PCUSA General Assembly + Sidebar + Zionism Unsettled.

            One of the hot issues coming before the assembly has to do with Palestine and Israel.  The main substantive initiative concerns divestment.  Some want to sell the shares of stock that the denomination owns in three companies: Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett-Packard.  These companies make money providing to the Israelis the means by which they maintain their illegal occupation of the West Bank, and make a profit from it.  The church has been negotiating with them for years, but it appears they are intransigent.  So, to ensure that, at least in this case, the denomination will not be profiting from this human misery, there is a recommendation to divest (the opposite of invest) in these companies.

            Last winter a controversial document called Zionism Unsettled was published by the Israel Palestine Mission Network, a group related to the General Assembly.  Zionism Unsettled gives the history of Zionism starting from its 19^th century beginnings as a desire for European Jews to escape terrible and often murderous persecution.  It continues to tell the story of the actions and consequences when Zionists settled in Palestine, gained power and strength, and began to forcibly remove the indigenous Palestinians.  This culminated in wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and two violent uprisings by the conquered peoples.

            Because Zionism Unsettled has the effrontery to tell this story from the perspective of the victims, its publication has disturbed many in the Jewish community.  Apparently, they only want this history recounted from the Israeli point-of-view.  They appear to consider insulting to them any reporting of the suffering of the people they are expelling and subjugating.

            Zionism Unsettled has drawn a firestorm of sometimes hysterical attacks.  (One group suggested that it ranked for anti-Semitism to the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a comparison that can only be attributed to mental illness.)  It has been charged that Zionism Unsettled advocates an elimination of Jewish presence in Palestine.  It doesn’t.  Zionism Unsettled does question the idea of a “Jewish State.”  Most people think this means Jewish presence or homeland.  But the term “Jewish State” refers to a nation in which one ethnic/religious group has rights and privileges at the expense of all other segments of the population.  This is how the advocates of a “Jewish State” themselves define the term.

            Anyway, a letter appeared recently, signed by a list of Presbyterian luminaries including a lot of pastors of large, rich urban churches.  The letter is severely critical of Zionism Unsettled.  But there is little evidence that they actually read it, or comprehended what they were reading.  Beginning with the idiotic mentioning of David Duke, who apparently made a statement in support of Zionism Unsettled, the letter chooses to frame the document as threatening the existence of Israel, and calls for a more balanced approach.

            In my view, this is an attempt to change the subject away from the suffering of the Palestinians and instead invoke a paranoid fantasy about Israel’s supposedly tenuous existence.  It’s sort of like a bully claiming that any criticism of his violence threatens his life.  In other words, it’s nonsense.

            I have been to Israel/Palestine recently.  The Israelis are not going anywhere. Neither are the Palestinians.  These two populations are going to have to learn to live together.  Whether a “two State solution” is even possible anymore is debatable.  Israeli illegal settlement activity has sliced and diced the territorial integrity of any possible Palestinian State.  But we’ll see.

            All that is before the General Assembly right now is an attempt to remove the church’s money from three corporations benefiting from and enabling Israeli oppression of the indigenous population.  One would think this is a no-brainer, as it were.  When we give money to the church, who wants that money paying for the demolition of innocent people’s homes?  Who wants their pension based on money gained in oppression?  Not me.  Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

            Yet the PCUSA has been arguing about this for years.  At the last General Assembly this simple act of dignity was rejected by 3 votes.  It is one of the most hotly debated items on the agenda, a fact I find to be pathetic and embarrassing.  What’s to debate, for crying out loud?! 

PCUSA General Assembly 221 + Day Minus One.

Detroit.

            Driving into Detroit it is impossible to miss the boarded-up and derelict neighborhoods lining the Interstate.  Economic shifts, nationally and globally, have left parts of this city all but abandoned.  Sixty percent of the population has departed since 1960.  The municipality is famously bankrupt.  Municipal services have been slashed to the point that some neighborhoods are without even traffic lights, let alone effective police protection.   

            The State has stepped in to help.  But this assistance appears to have more to do with bailing out – not the workers, retirees, or the embattled residents of the city, but the creditors.  The State appointed a dictator to manage Detroit, as it has for several cities with predominantly African-American populations. 

            Imposing austerity on the residents, and selling off anything of value at cut rates, all in the name of financial responsibility, will have the usual desired effect of transferring wealth to the wealthy.  This is a process happening practically everywhere; it’s just more visible in places of dire crisis like Detroit.

            Of course, none of this is particularly visible from our vantage point downtown.  We are assured that these blocks are perfectly “safe”.  I have a great view from my room on the 22^nd floor of the Renaissance Center.  The Assembly will be gathering at the renovated Cobo Hall starting tomorrow.  It will be easy to ignore the suffering of this city, here in our secure bubble.

            As a gathering of people professing to be followers of the Lord Jesus, indeed, who claim to be his very Body on the earth, it will be interesting to see how our presence here responds to the situation of a city in crisis.  At the pre-meeting conference here last October, denominational officials made a point of saying what a witness and statement we would be making by coming here for GA.  I hope we make a good statement, one that lifts up the resilience, creativity, courage, faith, and hope of the people of this city.  I hope that our presence here will not be construed as an endorsement or benefit of the dictatorship approach to problem-solving.

            For there are good things happening, I have heard.  And they are happening in spite of, not because of, the State’s predatory intervention.  For instance the amazing work of Grace Lee Boggs and her school, the development of community gardens on abandoned plots, people working together to rehabilitate homes, young people exploring music, art, theater, and yoga, and even a conference on reimagining  work for the 21^st century.  I hope we get to see and celebrate some of that.

