Posts Tagged ‘Culture Wars’

Of Gospel and Heresies: American Idol (conclusion)

June 21, 2018


















[4] Declaration of Barmen, section 5

Of Gospel and Heresies: This Holy Nation

April 25, 2018

Of Gospel and Heresies: This Holy Nation






—–Jeremiah 7:1-15






O people of Israel? says the Lord.
Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?





Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have grasped
to subdue nations before him
and strip kings of their robes,
to open doors before him—
and the gates shall not be closed:
2 I will go before you
and level the mountains,*
I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
and cut through the bars of iron,
3 I will give you the treasures of darkness

and riches hidden in secret places,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
4 For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
I surname you, though you do not know me.
and riches hidden in secret places,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
4 For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,







March 13, 2018








March 13, 2018




[1] Comey, p. 89


February 12, 2018



February 12, 2018

























[2] Locke, sect. 31-41





[6] Allen, p. 77





January 18, 2018














Comey, James. “Reinhold Niebuhr and Jerry Falwell: the Christian in politics.” (Review, pt. 5)

January 9, 2018

Just as God’s love establishes equality between individuals as the ideal, so too, Niebuhr says, does God demand equality and peace between nations. Falwell, Niebuhr would say, idolizes his own particular nation.[1] Patriotism, in and of itself, is fine, and a natural expression for the morally praiseworthy virtue of altruism. However, when patriotism and nationalism are distorted by pride, love of nation becomes a worship of one’s own nation and a desire to dominate others.[2] Niebuhr argues that the only defense against this idolatry is prophetic religion, that criticizes even the best nation by holding up the standard of perfect love. This is a recurring and important theme in Niebuhr’s thought, beyond the limited area Comey discusses: that Christian ethics is God’s perfect, unattainably high standard held up for us to strive towards, not a goal we can expect to fulfill. In An Interpetation of Christian Ethics, Niebuhr describes this in terms of the individual. I may feel pretty good about myself, if I only look at myself and what I’ve done. If I look at others, I may feel worse or better, depending on whom I look at. I feel pretty good about giving my spare change to a homeless person.   If I look around me, and see how many others only offer contempt, I may even feel pretty smug about my moral superiority. But if I look to the Gospel, and see what perfect neighbor-love would look like, I am humbled if not ashamed to realize how far I am from fulfilling God’s law of love. I do not give my sweater to the one who asks for my coat (Matt: 5:40); I don’t even give the coat. I don’t even give away my T-shirt collection (Luke 3:11). I allow practicalities and even fear to hold me back from fully loving others who need all the help they can get. And honestly, I’m going to keep doing so. But I can at least begin to grow morally when I stop measuring myself in comparison to any relative standard, and instead use God’s standard. This can lead me to repent, and to admit that my moral pride was undeserved; and knowing I still have some growing to do, I can strive to be better rather than bask in my self-satisfaction.

The same principle applies to nations. The “prophetic religion” which Niebuhr advocates holds up the ideal of the law of love. The Christian in politics should not judge his or her nation by looking at the others and feeling superior; rather, the Christian should look at the description of the Kingdom of God, where all are equal and love, not power, rules. No human nation, not even the best, will ever measure up to God’s perfect standard. This does not mean that all nations are equal or that one cannot judge between them; Niebuhr clearly and forcefully argued that the U.S. had a moral and religious duty to oppose Hitler with force, for example. But it does mean that the patriotic Christian must still admit that his or her nation needs to improve, and must call out the nation when it fails to uphold justice and protect the weak. Otherwise, the patriot will fall into idolatry, worshipping the State as if it were divine and attributing perfection to it as if it were God.

