Afghanistan Weighing on my Mind and Conscience

I had hoped to post something on Afghanistan but have not so far. All I can say at this point is that President Obama needs to lead America and the West into a decades-long struggle (for lack of a better word) in support of a moderate, tolerant Islam committed to the full mobilization of its human resources (including, especially, its women) against Islamic, extremist militarists.

It is a struggle that will be intercontinental and involve military, political and economic force in which America needs to use "just enough, but no more" military power. It is a different type of struggle, I believe, than any America has engaged in.

It is no less than a struggle between civilization (both Western and Islamic) and barbarism.

It is in the context that the decision about "more troops to Afghanistan" must be considered. The Afghanistan decision is operational: it may be that other commitments of power are called for. But the overall decision to commit America to this extended and expensive struggle is strategic and must be brought home to the American people by President Obama.

I believe he needs to lead us into the most tragically necessary war America has fought since the Civil War and WWII.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

References: The Continuing Global Conflict Against Islamic, Extremist Militancy

This is what I've been reading over the last few months.

No particular order than reverse chronological (as I've posted these links to Facebook).

THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP by Thomas P.M. Barnett (Esquire, March 2003)

McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'

COMISAF Initial Assessment (Unclassified) -- Searchable Document

Letter From Tehran: Iran's New Hard-Liners

This Week at War: Where is Jones? | Foreign Policy

The Purpose of the Afghan War - Council on Foreign Relations

The Cost of Commitment in Afghanistan - Council on Foreign Relations

A Muslim solution for Afghanistan - Yahoo! News

Peter W. Galbraith -- U.N. Isn't Addressing Fraud in Afghan Election - washingtonpost.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Still Not Tired – NYTimes.com

The Distance Between ‘We Must’ and ‘We Can’ - NYTimes.com

Obama considers range of Afghan war options - Yahoo! News

Rethinking Our Terrorist Fears – NYTimes.com

Rajiv Chandrasekaran -- In Afghanistan, the Middle Ground May Be Most Perilous – washingtonpost.com

Irans Nuclear Threat Heritage Foundation

Op-Ed Columnist - Obama at the Precipice – NYTimes.com

PostPartisan - Israel's Final Warning to the World?

Obama's Iran disclosure likely part of clever chess game - Yahoo! News

The Arena: McChrystal report-what now? | POLITICO.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Real Men Tax Gas – NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Policy Has to Match the Sacrifice – NYTimes.com

The cap-and-trade bill: Waiting for the other shoe to drop | The Economist

Strife in Yemen: The world's next failed state? | The Economist

Even amid a war and a recession, Americans shouldn't adopt a misguided doctrine - By Paul Wolfowitz

David Rothkopf -- Hillary Clinton Redefining State Department and Her Own Role – washingtonpost.com

The Women’s Crusade – NYTimes.com

The Holocaust's shadow over Israel's choices - Yahoo! News

Bill Cahir, Marine sergeant killed in Afghanistan, to receive Purple Heart – lehighvalleylive.com

What to Read on American Primacy

Op-Ed Columnist - Green Shoots in Palestine II – NYTimes.com

US troops now a 'coalition of one' in Iraq - Yahoo! News

A day of reckoning for Bush's 'torture' lawyers - Yahoo! News

Op-Ed Columnist - The Losers Hang On – NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Teacher, Can We Leave Now? No. - NYTimes.com

Obama's Favorite Theologian? A Short Course on Reinhold Niebuhr - Pew Research Center

The Pentagon's Wasting Assets

Soldier who fought in pink boxers home for 4th - Yahoo! News

What Role Has Iraq Played in Iran?

Op-Ed Columnist - A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura as Iranians Flock to the Streets – NYTimes.com

The Next Explosion in Iran - Yahoo! News

Beyond the Banks By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Don’t Try This at Home By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Foreign Affairs - Beyond Iraq - Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk

This Is Not a Test By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Obama Says No to Torture; Interrogators Say Yes to Obama - Yahoo! News

The Long Dance:Searching for Arab-Israeli Peace

Foreign Affairs - Change They Can Believe In - Walter Russell Mead

Troglodyte Talk-Radio Republicans

My deepest sympathies to my Republican friends whose glee at America losing a chance at hosting the Olympics has been spoiled by America's president being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Please let the rest of us know what we can do (short of putting a Republican in the White House) that will cause you to root for America again.

My first thought at 5:30 AM on hearing this was, 'Can't wait to see how Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter and the other troglodyte media-heads spin this such that President Obama receiving a prestigious international peace award for attempting to prevent a nuclear holocaust is a disgrace, confirmation of his traitorous ambitions and another indication of the illegitimacy of his presidency.'

Coming home tonight and reading some of the response, I've not been disappointed.

I would love it if some ditto-head would explain to me how Republicans ever intend to win another election in this land.

But I guess I have my answer - by hoping Obama fails and that they'll be elected by default.

That would explain, of course, why the Republicans chose, early on, not to put forward their own global reform plan for health care. (See Dems taunt GOP: Where's your health plan?)

I can only hope that the wild hope that Obama fails at anything he attempts will not carry over to his constitutional responsibility as Commander-in-Chief.

The first step back toward sanity is to take the little ear bud out of your ear and go read some articles by knowledgeable people - and I don't care if its The Weekly Standard or or Foreign Policy or the Heritage Foundation.

Anything is better than the mind-screwing you get from listening to the demagogues (and yes, that means you too Keith Olbermann - nuts is nuts whether you fall to the left of the tree or the right.)

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

A Time for Heroic Action?

See...

Family cemetery visit led to hanged census worker

Friends: Hanging victim devoted his life to kids

“Times of threat bring increased aggression,” said Jerrold Post, a CIA veteran who founded the agency’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior during his 21-year career at headquarters in Langley, Va.

