So all this talk against masturbation by Republican candidates reminded me of an email exchange I was having with a conservative relative recently. He said that us liberals always talked about Jesus talking about helping the poor and oppressed, but never talked about his stands on sexual immorality. Okay, fair point, I thought, so I decided to check my Bible and see how much emphasis Jesus placed on such issues compared with his discussion of social justice related issues. I figured the easiest way to check this out was just a verse count, which could give some sense at least of how much time he spent on one area vs. another.
I found 19 verses in the gospels where Jesus mentions divorce, which he was against. At that time in Jewish culture, men were quite cavalier about divorcing their wives, leaving them deserted in abject poverty (women of the time had little in the way of economic or civil rights) frequently with little prospects for remarriage, and Jesus was appalled at that idea, and so spoke out against divorce. His focus in these passages was not about the sex part, and was focused on marriage as an institution.
I found 9 verses which specifically referenced adultery and/or fornication. Three of these verses listed one or both on a long list of sins he was mentioning on his way to another point- for example, in Matthew he is discussing the idea that what makes you a sinner is at least as much about what is in your heart than what you do. The final six verses mentioning sexual morality were in the long (29 verse) section of Matthew where he again talked about how we should not just obey the laws but hold ourselves to a higher standard of personal morality, and he used several examples including murder, violence, lying, loving others, and adultery (the famous lusting in your heart verses which Christine O'Donnell was so eloquent about). That's it in terms of Jesus' worries about sex-related sinning- 4 mentions, all of them in the context of explaining a much bigger point he was making about how what's inside matters as much as whether you obey specific laws in the Jewish scripture.
Now, let's compare those to the social justice areas of the Gospel, which I think of as where Jesus talks about showing mercy to those weaker than us, not judging others, loving/forgiving/turning the other cheek to our enemies, forgiving enemies/blessing peacemakers in general, loving/treating others as we would ourselves, and what I would call the class warrior verses (the blessed are the poor/woe to the rich sections). Here are the numbers for these kinds of verses:
Mercy to those weaker: 24 verses
Do not judge others: 34 verses
Love and forgive your enemies/make peace: 53 verses
Loving your neighbors (defined as all other people, not just those who live next door) and treating them as you would treat yourself: 19 verses
Help the poor/the rich should sell all their possessions and them away: 128 verses
All told, that is 258 verses about mercy, forgiving enemies, not judging others, loving all people, helping the poor and woe to the wealthy vs 9 verses which mention adultery or fornication in any way, and 19 more saying divorce isn't good. Oddly enough, Jesus didn't say a single word against homosexuality or masturbation or abortion or birth control, although if you listened to some of our conservative friends, you would think he was obsessed with those topics.
Those ratios are pretty daunting. About 14 to 1 on class war vs. sex. Almost four to 1 on just the simple idea of not judging others as compared to all the mentions of sex sins. If you combine all the things Jesus said about sex and divorce, and compare it to all the stuff he said about helping the poor and how the rich should give away everything they own, you get close to a five to 1. And if you combine all the stuff about sex and divorce vs all the stuff about social justice, it's more than to 9 to 1 in favor of us social justice lefty types.
Of course, 2,000 years after Jesus lived and preached, we can't know for sure how much he said or cared about these issues. All the evidence we have of his life and ministry are those four gospels, written probably 40-60 years after his death by fervent believers who didn't always agree with each other on the details of his life, death, and ministry. But what is obvious from the gospels is that the Jesus of the Bible preached and cared overwhelmingly about just two things: his followers' relationship with God, and their love and kindness toward others, especially the weak and the poor.
Why is this important to our modern society today? Because conservatives try so hard to twist the religion of the majority of Americans into a warped, unrecognizable version of the message its founder had for us.
At least conservatives like Ayn Rand were honest in their disdain for religious pieties about compassion and helping the weak. Those of you conservatives who are trying so hard to wrap yourselves in the Bible ought to try actually reading one someday.
It's not so much a "conspiracy" as it the extension of basic economic rules taken to an extreme. I'm a lawyer, so I come to it from somewhat of a different angle, but it's still the same principle.
Cross-posted at Huffington Post- this was originally published last week and I thought I'd share
When you are in the political world, you have decisions to make every single day about who you will try to help and who you won't. In spite of the earnest quest of good technocrats everywhere, the simple fact is that there are only a few win-win solutions. Who you tax, who you give a tax break to, what programs you cut or add to, who you tighten regulations on, and who you loosen them on, what kind of contractors are eligible for government work, which school districts and non-profit groups get federal money, etc: these political decisions are generally not win-win. Instead, they mean that one group of people win, and one group of people loses. It is the nature of politics, and you can't take the politics out of politics.
