Commentary
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THE FINGER LAKES region of western New York is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The 11 lakes dangle like a necklace below Lake Ontario, surrounded by hills that are a breathtaking green in summer, red and orange for a flash in the autumn, then snowy white until the cycle repeats. It’s an area where the main tension has been of the resident-vs.-renter sort.
This summer, the tension, visibly staked out with lawn signs, was different. The topic: hydraulic fracturing, “fracking” for short. In this process, fluid—primarily water, with some sand and other chemicals—is injected deep underground to break apart shale rock, releasing natural gas and oil. Back at the surface, gas and oil are cleaned and sold; the water mixture is dumped into deep wells.
The procedure has only been made cost-effective in the last decade or so; awareness of retrievable shale oil and gas deposits isn’t a whole lot older. Combine the two, and you have an energy boom—one that led natural gas to nearly overtake coal for electricity production at one point last year.
A key question that has not been definitively answered: Does fracking, compared to the fuel it displaces, increase or decrease greenhouse gas production? Since natural gas, compared to coal, produces significantly less carbon dioxide when burned, cheaper natural gas is one reason why U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have gone down significantly of late. But natural gas is primarily methane—a gas that is more than 20 times as effective at trapping heat as carbon dioxide. During the fracking process, some of that methane escapes into the atmosphere; there is debate over how much.
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A YOUNG MAN of American Indian heritage said to me: "Imagine growing up an American Indian halfbreed with the blood of Caddo, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes in you ... Imagine growing up ... knowing that you belong to a culture long native to this land before the white man 'discovered' it. Imagine trying to assert your identity when the majority of society affirms that 'Indians are a dead race.'" ...
With words of dismissal, the politicians wipe out the tribes' meaning and deface them of their honor. With words, they strip American Indians of race, culture, philosophy, reason. With words they cover the Indians with a gloss of alienation and meaninglessness, leaving them hollowed-out entities, repeating over and over the rules of a society that was never their own.
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BACK IN 1990, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issued this warning: "The religious community must ... take seriously the risk of idolatry that could result from an unwarranted fascination with guns, which overlooks or ignores the social consequences of their misuse." Two decades later, about 660,000 more Americans have been killed by guns, with a million more injured.
These figures convince me that what was a risk in 1990 has become our reality today: For too many, guns have become idols. They claim divine status; make promises of safety and security they cannot keep; transform people and neighborhoods; create enemies; and require human sacrifice.
Not all gun owners have permitted their guns to become idols or absolutes. In fact, a recent poll shows most gun owners and NRA members, in contrast to public perception, believe personal freedom and public safety are complementary, not contradictory. But those few who hold the microphone at the NRA (the wealthy manufacturers and the gun zealots who do their bidding) have permitted their fascination for guns to supplant God and God's requirements for human community.
An idol's followers boldly claim divine status for it. Former NRA executive Warren Cassidy was clear when he boasted, "You would get a far better understanding [of the NRA] if you approached us as if you were approaching one of the great religions of the world." Not to be outdone, Charlton Heston, during a speech as NRA president, intoned, "Sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blued steel—something that gives the most common man [sic] the most uncommon of freedoms, when ordinary hands can possess such an extraordinary instrument that symbolizes the full measure of human dignity and liberty."
Afghans who worked with Ambassador Dubs gather around a makeshift memorial at the U.S. embassy in Kabul. / Family Photo
WHEN AMBASSADOR Chris Stevens was killed in Benghazi, Libya, in September, it was jarring for me to hear NPR refer to the last U.S. ambassador to be slain: my father, Adolph Dubs. He was kidnapped in 1979 in Kabul, Afghanistan, by Afghan extremists whose motives were never learned, and killed hours later in a botched armed response by the Soviet-allied Afghan government, even as U.S. diplomats pleaded for more time to negotiate.
My dad was 58, a career diplomat. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he had entered the foreign service, compelled by a deep desire to learn to use diplomacy to blunt the forces of fear and hate at the root of violent conflict. As a young man, he had considered the Lutheran ministry; he saw his work as a diplomat as a pragmatic way to build relationships, even with those whose histories and beliefs seemed alien to our own. People sensed this about him. Whether meeting with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, with Serbian farmers in the former Yugoslavia, or, finally, with Afghans in the uncertain and perilous months before the Soviet invasion, he was universally respected for his integrity and commitment, and even loved for his genuine humanity and humor.
