Recovering from the Year of Living Biblically

A. J. Jacobs describes himself as an agnostic Jew. As such, he’s not someone you would expect to find headlining Christian conferences and speaking at local churches. But lately, he’s been invited to do just that.

Jacobs recently released a book entitled The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Really, as literally as possible for an entire year. Not only did Jacobs take up the more ‘common’ practices, such as tithing, curbing the lust of his eyes, and guarding his tongue, he also took up some of the more obscure customs, such as: not mixing wool and linen, growing a beard that puts ZZ Top to shame, and of course a strict dietary code, which included eating crickets. As an aside, he considered some rules, such as killing magicians, worthy of abstaining from.

I haven’t read the book personally (yet), but it seems that it’s being well-received by parties across the spectrum, which seems due to the respect that Jacobs displayed to everyone involved. In an interview with Christianity Today (from whom I borrowed the title of this post), Jacobs discusses the warm reception he’s receiving by saying,

I’m speculating, but I think part of it is they [Evangelicals] were appreciative that I went in with an open mind and an open heart, and I wasn’t judgmental. I didn’t do a Bill Maher Religulous hatchet job with an agenda. I really did go in to try to just understand and find the allure and what, if anything, I can take from religion.

I’ve also gotten e-mails from Christians who say that they appreciate it because at least in the first half of the book you get to see a really secular mindset. They say, "Thank you for allowing me to see what’s inside of a secular person’s mind."

I think a lot of people, especially in the emergent church movement, like that I took to task too much over literalization or legalism. I do think that if you take the Bible too literally then you get into trouble.

I was very nervous before the book came out about the reaction, because I thought that I had done a fair job and I had gone in open-minded and to learn, but mixing humor and the Bible is a risky proposition. But I think that they go very well together.

And in the end, he says, "I’m now a reverent agnostic. Which isn’t an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there’s a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred."

This is interesting to me for a couple reasons. First, I get intensely frustrated with the Bill Maher’s of the world, who in my view accomplish little more than driving unnecessary wedges between people of faith and secular society.  Jacobs offers a refreshing alternative. In my view, mutual respect and tolerance are the preconditions for any type of meaningful dialogue.

Second, I was reminded of Pascal, who believed (and tried to persuade others) that the Christian life as he experienced it was the most rewarding, fulfilling, and meaningful way to live. Obviously, Jacobs wasn’t that convinced by the lifestyle he lived (nor did he live the Christian life as Pascal would have envisioned it), but the experience did reshape how he thought about life, specifically, he gained a deeper appreciation for the sacredness of ritual and life.

What do you think? Is it interesting to you? If so, why? If not, why not?

Reverend Milton Wells Talks Poverty

Image by ginnerobot via Flickr

An AmeriCorps*VISTA colleague of mine interviewed a pastor who is local to his community about poverty, its effects on their community,  and why poverty shouldn’t be a possibility. You can subscribe to his (my colleague, that is) YouTube channel and follow him on his Twitter feed. Great work, my friend!

Open Door Ministries and PRI Vice Chair Reverend Milton Wells talks about Poverty in Kalamazoo, goals he would like to see for the Eastside Neighboorhood, and the impact of the Prisoner Re-entry Initiative.

more about “Reverend Milton Wells Talks Poverty“, posted with vodpod

Is “Calling” too Confusing?

As an adolescent, I remember agonizing over what I was ‘supposed’ to do with my life. Early in life I knew that  I wanted to be in the people-serving business, and I sincerely believed it was my ‘calling’ to do so. I still do, for the record. But as an adolescent, that general commitment to helping and serving others was just to generic – I thought that there was one and only path with one and only job with one and only purpose for me. Was I to be a senior pastor who got up and preached every week? Should I open a homeless shelter that fed and trained homeless people? Or maybe I should join an international relief organization to demonstrate the love of Christ that I’ve experienced to others?

What is my calling?

That was the essential question, the one that demanded an answer. Or, to put it another way, “What if I don’t figure out what my calling is? What if I ‘miss it’?” I definitely did not want to discover the answer to that.

