Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The Impact of Christ on Female/Male Relationships - Wayne Northey

This study still has pertinence today. There are two versions, which titles below explain. The second was presented on the University of British Columbia campus to a secular/Christian audience.

An excerpt from the first:

Introduction

A few years ago, a man phoned me and asked if I had some time for a talk. I replied that I was getting my kids ready for bed, but afterwards would be happy to chat with him.

He phoned an hour or so later, and we had our talk. He had read and kept, as it turned out, a letter to the editor of The Vancouver Sun I had written a few years before concerning a prison riot at Matsqui Institution. He had appreciated some of the points I had made concerning the evil of the prison itself, and now was writing his memoirs. He was planning to quote some of my insights into the nature of prison in light of his own son’s experience as a prisoner. On a whim, he looked up the only ‘Northey W’ listed in the phone book, and asked if I was one and the same.

We had a subsequent lively conversation until in passing, he discovered that I had a Christian commitment. “Not one who really takes the Bible seriously though?,” he asked incredulously, then immediately cooled, and soon therefore terminated the conversation, upon my affirmative response.

I presume neither I nor my letter found its way into his memoirs after all.

Canadian singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn says that he often qualifies his affirmation of his Christian faith by saying: “But I’m not one of them.” He is obviously smarting under the identification of Christianity with things unsavoury said or done in the name of God and Christ.

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Reflections on David Milgard - Wayne Northey

It was a shock, followed by great sadness, to have heard the news today of David’s passing. 

In 1989, newly hired to head the Restorative Justice work of Mennonite Central Committee Canada, I was perusing correspondence of my predecessor, Restorative Justice pioneer, Dave Worth, and discovered David Milgaard in those letter exchanges. At the time he was in Stony Mountain Prison, near Winnipeg. We began our own correspondence that soon developed into a warm friendship. These past several years, we remained in touch regularly. David, who was pure heart, was a loyal friend. 

Through the tireless effort of his mother, Joyce, who died in March 2020, liberal MP Lloyd Axworthy raised his case in Parliament in 1991, claiming it was a great travesty of justice. On April 16, 1992, David was released from prison on a stay of proceedings—instead of receiving a new trial. He had served 23 years for a rape and murder he had not committed. 

Not until July 18, 1997, was David exonerated through DNA evidence. The Saskatchewan government finally apologized for its wrongful police investigation, prosecution, and imprisonment. The real rapist and killer—since deceased Larry Fisher—had been known to police at the time due to other sexual assault convictions, had been living in the same neighbourhood as his victim, and had been questioned about the crime and released by police... Vancouver’s The Innocence Project, and many others, estimate that as many as one in ten convicted of a serious and violent crime knew nothing about it at all, until their charge was laid. 

It took two additional years for David to receive compensation for pain, suffering, lost wages, and legal fees. 

He was only 17 years old when first incarcerated. What could have been the best years of his life were snatched from him. Despite that, I never experienced David expressing self-pity or bitterness. He had been raped in prison, shot in the back by police after an escape, suffered many prisoner indignities, and attempted suicide. 

After his release, David lived for a few years in Vancouver. Our family saw a lot of him then. He often would hop on a bus, seemingly heading wherever it was going, then he’d call us on his way back to pick him up for a visit—once, with a stray dog—at about 2:00 a.m.! When eventually compensated, his wanderlust continued by jet. 

David keenly embraced Restorative Justice: a peacemaking not war-making response to crime. He excoriated prisons, not only because of his harrowing 23 years inside but because he knew all reputable evidence-based studies worldwide find they almost invariably achieve far less than, if not the inverse of, their stated lofty aims. David knew/knew of Order of Canada recipient Ruth Morris who co-edited with Canadian criminologist Gordon West The Case for Penal Abolition, which presents a compelling rationale. In August 2020, David and I recorded on Zoom a presentation about aspects of that (RJWorld eConference, August 22 - 31, 2020: David Milgaard & Wayne Northey). 

David was appointed and remained deeply committed to the Independent Review Board Working Group, an entity whose creation was ordered by Justin Trudeau in December 2019. 

In 2016, he invited me to attend Simon Fraser University’s Ting Forum on Justice Policy: a Symposium on Wrongful Convictions and Criminal Investigative Failures (Session 6: Voices of the Wrongfully Convicted / The Innocence Project - School of Criminology - Simon Fraser University (sfu.ca)). Along with others, David presented powerfully about "the crime of punishment" (title of famous psychiatrist Karl Menninger’s book). Post-incarceration, he ever echoed Canadian philosopher John McMurtry’s words: 

As with past monstrous systems of cruel and systematic oppression, we see how morally blind the conventionalised [retributivist] mindset can become. 

David always wished to make this sink in: a tunnel vision justice system that brutally scapegoats its “guilty” victims gets it wrong by all estimates one in ten times! And who, he wondered, holds all its actors accountable? 

Thank you and farewell David, my dear friend, for a life of deep caring, passionately lived. As often approvingly said in prison, you “walked the talk.” 

—Wayne Northey 

 

Announcement - Restorative Justice 8-day e-Conference (April 22-30)

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Christian Pacifism and Its Cultured Naysayers - Wayne Northey

The Problem

I have a good friend who loves the great Christian thinkers, Erasmus and his 16^th-century Anglican friends and contemporaries known as the Oxford or London Reformers, Dean John Colet, Thomas More, and Juan Vives.

My friend writes:

But, Erasmus was no absolute pacifist. He was very much the nimble, subtle and nuanced owl of his age, ever finding a thoughtful and navigating a thoughtful pathway between the pacifist doves and warlike hawks. (name and source withheld).

