On having it all…or, How I learned to stop worrying about others’ expectations and became my own “woman of valor”

In January 2012, I wrote a blog post in reaction to a sermon preached at Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, Texas by a wonderfully insane Christian ethics professor at Baylor by the name of Jonathan Tran.  Aside from being wonderfully insane and a professor at Baylor, Tran is also, along with his lovely (and not insane) bride, Carrie, the leader/facilitator of the Young Professionals Sunday School class at Calvary.  Jonathan pointed out in his sermon that we (the church) spend far too much time trying to cater to our pre-conceived ideas of ideal church membership (a husband, a wife, and their 2.5 kids) that we often overlook the nowhere-near-married in our midst.  Young adulthood is a time of great learning, maturing, and figuring out one’s calling and purpose in life, and it should be appreciated as that, rather than seen as a time to speed quickly through on the way to “having it all,” whatever that means.

I reacted strongly (positively, yet strongly) to Jonathan’s sermon because I was dealing with all sorts of questions about what it meant to “have it all” and to “have a life” in the aftermath of finishing my PhD.  The past year has been spent continuing to reconcile where I am in life to where society expects me to be.  It has also been a pretty awesome year.  Not a lot of people can say they landed a teaching job at their dream school right out of the gate, and yet, here I am.  We’ve heard a lot this year about women and “having it all.”  “All,” as typically understood in American culture, includes a job at which a woman can excel and a family with a successful husband and Stepford children.  By this definition, I do NOT, in fact, have it all.  But I don’t see it that way.

One of my favorite bloggers is Rachel Held Evans.  Many, many times, I have read something she has written for the interwebz and said, “Yes!” almost immediately followed by, “I wish I could have said it that eloquently.”  But alas, bluntness, rather than eloquence, is much more my style.  So, of course, I was beyond excited to buy her new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  The premise of the book goes far beyond the idea of “biblical womanhood.”  It’s really about the dangers of picking and choosing which scripture to adhere to and uncritically discarding those passages that we find uncomfortable or “outdated.”  However, one of the features of Evans’ new book that she (and many of her readers) have truly latched on to is the notion of eshet chayil, or “woman of valor.”

In many evangelical circles, young women are taught to approach Proverbs 31 as a checklist—a whole rubric to discern where they fall short of being a “Godly woman.”  After all, evangelicals do enjoy a Bible-based guilt trip, even if the exegesis leaves something to be desired.  In correspondence with a rabbi’s wife in Israel, Evans discovers that, to the Jews, Proverbs 31 is not a checklist designed for women, but a blessing to women from their families.  In fact, Jewish men recite Proverbs 31 to their wives at the Sabbath table.  As Evans says, “Eshet chayil is at its core a blessing—one that is never meant to be earned, but to be given, unconditionally.”  Anything a woman does to her utmost can make her a woman of valor.

I may not “have it all,” indeed I reject the American ideal of such, but I have embraced the idea that even still, I can be a woman of valor:

• I may never have children of my own, but in counseling, nurturing, encouraging, and teaching classrooms full of college students, I am a woman of valor.
• I may not be a parent to two-legged children, but in caring for, amusing, loving, and nurturing my cats, I am a woman of valor.
• I may be an only child, but in loving my “niece” and “nephew,” supporting their parents, lifting up those families in prayer often, I am a woman of valor.
• I may never be the “go-to” commentator on all things related to the Middle East, but in doing whatever I can, whenever I can, wherever I can to correct faulty assumptions people have about Islam and Muslims, I am a woman of valor.
• My parents and I may not always get along perfectly, but in assisting them, communicating with them, and helping in times of medical uncertainty, I am a woman of valor.
• We may not in the same city or even, in some cases, in the same state, but in listening to, loving, and laughing with my friends, I am a woman of valor.

Over the past year or so, as I have contemplated what life as a “grown up” looks like and the pressures that women feel within American society, I have decided that we would all be a lot happier if we would tell society to take its expectations and shove them.  It’s not society’s expectations I ought to be concerned about, but my own.  If I am happy, if I am making contributions to society, if I am loved, if I love, then I am a woman of valor, irrespective of my marital status or any other ridiculous metric that society and especially America’s religious culture suggest ought to be applied.

Mark Driscoll, the "Un-Christian President," and the Arrogance of Presumption

Damn you, Mark Driscoll.  I had stuff I wanted to get done today, but now I have to stop and get THIS off my chest.  All because YOU couldn’t keep your hateful rhetoric to yourself.  Subtlety, Mr. Driscoll, is definitely not your strong suit.  Maybe someone should give you lessons (I’d volunteer, but alas, subtlety isn’t my strong suit either).

So for the rest of you who have no idea why I feel the need to go on this diatribe against one of the most popular hipster preachers in America, allow me to share:
 

Shortly before all of the inaugural festivities began, Mark Driscoll tweeted "Praying for our president, who today will place his hand on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know."

“a Bible he doesn’t believe…an oath to a God he likely does not know.”  *sigh*  Before I go any further, I want to make something abundantly clear: I do not, in any way, shape, or form, doubt Mark Driscoll’s Christian faith.  On the essentials, he and I agree—Jesus Christ is the son of God, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on a cross, on the third day, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father.  On anything beyond those essentials of the faith, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t agree: Not on how we approach the Bible, not on church leadership, not on church discipline, not on gender roles, not on the role of women in society, not on the charactersitics of God.  All of that said, I believe in the sincerity of Driscoll’s faith and I have no reason to believe that he won’t be granted admittance to Heaven upon his death.  Would that he could grant others, not the least of whom the president, the same courtesy.

This isn’t just about one idiotic tweet.  It is, more deeply, about two deeply disturbing trends: one political and one theological.

First, the political….It is, after all, inauguration day.  The notion that the president is not “one of us” has been perpetuated by plenty on the right who, for reasons known only to themselves, wish to emphasize the color of the president’s skin or the funniness of his name or the fact that is middle name is Hussein (also, “Barack H. Obama?”  Really?  Are we afraid of the “Hussein” of it all now?).  Is he a Muslim?  Is he a radical black Christian?  Is he an American?  Is he a communist?  Is he one of us?  The myth of a non-Christian Obama has been at work for years to undermine his legitimacy as one of us.  In questioning whether Obama believed in the Bible upon which he was sworn, Mark Driscoll was perpetuating this insidious and narrow view of what constitutes a true “American.”

Theologically, Driscoll presumes to know the eternal destination of President Obama, and that’s a problem on a variety of levels.  First, let’s all agree that Driscoll is a Calvinist; I am not, but that’s another post for another day.  Calvinists believe that they are a part of God’s elect and that the way their election is shown is by their fruits.  It’s self-fulfilling, really.  Act like a Christian, look like a Christian, talk like a Christian, and you’re a Christian.  That said, even the most hard-core Calvinist would agree that ultimately, only God can judge the sincerity of one’s belief.  Two problems, then, appear in Driscoll’s doubt of the president’s faith, one political and one theological (sensing a pattern here?). 

First, and I heard this all morning from a variety of supporters of Driscoll on Twitter, the argument by Calvinists that would support Driscoll’s assertion is that the fruits they see from the President are insufficiently Christ-like.  He doesn’t talk about Jesus enough.  He doesn’t support the “right” causes or political agendas.  This is NOT a religious argument; it is a political argument masquerading as a religious argument.  This is a bunch of mere mortals claiming to know the true path of “Christian” political leanings.  Hello, arrogance!  There are a number of ways to interpret the teachings of the scripture in light of modern political and social realities, and anyone who claims to have the market cornered on any kind of political “truth” in the Bible is a fool.  Second, if only God can judge the sincerity of one’s belief, then Mark Driscoll, thorough-going Calvinist that he is, should know better than to open his mouth and remove all doubt  that he is a fool.  Driscoll cannot judge President Obama’s faith anymore than President Obama can judge Driscoll’s faith. 

I’d say Mark Driscoll should stick to what he does best, preaching and church planting, but I’m not entirely convinced he’s all that adroit at either of those (also another post for another day); so instead, let me give him this piece of advice: If you must be a troll, Mark, do so under a bridge where trolls belong and not online where your stupidity can be broadcast to the masses.

On Afflicting the Comfortable....

I have a love/hate relationship with American civil religion: as a subject of academic study, I love it, and as a citizen, I hate it.  Civil religion can bring people together, but it can also be ridiculously divisive.  At its best, civil religion allows people of disparate faiths to unite under one banner; at worst, it becomes a narrowly defined checklist of what is and is not American.  What we saw tonight in the auditorium of the Newtown, CT High School was an exemplar of what civil religion can and ought to be. 

