit the semi-dark hall. Day or night the light, the music, the cell had this same general feel. In two of the three cells I stayed in, the toilet did not flush, so that over time the cell smelled like an oversized outhouse. While I could hear the inmates in the adjoining cells, I could not see anyone. Because of the hard cement floor and metal bench, as well as crowded conditions, sleep was difficult. I drifted off a few times, but only for a few minutes.

The essence of our experience was waiting. Four hours after we were put in the cell we were photographed and fingerprinted. Four hours later we talked via video camera to a bail bondsperson. Then for me it was another 16 hours waiting to talk to a judge and be released. If the guards knew anything, they pleaded ignorance when one would ask when they would be let out. It was an experience of complete sensory isolation.

“When I was in prison you visited me…” (Matthew 25.36)

While the cell was uncomfortable, the experience was bearable during the time I was in the cell with Fred and Kemah. However, at 4 am, about 12 hours after we had been locked up, Fred and Kemah were released. Rather, I should say from my perspective, they were taken out of the cell and did not come back; at that point I felt abandoned and forgotten. About two hours after they left, a young man was put in my cell with me, but shortly after was taken out. For a brief time I was put in with two other guys from our group, Sam and Jim, who had been arrested after us, but then an hour later, they too were released. The last couple hours I was squeezed into a one person cell with guy shivering in the corner, coming down from a drug high. However, the bulk of those 12 hours I was more or less alone.

Without my companions I began to be overwhelmed by two feelings: boredom and loneliness. To counteract the boredom, I made up games, seeing how close to the wall I could pitch plastic water bottle caps, and I played the alphabet game with the graffiti on the walls. I sang songs and recited passages of scripture (now realizing how few I actually remembered). However, despite my best efforts, soon the boredom crossed over into loneliness.

What was so striking to me is that I knew I had people on the “outside” who were monitoring my situation and praying for me. I knew that there was a lawyer who was trying to get me out. I knew my daughter and wife were aware and concerned for my condition. In terms of personal support, I was wealthy compared to the other folks in the jail. One of my cell mates was a 26 year old nurse assistant who was going to miss a job interview because of his arrest. His only support person was the roommate with whom he had gotten into a fight, the reason he had been arrested. There were others in adjoining cells who talked of not having anyone. I had an entire network, yet it didn’t seem to matter. I felt totally alone and abandoned and soon that loneliness turned to fear and hopelessness.

I realize now that the trauma of jail is not the physical dimension, but the feeling of being pushed aside, forgotten and alone. All of us in the cells that day shared the experience of fear and frustration. Regardless of the reasons that had landed us in the jail, all of us in the cells felt forgotten and abandoned. The lack of human contact and concern sucked from us any sense of dignity and worth.

“When you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters…” (Matthew 25.40)

Before he arrested us, the police captain tried to scare me by suggesting that we were going to be put in jail with a whole host of “bad people.” In the end I found a sense of solidarity with the other inmates; it was the “good people” who made my life difficult. Apart from my fellow protesters, I also spent time in a cell with a guy arrested for fighting, and another for possession of crack cocaine. In the adjoining cells were guys arrested for a variety of misdemeanors: assault, weapons possession, vandalism; and one woman arrested for writing bad checks. The other inmates referred to me as “the protester.” While a few of the guards were personable, for the most part they were aloof, arrogant and demeaning. Any request was treated as an imposition, and often they did not even come to a place where we could see them; they simply shouted from the room outside of the section where the cells were located. I am sure the questions we asked (about when we would be let out or when we see the judge) were questions they were asked 100 times a day. I suspect they hated their jobs and took it out on us.

As the hours dragged on and I did not know when I would be released, I began to feel intense anxiety. However talking to my fellow inmates calmed me down. In fact one of the nicest things one guy said was “The protester is still in here! This is messing with my mind! It’s not right!” In retrospect I don’t think he spoke those words in support of me, but rather as an expression for how frustrating the whole process was. However, at the time I took his comment as a recognition of my dignity, and it comforted me. Help came not from the guards, but from one of those “bad people.”

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me...” (Psalm 22.1)

From the inside of a jail cell, I learned what it is like to be regarded as less than human, and to be regarded as society’s refuse. We wonder why people often come out of prison, more violent and anti-social than when they went in. After only a day in a holding cell, I can understand why. People often live up or down to the way they are treated. A police station holding cell is mild compared to prison, and U.S. prisons, while terribly overcrowded, are much more sanitary than prisons in other parts of the world. In that jail cell, I was a nobody, someone unworthy of respect; someone not owed a piece of decency. People treated like animals will respond in kind, and prison treats people like animals. Yet, we wonder why prison doesn't set people straight.

People often “find God” while in jail; that may be so. However, I have never been in a place so devoid of hope and meaning as that jail cell. Perhaps, if I had stayed longer, I would have experienced what the writers of the lament psalms realized as they cried out in despair, and what Jesus found on the cross; that on the other side of hopelessness is the God of love. Frankly, I am glad I didn’t have to stay that long. I find it hard to believe we call ourselves “civilized” and yet treat people with the indignity that pervades our prison system. In my 25 hours I got only a tiny glimpse of that indignity, so small that it may not even be worth mentioning, and yet what I saw rocked me to the core of my being.

I doubt I will ever fully recover from those 25 hours in jail; I saw life from the perspective of hopelessness, and I did not like what I saw. May I never forget how many people slog through life from that perspective, and may I never let go of my resolve to be a person who works for hope, change and the dignity of every human being.

Debunking the Myth of Violence

Recently I heard a PBS interview with Matt Miller, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress about his new book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. In this book Miller focuses on ways Americans think about economic issues that have become outmoded and even counterproductive. While Miller focuses on six myths that pertain to our ways of thinking about economics, I would like to take Miller’s notion of a “dead idea” and apply it to the way we as North Americans think about how to resolve conflict both in our individual lives and around the world.

Events both in my personal life demonstrating and getting arrested in front of a gun shop, as well seeing the decisions of the new Obama administration regarding U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, have made abundantly clear to me again, how much we as a culture our caught in the myth that conflict can be resolved through violence. This is a myth that is not only false, but literally deadly.

While like many people I am hopeful for change with the new Obama administration, I was troubled to learn that within the first week of his new administration, Obama ordered unmanned Predator drone missiles to be directed at sites in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As reported on Bill Moyers Journal, these drones were directed at al Qaeda terrorists and killed about twenty people. Most of those killed were innocent bystanders, including children. Moyer’s’ guests, Marilyn Young, a history professor at New York University, and Pierre Sprey, former advisor to Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War, pointed out that using such bombing to “break the will” of the “enemy” only creates martyrs and encourages more recruits to the terrorist cause. They insisted that we needed to pursue more of a political approach, rather than a military strategy in addressing the problems in Afghanistan. To pursue a policy of increased bombing and military buildup is not only to repeat the errors of the Russians in Afghanistan during the 1980’s (which led to the Taliban coming to power) and the delusions of the Iraq War, but also to repeat U.S. errors in Vietnam (which led to a defeated withdrawal). Their fear, expressed by many other like-minded thinkers in a recent New York Times article, is that in Afghanistan, we will end up in a quagmire much like we did in Vietnam forty years ago.

As I watched the interview, I was reminded of how unconsciously we as a culture our caught in thinking that the way to peace and reconciliation is through war and violence. This way of thinking has confronted me on a personal level as well. On January 16 I was arrested for demonstrating in front of a local gun shop. Despite the fact that the police must deal daily with the presence of illegal guns on the streets of Philadelphia, they vehemently supported the gun shop owner’s right to continue doing business without proper oversight of straw purchases. The small flurry of articles and op-ed columns about our action provoked comments by readers that reflected that many people believe they not only have a right but also an inherent need to carry weapons to keep themselves safe. Yet these guns, whether legally or illegally purchased, don’t keep people safer, but do just the opposite. Two-thirds of all victims of gun violence are between people who know each other. Nonetheless, we persist in this self-destructive way of thinking to our own detriment. Through this experience I have seen how dependent as a culture we are on guns and other means of violence for our sense of identity, security and safety when in fact those guns make us less safe and secure.

We can also look at popular movies (“Defiance”, “Grand Torino”), and television shows (“24”, “Prison Break”, “Heroes”, “Lost”, “The Shield”), and the message is the same: we can resolve problems by literally “blowing away” our adversaries. Violent images pervade our language. Sports contests, competition between businesses, political campaigns, and even the recent economic struggles are “battles” and “wars” and the people involved are referred to as “warriors,” “soldiers” and “collateral damage.”

