Archive for culture
Theological Schizophrenia
Posted by: |It is bad enough that Republican warmongers like Mitt Romney, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Allan West are whining about the supposed cuts to the defense budget that are due to take place because of the failure of the congressional "supercommittee," but it is disgusting and shameful that a professor of practical theology and seminary chancellor would do likewise.
The defense "cuts," of course, are not really cuts at all, just reductions in the rate of spending increases of the bloated defense budget.
So, who is this Christian warmonger that is so upset about defense budget "cuts" that he thinks they are a deeply disturbing, draconian, recklessly dangerous, self-destructive absurdity.
He is not a member, with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Hal Lindsey, Cal Thomas, and Pat Boone, of the Christian axis of evil, although he should be. He is not a Christian killer par excellence, like Doug Giles. He is not a Christian warmonger on steroids, like Bryan Fischer. And neither is he the greatest Christian warmonger of all time. That designation goes to Ellis Washington.
He is Michael Milton, the newly elected chancellor/CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Milton holds a B.A. from Mid-America Nazarene University, an M.Div. from Knox Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wales, Lampeter. He is the former pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in addition to founding two other churches and a Christian school. Milton is the host and speaker on Faith for Living, which can be seen on television and heard on radio. He has also released three music CDs and is the author of several books.
But perhaps I should also note that Dr. Milton has a diploma from the Defense Language Institute, holds a commission in the U.S. Army Reserves as a chaplain, and was elected in 2010 by the Chief of Chaplains to the College of Military Preachers and appointed an instructor at the Armed Forces Chaplain School. He is also the founding director of the Chaplain Ministries Institute in Charlotte. I also note that on October 14, 2001, it was announced that Reformed Theological Seminary had "been approved by the NC SAA Program to receive the GI Bill under the provisions of Title 38 and 10, United States Code!"
Milton is a theological schizophrenic. Schizophrenia has been described as a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness that most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking.
I know of no other way to describe Milton after reading his latest post on the Faith for Living blog hosted by his seminary:
The failure of the bipartisan super committee to take decisive action to reverse the 15 trillion-dollar debt crisis this country needs from becoming another Greece has, predictably, failed. Now the Washington blame game begins. However, the greatest losers are the American people and, specifically, those Americans who courageously and proudly wear the uniform of the armed services.
As threats of cuts are made to their very mission, our brave troops are on the ground, in the air, and on the seas fighting, defending, and protecting this nation from the continuing threats to our very existence as a people. The absurd decision to tie massive cuts to the US military as an "incentive" to force action by the super committee was one of the biggest mistakes ever made by Washington DC, and they have made a few recently. Of all the things that the government does, providing a military to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" just happens to be one of the clearest.
Scripture teaches that God has ordained government for the good of man. Civil authority, according to St. Paul, has been granted the power of the sword to punish evil, thereby protecting the innocent: "For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil" (The Epistle to the Romans 13:4 KJV). The present talk of defense cuts flies in the face of our nation’s duty and our proud heritage.
We have had draw downs before – after WWII, after Vietnam, and after the Gulf War, but we have never had to think about draconian reductions while we were in the middle of a war! It is this very point that is deeply disturbing, and recklessly dangerous. The consequences of even the talk of such tinkering with our defenders, even if reasonable heads prevail to stop this absurdity, will have their consequences.
Have we not learned our lesson? Reagan’s military build-up in the 1980s reversed the ill-advised draw downs after Vietnam (just one front in a larger, trans-generational Cold War) and, according to scholars like Paul Kengor of Grove City College and the American Center for Vision and Values, "All of these ventures [the strengthening of defense] had the effect of demonstrating a stronger, resurgent America, not only economically but also militarily. Suddenly, the country that had left Vietnam no longer appeared to lack resolve" (The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Dr. Paul Kengor, HarperCollins, 2007, 82).