“And the whole country’s under threat now, with the economic difficulties and political polarization,” said Post, now a professor of psychiatry at The George Washington University. “The need to have someone to blame is really strong in human psychology. And once you have someone to blame, especially when there’s a call to action, some see it as a time for heroic action.”
(see Social change could spark violence)

If census worker (and Scout leader and teacher and lymphoma survivor and churchman) Bill Sparkman's death turns out to be anything other than suicide or deliberate mis-direction on the part of the killer or killers, then every person and especially every media pundit – professional or amatuer – who ever diseminated the idea that our current federal government is fascist or socialist or run by traitors or is being illegally led by a constitutionally unqualified president (or similar statements) has some blood on his hands for his death.

Let me say that again.

Maybe it was a suicide, or a murder in which the killer sought to deliberately mislead on motive or maybe some weird auto-erotic thing such as that which ultimately claimed Keith Carradine...

But if not...

...then anyone who participated in the poisoning of our national conversation to help create an atmosphere in which a harmless census worker could be targeted for lynching by a violent wing-nut bears some responsibility for his death.

In 1974 (the year of his death from cancer at the age of 50) Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, The Denial of Death. I cannot recommend it enough. It, along with the works of the late lawyer / theologian William Stringfellow and, I guess I should add, the Bible, have most informed my views on the reality of (and the attempt to overcome) death as a moral (as compared to a biological) issue.

In a nutshell, my read on Becker is that humans – the one animal species with the capacity for symbolic thought – find the idea of death, in its full implications for human meaning, intolerable. The better adjusted of us learn to accept a “vital lie” in which, somehow or other, death is overcome. For example, death will not matter if I have surviving children, or if I gain tremendous wealth or power, or a great number of sexual conquests, or make the world a better place, or have the greatest stamp collection in the world – the content of the “lie” doesn't really matter, so long as we believe it and can fulfill it.

And God help the poor fool who stands in the way of our (as psychologist Norman O. Brown called it) immortality project. (This, in the Bible, is what is called “sin”, but that's a topic for another time :-)

For the lesser adjusted (and I place myself in that category :-), we develop some neurosis or phobia or something, which allows us to continue functioning, albeit in an impaired way.

For example, let's say I can neatly bundle all my existential anxieties about my death and the ultimate meaning (if any) of my life into a fear of snakes. I can function just fine so long as I'm not confronted with snakes. And that's a viable “plan” because, to a certain degree, I can manage my activities to minimize the possibility of encountering snakes.

One major alternative for dealing with death is to openly confront it – that option Becker calls 'heroism'.

The hero (and we all love heroes – look at the movies we watch) confronts the power of death in a very direct and non-metaphorical way – and defeats it.

And THAT type of heroism, I'm afraid, is what Jerrold Post (in the block quote above) refers to: someone who has been all charged up by anti-federal government ranting and decides to fight and destroy “evil” directly by lynching a representative of the federal government.

It's the same type of heroism Roeder (allegedly) had when he gunned down Dr. Tiller as the unarmed Tiller ushered at his church.

Now his heretofore worthless life is transcendently “meaningful.”

But – and you can trust me on this - God help the radio show hosts and internet bloggers who selected his target for him.

A true hero right now is someone who leaves their ultimate justification in life in the hands of God and does their best to de-escalate irresponsible rhetoric before more innocent people are killed and, more importantly, before all chance of America's brilliant constitutional government functioning is lost amidst the inane babble of those who would substitute hate and ideology for citizenship and intelligent conversation.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

The Battle Against Extremist, Militant Islam

Just a quick sharing of two links: An analysis (by Bob Woodward and others) on the current situation in Afghanistan (which, of course, also has consequences for nuclear-armed Pakistan) and a declassified version of General McChrystal's request for more forces - and for a change in strategy.

McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'

COMISAF Initial Assessment (Unclassified) -- Searchable Document

Thwarted Decency

See This Anger Isn't Just In Black And White by Jim Sleeper (The Washington Post)

This may be the most intelligent paragraph I've read regarding the fear and rage that otherwise decent folks are expressing through screaming and other forms of incivility.

Yet it would be a mistake to feel disdain for these guys [young folks screaming 'USA' at John McCain's acceptance speech], for their buffoonish chanting was only one side of them, and not necessarily the dominant one. They haven't curdled into fascists, as some on the left seemed to think. More likely, the thwarted decency in them is trying to find a political home, a sense of civic standing that is slipping away.

I see it in the anti-choice protesters at the Allentown Womens' Center. I see it in Rep. Wilson's shout-out at the President of the United States addressing a joint session of Congress. I see it in the anger expressed during the Town Halls and I saw it in the crowds Sarah Palin was drawing during the presidential compaign.

I see it in my friends and family, many of whom are glued to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News.

I see it in one conservative micronationalist friend who is supporting the state sovereignty initiative in Tennessee and I see it in a liberal Scouting friend who has recently been singing the praises of fascism.

It reminds me of the prescient film, Network, and the deranged anchor, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), who has an on-camera nervous breakdown.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

[shouting]'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

These people are all decent people (including the anti-choice protesters and I'm giving some of them the benefit of the doubt on that :-).

There is a fear in all of us... the fear that the (more or less) comfortable lives in a comfortable America (which is the situation most of my friends and family share, though many others do not) are passing away; they are transitioning into something new, particularly if one is white, male and middle class.

And as fear will do what fear, from the standpoint of evolution, is “designed” to do, we are pushed into fight or flight mode.

Well, unless we plan to leave these fair shores to go to another (equally transitional world), that leaves us with fight mode.

It starts with verbal agression and can escalate to physical aggression.

