Attacks at Home

This afternoon I overheard a reporter (on “Fresh Air”) who has covered terrorist attacks all around the world. Now he is reporting one in his hometown of Boston. He said it seemed very strange to be covering a terrorist attack in which the victims had Boston accents. It made him think he needed renewed dedication to remembering that every terrorist attack is in somebody’s home town.

We get inured to attacks in strange places. In the same newspaper in which I read of Monday’s attack, another report in the back pages told of a car bomb (in Iraq, I think) that killed 50 people. I imagine that people in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Somalia are not overwhelmed by the deaths of three in Boston.

Naturally, domestic crises always seem most significant to us. An accident in which my brother got killed inevitably would strike deeper than an accident in which eight people I have never met lost their lives. We care more about those closest to us. I don’t think we can or should help that.

We can, however, try seriously to grasp the nature of other people’s losses.

I haven’t quite forgiven the Spanish professor who, on 9/11, lectured his American students in Barcelona (including my daughter) to the effect that America had it coming. Even in the more moderate form of British intellectualism, I don’t like reading that America overreacted in a vengeful manner. In other words, I feel strong distaste for heartlessness when it’s directed my way.

Maybe, though, I should rethink the way I react when I read stories from Afghanistan.

Attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka

You may know that I have a long-time interest in Sri Lanka. Today I got the following report from a friend there:

The attacks on Christians doing evangelism has really intensified. Many house prayer groups in homes of believers have been asked to stop. There are attacks on churches. A group has arisen which has taken it upon themselves even using force to protect Sri Lanka which they are saying belongs to a certain ethnic group and a certain religion. They have published a document on the so-called threat to Sri Lanka and listing dangerous organisations. We are in that list. Much wisdom is needed. Pastors are living with much fear. They are also hitting Muslim targets.

Please pray for us.

 

Kenya Elections

This New York Times piece is a comprehensive and accurate description of the situation in Kenya as the country prepares for the March 4 elections. A lot is at stake, not just for Kenya but for the region. Despite the disaster of the last election five years ago, Kenya has made significant progress in government. Their new constitution has spread power regionally, they have a reasonably free press, and people expect to vote and for their votes to count. The courts also seem to have improved.

Yet many very negative forces remain. If they take over the election by force or fraud, a sense of hopelessness (at least) will grow. If democracy prevails, it will be a significant step upward and a positive regional example.

I’m cautiously hopeful.

Birmingham is here!!!!

This is a big day for me! After years of waiting I can finally announce that my novel Birmingham is available!

It’s at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, in both ebook and paperback formats.

The novel is set in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963–fifty years ago, when Martin Luther King joined Fred Shuttlesworth in leading what is sometimes referred to as the children’s crusade. This was a turning point for the civil rights movement–children facing into the dogs and firehoses of the Birmingham police.

My story begins with a white seminary student who shows up to help the protests–penniless, naive, idealistic. He gets taken in by the movement and put to work, even though his presence is both illegal and dangerous. Chris Wright is his name, and as the protests advance over weeks of turmoil and frustration, he gets entangled with a faction of the Ku Klux Klan and with Dorcas Jones, a young, hard-nosed agitator.

I wrote the novel because I find these events so fascinating, and so easily forgotten. It was much more complicated than the view you will get from the 50th anniversary celebrations this May!

In many ways, our nation was on trial. We came through–but only because of the courage and vision of countless individuals, mostly poor, Bible-believing African-Americans. This was not a triumph of the elites. It was a triumph of the powerless and the despised.

Please buy Birmingham for yourself and all your friends and relations. If you like it, please write a brief review on Amazon (or any other website). If you have a blog, please feature the book. If you have a book group, please consider reading Birmingham together.

On Lincoln

Ross Douthat has an excellent blog post on the film Lincoln. Thanks be for that very rare thing, a truly thought-provoking popular Hollywood movie.

I am thankful for America…

… where we don’t have Republican suicide bombers ramming explosive-laden trucks into Democratic campaign offices.

… where  mobs of young Democratic men did not surge into Republican neighborhoods burning houses and churches.

… where Mitt Romney gave a gracious concession speech and pledged to pray for President Obama’s success.

… where President Obama acknowledged the love for America that motivated all sides in the campaign, and praised the Romney family’s lifelong devotion to serving their country.

…. where life goes on the day after the election almost exactly the way it went on the day before the election, only with fewer ads and no robo-calls.

The Inquisition

I just read Cullen Murphy’s God’s Jury, which is a popular history and meditation on the meaning of the Inquisition. Cullen, an outstanding writer, makes the point that the Inquisition was not a pre-modern phenomenon that we have outgrown. Quite the opposite: modernity created the tools of the Inquisition, and they still operate.

“Why was there suddenly an Inquisition? Intolerance, hatred, and suspicion of ‘the other,’ often based on religious and ethnic differences, had always been with us. Throughout history, these realities had led to persecution and violence. But the ability to sustain a persecution–to give it staying power by giving it an institutional life–did not appear until the Middle Ages. Until then, the tools to stoke and manage those omnipresent embers of hatred did not exist. Once these capabilities do exist, inquisitions become a fact of life–standard operating procedure. They are not confined to religion; they are political as well. The targets can be large or small. An inquisition impulse can quietly take root in the very systems of government and civil society that order our lives.” [p. 21]

He points out how the same tools were used by the Nazis, by the Soviet Union… and by the United States after 9/11.