To make a long story short — Fast forward a handful of years to college, where we had a wonderful chaplain who loved helping students grapple with questions just like that. He helped me think of these important questions in the context of the Apostle Paul’s missional lifestyle. To put it briefly: from what we know about Paul, Paul didn’t spend time agonizing over the question, “What is the one job I must do in order to live into my calling?” Instead, we see Paul living out his calling – to say and do the love of Jesus – wherever life took him. In other words, the Christian calling, that is, the life every Christian is asked to live by Jesus, is generic. And that’s not a bad thing. Love God and love your neighbor in whatever situation life throws your way.

As The Resurgence puts it:  

Our Call Has Already Been Issued

Christians don’t need to be specially "called" to live missionally; it is inherent in being a disciple. To become a disciple of Jesus means that you evaluate your passions and talents in terms of how they can best be used to spread God’s kingdom. The call has already been issued: "Glorify me in all that you do. Love and serve your neighbor. Go into the world and preach the gospel to every person." That’s it.

Each person must evaluate how they have best been suited to fulfill that call, but the call is clear. If you are a businessman, you are to do excellent work to the glory of God, to the benefit of humanity, and to the testimony of Christ in your community. You don’t have to wait on a special call to begin to do so—you’ve already received that call as a Christian. We talk about finding God’s will; it’s not lost.

In my view, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t specific times, places, or activities to which we are called; I think that does happen. But, it does mean that we don’t need to agonize about what we should or must do; that part’s already been settled, and there’s no need to distress over it. Instead, simply get up and do it.

“The Truth Smirks”

Jim Wallis, of Sojourners, recently interviewed Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show, and the interview was posted via Sojo’s online magazine (You need a subscription to view the full article, which is free). It’s a great read. For those who don’t want to bother with the subscription, here’s the full text:

Jim Wallis: The Hebrew prophets often use humor, satire, and truth-telling to get their message across, and I feel you do a combination of all three. How conscious are you of this, and are you trying to make social change happen?

Jon Stewart: It may be true that the Hebrew prophets used humor in that regard, to create social change, but it was also used by Borscht Belt social directors. We’ve got a lot more in common with them than the prophets. Everyone here has a lot of respect for activists and an appreciation for what it takes to be an activist. For most of us, writing jokes, playing a little Guitar Hero in the afternoon, and calling it a day seems to be the way to go. Because we’re in the public eye, maybe people project onto us their desires for that type of activism coming from us, but just knowing the process here as I do, our show is maybe the antithesis of activism, and that is a relatively selfish pursuit. The targets we choose, the way we go about it—it’s got more of a personal venting aspect than a socially conscious aspect.

But you do provide a perspective.

It’s definitely a perspective in the way that an editorial cartoonist might provide a perspective. We provide a different way of framing things, but it is [different from] the framing devices used by politicians. Their aim isn’t the framing device; that’s merely a method to get to a goal. For us, that is the goal. Some nights we get the recipe right, some nights we don’t, some nights it’s too strident, some nights too silly, some nights it’s juvenile, but our goal is to make ourselves proud of the product in terms of how we crafted it, the jokes we came up with, that sort of thing.

A lot of people love your show because they feel like someone is finally saying what needs to be said, that the news media is an emperor with no clothes or has no backbone. Are you aware that you’re evoking this sense of relief?

Well, we hear feedback from the audience. We also evoke anger. You know, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. It really is a question of does what you do find an audience, and is it an audience that appears to be ill-served? You can have the same conversation with Fox News and say there are a lot of people out there who feel a catharsis when they hear [them] spinning Obama’s love of Dijon mustard as proof that he is Lenin’s disciple. It’s not one or the other.

People have always said to us, “You want it both ways; you want to be taken seriously but then not.” And I always say, “When do we want to be taken seriously? We’re just doing our show.” It is what it is. It’s no attempt to be taken seriously. That’s how we’ve done things from the beginning and will continue to do so as long as we sell enough Budweiser that Comedy Central will let us stay on the air.

But you take on serious things. I preached a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral and talked about you—it was right after Jim Cramer appeared on your show. The scripture for that day was the text of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the temple.

But see, that’s the thing. [Jesus] only had to do one show. We have to do four a week!

(laughing) But I likened your interview with Cramer as a modern enactment of that parable—you were overturning the money changers.

