James Talarico is one of the bright lights of Texas state politics.

 

 

 

Only Then Will Your House Be Blessed - Harry Manx

I love this song so much...

 

 

The Fallacy of Thoughts and Prayers

For the last three years I've been living in central Texas, near Austin.  My wife and I moved here to be close to family.  There are things we really like about central Texas and things we don't.

One of the things we've learned about this area is that it has extreme weather, including a history of deadly flash floods.  We don't live on or near a river, so this has not been an immediate concern for us.  But the tragic events that occurred this past 4th of July weekend have seared the lesson into our consciousness.  As I write this, 80 people have died, many of them children, as flash floods ravaged homes, youth camps and RV campgrounds along the Guadalupe, Llano, San Gabriel and other rivers in the region.  That death toll is sure to rise as recovery efforts continue.  There is a pall of sadness over the region now, and the inevitable (and probably necessary) finger-pointing and blame-casting has begun. 

What I find interesting is the prevailing theological response to this tragedy.  Calls for prayer are ubiquitous.  Those who survived are considered to be "blessed."  The Governor of Texas, a religious conservative, declared that yesterday, Sunday, July 6,  be "A Day Of Prayer For Texans Impacted By Devastating Floods," asking that people pray for "God's peace and comfort" and for "His merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis."  In a press conference on Saturday, he stated "All we know is that prayer does work."

Likewise, social media is filled with calls to pray for the devastated towns and people.

This is the typical Evangelical response to tragedy, be it school shootings or hurricanes/tornadoes/floods/wildfires, and seems designed to provide folks with a sense of doing something while avoiding addressing the actual underlying problems that could be fixed.  Politicians are usually the first to make these calls to prayer, while doing all they can to avoid discussion of why they failed to implement practical solutions to mitigate the tragedies from occurring in the first place.

The theological cognitive dissonance for me during times like this is in the fact that many of the people asking that we pray, and who praise God for the "miraculous" survival stories, also believe that God is omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (everywhere at once) and that nothing happens except that God wills it.  This is a doctrine called "predestination," that many, but not all, Christians subscribe to.  Many Christians aren't cognitively aware that they believe in predestination, because they've never really examined their theological beliefs in any systematic fashion.  As a result, they can earnestly ask each other to pray for God to do something even though they believe that God is going to do whatever God wants to do regardless of prayers because whatever happens is part of God's preordained plan.  So, for example, they can be militantly anti-abortion but fail to consider that if an abortion was performed successfully then it must have been God's will for that to happen. They fail to see the contradiction in believing that God has complete unilateral sovereignty and will always accomplish exactly what He wishes, whilst simultaneously asking God to do what they wish Him to do (I'm using the male pronoun here because those who believe this way almost universally envision God as male).  

No one doubts that many of the people who died in the Texas floods this past weekend were praying to God to spare them as the waters encroached and then swept them away.

Christian theologians going back to Irenaeus (125–202 AD) have proffered the idea of predestination as a means of trying to reconcile their belief that God is omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent with the observed reality that horrible shit happens to people who don't deserve it.

But it is the 16th century Protestant reformer John Calvin who's teachings about predestination have had the most profound and lasting effect on Christianity (particularly on Evangelicalism).  Calvin wrote, "If one falls among robbers or ravenous beasts; if a sudden gust of wind at sea causes a shipwreck; if one is struck down by the fall of a house or a tree; if another, when wandering through desert paths, meets with deliverance; or, after being tossed by the waves, arrives in port and makes some wondrous hairbreadth escape from death—all these occurrences, prosperous as well as adverse ... are governed by the secret counsel of God."  In Calvin's view, nothing occurs except that God wills it.  We may not understand why it occurred, we may think it tragic or unjust or evil, but God willed it nonetheless and we simply have to accept the fact that we can't fathom God's inscrutable will.

I call bullshit on that.  It's an intellectual cop-out.  Things happen because of prior causes.  Humans have a considerable amount of agency to understand those contributing causes and enact counter-measures against future occurrances.  The scientific method serves as a tool for us to better understand these causes.  No, we can't (yet) control every storm and assault-weapon-owning-troubled-mind and aggressive cancer, but we can do an awful lot to mitigate bad things--an awful lot more than issuing thoughts and prayers after the fact, and leaving it in God's hands.

Already, here in Central Texas, it is coming to light that a very lax attitude had developed about placing children's camps (many of them run by Christian organizations) and RV campgrounds next to rivers that have long histories of violent flash floods.  We are learning that in Kerr county, which had by far the highest number of deaths, flood warning systems had not been implemented (as they had in some other counties and towns), despite their need being apparent and the costs negligible compared to the potential death tolls.  We are learning that the state government has been largely AWOL on the need for improving safety in the flood-prone region, being apparently more interested in combatting immigrants and women seeking abortions, banning access to Internet porn, and getting the Ten Commandments posted in public schools.  We are learning that the Trump administration's (and DOGE's) decimation of the National Weather Service was quite possibly a contributing factor for the imminent flood dangers not being adequately communicated.  More failings will come to light, and one hopes that solutions more concrete than "thoughts and prayers" will be implemented in response.

Lives could have been saved, and future lives will be saved, not by prayers or by passive acquiescence to what is perceived as "God's will," but by intentional, practical, proactive strategies and actions. 

 A poem:  (Don't Call It) Genocide

Take their land
Take their lives
Imprison them without trials
Wall them in to a few square miles
But don't call it genocide

Kill the electricity
Choke the funds
Keep them moving, on the run
Bomb them into kingdom come
But don't call it genocide

See the children with missing limbs
See the mothers, gaunt and grim
See the rubble that fell on them
But don't call it genocide

Say it's done in your defense
Say that they're all terrorists;
Enemies who shouldn't exist
But don't call it genocide

Make them fight for scraps of food
And live in tents 
Away from you
And when they perish, as they do
Don't call it genocide

We all know the calculus
Fifty of them to one of us
Buried in the desert dust
Just don't call it genocide

But the definition's pretty clear
And if this ain't it, it's pretty near
Erasing a people through violence and fear
They call it genocide.

