Roy Moore and the word "evangelical"

Peter Wehner is no longer proud to be a life-long Republican.

In his opinion piece, "Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican," he explains how Roy Moore's evangelicalism and dt's co-opting of Republicans has soured him on those two identifiers.

Thank God, I never claimed to be a Republican.  But I can relate to Wehner on the dirtying of a perfectly good Greek workd eu-angelion.  Good news.

I threw out the word evangelical in about 2003 when men claiming to be evangelicals were trying to convert Muslims in Baghdad.  

"Witnessing" is good--but Americans talking about Jesus right after bombing the city?  

And trying to convert people for whom changing religions could be a death sentence?

But my friend Virginia Ramey Mollenkott convinced me to take the word back.  Here reasoning: if all of us who cherish the good news of God's intervention in human affairs through Jesus the Messiah give up the word, we leave it to the misguided and blind.

Thank God, it's clear to nearly everyone that Roy Moore was a poor excuse for a Christian, much less a Bible-believing Christian.

See NAE's definition of the word: https://www.nae.net/what-is-an-evangelical/

But let's be more precise about the term. Some white evangelicals support Trump and Moore, but there's a fair number of progressive evangelicals. 

And don't forget the black evangelicals--who mostly vote Democratic.  

See this report on NPR: "Are You an Evangelical?"

Yes or No? A Gendered Decision

Saying 'yes' when I don't have the assertiveness to say 'no'--Jessica Bennett describes a situation I recognize, a 'yes' I say nearly every day. 

Thank you to the New York Times for printing her news analysis, "When 'Yes' Is Easier Than 'No.'" She has been managing coverage of the Me Too movement as gender editor of the NYT and is also the author of Feminist Fight Club.

For me, this "Yes" occurs not in sexual encounters but in thousands of other interactions.

"Would you like to go to a movie?"  "Yes" I say compliantly, even if don't want to go.  It's my husband, and we haven't had a date night recently.  Actually I want to spend the evening at my desk, checking email or working on Christmas cards.

"Would you like a doughnut/cup of wine/coupon?" No, but in certain situations I will say "Yes" to be polite.

"Would you like to meet me for coffee?"  "Yes, it would be nice to see you."  I generally comply with a friend I don't really want to see.

The phone rings, and caller ID tells me it's a person I don't want to talk to, but if I've refused the call five or six times already, I pick up the phone.  "Yes?"

A pan handler sticks a cup in my face as I enter the grocery store.  Darn it, can't I run a simple errand without facing an ethical decision?  Sometimes I walk on by with a "No," but other days I muster up a grudging "Yes" and fish out a dollar bill.

Over 45 years I've said yes to my husband sexually when I didn't want to, but now my "No" is firm.

Before marrying, I can think of only once when I said yes in a sexual encounter that I didn't want. On a date, Bob unzipped his jeans and wanted me to feel his hard-on through his underwear.  He seemed to think this was something every woman wanted to do, but I was disgusted.  I didn't tell him to bug off.  Instead, I was nice.

Jessica Bennett discusses women's conditioning to say 'Yes':

• "that we must be 'nice' and 'quiet' and 'polite."
• "That we must protect others' feelings before our own."
• "That we are there for others' pleasure."
• "that our bodies exist for male sexual pleasure,"
• "that our 'power' is in attracting male desire."

Girls and women are trained to "see their role in sexual encounters as being 'desirable' rather than assertive," notes Peggy Orenstein in her book Girls & Sex.

After 69 years of conditioning and saying "Yes," it's hard for me to pause, check my impulse to be nice, and say 'No' if 'No' is my inner truth.

But I'm working on it.

See also Rachel Simmons, Enough As She Is.

Feminist Milestones as Women Speak Out

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

Thanks to Gail Collins for her column, "Donald Trump's Gift to Women" in today's New York Times.

She assesses the history of women's rights and uprisings in the USA since 1920, when women got the right to vote, pointing out that the election of 45 has jump-started the battle for equal rights.

Women are now asserting the right not to be raped, groped, or sexually harassed in any way.

Here's a mini-timeline begun with some of the milestones she points out:

1920-- Women in the US gain the right to vote.  

1964-- Margaret Chase Smith seeks the Republican nomination for president, getting much ridicule.

1991-- Anita Hill's testimony of sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas is not believed.  The Senate confirms him as a justice on the Supreme Court.  Anger over this travesty leads to 1992...

1992--"The Year of the Woman"--four women are elected to the US Senate, joining the two already there.  Six women in the Senate was considered progress.