Even when we respond to events, we are prone as a culture to cast them in war-like language. In an article written shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Stanley Hauerwaus pointed out that responding to the attacks with a “war on terror” was self-defeating. He wrote: "I simply did not share the reaction of most Americans to the destruction of the World Trade Center. Of course I recoil from murder on such a scale, but I hope I remember that one murder is too many. That Americans have hurried to call what happened “war” strikes me as self-defeating. If this is war, then bin Laden has won. He thinks he is a warrior, not a murderer. Just to the extent that the language of war is used, he is honored.” (Performing the Faith, p. 205)

Pierre Sprey in the interview with Bill Moyer made the same point when he commented that the bombing of the World Trade Center and Pentagon were “criminal acts” and should be treated as such, rather than war. By calling on the language of violence and militarism, we give justification to our actions while we wrap ourselves more tightly in a downward spiral of self-destruction as a culture to our own detriment and to the detriment of millions of people around the world.

As Matt Miller points out in his book, the power of myths is that they are accepted as foundational truths without question. Miller’s point is that such myths must be seriously examined and rejected, if we are to find healthier, more productive ways of living. I would say the same about the myth of peace and safety through violence. While I might argue against violence from a moral or religious point of view, I believe that even the non-religious and the pragmatic thinkers need to ask themselves, is the myth of peace through violence accurate and true?

The challenge is that as a culture are so wedded to the way of violence and war that many will be afraid and resistant to ask those tough questions. They will castigate people like me as “liberals,” “do-gooders,” “impractical,” and “wimps” (some of the terms we have been called for protesting at the gun shop). To detractors I would say, there are none so blind, as those who will not open their eyes and see what is happening right before them.

Honoring Dr. King by Sitting Down

Most people remember Martin Luther King Jr. as a great leader who fought for racial justice. Many people commemorate the holiday set aside to honor him with acts of volunteer service, concerts, sermons, and recitations of his famous 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech. However, this MLK Holiday I honored Dr. King by sitting down in an act of civil disobedience. Along with six others, I sought to enter Colisimos gun store in Philadelphia to ask the owner to sign a Code of Conduct that would allow him to track and identify potential straw purchasers in his store. When we were denied entry to the store, we sat down outside the entrance to block entry to anyone seeking to enter (although we did let people out). Our purpose was to inhibit the sale of guns on that day, and to call attention to Mr. Colisimo’s unwillingness to take steps to keep illegal guns off the streets of Philadelphia and surrounding communities. Two days before five other protesters had done a similar action, so that in total twelve people were arrested and charged with trespassing and criminal conspiracy.

For the past several months, I have been part of a group that had been planning a legal demonstration for Saturday, January 17 and smaller acts of protest leading up to the larger demonstration. All of us also took part in a conference on peacemaking called “Heeding God’s Call” that was running simultaneously to our action. So for the twelve of us, our actions were not only an expression of our desire for peace in our city, but also an expression of our religious faith.

On the Friday (1/16) I was arrested, I did not start the day thinking I was going to commit civil disobedience, though I knew it was a possibility. However, on that morning when the 20 or so of us involved in the planning met, the consensus of the group was that civil disobedience was in order. Despite the fact that Mr. Colisimo had consistently objected to our modest request, I persuaded the group to try and meet with him one more time and persuade him to sign the code. I volunteered to ring the bell to his store and ask to talk with him. When the clerk refused to buzz us into the store, we decided to sit down in front of the entrance.

Some people my age and a few years younger (who were too young for most of the anti-Vietnam protests and missed the Civil Rights movement altogether), feel a need to earn their “activist creds” by committing civil disobedience and getting arrested. I have heard statements to that effect expressed enough times to know it is a sentiment shared by a segment of my generation of a certain political persuasion. I do not have such a longing. In fact I was quite relieved when what had been planned as an act of civil disobedience looked like it was going to become a legal protest. However, when the challenge and responsibility to commit an illegal act in front of Colisimos was presented, I agreed to do so. My commitments and convictions on the issue made that act a natural and necessary next step.

Lest anyone think that committing civil disobedience is somehow “chic” or “cool”, let me be brutally honest. Breaking the law did not come easily to me. My previous acts of civil disobedience (sending in my draft card; withholding my Federal telephone tax in protest of military spending) were safe and mild by comparison. Even though my head was convinced, my emotions ranged from guilt to anxiety. My parents raised me to be a responsibile citizen who honored and respected the law. During the action itself, the police who arrested us were hostile and belligerent, and threatened to “throw the book at us” (one officer’s phrase). Furthermore, spending 25 hours in a jail cell was traumatic. Moreover, I have a court date, which I am sure will cause further strain and disruption in my life. I do not feel like a hero; if anything, I feel quite the opposite. That being said, I would do it again, because the situation called for it.

History has sanitized Martin Luther King, Jr. so that he is depicted as a nice black man who wanted people to love each other. We too easily forget that in his day King was considered a criminal, a Communist, a degenerate, and an enemy of the state. He and his followers were vilified for their use of illegal actions. One of King's most famous writings, “The Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” was written in response to a group of prominent Alabama white clergy who publicly criticized him for his “disruptive” and “untimely” actions. The strain of being a lawbreaker did not come easily to him. Yet, as King said on many occasions, sometimes one must “stand up to evil and injustice by sitting down.”

In "The Letter From a Birmingham Jail” Dr. King wrote that he and his followers broke the law in order to “arouse the conscience of the community” in hopes that people would see the error of their ways. Time will only tell what effect our action will have on changing the laws and practices around the sale of guns in Pennsylvania. Only God and and Mr. Colisimo know how our action affected him. Even so, I draw inspiration from Dr. King’s unyielding commitment to confront injustice. I leave the results of our actions in God’s hands; for me the action was a natural extension of my faith and commitment, and indirectly a way to honor the memory of a man whose actions changed a nation, inspired movements around the world, and opened the door for people like Barack Obama to believe he could run for president. So this year I remember the radical King who reminds us that each generation has injustices it must confront and when the challenge presents itself, people of conscience must be willing to take the risk of being “uncivil.”

Taking on The Gun Lobby: David and Goliath

This week approximately 300 people from across the county will gather in Philadelphia for a peace conference entitled “Heeding God’s Call: A Gathering on Peace." Sponsored by the historic peace churches (Quaker, Mennonite and Brethren), the stated purpose is “to strengthen our witness and work for peace in the world by inspiring hope, raising voices, taking action.” The conference organizers hope that participants will not only leave the conference with encouragement and inspiration, but also have developed concrete plans for addressing the needs for peace, justice and reconciliation in the war torn places of the world. While the focus of the event is largely in international, I was part of a small group folks early on who advocated that we also needed to address the gun violence at home taking place on our city streets. I felt we could not address the wars abroad without also taking on the war at home.

So,on Saturday, January 17, the conference will conclude with a gathering of
1500-2000 people of faith from across the Philadelphia metropolitan area demonstrating in front of a gun shop named Colisimos that is notorious for selling handguns that have end up killing and seriously wounding hundreds of people, mostly young people, in Philadelphia and surrounding communities. We have asked Colismos to sign a Code of Conduct that has been endorsed by the Mayor’s office and has been signed by Walmart, the leading gun retailer in the country. The purpose of the Code of Conduct is to ask the gun dealer to take common sense steps to reduce the likelihood of guns getting illegally into the hands of criminals. If you live in the Philadelphia area I encourage you to join us. You can get more information at http://www.peacegathering2009.org/saturday-witness/take-action.

However, beyond the action we are taking on Saturday, this event is an effort by a number of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders to say to the people of Philadelphia that there is hope that deaths and injury due to gun violence can be reduced. This past year Philadelphia has seen a 15% decrease in homicides due to gun, but only a 3%drop in violent crimes over all. We can do better as the current death rate is still about one per day, and this event is saying we will do better.

This action is saying to our elected officials that we should pass common sense legislation that will significantly reduce the presence of unregistered guns on our streets: Legislation like the “One Handgun a Month” law that limits the purchases of one handgun every month. Legislation like the “Lost or Stolen” bill which requires a gun owner to report a gun to be lost or stolen within 24 hours of discovering that loss or theft. Legislation like can be found in New Jersey that requires extensive background checks on potential gun owners, so that guns do not get into the hands of unstable or irresponsible people, unlike the cursory background checks that are done in states like Pennsylvania.