But there’s more.  There’s always more.  Martin Marty argues that there are two kinds of civil religion: the priestly and the prophetic.  Tonight, President Obama, as “Comforter in Chief,” showcased the priestly—the quasi-official civil religion, often exemplified by the president in times of crisis.  There is also the prophetic—the type of civil religion which calls Americans back to their higher ideals.  Both of these can, and when used in a positive manner do, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  Tonight, the interfaith prayer vigil, the words offered, the scriptures read, the speeches given…all of these comforted those afflicted by unspeakable tragedy.  But the president’s words gave us a hint of what is to come, what ought to come: afflicting the comfortable.

Who are the comfortable here?  They are legion.  They can be found on both ends of our political spectrum, worried about any number of issues: guns, mental health, education.  People whose positions have become so entrenched that they simply cannot grasp that someone might have a reasonable opinion contrary to their own.  Inaction in this situation would be the greatest political sin.  We will not save the world.  We will not put an end to violence in this country or in the world.  But we should try.

I don’t have children of my own, and I can’t fathom what the parents who lost children must be feeling right now, but I do have a nephew who will turn two on New Years’ Eve and a niece who will be a year old three days after that.  They are both happy children, always smiling and laughing, often getting into trouble, but the apple of their parents’ eye (and Aunt Steph’s too).  My world is a better place because of them.  It is because of them and all of the children like them who are likewise the apples of their parents’ eyes that we should demand of our leaders that they afflict the comfortable, and that we, as citizens, should afflict our leaders because they have become the comfortable.  To quote one of the great priests of the American civil religion, Josiah Bartlet (given voice by Aaron Sorkin), “We can do better and we will do better and we must do better.”

On the God I serve not being an jerk….

We’ve heard it all before.  In fact, people have been spouting this crap since 1962.  “The Supreme Court kicked God out of public schools!”  I call B.S.  In fact, I have a degree that makes me uniquely qualified to call B.S.  Even still, this was the basis of the reprehensible argument Brian Fischer made today on his radio show for American Family Radio for the school shooting in Newtown, CT.  Fischer, in what is perhaps the single worst example of theodicy known to man, suggested that God “allowed” this tragic event to occur because He’s a gentleman and as such, “God is not going to go where he is not wanted.”  Before I get to the horrible theodicy encapsulated in this statement, allow me a brief history lesson.

In 1962, the Supreme Court handed down a 6-1 ruling on the case Engel v. Vitale, which outlawed government-written prayers in public schools as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  To fundamentalists like Fischer, this is when the government kicked prayer out of public schools.  A year later, the Court ruled on Abington v. Schempp which outlawed the devotional reading of the Bible in public schools.  Strike two.  These two cases, taken together, are proof to fundamentalists that God has been kicked out of public schools. 

I’ve always thought that anyone who holds this opinion must believe in a pretty wussy God.  I don’t think a temporal body like the Supreme Court could ever push an all-powerful God out of any place He wasn’t particularly keen on leaving.  Furthermore, God watches over His flock, so where the children of God are, so shall he be.  (See John 10:28-9; Psalm 23:4)  Neither of these rulings was designed to be hostile to God; rather they exist because this nation has always been designed, with regard to religion, to privilege none and disparage none.  Thus creating a free and open religious environment where even idiots like Brian Fischer are allowed to spout their particularly hateful brand of religion.

More importantly than the bad history and mis-reading of the First Amendment and various Supreme Court decisions, Fischer is guilty of some seriously BAD theology.  There’s a word for what Fischer was attempting (quite badly) to do; we call it “theodicy.”  Theodicy is an explanation for the presence of evil the world in light of a belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful God.  Augustine believed that evil exists as an abuse of humanity’s free will.  From a sociological view, Peter Berger says that theodicy is necessary for a society to create order from chaos. 

Theodicy isn’t easy, especially in light of an event so tragic.  I know I don’t have any solid explanations for why someone would open fire in a classroom full of kindergarteners.  But I feel pretty comfortable in suggesting that Brian Fischer’s explanation is total crap: God is a gentleman and, therefore, won’t go somewhere He isn’t wanted.  I return you to my previous statement that God keeps an eye on His children, even in the midst of evil (“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me.”  Psalm 23:4).

The bad theodicy of Fischer and others (Jerry Falwell, for example, tried to pin 9/11 on all sorts of groups he didn’t agree with politically) has its roots in the Deuteronomic view of affliction as a just punishment for sin (see, for example, Deuteronomy 28:15).  Psalm 1 says “the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish (vs. 6).”  However, this is not the last word on theodicy in the Old Testament.  Jeremiah accused God, not of cursing the wicked, but allowing them to thrive (12:1-2).  Perhaps the ultimate Biblical example of an explanation of evil is the Book of Job.  Job is described as upright and blameless, a man who feared the Lord (1:1).  Yet, he was afflicted by God, and in the midst of his suffering, directly contradicted the Deuteronomic explanation, saying that the Lord “destroys both the blameless and the wicked (9:22).”  As Christians, we accept the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the ultimate answer to the problem of evil: The resurrection story is God’s final answer, the ultimate story of conquering evil.

The more troubling aspect of Fischer’s explanation of the events today is how he twists and abuses scripture to make political hay.  Brian Fischer has a definite political point of view, and his asinine statement today is more reflective of THAT than it is of any theological viewpoint.  In fact, I would guess that Fischer couldn’t provide any kind of scriptural basis for his position, only a political basis.  However, should Fischer be able to provide some sort of theological underpinning for his view, I would be 100% comfortable in saying that the God Brian Fischer purports to worship is not the God I serve, for the simple reason that the God I follow isn’t a jerk.  He doesn’t point and laugh and sit back and watch as 20 5-year-olds are slaughtered. 

Brian Fischer and others believe with unrestrained certainty that their interpretation of the Word of God is absolutely correct, ignoring all of the contradictions and troubling passages and episodes that make us uncomfortable.  So desirous of a set-in-stone position, both theologically and politically, they have shrunk God, putting Him into an impossibly small package that looks suspiciously like themselves.  This is perhaps the gravest of modern sins—turning one’s own beliefs into an idol, then stubbornly holding tight to those positions, even when doing so makes them sound like unrepentant idiots.

I don’t know why this tragedy occurred today.  I have no words to comfort the families of the victims or the survivors.  But I know that even as I wrestle with why something like this could happen and I admit freely that I have difficulty reconciling this kind of evil with an all-powerful, loving God, I know that God is with them, with us all.  He heals the broken hearted and comforts those who mourn.  I pray that all those affected may feel a peace the passes all understanding.  God bless them.

An Open Letter to Well-Meaning Friends and Others Who Have Decided That I Need a Life:

So, apparently, one’s 20s are like a hung-over baby shower. I wish I could take credit for that analogy, but it’s not mine. It came from Jonathan Tran’s sermon this morning at Calvary. Recovery from the glory days of college and a longing for whatever comes next (marriage, a white picket fence, and 2.5 kids). But seldom does anyone stop to enjoy where they are in the moment. That period of singleness and trying to figure out what one wants to be if one grows up is a time not to be embraced, but endured. Unfortunately, churches in America fall into the same trap as the rest of us. By worshipping at the altar of the nuclear family, churches tend to equate, however unconsciously, marriage with holiness and closeness to God. This is not a helpful understanding of church and community, much less a biblical standard of holiness. It is, however, the reality that many such as myself find ourselves dealing with.

Let me be clear here. I don’t think Calvary is the rule in this. In many ways, it is the exception, in no small measure due to people like Jonathan Tran and his lovely wife, Carrie, who have made it their mission to pour into the 20-somethings in the church, offering us a safe place where we can vent our frustrations, worry about our futures, and rest—yes, rest. Psalm 37, from which much of Jonathan’s sermon was inspired, says “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:3-4). These verses do not point to work as Americans frequently understand it, but to listening to, being attuned to, being aware of the presence of God. This is work properly ordered. Rest in the Lord, then do the good that the Lord has placed in front of you.

I can say, as one who has survived all but the last 5 months of my 20s at this point, that I have probably needed more rest over the last decade than at any other point in my life. I can also safely say that I have gotten less rest in the same time period than at any other time in my life. By rest, I—like the Psalmist—am not necessarily talking about sleep (though I did save all of my all-nighters for graduate school). I’m talking about a space where I can be among friends who will help me bear the burdens of this long, strange trip from being a kid to being a “grown up”—whatever that means; a place where I am understood; a place where I can tell the stories of my life and have people say, “Me too.” I have not had this kind of rest for much of my 20s because I haven’t had a church where those kinds of things were okay.

