Locust Eater

2010-03-02T18:10:00.000-08:00

The day the locust died...

2002-08-03T14:30:00.000-07:00

Locust Eater has moved to a new, permanant location: http://www.locusteater.com. There will be no more updates at this url. Make all haste yonder to new address!

2002-07-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

Poynter.org has introduced Clergy Abuse Tracker, a comprehensive archive of reports of sexual abuse by clergy.

2002-07-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

In The Washington Post, Ralph Nader argues that the problem with capitalism is a new breed of socialism:

" 'Corporate socialism' -- the privatization of profit and the socialization of risks and misconduct -- is displacing capitalist canons. This condition prevents an adaptable capitalism, served by equal justice under law, from delivering higher standards of living and enlarging its absorptive capacity for broader community and environmental values. Civic and political movements must call for a decent separation of corporation and state."

A socialism that benefits only a powerful ruling elite? All we need now to be the second Soviet Union would be a vast, powerful state-run organization devoted to encouraging Americans to mistrust and spy on each other. What's that? We do have one? Oh, yes, we do: introducing TIPS, our very own KGB.

2002-07-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

There's not really very much to say about this other than it happened.

2002-07-17T19:20:00.000-07:00

The Attourney General seems to have mistaken the United States for a monarchy or a theocracy, since he has declared that America "has no king but Jesus." I wonder- does he think that George W. Bush is Jesus then? Does Jesus approve of our foreign policy? Our health-care system? Between him and Cal Thomas, who opined a few weeks ago that the decision to ban the Pledge "inflicted on this nation what many will conclude is a greater injury than that caused by the terrorists," I just don't know when to take these far-right Republicans seriously any more.

Meanwhile, Harper's Weekly reports that the girl for whose sake this was all begun "is a Christian and has no qualms about reciting the pledge."

2002-07-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

Dan (see post below) is not alone in noting that evangelical Christians, such as President Bush himself, are golden calfing it when it comes to the "free market." Pierre Tristam of the Daytona Beach News-Journal calls a spade a spade- the market has long since "stopped being a bet and bec[o]me a religion."

His analysis is strikingly similar to that of Thomas Frank, whose One Market Under God is an incisive expose of the fraud inherent in the idea of "market populism." Frank, in an article for The Nation, reveals just how snowed some Americans have been by the new religion:

" But what surprised me was the number of former Enronites I came across who had more ambivalent feelings about the disgraced corporation, who were willing to accept the damage the company has inflicted on the nation and on their savings, and to defend what Enron did, or at least what Enron set out to do. This is partly because the company chose its employees well: They are, after all, traders and MBAs, true believers in free-market theory even though they themselves have now become international symbols of its resounding failure. For several of the people I talked to, Enron had been their first job out of college or even out of high school, and they knew no other world than the New Economy 1990s, with its saintly CEOs and its many shrines to Our Lady of Perpetual Privatization. How are you supposed to criticize the laissez-faire order when you've never heard a competing theory in your life?"

Isn't that where Christians come in? What, aftter all, is the point of not being conformed to the pattern of this world but being transformed by the renewing of our minds? So that we can end up falling for the same idols as everyone else? At some point we replaced Christ's intrinsic message of love and the community which might result from the practice of it for the sham pearls the "equality" granted by the market which ultimately makes us all equally dispensable, like replaceable parts of some big machine.