These bills are designed to inhibit the process referred to as “straw buying.” Straw buyers are individuals with no criminal records who are hired by underground gun dealers to purchase guns on their behalf. The guns are registered in the straw buyer’s name, but quickly transferred to the underground dealer and then sold under the table to other people, many of whom are under the age 18 and/or have prior criminal offenses. When that gun is used in a violent crime and traced back to the straw buyers, if they say it was “lost” or “stolen” they face no criminal charges. By making the process of straw buying a more serious offense with even the threat of jail time, these bills are would impede and discourage the would be straw buyers, and reduce the flow of unregistered and illegal guns.

However, beyond even bringing hope to those victimized by violence and changing gun laws, our hope is to challenge National Rifle Association who see any effort to control the sales of guns, even illegal guns, as somehow limiting their Second Amendment rights. When I explain the proposed bills many people why it has been so hard to pass these bills. Very simply it is because the NRA fills the campaign coffers of elected officials and stirs up fear among legal gun owners by characterizing any attempt to limit gun sales an issue of curbing patriotic rights. The propsed bills have no bearing on legal gun owners, but are designed to discourage illegal sales.

This action is also a challenge to the gun manufacturers themselves, who profit handily through the sale of illegal and unregistered guns. The legal gun market is basically saturated, and so the “growth market” for guns is the underground market. The gun industry has been largely shielded by the Bush Administration from any prosecution but with a new president, there is hope for a new and more just approach.

Those who have planned this event (I have played only a minor role) recognize that the culture of violence that has gripped our society from the White House to the Pentagon to the city streets to the rural areas will not be changed by one conference or one civic demonstration. So we are committed to work beyond Saturday mobilize our churches, synagogues, mosques, community groups and legislatures so that a new spirit and a new attitude toward guns and violence can be fostered in our hearts and in our community.

I invite you to join us this week and covet your prayers. At times this struggle seems a bit like the Biblical story of young David taking on Goliath. The NRA and the gun lobby are powerfuls force, and we who are opposing them are small by comparison. However, as I recall, size and power did not prevail that day on the Philistine plain, and so I/we go forth in hope, and the expectation that peace can and will prevail.

Gaza: The Need for a New Paradigm

Upon receiving the letter from Adam Beach that I posted below, a colleague at Eastern who had received the same email, posted a response that simply supplied a link to “another perspective” on the issue. Ther link (below) was to an article by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer

As I read the article I was convinced agains of the futility of trying to say who is right or wrong, whose justified or not. While most seem to want to polarize the issue as , I consider myself anti-war, pro-Palestinian, and pro-Israel, which in fact means I advocate a radically new paradigm for addressing the ongoing conflict there.

In his article Krauthammer states that the “moral clarity [of the Israel- Gaza war is] not only rare but excruciating.” He states that Israel is “morally scrupulous” about contacting Palestinians and telling them they are going to attack them, while Hamas “unscrupulously” positions its rocket launchers in civilian targets such as schools and hospitals. He says that Hamas has fired 6.664 rockets in the last three years, whereas Israel has fired fewer, though more accurate weapons. He claims that Hamas uses civilian noncombatant deaths and injuries as part of their strategy, going so far as to say, “For Hamas the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.” He points out that from an early age Palestinian children are taught in schools to believe that Israel as a nation must be eliminated, and that Hamas has a deliberate strategy of ongoing disruption and conflict. Furthermore, when Gaza was granted sovereignty and Hamas was elected to govern they did not begin building roads, schools and other infrastructure, but instead “devoted all their resources to turning it into a terror base -- importing weapons, training terrorists, building tunnels with which to kidnap Israelis on the other side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.” By contrast in his view all Israel wants is “a sustainable and enduring ceasefire….If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost again.”

Krauthammer’s analysis and perspective has much to commend it. There is no doubt that Hamas has provoked this attack by its unrelenting attacks on Israel, and is morally culpable in the deaths of its own citizens. Furthermore, he may be correct in saying that Israel’s goal is “peace” and a ceasefire. Yet his analysis seems to ignore two important pieces of context.

First, Israel’s power and military strength completely dwarf Hamas. Furthermore, Israel’s policy of continual degradation of the Palestinian people has invited this response. The building of the wall, the cutting off of economic opportunity, and now the limiting of humanitarian aid to the region only cause the innocent to suffer more. Furthermore, their objective is not to “get even” but to obliterate the Palestinians; not just Hamas, but the whole region, hammering it into submission. Their tactics only fuel the very fire they seek to quell.

Second, while Hamas may be the enemy on the ground, they are not the real enemy; the real enemies are Syria and Iran who fund and fuel Hamas’ activities. For obvious reasons Israel does not want to directly take on those two nations (nor they Israel), and instead Israel obliterates Iran’s and Syria’s proxies, the Palestinian people. Though Israel recognizes this disparity, it seems to place its emphasis on oppressing the Palestinians rather than dealing with the root of the problem in its relations with Syria and Iran.

To say that Israel is morally scrupulous because it forewarns its victims, is to say the bully is justified in hammering the 90 pound weakling because he told him he was going to beat him up before he did it. Furthermore, having the right to defend oneself (which I affirm) does not therefore give one the right to kill innocent citizens (which I don’t affirm). The issue is not dead Jews vs. dead Palestinians; it is dead human beings, whose blood runs red no matter who fires the shots or who is killed. In its attempts to defend itself, Israel has contributed along with Hamas to causing untold suffering on innocent people. They have not tried to appeal to those innocent people, but have simply counted them as “collateral damage.”

Contrary to Krauthammer, I do not think there is any moral clarity on either side of this conflict. As long as both Hamas (& Syria and Iran) and Israel use violence as a means to peace (an oxymoron that most of the world’s governments have failed to understand), not only will the war continue, but also the innocent will bear the brunt of suffering. In that scenario no side can claim any moral high ground.

Krauthammer’s analysis only highlights the need for a new approach, one that (1) seeks to protect the innocent victims of war and oppression, and that (2) is willing to avoid the easy polarities and finger pointing and instead and call all responsible parties to account. Because of the vested interests of the governments involved, including our own, I don’t see this new approach coming from the politicians or even the United Nations. It will need to come from a counter community of international peacemakers, which alone has the moral authority to speak for justice and peace in such a morally vacuous situation. At this point all sides are operating solely out of a defensive and self-interested posture (as Reinhold Niebuhr reminded us nations can and must do), and so morals may seem like a luxury the combatants are neither interested in nor can afford to consider. However in the end morality is not a luxury, but rather is the very essence of what is needed if there is to any semblance of peace in the region.

Warsaw Ghetto (1943) and the Gaza Ghetto (2009)

Adam Beach, an Eastern University student who has spent a great deal of time in the Middle East documenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sent out this recent letter comparing the Nazi attack on the Jewish gehetto in Warsaw, Poland during WWII and the current attack on Gaza by the Israeli forces. The similarities are chilling, and remind me how easily and quickly the oppressed can become an oppressor. I print Adam's letter here in its entirety without comment. (I would encourage you to follow Adam's blog, Yallah Handala

On January 18th 1943 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, surrounded by walls, and living under crippling restrictions imposed by Nazi forces engaged themselves in an uprising that would last until May 16th in the same year. The poorly armed and ill-supplied Jewish forces staged heavy resistance against the modern war machines of the SS. While the Nazi SS claims to have suffered only 16 casualties; history has surmised that in reality SS casualties were much higher. In the end the courageous Jewish resistance was deflated as the Nazi troops resorted to indiscriminate burning of houses. Of the nearly 13,000 Jews that were killed in just three months of fighting at least 6,000 died in the house fires or from smoke inhalation. Thus, over %40 percent of those killed in the Ghetto uprising were not killed because they were engaged in resistance but rather by nature of the fact that they happened to be in or around the houses that the Nazis were indiscriminately fire bombing in order to root out the "sub-human" Jewish resistance forces. Considering that the Nazis' claim that they suffered just 16 casualties is suspected to be a heavily doctored number, it seems likely that, as it was published by the Polish Underground State, in fact their were at least 200 German casualties. Thus, the brutal Nazi Forces killed roughly 65 times more Jews then they suffered casualties. About half the Jews that were killed were engaged in active resistance, while the others were simply living in the Ghetto and found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Nazi justification for the ghettos in the first place and then the ensuing brutality against the already impoverished ghetto inhabitants was the idea of Jews as a dangerous and polluting people who were locked up in ghettos for the good of Germans and indeed the good of the world. Jewish resistance was twisted and contorted and reconstructed by the Nazis as sub-human terrorism while the Nazi brutality was constructed in the macabre logic of Nazism as defensive in spite of the heavy disproportionality in those killed and the reality that the Jews who rose up in rebellion were doing so in a ghetto!

