By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jun 19, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
My friend, Chuck Gutenson, a Christian scholar at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, has authored an outstanding new book on the political misuse of Jesus’ image and teachings. In Hijacked: Responding to the Partisan Church Divide, Gutenson argues that all Americans should join in efforts to stop the unhealthy alliance of religious faith and political partisanship.
Here’s an excerpt:
Click here to review/purchase
It really gets old, doesn’t it? Every election cycle, the story is the same. This Christian says that Christian is not really a Christian. And why is that? Is it because they differ on critical issues relating to the content of the Christian faith? Is it because of doctrinal or ecclesial disputes? No, the reason for this inability to recognize and respect each other as Christian sisters and brothers is because those Christians belong to a different political party and support different political candidates than we do. Oh, don’t get me wrong, they may have doctrinal or ecclesial disputes. We just don’t ever get to find out because the wedge issue that lies at the surface is our political differences.
One of the most common critiques of Christians in our contemporary culture is that we are “too political.” This has been borne out by study after study, and it’s a huge turnoff to younger folks. In fact, it is such a turnoff that in droves they are leaving churches that cannot properly distinguish their political positions from their Christian faith. And, frankly, who can blame them? Why continue to be a tarred by the rancorous debates over politics? Interestingly, it was Barry Goldwater who presciently said: “Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise.” And, therein lies the crux of the problem: because we are sure God is on our side, any attempt to compromise with those who disagree with us is judged to be a betrayal. The outcome? Rather than Christian faith being a thing that unites us, it becomes distorted and used for partisan gain. It seems that being political power brokers has become too seductive for us to resist.
But, you know what? Those who attempt to hijack religious faith for partisan gain do so because, well, because it works. And, as long as it works, they will continue to do it, election cycle after election cycle after election cycle. It will continue to divide, rather than unite, and with each cycle, more folks will throw up their hands in desperation and walk away. It can be stopped, though. In fact, we can stop it anytime we want. All we have to do is make it clear that we have had enough and will no longer tolerate it. And that’s exactly what we’d like to have you help us do. How? Join our campaign, pledge not to use religious faith for partisan gain and to do all you can to resist those who do.
Gutenson has also launched a Web site — DontLetThemHijackJesus.com — where citizens can share video messages with their friends.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jun 12, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
On June 26th, there will be an election in Brooklyn between Hakeem Jeffries, a New York State Assemblyman and New York City Councilman, Charles Barron. While the Daily News this week endorsed Jeffries in the Democratic Primary (which will essentially be the election in this heavily-Democratic district), the retiring Member of Congress Ed Towns, and the Amsterdam News, have endorsed Barron. This race is neck in neck and the turnout will be lowimmediately.
Barron has questioned the legitimacy of Israel’s existence, calling the Israeli government “the biggest terrorist in the world.” In 2009, hejoined former anti-Israel congresswoman Cynthia McKinney on a Viva Palestine convoy to undermine the Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza, which he has compared to a “concentration death camp.” He said, “There’s too many children and women and innocent men of Gaza dying because you’re isolating them and not allowing anything in. It’s like having a concentration death camp.”
At a 2002 rally in support of reparations for slavery, Barron said: “I want to go up to the closest white person and say, ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my mental health.”
For a compilation of Barron’s statements, click here:
And be sure to watch this stunning video:
If any of this makes you want to jump to action, click here to support Barron’s primary opponent, Hakeem Jeffries.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jun 12, 2012 at 11:00 AM ET
One of the “Crazy Lies” that I have debunked in my new book, “The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies About the Jewish State,” is the pernicious charge of “pinkwashing”: anti-Zionists perniciously claim that Israel’s extraordinary LGBT record is merely a pink smokescreen for its other failures. [Click here to read an excerpt from my book on “pinkwashing” charge.]
Fortunately, I am not the only one up and arms about the claim. Last week, a Trustee of the City University of New York lambasted that school’s decision to hold a conference on pinkwashing. As The Algemeiner reports:
The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at City University of New York plans to hold a conference on “Homonationalism and Pinkwashing” next year, which intends to accuse Israel of using their strong record on gay rights to detract from the “oppression of Palestinians”, while ignoring “the existence of Palestinian gay-rights organizations”, according to a release from CLAGS.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who sits on the Board of CUNY Trustees calls the conference “disgusting” and plans to bring the issue to the Chancellor’s office, which he believes may be unaware of the issue.
“It’s just amazing to me that one of the few free societies in the world like the state of Israel should be a target for people so stupid that they can’t recognize what their fate would be in any other nation in the Middle East,” Wiesenfeld told The Algemeiner.
Remember the RP’s highly critical take on Peter Beinart’s The Crisis of Zionism? Apparently, the RP is not alone…on either side of the issue.
Here’s a brilliant piece by New York‘s Jason Zengerle on Beinart and the controversy surrounding his book:
“I’m really not a radical.”
It is late April, a month after his new book about American Jews, Israel, and their tangled, often tortured relationship has hit the shelves, and Peter Beinart is on the defensive. He’s sitting in his office at the City University of New York. Although he’s now worked at CUNY for two years, the small, windowless cube—more befitting a research assistant than a tenured journalism and political-science professor—is filled with unpacked cardboard boxes and little else. But more square footage, or a view, or some family photographs would do little to lift the sense of siege that pervades the room. “I’m trying to live as a critic of Israel’s policies, from a moral perspective, inside the Jewish community,” Beinart says, “and inside the fairly mainstream Jewish community, which is where I feel most at home.”
