HONEST RELIGION NEEDS A SECULAR SOCIETY

 I read something today which first alarmed me and then had me thinking: the suggestion that Putin dreams of leading, along with the racist, fascist Bannon and his minions, a Great Revival of white 'Christendom'. He wants to revive the ancient error of the 'Cross-and-crown' framework of society using a coalition of counterfeit 'Christian' nationalists here, reactionary Romans (I question just how 'catholic' these people might be) and the Orthodox churches which have always been organized on an ethno-national basis. This 'coalition' would have three enemies: Islam, China (which has always feared Islam; why do you think they're persecuting the Uighurs so cruelly?) and....modern secularism.
That last gets me really thinking. I grew up in a 'sekler-HEWM'niss' family. I started to become a Christian when I was in college and am still becoming one; I am and have been an in-process Christian just about all my adult life. Neither my church nor any Rationalist body called on me to cut off ties from the first part of my life, by the way.
To me, 'secular humanism' is a few things: first, I'd say it belongs to spiritual adolescents at that stage of development where they see their parents as Utterly Hopeless Creatures, which we know to belong basically to high schoolers, college students (and maybe other young people of corresponding ages) and tends to begin to change in one's early twenties. Perhaps starting regular jobs has something to do with that.
Second, I see it as a way-station between moving beyond the god many of us know from childhood and our parents. We move through the valley of unbelief and in the hills on the other side, we find a God of Whom we know far less than we're used to believing. Paul Tillich said it well: "The post-skeptic God often bears little resemblance to the pre-skeptic God." How right he was!
Third, I see a secular society as actually quite necessary for the nurturing and growth of what I understand to be true religion and true spirituality. A society which is resolutely secular--that is, one where the government concerns itself only with earthly good for its members, including ecosystems--is probably necessary for religion to remain relatively uncorrupted. A society where one faith or another is supported by government opens the door all too wide to corruptions. Not to mention that such a society can play an important role in keeping religion intellectually sharp and honest. The Gallican Church (that is, the Catholic Church in France) offers some proof of that, I'd say.
When we try to use shiny objects to bring people to, or back to, 'old-time religion' it works for a while, but only for a while. Soon enough the objects lose their shine and the whole thing as shown up as yet another snake-oil medicine show. And that's where, in the dark past, religious coercion usually kicked in.
Modern secular society asks only that no religion make a public nuisance nor a public danger of itself; its only compulsion upon religion is more honesty, both intellectual and emotional, than any established religion would require of itself. Such societies have tended to leave such honesty to its religious dissenters.
Modern secular society might also require religion to dig deeper into its scriptures for more meaning--such understandings as can incorporate scientific facts with religious truths. Here, as elsewhere, the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life!
I should also mention here that, to the everlasting shame of religions, secular societies seem to treat their members with considerably more 'humaneness' than do societies which place high importance on outwardly religious displays. See Matthew 7:21 for what Jesus had to say. And, at least as importantly, note this passage:
Jesus, knowing that they [the crowd which he had fed] intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. John 6:15 (NIV)
He fled from those who would have made him an earthly sovereign. How then can he approve of a renewal of the 'Cross and crown' governmental framework? And read these lines written by a man who was himself a friar more than four centuries before our Bill of Rights was crafted, in a time when any other governmental pattern could hardly be imagined:
When the kindness of Constantine gave Holy Church endowments
In lands and leases, lordships and servants,
An angel cried on high above the Romans,
saying, 'This day has the church drunk venom,
And all who have Peter's power are poisoned forever'.
If Will Langland could see the evil results of 'Cross and crown' government in a time when hardly anyone could imagine anything else, there can be no excuse for us if we permit a renewal of such a flawed model of governance. Repeat. NO. EXCUSE!
Honest religion and secular society need one another! And something it seems I can't say often enough: A robust, living faith welcomes questions, can answer criticisms cogently, gives mockery a pitying smile and asks the state only for impartiality. It is a brittle and moribund 'faith' that begs the state for help to squelch questions, criticisms and justly deserved mockery in order to shore up its outward shell, as its insides are already usually empty as it is.