Kengor went on to demonstrate that President Reagan understood that America was still at war. According to this preeminent Reagan scholar, his action in strengthening the military greatly contributed to bringing down the Soviet Union. Why now, when our sacred military members are risking their lives to fight "over there" so we don’t fight "over here," would the president and other congressional leaders think that it is any different? To reduce military strength or even to talk about it as an option is to demoralize our troops while they are literally in the midst of a battle for our way of life.
Some may call it treason. I would call it self-destructive. As a minister of the gospel I would also call it irresponsible and immoral, given that God has called our civil authorities to protect our people against evil. May God have mercy and bless the troops who bravely carry on their mission to defend this nation, even while others who have taken the same oath are allegedly using the military as pawns in a Washington election year. There are times when the Church should speak up. Because our life and liberty is at stake, I think that time is now.
Milton holds to every armchair warrior, red-state fascist, reich-wing nationalist, imperial Christian fallacy known to man.
As I mentioned above, cutting the bloated defense budget is to Milton a deeply disturbing, draconian, recklessly dangerous, self-destructive absurdity. The "cuts" fly "in the face of our nation’s duty and our proud heritage." Never mind that the real defense budget is $1 trillion, that the United States spends more than the rest of the world combined, and that most defense spending is really spending on offense.
Milton idolizes members of the military. They are our "brave troops." They "courageously and proudly wear the uniform of the armed services." God should "bless the troops." U.S. soldiers are never Christian killers, murders, accomplices to murder, criminals, dupes, mercenaries, or part of the president’s personal attack force willing to obey his latest command to bomb, invade, occupy, and otherwise bring death and destruction to any country he deems necessary. They are "our sacred military members."
Milton is likewise deceived about the real mission of the military. He thinks they are "our defenders" who "defend this nation" and protect "this nation from the continuing threats to our very existence as a people." The government provides a military to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." U.S. troops "fight ‘over there’ so we don’t fight ‘over here.’" They are "in the midst of a battle for our way of life." But is this what the U.S. military actually does? Unfortunately, most of what the military does is more offense than defense, more foreign than domestic, and more civilian than martial. I think Milton needs a course in DOD 101.
Milton says that we are "in the middle of a war." The United States is actually in the middle of several wars. But rather than saying we should not cut defense because we are fighting wars, why not examine the wars we are fighting to see if they are just, right, and necessary? Since the undeclared, unconstitutional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Yemen, Pakistan, and everywhere else, are clearly – except to Christian warmongers and imperial Christians – unjust, immoral, and unnecessary, the only sensible solution is to end the wars, not increase the defense budget.
Like other Christian apologists for the state, its military, and its wars that I have written about who appeal to Romans 13 to justify their blind nationalism, their cheerleading for the Republican Party, their childish devotion to the military, their acceptance of national-security state, and their support for perpetual war, Milton seeks to justify a large defense budget by doing the same thing. This, of course, is ludicrous, since the passage has nothing to do with the government providing national defense. But let’s assume for a moment that it does. Fine. How does that justify bloated military budgets, foreign wars, militarism, imperialism, and policing the world? When it comes to the military budget, conservatives adopt the same fallacy as liberals do when it comes to education. To liberals more spending on education means better education; to conservatives more spending on defense means better defense.
And finally, why do conservatives always invoke the name of the criminal, warmongering, budget-busting, deficit-increasing, liberty-destroying, government-expanding, economic and foreign interventionist St. Reagan? Anyone remotely familiar with the Reagan record would not be impressed with Milton’s name-dropping. For the complete and utter evisceration of Reagan, see Murray Rothbard’s "The Reagan Phenomenon," "Ronald Reagan, Warmonger," and "Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy."
What is so bad about theological schizophrenics like Michael Milton is that they have a position of influence over many young people. We can only hope and pray that this is one college administrator that students never get to know.
Originally posted on LewRockwell.com on December 9, 2011.
Tags: Bible, culture, education, national defense, national security, nationalism, Romans 13, theology, violence, war, war on terror
The Warmonger’s Fruit of the Spirit
Posted by: |It seems sensible and logical that followers of someone called the Prince of Peace would not act like they are following Mars, the Roman god of war.
