Bailout 17: AIG Strikes Again

Thanks to Bruce Prescott for bringing my attention to this news. AIG executives, as Bruce says, are outdoing the so-called "welfare queens" of the Ronald Reagan era, living off the taxpayers' money. Come on and get the point. Your jobs are not that important to the rest of usq

Why We Must Teach What We Know

My friend Alan Bean, one of the first activists to break the story of the Jena 6, has written a story about the struggle to continue to teach the Civil Rights Movement and civil rights advances in a generation which cannot remember how significant the small steps were in this struggle. In his article, "The Face of White Supremacy," Bean describes an actual argument going on in the development of history courses for public education. Old prejudices die slowly, even when people hardly ever say them out loud anymore. Those who remember must tell the story.

The "At-Will" Principle

One thing that gets in my craw is the way that people who may get excited about issues of justice and ending inequitable social arrangements can turn around and advocate for following the principle of "at-will" employment. This idea, couched in language of equality, is designed to shift the power of an employment agreement almost exclusively toward the employer. It is rooted in the reaction to social change after the end of the slavocracy, and it justified a way to keep the wealthy class in control over the landless, dependent worker.

And it is not a Christian idea by any stretch of the imagination. Christians who listen to our own heritage of faith will know that we share mutual obligations to one another. Employers must treat employees with kindness and justice. Employees must give good labor for their hire. And no one should be needy among us. As the Lott Cary Youth Seminar theme stated, we are "Called to Be a Blessing to the World." God has blessed us that we may be a blessing to others. What God gives us is not purely our own to use however we wish. That is part of the lie of the modern nation-state which justified racial stratification and treating people as property. Our material goods are "property" in its etymological sense--to be used for their "proper" purpose of the benefit of the entire community.

For more on the "at-will" principle, look at my discussion of why even if it is legal, that doesn't make it right.

Hagan Announces Support for Public Option

Thanks to Michael Westmoreland-White for finding this information. Talking Points Memo describes Hagan's press conference statement in support of the public insurance option. I know I did not make it happen with my letter and blog yesterday, but with the support of plenty of other folks, she saw the light. That's a big step in the right direction. Now we need to press on and get a bill passed without gutting it.

Where Does Hagan Stand on Health Reform?

I am trying to find out where Senator Hagan stands on health care reform. Here is the letter I sent her today.

Hello, Senator,

A while back I sent a letter asking you four questions about your position on health care reform.

We live in a difficult time for most people, and a major cause of our economic difficulties is the out-of-control health care system. On the one hand, the medical profession and hospitals operate as quasi-monopolies, keeping numbers of physicians low and buying up smaller practices to eliminate competition.

On the other hand, the business invokes the free market as justification for excessive charges, as if persons seeking medical care can shop around the way they do for a hamburger, a pair of shoes, or a gallon of milk. The powerful insurance companies and health care institutions already place severe limits on which doctors we can see, what treatments we can get, and even how long our doctors can talk to us. That is not a free market.

US costs double or triple the costs of excellent health care systems in other parts of the world. Something must be done to get this runaway train to stop.

That is why I support a public insurance option immediately for all people who want to choose it. The highest priority is to get rid of layer upon layer of administrative costs, all focused on keeping me from getting medical care paid for rather than focused on keeping me healthy.

So again, I want to know the answers to four questions.

1. Do you support a public healthcare option as part of reform?

2. Do you support a public healthcare option that is ready on day one?

3. Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to our government?

4. Do you support a public healthcare option that has the clout to establish rates with providers and big drug companies?

Don't listen to the critics who say this will create long lines: we already cannot get an appointment to see a doctor without waiting months.

Don't listen to critics who say this will lead to bureaucrats making health decisions for us: we already have to put up with that from the insurance companies.

Don't listen to critics who say this will be unfair competition: they want to maintain their high executive salaries and focus on profit rather than trim their costs and organizations to make health care affordable.

Don't listen to critics who say this will make medicine less attractive for bright people to choose as a career: the insurance and health care management companies are already driving doctors out of the profession because of the regimentation and demand for shorter and shorter patient visits.

Stand with all of us for a better health care system. Stand for the public plan option.

David Goatley Writes on Youth and the Church

Rev. Dr. David Goatley put his own thoughts together on the Lott Carey Youth Seminar that was held last week at Shaw University's campus in Raleigh, NC. I read the article on EthicsDaily.com. This article reveals Dr. Goatley's insight and commitment to the right kinds of priorities for keeping the church from becoming a museum of our past. Those of us who work with young people should be encouraged to know of his perspective.