Among the many expressions of sympathy I received following his death, one photo is particularly meaningful. It's not the one depicting U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and other dignitaries receiving my father's casket at Andrews Air Force Base—rather, it's an image (above) taken in the courtyard of the embassy in Kabul. It shows the Afghan men who knew him, who had lived and worked around him during his time there. They are grouped around a memorial they had made, with his picture propped on it. These are the people who considered him a friend, understood what he was about in their country, and felt his loss, deeply and personally.
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JUST AFTER THE election, a New York Times editorial implored the president and Congress to "get to work fixing the current badly flawed, out-of-date campaign finance system." The Kansas City Star called it "painfully obvious" that the system needed change.
Those were after the 2008 and 2004 elections.
We all know how the cycle works: Every four years, politicians mount ever-more-expensive campaigns. After each election, the nation's papers call for reform. Meanwhile, business as usual—the business of the lobbyists, that is—continues in Washington.
So here's a proposal: Let's put an end to this cycle. Call it the "Reform in Four" campaign.
Step 1: Build a bigger army. We need to immediately broaden the coalition for reform—from environmentalists to the faith community to pro-reform Republicans, corporate leaders, and Tea Party members who are concerned about cronyism. The good news is that, in a July 2012 Gallup poll, 87 percent of Americans said that "reducing corruption in the federal government" should be a "very important" or "extremely important" priority for the next president. It ranked second, just below job creation (at 92 percent).
WHY IS the message of a poor Galilean preacher “good news for the poor”? Does he show the poor a way of escape from their misery by providing a vision of spiritual wealth? Is the message he brings suited especially for those who live in poverty and for them alone?
We cannot stop proclaiming Jesus’ words today, just because for some people they sound like “pie in the sky.”
How blest are you who are in need, the kingdom of God is yours. How blest are you who now go hungry, your hunger shall be satisfied. How blest are you who weep now, you shall laugh (Luke 6:20-21).
ONE OF THE best things about growing up in the 1970s was Schoolhouse Rock! on Saturday morning TV. The day my high school history class began to study the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, we all broke into song: “We the People ... in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare ...”
In the ’70s, Americans still believed those words; the general welfare was important to policymakers across the political spectrum. Today, we have a political discourse where the Republican presidential contender disparages the elderly and the unemployed for collecting benefits for which they’d paid into an insurance fund.
And now policymakers are allowing the looming “fiscal cliff” to threaten the U.S. economic recovery from the recent recession. At the end of this year (or a few months later if Congress kicks the can down the road), Congress and the administration must work out a compromise on spending cuts and revenue increases, or the economy will face deep, mandatory federal spending cuts and across-the-board tax hikes. Such deep spending cuts would devastate many programs that aid those most in need. And, in addition to hurting families, spending cuts at this point in the recovery threaten to derail economic growth and job creation.
In order to make sure fewer people need unemployment insurance benefits, Congress needs to run deficits for the next couple years. Economists are in general agreement that what the economy needs now is more fiscal expansion—that is, an agenda that will make investments that could create jobs and pave the way for long-term economic growth. Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke pointed this out in a recent speech: “Fiscal policy, at both the federal and state and local levels, has become an important headwind for the pace of economic growth.”
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THE TASTE OF the election still may be in our mouths—but Advent is breaking in.
Advent is a four-week stomp to Christmas. It is the time when God starts to show. God is pregnant during Advent: pregnant with possibilities that somehow, some way, someday, things will be different. They will taste better. We will know their taste better. We will be able to be engaged in our lives and our commitments and also be at peace. We will be the ones at the birthside, marveling about how God could dare come as a child or send heaven to earth, spirit to flesh, drenching humanity with divinity. The big words for this showing will be “Son of God” and “joy to the world.” The angels will sing, the night will go silent, the people will hark.
This Christmas would be a great time to notice what we have already seen: that when leaders and things get too large, when we put too much trust or hope in them, they revert to a brutal and brutalizing smallness. When we put trust in what we can notice, what we can do and who we can be, we are rarely disappointed. We expect, expectantly, as though we too were pregnant, day by day, with the possible.
For now, there is the waiting, the preparing for an Advent practice that will smell and taste good, that will open doors on more than a calendar.