As I have maintained whenever I speak about Christianity and war, if there is any group of people that should be opposed to war, empire, militarism, the warfare state, an imperial presidency, blind nationalism, government war propaganda, and an aggressive foreign policy it is Christians, and especially conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christians who claim to strictly follow the dictates of Scripture and worship the Prince of Peace.
I have also maintained throughout these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that, even though it is Christianity above all religions that should be opposed to the evils of war and militarism, in the Church will be found some of the greatest supporters of the military and the current wars.
The "criminality of war," as Howard Malcom, president of Georgetown College, wrote in 1845, is not "that tyrants should lead men into wars of pride and conquest," but that "the people, in governments comparatively free, should so readily lend themselves to a business in which they bear all the sufferings, can gain nothing, and may lose all." That people would act this way, Malcom says, is an "astonishment indeed." "But," he continues, "the chief wonder is that Christians, followers of the Prince of Peace, should have concurred in this mad idolatry of strife, and thus been inconsistent not only with themselves, but with the very genius of their system."
I have heard and read many Christians criticize Obama – and rightly so – for his horrendous policies, but I have heard and read little or nothing from Christians of how Obama has continued the war in Iraq, escalated the war in Afghanistan, and expanded the bogus war on terror to other countries.
The above sign from a church in Maryland can unfortunately be seen almost anywhere in the United States. Although some Christians have begun to criticize Obama and the Democrats for the things that only a short time ago they were silent about when perpetrated by Bush and the Republicans, support for the military among Christians – no matter where it goes, why it goes, what it does, how much it costs, how long it stays, and how many foreigners it kills – is so entrenched, so sacrosanct, that I am at the same time bewildered and embarrassed, angered and ashamed.
The result of this mindset is a perversion of the very Scriptures that Christians claim to believe and follow. So, just as Christian warmongers would, if they were honest, recite The Warmonger’s Psalm (Psalm 23), assent to The Warmonger’s Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), and pray The President’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), so they would acknowledge that they manifest The Warmonger’s Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).
In contrast to the works of the flesh (adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, and revellings), the Apostle Paul in the Book of Galatians mentions the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.
But in place of these virtues, warmongers have substituted pride, indifference, vengeance, ignorance, malice, arrogance, lust, foolishness, and blasphemy.
Christian warmongers have pride in the U.S. military – the greatest cause of terrorism and instability in the world. They are indifferent to the tremendous suffering of foreigners who get in the way of the U.S. military. They want vengeance for 9/11 now matter how many innocent Muslims have to die. They have a tremendous and willful ignorance of the true nature of U.S. foreign policy. They have malice toward foreigners who never harmed Americans until the U.S. military starting bombing them. They have an arrogant "USA, USA" patriotism that supports an interventionist and militaristic foreign policy. They lust for the blood of foreigners by supporting bombing, drone attacks, torture, and indiscriminate killing. They make foolish statements like the military is defending our freedoms by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. They blaspheme God by asking him to bless and protect U.S. soldiers.
I realize that I am making some serious accusations, but the truth is simply that most Christian warmongers don’t care whether there are Predator drone attacks against Afghan and Pakistani peasants as long as a Republican-controlled government gets to conduct the attacks.
Originally published on LewRockwell.com on June 23, 2011.
Tags: Afghanistan, bush, culture, Evangelicalism, iraq, Libya, Obama, peace, war, war on terror
Dumbing Down the Church
Posted by: |This guest post is by Doug Newman, and was originally published on Strike-The-Root on January 20, 2005. But as you will see, it is a timeless piece…
In 2003, the Barna Research Group released a well publicized study indicating that only about 10 percent of Christian students possessed a biblical worldview.1 I was reminded of this after talking with a friend recently after church.
My friend is not a political person, which probably speaks well of her. However, she seemed perplexed when I calmly implied that it was an outrage that Uncle Sam confiscates half our income before we can buy groceries. She responded that ‘we get a lot of things’ for those taxes we pay.
I heard millions of people speaking. She did not recognize that taxation is theft. She had no clue that things like oppressive taxation, gun control, government education and government welfare have no scriptural basis. I told her that this just may be the first time anyone had ever told her that the Bible has something to say about a limitless array of social and political issues.
