Recently there was an uproar among Christian conservatives over Obama’s statement stressing the point that the United States is not a Christian nation.

The argument that is created by the statement is in itself antithetical to American governance. Should a Jew living in the United States be obliged to think he lives in a Christian nation? What makes the United States a Christian nation?

Looking back on the history of this nation, one cannot overlook the Puritans. Better known as the Pilgrims they came here searching to not only find a place where they can escape religious persecution but also a place where their strict form of Christianity would not be challenged. Their oppressive form of worship was so offensive to non-Puritans, many fled the Plymouth colony and established splinter colonies. In the pre-Revolutionary days there were but three religions that held any sway: Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholicism and a smattering of Jews. (Islam was found only in a few groups of slaves brought over from Africa in bondage).

It is true, Christianity was an influential element of the history of this country. But those who drew up the foundations of this nation were not using the Bible as a blueprint for law. In fact, the founding architects of the United States were using principles that were running perpendicular to religious concepts. The Enlightenment was in full bloom when America declared Her independence (1776) and when the Constitution was written (1787). Thomas Jefferson, an avowed Deist penned the Declaration of Independence and James Madison, the chief mind behind the Constitution spoke about religion:

Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. [James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, addressed to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1785]

Does that mean there were others influential to the establishment of this great nation that were devout men of the Christian faith? Surely. But to say this nation is a Christian nation simply because the primary religion historically has been Christianity misses the mark. If you believe America is a Christian nation do you also believe it is a White nation? After all, the founders were all White. Most Americans, conservative and liberal, would be uncomfortable with this question. To a Jew or a Muslim or a Buddhist the statement America is a Christian nation has exactly the same sting. Identifying the US with a religion  runs contrary to the tenants that makes this nation so great. To do otherwise foments exclusiveness.  Therefore, President Obama was correct. America is not a Christian nation. It doesn’t belong to Christians, it belongs to the citizens and we will be a better nation the sooner we all see it is a such.

With President Obama promising to speak in public within an Islamic capital in his first 100 days I decided to write him a letter of encouragement. Having lived two years in the Middle East I wanted to share a little of my experience in the region:

Dear President Obama,

I wanted to share with you a story as you prepare to travel to an Islamic capital. It is a story of friendship and moderation at a time when those things seem to be in short supply in our relations with the Islamic World.

In 1988 I joined the Peace Corps and was selected to go to Yemen. Being from Kansas City and never having traveled abroad you can only imagine how this experience transformed my world view. I was chosen to take part in a pilot project that put Peace Corps English teachers in rural villages. I was the first Westerner that most of the people in my village had ever seen. I was blessed though. The teachers that taught in my school were from all over the Arab World. Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Tunisians, Sudanese, Somalis, and Palestinians were all represented there. And there was me, the American or Amreeki as they called me. For them I was the only image of America that they had ever seen. I am tall, with blond hair and blue eyes and I was teaching in Yemen…for free. With electricity for only six hours a day we would often talk into the night, long past the time when the generator switched off, and the candles provided the only light. Some in English, most in Arabic we would talk about our homes, our beliefs, our country and our politics. I was sent to teach the Yemeni kids English but I learned way more from living in that small mountain village than I could ever teach them.

After a year in my village I met Naji Kilani. Naji was a Jordanian who taught English at the local elementary school. He, his wife and his two children all lived in a small apartment-like dwelling in the village. We became quick friends. He helped me with my Arabic and I helped him with his English. We played chess and his wife would make Jordanian food and serve super sweet tea. I would invite Naji over to my two room hovel and I would make him tacos. When my two years were up we exchanged addresses and each went our own way. At first the letters between us were sporadic.  Then in the early 2000s there were e-mails. And now with the advent of instant message we have been chatting and even calling each other over the internet. It is like the 20 years that have transpired since we last saw each other had not passed at all. Despite the first Gulf War, 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraq War and all the tensions surrounding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict we are as close of friends as we were in 1988. We talk about the lunacy of those amongst us who stray to the fringes of fanaticism and we maintain the notion that an American from Missouri and a Jordanian from Irbid can talk with one another over thousands of miles and find many more things in common that differences.  

So Mr. President take heart. Those in the Islamic World are looking for a path to moderation. Sure, there are those whose blind faith has led them down a destructive path but as you know from living in Indonesia, most of the people are willing, and even eager, to embrace America again. All the best on your journey. I am pleased the road you have chosen is a much different one than your predecessor.

During the Great Depression many of the nation’s men were employed through FDR’s New Deal. By the time the Second World War struck America, the country was accustomed to duty and service. The generation that followed “The Greatest Generation” was not so keen to serve. Despite Kennedy’s famous line in his inauguration speech about doing for one’s country, few willingly did. The baby boomers have left a legacy of greed and selfishness.

