This page lists our reports and commentary from all of October, 2007

For an index to all our reports from the
Witherspoon conference on global mission and justice >>

And for all our reports
from the Ghost Ranch Week of Peace >>

Where Have All the Protests Gone?

We reported on Oct. 29 on the demonstrations held in cities around the country, calling once again for an end to the US war in Iraq.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, and is the co-founder of the American Empire Project, went to the demonstration in New York City.

He wrote about it afterwards, reflecting on how things have changed (maybe downsizing is the word) since the massive protests early in the war. While protests against the Vietnam war grew over the years, now the number of demonstrators seems to be shrinking.

He speculates that it may be because "the Washington Consensus – Democrats as well as Republicans, in Congress as in the Oval Office – has been settling ever deeper into the Iraqi imperial project. As a town, official Washington, it seems, has come to terms with a post-surge occupation strategy that will give new meaning to what, in the days after the 2003 invasion, quickly came to be known as the Q-word (for the Vietnam-era ‘quagmire')." And even more discouraging, this has happened even as the American people have come to the point where a majority disapprove of the war, and most want the U.S. to be out of there within two years at the most.

At the same time, the current Administration has convinced our people that the government is not something to be trusted, even to be appealed to. "Civic duty" has lost all meaning – even the idea of a civic duty to demonstrate against a war that is widely seen as wrong.

So where are the demonstrators? They are, apparently, staying home watching TV or wandering around on the Internet.

Read the article >>

What do you think?
Do progressive Christians (or other people of faith)
have anything to offer to a nation in this kind of situation?
(Morass? Quagmire??)
Please send a note, and we’ll share it here!

You may want to check out his book, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (University of Massachusetts Press), which has just been updated in a new edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.

Where have all the leaders gone?

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from death throes? He recently published a book with the title above. Here are a few choice lines:

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?

Where the hell is our outrage?

We should be screaming bloody murder.

We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.

But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course"

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.

While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions.

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.
 

These are times that call for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators?

Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo.

We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.

Excerpted from Where Have All the Leaders Gone?  Copyright (c) 2007 by Lee Iacocca. All rights reserved

Kim Bobo, the Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, recently sent this email note.

Dear Friend,

When nature's calamities strike, like they did last week in California, we know that those hardest hit are poor families.

Despite the media coverage of the burning of mansions, those who live in modest homes or even shacks will suffer the most. Please pray for California workers and their families hit by the fires.


Bad news and good news: the bad news is that the October 16th Wall Street Journal carried an article that criticized Interfaith Worker Justice; the good news is that not only was IWJ discussed in a high-profile newspaper read by millions of people, but most of the discussion was neutral, and accurately described a good deal of what we do (before going on to disparage us). The article, titled "The Rise of the Religious Left," was authored by Steve Malanga, a Senior Fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. (It's no longer available on the Wall Street Journal's website but can be found on the Manhattan Institute's website.)

The piece was in fact adapted from a longer essay that appears in the Autumn issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal under the title "The Religious Left, Reborn."        Here is my response to the article >>.

The October 21st New York Times Book Review carried an essay by Alan Wolfe titled "Mobilizing the Religious Left."

It's a review of Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century: The Classic That Woke Up the Church, a new volume celebrating and reflecting on Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), a book that inspired Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Bishop Desmond Tutu. It was good to see this book reviewed in such a prominent forum. In his essay, however, Wolfe made a dubious claim: "In a democracy, the people choose the questions they want to discuss, and in our time more of them want the religious spirit to concern itself with abortion and homosexuality rather than race relations or a just wage."

Here is my response >>

...  Interfaith Worker Justice calls upon our religious values in order to educate, organize, and mobilize the religious community in the U.S. on issues and campaigns that will improve wages, benefits and working conditions for workers, especially workers in low-wage jobs.

Thank you and Blessings,

Kim Bobo, Executive Director
Interfaith Worker Justice

You are invited to participate as a Congressional "Accompanier"

Purpose and Goals

David D. Kirkpatrick, a correspondent in the Washington bureau of The New York Times who covered the religious Right in the 2004 election campaign, provides a long, detailed survey of major changes going on now in the evangelical churches and their leadership.