If she had never heard this in church before, it would not surprise me one bit.
America’s churches are as ‘dumbed down’ as its schools. In all fairness, several generations of pastors have been lied to about the political themes in the Bible. Our call to be ‘salt and light’ goes beyond loving our neighbors, telling the truth and being faithful to our spouses. It extends to all aspects of life including politics, economics, law, education, medicine and any societal issue you can think of. Read More→
Tags: Christianity, culture, ethics, render to caesar, Romans 13, theology
Bad Arguments Against Immigration
Posted by: |This was originally posted on the Shotgun Blog
The Economic Argument
Arguments against immigration on economic grounds basically boil down to “They took our jobs!”. Some feel that allowing people to freely cross borders will result in a flood of low-wage labor that will “steal” jobs from natural born citizens. Labor is a factor of production, just like raw materials or financial capital. Restricting the flow of capital and labor will always decrease economic prosperity. Access to more resources – human or otherwise – always increases wealth and opportunity. If this does not make sense to you, I recommend Frederic Bastiat’s “What is Seen and What is Unseen”, chapter 7, as well as his brilliantly satirical “Candle Maker’s Petition.”
The Culture Argument
Others argue that immigration must be restricted in order to protect the nation’s unique cultural heritage. I submit to you that any culture which must be maintained by force is not an authentic culture and is probably a bad one. Cultures freely arise because they provide benefits to those who participate in them. Cultures are always changing. Getting government in the business of protecting culture is dangerous and counter-productive. First, who gets to define what constitutes culture? Bureaucrats don’t have the best track record in such matters. Second, do we really want to live in a culture that is forced upon us by government prohibitions, restrictions and mandates?
The Welfare Argument
Advocates of limited government sometimes argue against immigration on the grounds that immigrants make use of the welfare state and increase the cost of government. State-sponsored welfare programs are a problem. Stopping immigration because immigrants might use welfare programs treats one tiny symptom, not the disease itself. If you routinely dumped garbage on your front lawn and found critters frequenting your property, would you try to ban critters or would you clean the up the garbage? Though I think the vast majority of immigrants immigrate for jobs, freedom and opportunity, I’m sure some come and make use of government handouts (though far less than U.S. Citizens, and on average less than they pay in taxes). The handouts are an attractive nuisance and should be addressed on their own merits, not by attempting to ban the free movement of people.
The Safety Argument
Some argue that allowing easy immigration will bring bands of criminals into their country and make them less safe. First, if something is a crime it is already, by definition, illegal. Threats to life and property are already protected against via the existing police/military operations. Putting up a wall and stopping anyone from crossing it on the grounds that some of them may be criminals is ludicrous. By this logic, governments should perpetually engage in random home searches because they might discover criminal activity. Closed borders probably don’t stop criminals, but let’s pretend that they could; if we could keep foreign criminals out by keeping out anyone foreign, what would we gain? We’d have spent tons of resources keeping out foreigners, most of whom aren’t criminals, and we’d have that much less to use fighting domestic crime. Banning people from movement because some of them may be criminals is even dumber than banning gun ownership because some people may use them for crime. I trust LCC readers to see the many problems with preemptive Minority Report style crime fighting.
The Right Argument
Freedom to immigrate can be defended from several angles, but I believe the most important argument is based on rights. Imagine you and I have pieces of property that share a border. You wish to traverse my property and I wish to let you, but lawmakers prohibit it. What business do they have dictating whether we can make decisions about our own property? Sure, they were democratically elected, but what business do others have of voting to determine how you and I peacefully use our property?
What if government issued a decree that business owners were prohibited from hiring anyone born on a Tuesday? It’s no different when they prohibit hiring anyone born in another country. Shouldn’t the business owner be free to hire whom he wishes? If an individual wishes to travel, work, buy, or sell peacefully and all other parties involved agree, why should government prohibit it?
When you think up other arguments against immigration, ask yourself why they should not also be applied in state to state immigration? City to city? Home to home?