A funny thing happened once I graduated from Baylor. People started asking, with much greater frequency, if I was dating, when I was going to start dating, or if being done with my PhD now meant that I could have “a life.” I have been bewildered and, frankly, quite frustrated by these inquiries. First of all, anyone who knows me, even just a little, knows that I’ve never had “a life,” as that phrase seems to be commonly understood (dating, going out, etc.). I wouldn’t know what “a life” was unless it came up to me and introduced itself. But what is truly irritating, downright disheartening, is the implication behind these questions. Who I am in this place in my life, what I have accomplished, what I still want to accomplish—none of that is good enough if I haven’t found “The One.” I guess I got a free pass while I was writing my dissertation. People have often joked of being married to their dissertation. Married friends have called their spouse’s dissertation a “mistress.” But apparently being done with my dissertation meant it was time to get to the real business of life: marriage and procreation—hopefully in that order.

My church attendance last semester was spotty at best. Most of the time, I just didn’t feel like it was worth it to go. I was frustrated and angry, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. It wasn’t until this morning during Jonathan’s sermon that I realized what was wrong. I had bought into all the nonsense. As a single woman, approaching 30, with 2 cats, but no romantic prospects, I was on the precipice of becoming the stereotype: the crazy old cat lady. What did I have to offer the church? What did I have to offer anyone? And it made me angry—both at the world and at myself. Why wasn’t I good enough? Just me. No husband, no kids except the 4-legged, furry kind. Why couldn’t that be enough for people? And then I was angry at myself. Why did I allow myself to believe all of that?

This morning, Jonathan reminded us that for the early church, singleness, not marriage and family, was the preferred paradigm. He also reminded us that our mission, our vocation, our goal should be to be all that we are in Christ, not in marriage. We as a community of believers should help bear one another’s burdens. The modern church has uplifted the marriage covenant at the expense of the Church. One’s husband or wife is to be the one to bear one’s burdens. This is really unfair to spouses, by the way. Why make one person put up with all of your crap alone? That’s just wrong. It’s also not what God envisioned. The marriage covenant is important—of course it is. But it is not, nor was it ever intended to be, the most important thing in the lives of believers. If the community of believers has broken down, the answer is not to throw one’s hands up and say, “Well, never mind. Just get married instead.” The answer is to fix the community; this is the work of all who live in the community—single, married, with children or without, widows, children.

So I say to all of my friends and other well-meaning folks in my life who have inquired about my timeline for getting “a life:” I have one. And it is rich and fulfilling, occasionally frustrating and worrisome, but full of friends and fun—even with my cats (two men, by the way, destined to never leave the toilet seat up or hog the TV or make me pick up their socks). I am enough all by myself. I don’t know if I’m in a place where I can say that with as much confidence as I would like, and that’s why I need my friends not to ask when I’m going to get “a life” but how life is going. I deserve to be surrounded by people who see me as whole and complete just the way I am, and they deserve the same in return from me. There will be no more suggestions of internet dating or blind dates or “putting yourself out there.” God has a plan for me today and tomorrow and the next day and the next. That plan may include a guy who enjoys Broadway musicals and football in equal measure and who isn’t afraid to look me in the eye and tell me I’m full of shit, or it may not. That’s okay, because I have plenty of friends who enjoy either Broadway musicals or football, and no matter in which camp they fall, none of them are afraid to tell me I’m full of it.

I am thankful and incredibly blessed to have people who care about my well-being—even if their inquiries occasionally drive me nuts. I have friends who love me, a niece and a nephew who are pretty perfect, a family that supports me, and a church that has meant more to me that words can possibly express. I am blessed, I am loved, and I am a child of God. That’s all I need to be complete.

Bukra, in sha' Allah...

For the past three or four days, I have woken up and immediately turned on my television. Since Egypt is 8 hours ahead of Waco, the day is already halfway over by the time I roll out of bed. Every day, I have turned on the TV hoping to see news that Mubarak has finally seen the writing on the wall and negotiations are on-going to create an interim government and figure out how to make a peaceful transition to a post-Mubarak Egypt. Every morning, I have sighed, disappointed that this has not yet materialized and thought to myself, “Bukra, in sha’ Allah.” (Tomorrow, God willing).

Egyptians, like most Arabs, have a casual relationship with time. Meetings often start more than an hour after they were planned. Asking any Egyptian to get something done quickly is a risk. Follow up with him or her and ask when the task in question may be accomplished, they will smile serenely and say, “Bukra, in sha’ Allah.” This can be infuriating and frustrating to Americans who are used to punctuality and getting things taken care of quickly, but it is the Egyptian way.

As the protests carry on into a second week, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Hosni Mubarak’s grip on power is slipping. Secretary of State Clinton started talking about a transition to democracy while making the rounds to the Sunday shows. The Egyptian army has announced that it will not fire at demonstrators. Omar Suleiman has announced that the regime wants talks with the opposition and may consider new elections to correct the massive corruption from the November parliamentary elections. Things are looking grim in Mudville.

Bukra. Bukra, in sha’ Allah. The opposition parties have been working hard to organize a million man march on Cairo tomorrow, presumably centered at Tahrir Square which has been Ground Zero for these protests. Is this finally the day? Will this finally get through to Mubarak, the stubborn old coot, that he isn’t welcome in Egypt anymore? I hope so. Not just because the Egyptian people deserve better than Hosni Mubarak, but because Egypt needs to move forward—politically, socially, and perhaps most importantly right now, economically.

Last week, the Egyptian stock market plummeted 20 %. It has been closed the past two days. Schools are closed, universities too. Many stores are closed. Those that aren’t closed, especially supermarkets, are running out of food staples. Banks are closed, and ATMs don’t have any more money in them. The airport in Cairo is packed to the gills with Americans and other foreigners trying to get the hell out of Dodge. The tourist industry—a $10 billion/year enterprise—has come to a screeching halt. Most Egyptians, who live on a wing and a prayer on the best of days, haven’t worked for almost a week. If this keeps up, the Egyptian economy will be in such shambles when all of this over that political stability will be the least of the country’s worries.

Resolution needs to come quickly. If that means Barack Obama needs to fly to Cairo himself and personally escort Mubarak to a private plane that will take him to London where his family is, then so be it. Hop a plane, Mr. President. There won’t be many people in the arrival hall at the Cairo airport. Passing through customs would be a breeze. Okay, so that’s not so feasible, but Obama needs to let it be known to Mubarak that the gig is up. He can save his country. His final act as president could be his best. But to do it, he has to swallow his pride—a bitter pill no doubt.

So for now, I go to bed, knowing that in the morning, I will turn on the TV when I wake up to see what’s going on. Bukra, in sha’ Allah….

The Muslim Brotherhood Demystified

It seems to me that in all of our collective hand wringing over the situation in Egypt, one of the most commonly asked questions is “What happens if the Muslim Brotherhood gains power?” People are making bold presumptions that tell me that they don’t have a clue about the Brotherhood. It is simply being lumped into some monolithic grouping of “Islamists,” and of course, “Islamist” equates to evil and violent in today’s American parlance. This is an incredibly facile understanding of the Brotherhood based more on fear-mongering than fact. As some of you know, I have been hard at work on my dissertation and I am currently working on revisions to chapter 2 which discusses…you guessed it—the Muslim Brotherhood. I hope I can demystify the Brotherhood and provide some insight into a group which has a long, complicated, and very dynamic history.

The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Ismailiyya in the Suez Canal zone by a school teacher named Hasan al-Banna. Egypt in the mid- to late-1920s was secularizing and demanding an end to British interference in its affairs. Concerned that Egypt—the cultural center and one of the religious centers of the Islamic world—was turning away from Islam, al-Banna and the six other men who formed the core group of the Brotherhood were committed to the spread of Islam through preaching and education. Al-Banna’s transfer to Cairo in the early-1930s allowed the Brotherhood to establish a headquarters in the Egyptian capitol. There, the Brotherhood’s relationship with the Egyptian monarchy when from good to mediocre to violent. Because of the king’s cozy relationship with the British, many opposition groups with some degree of nationalist aspirations found themselves at odds with the regime. The Brotherhood was no exception. A series of violent encounters between the regime and members of the Brotherhood’s “Special Apparatus”—its paramilitary group—led to the assassination of al-Banna in 1949.

