interfaith dialogue of the day, part V

Actually a remix of the original ad, but I like this version even better. And if you can’t see how this is an interfaith dialogue, you just aren’t trying hard enough.

great moments in corporate PR

Because when you hear “strong environmental program and social giving,” you think of Wal-Mart… Right?

a common cause

One thing that the Christian Right and I can agree on: Stopping the ignorant and dangerous Rudy Giuliani from becoming President.

dictates of faith

At the Dallas Observer, the always provocative Bible Girl tells the story of Brother Andrew, a person who shows what it really means to put his religion above politics. Brother Andrew is an evangelical by the most basic definition: a man whose sole pursuit is converting people to follow Jesus Christ.

He first became known for smuggling Bibles into Communist countries during the Cold War. Now he travels to the Middle East to support Christian communities there, including visiting a madrasa in Pakistan that was attended by Taliban founder Mullah Omar. This pursuit has led him to some truly radical stances, away from the politics on the Iraq War that we normally associate with evangelicals:

“Under Saddam Hussein,” Brother Andrew told me in an interview, “the church was pretty much left alone.”

Not so today. Brother Andrew’s co-author, Janssen, says more than half of Iraq’s Christians are refugees in Syria, Jordan and northern Iraq. That’s 700,000 Christians uprooted from their cities and forced to run because of extreme religious persecution brought on in the aftermath of sectarian violence.

“Did anybody ever stop to think about the consequences on the church?” Janssen asked. “And yet the church is being scattered because of the fighting. We’re destroying the very solution to the problem.”

Brother Andrew picked up this theme in soft-spoken but emphatic words. “It’s scary,” he said, referring to the destruction of the Iraqi Christian churches. “It’s self-defeating, now more than ever before, because of the possibilities we [Americans] have at our disposal to make a change there. But it is not a change toward the kingdom of God. It’s a change toward our concept of liberty and democracy, capitalism, materialism, whatever.

And he goes further:

Brother Andrew has challenged Christians to pray for Osama bin Laden. The enemy, he says, is not bin Laden — it is “the Deceiver,” Satan.

“Is Osama bin laden more deceived than the farmer in Texas who does not believe in God?” Brother Andrew asked me.

Well, I said, he’s a bit more dangerous, don’t you think?

“Because [bin Laden] has other opportunities, yeah,” Brother Andrew said. “But spiritually speaking, you’re either lost or you’re saved.”

I don’t agree with Brother Andrew that Jesus is the only way to salvation or that converting everyone to follow him is how to solve all the world’s problems. But I have to admire his courage to stand up for those beliefs in a way that is non-violent but still involves great danger to himself.

I think it raises serious questions for anyone who claims to derive their political views from Christianity. A recent poll found that 60 percent of young evangelicals say that using military force in Iraq was the right decision, compared to 41 percent among all young Americans. After seeing Brother Andrew’s example, how do you reconcile supporting the Iraq War with being a good Christian?

It’s not a rhetorical question; I’d really like to hear the answer.

U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Shawn Weismiller.

*spoilers* Top Chef blogging

If you haven’t seen the season finale of Top Chef yet and don’t want it spoiled, stop reading.

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Okay, here goes. I have to say I love how it turned out. I even teared up a little bit at the end. Hung took a lot of flack from viewers and the other contestants, but I never bought any of the criticisms. He was clearly passionate about food but also from a background that required discipline at all times. His story is inspiring, and complaints that he didn’t volunteer to help everybody else in the kitchens after he finished just come off as sour grapes.

It’s a bit sad how gullible so many fans of the show (as reflected in their comments on the judges’ blogs) are to the producers’ creation of a reliable “bad guy” through editing. All Hung did this season is look out for himself when it was perfectly right to do so. He wasn’t abusive or manipulative like Howie. Yet in every viewer poll, he was was the least favorite.

It was the same with Marcel last season. Sure, I could see how he might be annoying, but the spite directed against him by the other contestants was far more ugly than anything Marcel ever did.

I’m sure plenty of viewers are outraged now and swearing to never watch the show again. Fortunately Top Chef is not a popularity contest.

Oklahoma going blue?

I promise not to dwell too much on poll results, and they are fairly meaningless this early in the campaign. But it’s interesting to note that a Survey USA poll has John Edwards beating Giuliani, Thompson, and Romney in Oklahoma (though Thompson is within the margin of error).

the disenrollment trend

Another angle on the Cherokee Freedmen story is that it is part of a larger problem in Indian Country of disenrollment being used as a political tactic. An unfortunate side effect of rising wealth in the tribes is a new temptation for unscrupulous groups to reduce the number of people they have to share with.

Cherokee Freedmen comments

Tazmin: Thank you for the comments. We will probably continue to disagree, but I appreciate hearing your perspective. I’ve put up a response at my new blog here.  I do agree that the media has not done the best job of covering the issue, so if there are better sources of information that you would recommend, please let me know how to find them.

comments on Cherokee Freedmen

Tazmin comments on a post at my old blog about the Cherokee Freedmen:

On the other hand, with so many wannabe groups out there claiming to be Native American with the intent to scam the unknowing public, verifying legitimate groups are essential. If someone is not Native American then they should not be a citizen of a Native American tribe. I completely agree with the one drop rule for allowing tribes to protect their identity and culture. Personally I would rather see a blood quantum of 1/4 or more for citizenship status. Then where would the Non-Indian Freedmen fall.We all know that the Dawes rolls had flaws but we also know that the Dawes rolls was not completely based on what a person looked like as so many new papers have reported. There is just as much proof that says this.

