Meeting With A Truth-Telling Writer

January 28th, 2011  |   

Visiting El Salvador in the 1980’s with a peace delegation was a descent into hell. The country, torn apart by war—a war supported by U.S. dollars and troops—smelled of fear and death.  I shall never forget that trip.

Death-squads were murdering people—their bodies dumped in the streets and valleys daily.  Inside the National Guard compound, the covert center for the death-squads, a soldier opened a meeting with a prayer and then introduced General Vides Casanova.  When I asked him what would happen if the U.S. were to stop sending money, he replied, “Well how many Marines would it take to protect your interests here?”

The cathedral steps were pocked-marked by government troops firing on a crowd fleeing from a rally for sanctuary inside.  The windows of the cathedral were broken and birds were flying over an altar lit by a bare light bulb attached to an overhead cord.  

At a side altar I paid homage at the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero who had been assassinated during worship.  He had called for nonviolence—the end of military killing. He pleaded for the U.S. to stop sending weapons to El Salvador. That message cost him his life.

I said prayers at a desolate spot not far from the airport where three American nuns and a lay worker were raped and murdered. 

Prior to returning home, I met Chris Hedges, an American reporter covering Central America. His outspoken honesty was compelling. It served me well back home as I struggled to keep abreast of what was taking place in the region. While other reporters were hanging out at the hotel swimming pool passing on U.S. embassy propaganda to the American public, Hedges was out in the field in the middle of the combat.

A couple of weeks ago I spent time with Chris Hedges here in Charleston. He is traveling in West Virginia while working on a book. Since meeting him in El Salvador, I have tried to read everything I see with his byline, including his books. I’ve just finished his latest one, “Death of the Liberal Class.”

My recent conversations with Hedges—the Martin Luther King holiday weekend— participating in Judy Bond’s memorial service where folks grieving and celebrating the life of this truth-telling anti-mountaintop removal woman—and talking truthfully with some thoughtful yet discouraged Christians. Those are the events, which have inspired me to some truth-telling of my own. Politics and religion are the subjects.

Starting With Politics—The State Of The Union

I hadn’t intended to watch the State of the Union address but my curiosity overpowered my intentions. Maybe I wanted to see if the Republicans and Democrats sitting next to one another would lead to a knock-down-drag-out fight like the one last year in the Ukrainian Parliament.

Actually, I wanted to see if our President would tell the American public that our nation is a mess and in need of a radical approach to clean her up. Laying aside finesse, subtlety and nuance, would he offer the nation courage of conviction rather than compromise?

In the end, the pols played nicey-nicey and the President put his best charismatic foot forward and served up a plate full of platitudes.  “We have to do better,” he said. He sounded like a coach beefing up his team at halftime for a second half comeback but with no specifics on how to do just that. He did, however get specific at least once.

“I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.” Get out on the playing field and “do big things.”

What he’s talking about is making our country even more militarized, beefing us up for more battles, more war—endless war.  If the President wants more military presence on campus, give recruiters a spot on career day, like other industries get, not a permanent presence on the campus. And setting aside “divisive battles” is no more than coded language for squelching, in the name of patriotic civility, all antiwar organizing and action that resists the Commander in Chief’s propensity to take us to war.

The President began the address by appropriately calling for prayers for Congresswoman Giffords. Prayer is a prelude to specific action. But for the next sixty minutes he offered not one word about gun control.

And then there were those lemonade-springs-where-the-bluebird-sings-on-the-Big-Rock Candy-Mountains moments.

·      Iraq: The war “is coming to an end” and “violence has come down” and our troops are coming home “with their heads held high.” If you believe that you’ve been drinking something stronger than lemonade. We have 50,000 troops in Iraq and many of them, along with huge numbers of corporate America hired guns will remain there. The violence still rages with no workable government in place. Our troops are coming home injured and disabled from a mission no one can feel proud of. We leave behind over 100,000 dead Iraqis, and over 3 million refugees and homeless, as well as the numberless wounded people and trashed cities.

·      And Afghanistan? The President says he will begin to bring our troops home in July. I found that interesting since back in September he said troops would remain there “until the job is done.” No timetable, just until the Afghans have “the capacity to secure their own country”—the land of Big Rock Candy Mountains.

·      We will, says Mr. Obama, have a future with “clean coal.” Mr. President, the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot and UFO’s are not real and neither is clean coal. It was born dirty and it will die dirty.