My friend’s assessment that such thinkers are “the nimble, subtle and nuanced owls of their age” has always struck me as passing strange. If “Teaching the Gospel Message that Jesus was totally nonviolent, and we’re called to be nonviolent too,” ¹ then aren’t exception caveats in the otherwise dovish Erasmus–he the premier 16^th-century Peace theologian–more of a departure from The Way than ‘nimble’ on The Way? And can it be denied that his opposition to church militarism² became his legacy–not nimble path-picking between doves and hawks?

My conditional “if” above is of course the nub. But as I read Jesus in the Gospels³, the burden of proof is surely on those “nimble” thinkers to explain why they seem to contradict/obviate/set aside what Jesus explicitly taught: Love your enemies–don’t you think?

What follows is not so much an argument for Pacifism as making space for a challenge to its alternative, in one’s commitment to taking Jesus seriously. It does not address the minefield of thorny practical issues of living “in, but not of the world,” which two millennia plus of Church history have brought to bold relief on this matter. Then again, neither does Jesus.

Abstract theology holds for me little appeal. So along the way, beginning with my friend, I interact with embodied expressions of Pacificism’s alternative.

Simply stated: in Jesus, if not Pacifism, why not?

Exception-Clause Footnote Theology?

I must express textual agnosticism: Search as I might throughout the New Testament, I find nowhere any Exception-Clause Footnote Theology at work that permits, let alone encourages, an end-run around this central text and theme. Do you?

Surely a nimble mind does not try to find a (convenient?) agnosticism about this theme, while seemingly ignoring that

peace [is] the heart of the gospel message and the ground of the New Testament’s unity. (New Testament scholar Richard Hays. See above footnote.)?

Whereas, one must wonder at the apparent abnegation of simply seeing this unifying theme of the New Testament!? Or have I missed something–and not they?

Mind you (intentional pun), that great thinkers such as C.S. Lewis had such “nimble” minds, one cannot deny. Perhaps though therein lies the problem? . . .

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Reflections on Mother Maria, helping Jews forge baptism certificates - Wayne Northey

I have relatives though who insist, not unlike Trump cultists, that there is “no good thing” (John 1: 46–slightly paraphrased) that comes from Christianity.Ever.

Though I have pointed them to this winsome article, On the Front Lines, by former noted CBC journalist, Brian Stewart. In it we read:

For many years I’ve been struck by the rather blithe notion, spread in many circles including the media, and taken up by a rather large section of our younger population, that organized, Mainstream Christianity has been reduced to a musty, dimly lit Backwater of contemporary life, a fading force. Well, I’m here to tell you from what I’ve seen from my “ring-side seat” of events over decades that there is nothing that is further from the truth. That notion is a serious distortion of reality. I’ve found there is NO movement, or force, closer to the raw truth of war, famines, crises, and the vast human predicament, than organized Christianity in Action. And there is no alliance more determined and dogged in action than church workers, ordained and lay members, when mobilized for a common good. It is these Christians who are right “On the Front Lines” of committed humanity today and when I want to find that Front, I follow their trail.

It is a vast Front stretching from the most impoverished reaches of the Developing world to the hectic struggle to preserve caring values in our own towns and cities. I have never been able to reach these Front lines without finding Christian volunteers already in the thick of it, mobilizing congregations that care, and being a faithful witness to truth, the primary light in the darkness and so often, the only light.

Apparently for my relatives, Christopher Hitchens is their last word on the matter:

Religion poisons everything!

Hence Peter Hitchens’ (brother to the above Enraged One, now deceased) testimonial: The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith.

As all faith-full discover however, God has his ways  . . . (Hint: it helps to be open-minded! . . .) My sister-in-law however, pretty much each time she sees us seems hellbent–pun intended, though there is much on my website about hell that runs contrary to religious fundamentalism–on reminding us that for her part, she is running as fast as she can away from organized Christianity . . . (There are sadly enough, some forms of “eschewable” Christianity dotting the vast 2,000-year-plus, worldwide Christian landscape.)

Would that she eventually discover, like Francis Thompson in the brilliant poem, The Hound of Heaven, that there is nowhere left to run, and give into God’s unrelenting Love! Though while God is indeed relentless, as the poet eventually discovered, to date, my relative seems to be just as obstinate. But the only hell there is, is the fire of God’s ceaseless Love poured out towards us! So there is endless hope! And Jesus of course, like hot knife through butter, descended into hell according to the  great Church creeds, precisely to initiate full Infernal Meltdown–to rid hell’s contents forever! Amen! And Amen!

Bluntly: Love wins!

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The Great Sumas Lake Heist: A Guilty Little Secret in Plain Sight - Wayne Northey

Story highlighted below by Tyler Olsen and Grace Kennedy| November 17, 2021

Photo above: Sumas Lake was at the centre of Fraser Valley life for thousands of years, before it was drained a century ago. The Reach Gallery Archives/Image: P188

A Maori Lord's Prayer

Divine love

Wellspring of our existence

Build us into a loving community

Feed us and heal us with wisdom and grace

Shatter our prejudice and soothe the pain of our failure

Weave love and peace into our intentions and actions

So that we may stand for justice and compassion

As a reflection of the piercing tenderness we see in the heart of Jesus.

 

Our province of British Columbia Canada since November 14 has been undergoing a massive emergency, due to unprecedented rainfall that led to gigantic mudslides, road washouts, flooding, and death. Worst hit in the Fraser Valley below where we live is the Sumas Prairie of the City of Abbotsford.

It is an overwhelming tragedy for lives lost and livelihoods ruined. One can scarcely imagine the scope. Our hearts go out to those affected by such wrenching devastation.