2006--Tarana Burke started the #metoo hashtag movement.

2016--The US elects a Predator-in-Chief, despite Access Hollywood confessions. The qualified woman nominee of the Democratic Party is not elected.

2017 Jan.--Women march to protest the inauguration of an admitted sexual predator.

2017 Oct.--#MeToo movement rises; prominent predators are fired or resign.

2017 Nov.--Survivors speak out against Alabama nutcase who molested teen girls.  POTUS endorses him publicly, believes his denials. 

2017 Dec. 8 Fri.--Sen. Jeff Merkley (OR) calls on dt to resign

2017 Dec. 9 Sat.--Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) calls on dt to resign.

2017 Dec. 11 Mon.--Senators Ron Wyden (OR) and Kirsten Gillibrand (MN) call on dt to resign.

2017 Dec. Tues.--Alabama voters reject sexual predator, electing Doug Jones, a Democrat, as senator. POTUS tweets suggestive slur against Gillibrand, igniting an even greater movement against him for his own sexual aggression.  He does not attack Merkley or Widen.  Sen. Maizie Hirono (HI) calls on dt to resign.

2017 Dec. Wed.--Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) calls on dt to resign, making a total of six senators.

2017 Dec. Thurs.--Gail Collins and Lindy West publish columns on NYT Op-Ed page against dt's tweet, Gail citing feminist timeline, Lindy using humor.

The pace quickens.  

Last May I predicted that dt would be impeached by the end of November.  

It didn't happen by then, but the wheels are in motion, both in the Mueller investigation and in this uprising against sexual predators.

dt will leave the White House in 2018, one way or another.

A Week for the Bible--and Women

The Gutenberg Bible, 1455

The Bible has had a tough week.

It was held aloft by sexual predator Roy Moore before and after he lost race for US Senator in Alabama.

It was scrutinized by US Senators and Representatives to the House on Tuesday, seeking guidance on how to lead this nation through perilous times.  Kirsten Gillibrand was at that Bible study--while our poor-excuse-for-a-president was tweeting a suggestive slur against her.

It was waved by supporters of gun control laws on the 5-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook murders of 21 kids and 5 teachers.  "Put away your sword," said Jesus to a follower just seeking to use it in defense.  WWJD with the manufacture, sale, and use of guns in the US today?

Over 2,500 years the Bible has been used to hold back women--but also to advance our equal rights. Its meaning has been in the eye of the beholder.  See All We're Meant To Be: Biblical Feminism for Today by Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty (1974). 

Thank you to Gail Collins for noting the presence of Gillibrand at the Bible study while dt was tweeting-- in her great column in today's NY Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/opinion/donald-trump-women.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fgail-collins&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0

See also:
Gillian Thomas - "Trump's Shameless Slur Against Kirsten Gillibrand."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/opinion/kirsten-gillibrand-trump-twitter.html

Fear among Senators and Congressmen

Maureen Dowd has fun with the fear among US Senators and Representatives in Congress in her column "Roadkill on Capitol Hill."

She quotes a worried Alan Simpson who in 1991 had sympathy for poor Clarence Thomas, whose reputation was being bombarded by a woman who had "come out of the night like a missile" revealing his past sexual conduct.

Yes, it's sad that Nancy Pelosi's instinct was to protect poor old John Conyers.  We want to be nice to old black gentlemen, right, even if they are sexual predators?

Dowd applauds Kirsten Gillibrand's calling a spade a spade with regard to Bill Clinton, in spite of his years of affairs and predator behavior.  I agree with Dowd and Gillibrand.  I ended my support of Bill as soon as the revelations came out detailing his use of Monica Lewinsky as a sex toy.

It's sad that Hillary Rodham Clinton's survival instinct led her to defend her husband and defame his prey. 

It's sad that she still stayed with him after the Lewinsky mess.

It's sad that she still wanted Harvey Weinstein's money, even though Lena Dunham and Tina Brown informed her staff that "Harvey's a rapist."

I refuse to condemn her, however, the way Maureen Dowd does with these words: "The muddled message of Hillary campaigning as a feminist while being a key cog in Weinstein's complicity machine..."

Hillary was a true feminist in each of those instances, and her choices--however wrong they may seem in our currently somewhat changed culture--were those of a woman who wanted to get ahead, who wanted to become president.

Eleanor Smeal, Nancy Pelosi, and other bona fide feminists made similar choices at the time.