Down on Today's Youth? Try Spending a Week with 500 of Them
David Emmanuel Goatley
Thursday, July 2, 2009 6:04 am
EthicsDaily.com

People who believe that young people are hopeless should have been with me June 20-26 at the 55th annual Lott Carey Youth Seminar on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C.

Nearly 500 youth and their advisors spent a week for missional learning, serving, worship and fellowship. One of the most beautiful sights in the world to me is coming across a bridge on campus in the evenings, seeing hundreds of young people who have gathered for this missional impact week in the quadrangle courtyard talking, playing and building relationships that sometimes last a lifetime. Each year I share with our youth seminar, I come away feeling that the world can be OK.




I remember feeling that way six or seven years ago when I was in Guyana with my then 10-year-old son. He accompanied my wife and me on one of my international mission assignments. He and two or three Guyanese youth went with me everywhere I went. They visited churches with me. They visited an Amerindian community that we had to reach via boat with me. They visited a Christian campground with me. They visited a hospital with me. They visited a rainforest with me. They worshipped God with me.

At the end of the assignment, I asked my son what was the difference between Guyanese and United States children. His response: "They play cricket, and we play baseball." I remember thinking, "Let's turn the world over to the kids who have not yet been corrupted by the grown-ups."

Our annual youth seminar is the major event in our International Youth Development work, where we help churches to nurture new generations of Christian leaders for the world. We believe that helping youth to learn through service is important to becoming a disciple of Jesus.

This year we included helping our young people to learn about advocacy – what it is, why it matters, why Christians must do advocacy along with ministries of mercy, and how they can make a difference. We included presentations from ONE, Genocide Intervention Network and NAACP College and Youth Division. We believe that connecting serving, learning, worship and fellowship is worth investing in for young people. It is hard work, but it is good work.

When my last youth director left to pursue other opportunities, we did not hire a replacement. The economy was rapidly turning downward, and we could not afford to pay someone fairly. Therefore, we divided the responsibilities, with me assuming my share of leadership.

I have had some of my colleagues look at me peculiarly because I am playing such an involved leadership role in our International Youth Development work. You see, I am the CEO. While I understand the arguments about good stewardship of time, why is it more important for the CEO to spend time with the adult leaders than with the youth leaders and youth leaders-in-the-making? Why should I spend time with potential donors and not with potential leaders?

Furthermore, I learn a lot from youth. How else can we learn to serve the present age unless adults take the time to listen and to seek understanding from youth? How else can we anticipate where the church needs to focus energy and invest resources unless we listen and learn from young people?

Last year, we arranged for many at our seminar to do some future planning for our organization. Wow! I had never heard adults dream how we can actually make a difference in any similar way. These young visionaries believe in the God who can do exceedingly abundantly beyond what we can ask or imagine.

Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention helps churches extend their Christian witness to the ends of the earth. Our youth seminar is the principle event in this area. It is worth serious personal investment of the CEO.

If we really believe that some of us plant, some of us water, and God gives the increase, perhaps more of our important leaders should invest more of our personal time and talent with the next generation of Christian leaders for the world. I do not know what the young people will get out of your time, but you will be better for it.

David Emmanuel Goatley is executive secretary-treasurer of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention.

Yoder, Race, and Liberation

In conversation with a friend studying theology in Scotland, Scott Prather (see his recent article, "The Body and Human Identity in Postmodernism and Orthodoxy," in American Theological Inquiry), I was thinking about how late-twentieth century theological movements. We share an interest in Yoder's theology and in the renewal of churches overwhelmed by the culture of race, capital, and empire. I put together a few thoughts that address some of the intellectual and ecclesial agenda I am in the midst of in these days.

One thing that has changed about my theological work since leaving graduate school is that I do not tend to look at flawed approaches as reasons to disavow others' theological writing. So although I can find things to disagree with in much Latin American liberation theology, whether it be elements of modern politics too intermingled with ecclesiology, or aspects of RCC doctrines that I find problematic, or sociological models that repristinate the policing of religion to the margin, I just set those parts aside and mine the stuff that represents what I would classify as faithful theological reflection. It would not sell in a dissertation, but I'm not working on that agenda any more.