I am an avid reader of women’s magazines, especially those that have a centerfold of the perfect Christmas dinner. I praise that dinner, hope for it, plan for it, and then eat with vigor what really comes out. A friend has a sign on her refrigerator about the difference between what we usually have and what the magazine announced: “It’s not going to happen that way.” By that sign, she is preparing herself for a day and a life of surprises. She is grooming her “to don’t” list.
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A TRADITIONAL whale-oil lamp is solemnly lit by an Inuit elder. After being brushed with cedar and smudged with sage, three commissioners take their seats. A survivor begins his testimony, haltingly narrating painful memories from 60 years ago. Soon tears begin to flow, and a support person carefully collects the tear-soaked tissues into a basket, to be added to the sacred fire that burns outside the hall. In this space, so filled with sorrow and rage, every ritual communicates respect, empathy, and determination, turning public halls into sanctuaries of healing.
For seven generations Indigenous Canadian children were taken from their homes and sent, most often by force, to Indian Residential Schools. Churches began operating these schools in the early 1860s, and by the 1890s the federal government had begun to make attendance mandatory as part of a policy of assimilation into Canadian society. In these schools children were forbidden to speak their native languages, forced to conform to European ways of life, and often abused emotionally, physically, and sexually. Though most residential schools were closed by the mid-1970s , the last was not shuttered until 1996.
As part of a 2007 legal settlement with survivors, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was created, with a five-year mandate to document the testimony of survivors, families, and communities affected by the residential school experience and to inform all Canadians about this tragic history. Launched in Winnipeg in June 2010, the TRC will include seven national and a number of regional hearings throughout the country. The hope is to “guide and inspire Aboriginal peoples and Canadians in a process of reconciliation and renewed relationships that are based on mutual understanding and respect.”
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EVEN AS ELECTION-YEAR news cycles move on, the nation faces the aftermath of a prolonged and dramatic heat wave. July 2012 broke two records: It was the both the warmest July ever recorded and the warmest month—period—ever recorded in the lower 48 states. In our home of Chicago, temperatures crept past 100 five times. Moreover, the extreme drought of 2012 is not a random event, but part of a worrisome trend.
Global climate change has come to the heartland. Unless we take collective and decisive action, 102 could become the new 93. And it’s not just armpits and foreheads that will sweat. We have already glimpsed the future, and it is not pretty: massive forests burned in Colorado; major power outages; thousands of acres of crops lost to drought in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and elsewhere. These ominous events are indications of the “new normal” unless we make widespread changes in fossil-fuel consumption.
The farming crisis has been acutely severe—and it is directly related to climate change. This summer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated more than half of all U.S. counties as disaster areas (1,584 in 32 states). Fred Below, a crop biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, bluntly summed up the reality: “It’s like farming in hell.”
Ironically, agriculture is the human activity that emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other source, including transportation and industry. A key reason: Today’s agriculture intensively depends on burning fossil carbons. (Methane emission from cows and rice fields, and deforestation to clear farmland in the global South, are also contributors.) Being so dependent on fossil fuels means that the food sector is the greatest contributor to global climate change—and that rising oil costs increase food costs, squeezing the poor and marginalized.
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IN THE TRAGIC, often-hopeless world of gang violence, this year’s truce between two notorious gangs in El Salvador offers reasons for hope and a breakthrough opportunity for change.
Beginning in March, leaders of the infamous gangs Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 called a truce from behind prison walls. The agreement was mediated by Monsignor Fabio Colindres, the Catholic chaplain for the Salvadoran police and military, and Raúl Mijango, a former legislator and, before that, military commander in the FMLN, the onetime guerrilla movement that is now the country’s elected ruling party.
The truce, which was still in effect at press time, immediately reduced violence in El Salvador, which has been among the world’s most deadly countries in recent years. Since early April, said President Mauricio Funes in late August, the murder rate has gone down to around five per day, a decrease of more than 60 percent from the 13.5 per day average of January and February.
The gang violence that has plagued El Salvador and other Central American countries in recent years is an import, brought by youth deported from the United States. MS-13 and Barrio 18 both originated on the streets of Los Angeles—ironically, built by young people whose families were refugees fleeing the U.S.-backed violence of Central American civil wars and death squads in the 1980s.
But just as violence can be moved across national borders, peace can be as well.