Probably all of our presidents made unsavory alliances to work their way to the nation's highest office: JFK and the Mafia, LBJ and the war in Vietnam, Nixon and the Watergate break-in...

I want a woman president, and if in 2016 she took money from an asshole, I don't care.  

In 2018 candidates for office will be more cautious--unless they are like dt and Roy Moore, so far gone that they refuse to take responsibility even for their own law-breaking actions.   

Frank, Diana, and the End Times

Diana Butler Bass

"For many evangelicals, Jerusalem is about prophecy, not politics," writes Diana Butler Bass in an opinion piece for the CNN website yesterday.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/08/opinions/jerusalem-israel-evangelicals-end-times-butler-bass-opinion/index.html

"Jerusalem was our prophetic bellwether. God's plan hung on its fate. Whenever Israel gained more political territory, whenever Israel extended its boundaries, it was God's will, the end-times unfolding on the evening news," she writes.

Thank you to Diana for this article explaining how end-times prophecy in Revelations has been distorted to support Zionist and right-wing policies today.

Thanks also to Frank Schaeffer for appearing on MSNBC's AM Joy show today to explain the same thing and to point out the big donors to whom #45 is playing with his unilateral declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, ignoring the Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

• Big donor Sheldon Adelson: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/us/politics/trump-embassy-jerusalem-israel.html?_r=0
• 
  
• Mega pastor John Agee on CBN News "THE Christian Perspective" -- not "A Christian Perspective": https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2017/december/biblical-timing-of-absolute-precision-john-hagee-praises-trumps-jerusalem-decision
• 
  
• 19th C. father of "pre-tribulation rapture theology" John Nelson Darby: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nelson_Darby
• 
  
• More on evangelicals & Jerusalem: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-israel-politics-20171206-story.html

Why wasn't Bill Clinton removed from office?

Monica Lewinsky

Bill Clinton should have resigned but didn't. 

Therefore, the Senate should have removed him from office after his impeachment by the House of Representatives for lying.

He used his power as president to seduce his young intern Monica.  That was not appropriate behavior.

Thank you to Kirsten Gillibrand and Barbara Ehrenreich for coming out this week against the general amnesty he received in spite of his sexual misconduct.  (Barbara was public in her denunciation of him in 1998.)

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/17/kirsten-gillibrand-bill-clinton-democrats-247427

In the late 1997-99, I was disgusted by Bill's behavior.  I resented his exposing my teenage daughters to the salacious reports in the news every day.

I was angry to see Eleanor Smeal, the National Organization for Women, and 55 senators give Bill Clinton a pass on his behavior.

And why did Lewinsky's superiors transfer her away from the White House in April 1996, without reporting that there was a problem? After all, they knew that "she was spending too much time around the president." 

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/12/senate.vote/

Senators who voted "not guilty" include Barbara Boxer, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Patty Murray, Barbara Mikulski, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lambert Lincoln, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, Tom Daschle, John Edwards (we know why), Ted Kennedy (same reason), Arlen Spector, Charles Schumer, Daniel Moynihan, and others.

Voting guilty were Kay Bailey Hutchison, Connie Mack, John McCain, Jeff Sessions, and others.

I am grateful that now in November 2017 Senator Gillibrand and a few other Democrats are convinced that Bill Clinton should have been held responsible for his behavior.

I didn't understand why Hillary Rodham Clinton stuck with Bill after his betrayal.  Gradually her gamble became clear: she was planning to use him as a prop for her campaign for senator and then for president.  

It made sense that his popularity would help Hillary to be elected--but in the long run, his popularity waned.  A lot of people hated him more than they hated Hillary.

He became a weight dragging down her chances of getting elected. 

His hubris was one of the many factors that led to her defeat on November 8, 2016.  

From Wikipedia:

All of the Democrats in the Senate voted for acquittal on both the perjury and the obstruction of justice charges. Ten Republicans voted for acquittal for perjury: John Chafee (Rhode Island), Susan Collins (Maine), Slade Gorton (Washington), Jim Jeffords (Vermont), Richard Shelby (Alabama), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania), Ted Stevens (Alaska), Fred Thompson (Tennessee), and John Warner (Virginia). Five Republicans voted for acquittal for obstruction of justice: Chafee, Collins, Jeffords, Snowe, and Specter.

President Clinton was thereby acquitted of all charges and remained in office. There were attempts to censure the president by the House of Representatives, but those attempts failed.

What Blase Bonpane is thankful for...

Are you feeling a little down about the state of the nation and the world?