I deleted my Twitter account back when Elon Musk took it over and rebranded it as "X".  Last week, after Mark Zuckerberg announced the loosening of fact-checking and of safeguards against hate speech (in addition to donating a large sum of money to Trump's inauguration fund), I decided to cut ties with Meta.  I've deleted my Instagram account and am in the process of backing up 20-odd years of data from my Facebook account, and will then delete it.  I have setup an account on Bluesky.  I like it a lot, but their word limit is frustrating for a wordy guy like me.

Now, if I could just figure out how to do away with Amazon...

After the disastrous 2024 election, I've also given up on U.S. commercial media (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) but will stick with my long-time favorite news sources: the UK's Guardian, Canada's CBC, the venerable BBC, etc.  And, for her clear and cogent political news summaries, Heather Cox Richardson.

I started this blog back in 2003, when blogging was a thing.  Over time, and to my great surprise, readership increased steadily.  Eventually I was getting tens of thousands of views per month and my posts were being re-posted on other much more popular sites.  But I never set out to be widely distributed or some type of "influencer."  I was just documenting my spiritual journey and random thoughts.  Then I got onto Facebook and slowly shifted my output onto that platform.  For a few years now this blog has mostly lain fallow. 

But now I'm shifting back to this musty trusty old blog.  I don't have any kind of grand strategy for content, just occasional "deep thoughts" from a nobody, the way it used to be.

Trumpism Is A Cult

 

 

I'm no authority on politics, just a guy with some opinions. So here's a not-particularly-groundbreaking opinion:

 

The United States is in the process of transitioning from a democratic republic into an autocracy based on oligarchy. The rich will become richer, the poor will become poorer, the middle-class will shrink. Justice and opportunity will more and more become commodities available only to those who can afford them or have connections. For some, it's always been this way, but there's been a slow and steady movement over the course of many years to adopt this direction for the nation as a whole. It's anyone's guess whether or not this slide will be halted, or what it will ultimately look like. Obviously the 2024 election could have slowed or even stopped that transition, but instead has accelerated it. We could have gone in a very different direction.

 

I've been reading the various post-election analyses that have tried to fix the blame on where exactly Democrats went wrong. So far I've seen nothing in these reports that I find convincing or compelling, and I don't think that line of inquiry will bear much fruit.

 

Now, to move into a subject that I think I am a bit more knowledgeable about... In addition to having a Masters in Religion, I've informally studied cults for many years. I think my interest in cults began when as a teen I read an article in Reader's Digest about the tactics used by the Hare Krishnas to woo young people. In the 1980's I discovered a man named Walter Martin, who billed himself as "The Bible Answer Man" and wrote a book called "The Kingdom of the Cults." Martin had a radio program that I loved to listen to, in which he dissected religious systems that he deemed as "cults". His primary mission was to explain how neo-Christian denominations like Mormonism (Latter Day Saints) and Jehovah's Witnesses deviated from traditional Christianity. But where Martin's raison d'être was as a Christian apologist, "defending the faith" as it were, I became much more interested in how and why people are swayed into believing ridiculous things and falling under the spell of cult leaders. Another influence in this regard was James Randi, also known as The Amazing Randi, a former stage magician who promoted skepticism and made a career out of debunking supernatural, New Age and occult shysters.

 

So I've long been fascinated by religious cults such as Jim Jones' People's Temple, Scientology, The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishna's), The Unification Church (Moonies), Heaven's Gate, Branch Davidians, and the rest. Parallel to this, I've long had an interest in propaganda and in trying to understand how and why it is so influential. I've spent countless hours over the years studying this stuff.

 

There are certain tried and true characteristics of cults. These include:

*Authoritarian Leadership. Most cults are founded by a charismatic (and often quirky) individual who displays all the hallmarks of malignant narcissism and sociopathy. The cult leader is manipulative, abusive and demanding of absolute loyalty. There is a lack of accountability (leadership is not to be questioned, critiqued or challenged).

*Dogmatic/Extremist Beliefs. Cults often present a happy front but underneath are legalistic and extreme, and expect zealotry from their members.

*Opposition to Independent Thinking or Questioning or Disloyalty.

*Fear. Most cults profess themselves to be the solution to an existential problem that only the teachings of the cult leader can save humanity from. Cult members are conditioned to adopt unreasonable fears based upon conspiracy theories and catastrophic scenarios created by the cult leaders.

*Guilt. Members who fall short, or express doubts are accused or disloyalty and failure. The threatened consequences for falling away are dire (such as eternal damnation or demonic possession).

*Modification of behavior, values and identity. Individual identity, values and behavior are transformed to conform to those of the group.

*Internal "cult jargon". Most cults develop a litany of special terminology. This creates a sense of belonging and specialness among members. Perhaps the most profound example of this is Scientology, which is rife with thousands of unique terms and acronyms. It is fascinating to listen to Scientologists speak their specialized nomenclature invented by L. Ron Hubbard.

*Exclusivism. Cults foster an "us vs. them" mentality. People outside of the cult are hopelessly misled at best and dangerous enemies at worst. Cult members are encouraged to limit or cut ties with outsiders.

*Thought Terminating Cliches. This is a technical term for idiom that are used to immediately dismiss doubt, dissent or critique. These are, according to Charles Bufe, "thought-stopping phrases..., especially repeated phrases, (used) to ward off forbidden thoughts." Although extremely common within cults, they are commonly used outside of cults as well. Examples include statements such as "Lean not on your own understanding", "God works in mysterious ways", "Just pray about it (or meditate on it)", "Trust the plan", "Boys will be boys", "Things have always been that way", etc. Within cults, however, these thought terminating cliches are very intentionally ingrained in order to cause members to police themselves against exploring ideas that could lead to doubt.

