http://www.micahscall.org/content/index.php?topic=so_home Top thinking and reflections from MicahsCall Think/Discuss Copyright 2012 MicahsCall GeekLog Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:27:02 -0800 en-gb http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/shared Reach and Teach http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/shared Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:26:10 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/shared#comments Think/Discuss Musings by Jim Burklowww.tcpc.blogs.com/musings for current and previous articles2-1-12Shared Sacrifice, Shared Reward"Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more." (Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Luke 12: 48)That's how it is in the kingdom of heaven, that realm of living imagination that inspires us to create it on earth. But here on earth in America today, Mitt Romney, a very rich man, paid an average of only 14% in tax on his income over the last two years. Low income Americans paid 15% on taxable earnings over $8,500 to $34,500.Since 2003, Romney's investments, which produce most of his income, have been in a "blind trust".  He's not even making investment decisions.  Can it be said that Mitt Romney "earns" any money at all?  And if he's not really earning money through his own hard work and wits, how could taxing his income at a much higher rate have any impact on his level of ambition in the free-market economy?  (See more on this subject in a recent "musing" of mine, The Burklo Limit.)  Less money in his pocket might dull his political ambitions and campaign expenditures slightly.  But would that be an all-bad thing?America has abandoned much of the principle of progressive taxation, in which the impact of taxes on people's lives is factored proportionally into the rates that people pay.  Under progressive taxation, lower income people would pay a lower rate, and progressively higher income people would pay progressively higher rates - thus somewhat flattening the felt impact of taxation among economic classes. There's a lot of noise in politics these days about instituting a "flat tax" - one rate for everybody, regardless of income level.  But nothing's flat about the effect that a uniform tax rate at Mitt Romney's level would have on the incomes of people across the wealth spectrum.  Lower income people might sacrifice buying higher-quality food in order to pay their 14%.  Paying taxes has viscerally-felt consequences for them.  But 14% is not even close to being a nutritional threat for rich folks.  Romney still would be a very wealthy man even if he paid the current top rate, 35%, in income taxes. What is the "much" that Jesus says will be required of those who have been given much?  It must be proportional, so that it is flat in tangible impact rather than in abstract numbers.The Republican argument for low taxes on rich people is that they are the ones who create jobs.  "We all know that there's a reason we have low rates on capital gains. That's because it spurs new investment in our economy and allows capital to move more quickly," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said recently.  But the top marginal tax rate in the Eisenhower era was 90%.  Somehow the economy chugged ahead during that Republican administration!A researcher with the business-oriented Kauffman Foundation, quoted recently in Miller McCune Magazine, said that only about 10% of the wealthy people of America are job-creators.  Yes, almost all job creators are wealthy people.  'Mom and Pop" small businesses don't grow the economy nearly as much as those businesses started by rich folks.  But only a small number of wealthy people invest in the start-up businesses that create substantial numbers of new jobs.  Why is our country rewarding with lavish tax breaks the 90% of the rich who do little or nothing to stimulate more employment of Americans?  Higher taxes from them could pay for public investments that do preserve and create jobs and improve the infrastructure for capitalism to thrive.Winner-Take-All Politics, a book by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson (2010), documents that US government policy changes in the last 30 years have been the primary causes of a hyper-concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.  A long-term, highly-organized, massively-funded political effort to cut progressive taxation on the wealthy and eliminate regulation on the financial industry has compounded the assets of the very richest of the rich.  "Why has Washington made the rich richer and abandoned the middle class?  Because of the relentless effectiveness of modern, efficient organizations operating in a much less modern and efficient political system."  (p 115)  (See Bill Moyers' recent interview with the authors of this book.)  "If the effects of taxation on income at the top had been frozen in place in 1970, a very big chunk of the growing distance between the superrich and everyone else would disappear." (p 49)  Hacker and Pierson lay most of the blame for creating much worse income inequality on the Republican Party, but also lay a large share on Democratic politicians who have become dependent on Wall Street money for their campaign funds. Mitt Romney accuses the President of stirring up class divisions in America.  That's a breathtaking statement from someone who had an income of $42 million dollars over the past two years, money that he gained almost entirely without working.  Americans are only now waking up to the results of a class war that has been waged against them for three decades.  The President is just responding to the people's anger about it.Perhaps this also will be the year when Americans wake up to the consequences of three decades of systematic dismantling of the ability of government to protect them from the excesses and failures of capitalism - and to protect capitalism from its own tendency to self-destruction.  All of us have skin in this game.  Today, when capitalism succeeds, rich people get richer.  When it fails, the taxes we all pay bail it out in order to prevent further economic damage.   As quoted by William Cohan in the NY Times: "Senator Christopher Dodd correctly said in April 2008, during the first Senate hearing about the unfolding financial crisis, 'We’ve socialized risk and we’ve privatized reward.'""And what if the traditionalist-conservatives are right and a... tax cut, without corresponding cuts in expenditures, also leaves us with a fiscal problem?  The neo-conservative is willing to leave those problems to be coped with by liberal interregnums.  He wants to shape the future, and will leave it up to his opponents to tidy up afterwards," said  Irving Kristol, neo-conservative journalist, in 1980.  This cynical plan for destruction of the capacity of government to serve the common good has succeeded.  Republicans bankrupted the country with tax cuts and an expensive war, leaving President Obama to clean up the mess... and then obstructed at every turn his attempts to clean up the mess.  Conservative leaders understand how to manipulate the voters.  If Republicans make a mess of government, that makes the people lose trust in government, and that just feeds their anti-government agenda.  They believe voters will blame Obama for failing to save the country from the worst recession since the Great Depression more than they'll blame the Republicans for stonewalling his solutions to the problem.It's time for us to prove them wrong.  