It will be there in decline our entire lives

August 1, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A lot of the gen­er­a­tional prob­lems I see affect­ing Quak­erism are not unique to us. The val­ues of the Six­ties gen­er­a­tion have become the the new oppres­sive ortho­doxy. In Quak­erism, our “free­dom from” (the past, Chris­tian­i­ty, the tes­ti­monies under­stood as the reflec­tions of faith) has become near­ly com­plete, which means it’s become bor­ing, and sti­fling. There’s a refusal to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for mat­ters of faith and so all truth is judged by how it affects one’s own indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al­i­ty (we’re all Ranters now, hence my web­site’s name). Where Friends once talked about the death of the rebel­lious self-will and the bear­ing the cross, we now end­less­ly share self-absorbed sto­ries of our “spir­i­tu­al jour­neys” (does it real­ly mat­ter, has­n’t Christ got­ten us all here now and isn’t that the point?), while we toss out pseudo-religious feel-good buzz­words like “nur­ture” and “com­mu­ni­ty” like they’re par­ty favors.

I often feel like I’m talk­ing to a brick wall when I talk about these issues (can’t we just all be nur­tur­ing with­out being told to, sim­ply because it’s the right way to be?). For­tu­nate­ly, there are some fas­ci­nat­ing sites from thirty-somethings also see­ing through the gen­er­a­tional cri­sis affect Chris­tians. Right now I’m read­ing Pas­toral Soft­ness, a post from Jor­dan Coop­er, a pas­tor in a com­mu­ni­ty church in Saskatchewan, and this para­graph just hits me so hard:

The mod­ern church is not going to lis­ten to us, it won’t affirm us, or give us any of its resources there is no point any­more in let­ting it get to us. It will be there in decline our entire lives and will prob­a­bly go down fight­ing and wast­ing a lot of lives and mon­ey but to let that define us spir­i­tu­al­ly will be an even big­ger loss. We can’t blame it for being what it is and if we are going to have a long term future in serv­ing God, we need to stop look­ing at our envi­ron­ment and instead in our hearts.

Seri­ous stuff, indeed, and I sus­pect some Friends would elder me for even repeat­ing it. But its real­ly the same mes­sage that Christ gave a young man 350 years ago:

When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy con­di­tion”; and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my con­di­tion, name­ly, that I might give Him all the glo­ry. (Jour­nal of George Fox)

Every­one knows the first part but it’s the last sen­tence that’s been speak­ing to me for at least the last year. Does Christ make the insi­tu­tions fail us just so He can direct our gaze to the true Source? And isn’t this what Quak­er sim­plic­i­ty is all about: keep­ing our minds as undis­tract­ed as pos­si­ble so we can see the real deal?

Coop­er did an inter­view with Robert Web­ber, an author I know noth­ing about but who’s appar­ent­ly writ­ten a few books deal­ing with the new gen­er­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals. I some­times stum­ble across peo­ple and won­der if there’s not some kin­dred cul­ture out there that’s just out of reach because it’s sup­pos­ed­ly on some oth­er side of an the­o­log­i­cal rift. Any­way, Web­ber says:

The prag­mat­ic church­es have become insti­tu­tion­al­ized — with some excep­tions. They respond­ed to the six­ties and sev­en­ties, cre­at­ed a culture-driven church and don’t get that the world has changed again. Prag­mat­ics, being fixed, have lit­tle room for those who are shaped by the post­mod­ern revolution.

A lot of these evan­gel­i­cals are reach­ing for some­thing that looks very much like ear­ly Quak­erism (which self-consciously reached toward ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty). I’d like to think that Friends have some­thing to offer these seek­ers and that there could be a dynam­ic re-emergence of Quak­erism. But to be hon­est, most Quak­ers I know don’t have any­thing to offer these wea­ried seek­ers except more of the same hashed out insti­tu­tion­al­ism, with dif­fer­ent fla­vored top­pings (dif­fer­ences of social stands, e.g., paci­fism, atti­tudes towards gays). I know John Pun­shon­’s been talk­ing a lot about Quak­ers’ pos­si­ble inter­sec­tion with a larg­er renewed evan­ge­lism but I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read Rea­sons for Hopeyet. I’ll do that soon.

Update:
Com­par­i­son chart of tra­di­tion­al, prag­mat­ic, and younger evan­gel­i­cals from Robert Web­ber by way of Jor­dan Coop­er. Very interesting.