Gee, I hope it ends better for me. Again, people who do what I do have always been around, and I would say it’s more like Joey Bishop overturning the blackjack tables at a casino more than it is the other way.

But you were mad that night.

I was. One of the things that’s very important to everybody here is to write jokes about the subjects you actually care about, because it makes going to work worthwhile. Anybody in the public square making statements has a certain sanctimony that fuels it, but to lay it open that baldly on a regular basis would be really tiresome. But in general, there are very strong emotions that fuel the comedy for us, and that’s what makes it exciting for us—and hopefully makes it interesting for the audience.

With Cramer, though, it felt like there was something really wrong with the way the media covered the economic crisis. You seemed like you wanted to expose that—like what you did on Crossfire. Some say you singlehandedly shut down Crossfire.

Ultimately it is a business, and if Crossfire was generating the ratings that they thought—basically I walked onto a sinking ship and as the water was up to our waist, I said, “Hey, there’s water!” Believe me: You can’t sink something that they think they’re going to make money from.

The sense of timing is decided on by the world more than it is us. We had done the Jim Cramer piece six months earlier. We had done a whole Bear Stearns piece on him, and nobody really picked up on it—not that they should! So it caught us off guard. The Cramer thing was happenstance. The original impetus was Rick Santelli, who had gone on [the show] and did a bit of a populist rant—and Lord knows I love a good populist rant. To his credit, he’s been against bailouts from the beginning, but he was angry we were bailing out individual homeowners and complaining about why should we be paying money for their poor judgment?

So the impetus was it’s interesting to see CNBC criticizing homeowners’ judgment when their judgment throughout this whole economic crisis has been suspect. Jim Cramer took the bait and said, “You’ve taken me out of context with the Bear Stearns thing,” and they called to come on. The whole thing turned into more of a gladiatorial match between he and I, and we certainly had our fun with it. We had three pretty far-out shows from it, but the interview itself, I was expecting a slightly different conversation. I’m sure he was as well.

So you’re trying to be funny and do good satire, but you are sometimes trying to use satire to hold somebody accountable.

I don’t know that it’s to hold them accountable, because I feel that is a role we have not embraced—and maybe we’re kidding ourselves in thinking that’s not what we’re doing. My mentality is more from the perspective of an angry guy at a bar. To hold someone accountable you must be in a position of jurisdiction, and for us it really is a question of shouting back at the television. We get to do it on television, and we hopefully do it the way we know to do it best, which is with absurdity and sarcasm and silliness.

So you’re venting and trying to be funny but choosing targets that you—

—that speak to our sense of outrage. Isn’t everything fueled by outrage? Everything is fueled by discomfort. You have a discomfort about something and so you choose to act to ease that discomfort. The way we ease that discomfort is having the Thomas Jefferson Memorial sit on the Abe Lincoln Memorial’s lap when we’re talking about gay marriage, you know? It’s the way our brains work best. If there’s anything that was our craft, that’s it—to take those things that give us discomfort and by framing them in a manner that we think brings our point of view, kind of eases that sense. You feel like you’re able to vent.

Sojourners is a progressive religious operation, so—

Wait a minute! I thought I was talking to a gossip magazine! Wait, what?

We fooled you again!

Darn it!

When it comes to aspects of faith, you’ve said you’re not particularly observant—you said you had a bacon cheese croissantwich during Passover this year. What are the best and worst ways you’ve seen religion impact current events?

Religion makes sense to me. I have trouble with dogma more than I have trouble with religion. I think the best thing religion does is give people a sense of place, purpose, and compassion. My quibble with it is when it’s described as the only way to have those things instilled. You can be moral and not be religious, you can be compassionate, you can be empathetic—you can have all those wonderful qualities. When it begins to be judged as purely based on religion, then you’re suggesting a world where Star Jones goes to heaven but Gandhi doesn’t.

So religion has no monopoly on religion.

That’s right. Like anything else that’s that powerful—that is touching that deep into the epicenter of the human psyche and our fears, it can be misused. I’m probably much more responsive in a bad way to dogma and to extremism than to religion. When people say things like, “I found God and that helped me stop drinking,” I say, “Great! More power to you. Just know that some people stop drinking without it.” It’s when it gets into the realm of “This is the only way to salvation”—that’s when I think, “Okay, now we’re getting into a problem.”