With our votes and our voices, it's time to put the heat on our politicians to return to a truly progressive income tax system to fund an efficient and effective government that serves the people and not just special interests.  It's time to demand sensible limits on the financial industry and on campaign finance.  These are mainstream, tried and true policies that have served our country well in the past and can do so again. "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics,"  said Plutarch, the 1st century Roman historian.  Our country may not be on its deathbed, but surely we are now experiencing the pain of a serious sickness in our democracy.  The interests of the many have been sacrificed for the interests of .1% of the people of this country.  And we should ask if the interests even of this tiny slice of the richest of the rich have been best served.  Henry Ford paid his auto workers more than the prevailing wage, so they'd be able to buy his cars and make him richer.  How much more comfortable everyone would be, including the richest, if lower and middle income workers had a lot more economic security in America?  How much easier life would be for capitalists if America had universal, single-payer health insurance!  Their companies would not need to pay for ever-more costly private insurance for their workers. The government's bailout of Wall Street, and the accompanying massive infusion of public money into the economy, was essential to prevent a bad recession from becoming a terrible depression that would have ruined most of us and severely whacked the assets of the wealthy. Let's not miss this teachable moment:  if the government doesn't properly regulate business, you and I will pay to pick up the pieces when the market implodes.  Preventing such debacles with a reformed economic and political system will benefit people in all economic classes.We're all in this together.  Shared sacrifice, shared reward: this can be our mantra as the presidential election season begins in earnest. A suggestion: vote via the buddy system.  If you are someone who stays on top of public affairs, please lose your inhibitions and email your voting choices to everyone you know - early and often!  If you are on the other end of the spectrum, find folks you know and respect and ask them to be your buddies, getting voting advice from them.  From the grassroots up, let's work for real change - till the kingdom comes!  JIM BURKLOWebsite: JIMBURKLO.COM     Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburkloBIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians - my latest book - at www.amazon.comAssociate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/shared http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/presbyterians Micah Admin http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/presbyterians Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:42:58 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/presbyterians#comments Think/Discuss Holly Tabor, most likely stuck inside because of snow storns in Washington (state), shared this video which I think will make any Presbyterian laugh (and getting Presbyterians to laugh.... well, that's amazing). http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/presbyterians http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/loving_enemies Micah Admin http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/loving_enemies Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:34:38 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/loving_enemies#comments Think/Discuss What happens when someone stands outside a church with a sign like this, and then goes into that church to join the congregation during worship and social time? Pace e Bene's Peter Ediger (staff in Las Vegas) found out! Click here to see his reflections. http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/loving_enemies http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/Agnatheism Reach and Teach http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/Agnatheism Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:44:52 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/Agnatheism#comments Think/Discuss Musings by Jim Burklowww.tcpc.blogs.com/musings for current and previous articles1-26-12Why I'm an AgnatheistA particularly useful book crossed my desk recently:  BRIDGING THE GOD GAP: Finding Common Ground Among Believers, Atheists, and Agnostics (Living Arts Publications, 2011) by Roger Schriner, a retired Unitarian minister and psychotherapist from Northern California.  In it, he describes the wide continuum of nuanced positions between "theism" and "atheism", blurring the meaning of both terms.   "The difference between belief and disbelief is often merely wordplay, a matter of semantics rather than substance." (p 80)  There are many ways that God is understood in the Bible, that book so strongly associated with traditional theism.  Just which theism is displayed in which book, much less which chapter of which book, in the Bible?  There's the ineffable, mystical, unnameable I AM THAT I AM in the burning bush that confronted Moses in Genesis.  But also in Genesis are the three men who showed up for dinner at the tent of Sarah and Abraham.  The story indicates that these earthy, humanoid beings collectively were God.  In the second book of Kings, in the story of Naaman, God is described "henotheistically".  God was the god only of the land of Israel.  So Naaman, after being divinely healed in Israel, brought with him a cartload of dirt from Israel when he returned to his native Syria.  The God of Israel only had power over what happened on top of Israeli dirt, and he wanted to continue to have access to that power when he went home.  In the New Testament, in the book of Acts, Paul went to the Areopagus in Athens where stood statues of the Greek gods.  One empty spot was dedicated to "The Unknown God", which Paul said was the real God.  If the real God was unknown, did that make Paul an agnostic?  Early Christians were considered atheists because they did not worship the gods of Rome.  Such lack of reverence was as unthinkable for Romans as it would be for Americans to vote for an atheist candidate for president today!  And on that subject, the current political contest leads a lot of Americans to puzzle if Mormons believe in God.  The Latter Day Saints church teaches that God began as a man who went through a process of spiritual improvement until he became divine, and that humans are intended to do the same.  It's a view that's foreign to a lot of Christians.  But there are many differing concepts of God among Christians, much as their pastors and priests might want to deny that this is so.  Those views reflect the variety of understandings that appear in the Bible and outside of it as well.  The God of the Mormons is just one of many that exist side by side, named by the same generic word.  And we can be sure that different Mormons have different understandings of God.  The realm of Christian theism has no clear boundary.I think that many atheists are really awetheists.  They are people who experience the same kind of reverential wonder and respect for life and the highest human values that we associate with religion at its best.  Awe is their God, though they don't use that terminology.  