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Ted Cruze and The Liberty Way

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Sen. Ted Cruze (R-TX)

Sen. Ted Cruze (R-TX)

Yesterday Senator Ted Cruze (R-TX) chose to announce his candidacy for the Republican Party presidential nomination at Liberty University, home of “The Liberty Way” (see below).

Liberty University is a telling choice.  Liberty has grown to become the largest university in Virginia. But, as universities go… well, Liberty is not what Thomas Jefferson or the University of Virginia would recognize as a place of higher education.

Liberty is the creation of the late Jerry Falwell (1933-2007), the televangelist host of “The Old Time Gospel Hour” and father of “the Moral Majority,” the right-wing evangelical political movement that became a national platform for the Religious Right. In the 1950s and ’60s, Falwell was a severe critic of Martin Lutber King, Jr., the civil rights movement and school desegregation. Later, in 1993, he declared

“AIDs is not just God’s punishment of homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for a society that tolerates homosexuals.”

Liberty was not always Liberty. Jerry Falwell founded Lynchburg Baptist College 1971. The name was changed to Liberty Baptist College, and finally became Liberty University in 1984. Falwell. A graduated in 1958 from Baptist Bible College, an unaccredited Bible college in Springfield, MO, named himself Chancellor. His alma mater was later granted preliminary academic accreditation 43 years later in 2001. When Falwell died in 2007, his son, Jerry Falwell, Jr., followed in his father’s footsteps, much as Franklin Graham did with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

So, why would someone kick off a presidential campaign at Liberty University?

Liberty is the largest Christian university in the world, largely because of the more than 100,000 on-line students along with the roughly 13,000 who attend classes at one of Liberty’s three sites.

Liberty University’s colors are red, white, and blue. It’s patriotic. The cross and the flag go together at Liberty. And it’s hard to tell the difference between the two. Their on-line website’s tagline is “Training Champions for Christ since 1971.”

Senator Ted Cruz is a Texan. He could have chosen to announce his mission to take back “the promise of America” at the Alamo or the University of Texas, but he didn’t. He chose Liberty in Virginia.

Liberty requires students to abide by “The Liberty Way” code of conduct but doesn’t tell students what it is until after they’ve enrolled. Here’s all Liberty says about “The Liberty Way” on its website. The Daily Kos published “Liberty University’s The Liberty Way’ Exposed“. I wonder if the Senator signed before he chose Liberty.

We at Views from the Edge view “the way” a bit differently. A little Bible reading goes a long way:

“What does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk HUMBLY with your God?” [Micah 6:8]

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, March 24, 2015.

 

 

Want a Handgun? Want to Be Safe?

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This video is worth watching. It says what so many of us think and feel.

Click HERE to watch the video of visitors to the NYC gun store targeting first time gun buyers.

American Religion and LGBT Rights

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Common Good News, an online publication of Faith in Public Life  and Convergence, re-published and interesting piece today from ThinkProgress. Click The Rise of LGBT Rights is an Existential Threat to Conservative Religious Groups for a thoughtful read following the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s re-definiton of marriage and news of the election of a Lesbian Rabbi to lead the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

 

Visual Poetry

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Steve flies kites all night when the weather is just right. Last night the kite was poetry in motion over the Illinois prairie. Photo by Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 16, 2015.

Visual poetry

Visual poetry

 

Barack Obama after the Presidency?

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Ever wondered what President Barack Obama will do after he leaves office? 

The President’s 50th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” speech in Selma, Alabama is a masterpiece in the tradition of the Church of the Bridge (see earlier post “The Church as Bridge” on Views from the Edge). Think of the President as pastor-preacher in the prophetic preaching tradition that speaks truth to power, celebrates hope, honors courage, and preaches a gospel that calls us all to cross the Pettus Bridge toward the world for which our hearts yearn.  The President’s speech was, in fact, a sermon rooted in Hebrew and Christian Scripture, freely quoted from memory.

Click HERE to hear the President on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

The Church on the Bridge

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Pettus Bridge, Selma to Montgomery

Pettus Bridge, Selma to Montgomery

If some churches are like opium dens, others are like Pettus Bridge, the bridge over the Alabama River you must cross to get from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

In the history of America’s civil rights movement, Pettus Bridge and the events of “Bloody Saturday” represent a crossing over from the society addicted to violence, hatred, and war to “the peaceable kingdom” of Isaiah. Think Jesus. Think Martin Luther King, Jr. Think Congressman John Lewis. Think all the anonymous souls who dared to cross the bridge from here to there.

“Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies — or else? The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” [The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]

I suspect Karl Marx never knew a church like that. What he saw was religion as a tool of the powerful, an ideological overlay on reality to keep their subjects compliant with the existing social order.

