Christian Politics...

Is this the future of Jesus' Church??

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Why William Jennings Bryan?

You will not crucify humanity on a cross of gold!

And the crowd in the Kansas City convention hall went absolutely beserk.

It's hard to believe that monetary policy was the monstrous issue of the 1896 presidential race.

Maybe it was a different time. Maybe people studied politics more, knew economics better. Maybe, for all the cries of "country bumpkin" the East Coast elite dished out, maybe those bumpkins knew more than all but a few economists do today.

And they probably did.

Because it affected them so profoundly.

The vast middle of the US, the breadbasket, was small farmers at the turn of the century. Farmers are surprisingly like any other small business man... they desperately need capital. They invented, after all, the term "seed money".

The banking elite wanted only gold as the backer of currency. Gold provided more stability, it was thought. Big business very much loved that currency was limited to gold reserves on hand.

But for small farmers, the limited supply of gold meant a limited supply of money, and most of that in the hands of the bankers and big business.

Limited money supply meant limited money available for loans every spring to put seed in the ground. Expensive money.

As the US pushed a single-metal currency, farmers' access to capital was starved off.

It was this issue that drove young Congressman William Jennings Bryan. He was from a farm state, born in another farm state.

Very quickly he made his name as an orator. It had always been his goal, as he had seen what God had given him in talent, to use the spoken word to effect change for the good of the common man.

He arrived in Chicago a relatively inexperienced Congressman. His Democratic party wasn't that different from the Republican. They were backed by old money and didn't listen to the cries of the little man.

It was the time of the Populist party. When Communism seemed better than Capitalism.

And Bryan was the immense underdog arriving at the 1896 Democratic convention. The Populist party and several others were threatening to tear the Western/Southern 2/3s of the Democratic party and render the Democrats even more marginalized than they currently were.

Bryan had the ability to fill a 15,000 seat auditorium with his voice alone... and he had words that mattered and words that held together. He was an ORATOR.

His passion for the people brought the house down. The "Cross of Gold" speech is still the standard for American political oratory.

Politics and religion met in Bryan... And he left Kansas City the upstart surpise, the nominee of his party.

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... And What About Morality?

Rev. Ted Haggard's troubles shine a bright spotlight on the disucssion of Christians in politics. Haggard's story would be huge without the gay marriage debate. With it, it just underlines that Christianity is just a powerplay for moral hammering.

Evangelical Christians look little different than the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages. Loud, strident ... and hypocritical.

Should believers back down from moral politics, or politics as a whole? Is taking moral stands something that hurts rather than hinders the cause of Christ and the communication of the Gospel?

We end up looking like rigid nasty spiteful buffoons.

Yet a fall like this is nothing new. Mankind is inherently sinful and we will often turn away from Jesus' power and love. Our culture sees it most with sex, but we quietly do it with money and with many other areas.

Perhaps in this search for a real Christian political expression this needs to be kept in mind, that what people should see first is Jesus. And I don't think that's where we're headed right now.

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In Times of War...

I was planning on a logical progression of these thoughts, but ran across something as I read this morning that was too good not to post now...

My current read is a history by Victor Davis Hanson. I highly recommend his Ripples of Battle. Hanson is a classicist whose books continually answer the question, "Why should I care?". Why should I care about history and what went before?

A Christian High School teacher of mine was known for her phrase: "Man's Heart Never Changes". That could be the subtitle of this post, and perhaps the first tenent of a Christian political understanding.

My current read is about the Peloponnesian War. That famous conflict between the Greeks that we studied in school. And it's full of application. The title of this Hanson book is A War Like No Others.

From this morning's chapter about political turmoil at home while the troops were out fighting... turmoil both in Athens and in Sparta:

When the war appeared to be stalemated and the eventual victor uncertain, internal revolution was less likely. Yet after a particular setback...one side or the other grew emboldened that change at home might reflect the course of the larger war. If proof were needed that many people lack an ideology but instead prefer to look first to their own self-interests, no better examples exist than the first Peloponnesian War... the ebb and flow of Greek opinion that followed each particular Sparan or Athenian reverse. War ... when combined with political tension, turned what would have otherwise been heated, but mostly restrained, civil disputes into unchecked bloodletting. ... Thucydides (the War's notable historian) thought civil unrest and coups were central to his story of the war itself and that soon after hostilities broke out the "entire Hellenic world, so to speak, was so convulsed."

Oligarchs usually sought to parade their cause under the misleading rubric of wishing for "a temperate aristocracy". Democrats countered by professing loyalty to the idea of "equality under the law". Once the struggle began, the former were rarely temperate and the latter seldom lawful.

We are not shedding blood over our current war. But we did during the Viet Nam era. Any biography of a Nixon insider shows how much the mental instability of that administration was tinged by the horror of violent overthrow of our very government. Of machine gun emplacements wrapped by mounds of sandbags in the basement corridors of the White House and Congress.

I hadn't thought about it, but there truly is blood in the streets at home when there is war abroad. Generally the war is longer in duration than the tidal wave of patriotism upon the start of conflict. As the war drags, the political opponents begin to use the war as leverage.