I use Christian language to describe the deep humility I feel when I mindfully encounter the miraculous natural world around and within me.  For me, God isn't supernatural; God is the essential creative nature of the universe.   Some Christians say that this makes me an atheist.  Some atheists get upset when I tell them what I mean by the word God, and they say that I'm not a Christian!  They don't want to be associated with the supernatural God they associate with Christianity, and don't want to be confused by the possibility that non-supernatural theists like myself can be Christian.   Such conversations lead me to wonder if I am an agnatheist: someone who is agnostic about whether or not there is really such a thing as an atheist.  BRIDGING THE GOD GAP offers a breathtaking array of places to stay, or at least visit, along the road between theism and atheism.  But Schriner's breakdown of the choices is hardly exhaustive.  The human experience of God, or the Ultimate Reality Formerly Known As God (URFKAG), defies definition by its very nature.  Pondering that is enough to make an awetheist out of me! (An understanding of God which I've found to be helpful is elucidated in process theology, a school of thought founded by the mathematician and philosopher of the early 20th century, Alfred North Whitehead.  For a brief introduction to it, check out this interview with Phil Clayton, process theologian at Claremont School of Theology.)_______________Mark your progressive Christian calendars!February 12, Sunday:  Evolution WeekendApril 15, Sunday:  Blessing of the TaxesMay 6, Sunday:  Pluralism Sunday - sign up your church to participate, now! JIM BURKLOWebsite: JIMBURKLO.COM     Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburkloBIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians - my latest book - at www.amazon.comAssociate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/Agnatheism http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/scandal Micah Admin http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/scandal Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:45:22 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/scandal#comments Think/Discuss Rev. Chuck Rawlings, who most recently worked as the Executive Director of the Santa Clara County Council of Churches, writes incredible "Public Liturgies" and MicahsCall is pleased to share this one with you. To view more of his liturgies, click here.THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2012The Scandal In Silicon Valley: Giving Fire To The WorldNathan the prophet came to David.  “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb….It drank from his cup and was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep…he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it…. David burned with anger… and said to Nathan, “the man who did this must die!” Nathan said “You are the man.”So it is also with the great Achilles—Silicon Valley’s fabulously successful tech corporations—that are increasingly exposed for their vulnerable heel—the export of hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas, and the often terrible working condition in their supply chain plants.The Second Samuel story of King David’s adultery with Bathsheba is to illustrate the moral magnitude of what can be called the scandal of Silicon Valley’s export of jobs.  If some of these jobs are returned to the U.S. they would play a big role in bringing the Bay area and other U. S. communities out of their recession--and maybe they still can. President Obama called for this kind of change in his State of the Union message, but it will require orders of magnitude in presidential leadership this President has so far not shown. It will mean simulating or creating a jobs and factory relocation “Czar” endowed with miracle-working powers to impel tech corporations such as Apple to create scaled-up manufacturing systems in U. S. communities. Here in the U. S. such plants could manufacture and assemble products like I-Pads and the I-Phone4’s.  Silicon Valley tech leaders are not motivated intuitively or ideologically by their own experience to want to develop domestic working class factories for their products.  They are mesmerized and motivated to invent the next stupendously intricate nano device that will make billions in dollars roll down like a mighty stream. Ideologically they are simply loyal to their own experience shaped in the tech booms of the last 20 years. They argue that the billions of dollars they generate create job growth.Yet in moral terms one greater task is asked of this Achilles—to bring the jobs back to the U.S. This is no idle matter. While the quiet, soft days of January’s economic improvements have shown a few flowerings, unless jobs reappear on a grand scale in both the US and Europe the glowering crisis of the global economy threatens a global second recession and the dystopian collapse predicted at the Davos Forum this week (see blog dated blank).It’s not too much to say that the President’s freshly announced discourse with the corporate masters of private corporations may be the last chance for a stable and democratically structured U. S. economy and maybe the last chance for democratization in the global community.  The President needs a fast learning curve and a re-framing of his own mediator thought style to work this miracle. His intuitions, often wonderful, have outstripped his experience with the history of industrial relations in the U. S.  For the first years of his Presidency he has mostly ignored the urging of social and economic experts to quickly re-launch the WPA and similar public works projects.  Barney Franks is probably right with his weekend remark in the NY Times magazine that some of his friends on the Left “read into [Obama] more than was actually there.”Last Spring an OpEd about “Steve Jobs’ Doughnut Hole” was sent by this writer to the NY Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Silicon Valley Leadership Council and the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council. The analogy was to the empty middle of Jobs’ plan for a Pentagon-size circular headquarters. The essay grew from personal familiarity as a clergyman in cities like Cleveland, Youngstown and Pittsburgh where a quarter century and more ago the interfaith community had worked to oppose the destruction of their local workforces through corporate disinvestment; a disinvestment that in a few year’s time reduced the huge mid-west steel mills and metal-working factories to rust, ruining the lives of millions of skilled workers.  It was all done in the name of a supposed natural economic law; a god that required the sacrifice of entire manufacturing cities and their workforces.My essay was ignored but new alarm bells have begun ringing in recent weeks.  Reuters and CNN carried stories of the consequences of current jobs exports. Jon Stewart did an extended interview about the question, and then beginning Sunday last two big, big stories have twice begun on the N Y Times’ front page with two columns above the fold and continued over four full pages with twenty columns in its main news sections.   The Times documents (at last) both the happy and grim sides of the Apple journey.  While Apple does employ 43,000 within the U. S. and has drawn everyone’s admiration as it revolutionized a global universe of information and communication in dazzling ways, it also has contracted 200,000 jobs offshore.  