*Labeling and scapegoating. Those on the outside of the cult are referred to by labels that reinforce their inferiority to those on the inside. Likewise for those on the inside of the cult who display disloyalty. The recipients of those derogatory labels, and their arguments, can then be summarily dismissed.

*Love Bombing and Confirmation Bias. Followers are told what they want to hear and what makes them feel validated. This often includes flattery, manipulative affection, offers of comradery, and grandiose promises.

 

We often think of cults as being religious in nature, since that's where we find the most egregious examples. But other areas of life, such as business (multi-level marketing organizations like Amway, for example) and politics can also be "cultish". And this "cultishness" can exist to varying degrees.  Organizations might be mildly cultish or somewhat cultish or full-blown cults.

 

Which bring me to my point.

 

I remember, in 2017, seeing newly minted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on TV, claiming that Trump's inauguration was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe”--despite clear proof to the contrary (Spicer later expressed regret at allowing himself to be pressured into making that statement). I remember Trump's Counselor Kellyanne Conway subsequently defending Spicer's demonstrably false claim as being "alternate facts".

 

I remember Trump's televised Cabinet meeting in 2017 in which his staff, from Vice President Mike Pence on down, went around the table taking turns heaping praise onto a smugly smiling Trump.  Since then we've witnesses so many examples of cult-like behavior in Trumpland that's it's difficult to keep track.

 

And now Trump is to once again be President of the United States. What I find compelling--chillingly so--about our present situation, is this: Trumpism is a cult. I don't mean that in the pejorative sense, as a cheap insult. I mean it in the technical sense: that the MAGA movement, which has overtaken the Republican party, bears all of the hallmark characteristics of a cult. You can go back through the list of cult characteristics I've provided above and consider how Donald Trump and the MAGA movement ticks all the boxes.

 

Trumpism/MAGA is a cult. We're talking Jim Jones/People's Temple. We're talking Heaven's Gate. We're talking Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (aka Osho). We're talking L. Ron Hubbard/Scientology. We're talking fanatical followers of a narcissistic authoritarian leader who have their own internal terminology and thought-terminating-cliches ("Fake news!", "He's just a RINO!", "She has Trump Derangement Syndrome!"), their own specious set of beliefs, their own extremism and zealotry, their own confirmation bias, their own culture and clearly marked boundaries of who is "in" and who is "out".

 

Like many cult leaders, Donald Trump isn't a mastermind. But he is a master manipulator of people. Like many cult leaders, he's not well educated or terribly intelligent. The troubling thing about Trump however is that he has a cadre of people behind him who are very intelligent and have very specific agendas. They are more than happy to use Trump to further their ends--be they amassing personal wealth or instituting social and political change (such as creating a White Supremacist Christian Nationalist theocracy).

 

Those of us who haven't been indoctrinated into the Trump cult have watched over the years as friends and family members have been transformed; as they've adopted ridiculous conspiracy theories; as they've opened themselves to propagandic "news" outlets; as they've jettisoned the values (such as the teachings of Jesus) that they once held dear; as their perception of reality has become skewed. This is what cults do to people.

 

We find ourselves in a time where a cult has managed to take over the government of our country and the minds of tens of millions of citizens. Who knows where that will lead. As with any cult, there are degrees of involvement. There are those who orbit on the periphery and there are the true believers and there is the inner circle. Perhaps, two years from now in the midterm elections, enough people can be pulled away from the cult to enable Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in order to thwart the MAGA/Project 2025 agenda. Perhaps not.

 

One possibly hopeful aspect is this: more often than not cults fall apart, or at least diminish greatly, after the charismatic leader dies. Usually there is no one among the cult leader's coterie of minions who is able to take on the mantle (there have been exceptions, such as Brigham Young succeeding Joseph Smith). Trump is 78--the oldest person to ever be elected President. Will he live (or remain functional) long enough to complete his four-year term? Those who adore him seem far less enamored with his Vice President or anyone else in his circle of minions and sycophants. Perhaps that's when the cult of Trump will sputter to an end. In the meantime, how much damage will be done? We seem to be in uncharted territory.

I've known several transgender people in the course of my life. You quite possibly have too, and may not even know it. They're not freaks or perverts. They're just people trying to live their lives, like anyone else. That's their agenda: to live a full life in peace.

I was reading an article this morning in The Guardian about how some trans people in the U.S. are buying and learning how to use guns because they feel (with good evidence) that their lives will be increasingly in danger in the U.S. I'd seen statistics in the past indicating that 80% of transgender adults have seriously considered suicide, and 40% have attempted it. Being trans is difficult long before you pile on the social and religious and political hatred that has been ginned up by Republicans (many of whom think of themselves as Christians).

In a recent excellent conversation between historian Heather Cox Richardson and Daily Show host Jon Stewart, Cox Richardson made this point regarding the recent election:

"The way I think about it is if you have ten people in a room, eight of them just want to get by. They just want to put food on the table and have a good time and have their friends and have a nice life. But there are two people who want to control everybody else. The way that they get that power is to get six people to turn against the two at the bottom. The way that you do that is through the stories you tell. If you can tell those people in the middle that those two people at the bottom--and you can pick them at random because of the clothes they wear or the color of their eyes or the skin or whatever--then you can get power from those other six. That would explain to me anyway, why people of color will turn against other groups of color or why white women will vote against their own interests, because they are hearing stories that say, You must turn against those two people at the bottom, or we're going to turn against you. It's why I do what I do: because I think the stories we tell about who we are and the communities we are, are the way that you garner power."

We know from campaign rhetoric which "two at the bottom" the Trump/MAGA/Republicans chose: undocumented immigrants and people who are transgender. Here in Texas, Ted Cruz's ads were all about how acceptance of transgender people poses a threat to teenage girls and to the U.S. military.