The church of the bridge is no opium den. No one is doped up. No one is in a stupor. People don’t go there to hide. It is by nature a place that calls for commitment and action. The Church as Pettus Bridge is spiritually, economically, politically, and culturally revolutionary. It requires far-reaching transformation of people, structures, and systems. It’s a risky place. The church on the bridge requires you to put your whole body, mind, and soul on the line – on the  bridge – fully conscious that the troops the old social order will come after you. It is the church of Jesus and the prophets, and of Paul at his best:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. [Epistle to the Romans 12: 1-2, NRSV]

Every time the Church of the Bridge gathers for worship, the pews are filled with people wearing crash helmets. They expect something real to happen. They expect to make it happen. When they gather around the Lord’s Table for Eucharist, they know what they are celebrating: “the peaceable kingdom”, the City of God on the other side of violence, hatred, and war that puts them on the bridge.

 

 

 

Just a bunch of hypocrites

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“It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.” – George Whitefield (1714-1770)

Many folks who remain in the churches have learned to live with poor sermons. Others have heard them and moved on.

William Sloane Coffin memorial photo

William Sloane Coffin memorial photo

One of those who had given up met one of America’s great preachers one day in a casual encounter.

“I don’t go to church any more.” he said, “They’re just a bunch of hypocrites!” To which William Sloane Coffin replied, “You bet. We are! And there’s always room for one more.”

William Sloan Coffin’s sermons always gave offense. As Chaplain at Yale, it was his pulpit that sparked and led the campus civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War. It was Coffin who presiding at the burning of draft cards. It was this offensive preacher who co-founded Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam and served as leader of SANE/FREEZE, America’s largest movement for global nuclear disarmament. Coffin became Senior Minister of Riverside Church in NYC, one of the nation’s great preaching churches built for Harry Emerson Fosdick, the pacifist preacher thrown out of his previous congregation for sermons that status quo maintainers found offensive.

In the parlance of William Sloane Coffin, the well known statement that “the church is a hospital for sinners; not a museum for saints” [variously attributed to Augustine of Hippo, St. John Chrysostom, Abigail van Buren, and others] might be re-rendered “the church is a hospital for hypocrites; not a museum or a mutual congratulations society for the sinless.”

In a future post Views from the Edge will reflect on the American religious landscape in light of Whitefield’s observation and this retired preacher’s search for a new church home.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, March 7, 2015.

Jewish Voices for Peace

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Jewish Voices for Peace (“JVP”) asked its constituency to thank those who will pay a price for their public refusal to attend Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech before the Joint Session of Congress yesterday. Here’s the letter:

Thank you for taking a principled stance against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s inappropriate speech.

Netanyahu, who has presided over a 23% increase in illegal settlement building and a brutal assault on the people of Gaza that killed over 2,000 Palestinians, should not have been given this platform to speak to US elected leaders.

It was unacceptable for a foreign leader who has repeatedly snubbed US officials to come to Washington to directly challenge President Obama’s diplomatic efforts, promote his own reelection campaign, and try to drag us into war.

Thank you for courageously taking a stand against the speech.

The Board and staff of Jewish Voices for Peace fully recognize the continuing cancer of Anti-Semitism. Like the Prime Minister and Elie Wiesel, they, too, would surely say “Never again!” to the Holocaust (“Shoa”). They, too, are concerned for the survival of Israel. They, too, love Israel, but they love it differently, the way the Hebrew prophets did – in the way that lovers quarrel, critically and self-critically.

U.S. Senator Al Franken (MN) is one of those who yesterday exercised the lover’s quarrel. By not taking his seat, perhaps he could hear the sound of a different clapping from Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Micah.

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?” – Micah 6:8

As one of your constituents, thank you, Senator Franken for standing tall for justice,mercy, and humility.

 

An Axe for the Frozen Sea Inside Us

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Writer Franz Kafka discusses books worth reading.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief.

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, The Castle, and posthumously published The Trial and Parables and Paradoxes wound and stab us. They “wake us up with a blow on the head.”  They “open the frozen sea inside us”.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Feb. 28, 2015, in tribute to Franz Kafka.

 

How do you know?

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How do you know you’re a writer? Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Virginia Wolff might have “known” because other writers, publishers, and Broadway and Hollywood producers heaped praise on their writings. But the operative word is might. Existential knowing is a different sort of knowing.

Like great athletes, composers, and musicians, great writers are rarely satisfied with their work. They are always reaching beyond themselves. Often they operate from the depths of depression, despair, obsessed with death, the dark depths of the human psyche and the world’s instinct toward self-destruction. Some of the greatest – Hemingway, Wolff, Sylvia Plath, and Edgar Allan Poe – do themselves in.

How do you know you’re a writer? Some would say you “know” it existentially by the ebb and flow between times of creativity and nothingness. When I feel down and the well runs dry as a bone, I know existentially…I might be a writer.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN Feb. 28, 2015, inspired by tour of Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West, Florida.