Through companies such as Foxconn—owned in Taiwan, with giant plants in China, Germany and many other countries—Apple products invented here in the U. S. are manufactured over there. Working conditions in these plants are well-documented as often both terrible and frequently the cause of high numbers of suicides and deaths from industrial explosions. Workers often work 60 to 72 hour shifts in hazardous and unhealthy conditions, it seems plain that what really drives this is our own hunger for glittering devices and the breakneck production whose costs are constantly under downward pressure to the last penny.Many media sources report that Silicon Valley tech giants (e.g., Dell, H-P, Sony) have together contracted more than 1.2 million manufacture and assembly jobs away from the U. S. where unemployment as of the last count by Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in December now numbers about 13 million. The number is much larger because the millions of workers trapped in long term unemployment are not counted and number additional millions.  Lost along with these jobs is what experts call “the multiplier effect” – for every tech industry job there are additional jobs required in parts design and manufacture, marketing, sales and transportation. Just as dazzling as its devices and software, is the extraordinary chain of assembly and supply that include myriad networks of parts suppliers, engineering and manufacture. Understandably, the growing complaint that Silicon Valley has betrayed its own country is as welcome as Bubonic Plague, But other kinds of virtuosity are now required of this industry.  If just twenty percent of those exported jobs, say 200,000, were brought back to the U. S. the economies of half a dozen cities stricken with long term unemployment—like Atlanta, Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles, San Jose, Chicago and Youngstown—could be revived or given a huge lift.There is always some moral ambiguity in these pictures. Shifting steelmaking to Korea and Brazil in the 1970s and 80s helped raise the local standard of living. The growing global economy has lifted millions of Chinese out of rural poverty, opened up a maze of educational opportunities, and created the largest migration of peasants in history as they moved from meager farms to higher levels of skill, pay and opportunity in China’s burgeoning new cities. This is to be celebrated in the name of our common humanity.  But if its consequence destroys cities like Detroit and Cleveland or creates a hole in Silicon Valley where eighty-five thousand unemployed people languish, then it’s not too soon to ask some questions and challenge prevailing practices that keep sacrificing American workers to expedient corporate strategies.The extent of the Times’ coverage is a measure of how urgent returning jobs to the U. S. has become. Late, very late, in its awakening the media and the President appear to now realize that this issue may become the whole ball game. What has been an unbelievable bonanza for profits now requires the Achilles-like tech industry to turn on a dime and address not the next profitable opportunity but a looming disaster born of the too easy global option to off-shore nearly everything.On the defensive, an Apple executive quoted in the Times claimed “We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries. We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”   The late Steve Jobs bluntly told President Obama at a Silicon dinner a year ago: “Those jobs are not coming back.”   The Times’ weekend piece came close to prophesying that moving jobs back may be impossible.  It cites many sources that say the size, flexibility and lifestyles of young Chinese workers could not be matched in the U.S.  Also missing here in the U. S. workforce are the new engineering skills found in the young Chinese workforce.  A former Apple executive asked “what U. S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?—referring to Foxconn City where 230,000 employees in Shenzhen live and work. Here are two answers from this blog corner: in the depression of the 1930’s young American workers did live in dorms built by the government and through the Civilian Conservation Corps built much of the state and national parks system.  The people jobs exporters claim are not available are actually right here in our own regions. In Ohio there are 469,000 people unemployed. 174,000 in Georgia. Over 2 million in California.  In Michigan 431,000. [BLS December 2011].  And there is a big community college system in place where engineers can be trained. In a column this week, David Brooks called for linking policy strategies, creating relevant training and streamlining regulations.The hard driving Silicon Valley executives do work hard and often achieve much.  But they have public responsibilities regardless of their private preoccupations and occupations. What we must teach them is to re-tool themselves with a social justice vision dedicated to overcoming growing inequality as a new priority framework for their lives. They’re often sitting out there in the Pews Friday mornings, evenings, and on Sunday mornings. It’s too easy for them to leave and continue talking only with themselves.  Community clergy, civic and labor leaders need to insist on a conversation, and more than one.Conversation can help everyone become more thoughtful. At the famous tech moguls dinner with President Obama last February, Steve Jobs, whom everyone knew was in failing health, finally conceded: It might be possible, someday, to locate some of Apple’s skilled manufacturing in the United States if the government helped train more American engineers.The whole ball game is at stake in having serious community conversation—masters of the universe and the rank and file citizens together. It is not enough to hold open meetings while keeping real conversation private.Aeschylus’ wrote a play about Prometheus, bound to a rock by Zeus as punishment for having given fire to the world.  Tech leaders in Silicon Valley are virtually consumed in this fire, its demanding engineering requirements, its almost unimaginable entrepreneurial opportunities. The next spark, however carries the danger that it so disarranges our democratic worlds that all is lost just as Zeus and better known Gods feared.  ABOUT CHUCK RAWLINGSChuck RawlingsI served as Coordinator for Urban Programs at the National Council of Churches in the 1990s and in the 80s as executive director of the New Jersey Council of Churches where I supported then Governor Jim Florio’s forlorn effort at tax reform. He learned and so did I. Three programs have been central to my work over many years: researching the impact of globalization on wages and benefits of workers in the U. S. and around the world. This connects to an earlier interest in creating community/worker ownership of manufacturing in cities like Youngstown and Pittsburgh where disinvestment substantially destroyed tens of thousands of people’s lives. In earlier years I’ve worked in the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement and the Central America human rights and sanctuary movement. In the last decade I’ve been involved in advocacy for Palestinian liberation from the Israeli Occupation, joining with my wife, Joan, to sponsor tours to both Israel and the West Bank to help Americans understand what that means. Until recently I served as executive director of the Santa Clara County Council of Churches.View my complete