2002-07-17T07:44:00.000-07:00

It's disturbing to see wholly unqualified capitalistic jingoism appearing within the pages of the typically nuanced and generally apolitical Evangelical Protestant magazine, Books & Culture. In a quickie piece of anti-anti-globalism polemic and pro-globalism apologetics, internet blog pundit Jeremy Lott ("Is Globalization Christian? Why the WTO Protestors Had it Wrong" Jan/Feb 2002) takes swipes at Pope John Paul II and Neo- or Kuyperian Calvinist thinkers Jim Skillen (of the Center for Public Justice) and Bob Goudzwaard, author of numerous books , including Globalization and the Kingdom of God. (NB: Evangelical historian Mark Noll regards the NeoCalvinist, Kuyperian, Reformed presence in North America as the primary cause behind the "Evangelical Mind's" alleged intellectual renascence of recent years.)
Why choose these targets? Perhaps because they represent serious threats to Lott's own ideological commitments, which he claims are those of the true Christian. The three men Lott attacks are respected Christians influential far beyond their own churches, so they must be taken down, their heterodox politics exposed. Well, let's expose them: Along with the pope, Skillen and Goudzwaard belong to highly conservative, or more precisely traditional and tradition-heeding churches that are rooted more in European than American habits of the heart. They are well aware of the corrosive effects and occupational hazards of "free-market" or laissez-faire (i.e., unregulated) capitalism; they do not accept it as an autonomous, self-regulating, rational organism whose operations and tendencies are self-evidently good. Unfortunately, Lott doesn't consider why his opponents think as they do because he is certain they are badly mistaken. Thus he feels justified in making derisive comments about them, including a hint of guilt by association: anti-WTO anarchists in Seattle thought of globalism just as Goudzwaard and the pope do.
Since Lott's rhetorical weapon of choice is the Rush Limbaugh-style cheap shot, it is difficult to attribute anything but gross irresponsibility and ignorance to him and his editors. Even for the most conservative, Catholic-hating fundamentalist, John Paul II merits serious consideration when he warns that neither capitalism nor communism have any intrinsic claim to goodness. Remember, this is the man widely creditted with playing an integral role in the destruction of Soviet Communism. Even Bob Jones has to be moved to sympathetic tears by the story of Karol Wojtyla's (the pope's given name) heroic and saintly struggle against the state-enforced religion of Communist materialism.
Nevertheless, Lott clearly demonstrates that many Christians just don't get it. They so greatly desire to see us all bow down to the state-promulgated religion of Capitalist Materialism that neither reason nor charity will be allowed to stand in their way. Lott can barely contain his enthusiasm for his chosen religious authorities, whom he invokes to settle the pope's hash: "John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, editors of London's classical liberal weekly newsmagazine, The Economist." Lott champions their book, A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization, which asserts "that globalization, on the whole, is tugging us in the right direction and hence needs to be 'not only …. understood but …. defended stoutly.'" What is tugging us? The "invisible hand?"
The capitalist mysticism that ascribes a will and rationality to "the market" looks a lot like what philosopher Eric Voegelin famously critiqued as a gnostic political religion arising from Hegel's dialectical view of human history. (You can see this spelled out quite clearly in Francis Fukuyama's work, primarily The End of History.) Political gnosticism appears in modernistic, utopian doctrines of scientific and social progress, evolutionism, and Marxist communism. In each case human individuality, rights, rationality, and tradition are sacrificed on the altar of the one true ideology and its processes, which are alleged to be "natural" and benevolent--our guiding spirit for a better future. Lott's disregard for those who suffer under global capitalism is also akin to Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse-Tung's endorsement of the need to "break the eggs" (i.e., crack heads) for the collective good. Lott's failure to see this gives credence to Karl Jasper's observation that the biggest threat in fighting totalitarian ideology is that the freedom-fighters become totalitarians themselves.
Lott is quite impressed with Micklethwait and Wooldridge's disarming and "characteristically witty Oxbridge prose and a raft of subtitles;" moreover, his heart resonates with "their crusade to "explain and defend globalization against its enemies and, more important, its erstwhile friends." However, the true voice of the gospel calls us to question Mr. Lott's understanding of who a Christian's real friends and foes are. Attention Mr. Lott, I think your idolatry is showing.

2002-07-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

James M. Penning and Corwin E. Smidt ("The Decline that Wasn't," Books & Culture, July/August 2002) report that students at Evangelical colleges (presumably Evangelicals themselves) are not getting all slack and secular, as James Davison Hunter claimed in his 1987 book, Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation. On the contrary, their new study reveals that Evangelical college students are now more Evangelically orthodox than ever. Most of the students surveyed by Penning and Smidt believe "The only hope for heaven is through personal faith in Jesus Christ" and "The devil is a personal being who directs evil forces and influences people to do wrong." 81% of the students surveyed believe that "God created Adam and Eve, which was the start of human life." When questioned about the Bible, the largest group (47%) responded that "The Bible is the inspired Word of God, not mistaken in its statements and teachings, and it is to be taken literally, word for word."
Ironically, this survey indicates failure, not success, from the perspective of Mark Noll's classic, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The Scandal politely suggests that it was a serious mistake for conservative American Protestants to make rationalistic and scientific defenses of their faith--like a literal reading of Genesis--as a point of orthodoxy. Tackling literalism and inerrancy in Evangelical theology, Noll avers that they are not essential to Christianity but are only culturally distinctive in American Evangelicalism. Further, he asserts that "To confuse the distinctive with the essential [as Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have done] is to compromise the life-transforming character of Christian faith. It is also to compromise the renewal of the Christian mind."