As the Free Officers began gaining momentum in the years before their revolution, they did so with the assistance of the Brotherhood. However, relations quickly soured between the Brotherhood and Nasser as the Free Officers worked to consolidate their power. In late 1954, a member of the Special Apparatus tried and failed (miserably) to assassinate Nasser. This led to a major roundup of Brotherhood members, and death sentences were handed down for the top leadership of the organization. Many other Muslim Brothers were given lengthy sentences in Egyptian prisons where torture and abuse was the rule, rather than the exception. Many of these men emerged from prison after a general amnesty from Sadat in the early-1970s more radical than when they went in. In general, these guys broke away from the Brotherhood and became the foundation of the more violent groups—the Gama’at and Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Brotherhood itself emerged from its experience in Nasser’s prisons much less willing to tangle with the Egyptian regime, and recommitted itself to the spread of Islam through preaching and social activism, rather than political action.

The Sadat years were pretty good to the Brotherhood. Sadat, the “Believer President,” encouraged Islamic activism on college campuses, allowed the Brotherhood (still an illegal organization) to publish its own newspapers, and freed all of the Brothers who had spent the better part of the last 15 years in jail. However, Sadat’s decision to make peace with Israel was not well received, and members of Islamic Jihad, one of the radical offshoots of the Brotherhood, assassinated him in October 1981. Mubarak largely ignored the Brotherhood in the early-1980s, choosing instead to consolidate his power within the ruling National Democratic Party. In 1984 the Brotherhood was allowed to run for seats in parliament, though members who wished to do so had to appear on the party lists of other parties, since the Brotherhood was still outlawed.

The bigger platform used by the Brotherhood at this point were the professional syndicates. These unions are the bulwark of Egyptian society, and they had long been the victim of financial mismanagement and corruption. The Brotherhood began to gain the majority of the seats in all of the major syndicates (Medical, Journalism, Law, Engineering) and reformed them, offering quality low cost health care, housing assistance, and other services to all of their members—regardless of religion or ideological persuasion. The leadership of the Brotherhood in the syndicates were part of what is known as the “Middle Generation,” those young professionals who came of age during the 1970s and Sadat’s more open stance toward religious activists. The Middle Generation showed a great deal of political savvy in navigating the politics of the syndicates, making alliances with other opposition groups to cement their power in the groups.

Under the Brotherhood, the syndicates also provided social services to the people of Egypt at large. When a strong earthquake hit Cairo in 1992, the Medical Syndicate immediately mobilized to provide triage care to the injured, and the Engineering Syndicate sent teams to investigate the rubble and test the structural integrity of the buildings that were damaged in the quake. The Brotherhood was the driving force behind the disaster response and they were on the scene 48 hours before the state, which humiliated Mubarak and led to some incredibly restrictive laws designed to curtail the strength of the Brotherhood in the syndicates. This also lead to more restrictions on the Brotherhood in the electoral arena. Mubarak began either passing laws or amending the constitution to make it more difficult for the Brotherhood to operate politically.

Even with those restrictions, the Brotherhood has continued to espouse a moderate agenda, issuing a reform initiative in 2004 which demanded the end of military rule, dismantling of the internal security service, free and fair elections, a free press, the ability of opposition parties to organize and run for office, term limits on the presidency, and solidarity between Egypt’s Muslim and Coptic Christian populations. The troubling part of their platform is their stance toward Israel as the Brotherhood wishes to abrogate the Camp David Accords with Israel.

The Brotherhood at this point faces an internal split: the old guard of the organization, those octogenarians who remember all too well what it was like in Nasser’s prisons, are not at all anxious to confront the regime directly. These are the guys in charge, and the General Guide of the Brotherhood, Muhammad Badie, has expressed his desire to move away from the political arena and back to a focus on preaching and social activism. The Middle Generation, who now make up the middle management of the Brotherhood, are much more politically active, having grown up in a much different environment than their elders, and want to be more invested in the political process in Egypt, not less.

The irony of Mubarak’s heavy handed policies against opposition parties is that secular opposition parties have not been able to really sustain any kind of meaningful organization, but the religious nature of the Brotherhood has made it relatively easier for the Brotherhood to grow and organize. After all, it would cause more problems than it would solve for the government to start interfering heavily in the day-to-day operations of Egyptian mosques. So in reality, the regime has set up a de facto two-party system in which the Brotherhood is the only legitimate opposition. That doesn’t mean that Egyptians are completely on board with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many support the Brotherhood today because it is the only real option. However, while the Egyptians are a very religious people by nature, they are not generally radical. Public opinion turning against the radicals in the 1990s played a big role in the defeat of the Gama’at and Islamic Jihad. Should all of this craziness result in regime change and an interim government, it is likely that the Brotherhood would have a large role in the interim government, but much more questionable that they would be able to maintain a majority once other opposition parties were able to organize and mobilize.

I find it doubtful that the Brotherhood, which denounced radicalism of its own accord, would be hospitable to the return of the radicals who have taken up residence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s also important to remember that the primary grievances of the protesters in Egypt are not religious; they are economic and political. Whereas Iranians were upset that the Shah was trying to rid Iran of its religious heritage, Mubarak has done no such thing. Infringements of religious expression are not one of the multitude of problems facing Egypt today, which makes the popular support of an Islamist government less likely.

At some point, the United States must start thinking long-term in the Middle East. Our short-sighted policies in the region for the last six-plus decades have only added to the anti-Western, reactionary tendencies which have led people to terrorism. If we are patient, if we understand that a free, open government in Egypt is more likely to weaken, rather than strengthen, the Muslim Brotherhood in the long run, we could find that democracy in Egypt is much easier to achieve and sustain than it has been in Iraq and that it can be achieved with little or no military intervention on the part of the United States. That would be a steal at twice the price. But it means the United States and her allies (especially Israel) have to be willing to sit down, shut up, and keep their hands to themselves for a little while as things sort themselves out.

And Now We Come to the Payoff...

Okay, so now that we've been through the background of the mess in Egypt, and you've all suffered through me saying "I told you so," what about now?

First off, let me say that I respectfully disagree with Vice-President Joe Biden. I would call Hosni Mubarak a dictator. What else could you call him? A leader with the occasional nefarious urge? The man's a dictator, and while I understand the rock and hard place the Obama administration is stuck between, surely Biden could have obfuscated a little bit better than that. But I digress...

Two months ago, Hosni Mubarak presided over the most corrupt elections during his 30 year rule. That, by the way, is really saying something, because Mubarak has presided over some pretty corrupt elections. Of the 88 seats contested, the NDP won 84, NDP members running as independents won 3, and the opposition Tagammu party won the only other seat. 87 of 88 seats won by the NDP. So, when Mubarak went on television two days ago promising "reform" including hiring a new cabinet, it's easy to understand how people were struck by the ridiculousness of it all. And if I thought it was ridiculous, imagine how Egyptians felt.

Likewise, appointing Omar Suleiman as his vice-president isn't likely to persuade anyone that Mubarak is serious about reform. Suleiman is a carbon copy of Mubarak, except maybe with a little more blood on his hands. He's an obvious choice if you're Mubarak--low tolerance for Islamists, relationships with the Palestinians and Israelis. He's just not a choice that screams "Reform!"

Lots of people have been asking what Egyptians want. The answer is easy. They want regime change. They hate Mubarak. They want freedom, economic opportunity, and a better life. And they don't feel like they can have those things with Mubarak in power. But the question remains: how and who? The usual suspects include the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Mohamed ElBaradei. ElBaradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and has expressed a willingness to lead a transitional government. However, any freely elected government elected now would have a heavy Muslim Brotherhood presence. This is problematic because the Brotherhood is still highly distrustful of Israel and has stated publicly that it thinks Egypt should abrogate its peace treaty with Israel. Ruh-roh...

Whatever issues folks have with the Muslim Brotherhood, I think it's time to take a risk on freedom in Egypt. As Secretary Rice said, we have privileged security over democracy in the Middle East for decades and gotten neither for our trouble. It seems the definition of insanity fits quite well in this instance. Perhaps it's time to try a new strategy. My sense from the Egyptians I met is that they want democracy--one that looks a lot like what we're used to, but still indigenous. If the Brotherhood doesn't uphold the desired standard of freedom or listen to the will of the people, then the people will boot them out of office and start over. It may be a bit painful in the short term, but it will be a better situation for American national security interests in the long term.

Egyptians, like many others in the Middle East, like the idea of America--free press, free speech, free assembly, the right to protest government policies and run for office in free and fair elections. What they don't like is that America doesn't extend those ideals to everyone unless it's politically expedient. The hypocrisy infuriates them. This is a chance to prove them wrong. We owe it to our long term security and to the Egyptian people to give them a chance.

Is This Where I Get to Say I Told You So?

To the title of this post in a moment, but first--read my first post about the situation in Egypt or the people discussed in this one won't make any sense.