As with other major disasters, the rising to the challenging needs of neighbour and stranger by innumerable officials and volunteers is wonderfully heartwarming and immensely uplifting. There are and will be endless accounts of heroism, compassion, empathy, etc. We're all reading about, watching, prizing this superb outpouring of community-coming-together everywhere hard hit.

What follows was occasioned by the Deluge, but not about the above.

The Tragedy and the Travesty

"They took the lake away and we never got one inch of it,” former Grand Chief Lester Ned told the Vancouver Sun in 2013. “I don’t know how the people survived way back then.” Chief Ned died in October.

This overwhelming tragedy today points to an overwhelming travesty committed a century ago against thousands who had peopled the Sumas Lake area: a Lake that was drained under the noses of--in stark terms, stolen from--the Sumas First Nation.

The current horrific events cast an eerie spotlight on a century-old gargantuan injustice committed by White Settlers. There is no gentle way to state it. Calling it an injustice, a blandly inadequate term, or property theft according to the Criminal Code of Canada, are the only legitimate labels for such an incalculably grotesque high crime.

Should not the sheer pathos of that simple comment send chills down our spines? ((We read in Sumas First Nation built on higher ground, unaffected by flooding in former lake bed, says chief, by Michelle Gomez, November 19, 2021:

The lake also used to be their primary food source, according to [Sumas First Nation Chief Dalton Silver], and their ancestors told government officials in the early 20th century that draining the river would cause starvation for the Sumas people.

"It is something that our people never would have even thought of doing, altering nature in such a way."

Ultimately, the lake was drained between 1920 and 1924.

A few points before proceeding:

• Morally: All crime cries out for confession, repentance, commitment to "never again," and amends-making on the part of the perpetrator(s) and/or beneficiar(y)ies. Biblically, this is called justice-making. I've spent a career working on it, writing about it, puzzling over it.
• There is never a "right time" to raise this issue. Some said to me though in mid-November, "This is the wrong time." I ask simply: If not now, when? If not now, why? We humans have enormously short attention spans, especially when it serves our purposes. However, I did put this reflection on hold for three weeks.
• Some claim there is a kind of "Statute of Limitation" at play here. I ask: Morally, is there ever a Statute of Limitation for such an horrific wrong?
• Commitment to Truth, Justice and Compassion (as in the Maori prayer above) starts with connecting dots. If this, then that . . .

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First Nations Version - Indigenous Translation of the NT

Announcing: “First Nations Version An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament”:

Wayne Northey: The Lord's Prayer in this version is beautiful! Please view its reading below. A few sample passages follow the video. I'm excited to read the Story afresh through First Nations People on Turtle Island, who have suffered so much—and that suffering continues!—under us White Settlers.

 

Excerpt:

The Great Spirit loves this world of human beings so deeply he gave us his Son—the only Son who fully represents him. All who trust in him and his way will not come to a bad end, but will have the life of the world to come that never fades—full of beauty and harmony. Creator did not send his Son to decide against the people of this world, but to set them free from the worthless ways of the world.

John 3:16-17

Love is patient and kind. Love is never jealous. It does not brag or boast. It is not puffed up or big-headed. Love does not act in shameful ways, nor does it care only about itself. It is not hot-headed, nor does it keep track of wrongs done to it. Love is not happy with lies and injustice, but truth makes its heart glad. Love keeps walking even when carrying a heavy load. Love keeps trusting, never loses hope, and stands firm in hard times. The road of love has no end.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Many First Nations tribes communicate with the cultural and linguistic thought patterns found in their original tongues. The First Nations Version (FNV) recounts the Creator’s Story—the Christian Scriptures—following the tradition of Native storytellers’ oral cultures. This way of speaking, with its simple yet profound beauty and rich cultural idioms, still resonates in the hearts of First Nations people.

The FNV is a dynamic equivalence translation that captures the simplicity, clarity, and beauty of Native storytellers in English, while remaining faithful to the original language of the New Testament. Whether you are Native or not, you will experience the Scriptures in a fresh and new way.

Please click on: First Nations Version of the New Testament

“The Sex Offender as Scapegoat” - Vigilante Violence and a Faith Community Response - by Hugh Kirkegaard & Wayne Northey

John 12:20 – 33; John 11:49-52:

49But one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! 50You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

51Caiaphas did not say this on his own. Instead, as high priest that year, he was prophesying that Jesus would die for the nation,52and not only for the nation, but also for the scattered children of God, to gather them together into one.

Wayne Northey: The above is the classic scapegoating text in the New Testament. You will learn much about scapegoating by reading on.

It was my longstanding friend and colleague Hugh Kirkegaard (currently (2021) and for some years Director of Chaplaincy, Correctional Services Canada, Atlantic Region) who inspired and co-authored this paper; and had worked closely in Toronto with B. O. He arranged for CSC funding for us to attend the COV&R (Colloquium on Violence and Religion) Conference at Emory University, Atlanta in 1999, where we presented on what was turned into the paper highlighted below.

You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.—Caiaphas

It has been translated, published in anthologies, and referenced numerous times since, thanks to the power of René Girard’s insights on scapegoating. The original paper is still on the Emory University COV&R ’99 website here.

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"End Abuse" Programs - Wayne Northey

Esther, my partner, and I have been hugely privileged to have been connected to the End Abuse Programs for many years: Esther since 2009. She co-facilitates groups of women in Phase Two at the MCCBC Office (33933 Gladys Avenue, Abbotsford–all Phases are for 10 weeks), and a Respectful Relationships for Survivors of Trauma Program in Fraser Valley Institution (FVI) for the same duration as above. There have been multiple contracts through MCCBC for the latter.