2002-07-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

From the San Jose Mercury-News: "In more than two decades of public life as state attorney general, governor and U.S. senator from Missouri, Ashcroft repeatedly pursued extraordinary means to achieve his political ends. State police blocked a father from taking his brain-dead daughter to a hospital in another state so he could remove her from life support. Nurses at a rural family clinic were threatened with prosecution for distributing contraceptives. A state official assisting a voluntary integration plan for St. Louis schools was threatened with the loss of her job.

And in his term as U.S. senator, Ashcroft tried to change the Constitution to match his beliefs several times, introducing or co-sponsoring seven amendments, including ones to permit school prayer, to ban flag burning, to define human life as beginning at fertilization, and to make it easier to amend the Constitution."

That dang Constitution-- keeps getting in the way of God's will, huh Mr. Ashcroft? I am genuinely saddened that there are people who hold the beliefs of Mr. Ashcroft who call themselvess Christians. Ashcroft has never, not once, in anything he did, reminded me of Jesus, except in the many egregious examples of how unlike Jesus he is. Contrast the following story, for example, with John 9:1-5.

"Missouri state Sen. Harry Wiggins, for one, recalls a meeting with Ashcroft and a group of Kansas City community leaders when he was governor. The group had tried for months to see the governor about funding to keep open Kansas City's only hospice for AIDS patients.

As the meeting began, Wiggins recalled, Ashcroft appeared uninterested until he focused on the facility being a 'home,' not a hospital.

'Then you have my attention,' the governor said, according to Wiggins. 'I'm looking for where it is cheapest to send them to die.'

Wiggins said: 'Governor, that's not what we're here for. These are human beings.' Ashcroft replied, 'Their pain and suffering is a result of their own misconduct.'"

John 9: 1-5 :
"As Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'
'Neither this man or his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.'"

It's not just that Ashcroft doesn't seem to be read up on his Gospels, or that he's uncompassonate, but that Mr. Ashcroft seems to be doing his damndest to usher in the Night to which Jesus referred as quickly as possible.

2002-07-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

Joy Bergey examines the modern American suburb and finds that the use of land by developers and consumers is not in line at all with a Biblical understanding of land use:

"Land is not just another commodity to be used up without consequence. The land was the arena in which the liberated community was to live out God's experiment in shalom--which entailed a reverence for creation, a respect for limits, a sharing of abundance in harmony with the earth. God required sacrificial offerings from the Israelites for the gift of land as a reminder that the land is and always will be God's gracious provision.

We don't see the world this way now. Our economic system assumes that if we see land that we want to develop, we go ahead and do it. We pay the price in dollars, blind to the economic, environmental, and spiritual costs. And generally, the people receiving the land are not the ones making the sacrifices."

This sounds very similar to stuff Wendell Berry's been saying for the past 25 years. The folks at Christianity Today have their own take on these ideas. They sent Eric Miller down to The Future of Agrarianism Conference down in Kentucky, which was held in honor of the 25th anniversary of Berry's now-classic collection of essays, The Unsettling of America. Miller provides a typical CT gloss over the event, making it sound sexier than it propbably really was, but get past the first few paragraphs, all about the clothes people wore and food they ate, and he makes comments of some substance:

"without deep changes in the coming two decades, the unspeakably dominant corporations will be importing much of our food supply, while what rural communities still exist will morph into housing for migrant workers?troubling conclusions for those who believe the corporate order to be incapable of caring well for the earth, its people, and their food."

But note how Miller distances himself from "people who believe" negative things about corporations. He goes on to rip Berry for not having "sufficiently capacious vision" of "goodness" and "for the church," meaning that he thinks Berry is a downer for not finding some good in the corporate hegemony, and that something must be wrong if Berry doesn't have plans to include "the church" in his plans.
My guess is that he's misreading Berry- Berry would, of course, argue that he has no problem with individual churches, acting in the best interests of thier communities, but that "the church" as an institution has done a whole lot to help the destructive industrial, global economy achieve legitimacy. News flash, Miller: Berry doesn't trust big organized movements, and with good reason, methinks. A tree will judged by its fruit, right? If "the church" wants to be involved in Berry's vision, it'll have to do more than whine that it's not invited to the party. I suspect though that both Miller's comments are a thinly-veiled bid for control of Berry's discourse, since Berry's community-oriented spirituality undercuts the hegemonic intent rife in much of the evangelical church.