profile   http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/scandal http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/20120118080440102 Reach and Teach http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/20120118080440102 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:04:40 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/20120118080440102#comments Think/Discuss With California having just enacted the FAIR Education Act (Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful) on January 1st, it was good timing to receive Dr. Warren Blumenfeld's new article seeking curricular infusion across the country. Here's his article, reposted with his permission. For more information on the FAIR Education Act, click here.Silence = Violence = Death: A Call for LGBT Curricular Infusion By Warren J. Blumenfeld A few years ago, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Alliance at a private Boston-area university asked me to give a presentation on LGBT history at one of its weekly meetings. During my introductory remarks, in passing, I used the term “Stonewall,” at which point a young man raised his hand and asked me, “What is a ‘Stonewall?’” I explained that the Stonewall Inn is a small bar located on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village in New York City where, in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, during a routine police raid, patrons fought back. This event, I continued, is generally credited with igniting the modern movement for LGBT liberation and equality. The young man thanked me and stated that he is a first-year college student, and although he is gay, he had never heard about Stonewall or anything else associated with LGBT history while in high school. As he said this, I thought to myself that though we have made progress over the years, conditions remain very difficult for LGBT and questioning youth today, because school is still not a very “queer” place to be. In my own high school years during the 1960s, LGBT topics rarely surfaced, and then only in a negative context. Once my health education teacher talked about the technique of electro-shock treatment for “homosexuals” to alter their sexual desires. In senior English class, the teacher stated that “even though Andre Gide was a homosexual, he was a good author in spite of it.” These references (within the overarching Heterosexual Studies curriculum at my high school) forced me to hide deeper into myself, thereby further damaging my self-esteem and identity. I consider, therefore, the half-truths, the misinformation, the deletions, the omissions, the distortions, and the overall censorship of LGBT history, literature, and culture in the schools as a form of violence. I am seeing increasingly an emphasis within the schools on issues related to bullying and harassment prevention. Current prevention strategies emphasize conflict resolution, peer mediation, understandings basic issues of school climate and school culture. Often missing from these strategies, however, are multicultural curricular infusion. Unfortunately, still today educators require courage to counter opposing forces, for example, the current attacks on Ethnic Studies programs currently underway in states like Arizona. Throughout the United States, under the battle cry of “preserving traditional American family values,” conservative and theocratic forces are attempting to prevent multicultural curricula being instituted in the schools. On the elementary school level related to LGBT issues, they are targeting books like And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, a lovely true story about two male penguins in the New York City Central Park Zoo raising a baby penguin; also, King and King, by Linda de Haan, about a king meeting his mate, another king. Not so long ago, the Right went after Daddy’s Roommate written and illustrated by Michael Willhoit, about a young boy who spends time with his father and father’s life partner, Frank, following the parents’ divorce, and Gloria Goes to Gay Pride by Lesléa Newman, with illustrations by Russell Crocker, a portrait of young Gloria who lives with her two mommies: Mama Rose, a mechanic, and Mama Grace, a nurse. For LGBT violence- and suicide-prevention strategies to have any chance of success, in addition to the establishment and maintenance of campus “Gay/Straight Alliance” groups, on-going staff development, written and enforced anti-discrimination policies, and support services, schools must incorporate and imbed into the curriculum across the academic disciplines and at every level of the educational process, multicultural perspectives, including LGBT, age appropriately from pre-school through university graduate-level programs and courses, from the social sciences and humanities, through the natural sciences. LGBT experiences stand as integral strands in the overall multicultural rainbow, and everyone has a right to information that clarifies and explains our stories. For LGBT and questioning young people, this information can underscore the fact that their feelings and desires are in no way unique, and that others like themselves lead happy and productive lives. This in turn can spare them years of needless alienation, denial, and suffering. For heterosexual students, this can provide the basis for appreciation of human diversity and help to interrupt the chain of bullying and harassment toward LGBTQ people , for in truth, very few real-life families resemble the mythical “Brady Bunch,” the Andersons in “Father Knows Best,” or the Huxtables of “The Cosby Show.” No matter how loudly organizers on the political and theocratic Right protest that his is merely a “bedroom issue,” we know that the bedroom is but one of the many places where we write our stories. Therefore, while each October (National LGBT History Month) is a good time to begin the classroom discussions, I ask that our full stories be told throughout the year. For what is true in AIDS education holds true for our history as well: “Silence = Death.” Warren J. Blumenfeld is associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. He is editor of Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price (Beacon Press), and co-editor of Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (Routledge) and Investigating Christian Privilege and Religious Oppression in the United States (Sense). Permission granted to forward, print, or publish this commentary: wblumen@iastate.edu Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld Associate Professor Department of Curriculum and Instruction Iowa State University Ames, IA 50011 Office 515-294-5931 Home 515-232-8230 Email: wblumen@iastate.edu Blog: http://www.warrenblumenfeld.com http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/20120118080440102 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/meaning Reach and Teach http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/meaning Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:50:43 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/meaning#comments Think/Discuss Musings by Jim Burklo1/17/12www.tcpc.blogs.com/musings for current and previous articles(This "musing" appears in The Interfaith Observer online magazine this month.) How I Make Meaning of LifeMy wife and I drive out of the city.  