The power of Dr. King’s religion that kept him going and the power of violent religious fundamentalism, which led to so much else—both are kinds of power.

That’s a great example because you’ve got somebody who preached nonviolence using the same tools that are used to incite violence.

One night you had the boy soldier Ishmael Beah on. You did more of a straight interview with him and said, “I know I wasn’t funny tonight, but tonight wasn’t a night to be funny. I’ll be funny again the next night.”

I’ve had a lot of those kinds of nights! Sometimes intentional, sometimes not. That’s probably the premise of the show—“Might not be funny tonight, but we’ll get ’em tomorrow.”

So the subject matter seems to change the frame.

The interview part of the show is somewhat problematic. It’s the one thing I don’t feel as confident in. Because I’m not playing a character and producing any comedy, the interviews exist in the improvisational, conversational human world, and that’s probably the place I’m least comfortable. Yet some of the interviews I’ve liked the best are the ones like Ishmael Beah. When you have people on where you feel as though they’ve touched something, then you feel like you’ve elevated it.

Do you think the media could improve? Could we have a forum where it’s a serious, diverse, and civic conversation about how to solve problems?

Absolutely! I think that does occur. Part of the problem is it may be a beautiful dance, but it happens in a snowstorm. There’s just so much noise around it. The 24-hour [networks] are dictating the pace of the conversation, and the pace is one of frantic urgency. It is a relentless beast searching for food, so there’s not a lot of ability to sit back and reflect. In the moments that are reflective and elevate the discourse, it’s easy for that to get lost in the rest of the static. There is a place for that, but it has to be really purposeful.

Are there big issues like climate change, poverty, torture, or what’s happening to kids in these wars in Africa that tug at you?

Oh sure! Certain issues for us loom larger partly because of the way they’ve been spawned. When you have a regime saying over and over again, “We don’t torture, we don’t torture, we don’t torture,” and yet each piece of information that comes out is pointing us in the opposite direction, you begin to think that’s probably not an area where we should be parsing language and spinning. If you want to [torture], make your case. But the way things are presented tends to influence what it is we’ll talk about.

Part of it, honestly, is trying to reconcile our reality to the reality we’re seeing in television. It’s trying to get back to, “Okay, so why is it that I’m seeing this as ‘yes, we have tortured,’ yet it appears that we keep hearing how we have never [tortured].” Make your case! Make the case that in these urgent times that’s what we needed to do, but don’t be disingenuous.

Tell the truth.

Yeah! Tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. Too often the role of government and corporations is to obscure their real argument, and we feel like the role of media and the role of editorial authorship is to re-clarify those things. If there’s anything we think, it’s that we’re presenting it in what we believe to be the clearest position that we can in a satirical framework.

Without being activists or setting yourselves up as authorities on what the truth is, you’re trying to get some honesty and truth-telling.

Truth-telling is probably too strong a word. What we’re trying to do is square our reality with the reality of what we’re seeing. It’s just trying to line up worlds.

So where’s it all going? With Bush there were a lot of easy targets.

Their spin was really clear and blatant in the way that this administration has not revealed itself yet. [The Bush administration] wielded a hammer; this administration’s probably wielding more of a scalpel. The one area we felt more freedom to go at was the economic bailouts, but the main area we attack is the area between who [administrations] say they are and who we view them as. That has not necessarily revealed itself in as clear a matter.

President Obama is a lot of things, but one thing he’s not is particularly funny.

The other administration wasn’t funny, but they were so clear. In some respects, they were victims of their own branding. Because their branding was so strong, it was pretty easy to find the holes.

For us, the main thing is to feel like the conversation that [administrations are] having with us is an adult conversation. The one thing I hated most about the other administration is what they would say is, “We trust the American people.” Yet the conversation they were having with us was one you would have with a child—“We trust you; we’re just not going to talk to you about what our real motives are, what we’re really trying to gain.” If they had, I think they would’ve had a slightly more positive experience with the American public.