So when I read the liberation theologians, I figure that what they set out to do is not so different from what I am setting out to do. Where they help me, I use them. And they are way more useful to me than so many evangelicals who can't see past the end of their statements on inerrancy or satisfaction, or the mainstream protestants who are convinced that the nut of the gospel is the equivalent of the nut of American democracy.

Yoder has the resources for a theology of race which he never adequately developed, nor did he demonstrate a full understanding of the implications of race for his dialogue with black theologies and ecclesiologies. That is, by making his concept of Constantinianism absorb so many diverse failures of the church, Yoder did not name adequately what whiteness is and what it does to the churches. Ultimately theologians like influenced by Yoder must dredge the wells of white theology to see how the construction of whiteness has poisoned generations.

I have been thinking about the commonalities of Yoder and the black theologians and other liberation theologians for some time. Having spent some time reading liberation theologies this year, I still find the commonality compelling in the basic backbone:

• a living, breathing, human Jesus;
  
• the political nature of the messiah;
  
• Jesus representing an oppressed, poor, minority;
  
• the minority position/option for the poor;
  
• the critique of Constantinianism/Capitalism/National Security state;
  
• the making of a new, called-out community;
  
• the pneumatological driving force of the church linked with a bottom-up ecclesiology;
  
• the critique of ecclesial political establishments;
  
• the turn to the marginalized;
  
• the theological engagement with practices;
  
• the value and critique of tradition;
  
• perpetual reform/evangelization of the church;
  

and on and on.

Jena 6 Case Finally Over

When the Jena 6 were charged far out of proportion for their fighting which injured Justin Barker, it touched a tender nerve among those of us who long for an end to white supremacy. I first posted about the story over two years ago, having read the Chicago Tribune news story and the earlier work by Alan Bean, director of Friends of Justice (If you don't know Alan's blog, you should check it out.)

All over the news and talk shows, self-righteous pundits were raging at Duke University and the Durham legal system for daring to believe and act on the charges brought against three young white men by a black woman. Tragically, in the Duke case, the charges turned out to be unsubstantiated. People pretended not to believe that this sort of thing ever happens in the good ol' US of A.

Yet the Jena case had been around almost a year before it got any attention. The DA in Jena said that the violent crime was "aggravated" because when the boy was kicked, it was with a sport shoe which he dared to call a deadly weapon. With no ability to meet bail, these boys were facing attempted murder charges even though the victim had not been hospitalized and attended a party the night of the fight. The story did not make sense.

Thanks to folks like Alan Bean, the news began to get out. In a few months, it became a major national issue. Now, years later, the case is coming to a conclusion. The boys who beat and kicked Justin Barker are paying restitution and fines. They have all served jail time. But they also have finished high school, and five of the six are now in college.

For more information, check out Alan Bean's post today.

Lott Carey Youth

This calm and clear morning on campus I found young people and their leaders gathering in small groups, walking from one location to another. The 55th Annual Lott Carey Youth Seminar is in mid-stride. The theme is "Empowering Youth to Impact the World." Along with mission opportunities, good preaching, recreation and fun, and devotionals, the seminar this year has allied with the ONE Campaign, the Genocide Intervention Network, and the NAACP to help young people understand the relationship between their following Jesus and their care for the people of the world.

Although the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention is one of the smaller Baptist conventions, it's link to Shaw and our common history is very important. Named for Lott Carey, the first African American missionary to Africa, specifically to Liberia, this convention works to engage its member churches in a global vision of the gospel. Lott Carey was a former slave from theWilliamsburg area in Virginia.

Under the leadership of Rev. Dr. David Emmanuel Goatley, this convention has expanded its work and enlarged the opportunities for ministers and laypeople to engage in mission work. Moreover, this highly intelligent and devoted leader has played an important role among Baptists of all regions and ethnicity as the President of the North American Baptist Fellowship.

As I looked at the young people and their leaders on campus today, I was encouraged to hold fast to what I have never stopped believing: there is yet much work for Shaw University to do, and there are many partners and allies who are committed to making that happen. I know that is true of the faculty with whom I have conversations. Along with the Lott Carey and leaders and youth, we can see a better future for the poor in our neighborhoods, for African peoples, for war-torn lands in need of peace, for U. S. communities in need of reconciliation, for people everywhere who have not had access to education, and for Shaw University as a part of pursuing those tasks.