ENLARGE THE EQUATIONS

 Enlarge the equation.
Could this be the slogan which we on the political/economic left--Democrats, democrats, liberals, progressives, racial justice-seekers and Greens--need pretty badly? Something that says what needs to be said in a brief, understandable and memorable way?
I thought of it today in what might be considered and interesting context: the cost of keeping a henhouse, including the raising up of altered male chicks to be capons instead of having them horribly ground up the way the great poultry houses do, versus the cost of just buying eggs and poultry at the markets. Obviously, it will cost more money to build and maintain poultry. But on the other hand, I might contribute something to local food sufficiency and I'd be giving at least some life to the male chicks who would otherwise be destined for a quick and horrible end.
And then it occurred to me that enlarging the equation was what I was doing in my head. And then my mind took another jump as I asked myself, isn't this what we need to do across the board? Enlarge the equations of profit and loss? Include as many others, human, animal and even plants, in the gain/loss equation? Isn't that why, at least until 1980, we didn't grind the seed-grains?
Don't we need to enlarge the equation so that we act to make sure every child is cared for and has at least an education which will enable them to keep on learning through their lives, and more, wanting to keep on learning thus? Sarah Palin is the personification of those who don't want to learn further; need I say more?
Don't we need to enlarge the equation so that we can see what a monetary rathole the military-industrial-security complex is for the most part? And, above all, don't we need to enlarge the equation so that we start putting 'capital' back into the ecosystems from which nourish us all? What good will even gold and silver, never mind fiat paper cash, do us when there's nothing left to make, sell or buy?!
Finally, don't we need to enlarge the equation to enable us to see, with perhaps a hint or two of how God sees all His Creation, much more of the ways not only all humans, but all life on this blue-green planet, are connected with each other and treat those connections with understanding and respect?!
Overgrown palefaced frat-boys who have never had to worry about putting anything by for any reason have ruled the roost for far too long! It is past time to knock them off that roost and compel them to get honest jobs! If all they can do is fast becoming antiquated, especially thanks to these new car-buying services which avoid going to a dealership, well, too bad. I can hardly wait to see Alex Jones, Tuckums and everyone who is part of the fascist noise machine trying to sell pencils and wrapping paper on the street corner!
My profound apologies to Xers, Millennials, and Zoomers for the ways in which my Boomer generation (ESPECIALLY my 'fellow' pale males) has proven such a dismal, dismal failure! Back when we were young and getting some inklings of what hard work this all might prove to be, what did we do? Did we roll up our sleeves like sturdy men and women and get to the work before us?
We all know the answer is a big fat NO. Most of us shirked in favor of jamming our own pockets and purses with mostly ill-gotten cash 'made' by selling off still-vital parts of our economy and losing millions of honest people's jobs and pension funds. And now those problems are bigger and mostly up to y'all to solve, although Bill McKibben is giving us another chance with his Act III organization.
Think about that phrase, though: Enlarge the Equations. Might that not just be a winning slogan?