WHEN AMBASSADOR Chris Stevens and other embassy staff were killed in Benghazi in September, it struck close to home for us at Sojourners. The last time a U.S. ambassador was slain was in 1979, when Adolph Dubs, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, was kidnapped by Islamic extremists and later killed. His daughter, Lindsay Dubs, was Sojourners’ managing editor. The degrees of separation between world events and the home front are often slim.
Some attributed last month’s violence in the Middle East to “fanaticism,” a “blind and tragic barbarism” by “imbeciles.” Others used words such as “beyond pathetic,” “fringe,” and “extremists.”
Those descriptions were applied to both those who created the anti-Islam video that provided the spark, and those who used the hateful video as a reason, or excuse, to engage in violent protests against the United States and the “West,” including Israel.
The media repeatedly summarized the cause of the violence as resting in the intentionally offensive video, and said that Muslims, angered by the blasphemous depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, rioted in a blind and uncontrollable rage. Moustafa Bayoumi, writing for the Middle East Research and Information Project, described the process: “Islamophobes provoke. Too many Muslims respond. Non-Muslims believe Muslims are crazy. Muslims are told the West hates them, and the Islamophobic right sleeps well at night with their cozy dreams of a mission accomplished.”
IN THE PAST two years, I’ve done two smart things: I went fishing last summer, and then I went fishing again this summer. Fishing is teaching me the art of waiting. And how to wait is what Mark 13:32-37 and the spirit of Advent are all about.
There is the obvious parallel: The very act of fishing, like the celebration of Advent, is a ritual of hope. Both are filled with expectation; we are waiting for something.
But some similarities are more subtle. Don’t be deceived by tranquil scenes of grandpa, fishing pole in hand, leaning against a tree, eyes closed, lazing away ... Take it from me, to be truly fishing is to be constantly on guard. You are always watchful, always mindful, always alert for the slightest touch on the line. The attention is so focused that eventually you can feel or hear a fish circling the bait. But if the concentration breaks, even for a split second, chances are you’ve missed what you were waiting for.
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IN NOVEMBER, Californians will vote on a ballot initiative that would end the death penalty in the state: the Safety, Accountability, and Full Enforcement Act of 2012, known as the SAFE California Act. The backdrop of this vote is California’s deep economic crisis and the economic savings to be gained from ending capital punishment. But when the debate is largely concerned that the cost of killing criminals is just too high, where does faith come into the conversation?
If the measure passes, all 725 death penalty sentences in California will be converted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The supporters of the initiative have one main mantra: “California can’t afford the death penalty!” This initiative delivers on savings—around $1 billion in the first five years, say supporters—due to halting the death penalty’s expensive legal processes and increased costs for death row detention.
The initiative also redirects some of those funds, $30 million per year for three years, to counties across the state to help investigate unsolved cases of rape and murder. In 60 percent of rapes and 36 percent of murders in California, no one is even charged with the crime, let alone convicted.
Death row prisoners are generally not allowed to work; once their sentences are changed under this initiative, they will be required to work inside the prison and to pay into California’s victim compensation fund.
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COAL, NATURAL gas, petroleum. Thoughtlessly we call these substances “fuels”—fuels to burn for creating pleasant climates inside homes and offices; fuels to power appliances and engines. For years, like nearly everyone, I never thought beyond our mere use of these things. I neglected to consider their role in the Earth’s wider economy.
This all changed when my family moved to a Wisconsin peatland in 1972. Since then, conducting research there with my graduate students has produced four decades of discovery.
For thousands of years, wetland plants and algae in a bay of glacial Lake Waubesa took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They transformed it by photosynthesis into the carbon structure of life, eventually adding their remains, page upon page, to the accumulating peat. Eventually, this peat filled the bay for an area more than a mile long, reaching a depth of 95 feet at the present lake edge. When first I walked here, I saw the vibrant surface of plants and wetland creatures; now, in my mind’s eye, I also see the deep-layered remains of creatures below.
Also standing and walking here (much more gracefully than I) are sandhill cranes. These stately creatures, as conservationist Aldo Leopold observed, “stand, as it were, upon the sodden pages of their own history.” Elsewhere, the sodden pages of peat deposits have been cut over the ages to be dried for fuel. The early Romans saw this practiced by conquered peoples of northern and western Europe. Peat was also used as fuel in Ireland, Scotland, and northern Europe after forests were cleared for agriculture. And peat is the precursor of coal, transforming under geologic pressure into brown coal, bitumen, bituminous coal, and anthracite.