The most fundamental difference between progressives and conservatives is that question of which side you are on. Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government's job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them. Progressives, on the other hand, believe it is the poor and those who are ill-treated who need the most help from their government, and that prosperity comes from all of us -- the worker as well as the employer, the consumer as well as the seller, the struggling entrepreneur trying to make it as well as the wealthy who already have.
Usually, I might spend my time arguing which of those worldviews gives us better policy outcomes, or which is better politics, but in this post I want to focus on something else: which side the God of the Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition is on.
I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church web site," Beck urged his audience. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me....
We'll get to the rest of what Jesus has to say below, in the last section. But first, a word from His churches....
I remember that at the turn of the century (ha! I've always wanted to get to write that) it seemed like you couldn't read a news outlet anywhere that wasn't running articles on Islam 101 and the institution of Sharia law in some country. In one such article I read, a clerical commentator, iirc, was talking about why the veil was such a big deal to newly instituted Islamic governments.
He said, roughly, that it was because it was a lot easier to prove your piety by insisting that women cover themselves than it was to give up banking with interest.
I've always thought of that story when people go tediously on about the huge, innate cultural differences between Us and Them. It isn't only that women haven't been able to vote in the US for even a full 90 years, that we're only at about the 150 year mark for meaningful property rights for married women, that the states never ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, that women get paid less than men, etc. It's also because still today, our rights and health are often the first bone offered up on the altar of bipartisan consensus.
For the sake of people who believe that undifferentiated cell balls are people, the Democrats routinely ignore the interests of those who believe that women are people. Hence, the uterus remains the only organ that the state can require any adult living or dead to donate the use of for anyone else's sake.
The health financing reform fight has been no exception to this trend, and I don't know if I'm even capable of conveying how angry it makes me that Obama's signaling he's willing to gut reproductive health coverage in even private insurance plans, and almost certainly to exclude it from any public option, just so he can stake a claim to being the "last" president to deal with health care.
If you like the coverage you have, you can keep it. Probably. Unless you're a chick.
Public Christians in US politics can easily prove their piety to peers by punitively, and only, making life harder for women. They are not asked to prove moral fitness by driving out moneychangers, helping the poor, showing mercy, clothing the naked, exemplifying forgiveness, showing hospitality to strangers, being humble, keeping prayer private, sheltering the homeless, ministering to prisoners or feeding the hungry. Indeed, if indifferent cruelty is a spiritual virtue, then majorities in Congress are surely bound for heaven. Such as it would be. Whatever faith that is, it isn't in the Bible, a book I've had to read through cover-to-cover at least twice.
Which also therefore qualifies me to inform you that 'the b*tches got it coming' is neither in the Gospel, which isn't the law, nor the Constitution, which is. Read up.
I learned last week that my friend and law school classmate Luke Cole had died in a car accident while vacationing with his wife in Uganda. Luke was an incredible guy with an infectious positive energy about him and the belief that he could change the world for the better. In a number of big and small ways, he did.
Luke became an environmental justice lawyer before most of us in the public interest legal field even knew what environmental justice was. He didn’t invent the concept, but he realized early on that communities of color—from American Indian reservations in the West to hog farming communities in the South to inner-city neighborhoods in the Northeast—were struggling with common problems of multiple environmental hazards and inadequate environmental protection. He realized, too, what government and private research would eventually confirm: that the racial character of these communities was the greatest predictor of the level of environmental degradation they would suffer. Greater than class. Greater than region of the country.
Yesterday, a Huffington Post reader commented on my previous article about the campaign against Bruce Wasserstein's gouging of seniors to fatten his own pockets. "Sadly," they said, "nobody cares."
I will admit, it's tough to raise interest in an issue like this. Everything from high gas prices to the crumbling economy to the Iraq war is demanding people's attention--and that's before you have to deal with the filtering effects of the media that reduces complex issues to trivial "gotcha" games. But a small group of committed citizens got out on the streets yesterday to say "Yes, we do care about the health and well-being of our elders, and the workers who take care of them. Do you?"
Over the last week, I've been documenting the struggle between workers and residents of the Atria assisted living facilities chain, and Bruce Wasserstein, CEO of the Lazard investment firm, who has reaped enormous profits from an affiliated fund's holdings in Atria, while the workers endure low pay and terrible conditions, the residents suffer neglect, and the shareholders continually lose value in their investment. If you've been reading thus far, you're probably asking yourself, "Okay, this is a terrible situation. What can I do about it?"