On the way, we share stories with each other.We laugh about how complicated and intertwined the tales of our lives have become with each other, and with and among the people we know.We are amazed at how disparate events and people come together over time, in surprising combinations.We get out in the country and see a lonesome hill and we get out of the car and climb it.  At the top we hold hands and take deep breaths.We walk down the other side, and at the bottom is a pile of rusty junk.I collect some of it and put it in the car. I'm not sure why I pick it up, but I sense there are reasons.At home I put the junk in a cardboard box in the garage.On a Saturday morning, I drive alone to the desert mountains and hike along walls of pale stone.I pluck a stem of sagebrush and crush it under my nose with my fingers.I wonder how that scent floods my mind with memories of other hikes in other landscapes.I ask:  Do those moments, stored and now released, belong to me or to those times and places?Am I but a wind blowing through wilderness, making pine needles moan and cottonwood leaves flutter?Need I be anything more than these questions I ask as I pause on the trail?At work, I listen to a student tell me that she doesn't know why she is alive, and can't find other students who will listen to her predicament.I listen to a university staff person tell me about having an affair and how it made a mess of her life.I make vegetarian pizzas and serve them to students in our Interfaith Council as they discuss what they and their religions have to say about life after death.I lift chairs off stacks to arrange them in a patio where I will be leading a memorial service for a student who committed suicide.I fuss with image files to fit them in an e-newsletter.At home, I read a story to our five-year-old granddaughter, and then we chase each other around our apartment and yell.I edit an academic paper for my daughter, who is in graduate school at the university where I work.At church I feel the tears welling behind my eyes as we stand in line to receive communion.A mystery is being completed in us as we eat bread dipped in wine.I get a call telling me it's time to drive 400 miles north to my home town because a friend of mine is dying.I sit next to the hospital bed and stroke his forehead and chant peace and love into his ear as he dies.  We were friends for 44 years.On a Saturday afternoon, rummaging through the garage, I find the rusty junk in the box and take it out.  Without a plan, I assemble it in different ways, to see what could be made of it all.A steel spring, a metal strap, a corroded piece of a toy Tonka truck, and a rusty little tube.Finally I'm pleased with a construction of the pieces.  With tin-snips and epoxy glue I put it together.I call it my self-portrait.I take it inside our apartment and put it on a shelf and stare at it.It gives my life a meaning That makes me laugh.   JIM BURKLOWebsite: JIMBURKLO.COM     Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburkloBIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians - my latest book - at www.amazon.comAssociate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/meaning http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/foodstamps2 Reach and Teach http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/foodstamps2 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:37:00 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/foodstamps2#comments Think/Discuss With the campaign trails filled with nonsense about foodstamps and other programs that help protect people from hunger and homelessness, the Center for Budget Priorities and Policies has put together a great resource with facts about one of America's most important safety nets. Policy Basics: Introduction to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) What Is SNAP? The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) is the nation's most important anti-hunger program. In 2011, it helped almost 45 million low-income Americans to afford a nutritionally adequate diet in a typical month. Nearly 75 percent of SNAP participants are in families with children; more than one-quarter of participants are in households with seniors or people with disabilities. After unemployment insurance, SNAP is the most responsive federal program providing additional assistance during economic downturns.  It also is an important nutritional support for low-wage working families and low-income seniors and people with disabilities with fixed incomes. The federal government pays the full cost of SNAP benefits and splits the cost of administering the program with the states, which operate the program. Who Is Eligible for SNAP? Unlike most means-tested benefit programs, which are restricted to particular categories of low-income individuals, SNAP is broadly available to almost all households with low incomes. SNAP eligibility rules and benefit levels are, for the most part, uniform across the nation. Under federal rules, to qualify for SNAP benefits, a household must meet three criteria (although states have flexibility to adjust these limits):  Its total monthly income generally must be at or below 130 percent of the poverty line, or $2,008 (about $24,100 a year) for a three-person family in fiscal year 2012. Households with an elderly or disabled member need not meet this limit.Its monthly net income, or income after deductions are applied for items such as high housing costs and child care, must be less than or equal to the poverty line (about $18,500 a year or $1,545 a month for a three-person family in fiscal year 2012).Its assets must fall below certain limits: households without an elderly or disabled member must have assets of $2,000 or less, and those with an elderly or disabled member must have assets of $3,000 or less. Some categories of people are not eligible for SNAP regardless of how small their income or assets may be, such as strikers, most college students, and certain legal immigrants. Undocumented immigrants also are ineligible for SNAP.  Most unemployed childless adults are limited to three months of benefits in many areas of the country, though this limit may be waived in areas of high unemployment. For  more information, see A Quick Guide to Food Stamp Eligibility and Benefit Rules, at http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1269.  How Much Does SNAP Cost? In fiscal year 2011, the federal government spent about $78 billion on SNAP.  About 92 percent went directly to benefits that households used to purchase food. The remaining 8 percent was used primarily for state administrative costs, including eligibility determinations, employment and training and nutrition education for SNAP households, and anti-fraud activities. About $2.5 billion went for other food assistance programs, such as the block grant for food assistance in Puerto Rico and American Samoa, commodity purchases for the Emergency Food Assistance Program (which helps food pantries and soup kitchens across the country), and commodities for the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations. SNAP has experienced large but temporary growth in recent years.  Caseloads have increased significantly since late 2007, as the recession and the lagging economic recovery dramatically increased the number of low-income households who qualify and apply for help.  In addition, because of benefit increases that were part of the 2009 Recovery Act (discussed below), SNAP has delivered $26 billion in additional economic stimulus through fiscal year 2011.  