LORD ACTON REDUX

 "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."--Lord Acton

Can we be said to all agree on this? And further agree that none of us bipeds are born more or less so corruptible than our fellows? Well, whether you agree with this or not, I will proceed under just that assumption. If you think you can make a case otherwise, you're more than welcome to try. Good luck with that, though.
So. Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a large reason to protect and extend democracy. Ideally, under a democracy, all living things have some power but none have too much. Yes, there is and will continue to be a certain amount of inequality of power; that's a condition of life. But democracy is intended to make it so there is no one as abject to have no power at all nor anyone who is dangerously powerful enough to 'bid defiance to our laws and people', as Mr. Jefferson said of our moneyed corporations in the year of Grace 1814!
So this is one point of political democracy. But political democracy can be made into a hypocritical laughingstock when economic power is skewed toward the rich and already powerful. Inequality is already so great that our economy may not even be capitalist anymore: we may have crossed the line into a neo-feudal economy.
Those who have either never, or barely, had to work for their wealth think they do the poor and working people a favor by making their lives as miserably hard as possible for as little money as possible. A favor, so please you! 'Builds character', according to those who knew they were never going to miss a meal and who always had Daddy or Mumsy to pull them out of any trouble!
Well, I for one am for returning that 'favor'! How exactly am I so? Read the maxim with which I begin this post. Then reflect on what kind of power billions of privately-held dollars or other currency gives one individual or one family. Isn't that pretty dam' close to absolute?
Not to mention, aren't a lot of rich people rather anxious to save the souls of we who have much less than they by making us work so very hard for so very little? Well, that's where I want to return the favor: if absolute power corrupts absolutely, consider the state of the souls of these rich folks! How can they be other than hanging by threads above the very mouth of hell? Shouldn't we pull them back from the edge of the flaming abyss over which they hang?
Make no mistake about it: even after such 'heavy' taxation of the rich as I propose, they'll still be richer than you and me, and to such riches as that, big whoop, sez I. They'll still have vacation homes, country clubs, yachts and other toys of the rich--not so many private aircraft, though, I imagine! Shocking privation, isn't it?
But now they'll only be ten to twenty times as rich as you and I rather than 350 times as wealthy. And, with their wealth scaled down, they won't have such dangerously corrupting power as would turn feudal barons and kings into solid emeralds with envy! And, best of all, we pull their precious immortal souls well back from the edge of the flaming abyss!
And surely none of us should aspire to such wealth as to give us such all-encompassing and, thus, completely corrupting, power, now should we? So let's dispense with wanting to aspire to such a truly dangerous state; let us rather endeavor to do our own personal best at whatever we can do and at least like doing in building up each other and our ecological reserves. No one is wrong to ask for at least a modestly comfortable living by doing so; am I not correct in this? Seriously.
Finally, there is really no such thing as a monopoly on cultural power. We have media moguls, and one in particular, along with some of his spawn, has done the world horrific harm and should be prevented from doing more. But apart from that, cultural power is far more diffuse than political or economic power. Indeed, economic power affects cultural power. Culture follows money, so 'tis said, and it's true to a fair extent. I only mention 'cultural power' because I know that's where the 'What about...' is coming from today's fascists.
Anyhow, let's save the souls of our far-too-wealthy brothers and sisters by allowing no individual or family fortunes larger than $1 billion max, although my preference would be for making $500 million the maximum. And for keeping the top tax rate where it was in Ike's day back when I was born! And most of you who read my posts know what that means! As I said, the rich will still be rich but will be well back from the flames to which neo-feudal power brings us too dam' close!

WE, NOT THEY, ARE THE 'REAL AMERICANS'

 In my last post, I wrote that we liberals and progressives, so far from being un-American, are in fact the very soul (no pun meant) of America. We are the pioneers trying to build something that, so far as is knows, has not yet existed in human history: a multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-faith (including none) democratic republic. We also stand on the verge of a further extension of democracy; the giving of a voice to Creation itself.
We always should beware of saying our enemies are also God's enemies, but if God is urging us towards His holy realm as Isaiah describes it, can it be otherwise? They want all--repeat, all--the economic and political power in their hands alone and wish to stifle, or at least neutralize in Viktor Orban's soft-fascist style, any and all differing voices. Which feels more like God's Will to you: all of Creation having many various yet harmonious voices or the only voice that of the most ruthless and heartless among us? Which is more Christ-like? If we're not sure of the answer, I'd say some serious prayer and study (hermeneutics mandatory here!) is seriously required!
I think a word is in order about Orban's style, and what its possible transplanting here will likely require of us. 'Soft-fascist' means that our side is, through co-opting of the media, the judiciary and the counting (and, more often, the discounting) of certain votes means that we are put in a permanent 'loser' position. The whites, most Asians and palefaced Hispanics among us will be largely left in physical peace. The fascists will say, 'Nyah! Nyah!' which is what those wicked fools live for anyway! 'Enjoy your families and private lives; we don't need to bother you anyway! NYAAAAH! NYAAAAH!'
This is where we may have to make bothers of ourselves. When 'racial purification' begins, we dare not hide in our homes. We will have to put our bodies between the fascists and their intended victims and say, "No, you'll have to knock us down to get at our friends and our equally American brethren here." And to keep on doing this as long as we can. Are we ready for this? Some of us are but most of us need to learn the whens and hows at least.
I can't blame anyone who wants to leave this country and move somewhere else where people and other living creatures are treated more humanely and not so much like hostile alien things. But the war will be fought mostly here and it must be won here. The choice is between us who represent the truest and best spirit of this country and the Western world at large and those who would make a bitter, obscene and tribally inbred parody of both.
We, and the West at large, are what we are in large part because of our openness to new ideas, new technologies and new people as well. It is much more of a strength than a weakness. We close the doors and we start to decompose from within. Such inbreeding might be a large part of how the Arab/Muslim world, which led the world in learning and technology a thousand years ago while we were still running round bare-assed under our chain mail, lost its primacy and is today at the back of the line intellectually. I personally feel that's worth a lot of thought. What about you?