Together we have facilitated the Home Improvement Program for Men: 15-week sessions, two a year, since 2017.

The video below was done by University of the Fraser Valley students. We all feel it is excellent! They could not access women in the federal prison. Many have told the facilitators that it has been life-giving.

 

Wayne Northey's "IVAN ILLICH Discussion Group" with David Cayley

Portal to Wayne Northey's IVAN ILLICH discussion group with David Cayley:

 

David Cayley is introduced on this website here.

 

This summer, he consented to meet with a group of us on Zoom, to discuss his new book on Ivan Illich.

An epigraph in the book above goes:

On the table . . . there is always a candle? Why?
Because the text that shaped my understanding
was . . . a treatise on spiritual friendship by the
twelfth-century abbot Aelred of Rievaulx . . . It
begins with the words “Here we are, you and I, and,
I hope, also a third who is Christ.” If you consider
his meaning carefully, you understand that it could
be Christ in the form of Brother Michael. In other
words, our conversation should always go on with
the certainty that there is somebody else who will
knock at the door, and the candle stands for him or
her. It is a constant reminder that the community is
never closed.–Ivan Illich

Further commentary on this and the book’s genesis is on page 9:

On December 2, 2002, he died in Bremen. I proceeded with what I had and, in 2005, published The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich.

The origins of the present book lie in that one. What I dared to call Illich’s testament—a name some thought presumptuous—was at the same time something vulnerable, exigent, and unfinished. There were reasons, after all, why Illich had maintained his discreet silence on the subject of the Church for so long, reasons why only his trust in me had finally allowed him, as he put it, to “stammer … what I have avoided saying for thirty years.” At various points he speaks of what he is telling me as no more than a “hypothesis” or, again, as a set of “possible research themes.” What I had asked for asked something of me in turn. A hypothesis needs testing; research themes need to be followed up. When Illich completed his “stammered” testament in 1997, he said, “I leave it in your hands to make sure that my intention … of speaking in gratitude and fidelity to the one behind this candle, which is burning here while I’m talking to you, was not a betrayal of his touching tenderness but a truthful statement, chosen once in my life.” The one behind the candle was always, finally, Christ. His charge was weighty, and in the intervening years, I have felt its insistent weight, even if with gratitude. With this book I offer my answer. In its pages I try to see Illich whole—understanding his various beginnings in the light of what he said to me at the end—and I try to say what I think the example of his life and thought means for our time. 

One participant is author Marcus Peter Rempel. His book, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories, powerfully applies both the thought of Ivan Illichand René Girard in telling his stories.

Marcus also is a singer-songwriter. In part inspired by Ivan Illich, in response to the death of a good friend, in the season of falling leaves, Marcus explains how he came to compose the following, gently-meditative song, Conspiratio:

NOTE: A clickable list of many Illich resources is here. The new Ivan Illich series of publications is here. David Cayley’s is the second of the series.

You may also appreciate the following excellent interview by noted theologian William T. Cavanaugh¹, October 2021, recorded at the Center for World Catholicism & Intercultural Theology, by clicking here. Cayley addresses amongst other issues what Illich’s response to the Pandemic might have been.

Zoom Recordings:

September 28, 2021

Much of this was discussing Illich as priest, his wanderer lifestyle, his formation, his relationship to David and genesis of recorded discussions and books with/by/about him.

October 26, 2021

Much of this was David’s discussing Illich and the Church: his faithfulness to, but variance from it; eventual cessation of performing duties as a priest; but perhaps consequently making the world his parish. Hebrews 11:4b reads:

. . . and by [faith] he being dead yet speaketh. (KJV)

Please also see Ivan Illich’s The Powerless Church and Other Selected Writings, 1955–1985.

 

 

https://waynenorthey.com/2021/11/02/ivan-illich-an-intellectual-journey-discussion-group-with-david-cayley/

"Infesting the Sea" - A Legacy of Pirates vs. Emperors - Wayne Northey

Saint Augustine recounts this story of Empire:

The king asked the fellow, “What is your idea, in infesting the sea?” And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, “the same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor[Prime Minister/President].” (Saint Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson, New York: Penguin Books, 1984, IV, 4, p. 139. See too Noam Chomsky’s: Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World.)”

From the dawn of history the oppressor has always insisted that oppression was good for the oppressed. — Moorfield Storey

Each act of aggression, each new expedition of conquest is prefaced by a pronouncement containing a moral justification and an assurance to the victims of the imperial aggression that all is being done for their benefit. — Richard F. Petticrew

The Expansion of the Roman empire, which accusers were blaming Christ for having reversed, was not an automatic benefit to the human race; for “if justice has been abolished, what is empire but a fancy name for larceny?” — Augustine (The Illustrated Jesus Through the Centuries, Jaroslav Pelikan, 1997, p. 30.)

Roman historian Tacitus wrote so long ago:

To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire; they make a desolation and call it peace[/democracy].

Novelist J.M. Coetzee writes in Waiting for the Barbarians (1980):

One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation (p. 133).

American public intellectual Edward Said wrote in the Preface of Orientalism (1978):

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires¹, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest ‘mission civilisatrice.’

American Empire has always and supremely been about “plundering, butchering, and stealing,” “the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation,” leaving “desolation,” “destruction and misery and death” in its wake (while calling it “peace and freedom”), and long since has been in voracious bid for worldwide domination, in order to extract maximum wealth from all peoples and the Planet. Our call is simply to practise insurrection against Empire in all its avaricious, brutal and horribly destructive ways. (No small order!)