The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations. ...

Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers. ...

The full article >>

But someone else says:

For a very skeptical response to this article, see a short comment by Susie Bright, who is described as "an author, editor, and journalist known for her original and pioneering work in sexual politics and erotic expression." She argues that the sexual hang-ups [I’m using nicer words] of evangelicals are still strong, and their disillusionment with Pres. Bush does not indicate a real change in their values.

The Green (Environmentally concerned) Presbyterians at First Presbyterian Church in Kalamazoo, MI would like suggestions from any congregation that has successfully eliminated the use of foam (especially) and other paper/plastic cups in church programs – especially before/after worship and for meetings. How did you do it? And what have been the results? Any and all suggestions welcome. Please respond privately to Kremlick@juno.com and in the subject line, note "Green Presbyterian - cups."

Arch B. Taylor, Jr., writing as a sympathetic Gentile, offers personal observations concerning the complex relations among these three entities in light of current events and biblical instruction, expressing sincere hope for a peaceful settlement of the ongoing conflict between the modern state of Israel and its Middle East neighbors.

Arch Taylor is an ordained Presbyterian minister who served for over thirty years in Japan and taught Bible at Shikoku Gakuin University. After retirement he went on short delegations twice to Nicaragua with Witness for Peace and Habitat for Humanity, and once to Israel/Palestine with Presbyterian Peace Fellowship and Christian Peacemaker Teams. He is a member of Mid-Kentucky Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, Society of Biblical Literature, and author of Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, & Beyond: Subversion of Values.

His essay is published here in PDF format.  You can also ask him to send you the file in MS Word format; just send a note to him at archtaylor@att.net.  To request a copy on paper, he asks that you send him $2 to:  

Arch B. Taylor, Jr.
2200 Greentree North #1120
Clarksville IN 47129

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, spoke in Boston on October 27, appealing to Jews to challenge what he described as the Israeli government's oppression of Palestinians.

In a lengthy and emotional address to a packed Old South Church, where the faint din of pro-Israel protesters could be heard through the stone walls, Tutu cited passages from the Hebrew Bible to argue that the God worshiped by Jews would champion the cause of Palestinians.

"Remembering what happened to you in Egypt and much more recently in Germany - remember, and act appropriately," he said, alluding to the enslavement of Jews in Egypt described in the book of Exodus, as well as to the Nazi Holocaust. "If you reject your calling, you may survive for a long time, but you will find it is all corrosive inside, and one day you will implode."

His remarks, to a congregation of about 850, created controversy even before they were delivered. A wide array of Jewish community leaders and organizations denounced Sabeel, the Palestinian Christian organization that put together the conference at which Tutu spoke, as anti-Israel, and rued Tutu's support of the group.

An op-ed column by Bishop Tutu, published in the Globe the day before his speech, expressed his hope for Israel/Palestine. He acknowledged there is little reason for "optimism" in today’s realities, but his hope is grounded in the deeper reality of God’s intention for humanity:

God has a dream for all his children. It is about a day when all people enjoy fundamental security and live free of fear. It is about a day when all people have a hospitable land in which to establish a future. More than anything else, God's dream is about a day when all people are accorded equal dignity because they are human beings. In God's beautiful dream, no other reason is required.

God's dream begins when we begin to know each other differently, as bearers of a common humanity, not as statistics to be counted, problems to be solved, enemies to be vanquished or animals to be caged. God's dream begins the moment one adversary looks another in the eye and sees himself reflected there.

On Oct. 25 we posted a call from the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, calling on their supporters to join in the mobilization for peace on Saturday, Oct. 27.

Here’s one report on the events held around the country:

The October 27 demonstrations represented another important step forward for the anti-war movement in the United States.

Over 100,000 people took to the streets in coordinated regional and local protests to demand an immediate end to the war in Iraq. The October 27 demonstrations took place just six weeks after the September 15 National March and Die-In in Washington, D.C. that was led by Iraq War Veterans and family members of soldiers and marines.