More Online Reading:
Lead­ing Dying Churches
Jor­dan Cooper
The Ooze
“Indieal­lies” Meet­up to con­nect with local read­ers of these sites

“Voices” Confessions Ignored?

August 1, 2003
· Martin Kelley

So there’s been a flur­ry of blog­ging about Con­fes­sions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist, an arti­cle con­demn­ing the activist group Voic­es in the Wilder­ness by one of it’s for­mer mem­bers. Lots of con­ser­v­a­tive blogs, includ­ing the very influ­en­tial Instapun­dit are com­ment­ing on it. But so far I’ve seen no paci­fist respons­es oth­er than my own and Voic­es’ web­site is silent. What’s up with this? Is every­one just fig­ur­ing it’s bet­ter to let this all die down or do they not know the pub­lic­i­ty val­ue of such a promi­nent article?

Iran-Contra alum behind Terror Psychic Network

July 31, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The Idiot who came up with the “Ter­ror Psy­chic Net­work” is leav­ing the Pen­ta­gon over the flap. What’s even more strik­ing is his iden­ti­ty: it’s John Poindex­ter, one of the peo­ple at the heart of the Iran-Contra scan­dal that rocked the Rea­gan Administration.

For those too young to remem­ber, in the Iran-Contra affair Rea­gan’s kook­i­est spooks secret­ly sold arms to U.S. arch­en­e­my num­ber 1 (Iran) in order to cir­cum­vent Con­gres­sion­al demands that they not fund an oppo­si­tion army against U.S. arch­en­e­my num­ber 2 (Nicaragua), with the mon­ey being fun­neled through the coun­try that then and now still inex­plic­a­bly isn’t pub­lic ene­my num­ber 3 (Sau­di Ara­bia). It was the cir­cuitous­ness of it all more than any­thing that kept Rea­gan out of jail for all of this.

Why Poindex­ter was ever allowed back any­where near Wash­ing­ton, much less the Pen­ta­gon, is a mys­tery. Here are some arti­cles on Poindex­ter’s return to Wash­ing­ton and return of the Iran-Contra crew to the (Bush II) White House. Here’s anoth­er arti­cle on the res­ig­na­tion of the Rea­gan crook turned Bush-II fool.

Confessions of an Anti-Sactions Activist

July 30, 2003
· Martin Kelley

There are a bunch of fas­ci­nat­ing rants against the con­tem­po­rary peace move­ment as the result of an arti­cle by Charles M. Brown, an anti-sanctions activist that has somewhat-unfairly chal­lenged his for­mer col­leagues at the Nonviolence.org-affiliated Voic­es in the Wilder­ness. Brown talks quite frankly about his feel­ings that Sad­dam Hus­sein used the peace group for pro­pa­gan­da pur­pos­es and he chal­lenges many of the cul­tur­al norms of the peace move­ment. I don’t know if Brown real­ized just how much the anti-peace move­ment crowd would jump at his arti­cle. It’s got­ten play in InstaPun­dit and In Con­text: None So Blind.
Brown’s cri­tique is inter­est­ing but not real­ly fair: he faults Voic­es for hav­ing a sin­gle focus (sanc­tions) and sin­gle goal (chang­ing U.S. pol­i­cy) but what else should be expect­ed of a small group with no sig­nif­i­cant bud­get? Over the course of his work against sanc­tions Brown start­ed study­ing Iraqi his­to­ry as an aca­d­e­m­ic and he began to wor­ry that Voic­es dis­re­gard­ed his­tor­i­cal analy­sis that “did not take … Desert Storm as their point of depar­ture.” But was he sur­prised? Of course an aca­d­e­m­ic is going to have a longer his­tor­i­cal view than an under­fund­ed peace group. The sharp focus of Voic­es made it a wel­come anom­aly in the peace move­ment and gave it a strength of a clear mes­sage. Yes it was a prophet­ic voice and yes it was a large­ly U.S.-centric voice but as I under­stand it, that was much of the point behind its work: We can do bet­ter in the world. It was Amer­i­cans tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for our own peo­ple’s blind­ness and dis­re­gard for human life. That Iraq has prob­lems does­n’t let us off the hook of look­ing at our own cul­ture’s skeletons.
What I do find fas­ci­nat­ing is his behind-the-scenes descrip­tion of the cul­ture of the 1990s peace move­ment. He talks about the roots of the anti-sanctions activism in Catholic-Worker “dra­matur­gy.” He’s undoubt­ed­ly right that peace activists did­n’t chal­lenge Baathist par­ty pro­pa­gan­da enough, that we used the suf­fer­ing of Iraqi peo­ple for our own anti-war pro­pa­gan­da, and that our analy­sis was often too sim­plis­tic. That does­n’t change the fact that hun­dreds of thou­sands of Iraqi chil­dren died from sanc­tions that most Amer­i­cans knew lit­tle about.
The peace move­ment does­n’t chal­lenge its own assump­tions enough and I’m glad Brown is shar­ing a self-critique. I wish he were a bit gen­tler and sus­pect he’ll look back at his work with Voic­es with more char­i­ty in years to come. Did he know the fod­der his cri­tique would give to the hawk­ish groups? Rather than recant his past as per the neo-conservative play­book, he could had offered his reflec­tions and cri­tique with an acknowl­eg­ment that there are plen­ty of good moti­va­tions behind the work of many peace activists. I like a lot of what Brown has to say but I won­der if peace activists will be able to hear it now. I think Brown will even­tu­al­ly find his new hawk­ish friends are at least as caught up in group-think, his­tor­i­cal myopia, and pro­pa­gan­da prop­a­ga­tion as the peo­ple he critiques.
Voic­es in the Wilder­ness has done a lot of good edu­cat­ing Amer­i­cans about the effects of our poli­cies over­seas. It’s been hard and often-thankless work in a cli­mate that did­n’t sup­port peace work­ers either moral­ly or finan­cial­ly. The U.S. is a much bet­ter place because of Voic­es and the peace move­ment was cer­tain­ly invig­o­rat­ed by its breath of fresh air.