But their children are a different story. The children maturing today have been raised by helicopter parents. Their lives have been organized from cradle to college. These kids have had full lives and devotion to community service is almost part of their DNA. It seems to be a perfect time in this country to implement number eight on the Obama to-do list: mandatory service. There are many ways in which to serve the country besides military service. If one looks at all the problems facing this country it seem logical that there be a required two year volunteer service for those Americans either completing high school or college. Think how fast the victims of Hurricane Katrina could have their lives restored if two million young people descended on New Orleans. The burden of the nation’s wars would not fall just on a few selfless Americans and the nation’s leaders would be required to show more intelligence in committing these troops or else they would taste the wrath of the country’s majority. The Peace Corps would flourish with independent minded college graduates willing and able to disperse around the globe spreading democracy through noble deeds rather than through the rifle. New aspiring teachers would educate in rural Appalachia or in DC, helping to erase decades of inequity. The ranks of policemen and firemen would always be full. There would be ample boots on the ground along our borders to prevent illegal immigration to our nation. But the most important component of this policy would be a tradition of democratic service. Though mandatory, the options of service would be great and the rewards would be shared by all Americans. This is why a two year compulsory national service comes in at number eight.

The far left has rightfully been vilified for their antics. For example, it is common for the loony left to shout down  right wing speakers at college campuses or to degrade  those who proudly wear the US uniform. But we are seeing there is an element on the right that is as equally dubious. As the presidential campaign enters its final phase, the McCain-Palin rallies have attracted some Republican party faithful with some hateful and inherent bias that is indeed troubling. It begins with those who choose to highlight Barack Obama’s middle name. What is the insinuation? Is it that he is a closet Muslim or is it simply to equate the notion that anything associated with the Near East is unworthy? Obama = Osama and Hussein = Saddam. It is the word association of the ignorant, of those who have never stepped one foot beyond this hemisphere or Europe and who have been insulated behind the walls of American bias and infused with a sector of the media that caters to an insular world view.

I would like to tell a story that occurred to me recently.  In the late 1980s I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Yemen. I taught in a small village named Oozla that was serviced by a single lane dirt road. The classes were huge by American standards; often well over 60 kids in a room with benches as seating and their laps as desktops. I left in 1990. Last week I received an e-mail out of the blue. It was from an ex-student of mine named Mohammed who went on to study English and became a productive member of society there. Though his English is not perfect I would like to share an e-mail he sent to me:

It`s nice to hear from you.Is Yemen mentioned in the history subject you teach?I hope a great future for your daughter.
I want to know where do you live in the States.
Mudir Abdulwahab lift the school in 1992 and replaced him Mr. Ali AL-Duais.He has now  a grocery in Oozla and his son got top 7 in high school certificate in Yemen and left for Germany to study university.Regarding your crazy neighbor he kicked the bucket 15 years ago.Of course I do know Mohammed AL-Omary,he taught me geography at high school.He is also my friend and his hair still like monkey`s.I promise to provide you with pictures for Oozla and all your friends when I go there.
Actually, the economy is going bad everywhere and hope you cope up with these bad situations. For Yemen, there is a massive raise in prices and we are suffering from unemployment.However Yemen was developed during the past 10 years, but the live is still hard.
My personal life, I am engaged and getting married in January 1st 2009. You are invited for my wedding in Oozla and hope you come with your family.I am wondering for the srtong memory you have got because you still remember funny characters from Oozla.Say hello to your family for me.
my best,

Mohammed

Mohammed is in his mid 30s now and despite all that has happened since 9-11 there is still that bond that links people not by their names or what their governments do but what is inside all of us. In January I could go back to Oozla to Mohammed’s wedding and be welcomed as if I was a member of his family. So when you see people single out Obama’s middle name, know they possess the ignorance that is the worst that America has to offer, a bias that is not based on one’s character but on the implausibility that his father was African, gave him an Arabic name and that he had the ability to perhaps be the most powerful man in the country despite that fact. And that is what is best about the American spirit.

Anyone with an open mind who heard Barack Obama’s speech on race today recognized the brilliance of the words. He is able to explain the anguish of the generation before him and the great strides that have benefited his generation. I have listened to a lot of right wing radio today simply because I wanted to hear how they were going to attack his speech. It was fascinating to hear them dissect and assault Obama They used the same tactic to attack the speech as they used to go after Reverend Wright. Don’t get me wrong, no person with intellect could condone the manner in which the Reverend said what he said. The “radio right” clung to two parts of this magnificent speech to criticize Obama. First, they said he threw his white grandmother under the bus by saying:

“I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

If he cared so much for his grandmother how could he possibly criticize her publicly like that?, they decried. But Obama was pointing to the fact that the generation that came before mine saw racism at almost every corner. My father had a Black friend at Kansas University in the 1950s and he would drive him to the African part of Lawrence to get a haircut because his friend couldn’t get his hair cut in town. This occurred in what is now the most liberal town in Kansas. I went to kindergarten in a school that was formerly the Black high school in Liberty, Missouri in 1969. When the school was converted to a kindergarten at the time when schools were integrated, the building, which had been battered and worn from years of neglect by the city was renovated to make it usable by the mostly White kindergartners. These events that are etched in my distant memory are nothing compared to the decades of injustice that has consumed this nation in the last century, never mind the two centuries prior. Are men such as Reverend Wright simply to forget this climate that surrounded their existence for most of their lives? Obama said it succinctly: 