I spent a semester in Cairo in the spring of 2009, and I discovered that in many ways, Cairo is a city of excesses. I wrote down a long list of statements about Cairo that all began with "too much," "too little," "too many," or "too few." Here is a sampling of those statements:

Too many people: Cairo's population is estimated to be around 20 million. That's a quarter of the total population of Egypt. This picture is indicative of the type of housing found in most of Cairo--crowded ramshackle apartment buildings that are not terribly structurally sound.

Too many houses: A 1 million unit housing surplus in Cairo

That too few people can afford: The surplus are all in the upscale suburbs of Cairo, subsidized by the government in an attempt to un-crowd downtown Cairo, but they are more expensive than most Egyptians can afford.

Too many homeless: Depending on whose statistics you believe, there are between one and five million people living in the Cities of the Dead, the sprawling mausoleum complexes on the outskirts of the city with no electricity, sewage, etc. Even many of those who can afford to live in apartments often do so in slum housing like Garbage City (to the right). Roughed in electric and sewage are the norm, and living conditions are pretty abysmal. That's the Mosque of Muhammad Ali in the background--perfectly indicative of the chasm between rich and poor in Egypt today.

Too many college graduates: Like any good socialist country, higher education at public universities is heavily subsidized.

Too few jobs: A 1964 law guaranteed civil service jobs to college graduates. Now graduates far outnumber the jobs available, leading to massive underemployment.

Too much power: A very large army and an even larger security force have allowed the National Democratic Party (NDP--the ruling party) to concentrate its power

In the hands of too few: Restrictions on political activity have limited the options for opposition parties to the NDP, and cronyism has led to all of the wealth in Egypt being held in the hands of a small cadre of NDP loyalists.

All of that being said, I told a number of people when I returned from Egypt that it seemed to me that Egypt was on the edge of a cliff and it wouldn't take much for it to fall or be pushed over the edge. One of the worst kept secrets in Egypt is that Hosni Mubarak was grooming his son, Gamal, to take over as president, quite possibly in the elections to take place in September of this year. While I think Gamal could have been just what the doctor ordered, he faces two obstacles. First, he's Hosni's son. The feeling in Egypt was that they fought not that long ago to get rid of the monarchy. They have no desire to invite hereditary succession back to their country. Second, he isn't a member of the old military guard that surrounds his father. These guys are all octogenarians who were in the military and are still imbued with the revolutionary spirit of the Free Officers. They don't trust the suave, young Mubarak who has never served in the military. So the nightmare scenario is this:

Gamal takes over, but his presidency is undermined from within and without. The NDP old guard (including the likes of Omar Suleiman), infuriated by the young upstart, starts to undermine his reign from within the party. Opposition parties also move to undermine him through other means. The baby Mubarak regime comes to an end and a power vacuum emerges which has to be filled. As the best organized opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood steps into that vacuum. With the Brotherhood in power, more radical Islamist groups feel like they can come in from the cold, and return home after more than a decade in exile with al Qaeda and other savory characters. Border crossings with the Gaza Strip go mysteriously unmanned, weapons and other materiel flow freely across the border, Hamas re-radicalizes, and the entire region is thrown in to chaos.

This--the nightmare scenario--is where I get to say I told you so. If I could see this, or some permutation of this, coming 18 months ago, why in God's name does it seem that no one in Washington was prepared for it? And I don't even have security clearance. Give me security clearance, Washington. Give me security clearance and I can go save the world.

Hosni Mu-What? Huh?: A quick primer on the people, places, and events that got us to where we are

A number of my friends have been asking on Facebook for someone to offer them an intelligent opinion of what the heck is going on in Egypt right now. I hope none of you find it presumptuous if I assume that I might be able to offer such an opinion. And even if you do find it presumptuous, I hope you nevertheless read it so that you might have a better understanding of what exactly has been going on in the streets of Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt the last few days. This post will be followed by one which contains the observations I made about the state of affairs in Egypt upon my return from a semester in Cairo 18 months ago. Finally, once we’ve made it through all of that, I’ll sort through the events of the last few days, what I think it means, and what might happen.

But first, some historical background info…

The Free Officers: A group of young Egyptian army officers who were disenfranchised by the Egyptian monarchy’s close relationship with Great Britain and wanted Egyptian independence. Successfully overthrew the monarchy on July 23, 1952.

Gamal Abdul Nasser: (on the left in the picture, Sadat is on the right) One of the leaders of the Free Officers. Assumed the presidency of Egypt in 1954 and remained in the position until his death in 1970.


1967 (Six Day) War: Pre-emptive strike by Israel against its Arab neighbors. Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip (now Palestinian territory) from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank (also Palestinian territory) from Jordan.

Anwar Sadat: Nasser's vice-president, assumed the presidency upon his death. Was the leader of Egypt during the 1973 war and the signing of the Camp David Accords. Assassinated on October 6, 1981 by Islamic fundamentalists.

1973 (Yom Kippur) War: Egypt's attempt to recapture the Sinai Peninsula. Despite initial successes, Egypt began losing ground against the Israelis. Shuttle diplomacy by Kissinger and Nixon led to a brokered cease fire, the beginning of peace talks, and a lot of American aid being sent Egypt's way.

Camp David Accords (1979): Peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, gave Egypt the Sinai Peninsula back.

Hosni Mubarak: Sadat's vice-president, assumed the presidency upon his assassination. Has ruled Egypt ever since.

Emergency law: Enacted by Mubarak after Sadat's assassination, placed restrictions on freedom of speech, press, and the right to assemble. Renewed continuously ever since.

Omar Suleiman: Former head of the Mukhabarat, Egypt's internal security service. A close confidant of Mubarak's and fellow former Army officer. The Mukhabarat is responsible for monitoring domestic political opposition and occasionally makes people disappear if they become too vocal in their criticism of the regime. Suleiman was in charge of the effort to fight terrorism within Egypt in the 1990s and he now serves as the point man for critical issues in the Global War on Terror.

Muslim Brotherhood: The oldest Islamist organization in the world. Founded by Hasan al-Banna in Egypt in 1928. Officially illegal in Egypt, but allowed to operate. Once violently opposed to the regime during Nasser's time, the Brotherhood has renounced violence and has occasionally been allowed to run for parliament.

Syndicates: Professional unions, once corrupt but cleaned up and run efficiently during the 1980s under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.

November 18, 1997: 58 tourists and 4 Egyptian tour guides are massacred in Luxor by members of Islamic Jihad. This event turned popular opinion against violent fundamentalists in Egypt and crippled the Egyptian tourism industry for years.

2005: "Arab Spring," a reform initiative spear headed by the Bush administration with the hopes that more democracy, or at least democratization, would lead to less radicalism and anti-American sentiment. In a speech at the American University in Cairo in June of that year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither." Parliamentary elections in Egypt that year were moderately less corrupt, but voting irregularities and voter intimidation were still widely reported.

Gamal Mubarak: Son of Hosni, a former investment banker in London. The Western-educated Gamal is widely considered to be his father's successor as President.

Thus concludes our quick trip through the last six decades of Egyptian history. Next up, my observations, post-Egypt...if 18 months late.

Words and Warfare: Thoughts on the Day that Was…

It is still too early to know exactly what the motivations of the shooter who killed six people and injured 13 more, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, at a Tucson, AZ shopping center this morning. We have some YouTube clips, hints of a criminal history, and stories of possible mental instability, but there is nothing yet to nail down his motives.

What we do know is this: people are already starting to place the blame. It’s the fault of politicians, talking heads, and pundits. This is not quite true. The tragic shooting this morning in Arizona was the fault of no one but the man who is the alleged gunman. There is, however, blame to be placed at the feet of politicians, talking heads, and pundits. They did not buy the gun, go to that Safeway, or pull the trigger, but their rhetoric has created an environment so hostile to political opposition that it could push people to commit acts of violence.

Sharron Angle should not be blamed for this shooting because of her talk of “second amendment solutions” during the mid-term elections. Sarah Palin isn’t to blame because she put, among others, Rep. Giffords in her “cross hairs” for her vote for the health care plan. Jesse Kelly isn’t to blame for his campaign event inviting supporters to “get on target” to remove Giffords from office in June in which people were invited to go shoot an M-16 with the candidate. Angle, Palin, and Kelly are guilty of one thing and one thing only—contributing to an atmosphere of hatred, vitriol, and scorn which is starting to border on eerily unstable.