I am convinced there are two triggers to verbal and physical aggression.

The first is the simple matter of not getting our own way.

I don't believe that is all that significant. Most of us, since childhood, have learned that we don't get our own way much of the time.

And that's okay – so long as our “non-negotiable” needs are met and so long as we believe the process is fair that that we (the minority) have been heard.

And that's the anger I'm hearing now... that the needs denied are “non-negotiable”, that the process is not fair and that I'm not even being heard. (And, of course, if I'm not even being heard, what recourse do I have other than violence?)

Most (not all) of the people I know are Christians and Americans.

For those of us that fall into both of those categories, we live within something that the late lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow called, The Constantinian Arrangement.

Christians were persecuted in Rome until the Emperor Constantine “cut a deal” with the Church: respect and live within the laws of my regime and I will tolerate (and even allow as a monopoly) the practice of your religion.

Some sixteen hundred years later, it is still a matter of dispute as to whether or not that was such a good idea :-)

But for those of us who believe it was a good deal (or who are willing to live with it nonetheless – see “on not getting one's own way” above :-), this is my take on the American situation.

In America, we live according to a social contract whose penultimate authority is the Constitution and whose ultimate authority is God (or, for my secular friends, conscience, not that I believe the two are identical, but they are close enough for government work :-).

The constitution was (wisely) designed in such a way that competing interests (whether of individuals or collectives such as companies, industries, non-profit groups, etc.) could battle it out to a victory in a three branch system with checks and balances all along the way – all of which occurs in the context of a Bill of Rights which protects the rights of the minority).

I must admit that I believe the Founders of America did a bang-up job on this (with the notable exception of their tolerance of slavery and the subjegation of women and other non-propertied peoples).

In the world today, America has the “longest-lived” and briefest constitution of any other nation.

My friends on the right would (I believe) declare that we do not, at this time, live under the Constitution. They might argue that life under the Constitution as that was understood by the Framers ended with United States vs. Butler in 1936:

The general welfare clause of article 1, section 8, was also intended as a shield, to ensure that Congress, in the exercise of any of its enumerated powers, would act for the general rather than for any particular welfare. Here, however, Hamilton stood opposite Madison, Jefferson, and others in thinking that the clause amounted to an independent, enumerated power--albeit limited to serving the general welfare. But as Congressman William Drayton noted in 1828, if Hamilton were right, then whatever Congress is barred from doing because there is no power with which to do it, it could accomplish by simply appropriating the money with which to do it. That, of course, is precisely what happened, and what the Court sanctioned when it came down on Hamilton's side in 1936 (United States v. Butler), then a year later went Hamilton one better by saying that although the distinction between general and particular welfare must be maintained, the Court would not itself police that distinction (Helvering v. Davis). Congress, the very branch that was redistributing with ever-greater particularity, would be left to police itself. On the First Principles of Federalism by Roger Pilon

I don't buy this.

The Framers understood that the government would, at times, get it wrong. (See “on not getting one's own way” above :-).

When it's wrong, we have to suck it up and live with it (as I did for eight years with Bush vs. Gore and as slaves did for decades – under slavery – and Blacks did for decades under Jim Crow, and as women did until the early part of the 20^th century).

And as Republicans need to do now. At least for 4 – 8 years.

Why?

Because I have free speech. Because I have freedom of the press. Because I have the right to assemble with like-minded people.

Because there is no power of government, whether Executive, Legislative or Judicial that, in the long term (if not always the short), is beyond the reach of the people through either legal means or through non-violent civil disobedience.

So what we really need to do, as liberals and conservatives, as Democrats and Republicans, as Hamiltonians and Madisons, as pro-choice and pro-life, as etc., etc....

...is listen to each other.

We need to listen to each other and get political and, if we cannot come to an agreement, at the end of the day, use our political power to force our will.

Because if we get it wrong it will not, in the long run, endure.

Obama can possibly force health care reform through a simple majority vote if he can get enough votes to fight a filibuster. Then the issues will be resolved under conference.

But if what comes out of it is not good, it will not last – because laws can be changed or repealed (see Prohibition :-)

As Benjamin Franklin said, we must all hang together or we shall assuredly all hang separately.

And while it may not play well in Tennessee (at least WESTERN Tenassee ( :-) ), I cannot help but recall the words from Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory will swell when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Is Healthcare a Right or a Personal Responsibility?

It is my (at least preliminary) belief that access to affordable health care is a right of the people of the United States and that it is within the powers of Congress to pass laws enabling that under the “General Welfare Clause” in Article I, Section 8 and the United States Constitution.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; [Followed by Congress' enumerated powers]

For those who care, this would put me on the Hamiltonian side of constitutional interpretation as distinguished from the interpretation of James Madison.

No one questions the authority of congress to legislate in support of military defense against national security threats so it seems to me quite reasonable for Congress to legislate in support of non-national security threats to life.

For those who would argue the Madisonian view I would, while aware of the dangers of a predatory federal government such as is restricted in the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution, am persuaded (until someone persuades me otherwise) that the same interpretation given in the Hamiltonian view is used by state governments within their own state constitutions.

Governments – whether federal, state or local – simply must have sufficient power to create conditions in which people's welfare (including their health, which is the foundation for most other types of welfare) can best be enabled.

This would not, in my opinion, rule out legislation that would require people to take significant responsibility for their own health and welfare (as we do with our careers, our finances, our marriages and our other private endeavors) but – as with these other endeavors – the federal government has the responsibility and power to fund and regulate the larger rules of the game.

Anyway, that's where I come down on the issue (for today, anyway :-)

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA
bekkenhuis@fast.net

The Inclusive Christian Discussion Forums...

...are now up and running at The Inclusive Christian Discussion Forums on Yuku.