A lot of people enjoy the conversations they have with you every night, so keep up the good work. I think you are a little like a Hebrew prophet after all.

(laughing) You sure there’s not a little Borscht Belt in there somewhere?

I’ve always admired Jon Stewart, because I’ve seen his show be ‘prophetic’ time and again – and I’ve always assumed there was intentionality there. Stewart seems to downplay that idea quite a bit here, but for whatever reason, I think there might be more intentionality than he admits. Either way, the show is wonderful, in my estimation, and clearly, Stewart’s a pretty smart and witty guy.

More Americans “Pro-Life” Than “Pro-Choice” for First Time

Or at least that’s what the results of the most recent Gallup Poll suggests (May 15, 2009).

“A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion and 42% “pro-choice.” This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.”

There are a lot more interesting questions with interesting answers on Gallup’s site HERE.

For what it’s worth, I’m pretty surprised.

What do you all think?

Loving Your Neighbor: The Water Project

Jesus said,

‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.

I’ve been having some rich conversations lately about faith, skepticism, and social action (mostly) through the wonderful medium that is the Internet. In the course of conversation, I’ve made the claim that Christianity can be an incredibly powerful source of social change, justice, equity, and charity. As a Christian who’s been involved in the church for my whole life, such a claim is self-evidently true. I mean, I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes and contributed it to it in a variety of ways in my own life. But I take that experience for granted, experience that others with whom I converse regularly do not share.

 

So I began thinking about the people and organizations I was familiar with who were doing this type of work in the world, i.e., loving their neighbors altruistically – with no strings attached. Hence, the title of this post (and hopefully some more to come!).

The Water Project.  Here’s who they are, what they do, and why they’re doing it:

Who We Are

The Water Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that’s bringing relief to communities around the world who suffer needlessly from a lack of access to clean water.

What We’re Doing

We help raise both awareness and the funds needed to provide the most basic and life-sustaining need of people…clean water.

We do that by connecting donors to water project implementers who are providing clean water to under-developed nations efficiently and sustainably.

We work closely with partners around the world who identify, implement, report on and follow up on each project. We share this information with our supporters through innovative tools online that inspire confidence in the work being done and the impact it has.

Why We’re Doing It

We believe that providing clean water restores hope by enabling our partners to make a "whole-life impact" in the communities they serve through their broader development activity. We desire to see access to clean water enable schools to thrive, people to get back to work, farming to provide enough food to earn a living, and suffering to be alleviated as health improves.

We believe the issues facing Africa, India and other under-developed parts of the world are not simply today’s problems. We know that a lack of clean water stands in the way of tomorrow’s hope. And we’re sure that together we can change that.

Are We a "Religious Organization"?

No. We are simply a Christian non-profit.

Religious organizations are organized and recognized differently than public benefit charities. The work we do through The Water Project is for the good of the general public. The reason we do this work is because we are Christians. We believe that important distinction allows us to work with people of all backgrounds and faiths for the benefit of all people. Our projects do not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, ethnic or religious backgrounds. We serve others.

We believe that bringing water to those who need it most is a natural expression of how Jesus Christ teaches us all to live. We believe these essential, life-sustaining projects will help enable our partners to demonstrate what loving one’s neighbor is all about. We believe these water projects relieve suffering, open doors to education, stimulate economic development, and most importantly introduce a true and lasting hope.

So simply put, we follow the teaching of Jesus who has called each of us to act, in this world, for peace and justice by loving our neighbor — however, whenever and wherever we can.

We exist to see the world changed through this love. It is a simple message of hope in an increasingly difficult world.

That’s a pretty clear picture of what it means to love your neighbor, I think. We love because we are loved, and love doesn’t distinguish among race, creed, ethnicity, or religious background (or lack thereof). And there are no strings attached – there is a need, and the need is being met, period.

The Water Project is on Facebook and Twitter, and you can follow them here. You can help support them by giving “Twollars” (I’m not kidding), which doesn’t cost you anything but a few seconds of time. Details are on their site under “Action Alert.”

What do you think? Do you have a favorite charity or philanthropic effort that you want to share? What about a personal story?

 

On Vacation

Hey friends,

I’m on vacation until the end of the week!

Doing some good fishing, some bad golfing, and enjoying my wife and family.