Now that home has become something of a war zone. At his shul—“It’s an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side,” he says, “but it’s probably better not to mention its name”—he is suddenly a controversial congregant. At the Jewish day school where he sends his young children, other parents now look at him askance. Even members of Beinart’s own family are furious at him. And yet it’s the impact his book has had on his professional home—namely the community of center-left American Jewish writer-intellectuals where Beinart has spent his career—that has been most painful.
From the moment it was published, The Crisis of Zionism has dominated the American Jewish political discourse. The book argues that Israeli policies—chief among them the occupation of Palestinian lands—threaten the democratic character of Israel and the Zionist project in general, and that it’s the responsibility of American Jews to help change those policies. Marc Tracy, who edits the Scroll, the blog of the Jewish online magazine Tablet, says, “There was definitely a period where the Scroll might as well have been renamed ‘the Peter Beinart Blog.’ Everything was about him.” Politically conservative Jews attacked the book—not unpredictably. “Why does [Beinart] hate Israel so?” Daniel Gordis asked in his review for the Jerusalem Post, before answering: “Beinart’s problem isn’t really with Israel. It’s with Judaism.” The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, writing for Tablet, branded The Crisis of Zionism “an act of moral solipsism.” But withering reviews have come from Beinart’s ideological allies on the Jewish center-left as well. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Rosen—a mild-mannered Jewish public intellectual whose most recent book was a meditation on bird-watching—savaged Beinart for his “Manichaean simplicities” and for “employ[ing] several formulations favored by anti-Semites.” Tablet editor Alana Newhouse panned the book in the Washington Post for introducing “its own repressive litmus test, this one to determine who can be considered both a liberal American and a Zionist.”
This morning, The Huffington Post features an exclusive excerpt from the RP’s latest book, The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies about the Jewish State” In the excerpt, the RP discusses the toxic charge of “pinkwashing,” in which anti-Zionist activists claim that Israel brags about its extraordinary LGBT culture to brainwash Americans about its other activities:
Israel’s commendable gay rights record should be a cause for the American Left to celebrate. But in the Orwellian dystopia that is our political discourse today, the Israel-is-always-wrong crowd has used Israeli publicity of its proud LGBT culture as yet another reason to criticize the Jewish State.
Borrowing a term coined by the breast cancer prevention community to describe companies that claim to care about the disease but at the same time sell carcinogenic products, the anti-Israel crowd has redefined “pinkwashing” as Israeli propaganda designed to hypnotize American liberals into ignoring Israel’s transgressions in the disputed territories.
The most quotable advocate of this terminology is CUNY English Professor Sarah Schulman, who described her objective as trying to frame the Palestinian cause with simpler language, “like in the kinds of magazines you read in the laundromat.” (Perhaps “pinkwashing” is supposed to remind laundromat users of the infuriating consequences of leaving a red shirt in a white washload?)
20 years as a senior-level executive with three Fortune 500 companies, a high-level governmental official, a political player rubbing elbows with governors, members of congress and even private visits with the President.
However, after 20 years of climbing the corporate ladder, extensive travel and a cell phone permanently in my ear, I started to feel that while I had achieved some level of “success,” I was lacking “significance.”
While playing corporate musical chairs, the music suddenly stopped one Friday afternoon and I found myself without a chair in that ivory tower I had grown so comfortable in occupying. But it was a 300 year old story that would not only be redemptive; it would provide the purpose I had been seeking and the means to help others in similar situations find their purpose.
Ironically, I had delivered thousands of speeches over the years about the power of purpose. Included in those speeches was a simple yet powerful story of a bystander observing two people laying bricks. The first person when asked what he was doing responded, “I’m laying bricks.” The second responded, “I’m building a cathedral.” Naturally, the “cathedral builder” had resonated more with me than the “bricklayer,” but after 20 years of playing the corporate game, pushing my way to the front of the room, I was starting to feel more like that “bricklayer.” And unfortunately, I wasn’t alone.
Click to order Greg's book
Numerousstudies report that less than halfof employees are actually satisfied with their jobs and feel a sense of purpose. Other surveys suggest that a high number of employees would leave their companies today if the economy were better. And with one in ten Americans currently unemployed, six of those ten unemployed say the next job they get will most likely not provide purpose; instead, they expect to have to settle for something less.
A women and workplace survey from “More Magazine” revealed that 43% of the women surveyed say they are less ambitious now than they were a decade ago. And only a quarter of the 500 women ages 35 to 60 say they’re working toward their next promotion. Three out of the four of women in the survey, 73%, say they would not apply for their boss’ job, reporting the stress, office politics and lack of purpose make the leap simply not worth it. In fact, two of three women said they would accept considerably less money for more free time and more flexibility. The bottom line is, there’s never been a time when Americans, male and female, young and old, public and private sector, need a sense of purpose.
Read the rest of… Greg Coker: The Recovering Bricklayer
It doesn’t take a decades old bullying incident to illuminate Mitt Romney’s views towards gays. His current public policy positions say enough. Mitt Romney believes that gay people are second class citizens.
Mitt Romney believes the humanity of gay citizens is not equal to the humanity of straight citizens. Otherwise, Mitt Romney wouldn’t advocate for denying the basic right for gay people who love one another to marry one another.
Mitt hails from a party that often claims government encroaches on religious liberty. But Mitt’s vision of government encroaches on my religious liberty. I am Jewish, and Reform (and Conservative) Judaism recognizes the rights of gay folks to get married. But under Mitt’s governing philosophy, the government would supersede the right of my faith community to recognize and sanction gay marriage.
Small government and individual liberty aren’t universal principles within the modern Republican Party. They only apply to those who were born the “right” way.
This morning, the RP, former Congressman Artur Davis, and former RNC Chairman Michael Steele weigh in about last week’s announcement by President Obama of his support for marriage equality.
Please let us know how you feel in the comments section below.