How remarkably, and cynically, different this is from the Jesus who they claim to worship, who said, "Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." The Jesus depicted in the Gospels was constantly defying social and religious norms in order to lift up and make a place for those "at the bottom" that Cox Richardson spoke of in her analogy.

It's just another example of how Trump/MAGA/Republicans claim Christian piety, but their words and deeds show them to be quite the opposite. They're much more akin to the Pharisees of Jesus's day who opposed Jesus and ultimately conspired to have him murdered--all the while proclaiming their own godliness. Jesus referred to such folks--who claimed to be among God's chosen while simultaneously being heartless to "the least of these"--as "fools," "hypocrites," "blind men," "vipers," "sons of perdition," "whitewashed tombs (appearing clean on the outside but filled with death and rot)," etc. In fact, they're the only group of people in the Gospels who Jesus held in utter contempt.

Several years ago, when I was an evangelical Christian and was trying to understand LGBTQ+ people (many of whom very graciously helped me by telling me their stories) I attended a conference of the Gay Christian Network in Chicago (I was relatively nearby, in seminary, in Indiana). I have rarely encountered Christian acceptance and hospitality like I did at that conference, as a straight man surrounded by LGBTQ+ followers of Jesus. But the most profound experience I had there was participating in worship. It was the deepest, most heartfelt, most Spirit-filled worship I have ever encountered. I felt the presence of Jesus in their midst. That's when I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was nothing "wrong" with these folks, or threatening about them.

 Yes, Donald Trump is despicable, and has been that way for a long, long time. But he's just a man. What really concerns me is the environment that enabled someone as despicable (and ridiculous) as him to rise to such a level of power. Soon enough Trump will be gone, but that toxic environment will remain. Decades and decades of irresponsible right-wing propaganda set the stage. Propaganda is such a powerful thing (as any dictator knows). In the words of wise Voltaire, "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

 

I've been watching and reading about the recent McCarthyesque hearings on Capitol Hill regarding antisemitism on college campuses. Lots of cynical performative political posturing going on there, but that's par for the course. The most egregrious thing is the intentional conflation of "anti-Israel" (aka "anti-Zionism") with anti-Jewish (ake antisemitic). They aren't the same thing. I know (and know of) lots of Jewish folks who are very critical of Israel and Zionism.

Anyway, all this has prompted me to express an opinion, if anyone cares. So here goes...

Webster's Dictionary defines "genocide" as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group."

According to the United Nations, genocide incorporates any of the following acts committed by a nation/state or organization with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:

--Killing members of the group.

--Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

--Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

--Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

--Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The word genocide was first coined in 1944 to describe what the Nazis were systematically doing to European Jews. It derives from the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. 

Sadly, there are instances all through history, from ancient to modern times, of genocides being committed all over the world. In addition to the Holocaust, we can look at many instances that occurred as part of European colonialism of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, North America, Australia, etc. We see it in the current genocide of the Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar. We saw it in the Islamic State's massacres, mass rapes, and forced conversions to Islam of the Yazidi people. We saw it in Rwanda against the Tutsi and Twa people by the Hutus. We saw it in Bosnia, and East Timor, and Cambodia, and Guatemala, and Chechnya, and Syria, and Albania, and Armenia. And on it goes...

The recent film Killers of the Flower Moon documented the systematic killing of Osage Indians by a group of whites in Oklahoma in the early 1900's in order to gain control of the mineral rights on Osage land. That too, was genocide.

If one studies the history of modern-day Israel/Palestine one can see that it is rooted in European colonialism and the systematic displacement of the indigenous population by a largely immigrant and militarily more powerful population. That is a form of genocide. There are plenty of parallels to what European settlers did to the indigenous peoples of North and South America. Furthermore, the disproportionate and systematic displacement, isolation, incarceration and killing of Palestinian civilians (in Gaza, in the Occupied Territories, etc.) is within the scope of genocide. So many of the conflicts and wars and genocides that we've witnessed in the 20th and 21st centuries have their roots in European colonialism.

Hamas is a despicable, murderous, evil, cynical, terrorist organization that would commit genocide against Israeli Jews if they could, as they made clear on October 7th, 2023. But it doesn't justify the wholesale slaughter by Israel's military of 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7th, the vast majority of whom were not Hamas operatives. Hamas does not represent the majority of Palestinians, just as the Netanyahu regime of Israel does not represent the majority of Jews in the world. One can speak out against the actions of Hamas without hating Palestinians, and one can speak out against the actions of the Israeli government (and illegal settlers) without hating Jews. Many Palestinians speak out against Hamas. Many Jews speak out against Israel. 

For whatever it's worth, I'm against genocide wherever and whenever it occurs, and I agree with those, Jewish and non-Jewish, who think that indications of genocidal acts and policies by the Israeli government should be thoroughly investigated. Investigating possible war crimes committed by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians, and how those fit into the bigger charge of genocide, should not be a controversial thing or open to accusations of antisemitism. 

And, of course, it does not preclude Hamas and other terrorist organizations from being likewise investigated and held to account for their crimes.

One other thing worth pointing out, to try to bring this full circle, is that something seems to have eluded the comprehension of some pundits, like the ones conducting those congressional hearings: According to the Encylopedia Britannica, Semite was a "name given in the 19th century to a member of any people who speak one of the Semitic languages, a family of languages spoken primarily in parts of western Asia and Africa. The term therefore came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians (including the Amhara and the Tigrayans), and Aramaean tribes." The Encyclopedia Britannica goes on to explain that "by 2500 BCE Semitic-speaking peoples had already become widely dispersed throughout western Asia. In Phoenicia they became seafarers. In Mesopotamia they blended with the civilization of Sumer. The Hebrews settled with other Semitic-speaking peoples in Palestine." What this means is that in November of 2023, when three Palestinian exchange students--graduates of the Ramallah Friends School (a Quaker school in Israel/Palestine)--were shot near the University of Vermont by a white man because they were wearing keffiyehs (traditional Palestinian scarves), that was an antisemitic hate crime. My point in bringing this incident up is to try to hightlight, again, that Republican's concern about what they call "antisemitism" is really a smokescreen for their support of a right-wing Israeli government that has engaged in, it seems, war crimes and genocide. That unwavering, unquestioning support, which seeks silence any dissent, is based upon a set of fundamentalist evangelical Christian beliefs about Israel, as well as a set of shared values with militaristic right-wing governments.