I hope you enjoy your week as much as I am going to enjoy mine!

A story that hits close to home

Every morning on the way to work, I tune into Morning Edition on NPR to catch up on the news headlines, at least as much as is possible in 20 minutes.

This morning another story from StoryCorps was featured, and it brought a tear to my eye… something that almost never happens, frankly.

When I was a child, my grandmother began to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. I was old enough to have some memories of her before she began to suffer from memory loss, but I am the oldest of my siblings. Not all my siblings remember her before the disease as well as I do.

This morning’s story hit so close to home because it was an interview between an elderly married couple that is deeply in love after 60 years of marriage… and the man, Seymour, is beginning to suffer from the same disease that caused so much pain and suffering in my own family. But in spite of the disease, there is a deep, powerful connection between these two people, which reminded me of my own dear grandparents. My grandparents were and remain a deep source of inspiration for me as models of love, faithfulness, and commitment. Those same values are echoed in the story of Marcia and Seymour. So I thought I would share.

Marcia and Seymour Gottlieb have known each other for 60 years. The rat-a-tat-tat of the story the married couple tells about how they met sounds like George Burns and Gracie Allen — a beautifully crafted comedy routine.

Marcia: "Our journey started a long, long time ago."

Seymour: "Must I tell everybody you worked for me?"

Marcia: "It’s the truth!"

Seymour: "Well, she worked for me. She was the cashier."

You see, Seymour Gottlieb had needed another worker at his surplus store, and an employee had recommended her friend.

Seymour: "And here came old Marcia. I looked her over and said to myself, ‘Gee, what a funny-looking broad!’ But she has good credentials, she can count, so I said, ‘All right, I’ll give her a chance.’ "

The Gottliebs recorded their story in Los Angeles as part of the StoryCorps Memory Loss Initiative. Seymour has Alzheimer’s, but says he’ll never forget meeting that "funny-looking broad," Marcia.

Marcia: "Do you have any questions for me, kid?"

Seymour: "I have nothing to ask you. Everything about you — I think — I know. Your brassiere size, your dress size, and the true color of your hair … That’s a lot of baloney, that blond hair!"

But as with any good routine, there are moments of sentiment amid the laughs.

Seymour: "I’m very lucky to have my mate this long. Look at that beautiful face. When we first met … she didn’t have the wrinkles in her face. Now she’s a good-looking old lady. You know, the older you get, you have different needs from your mate, and she has met all of them."

Marcia: "Seymour … as old as you are …"

Seymour: "87!"

Marcia: "As big a fart as you are, I do love you!"

Seymour: "You do?"

Marcia: "Yeah."

Seymour: "Well, I can’t help it. I don’t know if medication will also help you.

"The longer I know her, the more I appreciate her, ’cause she’s my pal. She’s my best friend — not the best cook in the world, but she makes reservations very well."

And … scene!

 

(there’s also an audio file available for download, in which you can hear Seymour and Marcia interact… it’s a beautiful sound)

Some humbling reading…

“White privilege.”

I first heard the term in college in the same course that I heard about “White Flight” for the first time: Sociology 101. 

I remember being angry the first time I heard about it, and I suppose that’s probably how a lot of white men feel when they hear the terms for the first time. But, over time, I began to see the merits of the arguments… I don’t agree with everything I’m about to copy and paste here, but that’s a part of the point. This is a voice that’s fundamentally different than mine, and perhaps yours, and it’s worth hearing, digesting, and responding to.

Some words from Mary Mitchell:

The following essay recently landed in my e-mail. The author is Tim Wise, and the article first appeared at BuzzFlash.com, but I’ve heard the same sentiments expressed by friends and associates:

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin’ redneck," like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll "kick their fuckin’ ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good churchgoing Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

“Unlikely Disciple”

Kevin Roose is a brave, brave man. As this article explains:

Before Kevin Roose enrolled at the world’s largest evangelical university he didn’t know any evangelical Christians, save for one. He didn’t even really know God. But that didn’t stop the “practically religion free” Brown University sophomore from taking a semester’s leave to subject himself to “Bible Boot Camp” at Liberty University, the bastion of higher education founded by the late Reverend Jerry Falwell. On campus in Lynchburg, Virginia, Roose engrossed himself in classes like Evangelism 101, History of Life and Old Testament Survey, at the same time acclimating to a social scene regulated by “The Liberty Way,” a forty-six-page code of conduct.