Aside from enormous power imbalance introduced by the Nazi's heavily superior military weaponry the Warsaw Ghetto suppression was so successful related to the number of Jewish collaborators the Nazi's had coerced into feeding them information about the Jewish resistance movement. As the massacres took place the Allied forces did little to nothing to stop the Nazis. Szmul Zygielbojm, who was the leader of the Jewish socialist party called the Bund wrote in suicide letter that:

"The latest news that has reached us from Poland makes it clear beyond any doubt that the Germans are now murdering the last remnants of the Jews in Poland with unbridled cruelty. Behind the walls of the ghetto the last act of this tragedy is now being played out.

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions, tortured children, women and men they have become partners to the responsibility ..." (Quote By Joseph Massad, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10110.shtml)

In the last 11 days of fighting in the Gaza Ghetto Uprising nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 3,000 have been wounded (many of which are expected to succumb to their wounds because of an acute lack of medical supplies and space in Gazan hospitals). Medical sources in Gaza are saying are the casualties are at least %50 civilians. Over a hundred of the casualties are children. Today, a UN school was shelled twice by Israeli tanks causing over 40 deaths and dozens more wounded. In last few days whole families have been killed in their houses. In once case Israel bombed a mosque it said was a "stronghold" for Hamas. As it turned out five young girls, sisters, were in the mosque after having fled their home. The only video evidence Israel has released which they did as "proof" of their targeting Palestinian resistance fighters turned out to be a 14 year old boy and other men loading badly needed gas and water tanks onto a pickup.

Since the beginning of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza ghetto, 4 Israeli civilians have been killed by rocket fire and at least 6 soldiers have been killed. Israel has been using phosphorous bombs in crowded civilian areas (bombs that explode in the air and shower thousands of bits of burning phosphorous that burns through flesh and bone in seconds and is considered a war crime if used in civilian areas). Israel has also been using radioactive Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME) weapons. "DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated "micro-shrapnel" of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic).<4-11>" (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x414058) The weapon was developed by the US and sold to Israel. What is taking place in the Gaza ghetto is a massacre that equals and even so far exceeds the Nazis massacre of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

If Israel were to keep up her pace for as long as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising lasted--three months--roughly 6,300 Palestinians will be killed and over 27,000 wounded (many if not most of which will succumb to their wounds as a result of the fact that conditions in Gazan hospitals, if they are not bombed, look only to get more dire). This reality puts potential Palestinian casualties at well over the 13,000 that were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, if even a third of the potential Palestinian wounded succumb to their wounds, which seems tragically likely. If Israeli casualties remain at the same rate they have been at there will be about 90 dead at the end of the three months. Thus if things continue we are looking at over 15,000 Palestinian deaths and a Israeli disproportionality rate of 170-1, a rate that makes the Nazis 65-1 look mild. Even now the Israeli massacre in Gaza is running at nearly 70-1, already proportionally worse than the Nazis' suppression of the Jewish uprising in 1943.

It may seem sick to engage in such theoretical projections (and God knows I pray each day that things will not carry on this long or with the ferocity that we have seen so far) but I believe it is important to put this mass killing in historical perspective."


The sick thing about what is happening now is Gaza, is that like in the case of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Israelis have enlisted their own judenrat collaborationist government--the PCA (Palestinian Collaborationist Authority)--in their program to root out Hamas. The PCA in the West Bank has actually been on the verge of violently breaking up Palestinian demonstrations in solidarity with the Gazans. I fully expect their to be a Fatah invasion of Gaza following the Israeli massacre. Indeed I wouldn't be surprised if Mahmoud Abbas had foreknowledge of the invasion of Gaza and may already have plans for taking Gaza over after the mass killing.

Yet as Joseph Massad wrote recently in an Electronic Intifada article:

"The crushing of the Gaza Ghetto Uprising and the slaughter of its defenseless population will be relatively an easy task for the giant Israeli military machine and Israel's sadistic political leadership. It is dealing with the aftermath of a strengthened Palestinian determination to continue to resist Israel that will prove much more difficult for Israel and its Arab allies to deal with. While the thousands of dead and injured Palestinians are the main victims of this latest Israeli terrorist war, the major political loser in all this will be Abbas and his clique of collaborators. The test for Palestinian resistance now is to continue to refuse to grant Israel the right to conquer populations, to steal their land, to destroy their livelihoods, to imprison them in ghettos, and to starve them without being resisted.

The only constant in Palestinian lives for the last century of Zionist atrocities has been resistance to the Zionist project of erasing them from the face of the earth. While Zionism sought and recruited Arab and Palestinian collaborators since its inception in the hope of crushing Palestinian resistance, neither Israel nor any of its collaborators has been able to stop it. The lesson that Zionism has refused to learn, and still refuses to learn, is that the Palestinian yearning for freedom from the Zionist yoke cannot be extinguished no matter how barbaric Israel's crimes become. The Gaza Ghetto Uprising will mark both the latest chapter in Palestinian resistance to colonialism and the latest Israeli colonial brutality in a region whose peoples will never accept the legitimacy of a racist European colonial settlement in their midst." (Joseph Massad, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10110.shtml)

Please do what you can, in demonstration, in boycotts, in resistance in Palestine, and in prayer on behalf of the people of Gaza.

Here are some links: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/ http://www.bdsmovement.net/ http://www.vtjp.org/ http://electronicintifada.net/

Along with the vast majority of the world's people and nearly none of the world's governments: I look forward to and pray that the state of Israel is swiftly dissolved out of existence. I hope and pray that not one drop of Jewish-Israeli blood is spilled in the process and equally that not one Israeli-Jew be displaced from their homes but it is time that the rouge state of Israel be brought to justice and swiftly dissolved for being the racist, apartheid state that it is.

In mourning,

Adam Beach

The Futility of Violence and the Need for a Counter-Community of Peace

The recent invasion and bombardment of the Gaza Strip by the Israelis is yet another example of the utter futility of war when it comes to truly resolving conflicts. While there were major demonstrations in European and U.S. cities opposing the Israeli action, the U.S. and other governments have basically stood idly by offering their spoken and tacit support for the Israeli action. Now, in Israel’s defense, Hamas, the radical Islamist group they are combating, is equally culpable when it comes to perpetuating the conflict through the use of both targeted and random violence. How many times do the Israelis and the militant Palestinian groups like Hamas have to attack and kill each other and innocent civilians before they realize there will be no winner in the conflict and no lasting peace in the region as long as war and violence is the route they choose?

On January 7, 2001, in the twilight of his presidency, Bill Clinton said in a policy speech on Israel said “there is no place for violence and no military solution to this conflict. The only path to a just and durable resolution is through negotiation.” However, in that same speech Pres. Clinton went onto say “the United States must maintain its commitment to preserving Israel’s qualitative edge in military superiority.” Now does anyone else see the inherent contradiction there? If there is no military solution, then why are we supporting and supplying their military capabilities? When you bang your head against a wall enough times, you might want to consider another approach.

I am no expert on the politics of the region, but from what I have learned from friends and colleagues who have spent time in the region and have taken time to study the conflict, three things seem very clear. First, the suffering of the average Palestinian at the hands of the Israeli military and domestic policies is morally and politically indefensible. The anger behind the Palestinian attacks has a realistic and justifiable basis, even if their actions do not. However, second, the official policy of nations like Iran and Syria, and their surrogates like Hamas, give Israel the justification to defend itself, even if their means of defending themselves is unjustified. Third, the United States’ policy of blindly supporting Israel in such actions as have recently occurred, only fuels the endless cycle of violence and drives the possibility of resolution further away.

