Glenn Beck told Christians on his radio show to leave churches that advocate for “social justice” or “economic justice.” He compared churches that teach social justice to Nazis and Stalinists.

Stephen Colbert talks about this and interviews James Martin S.J. about Catholic social teaching regarding Jesus and the poor. Colbert, in his satirical style, mock’s Beck for his ridiculously inadequate understanding of Jesus and accuses Beck of acting like the Pope in telling Catholics what to do.

From Christian Peacemaker Teams

Gene Stoltzfus, founding director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, died March 10 after a heart attack. He served as CPT director from its founding in 1988 until 2004, when he retired and moved to Fort Frances, Ontario. He was born in 1940.

Gene traveled to Iraq immediately before the first Gulf War in 1991 and spent time with the Iraq CPT Team in 2003 to facilitate consultation with Muslim and Christian clerics, Iraqi human rights leaders, families of Iraqi detainees and talking with American administrators and soldiers.

From mid-December 2001 to mid-January 2002, Gene and current CPT co-director, Doug Pritchard, were in Pakistan and Afghanistan listening to the victims of bombing and observing the effects of 23 years of violence.

Gene’s commitment to peacemaking was rooted in his Christian faith and experience in Vietnam as a conscientious objector with International Voluntary Services during the U.S. military escalation (1963-68).

In the early 1970’s Stoltzfus directed a domestic Mennonite Voluntary Service program with a view to engaging with the social justice and peacemaking needs of that day. In the late 1970s, he and his wife co-directed the Mennonite Central Committee program in the Philippines during President Marcos’ martial law era focusing it on human rights and economic justice; and then they went on to help establish Synapses, a grassroots international peace and justice organization in Chicago to connect the United States and people in the developing world.

Gene Stoltzfus grew up in Aurora, then a rural town in Northeast Ohio. He graduated from Goshen (Ind.) College and held an M.A. in South and Southeast Asian Studies from American University, Washington, D.C., and a Master of Divinity from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind.

He was married to Dorothy Friesen of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. They lived in Chicago for 25 years until his retirement to Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada. After retiring from CPT, he traveled widely to speaking engagements, blogged regularly at Peace Probe and made twig furniture and jewelry as a contribution to the greening world.

For those who have read much in Yoder, these lectures present little that is new or surprising. Much of the material here, plus much more, can be found in Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution or The Politics of Jesus, not to mention other books. Yet there is an element to these lectures that brings out more clearly than ever Stanley Hauerwas’s claim that Yoder provides us with resources to think of “natural theology” in a new way. “The gain of the cosmos” bends towards Jesus and nonviolence (46).

Thus Yoder narrates the “cosmological conversions” that Tolstoy, Gandhi and King underwent that pushed them to see reality anew. Speaking of Tolstoy’s insight that influenced Gandhi and King Yoder states:

The key to the good news is that we are freed from prolonging the chain of evil cause engendering evil effects by action and reaction in kind. By refusing to extend the chain of vengeance, we break into the world with good news. This one key opened the door to a restructuring of the entire universe of Christian life and thought. There developed from it a critique of economic exploitation, of military and imperial domination, and of westernization. (22)

Yoder invites the reader to have their own “cosmological conversion” has he explains the New Testament’s cosmology (thus overcoming some weaknesses in Tolstoy’s viewpoint). The “powers and principalities,” which help create order but also dominate and oppress people in forms such as the state, have been disarmed and defeated in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. They were put on public display and shown for what they truly are: emperors with no clothes. Jesus now wages a cosmological war against these defeated powers, and invites us to be part of the march toward history’s christological telos. Christians are a sign of Jesus victory and the eschatological kingdom. As such we take part in an alternate politics that sees that the “grain of the universe” is not with the powerful, but the oppressed and downtrodden, not with violence but with suffering as Christ suffered. As such, Jesus’ church will inevitably run headlong into the empire’s of this world as they resist Jesus, and the church will have to witness publicly, and sometimes at great cost.