 The most evil and tragic of human enterprises is war. Memorial Day should be a day of somber reflection on the terrible (and almost always avoidable) costs of war: All of the young people sent to fight and suffer and die, and the even greater number of noncombatants who also have their lives destroyed. 90% of all deaths in war are civilians. According to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the civilian to soldier death ratio in wars fought since the mid-20th century has been 10:1, meaning ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. This ought to be their Memorial Day too.

As Tim O'Brien wrote in The Things They Carried, “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue.”

The only exception I can think of to this is the tale of Desmond Doss, who joined the Army in WWII to be a combat medic, but refused to carry or use a weapon (his life was the subject of the 2004 documentary The Conscientious Objector, and the 2016 Oscar-winning film Hacksaw Ridge). Jesus said "Blessed are the peacemakers [not the war-makers]; for they shall be called the children of God." Matthew 5:9

 

 

When I was a conservative evangelical Christian, I went along with the party line (on any number of issues) because I was constantly being presented with a very warped picture of the world. It was inculcated in me that the "other"--be they liberals or Democrats or gays or people who supported abortion or academic intellectuals or people from other cultures or people who practiced different religions or people who were in other ways different--were hopelessly misguided at best, and intentionally demonically nefarious at worst. Thus, there was a constant undercurrent of fear and paranoia and defensiveness about living in the world surrounded by so many misguided and/or Satanic people. I recall being in a Christian rock band and we sang a song with a chorus that went "Foolish hearts, blackened foolish hearts, are destined to die." Yikes. 

 

In our fundamentalist culture, the wagons were always circled, the walls up, the basic mindset always exclusionary (while we simultaneously spoke and sang about how Jesus loves everyone--except, I guess, for those foolish blackened hearts destined to die, which meant pretty much everyone who didn't believe as we did). The solution was to get everyone to believe the way we believed or, failing that, to at least get them to behave the way we thought they should behave. That was the criteria of any outreach. I recall, a few years ago, I mentioned on Facebook that I was going to hear a Muslim Imam give a speech at a church on the topic of Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue, and an old friend from my fundamentalist past responded by asking if I was going in order to try to convert the Imam, and if I wasn't going to attempt to convert him then I had no business going.

 

In the fundamentalist Christian ghetto, the thing we were conditioned to fear most was openness and inclusivity. Acceptance of "the other" (without an agenda to convert them) and learning to listen to and understand and appreciate the viewpoints and experiences of "the other" was considered a dangerous proposition because doing so would weaken the walls of our fundamentalist fortress and dilute our scrupulous doctrinal purity. We had to be vigilant about not allowing "sin in the camp." 

 

The senior pastor of an evangelical megachurch I attended for several years referred to seminary (in other words, rigorous theological education) as "cemetery" because he believed that learning too much would kill our fundamentalist faith. That is a pretty typical viewpoint in the fundamentalist Christian world, and it chillingly echoes Orwell's totalitarian slogan in his book 1984: "Ignorance is Strength."

 

The prioritization of purity and separateness eclipsed empathy and compassion. But we couldn't see that (which, I now realize, is why Jesus called the Pharisees "blind").

 

I've been out of that conservative, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian bubble for a number of years now, but current events cause me to reflect: If I were still ensconced in that environment, I imagine I would probably be a Fox News and conservative talk radio devotee. I would, quite possibly, have supported Donald Trump (in part out of hope that he would appoint conservative Supreme Court justices who could impose the lifestyle choices I believed to be correct upon the general populace). I would more readily imbibe conspiracy theories and the sketchy claims of prosperity preachers and self-proclaimed prophets. I would tend toward insular protectionist/isolationist ideologies and policies. I would see the larger world as filled with scary ideas and scary people intent on destroying my godly and "right" little world--a world in which the lines were clear and the explanations were simple.

 

A couple of years ago my wife and I went back to the town where we had once belonged to that fundamentalist Christian megachurch. We were doing a little shopping in the neat little "old town" area, and we came upon a store selling Buddhist, Hindu and "metaphysical" goods. We went inside and had an enjoyable browse. The proprietor behind the cash register, it turned out, was a recent immigrant from Tibet, and thus a Buddhist. We had a lovely chat, including some talk about spiritual things. But the thought never crossed our minds to try to convert him, nor--apparently--he to convert us. It was genuinely interesting to hear his perspective and he appeared equally interested to hear ours. As we left the store, my wife remarked to me, "You know, for so many years, I would have been afraid to go into a store like that or to have a genuine conversation with a person like that. It's so nice to be free."

 

Here in the U.S., whenever a school shooting occurs, the old canard will be trotted out by conservative Christians that the underlying reason for gun violence (and a myriad of other social ills) in the U.S. is because prayer was removed from public schools (in 1962), and our nation is becoming steadily more secularized. 

 

Former Arkansas Governor and perennial right-wing media pundit Mike Huckabee stated after the Sandy Hook school massacre: "We ask why there is violence in our schools but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?" 

 

In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas mass shooting, Franklin Graham, who is now president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of Samaritan's Purse, stated "We have taken God out of schools and most homes are leaving God out of the rearing of their children. He is the solution. The more we turn our backs on God and His Word, the more problems we have as individuals and as a nation." 