This recent crisis is yet another challenge to pacifists and other people committed to the way of peace to raise our voices about the inability of war and violence to bring about justice and lasting peace. Shortly after the September 11, 2001 bombings, Stanley Hauerwas, theologian and ethicist from Duke University, wrote an essay to a primarily Christian audience which he called a “pacifist response” to the bombings. When questioned about the alternative he would propose to the current U.S. practice of responding to violence with violence, he wrote: “Such questions assume that pacifists must have an alternative foreign policy. I have something better – a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill” (Performing the Faith, p. 206). His words refer to the fact that we who believe in peace must be like the Christian Peacemaker Teams and Witness for Peace teams that literally put themselves in between warring factions, in an effort to force warring parties to seek another way. He is saying that if there was a community of people committed to the way of peace to the degree that our government is committed to war, we might see a different result.

In speaking of Osama bin Laden Hauerwas said: “Indeed, I fear that absent a counter-community to challenge America, bin laden has given Americans what they so desperately needed – a war without end. America is a country that lives off the moral capital of our wars” (Performing the Faith, p. 207). In the same vein groups like Hamas, and nations like Israel, give each other the moral justification to be at war continually and endlessly, when in fact those wars are totally and completely morally bankrupt.

We who believe in alternatives to war and violence, be it from religious or humanist convictions, must be willing to model in our daily life, as well as our political actions, a perspective that rejects war as a means to resolving conflict. The last 60 years of the Israeli-Arab conflict is exhibit A of the futility of that approach.

Some years ago, in the late 1980’s there was a proposal put forth in a Congressional bill to establish a national Peace Academy in the same vein as the national military academies. Obviously, that proposal never went very far on the government levels, but there are think tanks such as the Carter Center in Atlanta and the The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University that have taken seriously the charge to find alternative ways. Moreover, there are numerous groups and individuals such as Jimmy Carter, the World Elders founded by Nelson Mandela, and Dan Buttry of the American Baptist Churches, who work tirelessly to help local and national groups find peaceful resolutions. We need to know and hear of these folks. We need to become that “counter-community” Hauerwas talks about. We need to say loud and clear: Enough with war, let us seek another way.

Time to "Cut Bait" with Evangelicals

When I was growing up, my Dad often used the expression “Fish or cut bait.” Seeing as neither I nor my father were big fishermen, it wasn’t until I was much older that I understood what the expression meant. To “cut bait” is essentially to cut your line, let your bait go free into the water and give up fishing. Dad would use this expression when it was time for us to act, rather than wallow in indecision.

This saying came back to me recently when I learned that Rev. Richard Cizik resigned from his post as vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). His resignation was prompted by criticism that came after an interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s program Fresh Air. In the interview he was asked his position on gay marriage. He responded by saying that while he did not endorse gay marriage, he was open to the notion of civil unions. He also talked about his efforts to reverse global warming and his support for Barack Obama in the Democratic primary.

Apparently, Cizik’s remarks did not represent the views of the powerbrokers within the NAE. Cizik’s remarks prompted NAE president Leith Anderson to write a letter to the NAE board of directors that Cizik’s positions did not represent the positions of the NAE. Mounting pressure eventually forced Cizik to resign, even though he is widely credited with being a fresh voice for the new evangelical movement and someone who is trying to engage evangelicalism and U.S. culture in a meaningful way.

I learned of Cizik’s resignation from blogs by Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo, both long time progressive evangelicals who I deeply respect. Both Wallis and Campolo have had a significant role in shaping my understanding of how Christians should and can relate to the wider U.S. culture. Wallis expressed that he was “deeply saddened” by the NAE’s action but went on to say that he had trust in the NAE’s “commitment to the wider evangelical agenda beyond just abortion and gay marriage.” Campolo for his part said that Cizik’s resignation provided “one more reason why many of us are calling ourselves Red Letter Christians instead of evangelicals.” (For those not familiar with the term “Red Letter Christians,” it refers to the practice in some Bibles to put the words of Jesus in red letters, as opposed to black. Thus “red letter Christians” are those who follow the radical teachings of Jesus first and foremost). At the same time Campolo affirmed the common ground he has with evangelicals in regards to beliefs and the need for a “personal relationship with Christ.”

In spite of my respect for Wallis and Campolo, I have gone a step further, and “cut bait” with evangelicals. I first encountered the word “evangelical” when I attended Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the late 1970’s. After trying to figure out what constituted an evangelical, I asked my advisor and New Testament scholar, Dr. David Scholer (recently deceased), what an evangelical was. I have never forgotten his response: “An evangelical is a person who another so-called evangelical considers to be one.” In other words, evangelicals are a club, a social group, a political entity. As much they like to define themselves in terms of doctrinal and theological positions, evangelicals first and foremost are a socio-cultural group that determine who they like and don’t like. Many African American and Hispanic Christians share the same doctrinal beliefs as evangelicals, but are not considered “evangelical” because they didn’t make the club. Evangelicals are overwhelmingly white, middle class, and politically conservative. People like Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne and Ron Sider see themselves as a “progressive” wing of evangelicalism, but how can the likes of these be seen in the same “club” as James Dobson, Joel Osteen or the Southern Baptist Convention, who continually rail against everything from global warming to the anti-war movement to a concern for the public education to gay marriage and abortion?

For years, like Sider, Campolo, Wallis and others, I considered myself an “evangelical,” but several years ago, I decided that was a club I didn’t want to be associated with. It is not because of their views on certain issues, because in fact in many cases I share their views or am close to them. It is their arrogance, self-righteousness, and intolerance of any dialogue. Had I wanted to stay in the club, I am sure there would be many who would want me out, just as they wanted Rich Cizik out. I simply saved them the trouble; I “cut bait” with the evangelicals long ago.

Stanley Hauerwas, theologian/ethicist at Duke Divinity School, says that one’s perspective on any given issue can not be divorced from virtue, or what I take to mean certain traits of character. For me the primary Christian virtues are servanthood, humility, and a willingness to listen. The NAE, and I fear even people like Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo, assume that Christianity can “make an impact” on US culture and government policy. Like Hauerwaus, I hold out no such hope. Rather as Hauerwas says our first task is to model justice and freedom in our relationships to each other, and by our life together as Christians bear witness to a different way of life and community possible in Jesus Christ. In other words the virtues of servanthood, humility and a willingness to listen first must be exercised by Christians with one another. I don't see any trace of that in the NAE.

Instead the NAE’s action in relationship to Rich Cizik is only the most recent of a variety of ways in which evangelicals have shown that they have absorbed our culture’s intolerance of difference, and taken on an attitude of arrogance that gets played out in our culture every day between groups of differing views. Moreover, this intolerance has played itself out on the world stage and involved us in two wars and alienated the US from many of the nations of the world, including our so-called allies. Instead of being a model of a different way, evangelicals have shown they are as much a part of the problem as anyone else. Other than the fact that both evangelicals and I share the label “Christian,” I’m not sure there is much else we share. For that reason I disassociate myself altogether – I cut bait.

The recent presidential election shows that declining influence the “Christian right” and evangelicalism are having in our culture. I suspect that Rich Cizik was not the only “evangelical” who voted for Barack Obama, despite his positions on abortion, gay marriage, global warming and the like because any thinking person can not be a one-issue voter. Moreover, any thinking Christian will recognize that on any one of these issues, there may be a variety of positions even among devout Christians. The ability to listen to one another and to interact in a compassionate and humble way requires an approach to dialogue that the NAE has neither understood nor accepted. I have no time for a group that is so rigid and close-minded that they automatically expel one of their own, when he happens to rethink his views on something. The Spirit of God is not contained in doctrinal statements or theological positions, but in the ongoing work of trying to engage the world with the love and justice of Christ found in the gospel. I feel badly for Rich Cizik, but in the end he is better off being set free from the rigidity of a group who has lost the Spirit of the One they say they serve.

Living the Questions for the New Year

For many people, the beginning of a new year is a time of reflection and prognostication. We look back on the year that has passed and note the highs and lows, & the good, the bad and the disappointing. Then we look ahead to the new year. Some of us even make personal resolutions. The new year is also a time for us to project our hopes for the world at large for the coming year.

Yet this year in the midst of an economic crisis, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pirates seizing ships on the high seas, continued foot-dragging on global warming and so many other things, I find myself asking questions of the new year rather than expressing hope. And so I share with you my questions for 2009.