This cosmological conversion to which we are invited is to a new way of living in and viewing the world, not merely to feelings and beliefs. It is to see that Jesus is more determinative of history than anybody in the White House, the Kremlin or some country’s Parliament. He goes on to show how in the past few decades the Holy Spirit has moved within the Catholic Church to help many people to this conversion, most importantly people in the Catholic Worker movement, but there have also been stirrings in the bishops themselves. Jesus is lord and has altered the course of humanity’s sinful, violent rebellion. The question for us is whether we care to take the medicine that will make us well enough to see again, to see not merely shadows, but the reality that casts them.

This is a kind of natural theology. It is also a realist epistemological and metaphysical outlook. Not realist in the Machiavellian sense of political self-interest, but realist in the sense that the actual material world is the place where history lies and in which Jesus operates and moves. Without a real, live Christian community—such as the Catholic Workers—that embodies this cosmological worldview, without these living examples, there is little hope that others can come to see how radically Jesus altered reality.

So although there is not a lot of new material here, the way it is presented may help a new reading of Yoder and more importantly a recovery of the more precise political sense in which Christians are called to operate in this world.

Finally, I should make a note about the good introduction to the text. Martens and the other editors tell us the general historical situation of Poland in 1983, as well as give a very helpful overview of the content of the lectures. I was hoping to know who Yoder’s exact audience was and what questions he was asked to address (which Yoder would have taken very seriously), but that information is not there. I read these lectures in their unpublished form in 2005, but even then lacked the context in which to place them. Other than that missing element of context the editor’s introduction is good. Moreover, they helpfully tell us what they did and did not do to the text (unlike Stassen’s introduction to the recent Yoder book, War of the Lamb, in which he fails to mention that they added, subtracted and moved things around in the text). In sum, I’d recommend this book as supplementary material to Yoder’s Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution and other writings. At 145 pages, it might also make a decent introductory text to Yoder and nonviolent history as well.

–Andy Alexis-Baker

Christian anarchism has been around for at least as long as “secular” anarchism. . .Yet despite the relevance and growth of this literature, no generic study bringing together these different thinkers or reflecting on their contribution has been published to date, because such work involves meticulous searching, compiling and structuring of countless different texts and sources, not all of which are easily accessed. This book, however, provides precisely such a study, and thereby presents Christian anarchism to both the wider public and the wider academic community.

Printed in the U.K the book is also available in the U.S.

The primary intent of the lyrics is not for calling people to arms; the lyrics, primarily, are meant to illustrate a scene in which the flag waved proudly after weathering an attack from a foreign power and to use this as a sign of hope for the survival of our nation and its ideals. The battle imagery in the lyrics is in the context of the United States defending an attack from British bombs bursting in air.
–Joseph Penner

In their book, Blood, Sacrifice and Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag, Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle argue that American patriotism is a civil religion of blood sacrifice in which the flag is a sacred object akin to totems and idols. Violence is key to this religion. The Star-Spangled Banner is a hymn to the American flag. It essentially is about how the sign of the flag was a beacon of hope that the American patriots would not be defeated by the British military. As Marvin and Ingle state:

The patriotic statement that Americans are an unconquerable people, common at times of totem peril, is a deadly serious statement of totem faith. The totem wards off evil and protects from harm.
-Marvin and Ingle, Blood, Sacrifice and Nation, 37.

The “totem,” in this case the American flag, has to deliver protection to be effective. If an army overruns and defeats it, the totem will cease to exist. Thus its group members have to be willing to exchange themselves for the totem, to sacrifice themselves to renew the flag’s power. It is a bloody ritual, enshrined in the Star-Spangled Banner. Marvin and Ingle write:

During the British bombardment of 1814, Francis Scott Key was moved to model in poetry the flag’s endurance under fire. The battle for the death defying Star-Spangled Banner was ritualized as a creation-sacrifice guaranteeing the nation for eternity and illuminated by the regenerative dawn.
-Marvin and Ingle, Blood, Sacrifice and Nation, 245.