In this historical moment that supreme manifestation of Empire is the United States – to which the entire Western world is tied in various supportive ways; under which domination much of the rest of the world suffers2: in the Greater Middle East as only one example, which endures brutal will to domination and oppression at the hands of American Empire.

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For Related Reading by Wayne: "CIA: 70 Years of Organized Crime"

https://waynenorthey.com/2021/10/21/the-cia-70-years-of-organized-crime/

On "A Letter from Hell" by Wayne Northey

Wayne Northey's Reflections in Response to Robin Schumacher's article, https://www.christianpost.com/news/a-letter-from-hell.html 

Interesting that the photo chosen (see it here) for Schumacher's article is along the lines of what Larry Dixon wrote (The Other Side of the Good News: Contemporary Challenges to Jesus’ teaching on hell) in apparent approval of an instance of “horrific violence” by the U.S. Empire in the first Gulf War:

A brave journalist who was in Baghdad when the bombs landed, cried out in his television report, ‘I have been in hell.’As horrible as war is we would have to say to him, ‘No, you haven’t. If we understand Jesus correctly, war is only a small foreshadowing of that final condition of the forsaken (p. 14, emphasis in original).’

Besides the sanctimonious piety in these kinds of warnings, the tragic flaw in Dixon’s book begins with the title: there is no other side to the Good News, or it simply ceases to be such . . .

Or as 19th-century American newspaper columnist, Matt Miller, wrote in an ironic riff on Evangelicals’ all-time favourite verse, John 3:16 (I love the verse too!):

For God so loved the world that he temporarily died to save it from himself. But none of that really matters because most people will be tortured for eternity anyways.

John Alexander dedicates his book,Your Money or Your Life: A New Look at Jesus’ View of Wealth and Power (1986), to his father this way: “He is an unusual           fundamentalist; for he believes that inerrancy extends to the teachings of Jesus.” 

There is indeed an arcane footnote/exception–clause theology of John 3:16 at play – and more generally amongst conservative “Evangelicals” by extension. As a good fundamentalist, I discovered eventually to my shock that apparently John 3:16 has a reprised footnote inserted into so many Christians’ Bibles–what one could call a footnote/exception clause theology at work in the text. It is never stated out loud, however. But it is observably no less binding dogma.

After “world,” “whosoever,” “perish,” and “life” the footnote reads: “except our enemies.” They must in fact be exterminated–and be relegated to hell (whom as God’s enemies Christians are to hate with a pure zeal, so claims Larry Dixon, discussion of whose sad book is in my: WAR AND HELL – and Exception-Clause Footnote Theology)! Yet, I was always taught in my upbringing it was the “Liberals,” so-claimed masters of the exception clause and footnote theology, who played fast and loose with Scripture…

It seems almost invariably the case that apologists such as the writer of the article highlighted below spend inordinate energy “apologizing” for an image of God that if true, would so fundamentally contradict all ethical concepts of human decency, that one could simply grant them such a “god”–and be done with the entire travesty of religion!

Not unlike legitimizing during the Crusades the kind of message given by the Papal Legate–Chaplain–who told the soldiers at the siege of Béziers France in 1209¹:

Kill them all. God will recognize his own.

How lovely and endearing of “god!”

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Josh McDowell Steps Back and Walks Back Racial Statements

Wayne Northey's response to Michael Gryboski's article:

https://www.christianpost.com/news/josh-mcdowell-steps-back-from-ministry-over-racial-remarks.html

82 years and 150 books in, Christian “intellectual” McDowell has finally learned something about Black History in America? Thank God we’re never too old to learn! But this lacunain his awareness of historical reality of Blacks in America is  unimaginable and for an American Christian unconscionable.

As to his disparaging view that ‘social justice is our next epidemic,’ one can only pray that it may be so! In fact, Amos (5:24) shouts out:

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

To be sure: the above kind of pandemic pandemonium would be thrilling!

There is this to ponder from email correspondence with Archbishop Lazar Puhalo: Evangelicals are, in my opinion, the primary driving force of atheism in America. We are a very small voice attempting to counter that, but I suspect that ultimately Evangelicals and fundamentalists will prove to be house wreckers to Christianity.¹

In 1975 I was a research assistant for a brilliant Old Testament biblical scholar at Regent College, Vancouver Canada. Out of the blue one day, he commented that he just did not get that Clark Pinnock, an early mentor to me, who had announced an intention to teach a course that coming fall named “The Politics of Jesus.” (And incidentally, White American Evangelicals then were just beginning to discover politics in the worst way! And I do mean worst. You may read about that in my: Book Review of: Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.)² He paused, then added something like: “There are no politics in the Bible!”

In The Immaculate Mistake: How Evangelicals Gave Birth to Donald Trump (2021), by Rodney Wallace Kennedy, we discover:

President Donald Trump originated his political career by claiming that Barack Obama was not born in the USA. His “birtherism” theory was discredited, but there’s another possibility about birth. Evangelicals have given birth to Donald Trump in the immaculate mistake. Evangelicals are not a collection of dumb and irrational people; they are the creators of the demolition presidency of Trump. He is their child–the result of almost one hundred years of evangelical angst, resentment, and hurt. This is the story of how Trump has become a secular evangelical preacher and his message of fear, hatred, division, and getting even has captured the hearts and minds of evangelicals. Rather than dismissing them, this work takes them seriously and literally and offers a frank and disturbing series of portraits of their determination to win at all costs.