These changes are temporary, however, and SNAP spending is expected to fall to pre-recession levels as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) as the economy recovers and the Recovery Act provisions end.  (See chart:  "SNAP is Projected to Shrink as a Share of GDP.")CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS REPORT http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/foodstamps2 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/mormon Reach and Teach http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/mormon Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:15:47 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/mormon#comments Think/Discuss Musings by Jim Burklowww.tcpc.blogs.com/musings for current and previous articles1-9-12Mormon ReckoningAmerica is entering a Mormon moment as a former bishop of the Latter-Day Saints, Mitt Romney, takes front-runner place in the race for the Republican nomination for the presidency.  I welcome the religious reckoning that is bound to result.  Mormonism shines an ultraviolet light on Christianity in America, revealing features that are unseen under the rest of the spectrum.  In the last few years, I have become acquainted with the progressive theological and social movement within the Mormon world.  It's much bigger than the public perceives, if it is perceived at all.  There is a wide range of thought within the membership of the LDS on matters religious and political.  There is a loyal opposition to its leadership's positions on same-sex marriage, homosexuality, women's limited roles, and other issues.  The online Mormon "bloggernacle" on these topics includes dropout (or "Jack") Mormons, temple-ready, tithe-paying Mormons, Mormons who take the Book of Mormon literally, Mormons who don't, Mormon Democrats, and Mormon Republicans.  Journals like Dialogue and Sunstone make space for respectful but critical viewpoints about the church. This lively contrarian community within the LDS world results in part from the fact that the Mormon church has a theology, but few theologians.  The top leaders of the church, some of whom I had the occasion to meet a few months ago in Salt Lake City, are chosen primarily for their gifts as managers, not as scholars.  There is no LDS seminary, and there is little scholarship within the church to compare to what is found in the Catholic or mainline Protestant traditions.  An integral part of Mormon theology is the principle of personal revelation.  Each Mormon is expected to come up with his or her own "testimony" that the Church is "true".  And while there are clear Mormon doctrines, the LDS Church is not preoccupied with interpreting them.  That task is largely left to the personal relationship between the individual Mormon and God.As a result, a substantial number of Mormons have quietly consulted with their Maker and concluded that the Book of Mormon is mythical.  And they have found a way to hold that view while staying loyal to their church.  Their church is "true" for them in ways that might not be "true" for other Latter-Day Saints.  It's not hard to see how they arrive at that conclusion.  The text and Joseph Smith's account of its discovery are fantastic.  He claimed to have translated the text from the "Reformed Egyptian" - a language that never existed - into English, using "peep stones" called Urim and Thummim.  The book suggests that Jews settled in Meso-America and that Jesus visited this continent after his resurrection.  There is no sound archaeological or historical evidence for any of these claims.  The book was written in grammatically incorrect King James English, long after that version of the language had become antique.  While there are a few pearls of wisdom in it, and its vision of a Christianity indigenous to America is intriguing, a leap of faith as wide as the Grand Canyon is required to take it literally.  (Check out the LDS Church's own list of most cherished Book of Mormon passages, to get a sense of how many cups of non-Mormon beverages you'd need to finish the whole book.)  Consequently, many Mormons cherish the book as part of their cultural and religious heritage, while understanding that it cannot be taken as an historical record of the events it describes.For evangelicals to argue that the Book of Mormon is a false gospel, they must give the same kinds of reasons that theologically progressive Christians present for not taking the Bible literally.  Smith's story of the appearance of the golden plates of the text of the Book of Mormon is no more fabulous than it is to take the miracle stories in the Bible as facts.  Non-Mormon Christians have been in the habit of taking the Bible literally a lot longer than Mormons have been doing it with their book.  But the duration of an obsolete belief system is no argument for maintaining it.Many evangelicals are outraged that Mormons don't believe in the Trinity, and that they believe that God was a (married) man who became divine.  But what's any weirder about these doctrines than the arcane doctrine of the Trinity?  How do you explain the difference such theological disputes make in everyday life in 2012?  Plenty of loyal Mormons take their church's doctrine with a grain of salt.  Richard Mouw, president of the evangelical Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, CA, recently wrote in the LA Times that "I do not believe Mormonism is a cult. However, I am not convinced that Mormon theology deserves to be classified as Christian in the historic sense of that word. I have serious disagreements with my Mormon friends about basic issues of faith that have eternal consequences. These include issues regarding the nature of God, the doctrine of the Trinity and the character of the afterlife. But I have also learned that in some matters we are not quite as far apart as I once thought. In any case, such theological differences don't preclude a Mormon from being a viable presidential candidate, in my view."  I don't find the term "cult" useful in describing any religious groups.  But apparently Mouw does, and if Mormonism doesn't fit his definition, why?  Just because they've become "mainstream", as he says, in business and culture?  He fudges a bit about whether or not Mormons are really Christians, and he only hints at hellfire as a possible consequence of their beliefs.  Does he agree with the oft-cited phrase that a cult is just a religious group without political or financial clout?In the interests of maintaining a conservative alliance, many evangelicals will be challenged to follow Mouw's example and downplay theological issues for the sake of promoting a common political agenda which has no biblical basis.  Already for many evangelicals, political purity trumps theological purity.  Notice the peace they have made with the Catholic Church, which they used to vilify.  Rick Santorum, an uber-Catholic, has become an honorary evangelical!  For the sake of teaming up with Mormons to fight abortion rights and same-sex marriage, topics about which Jesus said nothing, will evangelicals cut Mormons slack on matters theological?  They do so at their own doctrinal peril.  If Romney becomes the nominee for the Republican Party, count on a national year-long teach-in about the Mormon faith.  Republicans will have to make Mormonism look good, and that's going to make Republicans look bad to the millions of fundamentalist Christians who are convinced that it is a terrible heresy.  