While Roose expected to meet a student body dominated by angry, intolerant zealots, he discovered that the Lukes, Matthews and Pauls he encountered were—more or less—like any other 21st century college students. In other words, in between prayer groups and Bible study they gossiped, complained about exams, and whiled away the hours on Facebook and MySpace. But what really surprised Roose is that after a few months of palling around with his spiritually intense classmates and “experimenting” with prayer, he began to enjoy—or at least appreciate—living a Christ-centered university life.

Kevin is back at Brown U now, and he’s written a book about his experience. I’m guessing it’s interesting. The Q&A section of the above article also contains some pretty fascinating stuff. Here are some highlights:

Why did you go to Liberty?
I wanted to explore the world of Christian college students because I had the ultimate secular upbringing and had no exposure to my Christian peers. I grew up in a liberal college town [Oberlin, Ohio], my parents once worked for Ralph Nader, and I chose to attend Brown University, which is known as a liberal enclave. I had read somewhere that 51 percent of non-evangelical Americans don’t know any evangelical Christians, and that one out of three American teenagers considers themselves a born-again Christian. So it really is our biggest cultural divide. I wanted to see how the other half lives, and to see if I could bring those two worlds closer together. (emphasis added)

Can you name a few substitute swear words one might overhear at Liberty?
They would say things like “darn” and “crap” and “heck.” They call them Nerf curses. And sometimes they would just say the first letter [of a curse word], like “F that!” But saying it without saying it … it seems like you may as well go the whole nine yards.

(I laughed when I read that one!)

Was it difficult to fit in at Liberty?
It was tremendously difficult because it really is an entirely different culture. But I had a great time getting to know the guys on my hall, and I found out that most of the time they weren’t even thinking about religion or Jerry Falwell or politics. They were worrying about homework or gossiping about girls in the sister dorm or wondering what they would be doing after graduation. It was an intensely humanizing experience to discover the amount I had in common with the people I met there.

What was your most enlightening class?
I enjoyed the Bible classes, and I think it’s important for Americans to be Biblically literate. I had been through 19 years of secular schooling in which I wasn’t taught about the Bible, and I think that’s a shame.

And although I struggled with it, I enjoyed my Creationist biology course. It was the most foreign thing to me because I’m a firm believer in evolution. Getting a test that would ask: True or false … Noah’s Ark was large enough to accommodate various types of dinosaurs … that was a little bit jarring for me. But as the semester went on, I learned that there is a coherent world view there, and even if I don’t agree with it, I think we need to understand the Creationist world view, because there are a lot of young Creationists out there. We have to understand why they believe what they believe and be able to engage them in an educated way.

Did Brown accept your credits from Liberty?
[Laughs]. I tried. I went to the dean and showed him my transcript and he took one look and said, “I don’t think so.”

Can your book help bridge the so-called God Divide?
I hope so, and I think people are ready for that. We have been fighting the culture wars—this divisive Moral Majority culture war—for 35 years, but people are now recognizing that this is destructive and that we need to find common ground. People are tired of demonizing. I think we’re ready to move past that and go forward…

But both sides have mythology that lets them demonize people outside the fold. And the culture wars will go on because there are legitimate issues of disagreement. But we don’t have to hold the same tone when talking about these issues. That can change.

I’m taken by a few things. First, I’m impressed by this young man’s willingness to engage people he knew absolutely nothing about from a posture of openness and humility. To me, that’s rare and should be applauded. Second, I’m a bit humbled, because his experience at Liberty breaks down some of the stereotypical things I had thought about Liberty, its values, and its teachings. Third, I’m a bit surprised to hear that they have courses on Creationist Biology. And finally, I’m incredibly impressed by the overall tone of the interview, which is summed up by the last quotation. We don’t have to go on hating each other and fighting with each other. Change is desirable and possible. Let’s make that happen.

I’m curious what you think. Can we learn anything from this experiment? If so, what?

(via)