I'm hoping it will prove a place of intelligent and (mostly :-) civil conversation on a variety of topics.

While you need not post under your own name, please pick a pseudonym and stick with it - I don't want to argue against 15 separate posters and find out they're all sock-puppets of the same guy :-)

You do not need to be a member of Yuku to either read or post.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Thought Provoking Issue Raised by an Abortion Protester

Will deal with this later, but thought I'd quick log it before I forgot. (If I log it, my anti-choice associates will "remind" me that I haven't responded to it :-)

If one presumes that a fetus starts as a fertilized egg and eventually becomes a "pre-born" baby in the womb (as I do) and if one presumes (as I do) that a fetus has no "right to life" whereas a baby - in the womb or out of the womb - is entitled to have its interests represented regarding a decision to abort, what is one to make of medical technology that is pushing back "viability" to earlier and earlier weeks?

A protester told me fetus' have survived out of the womb as early as (if I remember correctly) three or four months - which I find very early and plan to confirm via some research.

Nonetheless, even as a thought experiment, what if doctors were technically capable of extracting a fertilized egg from a womb and basically continue to "grow" it in some type of artificial womb?

Does that change the ethical issue at all?

I suspect not (as I don't believe "viability outside of the womb" is the key test), but it is worth giving a decent think.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

The Death and Life of New Orleans: City of Refuge

The late William Stringfellow (lawyer and lay theologian) was a good friend of The Rt. Rev. James Pike.

After Bishop Pike's death in the wilderness of Judea, Stringfellow and Anthony Towne published a book entitled, “The DEATH and LIFE of Bishop Pike.”

His explanation of the non-intuitive reversal of life and death in the title was something along these lines: that Pike's death was implicit in the entirety of his life and that the entirety of his life was implicit in his death.

Something similar could be said for the City of New Orleans as depicted in Tom Piazza's fictional City of Refuge as well as his non-fiction work Why New Orleans Matters.

[Full disclosure: Tom is a high school friend of mine who, though I haven't seen him in over 35 years, I've stayed in touch with via the occasional email and, more significantly, his excellent books. In high school I was the Republican conservative and he was the Democratic liberal and we've both lived long enough for me to see the errors of my ways :-]

Tom is a Long Island white boy who inexplicably (to his classmates) was heavily involved in “Negro” (as we would have called it at the time) music. [He has no doubt forgotten, but I remember asking him at one point in high school, “Leadbelly?! What mother would name her kid, “Leadbelly?!”]

Oh, my :-)

To make a very long story very short, Tom became a jazz/blues performer, a writer and – lastly – a citizen of what is no doubt his version of Mecca, the City of New Orleans.

To read City of Refuge, one would think he had been born and raised there.

Though I had read Why New Orleans Matters shortly after it was published, I unconscionably put off reading City of Refuge until very recently. I was afraid it would be a horror story.

Well, it certainly contains horrors but they are not recounted in a sensationalist way. It is an (on the surface) simple story of two families, one working class Black, one middle class white, who are caught in the maelstrom of Katrina and the death of the city that they, from their very different life experiences, both love.

The horrors are recounted in a very matter-of-fact way. A “sorry folks, that's just the way it was” sort of way.

The book is not a horror story, but an apocalypse.

It is the sudden and complete death of a great American city and the not-so-sudden, tentative signs of rebirth.

It reminds me, of all incongruous things, of Stephen King's book, The Stand.

It is the death of an old life and the frail, but hopeful beginnings of a new life.

For longer than anyone alive remembered, New Orleanians had danced at funerals. It was an obligation on those who were still alive to restate the resilience of the human spirit with wit and style, to be present, to answer when called, even with tears running down your face. If you lost your ability to dance in the face of death or troubles, then you lost everything. The point of holding Mardi Gras... was not to show the world that the city was okay. Mardi Gras was for the people of New Orleans, to prove to themselves that the spirit was not dead. (City of Refuge, p. 374)

As Tom is not merely an author but was an on-the-scene participant in the death (and hopeful resurrection) of the city (and people and music and food and etc.) he loves, I can only suspect how difficult a book this was for him to write.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Three Friends and a Discussion Regarding Abortion

]Written in response to a Jewish-Christian friend's response to A Peek into Fetal Memory: Learning in Utero by Prison Fellowship president Mark Earley

Introduction to a Discussion Regarding Abortion

A couple of things...

I did a little fact-checking on A Peek into Fetal Memory: Learning in Utero by Prison Fellowship president Mark Earley and found the following:

In the Womb: Twins, Triplets and Quads (TV capture)

Discovery Of Fetal Short-Term Memory In 30-Week-Old Fetuses

My computer (and dial-up connection) doesn't give me the umph! to download media but, based on the description given, I see no reason to doubt the interpretation given in the quoted note.

So I'm prepared to accept the following facts: that multiple birth siblings respond to each other in the womb at some indeterminate time before birth (if I could download the video, I no doubt would know that time) and that short term memory has been shown to exist at about 30 weeks (a little under 7 months).

Second, I'm inclined to accept that a sperm cell in a man and an egg in a woman constitutes a potential human being. A baby constitutes an actual human being. There is a long process between the one and the other and, while science can give us certain facts, the decision itself as to when a fetus becomes a baby is not one that can be made by scientists (at least, not while remaining in their role as scientists).

It is a spiritual decision and moral decision, on the one hand and, within the context of a civil society, a political and legal decision on the other.

Spiritual and Moral Considerations Regarding Abortion

The spiritual and moral aspects puts us in peril at the get-go.

One good friend of mine is a Christian heavily influenced by the Jewish tradition who sees God's revelation in the Torah and in the Talmudic interpretations of the Torah given by Rabbis, particularly those in biblical times and in the early centuries of the Common Era.

