Civil Commotion

Trump won because he stepped into a moral vacuum. More precisely, he stepped into an ethical vacuum. And that vacuum is no where more evident than in the Religious Right which, after decades of failing to speak for and secure dignity and rights for minorities of color, was found to have committed even worse things in allowing and covering up the sexual abuse of its own children by its own pastors and church officers. And that abuse, and the cover up of that abuse, continues to the present moment. This blog is about that abuse, and the election of Donald Trump, in my opinion, is just one more piece of the fallout of the moral bankruptcy that has allowed such abuse to thrive in conservative churches.

And now the president who has refused to permit children harried by tyrants to find refuge in this country is dropping bombs on another country and pleading that it is for the sake of children.

Jeri Massi

Well said. Go read the whole thing.

Following a one-year boost in donations in response to layoffs and recalls at the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Missions Board, it appears that donations are again in decline.

Last year, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions was a stupendous $165.3 million infusion into our flagship SBC mission board which had been struggling financially with serious and continuing deficits. Over 1,000 personnel, mostly overseas workers, took the early retirement offers and reductions in personnel costs put the board on a sustainable path. That Southern Baptists gave over $12 million more to the LMCO in 2015 than 2014 was an added boost and a great help in restoring reserves and providing stability going forward.

Alas, it looks like the 2016 offering will drop back down into the $155 million range, perhaps a little lower and render the big jump from 2014-2015 an historical anomaly, probably a delayed reaction to the downsizing.

Good. The Christian narrative is false, and its ethics are cult-like and affirmatively harmful. It will be a happy day when SBC missionaries cease messing-up people’s lives in order to appease their own insecurities.

What is the U.S. trying to achieve?

As everyone probably knows by now, U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea launched 59-cruise missiles last evening at the airbase from which Syria launched a chemical attack upon its own citizens earlier in the week. Six people were killed.

As gratifying as it may be to imagine Assad trembling and muttering “Guess I’d better not annoy the U.S. again,” I’m having a difficult time thinking of this attack as anything but crude theater.

• Though the War Powers Act grants the president authority to deploy military force in exigent circumstances to defend the U.S., it isn’t at all clear that there was any threat whatever to the U.S. — in which case the Constitution requires that the President seek authorization from Congress to use military force. The reason for this provision is to avoid exactly the situation in which the U.S. now finds itself: A war that never ends.

  Trump cited a “vital national security interest” to justify the attack, probably so that he could claim it was lawful. What is that interest?

• When U.S. intelligence established that Libya was behind an attack on U.S. troops in Germany (this was back in the ’80s), Ronald Reagan ordered an attack on Qaddafi’s palace; the strike missed him, but killed some of his family members. That strike was probably unlawful, too, but at least had the virtue of targeting the person with ultimate responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers.

  So: Why didn’t we strike directly at Assad?

• Why does it matter how Assad kills his people? Death by Sarin is faster than death by starvation or festering wounds, so Assad could claim he is killing rebels more humanely than by conventional warfare, and the deaths of children were merely unhappy collateral damage. Does the U.S. have an answer to that, besides that it makes for upsetting television?

• Is America prepared to resume allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S.?

A case for intervention in Syria can be made on humanitarian grounds, and a case for letting them kill each other and then dealing with the last dictator standing can be made on pragmatic grounds. It isn’t at all clear that Trump has thought through what his policy is going to be and, recalling that he said just a day before the gas attack that the U.S. wasn’t interested in Assad, the airfield attack looks downright schizophrenic. It is particular dangerous to loosen Constitutional restraints when the Commander-in-Chief plainly is emotionally unstable, has formulated no policy of his own, and is susceptible of influence by whomever he speaks with last.

The U.S. and its allies cannot impose a peace upon the Middle East; there are too many factions, and none of them will be mollified by even two generations of stringent martial law. Our policy should be to contain the sickness, end our reliance upon Middle Eastern oil, and disengage.

Well. Here’s a puzzle for theologians.

According to no less than Jim Bakker, who has suffered more than most men for his Godly Works, blaspheming Donald Trump is a sure sign that the End Times are imminent.

Bummer. I, personally, have probably hastened The End by 3– or 4-years.

Hold that thought, because now comes an evangelist named Mary Colbert to alert us that criticizing Trump means a curse will be visited upon you and your children and grandchildren. She made this claim — No kidding — on Jim Bakker’s television show. Since Bakker didn’t immediately stop her and explain that The End is imminent thanks to people who go around blaspheming Trump, I have to think he agrees with her.

So: Criticize The Donald, and Our Invisible Friend will curse you, your children, and your grandchildren. Blaspheme The Donald and the hammer is coming down on everybody.

Y’all can see the problem, I’m sure. A verbal distinction to which you attach no importance — “He shouldna tweeted that” vs. “Goddam him” — has consequences which range from merely local to global, and in any case implicates people who are blameless — perhaps even people who love The Donald.

Is that just? Is that right? Even granting that I am the 16^th or 17^th most wicked person who has ever lived, I cannot accept that as just.

Theologians, I imagine, being unconstrained by evidence or even reason, can probably explain this satisfactorily, might even serenely agree that it is exactly what one would expect. Who knows? They might be nodding their heads and grimly muttering “’bout time” over there at Southeastern Seminary even as I type.

Another thing: If this is correct, why would He use intolerable nuisances like Jim Bakker and Mary Colbert to let humanity know that they had better knock it off with the griping and start showing The Donald the deference that Our Invisible Friends expects us to show? It’s not as if any sober-minded adult actually cares what either of them says. Hell, Bakker can’t even sell any of that ridiculous survival chow.

Seriously: In the Trump administration there must be an entire generation’s worth of busywork for theologians.

You may be wondering: Are North Carolina’s Republicans a bit, u-m-m-m, chastened after the serial HB-2 debacles?

No. They are not.

As a matter of fact, they are so dishonest, and so enslaved by their inferior intelligence and bad character, that they have invited Kellyanne Conway to speak at their upcoming state convention.

Kellyanne Conway, one of President Donald Trump’s top advisers, will headline the N.C. Republican Party’s convention in June, the party announced Tuesday.

Conway will speak during the convention’s lunch session on June 3 in Wilmington.

“I am absolutely delighted that Kellyanne has agreed to be a keynote speaker at our state convention,” NCGOP chairman Robin Hayes said in a news release.

Seriously: North Carolina’s Republican Party just isn’t part of the decent world any more.