Anti-war sentiment is growing. The demonstrations yesterday, like the September 15 March on Washington, were noteworthy for the large number of young people - students and young workers - who are joining the front ranks of the anti-war movement in the United States. The Arab American and Muslim community was well represented. The participation of Iraq War Veterans and their families continues to grow. The energy and spirit of the demonstration is an indicator that the people of this country are fed up with the criminal war and occupation of Iraq.

The Presbyterian Witness in Washington Weekly for October 29, 2007, includes these items:

Drop Haiti’s Debt! – Write Congress Today

The Haiti Debt Cancellation Resolution (H.Res. 241) has momentum -- there are now 65 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. This progress came from work by Representatives Maxine Waters, Spencer Bachus, Luis Gutierrez and Barbara Lee, who urged their colleagues to join them in a letter earlier this year and by hundreds of people throughout the country who have called or written to tell their representatives that debt relief for Haiti is the right thing to do.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest countries in the developing world. About 80 percent of the rural Haitian population lives in poverty, and the poverty situation in Haiti has been deteriorating over the past decade.

Support Funding for Human Needs Investments

Last week, Oct. 23, the Senate passed its Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill. The House passed their version of this bill on July 19. These bills authorize federal spending on programs such as health care and medical research, housing, education, job training, child care and support, and even some homeland security. Because both chambers of Congress authorized spending levels higher than the President’s request, he has threatened to veto the Labor-HHS-Education bill when it comes to his desk.

Congo Global Action Coalition Conference and Lobby Day

November 11-13, 2007
Women and Children: The Victims Most Forgotten

Be one of 1,000 people telling United States Congress that the Democratic Republic of Congo matters to us. Together we can raise our voices to help the people of the Congo! Workshops will focus on saving lives, keeping people safe and ending economic exploitation.

Our light continues to burn!
This Saturday, October 27, participate in the massive mobilization for peace.

Announcement from the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq

Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, with 36 Partner organizations, sponsored an ecumenical witness at the Washington National Cathedral and the White House in Washington, DC, March 16, 2007. We continue to call Christians across the country to pray and act for peace.

This Saturday, October 27, tens of thousands of peacemakers across the United States will stand for peace and call for an end to the war and occupation of Iraq. Mass demonstrations in Boston, Chicago, Jonesborough (Tenn), Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Seattle, and smaller protests in dozens of cities, provide an opportunity to make a public witness for peace and to invite others to build a continuous Christian Peace Witness for Iraq.

This weekend, we invite you to use CPWI materials – posters, bookmarks and banners– to call others to join a national movement of Christian prayer and action to:

On our CPWI website, you'll find resources for this weekend, and flyers, vigil tips, posters, and other ideas and resources to support your efforts.

www.ChristianPeaceWitness.org

@ctr.pcusa.org is now @pcusa.org

Presbyterian News Service reports that the domain name for all email addresses of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national staff members has changed from @ctr.pcusa.org to @pcusa.org. Also, the individual inbox protocol has been changed from first initial-last name (e.g., jvanmart) to first name.last name (e.g., jerry.vanmarter).

General Assembly Council Executive Director Linda Valentine said, "We want to make it easier for constituents to contact us, so we are moving to a simpler firstname/lastname address, and the simpler pcusa.org format."

Warren Wilson College ranked as #3 among "green colleges"

The Sierra Club reports that numerous colleges and universities are "going green." Presbyterian-related Warren Wilson College is ranked number three on their "Top Ten" list, with this brief description:

This small Southeast star wears its environmental ethos on its sleeve and backs it up with a sustainably managed farm, garden, and forest that provide food and lumber for the campus; streetlamps that reduce light pollution; and community service as an integral part of the curriculum.

Witherspooner Janet Arbesman urges support for better mental health benefits in Senate Medicare package

WITNESS IN WASHINGTON WEEKLY

The Washington Office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

October 22, 2007   

This week's issue brings some important messages and helpful resource material:

Cameroon mission co-worker Christi Boyd tells of efforts to fight hunger, injustice

One of the speakers at our Witherspoon conference on global mission and justice, held a month ago in Louisville, was Christi Boyd, who is serving with her husband Jeff as Presbyterian mission co-workers in Cameroon. She is a facilitator for "Joining Hands in Cameroon," a ministry of the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) that is addressing hunger and justice issues for rural villagers, particularly women and children.