The battle for regenerative power of the flag is replayed at every sporting event as people, stand, turn their bodies toward the flag (or the music), and place their hand over their hearts in a pious act of reverence that re-enacts a creation myth of bloody proportions. This deeply idolatrous ritual, is also enshrined in federal law that mandates body posture whenever the national anthem is played:

§171. Conduct during playing
During rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. Men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should render the military salute at the first note of the anthem and retain this position until the last note. When the flag is not displayed, those present should face toward the music and act in the same manner they would if the flag were displayed there.

This law states not only that people should stand but directs people’s body posture. This is the type of thing that civil religion ceremonies are made of. In the sporting events the flag and its hymn—the Star-Spangled Banner—remind us that we are Americans, and that what we share is a submission to a violent authority, whose totem power is to protect us from harm. It is godlike.

Thus, this ritual is far from harmless from a Christian perspective. But there are simple ways to resist it. The simple act of staying seated communicates a powerful message that Christians are for Christ rather than this totem blood ritual. This is not unique to the United States. All nations have these totem rituals. Christians should find ways to witness to Christ in the face of these idols.

–Andy Alexis-Baker

This morning, I read one of the latest entries into the discussion on Goshen College’s decision to break with 114 years of Mennonite tradition and play the national anthem instrumentally at select sporting events. Written by John D. Roth, history professor at Goshen College, director of the Mennonite Historical Library and editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review, “A Modest Proposal for Peace” calls its audience to “shift our attention to the second half of the equation—the prayer that is to follow the anthem.” He then offers a concrete suggestion on how to accomplish this, stating:

At the beginning of each event a recorded message would say something like the following: “Please rise for the playing of the national anthem and remain standing for the words of Jesus taken from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5.” Then, immediately following the national anthem, a recorded voice would read the beatitudes (Mt. 5:3-10) without commentary, followed by a pause, and finally: “Welcome to Goshen College. Enjoy the game!”

Before I delve into my own reflections on this proposal, I want to say that I respect Roth and believe that his reputation for being a thoughtful theologian and scholar is well-deserved. Furthermore, I want to say that I admire the courage he showed as one of the few Goshen College faculty who has publicly voiced his disappointment with the school’s decision. That said, there are a few flaws in his proposal that I feel compelled to address. I hope to do so as diplomatically as possible below.

As I see it, Roth’s proposal is pointing at the wrong target. The problem with Goshen’s decision is not the longstanding Christian discipline of prayer that demonstrates one’s faith in God to hear and respond to God’s people. The difficulty is with the anthem itself, which is little more than a worship song to the flag and the national hymn of American empire. For this reason, what is most needed are proposals for ways to work at repealing the decision before it becomes entrenched (at best) or truly subverting its privileged position at games (at least). In my view, focusing our attention on what to do after playing a nationalistic song with violent and idolatrous overtones does neither.

My second thought on this proposal has to do with substituting the prayer following the anthem with the beatitudes. Although I admire Roth’s creativity and agree that in the context of the national anthem, “public prayers could easily become coded messages of civil religion,” I also don’t think this suggestion adequately addresses the theological problems at hand. Many of the people I know that support honoring the nation through its holiest song are aware of Jesus’ teachings on the mount. Yet for many people, the words have also been theologically dismissed as lessons that serve only to remind us of our sinful, imperfect humanity, are seen as impractical for “real life” situations, and have been re-framed in decidedly unhelpful and un-Christian ways. Simply reading these verses without commentary as Roth suggests does little if anything to communicate that Goshen College, the Mennonite Church and the Anabaptist tradition understands these words as ones Christ’s-followers are called to live by to the best of our individual and collective abilities. In other words, it does nothing to either state our position in relationship to the war song that proceeds it or to shift the paradigms of those for whom, “Blessed are the peacemakers” may be little more than a prayer of support for the troops.