As someone who speaks often to the progressive movement around the country, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., president of the Hip-Hop Caucus, has a unique view of what's going on. He wrote about it recently:
When I speak at anti-war rallies the audience is usually all White, when I speak at immigration rallies the audience is usually all Brown, when I speak at rallies and events with Katrina survivors the audience is usually all Black. Global warming, usually White, police brutality, usually Black, and so on. The progressive movement is segregated, and race is the tripwire that prevents us from coming together. Not only do I find this to be very discouraging, it is self-defeating.
For people of color and folks who are working on social justice, this point seems pretty obvious, as does the similar observation that Jose Antonio Vargas' recent piece in the Washington Post tried to make with regard to the progressive blogosphere. That's why many people (myself included) were surprised by the intense pushback to the Post article from several high-profile progressive political bloggers this week (Atrios, Jane Hamsher, Digby), culminating in this Daily Kos thread on Saturday. Much of this pushback also seemed to contradict itself: people saying we need more inclusion, while at the same time vigorously defending the status quo. Here's a sample, from MissLaura's front-page diary:
Do political blogs have progress to make including women and people of color? Well, of course we do. But for the traditional media to pretend that these are problems unique to the blogosphere, as if the traditional media itself was a model of representation (and here, again, Goodman has the self-awareness to give a nod to this reality, but does not follow the thought through), as if think tanks or electoral politics perfectly reflected the demographics of the nation as a whole, is absurd, and the disproportionate amount of coverage that this has gotten smacks of a new strategy for marginalizing blogs...for looking too much like the traditional media.
I could not agree more with those who say progressives need to move past confrontation and toward collaboration when it comes to race and diversity. But my question is, how can we start talking about solutions if there is still such apparent resistance to the conversation from those who have the biggest platforms?
Note: see video intro above for more, and contact me if you wish at jenifer[at]anconastrategy[dot]com. This is my first post on Open Left. Thanks so much to Chris, Matt and Mike for the opportunity! I am a San Francisco-based writer, activist and strategist working in the progressive movement. In these Monday columns I will be sharing with you insights and commentary on movement politics from my perspective, which is very much rooted in the traditions and politics of historical movements for progressive social change. I look forward to the conversation.
There has been some great discussion on Open Left over the last few days analyzing movement-building in historical context, initiated by Mike Lux, and continued by Paul Rosenberg and others throughout the weekend. These writers have asked important questions, like "Where did we go wrong?", "How did we lose," or more specifically, "What was the larger social context that caused the conservative movement to succeed and ours to fail?" The part I want to add to this discussion is around defining the kind of movement we want and need to build, because having a good understanding of what a successful movement looks like is part of the work we need to do to build it. Much of the discussion thus far has been on the relationship between insiders and outsiders. As Mike said:
I believe instead that we need to build our own kind of movement, one that is fueled by a more egalitarian and communal culture. Sort of, well, an Open Left…
I agree that this is a relevant and important component for us to understand. But it is just that -- a component. There is another piece that isn't talked about enough, and that I think is equally if not more important: the disconnect between the largely white progressive world and the people-of-color-led groups and social justice-focused movements that are necessary to building our long-term winning coalition. We could have an "Open Left," as Mike suggests. But if the leadership of that movement reflected that of the organizations listed under that heading on the right column of this website right now, it's important to point out that it would be largely white and male. And I think we all agree that is not what our movement looks like.
What is a Movement?
The word "movement" is thrown around a lot these days, in the blogosphere and in progressive politics (as anyone who is on any Democratic candidate's email list knows). In this context, I think we would all do better to more fully understand what a movement really is. Northwestern University Professor Aldon Morris writes of the four essential components of movement-building in his book, The History of the Civil Rights Movement. I often come back to this, because I find it incredibly useful in thinking about movement-building today. Morris, who devoted 30 years of scholarship to studying movements and what works, says successful movements need:
- A compelling narrative with symbols
- Mass membership organizations
- Indigenous local leadership
- Communication channels
It's encouraging that groups like the Democracy Alliance and the New Progressive Coalition, who are trying to figure out how to fund the emerging multi-issue progressive movement, have a similar framework to Morris'. They are working to invest in organizations in four broad categories: ideas, civic engagement, leadership and media. These are also the areas, of course, that conservatives like John Olin and Richard Scaife focused on when they set out to invest in a conservative movement.
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