Presbyterian News Service reports on Boyd’s recent presentation in Frankfort, KY, where she described the shift over the past few years from relief efforts to work for systemic change , largely through RELUFA, a network of 20 rural organizations with common needs — agricultural training, micro-credit, educational and health opportunities for women and children and environmental protections.

RELUFA is working on four basic goals, which Boyd described food "sovereignty," self-development, economic justice, and opposing political corruption with transparency.

Since white students at Jena High placed nooses in a tree last year to show their hostility toward their African-American classmates, the old symbol of racial hatred seems to be turning up all over.

Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote a week ago listing just a few of the recent incidents:

A noose is left for a black workman at a construction site in the Chicago area. In Queens, a woman brandishes a noose to threaten her black neighbors. A noose is left on the door of a black professor at Columbia University. And that's just last week. Go back a little further and you have similar incidents at the University of Maryland in College Park, at a police department on Long Island, on a Coast Guard cutter, in a bus maintenance garage in Pittsburgh.

Pitts tells "a history of rope," including the story of Mary Turner, who in 1918 was burned alive in Valdosta, Ga. A man slashed open her swollen stomach. "The baby she had carried nearly to term tumbled out and managed two cries before the man crushed its head beneath his heel. A rope was used to tie Turner upside down in a tree."

Things may have changed, he says – but they may be changing back again.

It feels as if in recent years we the people have backward traveled from even the pretense of believing our loftiest ideals. It has become fashionable to decry excessive ''political correctness,'' deride ''diversity,'' sneer at the ''protected classes.'' ... Just a prank, the man says.

Mary Turner would argue otherwise. I find it useful to remember her, useful to be reminded of things we would rather forget. To remember her is to understand that there is no prank here.

Pitts' column >>

I was reminded of this by a letter writer in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who responded to Pitts’ column by saying that the two nooses hanging in his front yard are just Halloween decorations, along with the skeletons and ghosts and tombstones. What’s the big deal, he says. After all, his stepdaughter is black, and "she hasn't given any of this a second thought."

I’ll side with Pitts on this one.

People of faith are being heard as they speak out against the U.S. use of torture.

The radically altered situation today in religion, politics, and global communication-what can broadly be characterized as postmodern and postcolonial-necessitates close rereading of Christianity's classical sources, especially its theologians.

In a groundbreaking textbook anthology from Fortress Press, Empire and The Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians, twenty-nine distinguished scholars scrutinize the relationship between empire and Christianity from Paul to the liberation theologians of our time.

For more info, and to order >>

Over 600 Presbyterians gathered in Louisville on October 2 -5, for "World Mission ’07: A Celebration of Grace." The meeting, sponsored by Presbyterian World Mission, the newly formed world mission agency of the Presbyterian Church (USA), focused a great deal of attention on concerns for developing and supporting mission in new ways, in response to changes in the church and in the broader culture.

"Church activists" push for reforms
New Social Creed will take global view

Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal filed a report on the Witherspoon conference (published almost a month after the event) focusing on the discussion of the proposed New Social Creed.

It may not add much to what we have reported here, but you may be interested to see how he looks at the discussion as an outside observer.

So what's this about "activists"?

One little thought: The reporter clearly saw this group – as well as the writers of the Social Creeds, old and new – as "activists." Whatever his intent, I find it interesting that the word "activist" is so often a term of opprobrium, if not derision, in today’s right-wing rhetoric. Activist judges are labeled as a threat to the Constitution; fair-trade activists are challenging America’s push for so-called free trade; labor activists negotiate, or maybe even strike, for decent wages.

Of course, the activist attitude is not limited to the progressive side of the spectrum. A quick Google search for "right to life" plus "activist" turns up about 307,000 citations. (I haven’t counted them all, but that’s what Google tells me, and who am I to question a company that makes as much money as they do?)