Falwell, too, would say that Christianity is a prophetic religion, and that the true Christian patriot must be a prophet. But “Falwell’s identification of America as Christian civilization and his belief in America as a new Christian Israel makes him a false prophet.”[3] Jerry Falwell claims that America is the best, most godly nation that has ever been. His evidence for this seems to be twofold. First, he would say, just look at us: founded by Christians as a shining city on a hill, preserving the Christian heritage better than any other, doing good for other nations, sharing our food, offering the protection of our military, establishing peace, promoting free trade and protecting trade routes so everyone can get richer as God intended, defending capitalism, which is the most godly economic system, and so on. Second, America’s wealth and power proves its righteousness: as “righteousness exalts a nation,” and the promise of the Bible is that God will bless the faithful nation, and God has clearly blessed America above all other nations, this must be the most faithful nation. * As Comey points out, this claim is subject to multiple objections. First, the biblical basis for this claim is not nearly as strong as Falwell asserts. There is no “direct warrant,” simply because the “United States of America” is never mentioned in the Bible. The indirect warrant from Scripture is also questionable, since it is not clear what “blessed” means or whether only faithful nations will ever be powerful. After all, at the time Falwell was writing, the “godless” USSR was considered an existential threat to the US, having quickly risen from the most backward of European nations to become a vast, powerful empire with worldwide trade and diplomatic influence; to any impartial judge, it would seem to be at least nearly as blessed as America. Falwell simply ignores apparent counterexamples to his argument, however, even asserting that part of the great righteousness of America is its opposition to the materialist, socialist totalitarianism of the Soviet Union; far from showing their blessedness, the Soviet strength only makes their evil worse. Falwell also ignores national sins of the U.S. such as segregation and racism. And more insidiously, Falwell fails to understand that spiritual pride can undermine even national virtues and turn them into vices, a process Niebuhr describes as “irony.”[4] Without a healthy skepticism born from a religious awareness of pride, American power easily becomes imperialism and oppression of other nations, American wealth and success can lead to the impoverishment of other nations, and American democracy is rejected by other nations as mere cover for the exploitation of the poor by rich capitalists and landowners. Falwell’s shock at the ingratitude of other nations towards America seems to incarnate the irony Niebuhr described years earlier. Here we are offering food, education, financial and military support to all these other nations, and they won’t even say “thank you”? But what Falwell never asks, and Niebuhr says the Christian must ask, is “Are we doing this for ourselves?” When we allow ourselves to become convinced that our nation has a unique divine mission, we all too easily cease to consider either the shortfalls and self-serving nature of many of our virtues, or the possible harm our nation and even our virtues may cause others. Furthermore, our pride can allow us to see our national actions as neither self-serving nor even simply good, but so superior that we deserve credit for going above and beyond the call of morality.

[1] Comey, pp. 75-89

[2] Comey, pp. 75-56

[3] Comey, p. 86

* Today we might say this is a sort of nationalized version of the Prosperity Gospel.

[4] Comey, p. 80

Comey, James B., “Reinhold Niebuhr and Jerry Falwell: the Christian in politics” (1982). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 1116.

December 21, 2017

I’ve been reading and discussing Comey’s thesis for awhile, mostly with the personal goal of understanding his mind a bit better and seeing how a theologian like Reinhold Niebuhr might have played a pivotal role in our nation’s history.  I’m posting a link to the full thesis here, and would be happy to discuss it further.

Recommended Citation



An open letter to a FOX News viewer

November 8, 2017

I’m writing this to a family member who, I’m told, has been posting FOX News.  Perhaps you also have a loved one who needs intervention; if so, I hope this helps.  Friends don’t let friends drive news cycles.

Part 1:  I’ve been told you’re posting links to FOX News.  Those of us who share your concern that Donald Trump is destroying conservatism in this country, and destroying this country, wonder why you would start repeating stories from a source that dedicates itself to promoting his virtue, accomplishments and authority even when these claims are contradicted by his crimes, vices, failures, bullying, lying, pettiness and proud, profound ignorance.  I thought I would take the opportunity to remind you, and others, about “the FOX News Effect:”



There are many other reports, but these two cover things pretty well, and so far as I know neither can be accused of liberal bias.  It is simply a fact that FOX News viewers, on average, are less informed, and less willing to become informed, than people who watch no news at all, according to some research; other less thorough studies suggest that perhaps they aren’t more ignorant than the totally uninformed, but still know less (while thinking they know more) than NPR listeners, PBS watchers, or even CNN consumers.  There are some important caveats:

  1.  MSNBC viewers do not do much better.  The problem seems to be not so much right vs. left, but right hemisphere vs. left hemisphere.  FOX and MSNBC are both partisan, serving up lots of slanted, emotionally appealing news stories to their chosen niches while avoiding stories that might challenge their narratives.  The right side of the brain is more involved with the emotions; the left side is more analytical, logical, and factual.  The partisan news media, whether left-wing or right-wing, appeal more to people who do not value facts or critical thinking, and encourage people not to try.
  2. As the Forbes article points out, correlation is not causation.  We’ve done little research to find whether FOX viewers are ignorant to start, or whether viewing FOX makes them ignorant.