·      “Our food is safe to eat, our water is safe to drink, and our air is safe to breathe.” Tell that to people who are warned not to eat fish because of mercury; and to the folks in Appalachia whose water has been poisoned by coal mining runoff; and to the people who suffer from asthma and workplace related respiratory disease caused by environmental dust. Mr. President, get outside your comfort zone and eat, drink and breathe the air with the poor folks forgotten in your address.

The Prophet Moses was charged by God to speak prophetic truth to Pharaoh on behalf of people in bondage. The question now is simply this: Who will be speak prophetic truth to power in the White House? Maybe he’s already spoken and the President is not listening.

The Prophetic Voice Of Cornell West

The prophet speaks truth to power. In the cacophony of political and media punditry, that voice is often drowned out or dismissed as outside of the mediocre mainstream where most people feel comfortable swimming. Cornell West, professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University, is one of America’s prophetic voices.

For some time now, West has been delivering straight talk—truthful messages—to his friend, Barack Obama. Like a surgeons scalpel, truth cuts to the bone in order to bring healing to a sick body. Aleksander Herzen once said, “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” The prophet reminds a nation that it is the source of much of the violence it sets out to cure. As the Bible says, “Physician, heal thyself.”

Martin Luther King, a Prophet who lived among us, told folks to be “magnificently maladjusted” to the way of the world—the materialism and violence that affected and afflicted individuals and nations. But that requires leaders who are willing to abstain from any desire for popularity or the kind of expediency that compromises truth. Dr. King paid the price of his abstention by losing the bulk of his followers, and his life, when he openly opposed the Vietnam War.

In one of his last sermons, King said: “I ain’t going to study war no more… I don’t care who doesn’t like what I say about it (the Vietnam War). I don’t care who criticizes me in an editorial. I don’t care what white person or Negro criticizes me…On some positions, cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when a true follower of Jesus Christ must take a stand that’s neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take that stand because it is right.”

Here are a few snippets from Dr. West, challenging Obama to emulate Dr. King. (Google West and pay attention to places like “Travis Smiley Presents” and “News One for Black America.)

West To Obama: “Despite your brilliance, despite your charisma, I’m disappointed when it comes to the fundamental question of priority, the question of urgency. How deep is your love for poor American people?…What kind of courage have you manifested in the stands you’ve taken?…What are you willing to sacrifice?…Don’t be seduced by the elite.”

I thought about those words after the State of the Union address. The poor were left out, as they are so often. Lots of talk about the middle class—rightly so—but the down-and-dirty poor were left outside in a place where the only trickle down will be what’s left over after tax and budget cuts are in place. And, I might add, a watered-down health care bill that results in rising co-pays, deductibles, and help for seriously ill people out of reach.

When I talk or write like this, some friends, fearful that I am losing hope, remind me that resurrection is possible. They say, don’t lose hope, the old can be made new, change is possible. I prize their concern but I must admit that hope is a fragile thing. It can be broken beyond repair. But I am not devoid of hope nor do I deny the reinvigorated power of resurrection. But not a bogus slight-of-hand rising. Authentic resurrection requires a real honest-to God death of old systems and ways of life—cultural transformation.

Here’s Dr. West again. I quote him, as Montaigne put it, in order to better express myself. “Democracy can be reinvigorated, can be revitalized, but it takes courage, you can’t just cut deals. You have to take a stand. You have to have backbone.”

With friends like Cornell West, President Obama can’t go wrong. If he is listening.

In Exile—My Quarrel With The Church

Chris Hedges, along with being a Pulitzer Prize winner for writing about global terrorism, has seen war up-close in Central America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. A professor, he also holds a master of divinity degree from Harvard. This connection between war, education, writing, and religion is of great interest to me, as you might well imagine.

His book, “Death of the Liberal Class,” is a prophetic statement, even though he denies being a prophet. He describes the title in a Democracy Now interview: “The collapse of the pillar, the primary pillars of the liberal establishment, those liberal institutions—the press, labor, public education and, in particular universities, liberal religious institutions and the Democratic Party.” All of the above, he said, have “been assaulted.” I agree.

For some time now I have felt discomforted and dissatisfied about the demise of the liberal institutions Hedges lists. They are failing us at a time when this country needs a reinvigorated rebirth. Dr. King in his last address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called the members to a “divine dissatisfaction” with the injustice, racial hatred, and violence. “Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.” I agree.