At bottom I think much anti-immigration sentiment comes from a fear of people unlike us. I support anyone’s right to be prejudiced, or to associate only with those of like culture. But putting that attitude into public policy not only hampers wealth and progress, it violates my right to associate peacefully with whom I choose.
Tags: culture, economics, freedom, immigration, language, security
News of the Week: Saved from Doom!!!
Posted by: |Highlighting the interesting and notable events of the past week…
I love this post by my dear friend Anthony Gregory at the Independent Institute: “Saved from the Precipice of Doom!”
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Thank goodness for the Republicans and Democrats, who in the eleventh hour, put aside their differences and compromised to avert the catastrophe of a government shutdown. You see, the Republicans wanted to cut something like $78.5 billion from what Obama wanted to spend—itself more than $78.5 billion over the year before. The Democrats were initially willing to talk about “cutting” much less. And now, thanks to the greatest political compromise since the one in 1850—and surely one that will be as permanent in preventing a national crisis—we can all sleep at night knowing that Yosemite and the National Archives will continue to be open for business. The Washington Post reports:
The final pact on 2011 spending called for $38 billion in cuts to federal agency budgets compared with last year’s levels, about $78.5 billion below the president’s initial funding request for 2011. The White House, which initially resisted any funding reductions, started touting all the cuts it signed off on in a statement that praised reductions of $13 billion in funding for education, health and labor programs.
Oh my, oh my! $38 billion cut from Obama’s budget proposal? I guess everyone gets what they want. Obama gets to pat himself on the back for avoiding a shutdown. The Republicans get to pat themselves on the back for avoiding a shutdown, and the American people are satisfied as well.
Oh, wait. Those who love government spending are not so satisfied. You see, the cuts appear to target hot-button social programs. And those who want (at a bare minimum) for government to live within its means might also be dissatisfied. They might protest that even if we go by Obama’s projected deficits, these cuts will only shave a few percent of the amount deeper the U.S. goes into the debt hole in a year.
Yet we should forget about all this and just be glad the government didn’t shut down. For if it did, we would surely awake to a dystopian nightmare, coastal cities collapsing into the ocean, civil unrest at every corner, whole swaths of previously populated centers abandoned, disease and lawlessness rampant in every direction. Thank goodness Congress and the President got together and stopped this.
After all, we all remember when happened when the government shut down in 1995. Traffic lights didn’t work. All the prisoners were running wild in the streets. The US military was completely put out of commission, allowing the Soviet Union to spring back to life and take over half of the world. In the Great Government Shutdown of 1995, an estimated 150 million Americans died of starvation, pertussis, rubella and acute cynicism. Cats were chasing dogs, telephones and plumbing ceased to function completely, and only 75 channels were available on cable television.
Some will respond that these claims are preposterous—that in fact, not only do modern “government shutdowns” only close down a handful of functions (including such programs as tax refunds and national museums, just to annoy the American people)—but that, in the United States, such shutdowns are so superficial an example of the government truly shutting down that they actually cost more money than allowing the government to run as normal.
Sure, refuse to take such a catastrophe seriously. But as our Dear Leader says, “Americans of different beliefs came together. . . [i]n the final hours before our government would have been forced to shut down. . . [to pass] a budget that invests in our future while making the largest annual spending cut in our history.” Thanks to these courageous and selfless efforts, “when 50 eighth graders from Colorado arrive in our nation’s capital,” they might “get a chance to look up at the Washington Monument and feel the sense of pride and possibility that defines America.”
Doesn’t that make your burn with patriotic fever? Red-white-and-blue fumes are just making their way up my esophagus right now. The two parties put aside their vast disagreement—over whether to borrow another trillion or so of to be paid back by these eighth graders or whether to cut that amount down by a few percent—and they agreed to meet in the middle. Just like their parents and grandparents, these kids will have the pride to know that they live in a country where every generation has the chance to grow up with much more money owed by the government on their behalf that the generation before it.
Tags: constitution, culture, economics, history, society, statism, taxation, taxes
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