At the same time, there are reports like this:  http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs and https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201003/why-liberals-are-more-intelligent-conservatives and https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201003/why-liberals-are-more-intelligent-conservatives

What these suggest are:

  1.  Either smarter, better-educated and better-informed people tend to be more liberal, or being liberal makes you smarter.  Conservatives tend to be more gullible, either because they are less educated and informed, or because they tend to be more trusting.  Conservatives are more authoritarian, more trusting of people seen as leaders; and they are more group-oriented, more inclined to trust people within group boundaries and inclined to distrust outsiders.  That’s not intended as an insult; it’s a psychological and definitional fact.  To be a social conservative is to be anti-multicultural and more respectful of authorities and institutions, whether they are Rush Limbaugh’s “dittoheads” or the people who won’t watch the NFL because players “disrespect the flag.”  That does not mean they respect all authority, but they do respect the authorities that they accept more uncritically than liberals do.  Liberals tend to be more skeptical, more cynical, and more willing to accept ambiguity and open questions.
  2. Being too extreme either way could be bad, but the liberal echo chamber is less impermeable and less effective than the conservative one.  The false news manufacturer had more trouble creating fake liberal news, because eventually some liberal would fact-check him; conservatives were far more likely to keep repeating a story that was factually false, but which fit their preconceptions and which seemed to be endorsed by a trustworthy authority (i.e. a leader of their group as opposed to an outsider).

Part 2:  The particular news story in this case illustrates much of the problem.  The story is originally reported as “Michelle Obama Speaks At Obama Foundation Summit.”  http://abc7chicago.com/politics/michelle-obama-speaks-at-obama-foundation-summit-in-chicago/2591352/ The original story, reported by the local news, mentioned how this was a meeting of young future leaders from around the world, how entertainers and artists as well as people in the political realm made speeches intended to advise and inspire, and Michelle Obama was one who spoke with a message encouraging young women in particular to be self-confident and to seek to be a positive force in the world.  The article also mentions, towards the end, that she advised young people to think twice before posting their opinions on social media.  This was at the end of a report that discussed comments from Manuel-Lin Miranda, Chance the Rapper and President Obama, as well as mentioning performances by other artists.  Overall, the event appears to have been a very large, star-studded, exciting and positive experience for those who attended.

CNN reported the same event somewhat differently:  “Michelle Obama to Young People:  Never Tweet (sort of)” http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/01/politics/michelle-obama-chicago-twitter-men/index.html.  The CNN report barely mentions the event, doesn’t mention any of the other events or participants at all outside the interview, and presented it more as a slap at the Tweeter-In-Chief than as simply advice to young people.  It then goes on to discuss other advice and encouragement she gave to the participants, and particularly to young women.  She discusses how most societies today are traditionally dominated by men, and that often women are overlooked, harassed or exploited by some men.  This is made easier because the traditional upbringing for young girls is to be nurturing and supportive, to take care of others; Michelle urged her hearers to find their own voice and their own destiny.

FOX News seems to be reporting on a different event:  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/11/01/michelle-obama-says-men-are-entitled-self-righteous-because-women-protect-them-too-much.html.  Not only is there barely any mention of the event and no mention of other participants, there is hardly any discussion of anything Ms. Obama actually said.  This isn’t fake news; she did say the things that are discussed, but they are edited and spun to seem more like the rants of a castrating harridan than the advice of an accomplished and educated woman of color speaking to other young women starting out on the path she has traveled.  There is no mention of her advice to avoid blasting your unedited and thoughtless opinions into cyberspace, which CNN presented as an attack on Donald Trump since he does exactly that; and there is little mention of anything else she said.  The only part of the event that receives any real attention in the FOX story is her comments on males and females.  They report:


This is presented as an unjustified slam at men, who feel “entitled” and “self-righteous” but who are in fact being unjustly maligned.

It seems pretty clear that there is some spinning going on.  The event was not, as CNN implies, simply a Trump-bashing; nor was it simply two days of man-bashing.  The local news presented Michelle Obama’s discussion as a positive and empowering message for young women, the culmination of two days and multiple speakers and artists reaching out to these delegates.  Both cable news services edited the event to fit their own narratives:  one, the “this president is a twittering fool” narrative, and the other the “liberals be hating men” narrative.  Both left a lot on the cutting room floor to emphasize what they wanted.