 

Of course, this doesn't explain the several mass shootings that have occurred at churches.

 

Another common association made is that since we allow abortion, God allows the slaughter of children. After the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family) stated: “I mean millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed fifty-four million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences too. And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that’s what’s going on." After the Uvalde mass shooting, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick identified the root causes: "We have 50 million abortions" along with violent video games and "We threw God out of school.” 

 

Essentially their argument is that the only way to stop gun violence (and other social ills) is for the U.S. to become a Christian theocracy.

 

I've heard this viewpoint for many years, and, alas, may have even espoused it back when I was a fundamentalist Christian. But if you think it through and apply a modicum of logic, it doesn't hold up against the data. All we have to do is look at the rate of gun deaths in the nations of the world and compare it with the religious affiliations of those nation's populations to see that it's a specious correlation. 

 

Most nations track gun violence statistics.  The common measurement that is used for doing so is gun deaths per 100,000 people. This provides the rate of gun deaths (as opposed to simply the number of gun deaths, which would tend be greater in a nation with a very large population).

 

So, for example,

 

The United States has the 32nd-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world (out of 195 nations): 3.96 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019. That was more than eight times higher than the rate in Canada, which had 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people — and nearly 100 times higher than the United Kingdom, which had 0.04 deaths per 100,000.

 

But when you look at the religious affiliations in these three countries, it breaks down like this:

 

United States 

Christian 69.8%

None/Atheist 22.4%

Jewish 1.9%

Muslim 0.9%

Buddhist 0.7%

Hindu 0.7%

Other 1.8%

 

Canada 

Christian 67.2%

None/Atheist 23.9%

Muslim 3.2%

Hindu 1.5%

Sikh 1.4%

Buddhist 1.1%

Jewish 1%

Other 0.6%.

 

United Kingdom 

Christian 59.5%

None/atheist 25.7%

Muslim 4.4%

Hindu 1.3%

Other 2%

Unspecified 7.2%.

 

"Christian" here, by the way, means a combination of Protestant, Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Mormon, and all other varieties. The percentages of actual practicing/church-going Christians in all of these nations is probably much lower. But even if we stick with the “official” percentages, the UK has 10% fewer Christians and 3% more atheists, yet has 100 times lower the rate of deaths due to gun violence.

 

So, if we consider the conservative Christian argument here of correlating gun violence to lack of Christian faith, this data would point us in the opposite direction: that fewer Christians and more atheists equates to lower gun violence.

 

Now let's look at the ten nations with the absolute lowest rates of gun deaths in the world, and the religions followed by their populations (I've highlighted the percentage of Christians in each nation):

 

1. Singapore (0.01 deaths per 100,000) - Buddhist 43%, Muslim 15%, Christian 15%, None/Atheist 15%, Taoist 9%, Hindu 4%

2. Japan (0.02 deaths per 100,000) - Shintoist and Buddhist 84%, Other/Atheist 15.3%, Christian 0.7%

3. China (0.02 deaths per 100,000) - None/Atheist 93%, Buddhist 4%, Christian 1%, Muslim 1%, Other 1%

4. South Korea (0.02 deaths per 100,000) - None/Atheist 46%, Christian 26%, Buddhist 26%, Other 2%

5. Oman (0.03 deaths per 100,000) - Muslim 85.9%, Christian 6.5%, Hindu 5.5%, Buddhist 0.8%, Jewish less than 0.1%.

6. United Kingdom (0.04 per 100,000) - Christian 59.5%, Muslim 4.4%, Hindu 1.3%, Other 2%, Unspecified 7.2%, None/Atheist 25.7%

7. Indonesia (0.06 per 100,000) - Muslim 87.2%, Christian 9.9%, Hindu 1.7%, other 0.9% (includes Buddhist and Confucian), unspecified 0.4%

8. Iceland (0.06 per 100,000) - Christian 75.6%, Atheist/Humanist/None 22.43%, Heathen/Norse 1.64%, Buddhist 0.42%, Muslim 0.35%, Bahai 0.1%

9. Romania (0.07 per 100,000) - Christian 92.6%, Muslim 0.9%, None/Atheist 0.2%, unspecified 6.3%

10. Norway (0.07 per 100,000) - Christian 76%, None/Atheist 22%, Muslim/Buddhism/Judaism/Other 2%

 

What you see actually is no discernible pattern regarding correlation between religion and gun violence. Some are majority Christian, some are majority Muslim, some are majority Buddhist, some are majority atheist (and one should remember, in the cases of Iceland and Norway, that although a majority are listed officially as Christian, most of the population do not attend church, and those nations are, in fact, very secular).

 

Also, abortion is legal in most of these countries in varying degrees (but not Oman and only recently in South Korea).

 

So we don't see a discernable pattern that more Christians equals less gun violence.  Here’s what these countries with the lowest rates of gun violence do have in common: they all have laws that regulate access to guns. That is the common denominator among not just these ten nations, but among all nations that effectively reduce gun violence. These are the facts.

 

There are 400 million guns in civilian hands in this U.S.  The simple math is that the more guns that are around, and the easier they are to obtain, the more people are going to use them, including in harmful ways. Add to that an increase in polarization and extremism, ginned up by irresponsible media pundits and politicians, and some people will act out, and they have easy access to incredibly destructive weapons when they do. Throw mental health into the mix and, if guns are readily available, they will come into play in mental health crisis situations (more likely in suicide, but also in homicide), regardless of what the dominant religion is.