Finally, it is my understanding that there is widespread dissatisfaction from Goshen College students, alum and faculty that the anthem is being played at games. Yet, the sense I have gotten from people within that community is that most of those people are cynical and disillusioned about the possibility of change. While I concede that what I have heard has been primarily anecdotal, I wonder why Roth advocates a kind of accommodation that will likely reinforce that sentiment. I have always seen Goshen as a place that teaches its students to believe that transformation is possible. Indeed, its brand new slogan, “Healing the world peace by peace” paints Goshen as the best place to learn how to intervene in various conflicts and attain real peace. At the risk of sounding too critical, I am perplexed about how the next generation is supposed to be ready for these lofty tasks if they don’t even feel empowered to resist a war song on their own campus. If I was a student at Goshen who was upset with this decision, I would want to be supported and encouraged by teachers who shared my view to find creative, direct and even public ways to speak and act against it. Yet what this article seems to propose is for rightfully displeased people of conscience to settle into an uneasy truce in which they stop trying to achieve the change they’d really like to see and start focusing on ways to just live with it.

In light of these critiques, I would like to make a couple of less-modest proposals. As someone who came to love the Mennonite faith several years ago and who sees Goshen’s decision to play the national anthem as undercutting the Anabaptist witness that has touched the lives of Christians like me and those who have signed our petition, I submit that it is vital to keep resisting the national anthem’s place in the campus community. Indeed, I urge people who are opposed to the decision and the implications it has for the direction of the school and the church as a whole to make repealing this action a top priority. If the Berlin Wall can fall and the Cold War can end and legalized segregation can be overturned, then there is more than a little hope for getting the national anthem removed from select sporting events at an Anabaptist school.

Second, if the anthem begins playing in March as planned, I would like to suggest another less-modest proposal that people discern active and public ways to subvert the privileged position it holds in both Brenneman’s and Roth’s formulations. For example, instead of playing the anthem at the start of the game, play it after a prayer and/or a 5 minute history lesson on Anabaptism and/or a sermon about peacemaking and/or an introduction to one of Goshen’s core values and/or a well-loved hymn — and play it on kazoos. Or for the sake of fairness and true hospitality, play instrumental versions of all the anthems represented on the teams or at the colleges in general in alphabetical order with the anthem of the United States of America falling where it may — and play them after reading Scripture from 1 Samuel 8. Or better still, just play the national anthem after the game as people are leaving — on nose flutes. If the national anthem is “just a song” as people who are puzzled by the passionate response against it tend to argue, then it shouldn’t matter if the college assigns it to a place that better reflects our primary allegiance to Christ.

Attempting these and/or other not mentioned less-modest proposals, requires that we not just assume, as Roth seems to, that the anthem is here to stay before the first note is even played at the college’s first game. It also requires continuing to point to the theological and ethical problems that including the national anthem in the life of the institution and in the Christian faith more broadly. All of these things are even more crucial in light of Goshen’s new statement, which amounts to little more than a declaration that they will simply wait out our “emotional” reactions to this move by “revisiting” the issue in a year. May we be bold enough to rise to this challenge.