Of the two spins, even FOX has been jumping on the Harvey Weinstein story, so it’s more than a little hypocritical of them to act as if these comments about “entitled” men are totally unjustified.  And given their own problems (Ailes, Stone, O’Reilly etc.) it’s a little self-serving of them to simply pretend that too many men feel morally empowered and socially entitled to “grab’em by the pussy” anytime they want, while perhaps other men wish they, too, were powerful and famous so they could do the same.  In fact, as J.S. Mill and Harriet Taylor pointed out a century ago, whenever any system is dominated by one group for a long time, the values of that system will tend to reflect the interests of that group.  For hundreds, even thousands of years young girls have been raised to please and care for others, particularly males.  Until about a hundred years ago, women could not vote, own property, work without the permission of their husbands or (if unmarried) oldest male relative, and those norms hold today in many parts of the world.  And even in the U.S. the idea that women should be subservient and unthreatening to men is powerful.  For example, Donald Trump divorced his first wife because he heard her on the phone talking to people doing business with Trump Inc. and thought she sounded “harsh.”  He said she lost her “softness” when she began working in his business, and that he wasn’t able to see her as a woman once he heard her raise her voice on the phone with someone who was doing business with the Trump casino (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-1994-putting-wife-work-dangerous-thing/story?id=39537935).  So it seems more than a little disingenuous to pretend that no men think women should focus on taking care of their men first, and themselves second.

The CNN spin, by contrast, is definitely a spin, but does not seem obviously false to the speaker’s intent.  But even if she were totally ignorant of the fact that Trump broadcasts his own unfiltered and often misinformed views, with spelling and grammatical errors that make them look silly even if they aren’t, the fact that she was warning this group of young future leaders to not do what the current president* does would be at least worth noting.  A president of a major nation is supposed to be a role model, not a cautionary tale.  But to imply that it was the main intent of Michelle Obama’s comments is also a falsification.  Yes, she spoke to young people who might be inclined to “tell it like it is” by tweeting without thinking.  Yes, she spoke to young men who might feel inclined to try to dominate and mistreat women, and to young women who might feel inclined to keep quiet and not stand up for themselves.  But her main intent was not to divide and not to discuss anyone who wasn’t actually in the room; rather, her focus was on providing advice and inspiration to young people who hopefully would make their lives forces for positive change in the world.  So both cable news channels were somewhat distorting the original event for their own editorial reasons, but the conservatives were more misleading and uninformative.

Part 3:  “The FOX News Effect,” then, is that viewers of FOX News and other right-wing news organizations are often more ignorant than people who pay attention to no news in particular.  While the apathetic may be uninformed, FOX viewers are often misinformed.  In some cases, this may be flat-out fictions or speculations presented as fact, as in Pizzagate or the Seth Rich story.  This story about Michelle Obama seems to be an example not so much of lying, but vigorous spinning of actual facts.  Yes, Michelle said those words, though they are neither obviously false nor as vicious as suggested.  People who get their news only from FOX are naturally mystified why Michelle Obama hates men and why Crooked Hillary hasn’t been arrested; they’ve heard only a mix of slanted news and the occasional deliberate falsehood, leaving them not ignorant, but misinformed:  not zero knowledge but negative.  Furthermore, they are emotionally agitated, which is the enemy of sound thought and reflection.

The FOX News Effect has been magnified by four further factors:

  1.  The Social Media Effect:  Trump supporters are far more likely to find even FOX News too “mainstream/lamestream” for their tastes, and to report that they get most of their news from Facebook, Twitter, private web sites, blogs and so on.  These are even less well researched, less vetted, and more biased than partisan cable news.
  2. The Falwell Effect:  Conservative religious “authorities,” such as Paula White, Jerry Falwell Jr, Pat Robertson and other Christian Dominionists and Prosperity Gospel preachers, have many millions of devoted followers, and have announced that anyone who questions Donald Trump for any of his known sexual, financial or other sins is challenging the will of God.
  3. The Russia Effect:  as an instrument of state policy, Russia has flooded the world with false news stories and even funded socially divisive social movements, largely through social media and individual blogs.  Furthermore, because Russia is an authoritarian, mostly white nation with a state religion (Russian Orthodoxy), Putin and Russia have been held up by conservative media as superior to democratic and Democratic pluralism.  Thus, FOX viewers, and consumers of alt-right media, are not only not worried about Russian distortion of their news; they welcome it.
  4. The Trump Effect:  President* Donald Trump gets most of his news from FOX and Breitbart and InfoWars, ignoring the CIA, FBI and other government authorities that get their information from actually observing the world.  This turns the conservative echo chamber into an Ouroboros, where the conservative news gets its news from uncritically repeating what Trump says, who in turn is uncritically repeating what they say, turning the old news ticker-tape into a vast Mobius strip where, with a simple twist and by attaching one end to the other, what was once an ongoing narrative becomes a one-sided, infinite, closed circle.  No new ideas can come in, no disconfirming facts can break the circle, and the system runs endlessly.  It is impossible to say whether alt-right news runs the country by flooding Trump’s brain with false and misleading ideas, or he controls them by filling the news feed with his fact-free tweets and rants.