What assumptions lie behind this use of the word "activist"? It seems to imply that acting to deal with a problem (whatever you define that problem to be) makes you unusual. Most people, it suggests, don’t act, but just roll along in their well-defined ruts. Getting upset enough about some issue that you take to the streets, or write letters, or try to do something to make a change in the world, makes you odd. Maybe even deviant!

Peter Smith was right, then, in labeling the Witherspoon conference as a bunch of activists, for the people gathered there, and the speakers we listened to, all reflected a concern that things need to be changed. And more than a concern – a willingness to do things (talk, write, march, or whatever) to help those changes come about.

Maybe it’s time we become more intentional about activism as a commitment and a style of life (collective and personal) to be claimed with pride.

What about the twenty-somethings?

You might want to contrast this with a recent article by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who reports that after being on a few college campuses, that "the more I am around this generation of college students, the more I am both baffled and impressed. I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be."

What he calls "Generation Q" — "the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, [are] quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad." But they see the looming disasters in our country – environmental, economic, and more – and are not getting active to demand changes.

He adds: "America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them."

Read Friedman’s column >>

The gap between America’s richest and poorest is at its widest in at least 25 years, with the wealthiest taking home a record share of the nation’s income that exceeds even the previous high in 2000.

According to recent data from the Internal Revenue Service, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of all U.S. income earned in 2005. That is a significant increase from 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of the nation’s income.

George Marshall, the founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network, who blogs on the psychology of climate change at www.climatedenial.org, has written a provocative essay in The Guardian, UK.

He urges environmentalists to drop slogans like "save the planet," and to focus on "intelligent living" instead.

Saving the planet, he says, is too big, too vague, too negative, when people are looking for positive things to do, not just things to give up.

So he offers his own personal statement:

"I have embraced a lighter lifestyle because it is the smart, cool, intelligent and healthy way to live. I want to live in the present and the real world, not be tied to an outdated and dangerous 20th-century way of living. I live this way because I love it, because it makes me feel good and because it is healthy and gives me freedom.

"I feel that I am setting the pace for the 21st century and I am excited to see people all around me trying to catch up. If we all work together we can build a world that is cleaner, fairer and happier and that is what I want to leave my children."

Are you looking for a hint of changes to come in the style of the coming 218^th General Assembly? When the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly (COGA) met recently, it sought to follow a directive of the 217^th Assembly by using a "discernment model" for decision-making rather than the traditional parliamentary procedures.

St. John’s School of Theology-Seminary in Collegeville, MN, has awarded its annual Dignitas Humana Award to Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the PC(USA), co-founder and former director of BorderLinks, and current executive director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.

The award is given each year to an individual who has made significant contributions to the advancement and promotion of human dignity in the United States and around the world. It was to be presented to Ufford-Chase in an Oct. 17 ceremony.

Join us... for the weekend of November 16 - 18, a day or two, or the entire week of November 12 - 18 ...

Ready to make a difference serving with RainbowCorps by doing hurricane relief work in the City of New Orleans?

You can register online now at www.mlp.org

Ecumenical Advocacy Days 2008:
Claiming a Vision of True Security

October 16 Call-in Day! (800) 965-4701    

The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP or CHIP) provides health insurance to millions of children who would otherwise be uninsured. SCHIP has been a successful partnership between our federal and state governments to provide needed health care services for over 6 million children living in low-income households. Another 9 million children, however, remain uninsured, 4 million of whom will be covered by the reauthorization and expansion of the program that has been passed by the House and Senate.

Frank Rich published an op-ed column in the Sunday, October 14, New York Times, in which he made a compelling case that we must stop simply blaming George Bush for the terrible things being done in Iraq and elsewhere in the name of America, and acknowledge our responsibility as a people for letting things go on this way.

He begins:

"Bush lies" doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.

Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: "This government does not torture people." Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of "torture" is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s "enhanced interrogation" techniques have a grotesque provenance: "Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation."

Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled "politics." We turn the page.

There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes committed by our contractors in Iraq. ...

He concludes:

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those "good Germans" who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

Read the full essay in the New York Times or on AlterNet

Frank Rich is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times. He has been at the Times since 1980, writing as a theater critic, and increasingly dealing with the intersection of culture and politics.