I am a liberal Christian in a Unitarian Universalist church who is convinced of the spiritual authority of the Hebrew Scriptures (the so-called Old Testament), the Christian Scriptures (the New Testament) and the broad, mainstream tradition of the Christian tradition (which I take as being the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, the Anglican and the various mainstream Protestant denominations).

Another friend of mine (who does not know the first friend) is a committed atheist. He takes his moral compass from science and secular humanism.

Yet, we are all Americans and we are all joined by bonds of friendship and common nationality.

My Jewish-Christian (if I may call him that) friend seems to believe a potential person becomes an actual person sometime between conception and birth. And I would agree with that (though not on exactly the same grounds). And he also believes that a potential person, while not an actual person, is still something more than a tumor or a cyst – and I would agree with that as well.

My atheist friend would consider the potential person as becoming an actual person at viability outside the womb. I think that's unreasonably late – an entity that can experience pain, retain memories and (therefore) begin the development of a personality can certainly lay claim to actual personhood even if it hasn't undergone the “formality” of birth.

It is worth noting that the views of at least two of us (the Jewish-Christian and the Unitarian Universalist Christian (jeez, don't we have anyone non-heretical here? :-) are explicitly informed by “private” sources of “knowledge” (i.e. revelation). Arguably, my atheist friend's judgments in this matter are also informed by private sources of knowledge in that science can not make value judgments and it's hard to see how humanistic values can help in this case where the very question under consideration is when does a fertilized egg become a human.

It's also worth pointing out that the three of us are guys and that only one of us (the Jewish Christian) has actually helped birth and raise children – he knows the process better than we do, but he certainly doesn't know it like his wife knows it (especially the birth part)!

The Intersection of Private Spirituality / Morality and Politics / Law in America

As we move from the spiritual / moral issues to the political / legal issues I should point out a “quirk” in my own Unitarian Universalist Christian views.

Following the late William Stringfellow (a biblically conservative socially progressive Episcopalian) it seems incongruous if not arrogant to identify any human moral or political decisions with the will of God. It is one thing to pray to do the will of God and quite another to claim to know the will of God.

God may be infallible – we are not. And that fallibility, in my opinion, extends to those circumstances where we presume to speak of God's ultimate judgment regarding a person or decision.

I am reminded of the story of Abraham Lincoln, early in the Civil War when his goal was to reunite the country, not free the slaves. Two Quaker women approached him and said that God had revealed to them that God wanted slavery abolished. Lincoln gently replied that as he was President of the United States and as only he could actually free the slaves with a stroke of a pen (as he eventually did, at least nominally, in the Emancipation Proclamation) it was odd that God would have revealed this to them without revealing it to him.

Point taken.

A hundred plus years later civilized nations accept the principle that people should not be treated as property.

And it is quite possible that a hundred years from now civilized nations will have a shared view on abortion more pleasing to God than either “abortion on demand no matter the circumstances” or “no abortions ever, let the mother die.”

But so long as we remain embedded in history rather than living in God's New Jerusalem, all our ethical decisions are human decisions informed by our “private” beliefs and not divine decisions. So we all struggle along as best we can hopefully mindful that God (or, for my atheist friend, conscience and history) will ultimately judge our subjective, frail, human decisions.

This is the motivation, I believe, behind the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (See Text )

Speaking from a religious point of view, I believe this amendment specifies that the government cannot claim to speak in God's name and – more to the point – cannot side with any one group of people based on their claim to speak in God's name. It also allows people of various religious / secular beliefs to freely exercise those beliefs in the public marketplace and the political arena.

These two aspects have, at times collided with each other. (See Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment )

Political and Legal Aspects of Abortion

Where does this leave my Jewish-Christian friend, my secular humanist friend and my own Unitarian Universalist Christian self? (And, for that matter, our strict Pro-Life brethren, but I'll allow them to make their own case :-)

If we are Americans and if we are committed to the First Amendment, I suppose we fall back on 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

That sounds nice in principle but are we prepared to accept it when the (alleged) killing of babies is involved?

The Constitution was developed such that laws that were passed (as well as the interpretation and enforcement of those laws) reflects the victors in a succession of conflicts between competing interests – with the provision that the Bill of Rights protects certain rights of the losers in such conflicts and that this Bill of Rights cannot be changed without an overwhelming change-of-heart in the United States (as happened with the abolition of slavery, when slave holders were denied their right to “property” in favor of the Black Americans' right to be treated as people, not as property).

So we come down to two decisions that (to the extent we take the Constitution seriously) we need to make as a society:

1. When does a potential person under the law become a person under the law. At conception? At the first trimester? At the second trimester. The third trimester? After birth?

2. Who is authorized to decide the fate of the potential person on the one hand, and the actual person on the other? The mother? The father? The government? The religious establishment? How do we adjudicate the claims between a mother and a father or between a mother and the third trimester fetus that may have no prospective viability outside of the womb. Or that has prospective viability but might kill the mother?

I'd love to be able to say that God has revealed to me what God thinks about all this, but I can't. All I can say is that I believe that a fetus is a potential though not an actual person until such time as its nervous system has sufficiently developed to have feelings and to retain those feelings in memory, beginning the process of having a personal identity and history.

Science can probably give us the best answer on when that occurs but I'm sure that answer will also be tentative as that probably differs from one fetus to another.

Almost certainly during this time I believe the mother should be the decision-maker regarding whether to bring the fetus to term or not.

As I believe a fetus, all the way back to a simple, fertilized egg, in its status as a potential person, is still something of great worth, a decision to terminate a pregnancy should be made with great care and all possible advice from the mother's partner, her family, her religious or other institutions from which she draws moral guidance, and her doctors.