At this point in my life, living here in West Virginia, I feel exiled from the Episcopal Church. Having listened to clergy and lay people, in and outside my own church, I know that I am not alone in my dissatisfaction. I am one among many who have left the church or who still show up for worship but find little passion inside the institution. Specifically:

The Liturgical Smells, Bells and Costumes: On Christmas Eve, the Pope wore an ermine-trimmed red satin cape, ruby red Prado shoes, and a white cotta with breezy lace sleeves over a purple cassock. The Episcopal Church is not Rome, but we know how to imitate. On Christmas Eve I went to church, sang carols and saw friends I love, but the liturgy was passionless and the sermon was full of abstract spiritual God-talk. Philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, deplored the sacrifice of human beings on the altar of abstractions. So do I. The Christmas Jesus had been skinned of all flesh and blood.

I love good liturgy but, like the Prophet Amos, I hate and despise the solemn assemblies when they are disconnected from the world outside the doors of the temple. If the rags worn by the poor are not somehow connected with the priest’s ornate gowns, worship is a hollow charade. If the hymns are disconnected from the cries of the poor, there is no spiritual harmony. What I find most often is that there is no spit in the spirituality offered (Jesus used spit to heal), no leaven in the broken bread, no fresh blood in the chalice I am handed. The leadership feels elite and emasculated by liturgical form that inhibits rather than inspires. 

A Mute and Co-Opted Pulpit: Chris Hedges observes: “The institutional church, when it does speak, mutters pious statements. It seeks to protect its vision of itself as a moral voice and yet avoids genuine confrontations with the power elite. It speaks in a language filled with moral platitudes.” That’s my experience as well.

Here in West Virginia, the minister better not preach a creation-connected sermon that challenges the coal industry over the way it is destroying the earth and people’s lives. That’s because the pews are inhabited by coal company folks, Chamber of Commerce leaders, lawyers who protect coal interests, stockholders, and people who party and play with coal company buddies. Money placed in the collection plate would disappear if the minister were to speak the secret truth they know about the exploitation.

The bishop of this diocese has successfully avoided addressing the war, despite the fact that over 20 of his ministers tried to get him to join them in a statement urging President Bush not to invade Iraq. And coal? The lump in his throat on that critical issue could well be caused by a piece of company mined coal—a non-union mine at that. And gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues? It would take a newly discovered Dead Sea Scroll, with proof that St. Paul was gay, to change his mind about the full inclusion of gays in the diocese. He’s still dragging his feet about appointing a diocesan committee to work on full inclusion for these folks. As of now he simply ignores a diocesan convention resolution to that effect, passed by a large majority. The weight of leadership can be found only in the weight of his vestments.

Where’s the Sunshine?: For many, the sunny side of the street is on the other side of the street from the church. For them the church is at best an irrelevant anachronism, at worst the enemy. Last week I marched to the West Virginia Capitol building to protest a coal industry sponsored rally against EPA regulations that protect people and the mountains from the voracious greed of Big Coal. Outside, following the rally, I was asked to say a prayer by the leader of the march. I suspect, looking particularly at the young people there, many of the folks were not connected to a church. It always amazes me that anyone actively up-against the powers-that-be would ask a minister from a church to say a prayer. But they did, and I did.

Hedges writes about an interview he had with Roman Catholic priest, Daniel Berrigan. Speaking about Empire America, Berrigan says: ”The thing is bringing itself down by a willful blindness that is astonishing.” He pays respect to “the Buddhist understanding that the good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere.”

And then Berrigan’s faith races ahead of his reason. “I believe if it is done in that spirit it will go somewhere, but I don’t know where. I don’t think the Bible grants us to know where goodness goes, what direction, what force.” So much for those who read the Bible and do good works in order to get a ticket to heaven. 

Says Berrigan: “I have come to the conclusion that the stronger a series of events in a lifetime hearken to the Bible, the less one will know the outcome. That was true from Abraham to Jesus.”

For those in exile from the church structures, and those working subversively inside them, the task is clearly defined by the Prophets of old and those who speak the prophetic Word. Simply put: When the church is dark, walk on the sunny side of the street with those who speak truth to power without any guarantee of outcome here on earth, or in a heaven that is a long way from the hell so many human beings experience here and now.

 

Entry Filed under: Fig Tree Notes Archives