 

Another brilliant Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann³

encourages preachers to think of themselves as “handler[s] of the prophetic tradition,” a job description that also applies to other intellectual professions. Brueggemann argues that this isn’t about intellectuals imposing their views and values on others, but about being willing to “connect the dots”:

Prophetic preaching does not put people in crisis. Rather it names and makes palpable the crisis already pulsing among us. When the dots are connected, it will require naming the defining sins among us of environmental abuse, neighborly disregard, long-term racism, self-indulgent consumerism, all the staples from those ancient truthtellers translated into our time and place.⁴

In other words, the preacher’s task is centrally about politics, because it is all about relationships! It is, as this website is dedicated to, about preaching the Gospel as Counter-Narrative to Empire.⁵

One might say of evangelicals collectively: “The [movement] doth protest too much, methinks.“–WN

In McDowell’s stepping back from active ministry, he might benefit immensely from sitting at Professor Brueggemann’s feet. Perhaps Book 151 would consequently have (possibly for the first time?) authentic prophetic Christian witness in it. One can always hope . . .

But in stepping back and showing movement towards repentance and change, my wise friend, Brad Jersak, says in response to the article:

. . . as a practitioner of restorative justice, you can [surely] affirm his retraction . . . If he has both recanted and stepped back, what more would we want to see?

I can only add: Amen!–and a hope indeed to see the fruits of repentance. One is never too late for that, either. That is, our both needing it and doing so!

Mr. McDowell, one can wish in you–in millions of your white Evangelical kin–an infusion of the Spirit of Amos: But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! ⁶

And again: Amen! (Now on to my own acts of repentance . . .)

Excerpts:

Prominent Christian author and apologist Josh McDowell announced that he will step away from his ministry work and speaking events for the time being after making controversial remarks about minorities and education.

In a statement posted Wednesday afternoon to his Twitter account, the 82-year-old said that the backlash from his recent comments at the American Association of Christian Counselors conference on Saturday led him to conclude that he had to step away from his ministry efforts for a time.

“It has become clear to me, along with Cru leadership, that I need to step back from my ministry and speaking engagements to enter a season of listening and addressing the growth areas that I have become aware of through this,” stated McDowell, who has authored and co-authored over 150 books.

…

Central Baptist College Professor Aaron New was among those outraged by the comments, taking to Twitter to note that he was “kinda stunned” by McDowell’s remarks.

“Apparently he also claims ‘social justice is our next epidemic,'” tweeted New. “[McDowell, can] you confirm and/or explain? Because this is […] absolutely horrible.”

“I’m not anyone of much significance. So he doesn’t owe *me* anything,” he added. “But I do think [McDowell] should clarify or explain or apologize – just for starters.”

Grove City College Professor Warren Throckmorton wrote in a blog entry Sunday that McDowell “completely ignored the actual reasons for lack of equity in opportunity.”

“He spent the first 10 minutes of his AACC speech blasting the concept of structural impediments to equity. So Mr. McDowell, what is the reason for lack of equal opportunity?” stated Throckmorton.

“I hope this incident will be a teachable moment for white evangelicals who have mindlessly accepted the word of their talking heads about CRT [Critical Race Theory].”

McDowell issued an apology soon after his Saturday speech in which he admitted that his comments were a “generalized statement that does not reflect reality.”

Assaulted and Blamed ... at Bible College - Wayne Northey

The article highlighted below begins with Megan Wohlers telling her story of abuse, and ends with these understated words from her:

And that’s not how Jesus would have acted.

Esther, my partner, works with MCCBC End Abuse in support of women in abusive relationships. A majority of them are from conservative evangelical churches in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia. The program follows a curriculum, and workers are trained by one of the authors of: When Love Hurts. That author is Karen McAndless-Davis. Esther and I are privileged also to facilitate the Home Improvement Program that works with men perpetrating the harm. There is much hopefulness in both programs.

That said, what is in the article highlighted below is sick and disgusting. But it is no surprise. In my post, Evangelicals, Let’s Talk About Violence Against Women, the author of the highlighted article, Kristin Kobes du Mez writes:

In part, evangelical political identity coalesced around opposition to feminism (among other things). When feminists championed legislation to curb violence against women, evangelicals’ first instinct was to oppose it. But there was more to their resistance than knee-jerk reactionary politics. Evangelical identity was (and is) based in a gender system that makes violence against women easier to dismiss, excuse, and deny.

…

Bushnell¹ and Southard², however, remained minority voices. The majority of evangelicals in the twentieth century preferred to uphold a patriarchal gender order, defend it as God’s will, and even situate it as a nonnegotiable requirement of the Christian faith. This explains why, in the midst of the recent deluge of abuse allegationssweeping through evangelical communities, someone like John Pipercould confidently blame the abuse of women on an “egalitarian myth,” not on the unequal power relations evangelicals have imposed on women and men. For evangelicals like Piper, complementarianism—which enshrines male authority over women in church, home, and society—is the solution, not the problem (emphasis added).

…

It’s worth noting that evangelicals are not speaking with one voice on this topic. Forty-eight percent of white evangelicals support an unrepentant perpetrator of sexual assault, but 36% find this unacceptable. Women like Beth Moore, Jen Pollock Michel, and Karen Swallow Prior (and many men, too) are speaking out in defense of sexual assault victims. Initially cautious when it came to the Kavanaugh allegations, Pollock Michel was stirred by what she heard at the hearing: “I don’t know how you hear that as a woman without feeling the complete horror and panic of that moment,” she explained to the Washington Post, referring to Ford’s account of the alleged assault. “As evangelical Christians, we say that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. I think it really is a moment for us to be asking ourselves as Christians about our own kind of hunger for righteousness.”

As in the past, this view seems to be the minority view.

Please see my Book Review of: Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by the same author of the article above, Kristin Kobes du Mez.