But I still believe it should be her decision.

At such point as society determines that the potential person has become an actual person, then I believe the interests of that actual person (as difficult to determine as that might be) should be taken into account by the government along with the interests of the mother and her husband (and possibly also her partner, even if they aren't married).

That point at which society determines when the potential person has become an actual person will no doubt be arbitrary. That is how the law works.

For example, someone is considered an “adult” in Pennsylvania regarding the consumption of alcohol on their twenty-first birthday. Had I been in Pennsylvania and had an alcoholic drink at 11:59 PM on February 4^th, 1975 I would have been in violation of the law. If I had an alcoholic drink at 12:01 AM on February 5^th, 1975 I would not have been in violation of the law – which is interesting because although I wasn't actually born until 3:02 PM in the afternoon, the law defines my adulthood by my birth date not my birth time.

Again, how these decisions are made (regarding when a potential person becomes a person under the law, what responsibilities society holds towards potential persons, how the interests of a fetus defined as a legal person should be considered) are, in America, through the political process under the US Constitution.

And as Americans, we are constrained to accept those judgments if we can and to work to change those judgments under the lawful processes provided by the constitution if we can't.

The Bonhoeffer Situation

What if we believe we cannot ethically accept those judgments and we do not believe the lawful process of changing those processes suffice?

What if we feel compelled to define ourselves outside of the American constitution and resort to violence to enforce our beliefs on others?

Well, to begin with, I suppose it bears mention that at the point we act on those beliefs we become traitors to our country and, in essence, go to war against it.

That is not necessarily immoral. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a traitor to Germany and the Nazi regime. Despite being a pacifist who initially used non-violent resistance to the regime he ultimately, through an accident of family history, became in the bomb plot. He was caught and executed days before his concentration camp was liberated by the allies.

Did Bonhoeffer do the right thing in ultimately embracing violence? I don't know. Only God knows.

Perhaps, at this time, it might make sense for the Catholics amongst us (if no others) to re-consider the Roman Catholic Just War Doctrine.

Just War Doctrine

The Just War Doctrine, as contained n paragraph 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

* the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

* all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

* there must be serious prospects of success;

* the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

I'll give some brief Unitarian Universalist thoughts on this :-)

First, a decision to engage in violence must meet “rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy.” The decision to engage in violence against one's fellow citizens is no trivial decision for anyone who claims to respect authoritative teaching.

Second, the damage inflicted by the aggressor need to be “lasting, grave and certain”. The twist here is that as abortion is legal in the United States, the claim would have to be that the nation is the aggressor. That is, the aggressor is the United States of America and the Constitution which is the foundation of a legal system permitting abortion.

For argument's sake, let's say this holds. Certainly, if one accepts the decision (informed, again, by private knowledge or revelation not available to the non-Catholic rest of us) that an entity that should be recognized by society as a legal person comes into existence at the moment a woman's egg is fertilized by a man's sperm, then abortion would certainly constitute a holocaust. How could one not believe that the legalized, unmitigated slaughter of infants would not cause damage to a nation that would be “lasting, grave and certain.”

I would only ask that my Catholic friends remember that we're not all Catholic and many of us (including many of us who are Catholic) really do not find it obvious or self-evident that this is the case.

Third, violence must be the last resort.

Can anyone seriously believe this is the case in America? There are all the freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment – to speak, to print, to assemble and organize, etc. We have a representative government. Votes and political financial contributions (for better or worse :-) effect elections and elections affect policy and policy affects laws.

Fourth, there are serious prospects for success.

I suppose that is arguable. Dr. Tiller's murder closed a clinic.

But that's winning a battle, not a war.

Those organizations committed to ending or limiting abortion seem to believe such violence ultimately immoral and counter-productive to the Pro-Life cause. (See All Statements from Pro Life Groups Condemning Tiller Murder).

I suppose one could take the conspiratorial approach and say that such statements are merely political in nature and that secretly these organizations believe that violence is the way to go.

But is that reasonable? Especially considering the Just War Doctrine's insistence that a decision to engage in violence meet “rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy.”

Can one seriously defend the idea that all of these pro-life organizations secretly believe that violence against abortion providers and the federal and state laws that allow their work will bring victory?

I doubt it.

Fifth, the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

Again, can an argument be made that such “evils and disorders” will not result?

Tough question. If extra-legal violence ends a holocaust at the expense of ending America's constitutional “experiment” in representative government, could that not reasonably cause “evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated”?

I'll let my pro-life Catholic friends tackle that one :-)

Lastly, let's consider that “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.”

Who, in America, has “the responsibility for the common good”?

Well, if one takes the Constitution seriously, we all do – collectively.

If one believes that the government that currently exists is representative of the people of America and legitimate, then what that government does reflects our corporate decision as to what constitutes the common good – even if we may disagree with this individual decision or that individual institution (as we all most certainly do).

Tentative Conclusion

I personally believe that a fetus is a potential person but not an actual person. As a potential person it is not something that should be treated as a tumor or a wart, but it is not entitled to full legal protection as a person either.

I believe it is a good thing for society to counsel sexual abstinence until such time as a person (hopefully a couple!) have the ability to assume the responsibility of an infant and, for those for whom the spirit is willing (or not, as the case may be) but the flesh weak, contraception.

At some point in the womb I believe that potential person becomes an actual person and should be recognized as such by law and should be considered a stakeholder in a decision to abort. That, to me, does not imply that no abortions would be performed after that time as, doing a bit of research after Dr. Tiller's murder, I am convinced that there are some really difficult situations women and their families encounter that may, indeed, justify abortion of a third trimester infant – just as we justify the execution of a murderer, the death of innocents (including innocent children) in a war or the withholding of a donor organ to one dying person to give it to another dying person with a better chance of recovery.