I realize that vitriol in political rhetoric is a fact of life. It waxes and wanes. But I have never seen it tilt so far toward psychosis. We have taken the black-or-white, with-us-or-against-us rhetoric of the last administration and begun applying it to domestic policy in a way that I find completely insulting and unnecessary. If you don’t agree with such and such position, you don’t simply hold a different opinion—you are dangerous, maybe treasonous. You may suddenly find yourself in someone’s “cross hairs.” We are suddenly, inexplicably, unreasonably at war with each other, at war with ourselves. The other side of a political issue is no longer the opposition, but the enemy.

Wake up, people!! We’re at war with al Qaeda. We’re kind of at war with North Korea, Pakistan, and maybe even Iran. Osama bin Laden is the enemy. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is the enemy. Gabrielle Giffords is not the enemy. Barack Obama is not the enemy. Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle and Jesse Kelly aren’t the enemy. Health care, illegal immigration, and economic recovery are not battlefields, merely political hot potatoes. It is possible, even highly likely, for sensible people to disagree on these issues, but still like each other when a debate on the issues is over. By all accounts, Rep. Giffords is proof that this can be possible, as her colleagues on both sides of the aisle have attested all day.

Tonight, in an extraordinarily candid exchange with reporters during a news conference, the sheriff of Pima Co. said, “That may be free speech, but it is not without consequences.” Words have power. Oratory can get people moving. But in what direction? For what purpose? In the service of what cause? Talk of “second amendment solutions” has no place in American political discourse. The Taliban is in need of a “second amendment solution;” American politicians are not. Is it not possible for people to recognize that public servants care deeply about America? Otherwise, there is very little reason for them to open themselves up to this foolishness. Gabrielle Giffords is a patriot. So is Sarah Palin. While people may disagree and disagree strongly with the positions of one or both of these women, war should not be declared on either of them. Neither should be placed in “cross hairs,” political or actual.

“The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight.” Those words, from an episode of the West Wing, ring true this night. What are we to learn from this tragic Saturday? We can disagree with each other politically and do so vociferously without lowering ourselves to our baser inclinations. We are not, or at least we should not be, at war with each other. Politics should not be a blood sport. We should have disputes, debates, and deep conversations, but save the warfare for mutual enemies—mostly foreign, though some domestic, who threaten the peace and tranquility of these United States.

We must recognize the consequences of our words. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said that the right to free speech does not give one the right to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Those who use the rhetoric of warfare in the relatively mundane world of domestic politics are dangerously close to yelling “Fire!” The stampede that could ensue, if the events of today are not an isolated incident, could be devastating for the United States. Words. Have. Power. Power to heal. Power to hurt. Power to create mayhem. It is our responsibility—yours, mine, Sarah Palin’s, Barack Obama’s—our responsibility to change the tone of political discourse in this country.

“The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight.” My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who were killed, those who were hurt, and everyone who was affected by today’s events. God bless you all.

And a heart that knows the way home...

This morning, my dear friend Bethany Bear posted a link on Facebook to her first foray into the blogosphere, a discussion of the “S’Mores and Sex” party held by our Sunday School class last Friday. Everyone, relax. The conversation wasn’t THAT titillating. Most of our discussion centered on the frustration that single twenty-somethings feel because many churches simply don’t seem like they have a place for people like us. When the church worships at the altar of marriage and family as the American church does, it can be difficult for young, single, professional, scholarly people to find a place where we can grow and learn and better understand our place in the body of Christ. I will leave you, gentle reader, to take in Ms. Bear’s thoughts, as they are insightful, intelligent, and typically thoughtful of Bethany.

What I wish to address here are the two questions she asks at the end of her blog. Those two questions are as follows:

1) What does the word “home” mean to you? 2) Does your current church provide a sense of home for you? If so, how? If not, what could your church do differently?

Having informed Bethany that my response would likely be longer than is considered polite in the blogosphere, I nevertheless promised to address them in a blog entry of my own, so here are my answers.

As to the first question, what is “home,” the answer is lengthy and to some extent plays into the answer to part two. But the other parts first…

To me, home has three potential meanings, and if you take a little from column A, a little from column B, and a little from column C, you probably get as close as you can to what “home” actually looks like.

For parts A and B, I shall introduce you all to my love of music. When I remember things, I remember them to music—a soundtrack for my life, if you will. Some songs remind me of people or incidents, and others actually take me back to a moment in time.

One way to understand home is as an abstract group of ideas, stories, values, etc. that are connected to a family unit or community. In many ways, this is what the musical In the Heights explores. Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda as a love letter to his neighborhood, In the Heights takes place in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan when the neighborhood is in a state of flux. The Heights is a mostly Latino, mostly immigrant neighborhood, and the characters Miranda introduces his audience to are all struggling in some way with the question of home.

Is “home” Washington Heights or is it Puerto Rico or Cuba or the Dominican Republic? The answer, ultimately, is that home for these characters is Washington Heights, but home also exists in the legacy of previous generations, the stories they brought with them, and the sense of community being immigrants—“strangers in a strange land”—engendered among them. In the Finale of the musical, Usnavi, the main character, articulates this beautifully:

Yeah, I'm a streetlight, chillin' in the heat
I illuminate the stories of the people in the street
Some have happy endings, some are bittersweet
But I know them all and that's what makes my life complete

The second idea of what home is comes from Miranda Lambert’s awesome song, The House That Built Me. The song is about going back to one’s childhood home and remembering the growth experienced within its walls. For me, there are four houses that built me: my grandparents’ house, our house in Guymon, my best friend’s house in Guymon, and my condo in Waco. This is a much more concrete example of home—those physical places where we experienced life and learned how to deal with all that was thrown at us.

Two of the houses that built me were my actual domiciles. While I don’t live in either anymore, the time I spent in those places was incredibly formative. My grandparents’ house, which has since been sold, was the one constant in my life when I was a kid. No matter where we lived or what was going on, I could always go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and feel like I was home. I lovingly refer to my best friend’s parents as my “other parents” and their house, even today, is a place where I know I can go and just chill and get away from all of the stress of life.

Finally, there is “family,” another term that demands quotation marks because it doesn’t necessarily refer simply to mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Those people are family. We’re stuck with them. “Family” is something we get to choose. Sometimes there is overlap; sometimes there isn’t. But where “family” is, there is “home.”

When people ask me where I’m from, where “home” is, my answer is not Stillwater, OK, where my parents reside (though I have a great deal of affection for that city and many of its citizens). “Home” to me is Guymon, OK and Waco, TX. That is where much of my “family” resides. This is where we get into the territory of Bethany’s second question—how churches provide a sense of home. Part of the reason that Guymon and Waco are both “home” to me is because of my great affection for my church “families” in each place.

For a very long time, Victory Memorial United Methodist Church in Guymon was my gold standard for what a church ought to do and how a church should treat people. This past winter, I was burnt out on life and tired of drama and so I escaped to Guymon. While there, I helped with Christmas Baskets for the less fortunate in town—a project of the Guymon Ministerial Alliance, but mostly made possible by the people of Victory Memorial—and spent quality time on a Friday night and Saturday morning in fellowship with my church family while we put together and delivered Christmas Baskets.

Then, on Sunday, I went to church where I was inundated with questions—very sincere questions—about what I had been up to, how my parents were, and other inquiries into my life. I was told several times that I was missed. Then, just as I had predicted would happen, when Charlotte, the choir director saw me before the service, she told me how glad she was to see me and that if she had known I was there, I could have come rehearsed for and performed in the Christmas Cantata. Those people are my family; that church is my home. People care; people listen; people get me. That’s pretty cool. It’s something all churches should aspire to.

Calvary Baptist Church in Waco does aspire to that. When a new member joins Calvary, the congregation pledges itself to be the family of God for that person in this place. After the first two hundred or so times you say that pledge, you memorize it and it kind of becomes rote, except that the people of Calvary actually try to be the family of God for people in Waco.

The past year has been full of ups and downs for me, and the people of Calvary have been there, walking beside me every step of the way. Some of them have even walked behind me to administer a well-timed kick in the butt as needed. But they have been a better support system than I ever expected and probably better than I deserve. I was in Stillwater most of the summer, and late in the summer, I was in Waco and at church and Tom and Jan Purdy both gave me big hugs and said they had been thinking about me and wondering how I was doing while I was gone. It warmed my heart to know that even in my absence, I was missed—though I’m sure it was mostly because Tom missed picking on me, but I digress…

Neither Calvary nor Victory Memorial is perfect. They aren’t supposed to be. Churches—even great churches—are merely an imperfect, earth-bound representation of the Kingdom of God. But whatever their faults, these two congregations are my family and wherever they are, I always feel at home.