She makes clear again in the final chapter that

. . . evangelicalism must be seen as a cultural and political movement rather than as a community defined chiefly by its theology (p. 298).

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Drone Strike Assassinations and Collateral Children: A Wayne Northey

Note: Wayne Northey responds in lament to Tom Engelhardt's US Sun article re: leaked drone strike footage HERE.  

WAYNE: What can one say? God damn the monstrous capacity of the West (of course elsewhere too!) to cold-bloodedly commit mass murder via drone strike assassinations and other aircraft the world over–of all those wrong-coloured bodies: 22,000 civilians and counting across the Greater Middle East and Africa? And don’t forget the children . . .

If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.–Jesus, Matthew 18:6.

The children were not merely caused to stumble. They were simply summarily executed.¹

But the U.S. is not new at this game, has been doing this–murdering innocent children–for a few centuries now. See but one historical for instance: Was America Great When It Burned Native American Babies? (Audio and Transcript) – Truthdig. And Obama–and all Presidents previously–considers/demonstrates this to be a “strong suit” of his. As does, obviously, lovely Michelle.²

Amongst relatives and friends a while back, triggered by raving I heard from one of the gathered about Michelle’s autobiography (and too many times from too many people I know!), I got a little carried away (OK: my wife says, “Not a little . . .”), and pointed out some of the above about her beloved husband–A Hollow Man Filled With Ruling Class Ideas–as indicated by (massive) biographer, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and law professor David J. Garrow.

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9/11 was a test - Wayne Northey

Below are excerpts from an outstanding essay by a Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism in 2019. But the last lines, though intended to be hopeful, ring perversely hollow–especially given what one can read on this website about the horrors of American Expansionism/Exceptionalism/Empire:

America is suffering from a sort of post-traumatic stress democracy. It remains in recovery, still a good country, even if a broken good country.

Perhaps he has no choice but to sound such a note when writing for mainline media that fully endorsed the War on Terror 20 years ago.

Then there is the White Evangelical Community, perhaps epitomized by Southern Baptist theologian Dr. Richard Land–of (1990s/2000s) “The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission” of the Southern Baptist Convention. I engaged in Alaska with Dr. Land in 1997 on the issue of capital punishment. The following about that is from: Why I Oppose the Death Penalty: “The Talking Place: Discussing the Death Penalty” Forum on the Death Penalty, Fairbanks Alaska, March 22, 1997.

The dialogue was organized by the Presbyterian Church in Alaska because debate was heating up in a state with no death penalty on the books.

It took place March 22, 1997, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and was teleconferenced throughout Alaska including into the Juneau legislature, and also translated simultaneously for the deaf. Questions were posed from the university audience and from the teleconferencing sites. There was a professionally produced video of the exchange made available to churches in Alaska. Parts I and II permitted a statement of my opposition to capital punishment. Part III dealt with specific biblical texts used erroneously, I argued, in defense of capital punishment.

Worse, Dr. Land sadly went on to become one of the most outspoken American evangelical voices in support of the War on Terror. See his tragic “Land Letter.”

When I was initially invited, it was to a “debate.” I refused to attend. I said that a debate reflects a “winners” and “losers” mentality that is of little use except possibly as entertainment. But I said I would take part if it was a “dialogue.” The event eventually was called “To the Talking Place,” based on a local aboriginal tradition of the entire community coming to “the talking place” to work out differences respectfully and communally. ¹

It involved a morning pre-session by a Religious Studies professor at the University on how to read the Bible. The dialogue was moderated by a local radio host. It was highly tasteful and respectful.

Afterward, Dr. Land shared with me that he was a seventh-generation Texan. That growing up white in that state meant profound “unlearning” on racial issues alone. That when his then 18-year-old son, a top university American football draft pick that year as I recall, discussed the “dirty little war” in Vietnam, Dr. Land told me that, contrary to his Southern Baptist preacher-father, he informed his son that if America otherwise was caught up in another war of that sort, he was duty-bound to burn his draft card! (Dr. Land’s father had warned he would be disowned if he ever burned his draft card during the Vietnam War.)

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"The Entire Country is Haunted" - Wayne Northey

"As we’re seeing more and more every day, this entire country is a real-life Indian burial ground—one that criminals parading as teachers, religious leaders and politicians took great care to cover up." - Alicia Elliot

Years ago, I ceased “proudly calling myself Canadian.” I had persistently been disabused of imagining our country to be “righteous,” built, so the false narrative goes, upon “Christian” values–thought squandered in modernity–to which the “godly” of the land must call Canada back to save “our home and native land.” So as said the false narrative goes.

Our motto, finalized in 1921 along with a Coat of Arms, came about thus:

A Mari usque ad Mare comes from the Bible’s Psalm 72:8, which reads in Latin: Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae. The King James version puts it into English: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

…

On 29 September 1921, after viewing the final design, Joseph Pope, federal under-secretary of state at the time, wrote in his diary: “Our Arms are very handsome … everything that can be desired. The motto A Mari usque ad Mare, which is an original suggestion of my own, I regard as very appropriate.”

And “Dominion?”

. . . the term dominion was chosen to represent Canada as a whole when the British North America Act was drafted in 1867 [the year of the birth of Canada as a nation, known as Confederation].

In 1992, I bought a T-shirt produced by my then colleague Menno Wiebe of Mennonite Central Committee Canada, that reads:

In 1492 the Americans discovered Christopher Colombus on their shores. What do you suppose they thought about that?

A few notes about the above history, and some theological context:

The word “dominion” is from fraught translations in Genesis 1:26 & 28 with reference to nature; and in Psalm 72:8 with reference generally to people. In short, though tragically taken this way repeatedly over the centuries¹, it should never have been taken as “domination.”