Is is hard to summon up the right mix of thankfulness and patriotism that Thanksgiving seems to require?

Let Blase Bonpane, the antiwar and anti-imperialism radio commentator, help you.

Here's part of his list of what he's thankful for this week, taken from my notes during today's broadcast "World Focus" (aired weekly on Sunday by Pacifica and other independent radio stations).

This former Maryknoll priest is thankful:

~~That the Roman Catholic Church is no longer enslaving and killing in the name of God, as was done for many centuries.

~~That the LA Times ran an editorial today about "The nuclear code football." But Blase goes further, asking the US to join China and India in supporting No First Use (NFU) at all.  See "In Defense of a Nuclear No-First-Use Policy" in The Atlantic, September 2016.  Blase points out that handcuffing the president would still leave nations like North Korea nervous about a congressionally-declared first strike.  Thus they might justify their own defensive first strike against the US Coalition

~~That some US general have declared that they "would never obey an illegal order..." i.e. an order to start nuclear war on a whim.

~~That some Americans are aware of the hellish wealth inequality in this country... and that they know about the distributive justice called for by the Bible.

~~That the UN has warned that 7 million people will die of famine in Yemen if the Saudi-led and US-backed blockade against humanitarian aid is not lifted.  We know, so we can demand that this blockade end.  See opinion piece in the NY Times "How War Created the Cholera Epidemic in Yemen."

~~That Bill Moyers' video series No Choice launched Nov. 13 to air the personal stories of women who sought abortion prior to 1972.  http://billmoyers.com/story/no-choice/

~~That Mark Twain opposed American imperialism and helped to found the Anti-Imperialism League

See?  You too have a lot to be thankful for--including the good work of Bill Moyers, Blase Bonpane, and Mark Twain.

A Martyr: Sr. Leonelia Sgorbati

Sr. Leonelia Sgorbati 1940-2006

dt isn't the only leader whose careless words have incited violence.

Pope Benedict XVI was endangering lives long before 45 came onto the scene.

In a speech at the University of Regensburg, Germany, in September 2006, this pope found it necessary to illustrate a lecture on faith and reason with a quotation from Byzantine emperor Michael II Paleologus criticizing Islam. 

The quote that caused the furor followed: “He turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: ‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,'” the pope said, emphasizing that he was quoting the emperor.

Because Michael II was living in the 14th century, the Crusades were still fresh in everyone's minds.  Anti-Muslim feeling was widespread in Europe.

But Benedict XVI is living in the 21st century.  Words spoken in Germany echo around the world, even to Kenya and Somalia.  

Sister Leonelia Sgorbati and the Muslim bodyguard she was traveling with were killed a few days later as protests to the speech mounted.

Well, this week Pope Francis officially declared Sr. Leonelia to be a martyr.  Thus she passed one of the milestones on the way to gaining full sainthood.

Clearly she was a saint, but getting official recognition as a saint is another matter.  It can take years.

Her driver, Mohamed Osman Mahamud, was a saint too, but the Roman Catholic Church is not likely to recognize him as such any time soon.

https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/11/09/nun-killed-backlash-regensburg-declared-martyr/

Another not-to-be declared martyr this year is Heather Heyer, the woman killed by a car mowing down demonstrators in Charlottesville on August 13.  

In her case, it was the US president whose inflammatory rhetoric egged on her killer.

Transgender Victories

H. Adam Ackley

Congratulations to Danica Roem (VA state legislature) and Althea Garrison (Minneapolis city council), transgender women elected to public office this week. 

Godspeed to all trans pioneers, such as H. Adam Ackley, dismissed from teaching theology at Azusa Pacific U in 2013. 

Since then he has done adjunct teaching at the University of Redlands and UC Irvine.

I've met Adam--a man of courage and faith.

https://goodmenproject.com/…/evangelical-theologian-and-mi…/ 


Heath Adam Ackley, Ph.D. is Director of Training & Curriculum at the U.S.-Canadian peer support non-profit Trans Lifeline and semi-retired professor of Religious Studies and of Gender and Sexuality Studies (University of Redlands, University of California at Irvine, Azusa Pacific University). He is the author of Women, Music and Faith in Central Appalachia (2001) and of chapters in Women of the Mountain South: Identity, Work, & Activism (2015), Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family and Themselves (2014), The Encyclopedia of Appalachia (2006), and Creation and The Environment: An Anabaptist Perspective on a Sustainable World (2000).

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/dr-heath-adam-420