ON A WINDY morning this March, as the Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments about the health-care reform law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), hundreds of people of faith gathered in front of the court building. As part of a public witness, they prayed and carried signs that proclaimed “People of Faith for Health Care.” Participants came from various faith traditions and denominations, many of which also signed an amicus brief in support of the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid to cover more low-income adults. The event was organized by two interfaith coalitions, Faithful Reform in Health Care and the Washington Interreligious Staff Community (WISC) Health Care Working Group.
The groups involved were motivated not by political beliefs but by a moral imperative, shared across faith traditions, to build a just society that cares for the poor, the sick, the widow, the orphan, and “the least of these.”
Those who gathered believe that their prayers on behalf of the uninsured were heard when, almost three months later to the day, the Supreme Court upheld the ACA. Chief Justice John Roberts’ vote with the more liberal justices led to the unlikely majority that provided a major step forward in the century-long struggle for health-care justice in the U.S.
Apparently you have never really understood the white man’s religion. If you had, you would not have begun your public ministry by calling for repentance. I mean, repentance is radical change, a recognition of guilt, a reversal of its past, an about-face. You can’t expect that from people.
You must have read the multitude of studies that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that no means of communication can do more than make very slight changes. But you talk about “rebirth.” What nonsense! ... You ought to focus on smaller changes that might reasonably be expected. But no. You make outrageous demands that force people to conclude that you are irresponsible.
Ballot box barriers, Lisa F. Young / Shutterstock.com
TODAY, THE RIGHT to vote is under assault across the country. From photo ID requirements to restrictions on voter registration, there are new barriers to the ballot box. While proponents of recent election law changes claim those changes are “race-neutral,” the measures will have a disproportionate impact on minority voters.
In Florida, for instance, African Americans made up 32 percent of those who voted on the Sunday before Election Day 2008, often in “all souls to the polls” drives organized by historically black churches. They were among the nearly 8 million Americans who voted early. Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia have since passed legislation reducing early voting.
The tea party-infused True the Vote, reportedly bankrolled by Far Right billionaires Charles and David Koch, plans to bring lawsuits to purge the voter rolls of allegedly ineligible voters. While the fear-inducing image of non-citizens voting has little to no basis in reality, it has real consequences.
In Florida, a law passed last year effectively stopped the League of Women Voters, Rock the Vote, and similar groups from conducting voter registration drives this spring. The law imposed restrictions on voter registration volunteers and subjected groups to $1,000-a-day fines if they didn’t turn in voter registration forms within 48 hours of completion. While parts of the law were temporarily blocked at the end of May by a federal judge as unconstitutionally “harsh and impractical,” it has already prevented civic groups from registering voters for some months. Registration drives encourage voting among the young and people of color, who often vote Democratic.
Jeju Island, gnohz / Shutterstock.com
IF YOU HAVE ever been to Jeju, you will understand why it is called a paradise. Lying in the waters south of the Korean mainland, this volcanic island is stunningly beautiful, from its clean mountain streams to its placid coral reefs. Jeju’s legendary female deep-sea divers harvest clams, abalone, and seaweed, relying on lung power alone. The island is also a spiritual place, said to be the body of Korea’s creation goddess, Mago. Jeju has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a World Biosphere Reserve.
Since January 2011, it’s also been the site where a $970 million naval base is being constructed by the South Korean government, with the help of giant construction corporations such as Samsung. The base, located in the small farming and fishing village of Gangjeong, will occupy a unique three-quarter-mile stretch of coastal wetland, threatening an ecological system that harbors several endangered species. The naval base construction also contributes to increasing military tensions in Asia, raising the risk of a devastating war in the region. Today, islanders, religious leaders, and peace activists are calling attention to dangers caused by joint U.S.-South Korean militarization.
The base is slated to be home to 20 warships, including submarines, aircraft carriers, and destroyers, several of them equipped with missile defense technology with the stated goal of protecting South Korea’s sea lanes and shielding against attack from North Korea. Civilian cruise liners will also be able to dock, according to the government. South Korean naval official Ku Okhyoe told a press conference last fall that U.S. military ships will be allowed to dock at the base only temporarily; Ku insisted, “The base is not intended for a certain country.”