– Nekeisha Alexis-Baker

• Letter to the Editor — Yorifumi Yaguchi, The Goshen College Record (Draws on the authors Japanese context and Christian refusal there to sing the Japanese anthem)
• Ready for rejection — by Eugene K. Souder, Mennonite Weekly Review
• Implications of flag, anthem — by John and Betty Drescher, Mennonite Weekly Review
• Because Words Matter, Schleitheim
• Letter to Editor, from GC Faculty, The Goshen College Record
• Letter to the Editor — David Hiebert, The Goshen College Record
• Letter to the Editor — Rueben Miller, The Goshen College Record
• Patriotism mit paxibum, ja? — By Glenn Lehman, Mennonite Weekly Review
• Goshen anthem decision debated — Celeste Kennel-Shank, Mennonite Weekly Review
• Is the Roman Emperor Still Your God? — John Goerzen
• To Whom Should Christians Pledge Allegiance? — Heber Brown, III, Faith in Action
• Goshen College caves – Peacemaking, Convictions and Heritage — Amish Phonebook
• No national anthem at Goshen, please — Halden, Inhabitatio Dei (contains a good comments discussion)
• The national anthem and Christ’s lordship — Celeste Kennel-Shank, Mennonite Weekly Review
• An Open Letter to Goshen College — Britt Kaufmann
• Christian College Reconsiders National Anthem: Has 114 year history of NOT singing it — Heber Brown, III, Faith in Action
• Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation — Tim Nafziger, The Mennonite
• I am making peace with the national anthem — Sheldon C. Good, The Mennonite
• Letter to the editor on GC’s anthem decision — East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church, in Lancaster, Penn., The Goshen College Record

Three years ago, all the athletic directors in Indiana met at the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA). At this meeting, the other directors complained that Bethany should not be able to host sectional games unless they played the anthem. As a result, this Mennonite high school has been punished by the state for refusing to play the anthem, despite its attempt to help people understand their stance on pacifism. It has cost them.

Yet Bethany wants to attract non-Mennonites so that the school can continue to have a higher enrollment. One of the ways it hopes to do that is by reconsidering its stance — (unfortunately) with the help of Goshen College administrators. According to The Truth, article:

Bill Born and Joe Leichty, two faculty members at Goshen College who were on the college’s national anthem task force, spoke with the Bethany board and faculty about the college’s recent process of addressing the national anthem issue.

This is all the more reason to oppose the Goshen decision. Please consider signing the letter of resistance and/or contacting the college and Mennonite Church USA (the college’s institutional home) directly:
Goshen College’s phone number: 1 (800) 348-7422.
Jim Brenneman (President): president@goshen.edu .
Executive director of Mennonite Church USA: Ervin Stutzman: (574) 523-3092

Set on the planet Pandora, Avatar is a sci-fi story of a mercenary-backed corporation’s attempt to confiscate and mine the land inhabited by humanoid aliens known as the Na’vi. Enter Jake Sully, the paraplegic U.S. marine protagonist who joins the science and anthropology wing of the operation as a substitute navigator for his deceased twin brother’s avatar. Early in the film, we discover that the avatar is an expensive high-tech clone that allows its user to temporarily experience and subsequently infiltrate the Na’vi community. After a series of unexpected events during his first avatar excursion, Jake finds himself living amongst the Na’vi clan known as the Omaticaya where he becomes an apprentice to the female tribe member Neytiri. From that point, the film revolves around the internal and external conflicts that arise as Jake bonds with the Omaticaya and struggles between his mission and his allegiance to the aliens.

Although Avatar’s primary focus is on Jake’s steady transition from an ambivalent supporter and participant in colonizing Pandora to a rebel against both the project and his own people, the film also touches on a number of hot-button issues. Without trying too hard, viewers will quickly notice thinly veiled commentary on the Iraq War, the American government’s policy on terrorism, veteran benefits, corporate greed and concern for the environment. There even appears to be a nod to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as the Na’vi attempt to fight heavily armed helicopters with wooden bows and arrows. Yet these and other references are used to explore the film’s bigger question: who are the savages, the terrorists, the “uncivilized?” Is it the near-naked, primal, forest-dwellers with the intimate connection to each other and their planet? Or is it the technologically advanced humans who kill and dominate on behalf of their shareholders? Avatar clearly answers: it is the latter. Yet, the film also insists that the colonizer’s savagery is not a permanent condition. How it chooses to make this second point, however, is praiseworthy at times and problematic at others.

Full review also available for download as a PDF