First, how will Barack Obama meet the challenges of the presidency such as the global economic crisis, the inequities in health care, a foreign policy in a polarized world, global warming, and the plight of the truly poor both in the US and across the world? Not since John F. Kennedy has someone entered the Oval Office amidst such high hopes and expectations. Since Nov. 5, Obama has been acting presidential even though he does not actually take office until January 20. Yet he enters the presidency facing multiple challenges that require not simply some quick fixes, but rather a complete paradigm shift as to how we think of ourselves as U.S. citizens and citizens of the world. I wonder, is he committed to the dramatic change he called us to in the campaign? Obama campaigned on a platform of change, and yet his appointees to the cabinet thus far seem remarkably similar to what has gone before; in fact many of his appointees served in the Clinton administration, and at least one (Defense Secretary Robert Gates) in the Bush administration. Now I realize that no matter who is sitting around the table Obama will be directing the conversation, and overseeing major decisions, and that in itself is a major change. in his second book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama makes clear is that he is not an ideologue of the left or the right, as much as he is a pragmatist. His mantras are “whatever works” and “whatever it takes.” In a time when there is a great deal of fixing to be done, will he be able to convince Congress and the American people, that the lifestyles we have been living need to be simplified, that the wars we have been fighting need a different approach, and the way we relate to the world needs to be significantly altered. Can he pull it off? That’s my first question.

My second question is this: How far down will the U.S. and global economy go? All the “experts” say 2009 will continue to deteriorate until it begins to turn around. However, these are the same guys who a few months ago were predicting we had hit bottom and the various government bailouts would turn us around. In other words, nobody knows. To add insult to injury to the increasing economic troubles, Bernard Madoff was caught running a billion dollar pyramid scheme, just highlighting how fragile and illusory our economic well being was and is even if you are filthy rich. As Thomas Friedman recently pointed out ,the Wall Street, mortgage and bank collapses came about based on loans where no money actually passed hands and where no one was willing to reveal the financial slights of hand that characterized many of the loan, stock and mortgage deals. Friedman concludes his analysis of the financial crisis by saying “we’re all going to be working harder for less money and fewer government services --- if we’re lucky.” That’s not very encouraging. My worries are pretty mild compared to most (how will I pay my daughter’s college tuition, will students be able to afford to come to Eastern University, what will the value of my house be), but others are facing economic collapse and some painful and difficult choices, and I wonder how will we as a people manage?

Third, how deep and severe is the damage that has been done by the Bush administration? The Philadelphia Inquirer recently ran a series of articles about the undoing of EPA regulations by the Bush administration. There have also been articles on the legacy of Dick Cheney’s vice presidency in which his disregard from public opinion was made clear. What concerns me is that we have yet to really see the extent to which the decisions of the Bush administration have handicapped the US image around the world, hampered the care of the environment, promoted the deregulation of the oil and financial industries and who knows what else. In my adult life I do not recall an administration that operated with such impunity as this outgoing administration. Even those who worked in that administration speak of the lack of commitment to honesty and truth. I fear the next few months will reveal just how much we have been duped.

Finally, what will become of the major places of conflict in the world: Zimbabwe, Congo, Sudan, Israel/Palestine, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea (just to name a few)? The prevalence of poverty and civil war around the world is a matter of grave concern. Any one of these places could be the staging ground for a broadening global conflict. There are certain interests that would like nothing better than more war, be they weapons manufacturers, mercenaries or governments, because war is good business. War also allows us to divide the world into “them” and “us” rather than look to our common needs and interests. As I look out on the horizon, I hope for peace and justice in these places, but I am continually troubled by our inability and unwillingness as a human race to pursue that peace. I am sure that all of these conflicts have a history and a set of circumstances that justify the conflicts from the combatants’ perspectives. Yet the ongoing decision to choose war over reconciliation only perpetuates needless suffering and death.

These are heavy questions I bring as a world citizen into 2009. By asking them, I am not throwing up my hands in despair. Rather, I see these questions as informing my prayers and to a certain extent shaping my actions. I am not without hope, but that hope is not built on a Pollyanna notion that “everything will be all right.” That hope is informed by the difficult choices all of us must make, if we are to act constructively in and on the world in which we live. And so in the words of the German poet Rainer Rilke I will “live the questions” as I enter the new year

A Christmas Prayer

In his book, Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama tells the story when he was running for the U.S. Senate of flying from Chicago on a private jet to a fundraising event on the west coast. He describes the comfortable chair, the wood paneling, the crab salad, and the constant attention he received from the wait staff. He then goes on to tell of a car ride with his campaign manager from Chicago to the western Illinois city of Galesburg. In a Galesburg diner he met with the town mayor and some Maytag workers who were concerned that their plant was being relocated to Mexico and they would lose their jobs. He contrasts the two trips by saying that when you are flying high in a private jet, it is very easy to lose touch with the struggles and needs of the everyday American. That’s why when possible he chose to drive rather than fly privately.

Recently, we have been reminded how some self-styled elite in our country seemed to have lost touch. Take the case of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has been trying to sell President-elect Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder. Now he is resisting calls for his resignation and may be impeached, so that Obama’s seat can be replaced. As disgusting as that action is, more disgusting is that all the people around him and many in the Illinois Senate knew he had done this sort of thing before, but looked the other way. Somehow the standards of honesty and decorum don’t apply to the governor or other Illinois officials – or so they think..

Or take the case of the former CEO of Merrill Lynch and Co., John Thain. In the twelve months he has held that post, the company lost more than $10 billion dollars and then was sold to Bank of America. For his stellar efforts Mr. Thain requested that he be granted a $10 million bonus on top of his $750,000 salary, $15 million signing bonus, and a long term pay package valued between $50 million and $120 million. Merrill’s compensation committee denied Mr. Thain’s request, but what kind of gall and hubris does it take for a person to even ask?

We could go on about the AIG executives who got bailed out and then took a luxurious corporate junket, or the auto executives who came to Washington expecting to be bailed out without any plan or the athletes who in spite of these hard economic times still get millions of dollars for throwing a ball or catching a pass – it is all obscene… and it has to end

One can only hope that as Obama ascends to the highest, most powerful position in the world that he won’t forget the lesson he learned en route to Galesburg. Likewise, one can only hope that the likes of Gov. Blagojevich and Mr. Thain can be humbled and cut at the knees to the point of recognizing how incredibly out of touch and arrogant they really are.

During this Advent season I am reminded of the words of Mary, the mother of Jesus when she proclaimed:

"God has performed mighty deeds with his arm
And scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
God has brought down the rulers from their thrones
But has lifted up the humble
God has filled the hungry with good things
But sent the rich away empty." (Luke 1.51-53)

Now I wish I could say that I see evidence of this great reversal of fortunes in our day, but I don’t. I will admit I am disappointed, angry and a bit cynical at the way the so-called leaders have handled the financial crisis. What I see is the poor being forgotten, and top 5% of the income bracket expecting their banks and finances to be bailed out. What I know is that I have tried in various ways to ally myself with those the passage calls the “humble” and the “hungry.” What I hope for is that not only will the poor and lowly be lifted out of their struggle, but that the arrogant of the world will be faced with their own shallow hubris either by personal reflection or circumstance.

During this Advent-Christmas season, we are often reminded to remember the things that are really important in life such as friends, family and good health. I do value these things, but there has to be more. This season I also remember that we celebrate not the birth of a cute baby in manger, but rather One who came to turn the world and its value on its head. This is my prayer and hope and what keeps me going.

Plaxico Burress and the Gun Laws

As a Philadelphia Eagles fan who by nature should take delight in any mishaps befalling opposing teams like the New York Giants, I should take some pleasure in seeing Giants star receiver Plaxico Burress being charged with illegal possession of a handgun after accidentally shooting himself in a nightclub. However, not only would such a reaction reveal a sick delight in another’s demise, but also would mask a much deeper sadness that grips me about the Burress event.

Burress shot himself in the leg with a loaded gun when he tried to grab it as it slid down inside of his sweatpants. At the time he was in an upscale night club in midtown Manhattan – not exactly a place where shootings generally occur. However, because Burress’ gun was not purchased legally (i.e. he did not have a permit to carry the gun), he is now facing 3 ½ years in jail for the possession of an illegal weapon. According to New York City law, the penalty for carrying an unlicensed gun carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 3 ½ years, the same minimum penalty as one would get for burglarizing a home. Before the law was enacted in 2006, Burress would have gotten a slap on the wrist and a year of probation for his act; now the stakes are higher.

