A time for great concern...

Over the years I have found myself moving further and further away from ideology of any type. It isn't that I oppose radical social justice - I support it vigorously - but people and societies move slowly. What's more, extremists tend to become the evil they hate. The German communist, Bertolt Brecht, who served his nation in a hospital during WWI, who endured the chaos of Germany after that war and fought to oppose the rise of the Nazi's in the 1930s, put it this way in his poem, "To Posterity."

In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do:
But without me
The rulers would have been more secure.
This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given to me.

For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh.
Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass
hat man can help his fellow man,
Do not judge us
Too harshly.

There is always a cost to standing in opposition to injustice: hard choices and bitter compromises are always present for it remains a struggle to not become that which we hate. Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr are clear on this - and they are both on my mind tonight as I watch the evening news. Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann - two very attractive and clever American politicians - continue their rodeo show of "guns, God and America." They whip American fears and bigotry to a fever pitch. They seductively play with words - encouraging hatred and violence - while winking coyly at their accusers.

And they, like those who successfully garnered Christian support for the Nazi regime in the 1930s, dangerously blur the distinctions between the Cross of Jesus and the economic and social agony of some Americans.

+ They encourage racial hatred: scape-goating

+ They make no distinction between Jesus - the one who allowed himself to be crucified in order to expose what it means for nations to use religion, fear and hatred as a weapon of social control - and their vision of America

+ They celebrate violence in the name of the Prince of Peace

+ They lie in the name of the truth and encourage hatred in the name of love

I might have thought this laundry list was once excessive - ideological and unhelpful - but no longer. In fact, given the Fox News cabal and this unholy marriage of religion and the pseudo race/class hatred of Palin and Bachmann...

... it would do us well to revisit the creation of the Confessing Church and the work of Neimoller and Barth. The Barmen Declaration of 1934 puts it like this:

+ Congregations that claim to follow Jesus must test the words and deeds of those in power against the historic witness of compassion and justice.

+ These same congregations must oppose cheap and destructive manipulation and fear mongering by speaking out against the agents of hatred.

+ People of faith must understand that the church does not belong to any nation - it is of the Lord - and must serve the Lord's way in life, in death and in life beyond death. (For more information: www.sacred-texts.com/chr/barmen.htm)

To be sure, Barmen was not perfect: it did not oppose the anti-Semitism of the age clearly or forcefully. Not did it challenge the political powers of the day - just those who controlled the national church and its funding - but it is one light in a sea of increasing darkness that warrants a revival.

Pastor Martin Niemoller, who challenged the religious intellectuals of his day and was incarcerated in the death camps at Hitler's bidding, said this upon his release when he spoke to the Confessing Church in 1946:

THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

The time has come to speak up - loudly - clearly - and passionately. Not viciously - not in ways that mold us into the very hatred we oppose - but in the spirit and presence of the Cross. It is estimated that 20% of Americans embrace and support the venom of Palin and Bachmann. Dr. King used to say: “When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.”

I do not think it is too harsh to say that now is such a time.