So we’re not back to the first question: what is “home?” Home is a set of values, memories, and ideals of a community which may or may not include specific places, but always includes people who have walked beside you, in dark times and in times of celebration. In the midst of those people, you are free to be the most authentic self you know how to be because you can do that—be angry and frustrated and insecure and happy and joyful and everything in between—with no fear of ridicule or rejection.

As for how churches—the good ones and the not-so-good ones—can be “home” for people, the answer lies in the one word summation of part three of answer one: relationship, knowing people and being known to people. “Do not walk in front of me; I may not follow. Do not walk behind me; I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.” This is the mission of churches—to walk through life beside people (occasionally taking a detour to give someone a kick in the pants) through life—regardless of the phase of life people are in. College students, graduate students, young professionals, newly married couples, new parents…the list goes on. All of these groups are walking through different things, but they all want people who will walk with them and help them work out their salvation with fear and trembling, whatever that looks like for them in that time and space. This is a church “family.”

See Bethany? I told you it would take a while…

Oh ye of little...obedience?

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. --Hebrews 11:6

This was the verse on which the pastor spoke at my church on Sunday. His point: God demands faith from those who profess to follow Him and those who follow Him are rewarded for their faith. Just so we’re all clear, this is a two premise statement:
1. God wants faith.
2. God rewards faith.

To this point, my issues are small. However, there is one thing that was said during the sermon that I have serious issues with. Now, admittedly, my mind was wandering to all sorts of places that were NOT the sanctuary of my church, but it came quickly back to the sanctuary when I heard the pastor say that doubters and skeptics could not receive the rewards of God because they did not have faith. See Stephanie. See Stephanie nearly come out of her chair.

Let’s be very clear here. It is my contention that doubt and faith are not mutually exclusive. Questioning is not a vice, and intellectual curiosity (about faith or anything else) is not a reason for God to withhold His rewards from us. In fact, one could argue that God…and Paul expected questions and doubts and skepticism. In Phillipians 2:12, Paul commands the church at Phillipi to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” If working out one’s salvation means gaining a deeper appreciation of the demands of the Almighty, I am loathe to believe that anyone can do that without asking questions and going through periods of doubt.

The very idea of working out one’s salvation intimates that it’s a process—one that probably won’t be completed until our death. We are to grow continuously, ask questions continuously, wrestle (sometimes with God) continuously. At times our salvation will seem constricting. We go through growing pains when we feel uncomfortable in our faith, but that doesn’t mean that our doubts are a hindrance to our salvation. Doubts are not a hindrance because faith is not the beginning of this journey.

Obedience is the beginning. Abraham obeyed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham didn’t have much faith that his son Isaac would be spared, but because of his obedience, he was. Faith can be fleeting. But if we obey, faith will come. This past year has been a huge test of my faith. I have often felt like Job, but in the middle of the story when things were looking bleak. I didn’t often have a lot of faith. But I continued to obey. And my faith came back.

The problem with certain sects in Christianity today is that simple faith—absolute, unquestioning, anti-intellectual faith—is seen as the hallmark of Christian orthodoxy. This is not the case. Real faith involves thinking. It involves asking questions. Yes, it even involves doubts and skepticism. This is not to say heresy should be nurtured. It shouldn’t. However, it shouldn’t be shied away from either. One of my most favorite things about Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, TX is that no question is to heretical, stupid, or difficult to ask. We ask the questions, and we deal with them—in small groups, in Sunday School, as a congregation. But only by addressing one’s doubts and working through those issues with men and women of faith and intellect who can provide counsel and wisdom. And through that act of obedience, one actually finds faith.

So perhaps it isn’t so much that God rewards faith but that faith is the reward. Obedience is the demand. After all, grammatically, faith has not verb equivalent. We have “believe,” but that doesn’t quite compute. One can’t “faith” anything. One can, however, obey. That is what is credited to us as righteousness. In Genesis 12, the Lord commanded Abraham to leave his home and journey south and Abraham went. It was only after Abraham did as the Lord commanded, that it is said that Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. The first step, the most important step, was Abraham’s obedience.

Is faith important to one’s Christian walk? Of course it is! It should not, however, become the be-all and end-all. We should not understand faith to be so important and strict that doubt and skepticism is looked down upon. Those who doubt often strengthen their faith in dealing with their doubts. Those who doubt are rewarded. They are rewarded with faith—as long as they remain obedient while waiting for their faith to return.

On being a first century church in the 21st century

Anyone who knows me know that I am about as far from a fundamentalist as one can get. So it may sound strange for me to advocate returning to the first century state of mind when it comes to American Christianity. For the record, I don’t think the first century church was particularly fundamentalist theologically, but I digress. Among the key characteristics of the first century church were its minority status and its mission. Because of the minority status of the church, it could not proselytize openly, yet it thrived. Why? Because it catered to the poor and the disenfranchised in society, just as Jesus did.

Those with the biggest soapboxes in the American church have all but abandoned this principle. It’s easy to forget the little things when you’re by far the biggest fish is what is admittedly the biggest religious pond in the world. When there are so many denominations fighting for butts in pews, it’s easy to overlook the basic message of Christianity in the pursuit of convincing people that yours is the best (possibly the only) path to salvation.

The Great Commission commands believers to go and make disciples. Most of the “leaders” of American Christianity seem more interested either condemning those whose beliefs don’t line up with theirs or bemoaning the supposed persecution of Christianity in America. If I understand my Bible, neither of these fall under the rubric of making disciples. As I see it, whining has never won anyone to any cause, least of all Christianity. Furthermore, this wrong-headed persecution complex belittles the actual persecution experienced by Christians in many parts of the world.

I spent four months in Cairo this spring, where Christians make up 10% of the population and face many social and political challenges. As in almost all Muslim country, proselytizing is against the law in Egypt. Christians in America who only think their rights are being infringed upon would find those rights actually being curtailed on the streets of Cairo. Yet the churches there are active, they are vibrant, they are, indeed, fulfilling Christ’s command to go and make disciples. These churches have active prison ministries. They teach English to Sudanese refugees. They offer free or nearly free medical care to those who cannot afford to go to hospitals. They provide job training for women so that they can earn money to help feed their families.

The people who are helped by these services are well aware that they are being helped by Christian churches, even if the words “church,” “Jesus,” and “Christian” are never spoken. This is the spirit of the first century church. Jesus and his disciples, above all else, took care of the poor, widows, children, and the sick. When they met with opposition, they didn’t whine or cry or pout because Jesus commanded them to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.

I have been approached by a couple of people in the last few weeks asking what can be done to get young people back into churches, and I think the answer lies in going back to the ideals of the first century church. We have known for many years about the fundamentalist reaction against materialism. However, I think what we are seeing now is a progressive reaction against materialism. I call this a progressive reaction to materialism because those in my generation aren’t suggesting going back to a status quo or advocating a strict interpretation of scripture or any of the things that the fundamentalist movement espouses, but we are distressed by the vacuous nature of the our culture and desperately want to contribute something positive to the world around us.

We care about issues like global poverty, AIDS in Africa, and human rights abuses. We hope to find greener energy alternatives both because of our concern for the environment and our worries about being so dependent on foreign oil. We want to reach out to the impoverished in our own communities. We are distressed by the prevalence of abortion in this country, but do not feel that criminalizing abortion is the answer.

The key to getting young people back into churches is to recognize our concerns and find ways for us to contribute to those causes which we are passionate about which are, incidentally, the same issues Jesus and his disciples were concerned with as well. We are not satisfied with a few hours of singing and platitudes on Sunday mornings. Bishop Mouneer, the head of the Anglican diocese in Egypt, often preaches that the church’s mission does not end at the front door of the church; that’s where it begins. Only when we face the world and confront the problems in it can we claim to be doing the work of the church.

This is the position of many in my generation, yet few of our elders in the American church seem as concerned as we are about the issues we care most about. Churches all around the United States are dying. Their populations are aging, their membership decreasing. To prevent Christianity from diminishing in America, churches must reach out to my generation. This is the blueprint. Will anyone listen?

More on Torture, Justice, and the American Way

When last we spoke, I asked why the Bush administration had turned to a torture program reverse-engineered from the U.S. military’s SERE program to train soldiers, sailors, and Marines to resist torture designed to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Apparently the Republicans have conveniently glossed over this troubling detail, because they continue to stay on the “Dick Cheney kept us safe” bandwagon. Oh well. Things are getting a little hotter for the Republicans, though, since hearings have started on Capitol Hill regarding who knew what and when, who authorized what and when, and who dissented and when and why.

