Republican Party: Part II

I was sitting down at the computer reading the comment from PWS on my last post. I was a little confused. So I turned around and asked him to clarify, saying that I was not sure of his point.

"I knew you would say that," he replied.

But, now that I have been able to discuss this with him, I think I understand things a little bit better. This is usually the case with us. We once tried communicating via blog comments for a brief period of time, but ultimately decided that discussion worked much better for us.

So, here are some clarifying thoughts:

Education is not a cure-all. Neither for societal ills, nor for personal success. My point was not that education in and of itself is more important that other things. My point was that Ohio school funding has been unfair for a long, long time. Kids in Cleveland (the capital of Ohio, by the way) and in rural areas, are not getting the same opportunities as kids in places like Oakwood, Dublin, and Lakota. That isn't right. And the fact that they don't get the same opportunities AND that no one has done anything about it is just as much a moral issue as abortion is.

What bugs me is when Republicans imply that abortion, gay marriage, and gamlbing are the only moral issues. Well, I disagree. And regardless of whether I agree with their position on those issues, I am getting a little tired of messages on my answering machine and ads on TV that speak only of these issues. As if they are casting their hooks into the sea of idiot Christians, hoping to see whose lip they can snag, and drag them to the polls.

Maybe I shouldn't be mad at the GOP at all. They push these issues only because enough Christians have watered down the gospel to a few hot-button political issues. But those, while important, just don't seem like enough to me. And I guess I feel offended that they think that's all I care about.

Now, off the subject a little bit, my discussion with PWS reveals his feelings about school funding. He says that funding alone will not make schools effective. And I tend to agree with that too, but that is another post altogether.

Enough of this.

Dear Ohio Republican Party

I am so glad y'all are duking it out over here. Nice to see a hotly contested primary for once.

I just wanted to say thanks for keeping us all focused on the real issues, which ARE (of course) gay marriage, abortion, and gambling. (Did I even need to say that? Everyone knows those are what's important.)

I mean, everyone in Ohio knows education isn't important. We wouldn't want to talk about that, right? Heck no. School funding was declared unconstitutional back in, gosh... it's been so long I can barely remember... uh, was is 1992?

But, no matter if I got the date wrong, cuz it's been, like 14 years now, and it isn't really worth counting anymore is it. Especially since this isn't one of the important issues.

Just wanted to say thanks.

You're doing a bang up job.

Notes

These are my notes from the talk I went to on Tuesday. Jim Wallis spoke. It was basically the Cliff's Notes from his book God's Politics. Here are some of the things I thought enough of to write down. (And this is what you'll read about in his book if you pick it up.)

- There are two hungers that seem prevelent today: a hunger for spiritual integrity, and a hunger for social justice. These are both biblical.

- Good religion pulls out our "best stuff." Bad religion pulls out our hatreds, fears, and prejudices.

- We are told to love our brothers: Half of the world's Christians are living on less than $2 per day, yet we are not fighting to get them on our political agenda.

- For the religious to affect real change, they must be part of a movement that is nonpartisan, one that is not ideologically predictable, and one that holds all sides to a moral standard.

- Changes in the rates of abortion will happen when we give support to low income women.

- There are 2000 verses in Scripture about poverty. That makes it a moral issue. The environment is God's creation. That makes it a moral issue. Yet these kinds of things are generally overlooked by the political working of the "Religious Right."

- The "politics of complaint" is not effective. God responded to Habakkuk's complaint by giving him HIS vision. We need to be in tune with God's vision.

- Protesting is good, but offering alternatives is BETTER.

- Hope vs. Cynicism: (Or, addressing those who say that nothing can be done to change the way things are.) His response is: that's exactly what faith is for - the really big stuff that seems impossible. Cynicism is a way to make ourselves feel secure so that we can avoid the commitment to make a change. Hope, on the other hand, is "believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change."

- On restoring the nation to the days of our forefathers, Wallis said something that I have been trying to articulate for a long time. (I have never liked "that's how the forefathers intended it" as a way of determining what laws we should support/oppose. To me it seems a blatantly obvious conterargument to simply say that they were mere men, no more immortal than we are. So if their intent is worth adhering to, so is anyone else's. Really, it isn't THEIR intent that should matter, but what God desires for our country.) Anyway, Jim Wallis gave this kind of reasoning a name that made me chuckle at first, but I can't say I disagree with it. He called it "ancestor worship."

- Patriotism is not in the Bible. (Then he said something about the bible being invoked only in judgement of a nation, which I was a little lost on...) He said that Christianity knows no national bounds. When the Bible is used to invoke the rights or power of one nation over another, it is being used incorrectly... but that's my paraphrase.

- People are entrenched in poverty because of public policies AND personal choices.

- Faith based ministries are great. But we "cannot keep pulling bodies out of the river without ever going up the river to see who is throwing them in." In other words, while we need to do things to help those who are hurting, we also need to work towards changing our socioeconmic structures so that the injustice won't occur in the first place.

- The biggest scandal in American education, according to Wallis, is not whether to teach evolution, it is the state of poor, innercity schools.

- A real religous movement is one that engages in the moral argument and "changes the wind" of society, rather than striving for political power.

Comments, questions, clarifications welcomed.