            Here’s a cool poem by a guy from Detroit, perhaps giving us some themes for the week:

Detroit Jesus



Time, Inc., buys a house in Detroit


and tries to track him for a year.


But he’s invisible to those looking for a 
           

            blue-eyed dude in a white robe


or for a city gone completely to hell.

He is the cinnamon of my son’s skin


with a green thumb and a Tigers cap


and my daughter’s dove-grey eyes. 


He prays into Blair’s guitar,


hangs out on Field St., 


bakes bread at Avalon


and plants tomatoes on the East side.


He rides his old-school bike down the heart
           

            of Grand River,


paints a mural in the Corridor,


shoots hoop in the Valley 


with priests and pimps and lean young men


trying to jump their way to heaven.

At night, 


while the Border Patrol counts cars,


he walks across the water
           

            to Windsor,


grabs a bite to eat,


walks back. 



Like Grace, 


born in Providence,


he lives so simply,


he could live anywhere:


Dublin, Palestine, Malibu. 


But Detroit is his home.


It was here one Sunday


a boy invited him down 
           

            off the cross


and into his house for a glass of Faygo red pop.

That was centuries ago, it seems, 


and how far he’s come,


reinventing himself more times than Malcolm.


He’s been to prison,


been to college,


has a tattoo of Mary Magdalene on one arm,


Judas on the other, 


and knows every Stevie Wonder song by heart.

He’s Jimmy, he’s Invincible, he’s Eminem. 


He’s the girls at Catherine Ferguson
           

            and their babies,


and he’s the deepest part of Kwame 


still innocent as a baby.

The incinerator is hell,


but he walks right in,


burns it up with love,


comes out the other side,


walks on.

He can say Amen in twelve religions,


believes school is any place


where head and heart and hands
           

            meet,


and wears a gold timepiece around his neck


with no numbers, just a question:


What time is it on the clock of the world?

And every second of every day 


he answers that question 


with a smile wide as the Ambassador


and a heart as big as Belle Isle,


hugging this city in his arms


and whispering to each soul


words no one else dares to say:


You are Jesus,


this is your Beloved Community,


and the time 


on the clock of the world 


is Now.

            --- Peter Putnam.

     

David Brat's Godless and Cruel "Christianity."

In the April 2011 issue of Interpretation the now-famous David Brat published an article attempting to justify Capitalism from a Christian perspective.  Here is the response I wrote back then.

Dear Editors of Interpretation,

            David Brat succeeds in being both sophomoric and patronizingly condescending in his article, which is far beneath Interpretation’s usual standards.  His self-righteous complacent triumphalism about Capitalism is the same sort of pompous prattle that every empire declaims about itself before it falls.  No empire is ever “here to stay,” and this one will collapse as well, either by the revolt of the billions of people who are routinely ground under its wheels, or by the very planet it has made a virtue out of degrading.  He writes: “We spend more time on market activity than God activity.  Thus Calvinism.”  What does that even mean?

            His early paragraph attempting to show Capitalism’s benefits fails to reveal the wildly uneven distribution of those benefits.  We are led to believe that Capitalism’s rising tide of prosperity in places like China and India has raised all boats, when actually the lion’s share of the benefits have been devoured by the people at the very top (though the “averages” still look wonderful).

            Brat’s reduction of morality to the merely individual level, while he claims it is inherent to our Reformed tradition, would have attracted Calvin’s ire.  The libertarianism Brat is trying to squeeze out of the Bible and Calvin is antithetical to the teachings of both.  The Bible, Jesus, Paul, and the whole Christian tradition, including Calvin, are about the formation of healthy and blessed communities. 

            What Brat derisively frames as “forcing some to pay for the benefits of others” is actually the whole point of Capitalism, which deliberately jiggers the economic system for the increasing enrichment of the wealthy.  But when it is reversed to benefit the poor, that statement becomes the centerpiece of biblical morality.  Does Brat’s Bible not include Exodus 23:11, Leviticus 19:9, Leviticus 25, or Deuteronomy 14:26, just to name a few that spring immediately to mind?

            Brat implies that what Jesus demands from us as his followers is not to be extended into our responsibilities as citizens of a democratic state.  “Do we have the right to coerce our fellow citizens to act in ways that follow our Christian ethical beliefs?”  Yes.  It’s called democracy.  Within constitutional limits, the majority always “coerces” the minority to participate in its vision and agenda.  Are Christians supposed to withdraw from the polity?  Brat’s mistrust of democracy reflects the attitude of the rich and powerful of every age.  They are generally the ones so afraid of coercion since they have the most to lose.  In real life, Capitalism resists democracy at every turn, preferring to give power to capital and rights to people with capital.  He ignores the inherent coercion involved in transactions between people with unequal resources.  The fantasy that “all voluntary trades are beneficial to both parties and the easiest way to see this is that if one were not better off, one would not partake in such a trade” may work in the fairy-land of Friedmanian academia.  But where the rest of us live such a statement is absolute nonsense.

            Brat’s analysis of the current economic crisis, as: “we wanted to force low-interest loans on the banks so that the poor could magically afford houses” is so breathtakingly self-serving, cruel, and stupid, that the only other people I have heard this from are Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.  Great authorities.  Presumably our hearts are supposed to bleed for the banks.

            It may have been fruitful for the church to synthesize Christianity with other philosophies.  But none of these is a godless ideology that renames sins as virtues for the purpose of enriching the wealthy by means of the wanton rape of planet and people.  No synthesis between Christianity and such an ideology is possible.