When it comes to damning testimony, I don’t know that anyone has any more damning information to share than Ali Soufan. Soufan is a Lebanese-American who joined the FBI as an interrogator in the late ‘90s. He is notable in this story because he was the guy who interrogated Abu Zubaydah before the waterboarding and got Zubaydah to give up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind 9-11 and the identity of Jose Padilla, the supposed “dirty bomber.” Again, this information was given to Soufan during a standard interrogation with NO TORTURE needed. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts this week, Soufan recounted the events that led him to walk away from the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. He and his partner, using traditional interrogation tactics, were getting lots of actionable intelligence information from Zubaydah.

Then the CIA showed up with orders from on high to use “harsh interrogation tactics.” This is, by the way, the only time I will use this despicable euphemism. They were told to torture, and no game of semantics can hide or obscure that fact. According to Soufan, as soon as the waterboard was introduced to Zubaydah, he became defensive and uncooperative. Eventually, Soufan and his partner were asked to come back and continue their interrogation. This back and forth between Soufan and the CIA continued until Zubaydah was so traumatized by the waterboarding that he shut down completely and Soufan could not get any more information from him. It was at that point that Ali Soufan, one of this country’s greatest weapons in the fight against terror, walked away from the interrogation. His disenfranchisement with what he saw going on around him eventually led him to leave the FBI altogether.

In his testimony this week, Mr. Soufan offered several refutations to the Bush administration’s “ticking time bomb” nonsense—you know, that scenario where an attack is imminent so you’ll resort to ANYTHING to get information to stop it, never mind the fact that torture doesn’t lead to actionable intelligence. In fact, that was Soufan’s first point. Torture is ineffective. According to Mr. Soufan, “Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse – the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example.” Hey, guess what, these guys have their very own SERE school! Just in case they get captured and tortured to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes. Mr. Soufan also said that torture at the hands of Americans only reinforces a detainees impression of America as amoral and Godless and thus strengthens his will to resist.

Following closely from this is Mr. Soufan’s second point: The information gained during torture is not, despite the constant ramblings of former Vice President Cheney, reliable. In fact, the FBI and CIA spent entirely too much time chasing down false information which had been tortured right out of detainees. Again, see my previous point in the preceding post—I would probably admit to having Osama bin Laden’s love child if waterboarded just to make it stop. Too bad it would have been not just a lie, but a real whopper of a lie.

Finally, Mr. Soufan addressed the “ticking time bomb” scenario directly. The CIA had, in its arsenal of torture tactics, authorization to use sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours. That is seven and a half days, at the end of which, I don’t know many people who would be coherent enough to even remember their own name, let alone anything that might even resemble actionable intelligence. When questioned by Senator Lindsey Graham (we’ll get back to Mr. Graham in a moment) about the allegations of former CIA officer John Kiriakou that Abu Zubaydah (the very one that Mr. Soufan so excellently interrogated) broke within seconds of being waterboarded, Mr. Soufan first reminded the senator that Mr. Kiriakou had recanted that statement, saying he had not been present during the waterboarding of Zubaydah and thus could not speak to the veracity of that claim. Then he made the excellent point that if waterboarding was so successful, why was it used 83 times against Abu Zubaydah and 183 times against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed…IN ONE MONTH!! What kind of “timely” information can be coerced from a guy who has to be waterboarded 6 times a day for a month?

But here’s the really bad news, just as I feared in my last post about this topic: this wasn’t really about “actionable intelligence” at all. It was about propaganda, gotten by any means, at any cost. The administration always held up the “ticking time bomb” scenario as the only acceptable reason for getting a little rough with detainees, be they in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, or any number of black-ops sites around the world. Yet, the evidence points to something much more insidious. In a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding the use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War, buried near the back, on page 353, is the following statement: “CTC [Counter Terrorist Center] noted that the questions regarding al-Qaida's ties to the Iraqi regime were among the first presented to senior al-Qaida operational planner Khalid Shaikh Muhammad following his capture.”

Just so we all know the timeline here, KSM was captured on March 1, 2003. During March 2003, he was famously waterboarded 183 times. The Iraq War started March 20, 2003. So apparently the only attack that was imminent here was the American attack on Iraq. Furthermore, this was not, I repeat WAS NOT, a ticking time bomb scenario. This was a directive from somewhere in the Bush administration to get information linking al-Qaeda and Iraq, a link that virtually everyone (except Dick Cheney) now believes to be non-existent, to justify the war. If that’s not a propaganda purpose, then I don’t know what is.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is completely missing the point here. This isn’t about finger pointing or hating Bush or demonizing our armed forces or intelligence services. This is about what America stands for. This is about keeping America safe. This is about actually preventing the next attack, not merely paying lip service to that auspicious goal. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant here. The only way this country can avoid making the same horrible, illegal, injurious mistakes again is to know exactly what those mistakes where. How were these things allowed to happen? Who was responsible for allowing it? Who stood back and did nothing while it happened? I’m sure I will come back to this issue many times before all is said and done because it infuriates me. It infuriates me because it was harmful to national security. It infuriates me because it put our men and women in uniform in greater danger in Iraq and Afghanistan. It infuriates me because it has galvanized Muslim opinion in favor of al Qaeda and its objectives. And personally, it infuriates me because the Bush administration and its Republican allies in Congress at the time demonized those who disagreed with them.

Dissenters were subtly, and not-so-subtly, called traitors and turncoats. Their patriotism was questioned. They were mocked and ridiculed by people who claimed to be looking out for this country. As it turns out, the true patriots here were the dissenters, not the idiots in charge. And to think that their integrity was being impugned by the likes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld who were looking out for something, though I haven’t quite figured it out yet. One thing is certain, they were not looking out for the best interests of the country. If they had been, they would have left the interrogating to the professionals, refrained from meddling in the affairs of the intelligence community, and listened when Judge Advocates from all four branches of the military raised objections to the torture methods being authorized from on high.

And now the Republicans, who are supposedly all about duty, honor, and country, who have tried to win every election since 9-11 by portraying the Democrats as sissies and not at all concerned about national security, are stonewalling every attempt to get to the truth in this, the most important of matters with relation to national security. And that brings me back to our friend, Senator Graham. It was obvious from some of his questions for Mr. Soufan in the Judiciary Committee hearing this week that Mr. Graham has been drinking the Republican Kool-Aid. It is also becoming readily apparent to me that this is all being done not because of some deeply held conviction that these tactics were necessary but because the Republicans want to do whatever they can wherever they can to get in President Obama’s way. Want to know my proof? The words of no less than Senator Lindsey Graham.

In February 2006, when hearings were convening to investigate the allegations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Senator Graham disagreed with his Republican colleague, Jim Inhofe, who I try regularly to forget that my fellow Oklahomans have the bad sense to keep sending to Washington, about whether outrage over the events at Abu Ghraib was warranted or not. Inhofe, of course, thought that the outrage itself was outrageous because he just knew that all of the detainees being abused were murderers and terrorists. Senator Graham rebutted this assertion saying, “When you are the good guys, you’ve got to act like the good guys.” Indeed, Senator Graham. So in 2006, you thought the good guys ought to act that way, and now you think the good guys should just…what, exactly? Avoid looking too close at what was going on? You, John McCain, and others who have in the past vocally opposed torture now think we should just sweep it under the rug? How is that helpful? What good does that accomplish? Don’t the good guys generally stand for truth, justice, and the American way? How can we possibly do that if we ignore the truth and don’t vigorously pursue justice?

Prove to me, Republicans, prove to me that you are interested in government accountability all the time and not just when it’s the other guys in power. Prove to me that your belief in the goodness of our country isn’t just lip service to win elections. Cooperate with the Democrats. Call for a special prosecutor. Demand an independent investigation. Rigorously pursue justice for those who were tortured, no matter their degree of guilt or innocence. Demand of yourselves, of the Democrats, of all of us, that none of us be considered above the law—even, if necessary, a former president, vice-president, cabinet secretary, or legal counsel turned federal judge. Loving this country doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to its faults or its wrongdoings. Patriotism is not blind allegiance. So prove it, Republicans. Let’s see if your patriotism can hold up when the going gets tough, because this isn’t going away. You can stay on the wrong side of this issue, or you can come toward the light. If you’re at all concerned about the survival of the GOP or its continued relevance on the national stage, I strongly recommend you chose the latter of those two options.

Here is the link to all of the testimony from the hearing in front of the Judiciary’s subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, as well as a link to the written testimony of former Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander. I would also like to thank Mr. Soufan and Mr. Alexander for their exemplary service to this country. These men are true patriots and deserve nothing but our utmost respect.
Testimony from Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
Matthew Alexander's Written Testimony to the Subcommittee