“And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”

The second criticism of Obama was best expressed by Dick Morris, the right winger on TV tonight. Morris said Barack Obama is too weak to be President because leaders need to be able to throw people under the bus, even when they are close friends. Well as we have learned Barack Obama is not your normal politician. He could not disown Reverend Wright because to do so would be to disown the entire generation that Wright speaks for; the generation that lived in pre-civil rights America. For us, it would be like disowning the WW II vet and all he has done to save us from fascism because he, to this day, can’t stand Blacks. But Obama does not identify with this generation. He doesn’t use race as a crutch. When he started his candidacy most African Americans were weary of him. You heard on the news that he was not “Black” enough because he was not running like all Black candidates had done before him. In past campaigns, like that of Jesse Jackson’s, he spoke primarily to the Black man with the hope that others would join. Others did not. Barack Obama spoke to everyone and the Blacks bought in. In this way he has transcended race.

As the Conservative right ties the beliefs of Reverend Wright with those of Barack Obama, they continue to be ignorant of African Americans and further distance themselves from creating a nation where all citizens are truly equal. It seems they think Barack Obama, once he becomes President, will somehow metamorphize into a bitter Black man with a chip on his shoulder instead of someone who understands the Black experience and who fully comprehends the direction this country needs to go.

“For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs – to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.”

Barack Obama is the embodiment of the change that is going on in this country in regards to race. It seems it is those who wish to cling to the battles of decades ago; the culture war, Vietnam and racism, that engage with great vigor the issues that bring divisiveness. You will hear it from Reverend Wright and you will hear it from right wing radio; but you will never hear it from Barack Obama.

In 1954 the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government in Guatemala and replaced it with a military dictatorship. The fears of a socialist government and the nationalization of industry in the small Central American country persuaded Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to doom the fledgling democracy. The decades that followed resulted in the most horrendous slaughter of indigenous people in the modern history of Latin America. The aim of these military campaigns against the Mayan Indians was to ensure a Latino majority who had historically been in the minority. A small Marxist insurgency sprouted up in Guatemala and the military led government with the assistance of the US government unleashed on the Marxists and Mayans alike. Death squads fanned out within Guatemala and killed hundreds of thousands of Mayans in the countryside throughout the 1980s. The Civil War lasted for 36 years. More people died in Guatemala then in all the other Central American countries combined; a significant fact since both El Salvador and Nicaragua waged war throughout this same timeframe.

The impact of US involvement in the overthrow of the Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán government in 1954 left a wound that festered during the Cold War period. A culture of fear and violence remains to this day. 90% of all cocaine traffic that comes to the US traverses Guatemala. Criminals rule significant sectors of the state’s police and military forces, expediting the movement of drugs. Gangs continue to threaten the civilian population there.

Guatemala has returned to a democracy following the civil war and recently Alvaro Colom, a liberal, was elected president. He is promising to heal the wounds of the past but this will not be easy. Any who have pushed back at the criminal establishment have ended up dead. He proves to be an interesting figure to lead the state. He is a trained Mayan priest despite the fact he is Latino and not Mayan. He is committed to improving the lives of the indigenous people; most of whom live on less than $1 a day. It would be in the US’s best interest to invest time and resources to ensure that Colom is successful. That is the least we can do for our transgressions during the 1950s there and the murderous decades that followed.

Guatemala’s Silent Genocide

Guatemala’s New Dawn?

Guatemala’s Challenge

2007 was a good year for me. For some, however… not so much.

Wacky 2007

For most, the modern Christmas has more do to with gift giving and materialism than Jesus Christ. That is a reality. There is an unusual phenomenon going on half way around the world that taps into the secular component of the holiday. Just over a hundred years ago, during what was known as the Boxer Rebellion, Christian missionaries were beheaded due to the threat their western religion had on Chinese traditions. When the cultural revolution under Mao took hold in China fifty years later, the communist state became the religion. Just a couple years ago Christians were forced to practice their faith in private for fear of government reprisals. But China is changing dramatically. In an article in the Christian Science Monitor, Peter Ford explores the emergence of consumer Christmas there.

“…China manufactures over 80 percent of the world’s Christmas decorations.
…Those decorations are increasingly brightening the streets, offices, and homes of China itself, as Chinese young people embrace a foreign festival with growing fervor.”

Christians should not get too excited. Most of those who are buying the decorations or are partaking in gift giving on December 25 do not know the significance of the activities. Some Christians may be somewhat appalled by the wholesale secular nature in the way Chinese society is hijacking the holiday. It seems to be a strange byproduct of the monopoly they have in the manufacture of everything Christmas; from the toys to the decorations and even to the artificial Christmas trees themselves. Who knows, maybe the Chinese will grow into comprehending the true meaning of Christmas in a “back door” kind of way. The Lord does work in mysterious ways, so I’m told.

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