 

What we can clearly see is that reducing access to guns reduces gun violence. It's blindingly obvious.  In the U.S. we’ve seen that increasing access to guns has increased gun violence. Gun production by firearm manufacturers has tripled over the last couple of years in the U.S. Gun purchases have reached record levels. Yet only 32% of Americans own guns. In other words, the people who own guns in the U.S. tend to own more than one, and often own lots of them. And guns nowadays tend to be capable of firing more rounds and firing at a faster rate than guns in the past. So more damage can be done in a shorter amount of time by a single gun. Yet, in the U.S., there is minimal regulation. An 18 year old kid, like the Uvalde shooter, can legally buy semi-automatic assault-style rifles, high-capacity magazines, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, tactical body armor, etc. The man who recently murdered four people (including two doctors) at a Tulsa hospital legally purchased an AR-15 type semi-automatic rifle a little over an hour before his rampage.

 

Of course no one is arguing that violence can be completely eliminated. The reality is that humans always have and always will harm other humans. But guns are extremely efficient at harming humans quickly, in large numbers, and from a safe distance.

 

In the U.S., there is no practical purpose to having hundreds of millions of barely regulated guns scattered around. Even a nation such as Israel, that lives with constant threats of terrorist violence within its borders (and is the darling of conservative Christians), has very strict and smart gun control laws (https://www.timesofisrael.com/comparing-america-to.../). Israel, by the way, has a gun death rate of 0.68 per 100,000 (far below the U.S.), and is a secular nation where 65% of the population is atheist, and abortion is legal.

 

 

For a significant chunk of my adult life I was a fundamentalist, charismatic Christian--part of the Vineyard churches. Some good came out of it (particularly meeting my wife there), but I also have many regrets about it. The most important lesson I've taken away from that time period is that just because someone claims with absolute certainty that something is true, it doesn't mean it's true.

Very few of the leaders--pastors and teachers and "prophets"--had graduated from college, much less had any formal or systematic theological training. Some were, I realize now, very needy people--seeking to be looked up to but also unwilling or unable to put in the real work necessary to be bona fide authoritative figures. Most were well-meaning but ignorant; confident that they had the answers (and that those answers shouldn't be questioned too deeply). They taught an unscrutinized mishmash of (often contradictory) doctrines. They claimed to speak God's will, making pronouncements about people and giving direction to people's lives. It's horrifying, now that I look back on it, the authority that some of them claimed for themselves. Some of them are still at it

 

Two caveats I try to always remember:

1. Beware of false dichotomies.

2. Beware of false equivalencies.

 

Today is Palm Sunday, a day that commemorates Jesus's "triumphal entry" into Jerusalem. This was an incredibly subversive act on his part, both religiously and politically. It was a bit of prophetic performance art, as Jesus and his followers reenacted the ancient Jewish ritual of the king's enthronement (for which Psalm 118 had been written and used). But, as biblical scholar James Sanders points out, in the case of Jesus, "The messiah has arrived and been acclaimed king. He has been recognized as king by acclamation not from those with power or authority but by a rather scragly crowd of disciples and followers."
 
The participants in Jesus entry into Jerusalem shouted "Hosanna!" which means "Please help us!" It was a cry for justice and mercy and deliverance. "Hosanna!" was what a person would cry out to the judge when they came into court as a result of having fallen behind on their crushing debt obligations from having to borrow money in order to pay civic and temple taxes (a few decades later, when violent rebel factions took control of Jerusalem and the temple, they intentionally burned all of the records of debt). "Hosanna!" was a plea from the powerless to the judge to be just and fair and merciful in hearing their case. At the triumphal entry, the people were calling out to God to hear their case against the terribly oppressive religious and civic and economic systems that they lived under.
 
Sanders says, "This enactment of the psalm [118] as a prophetic symbolic act would have been no less blasphemous and scandalous to those responsible for Israel's traditions (and they would have known them well) than similar symbolic acts performed by the prophets in the late Iron Age [such as Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel]." Those in power, who controlled the systems of oppression, would have looked derisively upon this noisy, unruly crowd and their charismatic leader. Ultimately they would decide that he and the movement he inspired needed to be crushed.
 
So, if you go to church today and see the children waving palm fronds, consider that what they are reenacting is a moment of radical and risky prophetic public action against rulers and authorities and systems of oppression. They were calling for a very different kind of kingdom and king; one marked by care for the "least of these"--the poor, the immigrant, the outcast, the powerless and voiceless. They were crying out for fairness and compassion and kindness and peace and radical inclusion and integrity and opportunity to thrive and grace and love. They were crying out for the kingdom of God.

 

The other night my reading of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark took me off onto a tangent of learning more about the Malleus Maleficarum (the “Hammer of Witches”), a 15th century book that is generally credited with sparking the witch burning craze in Europe and the New World that lasted for 300 years. Of course the church had been busy torturing and killing heretics—in the most gruesome ways—for many hundreds of years prior to that. But the Malleus Maleficarum—essentially a guide to detecting and trying witches—received wide distribution due to the advent of the printing press. Thus, despite being filled with bad theology, impossible anecdotes, conspiracy theories, pure misogyny and cruelty, it became authoritative in both the Catholic and Protestant Church, and in the legal systems under church influence.
 
According to Sagan, “What the Malleus comes down to, pretty much, is that if you’re accused of witchcraft, you’re a witch. Torture is an unfailing means to demonstrate the validity of the accusation. There are no rights of the defendant. There is no opportunity to confront the accusers. Little attention is given to the possibility that accusations might be made for impious purposes—jealousy, say, or revenge, or the greed of the inquisitors who routinely confiscated for their own private benefit the property of the accused…. The more who, under torture, confessed to witchcraft, the harder it was to maintain that the whole business was mere fantasy. Since each 'witch' was made to implicate others, the numbers grew exponentially. These constituted ‘frightful proofs that the Devil is still alive,’ as it was later put in America in the Salem witch trials.”
 
Sagan continues: “In the witch trials, mitigating evidence or defense witnesses were inadmissible.” If, for example, a husband claimed that his wife had been with with him the whole night, not cavorting about in the forest with demons, the archbishop would explain that the husband had been deceived—such is the power of the Devil—and had in fact shared his bed with a demon masquerading as his wife.
 