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Haiti's history and fate is entwined with America - Wayne North America

Wayne Northey: Haiti is a made-in-France-and-America tragedy . . . Please see Egberto Willies on this:

My wife Esther and I visited there in 1991, after attending a United Nations Restorative Justice Conference in San José, Costa Rica. We said in response that if we ever complained again about our circumstances, it was already too much . . . We felt similarly upon in 2018 visiting Rwanda–though its economic recovery since the 1994 genocide is miraculous.

David Cayley’s masterful and massive 2021 Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey explicates Illich’s critique of Western development philosophy (and heuristically all things Illich!) of which Haiti is prime exhibit. The author of the highlighted article writes:

Haiti has provided an anthology of cautionary tales of how 20th-century foreign aid and development assistance can go wrong, including a mess of failed projects that followed the cataclysmic 2010 earthquake in the country, which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

See too Ryan C. Berg’s July 8, 2021: Moïse’s assassination is a tragic reminder of Haiti’s unraveling democracy. We read:

Haiti’s constitutional crisis has failed to register with many Washington policymakers as well as those in the international community for far too long — in part, thanks to the plethora of challenges already present in the Western Hemisphere. Notwithstanding the Biden administration’s claims to the contrary, the inattention of US policymakers in recent years has contributed to the country’s rapid unraveling.

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Probes and Provocations - Recent Postings by Wayne Northey

WAYNE NORTHEY, Canada's conscience for restorative justice, is at it again, with his regular probes and provocations! Do visit the following four links for his reflections and commentary:

How did a small town in Canada become one of the hottest places on Earth?

This article discusses the backstory to the heatwave that hit Lytton, BC, a primarily First Nations village of 250 that has since gone up in flames. Tragically, it was also the site of one of Canada's infamous residential schools, where across Canada, so many children were abused, died, and were buried in unmarked graves. Speaking of which...

The Catholic Church must come clean—completely—about what it did to Native Americans

As Wayne says, "Yes, that we non-aboriginals living downstream from all these events, to this very moment, are beneficiaries, every last one of us raised with ill-gotten privilege. Yes, that we settler Canadians need collectively to atone. Yes, that we other religious groups created no outcry throughout this genocidal horror. Yes, that we settler Canadians cannot celebrate 'Canada' with a clear conscience–ever (again)!"

Pope Francis is not a liberal! (He’s not a conservative either.)

Speaking of the Catholic Church, Wayne also responds to an article by James T. Keane, which says, "Pope Francis is not a liberal! He is not a conservative either. In fact, like most of his predecessors (and many of his brother bishops), Pope Francis does not land coherently anywhere on the axes of American politics. And we should be happy about that."

War Criminal Found Dead at 88

And finally, a piece about the track record of global calamity left in the wake of Neo-Con politician Donald Rumsfeld, whose career climaxed and ended during the George W. Bush regime. With the chaos and strange indignities of the Trump era, Wayne reminds us of the cost of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz doctrine of global domination.   

Wayne Northey on Ken Dryden's "‘The Code’ of the NHL, and it has no cure for stupid"

Photo by Michael Barera, Wiki-Commons

Wayne Northey responds to Ken Dryden's Washington Post opinion piece, "'The Code' of the NHL, and it has no cure for stupid."

Wayne Northey: This of course is the story of humanity. We endlessly imitate the violence of the opponent, escalating it into something often far more monstrous, brutal, deadly . . .

As Ken Dryden indicates, a superb goaltender, gentlemanly player, NHL Hall of Famer, trained lawyer, Member of Parliament, author, motivational speaker . . . and dead-on in his analysis that boils down to: It’s ‘The Code’, Stupid!

The outstanding anthropological work on this was by French literary scholar and philosopher, René Girard. It is impossible to comment on Girard adequately and briefly at the same time. The following though is a teaser.

Girard understands the birth of all cultures, including Christendom and Christian culture, to arise from the unanimity achieved by scapegoating a victim or victims. ritual, prohibition, and myth dominant in all cultures religious and secular arise in the repeated exercise of a sacrificial mechanism designed to re-establish the peace. Cultic rites the world over in archaic religions and scapegoating interpretations of Christianity demonstrate the phenomenon; the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in a secular society serves a similar “scapegoating mechanism” function.

A classic treatment of the CJS in this respect is by Canadian Girardian scholar, and friend, Vern Redekop: Scapegoats, the Bible, and Criminal Justice: Interacting with René Girard.

So Mr. Dryden is right–indeed more right than he knows. But when in the article he states,

And mostly it works. But when it doesn’t, cops and judges intervene.–

he, a lawyer, doesn’t get it. For, just as in William Golding’s classic 1973 novel Lord of the Flies, what comes to the rescue of schoolboys during World War II stranded on a spectacular coral island after a plane crash–when some of the boys descend into unmitigated scapegoating savagery–is a British naval gunboat–that is, representation of an epitome of more savagery   . . . We read:

He saw white drill, epaulettes, a revolver, a row of gilt buttons down the front of a uniform. A naval officer stood on the sand, looking down at Ralph in wary astonishment. On the beach behind him was a cutter, her bows hauled up and held by two ratings. In the stern-sheets another rating held a sub-machine gun. The ululation faltered and died away. The officer looked at Ralph doubtfully for a moment, then took his hand away from the butt of the revolver. (pp. 181-182)

The surreal irony of the rescue of the remaining terrorized school children is caught here:

The officer grinned cheerfully at Ralph. ‘We saw your smoke. What have you been doing? Having a war or something?’ (p. 182)

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