Psychic Terror Network

July 29, 2003
· Martin Kelley

For those of you pronos­ti­ca­tors who want to get in on the ground floor of the Psy­chic Ter­ror Net­work (a.k.a. the Pol­i­cy Analy­sis Mar­ket), here’s the home of dot-com Home­land Secu­ri­ty. Its home­page is appro­pri­ate­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the Heav­en’s Gate Cult web­site, anoth­er mod­ern pseudo-religion (their sto­ry here).
The Pol­i­cy Analy­sis Mar­ket is cosponored by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects, and a spin-off of The econ­o­mist mag­a­zine, con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cion that this is the cult of the cap­i­tal­ists at work. It’s Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations here: there’s a “guid­ing hand” to com­plete­ly unfet­tered mar­kets that allows them to meet peo­ple’s needs bet­ter than indi­vid­ual intel­li­gence ever could. For­get the CIA, we’ll use inter­net surfers! They’ll want to make mon­ey and they can do our intel­li­gence gath­er­ing for us bet­ter than those desk jock­eys in Lan­g­ley! This Psy­chic Ter­ror Stock exchange is the per­fect mar­riage of Nineties dot-com can-do, eight­ies market-uber-alles and Seventeen-Seventies God-guides-the-rich Calvinism.
Trad­er accounts open in two days so get ready to join the Pyschic Ter­ror Net­work yourself!
UPDATe: We’re too late. Pen­ta­gon can­cel­ing Pyschic Ter­ror Net­work under the weight of ridicule they’ve received to the idea. Maybe the Pen­ta­gon should hire Nan­cy Rea­gan’s astrologer for their ter­ror alerts instead (actu­al­ly they should hire her great web­mas­ter, whose great design sure beats that of the Heav­en’s Gate dropout they used).

Betting on Terror

July 29, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The news sites are all report­ing a Pen­ta­gon plan to bet on future ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty (BBC). It’s report­ed as a stock market-style sys­tem in which sucess­ful pre­dic­tions by investors would win them money.
Some­one at the Pen­ta­gon has read a lit­tle too many books about the infi­nite wis­dom of the free mar­ket. There are those who have a reli­gious faith in the pow­er of unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ism, who posit it as a kind of all-knowing, self-correcting God. With the input of enough self-interested actors, the truth can be dis­cerned. I’d argue that stock mar­kets are more like blogs (the highly-linked New York Times ver­sion of the arti­cle), with every­one rush­ing to make the same links (Asso­ci­at­ed Press).
The truth of the mat­ter is that recent intel­li­gence laps­es have been the result of polit­i­cal med­dling in the col­lec­tion and ana­lyt­i­cal process­es. When the boss wants a cer­tain result (proof of weapons in Iraq, proof of Al Qae­da links), then the group-think pres­sure to con­form will warp the sift­ing process. A stock market-style sys­tem for pre­dict­ing ter­ror would be about as accu­rate as a poll of CNN and Fox News watch­ers – it will tell you what every­one thinks but it prob­a­bly won’t tell you the truth.