Women and girls, in particular, but also men and boys were accused, tortured and killed in the most painful and humiliating ways imaginable. Sagan recounts, “In the immolation of the 20-year-old Joan of Arc, after her dress had caught fire the Hangman of the Rouen slaked the flames so onlookers could view ‘all the secrets which can or should be in a woman.’”
 
The parade of horrors goes on and on. But the aspect that really caught my attention was the attitude of the church officials who endorsed and perpetrated witch trials. They were convinced of their absolute rightness. There was no alternative explanation other than the one they already believed. To even raise the possibility that they were mistaken was to engage in heresy and commit the mortal sin of attacking the Church. Critics of witch burning were themselves put on trial and burned. “The inquisitors and torturers,” writes Sagan, “were doing God’s work. They were saving souls. They were foiling demons.” Thus any opposition was standing in God’s way and deserved to be crushed.
 
During my time as a fundamentalist charismatic Christian I saw the same type of mass hysteria manifest around conspiracy theories about global Satanic witch covens that kidnapped children for human sacrifice. I see it today with QAnon and claims that Joe Biden (who is cast as a godless liberal despite his devout Catholicism) somehow stole the presidential election from Donald Trump (who is cast as a righteous instrument of God despite being antithetical to everything Jesus taught). I saw in my fundy days the same practice of applying bad theology in an effort to control people’s sexuality (especially LGBTQ people) and to control women via the Pro-Life movement. I saw the same arrogant certainty in leaders (typically men) who claimed to be unquestionably right and to have authority from God which should not be criticized.
 
I’m grateful that the church (Protestant and Catholic) does not today have a shred of the civic power it once had. History has shown that theocracy inevitably results in oppression and atrocity. But I’ve seen with my own eyes that the mindset remains that would plunge us back into darkness if given the chance.

 

I have this weird thing where if I have blood drawn while sitting up I am likely to pass out. It isn't an aversion to blood; it's something to do with the fact that I have rather low blood pressure. So I've learned that if I'm having blood drawn it is best for me to be relatively supine. The last time I passed out while having blood drawn I didn't realize it had happened until I was coming back around to consciousness. One moment I was chatting away to the phlebotomist and the next moment I was being revived and offered juice. In between those two moments was a gap of time in which there was nothingness. When I sleep, I dream. But this was simply... nothingness. Or, at least, nothing I remember.

That experience changed the way I think about the existence of an afterlife. Maybe there is an afterlife, maybe not; I don't know (nobody does). But if death equals nothingness--a complete extinguishment of consciousness--then why fear it? It's only natural. And if there is something more, I guess (like everyone else) I'll find out when I get there.

Schopenhauer wrote, "After your death you will be what you were before your birth." But what was I before I was born? Scattered atoms? A spiritual being? A thought in the mind of God? I don't remember.

I sometimes joke that I entered seminary as an evangelical Christian and departed as an agnostic Buddhist. It's an oversimplification, but in large part true. I think of myself as a Buddhist in the sense that I recognize the genius of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and the other practical teachings of the Buddha, as well as the transformative power of meditation, but I don't believe in rebirth or other speculative spiritual components of Buddhism. I think of myself as a Christian in the sense that I try to live my life according to the values and teachings of Jesus--particularly as laid out in the Sermon on the Mount--but I don't believe (any longer) in most of the tenets of the classic Christian creeds. In seminary I learned to appreciate things about all of the world's religions, but I also came to the conclusion that the most honest religious view is agnosticism; to simply be able to say "I don't really know."

Jesus was, I think, a remarkable person who made a significant impact during his life. He lived during a time of tremendous socio-political upheaval, under a repressive religious system that was under a corrupt and tyrannical kingdom that was under an oppressive empire (which also provided benefits like capability of long-distance travel, communications, preservation and transmission of philosophy, religious plurality, and relative peace).

Jesus's teachings, and the movement he led, cut like a laser through the multi-layered systems of oppression in which he found himself. He challenged their authority, pointed out their hypocrisy, and highlighted how badly they had missed the mark in their claim of being God's (or, the case of the Romans, the gods') authority on earth. He taught that every person--no matter their gender or race or illness or socio-economic status or profession or how "other" they are--is worthy of care and kindness, deserving of respect and fair treatment, beloved by God. Clearly, what he taught, and the way he taught it, was profound and powerful to the point of being viewed as a threat to the civic and religious authorities. So they conspired to have him arrested, tortured and killed. And that was the end of Jesus the man.

But the effect of his brief life was so great that people continued to tell stories about him. And, of course, those oral tales and eventual written accounts became more and more exaggerated and weighted with symbolism. In trying to express the significance of his life and teachings, people incorporated popular Mediterranean tropes: surely he was sent from God; like others sent from [the] God[s] in Greco-Roman-Egyption-Persian theologies, he was born of a virgin; he performed authoritative miracles over sickness and nature; yes he was killed, but like Osiris and Adonis and Castor and Romulus and Heracles (etc.) he rose from the dead; he ascended to Heaven, like other Greco-Roman god-men had purportedly ascended to Mount Olympus; and his death carried a sacrificial reconciliatory significance. Jesus gradually became linked to Greek philosophical concepts such as the Logos, and Neoplatonic cosmology, and Manichaen dualism.

Jesus became a mythic figure and an object of veneration (the same fate that happened to the Buddha). The man who told people to follow him (not worship him) became an object of worship. The man who criticized the hierarchical and puritanical Jewish temple religious system became the diety at the heart of a hierarchical and puritanical gentile religious system (with temples of its own). The man who challenged the empire was appropriated and transformed into a god who endorsed the empire.

I could go on, but suffice to say that studying and pondering things like this is how I became a Buddhist who doesn't subscribe to Buddhism and a Christian who doesn't subscribe to Christianity and an Agnostic who has opinions but freely admits "I don't really know."