Yet for me there is yet another depressing side to the story, which is how Burress got the gun and from whom. Currently, I am working with a group of folks planning an action in January to highlight the huge loopholes in Pennsylvania gun laws that allow for the illegal purchases of guns like Burress made. Right now in my state, illegal guns are largely secured through a process known as “straw purchasing.”

Here’s how the process works. An underground gun dealer, who is often a convicted felon and has served time, hires someone to purchase guns for him/her. This hired person is called a “straw purchaser.” The purchaser can buy as many guns as possible at one time, and so usually buys several. A simple background check is done, and if the person has no major crimes on his/her record, the purchase can be completed in less than 45 minutes. Once outside the store, the straw purchaser hands over the guns to the underground dealer for a commission, and the guns are untraceable to the new owner, the underground dealer. Those guns are then sold on the streets to petty criminals as well as law abiding citizens like Burress. If the gun is used in a crime, and the gun is traced back to the straw purchaser, they can simply say they lost the gun or that it was stolen, and no further questions are asked and no penalties are given.

The group I am working with is seeking to promote two laws. The first would limit handgun sales to one gun a month (thus restricting the bulk buying practice). The second law would require that anyone who has a handgun lost or stolen would be required to report that loss to police within 24 hours of discovering the loss or theft. Failure to do so would bring anywhere from a $500 fine up to 5 years in prison. The intention of this bill is to significantly discourage the process of straw purchasing. Similar laws passed in New Jersey and New York state have significantly reduced the straw purchasing practice in those states, with the result being that Pennsylvania has become a major supplier of illegal handguns to those and other surrounding states, as well as it own. Most often when violent criminals are caught they are found to be using these guns, so that passage of these laws is a key to reducing violent crime.

Despite the fact that Governor Ed Rendell, mayors and representatives of all Pennsylvania’s major cities, and most city police chiefs support these laws, they have not been able to get sufficient support. The major reason is that outstate representatives whose constituencies contain many hunters and gun collectors have not come on board, even though the proposed laws have nothing to do with hunting rifles or collector guns. Behind this resistance is a major effort by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to obfuscate the issue by claiming any gun laws limit legal gun owner’s rights and using phrases like “guns don’t kill people, people do.” So the NRA has poured tons of money into the political coffers of these representatives, thus binding them to the NRA position and blinding them to a simple set of laws that could reduce death if not violent crime. Behind the NRA are the gun manufacturers themselves who know that the illegal market is a huge business opportunity they can not afford to lose. Am I implying that the NRA and the gun manufacturer’s are complicit in the illegal market? Absolutely, I think their actions are criminal.

However what is sad in the Burress case is how far the illegal market spreads. Burress is a multimillion dollar athlete who can not only purchase a gun legally, but also can afford to hire bodyguards if he feels threatened (which is a reality for many celebrities). Yet for whatever reason, he chose to go on the underground market; and he is not the only one. The illegal gun market issue reaches the highest levels of society, and reveals not only our duplicity about the gun issue, but also how wedded we are to resolving conflicts violently. Furthermore, it reveals how far gun company corporate executives will go to make a buck. And it is shameful.

So as I watch the Eagles play the Giants I take no joy in Plaxico Burress’ absence, even though every time he plays, he burns my home team. His absence will create a hole of sadness in me for a world gone mad, and a society unwilling to take the practical, necessary steps to keep people from needlessly hurting and killing themselves through the use of illegal guns.

For more information on current efforts to change gun laws in Pennsylvania, go to Ceasefire Pennsylvania. For information about national efforts to change gun laws, and to learn about laws in other states go to Freedom States Alliance

The Minsky Moment

Apparently, economists have known for decades that the kind of financial crisis we now are experiencing could happen. In the 1960’s a banker turned Harvard economist named Hyman Minsky put forth the “financial instability hypothesis.” Minsky predicated that when interest rates are lowered to make the borrowing of money easier, a euphoria overtakes bankers and investors that makes them irrationally giddy. Eventually, the financial institutions where these bankers and investors work overextend themselves to the point of collapse. When that happens, we have reached the “Minsky Moment.” Unfortunately, we have arrived at the place old Hyman predicted. When he first put forth his views, Minsky was viewed as a financial crackpot. Now we know he was a prophetic genius of market economics.

Years of financial market deregulation have set us up for this crash; we now know that. What Minsky believed was that markets need vigilance and regulation. He believed that capitalism run wild would collapse on itself.

Our new president should go back a dig up some of Minsky’s papers. Barack Obama is right to call for tighter regulation of financial markets and holding institutions accountable. If he decides to help the auto industry, he ought to do so with strict guidelines to build more fuel efficient cars. The short term thinking of so many companies and the desire to simply focus on the bottom line have led to a way of doing business that is anti-community, anti-environment, and self-destructive. Only as corporations regain a sense of their original charter –which is to serve the common good – can long term stability return. Because the human propensity for greed is so strong, regulation will have to force some corporations be those good citizens. Hopefully, others will see that such a move is not only in their best interest, but in the best interest of the communities they are supposedly called to serve.

Unfortunately Minsky is not here to see his predications come true (he died in 1996), although I doubt he would take much solace in saying “I told you so.” Even so, we must take this time to learn a hard lesson. So let’s start by reading and heeding Hyman Minsky’s words. If you want to a get a glimpses of what he said you can read about his theory here.

Sports Integrity and Global Warming

One of the few vices I afford myself is Sports Illustrated magazine. When my weekly issue arrives, I often find a quiet spot, skim through it, and read the lead articles. Then throughout the week, I pick it up and delight myself in the great distraction of college and professional sports. I love the pictures, the personal stories, the statistics, the predictions and the team updates. I even read about the high school and college stars that will never make it big but who are featured in “Faces in the Crowd." I love my SI!

Now I will admit that in the great scheme of things there is little that is redeeming in the magazine; it is pure diversion. When I was a preacher, I would convince myself that I could get great sermon illustrations from reading Sports Illustrated; I confess it was lie then and it is now. I just read it for the pure enjoyment of sport.

However, increasingly I have become concerned about the integrity of the magazine from a purely sports perspective. Several years ago they instituted the annual “swimsuit” addition, which is no more than a reason to show beautiful, thinly clad, women in exotic places. Recently, the label “swimsuit” has become suspect, as apparently the models now prefer skinny dipping. They have less covering on their bodies than the Playboy bunnies I used to gawk at when I was a teenager. Each year when the SI swimsuit issue comes, I have been embarrassed that my three young, impressionable daughters might think their father is a pervert (yes dear, all men are perverts!). So I always throw it away before they have a chance to notice.

Then several years ago, SI offerred an optional golf section. If you wanted you could have golf added to your particular magazine. As much as I had to admit that golf was indeed a sport, I was never any good at it. Furthermore, I had no desire to read about guys with names like Tiger, Shark, Vijay, and Sergio. So I turned down the offer. However, then they did away with the "optional" part, and simply made golf a regular section in the magazine. Since golf is almost played year round is some part of the world, there is golf almost every issue. My eyes glaze over, as I have to admit that some people like sports that I don't like. I can live with that.

However, a few years ago, SI crossed the line – they added a NASCAR section. No questions, no warnings, no options – there it was being presented on a par with baseball, football, basketball, hockey, track, and even golf. As far as I am concerned car racing may be a competition, but it is not a sport. Yes, people make a lot of money driving cars, and I’m sure the Big Three automakers and the oil companies sponsor them big time, but a bunch of guys and a couple of women driving around a track for 500 miles is not a sport. Sports require sweat, blood, tears, and physical exertion. Okay, so you have to hold on tight to the steering wheel, and the torque is exhausting when you go around a curve at 120 miles an hour, and pit crews have to be pretty skilled to change tires that fast, but a sport – puleeez!!!

So imagine my horror when the most recent issue (November 24, 2008) featured NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson on the cover. First of all, what grown man goes around being called “Jimmie,” and secondly in the name of sport integrity, he’s not an athlete, he is a driver! I get hives just imaginining that this may be a sign of more sports degradation to come.

So here’s my solution. Given the fragile state of the environment and the need for a reduction in our carbon footprint, NASCAR must be banned. For cars to buzz around a tract at 120+ miles per hour, they have to burn up a lot of fuel. Unless NASCAR takes to racing Priuses and Honda Hybrids, they must be banned for the sake of the environment. Imagine how much cleaner the air will be in Daytona, Charlotte, and Woodstock, NY. Families will be reunited, trees will grow again, and sports will be saved as an institution. Yes, NASCAR races must go the way of chicken fights and gladiator matches. They are inhumane, uncouth, and bad for the air we breathe.