I will cite one example, current in the news, which I think illustrates all these factors.  The concept is “collusion.”  In law, this refers to an illegal conspiracy.  In common parlance, it might refer to any secret plot to deceive.  For almost the entire Trump presidency* there has been ample, objectively verified evidence that members of his inner circle and campaign colluded with agents of the Russian government to swing the election towards Trump, as part of the Russian government’s stated support for Trump.  And for years there has been objectively verified evidence that Trump Inc. has substantial financial ties to Russian oligarchs and mobsters.  This fits not only the common definition of “collusion,” but also the legal definition.  It is illegal, under American law, to receive campaign help from a foreign government.

In conservative circles, the focus has been on the Democrats.  Because of the Ouroboros circle, it is impossible to tell whether conservative news created this idea and Trump repeats it, or Trump started the claim as a way to deflect criticism and now they repeat it as news.  There are three threads in this tapestry of bullshit (I use the term philosophically, as developed by Harry Frankfurt in his tome on the subject). One thread is that since the information on Trump deals with Russia, and the researchers who did the research talked to Russians, and the anti-Trump Republicans and the Democrats paid for this opposition research on Trump, they colluded with Russia.  This is just patently false:  talking to Russians is not conspiring with the Russian government, and opposition research is a common part of elections today.  If the Democrats hired a research firm, and that firm in turn contacted a highly-respected former spy to find out things about Trump’s Russian ties, that’s legal, and thus does not qualify legally as “collusion.”  And it isn’t collusion with the Russian government in any case, but only contacts between private citizens.

The second thread, related to the first, is the so-called “Uranium Deal.”  According to this assertion, Hillary Clinton accepted a bribe to allow Russians to control American uranium production.  And yes, given that Russia has sought to ingratiate itself with everyone it could easily do so, it might have donated to the Clinton Foundation hoping for some goodwill later.  However, no actual security or energy expert has said there was any weakening of the U.S. by the takeover of this one mine.  The Russians don’t even have a license to export the uranium; it is just a Russian company that is managing the mine, which produces a small amount of the uranium used in this nation every year.  Most of our uranium is imported, so foreigners controlled it already; in this case it’s just a business deal where the uranium starts and stays in the U.S. and some money goes overseas.  And eleven other people signed off on the deal, so either there was a vast and undetected conspiracy by eleven heads of various agencies, and the employees of those agencies, or this whole thing is nonsense.

The third is perhaps the most interesting, both because it is partly true and it is ironic.  There has long been evidence that the Clinton campaign had used the levers of power within the Democratic party to favor her candidacy over that of Bernie Sanders.  That does seem to fit the popular notion of “collusion.”  It was a secret, albeit open secret, conspiracy to tilt the results of what was supposedly a fair and even competition.  It stinks.  It reminds me of the sorts of games the student government clique ran when I was in college, both for its pettiness and its arrogance.  But it is not, so far as I know, illegal.  A political party can pick its candidates however the hell it wants.  And it is certainly not collusion with a foreign power, which is what the Mueller probe is authorized to investigate as part of the FBI mandate for counter-intelligence and internal national security.  In fact, and this is the ironic part, we would not even know about this apparently legal but distasteful collusion to stiff-arm Bernie if it weren’t for the illegal and unpatriotic collusion to subvert the American political process to aid Russian aims by promoting the Trump campaign.  And at this point, it is simply a known fact that there was Russian support for the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign knew about it at the highest levels, they encouraged it, Trump himself publicly supported it, and thus there is already more evidence against Trump than they had against Nixon for eighteen months after the Watergate break-in.

But you won’t hear about this on FOX News.  What you will hear is a “news” agency that reports excessively on the legal shenanigans of some stupid and arrogant political hacks, while downplaying the illegal crimes of a current president, his family and his closest advisors.  Just as Sean Hannity once defended Cliven Bundy, a tax dodger who supports slavery and says he does “not recognize the United States as existing,” so now Hannity and the FOX (or FAUX) News agency supports and defends the indefensible actions and falsehoods of the Trump-Kushner Crime Family; or, Trump mindlessly parrots what he hears on “FOX & Friends” as if they were an independent verification of his own dreams, rather than simply repeating what he himself tweeted two hours earlier.

So, if you want to be conservative, fine.  As David Brooks said, liberal vs. conservative is an argument over how to distribute the goods of society, and that’s necessary and rational.  But seek out information sources that are themselves as rational and objective as possible.