Pajamahedeen and the Pastor

I had intended to use this blog to conduct a series of letters with my Pastor. He has begged off due to time constraints. So this blog has wound up talking about other things, instead of the modern day implications of Luke 16:25. A pity, in some ways.

But I wound up in an exchange with my Pastor about an article by John Leo which severely criticized the ‘selective outrage’ (my term) of many people in high church office.

My Pastor was not a fan of that article, and my next response was rushed (and sulfurous). I think the entire exchange is interesting, though. Here goes (information stripped to protect the guilty).

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Dear Pastor,
Please take time to read this.

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John,

Thank you for the article and I have read it and I do disagree with much of what Leo wrote. I do not think the church should make knee-jerk movements toward a left wing political agenda and I do not think the ELCA in particular is doing that. When democratic states like Israel or the USA are criticized for human rights violations by mainline churches, I understand those churches and those criticisms never to be in comparison with other more oppressive regimes. Of course, mainline churches are appalled at the abuses in Arab countries, or China, or Cuba, but criticisms are often directed at democracies precisely because we hold ourselves to a greater ethic, a higher standard than totalitarian regimes. In John Leo’s thinking, it is as if the American abuses at Abu Ghraib are not so bad because the abuses of Saddam were so much worse. What kind of playground logic is that? If we in the free world are going to have any credibility in the world, if we are going to stand for that which is right, and good and true, we should welcome the critique of our own citizens and organizations which call us back to our ideals. I would think you would celebrate the whistle blowers at Abu Ghraib, or the critique of Israeli policy, as examples of a free society challenging itself to be great. Instead, I hear knee jerk reactions from the right defending democracy’s abuses by comparing free societies to societies which are not free.

Your Pastor …

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Dear Pastor …

A working definition of anti-Semitism is when Jews are singled out for criticism for things that are ignored when non-Jews do them. I’m pretty sure that is Alan Dershowitz, incidentally.

By all means criticize, but you really ought to have a sense of proportion and apply your moral standards evenly. Yes, you might often direct your criticism where it is likely to do the most good and where you are holding people to a higher standard. But for that to be legitimate you must acknowledge that (A) you are in fact holding them to a higher standard and (B) there is a difference between _often_ directing your comments at the perceived lapses of the ethical and _only_ directing them there while ignoring vastly worse and pervasive behavior.

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” – Luke 6:41

Although that scripture isn’t exactly on point, I think it is close.

Abu Ghraib was a horrible thing, and those who perpetrated it are being tried and convicted at an incredible rate. Two soldiers have just been charged with murder for killing an Iraqi General in their custody. These are good things. But a humiliating picture by and out of control group of kids is so vastly different compared to the routine and systematic horrors endemic to that part of the world that obsessing on it is questionable.

As for critiques of Israeli policy, almost all of them by the main line churches in the US have the flavor of arguing:

Pushing an old lady into the path of a bus to kill her and pushing an old lady out of the way of the bus to save her life are equally wrong because you shouldn’t push old ladies.

‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’ is the actual Burke quote often rendered as “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Aiming your criticism at the good in order to ‘hold them to a higher standard’ while ignoring evil is objectively pro-evil. That isn’t good men allowing evil to triumph through inaction. That is good men actively assisting the triumph of evil in order to serve their own moral vanity.

People can be forgiven for concluding that the main line churches are only sympathetic to Jews when they are being slaughtered while nobly exposing their throats for the knife. Fighting back, however, seems beyond the pale. I’m unable to find a link on short notice, but I believe that Sarte signed a letter in support of Israel before the 1967 and later was very upset by the person who got him to sign. “You assured me they would lose”. (Emphasis mine, and I haven’t found the quote).

J

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Dear John …

Another interesting fact about the mainline Lutheran church in Germany is the support offered by the church to the anticommunist movement in the late 1980’s. The Lutheran church of East Germany was the only institution providing an umbrella of support for the movement that would eventually overthrow the government.

Your Pastor

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Dear Pastor …

Well, yes. You forgot the Catholic Church and Poland.

But many of the main line church umbrella organizations were thoroughly penetrated by the KGB and were hardly anti-communist. It was smaller evangelical churches that were smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union, not the NCC and WCC. Catholic “liberation theology” movement was explicitly pro-communist.

Today the Catholic Church hierarchy operates as an apologist excuse factory for much of Islam even as large factions of Islam specifically target Christian missionaries. Some of this is driven (in Rome) by a fear that failure to do this will result in the slaughter of Christian populations (can you say the Coptics, as an example?) instead of simple repression. Other parts (particularly those now culturally Arab) adopt and practice the subservience and deference long characteristic of dhimmitude.

Churches have been havens for those challenging tyranny including today (see: China).

They have also often been havens justifying and supporting tyranny.

It is an empirical question which place they have occupied more often.

I’d like to add that the far left “only America and Israel are guilty” mantra is a really bad business decision. The leftists sitting in the high church offices may or may not be out of touch with the true demands of faith (a point that can always be argued). But simple observation demonstrates that they are severely out of touch with the people who actually show up in the pews.

J