Meanwhile, in the Milwaukee community newpaper Riverwest Currents, Dan Knauss examines gentrification and the almost-necessary complicity of white bohemian and artist types in making gentrification work at all:

"The artists and radicals move into a neighborhood and the white faces make it safer for others to follow."

2002-07-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

This is older, but interesting nonetheless. Charles Colson, notable as the "evil genius" of the Watergate scandal, is now an evangelical talking head and heads up Prison Fellowship Minsitries, an organization dedicated to converting inmates to evangelical Christiainty. In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Colson warns against conversions by inmates to radical sects of Islam. Colson writes with a more tolerant tone than one would expect from him, but in the end, his solution to the "problem" is somewhat odd, given who he works for:

"Prison officials have ample legal authority to deny radical imams access to inmates. No civilized nation would allow the preachers of violence access to places packed with angry, alienated men."

Sound innocuous enough, right? Except, of course, that the whole question turns on which imams are deemed "radical"- does Colson get the privilege of deciding this? He proposes no criteria for deciding who is and is not "radical" and his long term solution provides a clue as to why:

"the long-term answer lies in what ministries like Prison Fellowship do: bringing the Gospel into the prisons."

What's going to save us from violent radical Muslims, according to Colson, is radical Christians. Colson goes out of his way in the article to claim of the Christianity he preaches that it, in contract to Isalm, is nonviolent. Which would, of course explain why he believes Jesus would be in favor of the death penalty. Doesn't that make Jesus, or at least Colson, a "preacher of violence"? Colson favors a government which "reflect[s] God?s transcendent standards", that is God's transcendent standards as Colson, an extreme-right Republican and ex-con, understands them. Which doesn't sound too far off from the vision of radical Isalm. Never mind the fact that it's kind of difficult to listen to someone who's guilty of tampering with our electoral process harp on about "God's transendent standards."

Get Colson on his own turf, and the little tolerance he showed in his Wall Street Journal editorial falls away; we learn that he really just doesn't like Muslims at all. Which might explain why all those Muslim prisoners were turning up thier radios when he was preaching. While I'm thinking about it, how did he know they were Muslim anyway? Maybe they were death row inmates and knew he's all for frying 'em in the chair...

2002-07-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

Tompaine.com reports on an unholy meeting of the Catholic Church sex scandal and Arthur Andersen:

"Scoundrels who disserved God collided with cads who served Mammon all too well."

Apparently Andersen was hired by an Ontario court to make sure Candian plaintiffs got every posible penny, and the firm ended up turning around and spending $7 million (Canadian) on, well, themselves. In both cases, there's a serious breach of trust- the priests betray our confidence in them as emmisaries of God, while the accountants betray our trust in them as honet brokers. What's most disturbing about it though is that it's become commonplace; an average person is likely surprised by neither. We have come to expect the priests to be ungodly and the bean-counters to be cheats.

2002-07-13T17:57:00.000-07:00

Sam Phillips on Contemporary Christian music in a recent interview for Salon :

"When I saw 'Boogie Nights,' I thought about the Jesus movement of that time. There was an innocence, a sweetness to those times in general, and he captured that. And there was a beautiful, sweet time in the church, and the walls came down and because of the counterculture people were less judgmental, more open-minded. There was a lot of ..." she laughs recalling it, "folk music. Like any movement, the people who wanted to take charge ... it just grew into a nightmare."

If you're not familliar with Sam's music, her album Cruel Inventions is one of the most underappreciated folk-pop albums of the early nineties. It has a roomy, cluttered sound, and incisive lyrics.

2002-07-13T14:26:00.000-07:00

Down South, the evengelicals have all but forgotten Christ's rampage through the Temple market. I guess "You have turned my Father's house into a den of robbers" just don't have the same oomph it once did. This is creepy in a Stranger in a Strange Land kind of way though, or maybe, more accurately, a Brigham-Young-In-Utah kind of way:

"America's Christian entrepreneurs are indeed creating minimall sanctuaries with distinctly "safe" Christian themes and values."

Minimall sanctuaries? And since when were "Christian themes" safe? That whole "deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me" bit is decidely not what I'd call safe. Eeesh.