Some fundamentalists will take a break from politics altogether, seeing how it co-opts and trumps religion.  Other conservative Christians will be nudged toward a more pluralistic, less dogmatic stance.  (See how it plays in the Seventh Day Adventist Church in this article by my friend and colleague Loren Seibold.)  Romney's Mormonism is going to result in a healthy confusion among conservative Americans. So there's good news for progressive Christianity in America's imminent reckoning with Mormonism.  Romney's candidacy is going to make people ask questions.  Do political and social agendas matter more or less than theological doctrines?  If America is a Christian nation as defined by evangelicals, can it be governed by a Mormon?  Can any one religion or sect claim to be superior to all others?  More people will question whether the Bible should be taken literally, as they see how hard it is to take the Book of Mormon factually.  People will ponder whether their critiques of Mormonism might apply to their own religious beliefs.  And progressive Mormons will be connected with the larger progressive Christian community, leading to fruitful friendships.    JIM BURKLOWebsite: JIMBURKLO.COM     Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburkloBIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians - my latest book - at www.amazon.comAssociate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/mormon http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/20120103131112616 Micah Admin http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/20120103131112616 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:11:12 -0800 http://www.micahscall.org/content/article.php/20120103131112616#comments Think/Discuss Musings by Jim Burklo1-3-12www.tcpc.blogs.com/musings for current and previous articlesEPIPHANIESAn awakening. An opening into higher consciousness.  A discovery.  A parting of the fog of confusion, revealing a new kind of clarity.  Webster’s says that an epiphany is a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something. What an enticing definition!  It makes me eager to get an epiphany right now.  How about you? In the context of the Christian church calendar, Epiphany is January 6, the day celebrated as the time when the wise men visited the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem.  It’s the sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of Christmas to three guys from somewhere in Iraq or Iran.  They were the first non-Jews to “get it” about Christmas.  Think of it! Jesus was barely born before his message was out of the Jewish box.  Hmmm – isn’t it about time that his message got out of the Christian box? I love this story for a bunch of ephinaneous reasons.  Yes, I made up that word, epiphaneous.  That’s what happens when you have an epiphany: you expand your vocabulary.  For one thing, I love this story because the three wise men show up with really weird gifts.  Normal folks might think:  let’s get Jesus a rattle, or a rubber ducky, or get his parents a couple months of diaper service.  No, these supposedly wise men traveled many hundreds of miles on camelback to deliver gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Gold – sure.  Valuable then, valuable now.  That’s not so strange: at least for Mary and Joseph, it was probably a welcome sight.  But frankincense and myrrh?  Used as burial spices, at the time. Yes, valuable:  Mary and Joseph could have traded them for something useful.  The three wise men were like those relatives or friends who feel compelled to give you stuff for Christmas, except they are truly clueless about who you are, what you want, what you need.  Another thing I love about the story is that the three wise men apparently didn't become Christians after meeting Jesus.  They already had a religion, and they didn't give it up.  They followed the star because their own religion suggested it.  Faithfully following their own religion got them outside of the box of their own religion, even while they continued practicing it.  Maybe that’s something we can emulate today. By following Jesus in a serious way, he’ll lead us out of the Christian box and inspire us to explore other religions and become better global citizens.  He'll lead us to be humble about our religion, even as we continue practicing it. The recipe for epiphany is simple, but still challenging.  It is about showing up:  physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  That’s what the three wise men did.  They did not just send gold, frankincense, and myrrh by Fed Ex and then just email a Christmas letter from Baghdad.  When they discovered that the star was hovering above a rude and crude manger, and that the so-called king was a peasant child, they still showed up in person and presented themselves.  Are we present?  Really here?  All here?  Did your body show up, but your mind is someplace else?  Did your mind show up, but your body get left behind?  Are you awake and aware of your whole self, here and now?The way to have an epiphany starts with being all here, and being awake to your inner and outer worlds.  If you are awake to your feelings, your bodily and mental experiences in the moment - if you are aware of what is going on in your mind and body right now, then you will be awake enough to have a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of things.  What are we really thinking?  What are we really feeling?  To what are we really paying attention right here and now?  Facing the truth about ourselves, reflecting our emotional and physical reality back to ourselves, lovingly, without judgment: that enables us to be present, body and soul, at the manger. When we take a good look at ourselves in the spiritual mirror, we begin to experience higher consciousness.  This is the kingdom of heaven Jesus was talking about: the heaven’s eye view of ourselves and the world around us.  When we take this God’s-eye view of ourselves, lovingly and without judgment, doing an inventory of our inner worlds, then we are able to perceive the meaning of what we observe.   I do quite a bit of counseling for students at USC in the course of my job, even though I’m not officially a counselor.  I find myself asking students questions to nudge them to examine their inner lives – lovingly, and without judgment. Just paying attention to their inner worlds, just describing their inner experience, is enough to trigger epiphanies. Suddenly they make new connections among their experiences and feelings, and make fresh sense of their lives.  It’s New Years, when we hear all that talk about resolutions.  I say, forget about who you ought to be, what you ought to look like, what you ought to weigh.  New Year’s resolutions are almost always about there and then.  This New Year’s, let’s look at here and now.  Who are you, really, now?  Look with clear spiritual eyes.  Pay full attention to your present reality, with love and acceptance of what is.  If you can do this, you’ll be empowered to make whatever changes you need and want to make.  You'll be epiphany-ready!  Be here now, and you’ll be ready to go there then... in 2012, and beyond.  JIM BURKLOWebsite: JIMBURKLO.COM     Weblog: MUSINGS    Follow me on twitter: @jtburkloBIRDLIKE AND BARNLESS: Meditations, Prayers, and Songs for Progressive Christians - my latest book - at www.amazon.comAssociate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California http://www.micahscall.org/content/trackback.php/20120103131112616