As to the church, I liked Murphy’s citation of Carlo Ginzburg, a historian who played a role in the Vatican’s decision to open their archives of the Inquisition to scholars.  He was at a convocation of historians and theologians, some of whom hoped the pope would issue an apology. “This is all very well,” Ginzburg said. “What I didn’t hear the pope say today, and what I haven’t heard anybody in this discussion say, is that the Catholic Church is ashamed of what it did. Not sorry. Sorry is easy. I want to hear the Catholic Church–I want to hear the pope–say he is ashamed.” [p. 231]

I agree.  But what Murphy doesn’t adequately analyze is the fundamental problem of control and freedom in institutions or communities. Murphy suggests, without quite saying it, that freedom is good and control is bad. It’s easy to feel that way after learning of the horrors of the Inquisition. But what would he say about the pedophile scandal in the church? That there was not enough freedom? Institutional control was needed, everybody agrees. And such control can, and does, turn into inquisitions.

Institutions and communities must have boundaries. Their need for control can easily become institutionalized and abusive. The way through this dilemma calls for wisdom and humility. It doesn’t yield, so far as I can see, to a generalized formula.

A Separation

I’d like to recommend “A Separation,” an Academy Award 2011 movie made in Iran. The film is not violent but it is extremely intense. It’s about a quarreling husband and wife, living an urban, car-driving, apartment-dwelling life. Children’s school examinations and the care of an Alzheimer’s-afflicted parent are the crucial issues–not Israel or, in fact, any kind of political or religious ideology.

On one level, this is a movie about how the dissolution of a marriage affects people–regular, fundamentally decent people. At a deeper level it’s about willfulness and stubbornness, which means it speaks to all of us, whatever our circumstances. I won’t give away the ending, which is a surprise that sticks in your mind.

While the movie is not particularly religious, it’s interesting in depicting an Islamic society. Just as is the case in America, religion touches people in many very ordinary ways. The devout and the non-devout act quite differently in some ways, and in others are just the same. It’s not a pro-Islamic movie. I would say, however, that it reflects a fundamentally Islamic view of family and marriage, perhaps because of the makers’ convictions, and perhaps simply because that is what the artists had to work with in making an Iranian picture.

From what I can tell, Islam is a religion profoundly in crisis, trapped in a dead-end. Nevertheless, the Islam behind this film is deeply humane, and its convictions about humanity are both strongly felt and relevant to all people. It spoke to me.

Learning comes from many sources, including some that we find surprising. That is one more reason to take care not to demonize others.

The Details of Romney’s Plans

You probably know that Mitt Romney is trying to reinvigorate his campaign. The new strategy is supposedly to project what Romney would do if elected. Instead of talking down the Other Guy he is going to come clean on his Big Plans.

I will bravely predict here and now he will do no such thing. In our current political environment no presidential candidate can afford to talk about Big Plans in a candid or courageous way.

It’s a staple of presidential campaigns that pundits urge candidates to offer sweeping and detailed plans to clean up our problems. In recent days David Brooks and Tom Friedman, two commentators I greatly respect, have expressed great frustration that Obama has offered nothing so grandiose. Brooks wants him to explain how he will lower American debt and reform Medicare, while Friedman wants him to offer a plan to rejuvenate our economy, fight global warming, and rebuild our infrastructure along green lines.

I’m all in on wanting such plans, as these are genuine and deep problems. I know, however (as these pundits surely do too), that no sane American politician would offer such plans. It’s all pain and no gain in our political environment. The details would be seized on, distorted and treated as if they represented a deliberate assault on American virtue.

Don’t believe me? Think of the caliber of debate on Obamacare. Death panels, anyone? Government takeover?

Or consider Paul Ryan’s plan to reform Medicare. It’s been reduced to a single word: “vouchers.”

It might be worthwhile to offer grand plans if they would be met by counter-proposals leading to a legislative process and a bipartisan compromise. That’s simply not going to happen. The last thing Republicans want to do is offer an alternative to Obamacare, and the last thing Democrats want to do is spell out how to reform Medicare. No, wait, the truly last thing either party wants to do is to offer a concrete proposal for dealing with debt and deficits. (No, Ryan hasn’t. Not until he tells us where the cuts will go and which tax deductions will disappear.) Neither party wants to offer such specificity on plans that will surely include pain.

Now, it’s nice to blame the political process, the political parties, and the politicians for this state of affairs. Surely at some point, however, we have to blame ourselves. We the American people–and I think this applies to all of us–have developed an inordinate fondness for dessert without vegetables, and for bumper sticker attacks on the people we disagree with. We punish politicians who spell things out. We prefer to talk in slogans. So for the foreseeable future, we are stuck with muddling through.

Appreciation for John Boehner

I never thought I’d devote a post to appreciation for John Boehner, but I’ve been startled by the defense he and John McCain offered for Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin. Abedin was attacked in print by Michele Bachmann and four other Republicans for purported links to the Muslim Brotherhood. This kind of slimy guilt by innuendo and association has been too much practiced of late. I thought we’d forever left behind an era where decency required politicians to denounce phony charges against their opponents. (You don’t hear many Republicans standing up to refute phony allegations that Obama is a Muslim, for example.) Boehner proved that there are limits still, and I salute him for it.