Following the media that seems to be where you are getting your facts has been completely one sided and full of mis-information. Besides, the issue is really the rights of a Sovereign Nation to determine it’s citizenship just as the US government does today.

I will start with what we agree on. Tazmin is correct to say that the rights of a sovereign nation are important to consider. But like I argued in a previous post, it is also about racism. We have to decide which concern trumps the other, and the answer isn’t easy.

Media coverage of the issue has been terrible. I wouldn’t necessarily say it is full of mis-information, but there definitely has not been enough information in media reports to really tell what is going on. It may be difficult to get any sources to talk about this, but I think an important story is being missed about the internal politics of the Cherokee Nation that led to the split in the first place.

For instance, a recent Tulsa World story begins:

Former Cherokee Nation Chief Joe Byrd said Friday that his tribe’s efforts to disenfranchise descendants of former slaves have allowed racism to resurface.

Without referring to him by name, Byrd blamed Chief Chad Smith for not stepping forward to stop those efforts.

Smith responded by accusing Byrd of making “hollow and desperate” allegations against his tribe to “salvage his devastated political aspirations.”

Clearly much more is going on here than is revealed in the article. What is Joe Byrd’s political history? Does Smith have a valid point, or is he simply trying to deflect attention from his own mess? Without more background on Cherokee politics, there’s simply no way for us to know.

Other stories have done little to answer these questions, or even made it worse.

Still, whatever might remain about the current situation, I don’t think it’s hard to see serious flaws in the Dawes Roll. Kevin Noble Maillard, a law professor and member or the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma, wrote in Indian Country Today:

“Indian blood,” as it is known today, was invented by white Northeasterners on vacation. In the late 19th century, a group of whites known as “Friends of the Indian” met annually at Lake Mohonk, a resort in upstate New York, to propose speeches and papers addressing solutions to the ”Indian problem.” From this group of politicians, scholars and missionaries emerged the General Allotment Act. Each adult citizen of the various Indian nations would receive plots of land. These farms represented a physical testament to the Indians’ ”entry wedge” into mainstream culture. And they also freed more tribal land for white settlement.

In deciding who would get a farm, the “Friends” engaged the federal government to locate the eligible Indians. Thus, in order to solve the “Indian problem,” the bureaucrats had to ask, “Who is Indian?” For them, a person who was part-white and part-Indian could still qualify as Indian. But an applicant with partial African ancestry was irrevocably classified as black. The social rules of miscegenation, or the mixing of races, allowed for white-appearing Indians, but excluded anyone partially black.

The Friends intended to create order from chaos, and we still feel their impact. Supposedly, contemporary freedmen have no Indian blood because no record of it exists. No record ever existed, even when the reality did.

Tazmin is right that there needs to be some way to keep people from taking advantage of Indian Nations by claiming membership unfairly. But I’m not convinced that the Dawes Roll is the right way to do that.

Many Cherokee Freedmen are active in Cherokee culture and politics, with a long history in the tribe. Their ancestors traveled on the Trail of Tears. They are certainly not a “wannabe group.”

Photo by Flickr user Piero Sierra used under a Creative Commons license.

crossing the lines

I’ve spent a couple of posts criticizing one-sided or needlessly inflammatory portrayals of a Christian viewpoint, so I want to point out this post showing what a more nuanced perpective might look like. Gary Stern, religion reporter for the Westchester Journal News, has been blogging from the Religion Newswriters Association convention. He summarized a presentation by scholar D. Michael Lindsay on common myths about evangelicals:

—That they see themselves as a political force (they see themselves as a cultural movement).
—That theology drives their political agenda. Lindsay said: “Most evangelicals are like most Americans. They don’t know what they believe or why.”
—That they are all white suburbanites (when growing numbers are Hispanic or Asian).
—That “moral values” issues alone drive them. Evangelicals are becoming a force on international issues, he said.
—That they are all conservative. The truth, Lindsay said, is that they are all across the political board—but many have been turned off by the Democratic Party’s growing secular camp. Of course, Clinton, Obama and Edwards are trying to change this perception.
—That evangelicals are “poor, uneducated and easily led.” The truth, he said, is that evangelicals are increasingly wealthy and educated. And they know that they use the GOP and the GOP uses them.

In another post, Stern hears Hillary Clinton’s advisor on faith issues, Burns Strider:

Strider knows he’s going uphill, even as he insists that Hillary is a deeply religious Christian and has been her whole life.

“You’re talking about a tough sell,” he said. “I’m not denying it. It’s a challenge. But we’re working on it.”

But Strider insists that Protestants are taking real interest in issues other than abortion and homosexuality, issues like Darfur, AIDS, human trafficking, religious freedom internationally.

Strider obviously has a political agenda, but his comments show how the politics of religion can be made more constructive than they have been. Christians have certain goals in common with many Democrats, even liberals, just as they do with Republicans. They lose their independence as a religion and as a moral voice in society if they become enveloped by either party. But if political involvement is more fluid, we can work together on the issues that unite us rather than just bicker over what divides us. Secular people can do their part as well by avoiding stereotypes of conservative Christians.

I may not be a Christian, but from what I’ve heard about Jesus, I think he would approve.

Photo by Flickr user Brian Sawyer used under a Creative Commons license.