What does that mean for the disciple of Christ who engages in politics?

Our position on issues must be carefully separated out from the current sweep of emotion. Who and what we are as redeemed men and women is easily pulled or pushed along by either side of the war's aftermath at home. But we serve a King not of this world.

This, then, might be my first pillar... Our politics must move heavenward just as all areas of our lives do, as we are weaned from the flesh and more and more recognize our new creation in Christ.

Of course, what that means then must be answered.

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Political musings

I'm hijacking my own blog for a time. It's silly season, mid-term elections. I've always been fascinated--held captive really--by politics. So for a time this will be a political commentary blog.

I'm in the midst of reading a second political book in a row... Just recently finished a book I recommend to any interested in political history.

That book was A Godly Hero. It's a biography of William Jennings Bryan. He was a 3-time Democratic presidential candidate. An Illinois boy who found fame and fortune by his mellifluous voice and passionate stands.

The history is fascinating because it covers a time when what we now take to be leftist politics was highly Christian in nature. It covers a time when Western populism was nearly socialist, when Communism was considered a viable option. When Christianity and the causes of the left marched in lockstep.

Those days are past, but I want to use this space to seek out what is a Christian political manifesto.

I'm not happy that the Evangelical church has made a tight alliance with the GOP. I'm not comfortable that the social causes of Jesus are now owned by the rabid secularists.

I'm not happy that I squirm when the word Christian and Democrat are linked.

So ... hold on... here we go.

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Thoughts on politics

I've been studying my reactions to the Mark Foley scandal. I'm not comfortable with my own thinking...

First of all, I'm disgusted with both parties. And I'm disgusted with the media coverage. There is no doubt in my mind that this is an engineered scandal... that the Democratic party held onto this information and timed it's release to squash any GOP headway at the midterms.

I've looked at the blog that "broke" this data (I think it's www.stopsexualpredators.com or something like that... I don't have it in front of me). It's pretty clear that it's a site manufactured to LOOK like a grass-roots anti-abuse site... but if you look at it critically it seems scripted. It leads to only one true "blockbuster" and that's this one... It's shrewd.

So their pontificating about the GOP not dealing with this information earlier rings hollow if you look at this deeply. They had the info and held it too, for exactly the same reason... to protect electoral advantage.

Now my own dis-ease... I find myself almost letting Foley off the hook because of the use of this as a political football. I find myself guilty of the same things...

It's tough in politics... because it's so easy to believe that the cause is worth more than the people.

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In Defense of Starbucks...

I've written here before that I was concerned about the trashing of Starbuck's. The conservative Christian core (or is that corps) led by Focus on the Family pointed out complaints based largely on comments on their cups.

Starbucks does run a "The Way I See It" series of brief quotes from luminaries and other customers. Some comments run in past months were in defense of gay rights.

OK, I may not agree with that particular series, but there were many I have agreed with, smiled at or disagreed but had good thoughts stimulated.

I find it interesting that Starbucks is coming under fire from a variety of sources. I chuckle to hear the Left denigrating it as a symptom of the multi-cultural glut. Of the massive standardization and blight.

So Left and Right are complaining... that tells me there's something good going on. And here's what I think it is. Starbucks (and for that matter, Panera) are the first examples of a socially redeeming mass-market retail food chain.

Yes, McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King have had their value. No really, I mean it, there is a value in the quick food. As any parent with a car full of kids trying to get from Point A to Point B in a limited amount of time. To be able to top of the blood sugar and keep them chewing (and not fighting) for a time is priceless.

But our food blob chains of the 50s and 60s enforced a certain individualization. A growing apart.

Interesting aside that CS Lewis pictured Hell in The Great Divorce as a place where people moved a little further apart from each other every day... the cold blackness descending ever-so-slowly on them, sliding further and further apart from the love and care of others...

But our new places are places that bring us together. Throw in Barnes and Noble and Borders with their coffee shops. These are places that invite us in. Invite us to share our lives.

The baristas who pour my coffee get to know me. They're encouraged to do that.

And as a believing Christian, I find that these are amazing places where God works. I'm in Starbucks now. It was here I first heard of John Eldredge. Where Blue Like Jazz first came to my attention. Where I've overheard some marvellous conversations.

It was in Panera where I first met my pastor and now my friend, Darin Shaw.

Even the cups. They urge me to slow down. To read. To reflect.

OK, some will be ideas I don't like. But some will be ideas that advance God's Kingdom...

Another aside... I wonder if Jim Dobson thought of submitting a gentle "The Way I See It..." He'd reach a far broader audience, and one that needs his message of Jesus' love.

So I came into Starbucks today, beaten and down... the first day of school, the kids are gone and I'm feeling the strain of 5 years of managing it all by myself.

And what should happen but the most amazing and sweet Christian meeting as I learned that one of my favorite baristas is a believer. She introduced me to another believer.

I'm humbled and I'm encouraged. Starbucks has created a place where God can work... by simply creating a space where we can meet, talk and connect.

That's a good thing.

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