Not to mention, I won’t have to cancel my subscription to Sports Illustrated.

Honoring Veterans of Peacemaking

On this Veterans Day I want to re-post a blog that I first put up on 11/7/06 honoring veterans of peacemaking. On this day when so much is made of war, we who see non-violence and negotiation as the way to healing differences need to find and honor the heroes of peace who have gone before us. So here is that posting from two years ago.

This coming weekend, is Veteran’s Day weekend, a time when the country honors the veterans who have served in the military and fought in our country’s wars. When I was a Baptist pastor, I could never get past this weekend without having someone in the congregation (not me) ask all the vets to stand up and be honored for “defending our freedom.” Now I realize that this kind of rhetoric is about as central to the American psyche as hot dogs and apple pie. I don’t doubt the vets’ sincerity or their courage, but I think they were and are often misled and misguided, as evidenced by the immoral wars we have fought over the last several decades, including the one we are in now.

As a pacifist, I want to ask for equal time for all those folks (many who were vilified) for their tireless efforts to work for peace in a war-mongering world. So I declare (for myself and anyone else who would like to join me!) this weekend as a Peace Veteran’s Day and put forth a few of my favorites to be honored for their work for peace through the years.

John Woolman- a Quaker in the 18th century who spent 20 years convincing his fellow Quakers to free their slaves

Elijah Lovejoy – a Presbyterian journalist who was killed by a mob in St. Louis for his opposition to slavery prior to the Civil War.

AJ Muste – a labor organizer and pacifist in the early 20th century

Mahatma Gandhi – a natural choice – the one who gave us satygraha (soul-force)

Martin Luther King Jr. – another natural choice, the one who tied satygraha to the ethic of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount and gave us the “dream”

Dorothy Day – the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement

Jimmy Carter – a tireless worker for peace in the public sphere and a man who was consistent in his search for peace even when he was considered “weak”

Dan Buttry – a friend and mediator throughout the world who has worked to bring reconciliation in Burma, Northeast India, and many other places in the world

Arthur Rouner – my pastor growing up who retired to start a reconciliation ministry has worked inmany places including India and Rwanda

Daniel Berrigan – a leader in the anti-Vietnam War movement

Clarence Jordan –founder of Koinonia Farms in Americus, Georgia (which influenced Jimmy Carter) and a leader in racial reconciliation

Elias Chacour - Palestinian priest seeking to bring Jews, Christians and Muslims together in dialogue

Desmond Tutu – a leader in the South African reconciliation movement

Paulo Freire- Brazilian educator who taught campesinos to read the word and the world simultaneously.

Myles Horton –founder of Highlander Research and Education Center, a place that has trained social activists in labor, civil rights, environmental causes and immigrant rights for 50 years.

The list goes on. This list is neither exhaustive nor complete; there are many more tha could be added. Feel free to add your own. These are a few of my peace heroes, veterans of the peace cause. Let us honor them in our thoughts, but more so by following their example.

Thoughts on Proposition 8

Christian singer/songwriter Darrell Adams once introduced a song he had written poking fun at popular religious practices by saying, “There is something in this song to upset everyone.” I feel somewhat the same way about what I want to say in regards to California’s Proposition 8. Some will feel I have crossed over some sort of line, while others will be angry I have not gone far enough. So be it.

Last week the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency was accompanied by a rising hope of a more open and inclusive spirit in U.S. society and culture. So it was with sadness that I learned of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which overturned a California State Supreme Court decision allowing same sex couples to become legally married. In May the court had decided that the state discriminated against same sex couples when it did not allow them to marry. Since June nearly 18,000 couples received marriage licenses. Though Proposition 8 does not nullify those marriages, it does amend the California State Constitution to read “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California.” So henceforth, same sex couples can not get legally married in California.

Reflecting on that result I find myself in an ambiguous position of agreeing with one side of the debate, yet fully understanding the other side. As the brother of three siblings in same sex relationships, I feel like they have been unduly denied a simple right that I and all other heterosexuals have. While part of me wonders why gays and lesbians would want to seek marriage, given the abysmal divorce rate (nearly 1 in 2) of heterosexual couples, I also recognize that the passage of such a law normalizes and legitimizes relationships that heretofore have been considered immoral by some, abnormal by others, and simply “different” by others.

Fifteen years ago I espoused the view that homosexuality was not normative in God’s eyes. I based that position on a reading of the Bible that noted that anywhere homosexuality was mentioned in Scripture it was either criticized or condemned. Over the previous 15 years I had attended numerous debates and read countless books on the topic, even writing a paper on the topic when I was in seminary. However, over time I became convinced that whatever the Bible had to say about homosexuality, it was not talking about a committed relationship akin to marriage. In some cases the Bible’s position was based on ancient views of human sexuality no longer held even by the most devout Christian. In other cases, the homosexuality mentioned was connected with pagan religions. However, the major obstacle for me was while I could discount or explain away the few passages that did mention homosexuality, I could find no statement positively affirming same sex relationships. The pro-gay Biblical argument was an argument from the absence of condemnation, not the presence of affirmation. At the same time I saw the committed relationships of my siblings and others, some of whom were dedicated Christians, and I could not accept that God would categorically condemn someone for loving someone of their own gender. I changed my position not so much on the basis of new view of Scripture, but rather the compelling evidence of the commitment and love of same sex couples I knew personally. I decided I would leave the theological debates up to God, and choose to err on the side of grace rather than judgment.

Yet even in the days when I opposed homosexuality on moral and Biblical grounds, I never believed that meant that gay/lesbian couples should be denied basic human rights. Laws discriminating against gays/lesbians in the areas of employment or housing did not seem fair. The same goes for gay/lesbian marriage. When I was a pastor, I might not have performed a ceremony for a gay or lesbian couple, but I did not feel I had the right to impose my view on society as a whole given the vigorous debate on the issue.

Today, I have changed my attitude toward homosexuality overall, and support the right of same-sex couples to marry. Nonetheless, I work for a Christian college that does not allow or support same sex romantic relationships. While I generally affirm the overall mission and culture of my school, this is one area where I personally disagree with my school’s position. At the same time a few years ago I was quite proud when Eastern University was one of only a handful of Christian schools that welcomed members of Equality Ride to dialogue at their campus. Equality Ride is program modeled after the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights movement, where young people go to Christian schools and military academies challenging schools to reconsider their policies regarding gay and lesbian relationships. Most schools banned the Equality Riders from coming on their campuses. By contrast Eastern invited the students to come for two days, set up opportunities for dialogue and generally allowed students and faculty to interact with the guests and each other on the place of gays and lesbians in the church and in society in general.

Like the Equality Riders, many supporters of gay rights liken their movement to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. This approach does not hold much appeal to African Americans who see their struggle for equality in quite a different light than gays and lesbians. In fact polls indicated that a majority African-Americans and Latinos in California supported Proposition 8. Tactically, I think the gay rights movement needs to come up with a different metaphor for their cause. For many people who support bills like Proposition 8 the issue is not so much about rights as it is about morality. While I may not agree with their view, I recognize that to talk about rights when people are thinking morality is to talk past one another. In that sense it becomes like the abortion debate where people are talking at each other, while not really hearing one another because they in essence are speaking a different language.

What is needed is a new kind of dialogue built on respect and listening. David Black, the president of Eastern, took a great deal of heat from the Board of Trustees for allowing the Equality Riders to come on Eastern’s campus, but I applaud him for the willingness to allow people of different perspective to engage in meaningful conversation. While in the end Eastern did not change its policies as a result of the visit, it sponsored a respectful and open dialogue conducted in a way that seems like a model that others could follow.

I am sure the supporters of Proposition 8 feel like they achieved some sort of moral victory last Tuesday, and certainly the opponents feel like a terrible injustice was institutionalized. Regardless of what the outcome had been, one referendum or even 100 referendums can not alter the fact that we can no more will away the debate over same sex relationships than we can alter the path of the Earth around the Sun. Deeply personal issues like the right of same sex couples to marry can not be solved in a court room or ballot box, but rather across a table of respect and openness. As Barack Obama embodies a new day in inter-racial dialogue in this county, my hope is that we can look at other areas such as gay rights where we as a nation disagree, and find ways to dialogue meaningfully and respectfully with the goal of finding common ground and living together constructively despite our differences.