This legal decision-making will no doubt be messy and arbitrary but no less arbitrary than saying it's an actual person at the moment of conception or it's not an actual person until it is viable outside of the womb. (I'm 55 and I'm not fully convinced I'm viable outside of the womb. :-)

And, in the final analysis, whether or not society addresses each and every one of these issues the way I believe they should be addressed, I believe that the American constitutional system is largely (if not completely) representative and legitimate and that force is not justified (at least, to those who grant credence to centuries of Christian Just War thinking) to change the system when there are so many legal or illegal but non-violent options for those who seek a change.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

Notes...

08/31/09 - Regarding John Dunkle's belief that there is no distinction between a potential person and an actual person, see the (pro-life) article at Cloning, Aquinas, and the Embryonic Person.

It includes this quote: The Catholic defenders of this "delayed hominization" of the embryo correctly say that St. Thomas Aquinas held (a) that there is no human person until ensoulment with a spiritual intellectual soul; and (b) there can be no ensoulment until there is a body proportionate to such a soul.

While the article says Aquinas' position is being misused in the debate regarding abortion / stem cell research, it does maintain that it was his position. If Aquinas can distinguish between a potential person and an actual one, so can I.

The Interfaith Christian

Going to (or, on this particular morning, not going to :-) a Unitarian Universalist church has, over the last decade or so, caused me to grapple with two questions.

First, what is the difference between THE TRANSIENT AND PERMANENT IN CHRISTIANITY. (See 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker's take on that at the link.)

The second is, what to do – as a Christian - in a non-Christian (though by no means anti-Christian) congregation which is largely divided (in the context of worship) by the secularists seeking a sound lecture based on Enlightenment rationality and the spiritualists seeking some type of inter-faith spirituality not constrained by any one faith tradition.

I have wrestled and wrestled over the relationship between the Christian and the secular, the Christian and other faiths and Christian language over Christian – and universal – experience.

A lot of books and talks and arguments (thank you, xianity@yahoogroups.com!) have brought me to the following simple, conclusions.

First, what we call spirituality is the experienced connection between ourselves and reality – all of reality. As the joke goes about the Buddhist ordering a hot dog from a vendor in NYC, “Make me one with everything” :-)

It is a feeling based on an ontological reality – the connection between us and the cosmos.

When we feel “one with everything”, we have it. When we don't, we don't have it.

Of course it's a little more complicated than that – relationships always are.

Sometimes we may feel a bit non-spiritual not because we're disconnected from the cosmos but because we don't particularly enjoy or agree with what the cosmos happens to be telling us at a particular point in time. :-)

This brings me to a second point – what to do as a Christian in an inter-faith congregation.

There are really only two things I can do: interpret the Bible, Christian theology and tradition the best way I can to people who are probably not particularly predisposed to hear it (but are interested anyway), and to develop an interfaith and / or secular language for the gospel as I best understand it.

Simply put in interfaith terms, acceptance of the gospel allows me to celebrate life in good times and not so good times, to accept all of life, including the sometimes very grim aspects of life, and to live in hope – even when hope, in it's ordinary connotations – is no longer possible. (Thank you, William Stringfellow.)

And one can do that without worshiping idols whether they be idols of sex or alcohol or avarice or idols of patriotism, career success or family.

My favorite joke is, beyond all doubt, this beauty which perfectly represents the gospel.

A man is walking in a desolate area. He slips off the edge of a cliff and manages to grab hold of a branch about half way down. He can't hold on forever. He knows he will eventually let go and die. But he hollers anyway.

“Help! Help! Can anyone hear me!?”

To his astonishment, a voice returns his cry.

“Yes, my son, I hear you. I am God. What do you want?”

“Oh, God, thank you God, please save me!”

“Do you trust me my son?”

“Oh, absolutely. Please save me! Please!”

“Do you really trust me? Will you do anything I ask?”

“Anything, anything you ask I will do!”

“Let go of the branch.”

There's a moment of silence. And then,

“Hey!! Can anyone else hear me?!!”

Love it.

That's it in a nutshell. Whether or not you can grasp or appreciate or identify (as I have) with the Christian tradition the question is, are we ready to let go of our idols (money, success, reputation, alcohol, sex, patriotism, stamp collection, family, 401K, you name it) and trust God to justify our existences, such as they are, on this earth even in the face of death.

Hope that's helpful to someone, because that's about all I've got.

Why complicate the God question with Jesus Christ?

Again, it's very simply put: because of the cross of Christ.

The heart of the Christian proclamation is not that God rules in triumph in heaven (which I believe God does) but because God, more importantly (for me, anyway), covertly rules in the very midst of the misery of the earth – and God in Christ crucified on a Roman cross perfectly communicates that reality for me.

There is no aspect of Hell on earth that God in Christ has not endured for me, no aspect of my own capacity for depravity (to use a favorite Calvinist expression :-) in which God in Christ has not identified with and redeemed.

And that is good news indeed.

There are some corollaries of course, that need to be worked out along the way.

Forgiveness, and the love of others, for example.

If you have a cosmology that allows you to believe what I just said, it becomes well-neigh impossible to have an enemy – because you no longer believe that anyone can ruin your life, no matter what they do. Even if they end it.

That doesn't close the door on justice, but it reminds us that as Christians – or sympathizers or fellow travelers or, as the late William Stringfellow called them, fellow exiles and aliens – justice isn't about being compensated for personal harm nor is it revenge, it is about the Christian's legitimate concern for the protection of society.

But the basics are simple: for St. Augustine, “Love God and do as you please” and for Martin Luther, “Sin boldly!” (?! :-)

For myself, not being as theologically gifted (or concise) as Augustine or Luther, it is “Embrace and live life as it has been given you, do not trade the false comfort of idols and other gods for looking reality at its harshest in the eye, and never give up hope – even hope where no earthly hope is possible.”

To the extent that we allow God (or whatever word we prefer) to empower us to do this, every worship and all of life will make us one with everything :-)

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

On the Sudden Death of Nancy and Peter Feist

See In Knoxville, "We Are All Crushed"

See In memory of Nancy and Peter Feist

There is very little that I can say about the sudden death of Nancy and the baby she was expecting in September.

I can say I worked with her and her husband at camp, I can say they are wonderful people with wonderful children and I can say they treated me with great friendship and kindness.

I don't have any funny stories to share. They were just wonderful folks to work with at camp – they were like high school sweethearts.

Maybe my mood is not conducive to remembering funny stories right now.

My meditations are more drawn to the religious aspects of this disaster.

Technically, the existential / theological term for this type of event is “boundary situation” but that scarcely seems adequate.

It's a horror. It's every nightmare that horror writers seek to imagine come to life. It's H. P. Lovecraft on a pessimistic day.

It is, less technically, the situation one finds oneself in when the basic trust we all have in reality is forcibly and suddenly removed from us.

It strikes me that this, above all else, is what the Christian faith seeks to address.

It's not about being a good person. It's not about breaking bad or even immoral habits. It is not about making the world a better place. It is not, even, particularly about loving your neighbor. And it certainly isn't about finding relationship or financial success through accepting Christ.

It is about life handing you a body blow like this and you find that somehow you have the grace to pick yourself off the bloody ground and keep going on.

But not just going on: going on in hope. Going on still vulnerable to joy and pain, still open to the needs of others and continuing to offer your chin to the gods to let them take another wack at you rather than hunkering down in some type of self-protective stoicism.

I've always thought the Simon and Garfunkel song gave the stoic alternative to a Christian stance on life the best: “hiding in my room, safe within my womb, I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock. I am an island.”

The other great world religions as well as many secularists would share this balance of realism and hope and vulnerability even though they'd use different language to express it.

But, in the end, it is not the language one uses to express it. It is one's encounter with the reality itself.

The central message of the Christian churches in the first and subsequent centuries was that God offered salvation to the world through the nightmare of Jesus' bloody and agonized death on the cross.

Through sanctifying (that is, making holy) suffering and death, God in Christ conquered suffering and death for all of us. Because of God in Christ, there are no godforsaken places in the world.

Whether one can accept certain physicalist ideas of resurrection or not, it would appear at least to Christians that God has chosen to heal us even in the abyss of our darkest, waking nightmares.

To believe in God in Christ is to believe that there is no such thing as a hopeless, meaningless life or a hopeless, meaningless death.

And, yes, being possessed by that reality can lead to forgiveness, love, moral behavior, social concern and even success in relationships and finance.

But what it mostly leads to is a hopeful, vulnerable embrace of life even when life seems to open into the abyss.

David and his grieving family are encountering the abyss and facing all the temptations of hopelessness and despair. But I've known them a long time. They've faced challenges before.

The gospel landed on good soil in this particular family.

Bill Bekkenhuis
Bethlehem, PA

"Would you rather die by a knife or a gun?"

Letter to Editor Express Times 06/12/09

Last Saturday the volunteer escorts at the Allentown Women's Center were repeatedly asked by a protester whether we'd rather die by a knife or a gun.

Paraphrasing, he said abortion is a procedure done with a knife. Dr. Tiller's “procedure” was done with a gun. I don't know which is worse, a bullet or a knife. So, how do you prefer to die – by a knife or by a gun?

We reported this to the Allentown police. Their response? “He's just asking a question.”

Nonetheless, I do not blame the responding officers.

They know what we know – that there is no local political will to enforce laws against intimidation or threats that would be enforced at any business in Allentown that wasn't a clinic providing, amongst other services, abortion services.

In the next 24 hours several escorts were interviewed by one FBI agent and two US Marshals who apparently had more political will behind them to follow up on such incidents.

Death threats are just the tip of the iceberg regarding the harassment patients, volunteers and staff must face while at the clinic.

It is, in my opinion, time for the women of Allentown (and their male allies) to let the City of Allentown (as well as their own families, friends and co-workers) know that death threats are NOT okay and that laws regarding intimidation, harassment and disorderly conduct MUST be enforced and that those who target providers of abortion services have no special immunity in this regard.

Gaza

I don't know very much about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

What little I know (or think I know) could be summed up by saying the Israeli and Palestinian peoples want peaceful relations between two economically viable states with defensible borders. Their governments, on the other hand, seem to be drawn to the more non-negotiable positions of their respective more hard line bases.

Hamas has attempted to manipulate Israel into an attack that would result in horrific civilian casualties broadcast around the world, strengthening its own power and prestige in the Arab world (viz a viz the more moderate party in the West Bank and the more moderate Arab and Muslim nations (excluding Iran).

Israel, fulling knowing that this is Hamas' game, finally attacked anyway.

Now, neither Hamas nor Israel want a cease fire and the suffering civilians, as always, don't get a vote.

What one might say theologically on all this will have to wait another time.

I found the three [edit - however many :-) ] articles below helpful.

Beyond the Banks By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Don’t Try This at Home By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: February 3, 2009

Beyond Iraq: A New U.S. Strategy for the Middle East

This Is Not a Test

The hundred years' war

The long tunnel to a Gaza peace

The Mideast’s Ground Zero

Despite Pummeling in Gaza, Hamas Thinks It Has the Upper Hand

Foreign Affairs - Change They Can Believe In - Walter Russell Mead

The Long Dance:Searching for Arab-Israeli Peace