When 50 members of the feuding Londonderry (New Hampshire) Presbyterian Church turned up looking for their Sunday service last weekend, they instead found all the locks had been changed, said Dr. John Mokkosian, a pastor who held service under a tree on the front lawn for the "continuing congregation," the group that wants to stay affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Last month, citing "theological, doctrinal and organizational difference," a group of about 200 members voted to separate from the Presbyterian Church USA, opting instead to associate with the New Wineskins, a more conservative interpretation of the same denomination. They were the ones who changed the locks, according an attorney representing New Wineskins.

For the full article in the Manchester Union Leader, along with a few comments from readers >>

Thanks to Suzanne Sandblom, of Manchester, New Hampshire, for calling our attention to this. In her note she wrote:

I can't really understand what it is all about but many of the Londonderry (NH) Presbyterians were locked out of their church this weekend by the New Wineskins – people that have been going for 30-40 years – this is not Christian and they want to take over- how awful is that!

The other side ...

The Presbyterian Layman has reported on the efforts of the group seeking separation to bring suit against the Presbytery of Northern New England, to gain possession of the church property. Their report states that the congregational meeting, held on September 30, voted by 208 to 86 (out of a total membership of 446) for immediate disaffiliation from the PC(USA), and to join the New Wineskins Presbytery of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

"Terror, Torture and Security: Theological Considerations for Tomorrow's Leaders"  

A working seminar will be held at Columbia Seminary, Decatur, GA, for students and faculty of Presbyterian related seminaries and colleges/universities.  Co-sponsored by Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, No2Torture, and Columbia, Fuller and Princeton Seminaries.  For more information, send a note to ppfwitness@gmail.com.

The goal of the event will be to strategize on how to lift up a generation of church leaders who know that they cannot equivocate on about the moral dimensions of torture and war.

More Light Presbyterians call for support of the truly inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act H.R. 2015

Through PEP, Presbyterian Equality Project, the LGBT civil rights initiative of More Light Presbyterians, we have been working to ensure that our entire LGBT community is included in and protected by ENDA 2007. We want to make sure that ENDA includes transgender persons and gender identity. This is why we support H.R. 2015.

After all the media excitement about the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to New York a couple weeks ago – and the unusual (is that an adequate description?) reception given to him as he spoke at Columbia University, there seems to be little media interest in what happened soon thereafter. Admadinejad told Iran’s state-run TV network that if President Bush ever visits Iran, "we will allow him to make a speech" at a university there.

Find the report in the Washington Post >>

Statement on PC(USA)’s ecumenical position going to ’08 General Assembly

LOUISVILLE – October 8, 2007 – A consultation designed to help frame the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s stance on ecumenical relations has outlined what it says are bold themes for the committee that ultimately will submit language to the 2008 General Assembly (GA).

A widely diverse group of people, taking part in the first Ecumenical Consultation for the PC(USA) since Presbyterian reunion in 1983, met here Sept. 27-29 to help craft the denomination’s position on ecumenism. One of the results was a 21-page document, which after analysis was revised to include several overarching themes. The final recommendation to the Assembly will come from the GA Committee on Ecumenical Relations (CER), which also took part in the consultation and is chaired by Elder Edward Chan.

Let the wealthy pay their full share

We recently posted an essay by Witherspoon Issues Analyst Gene TeSelle on the coming crisis in funding for retirement and health benefits for the soon-to-reach-retirement baby boomers.

Hunter Farrell addresses celebration of PC(USA) global mission, speaks of major shifts in global patterns toward cooperation and partnership

Hunter Farrell, the General Assembly Council's new director of World Mission, spoke two weeks ago to the Witherspoon conference on global mission for peace and justice. He told very personally of his own growth in understanding the link between mission and justice, and of his own deep involvement in justice concerns over the past few years in Peru.  Click here for our report >>

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly, is publicly calling on a Burger King executive to retract comments he made recently about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group of church-backed farm workers who pick tomatoes in Florida used by the fast-food giant.

Steven Grover, Burger King’s vice president of food safety, quality assurance and regulatory compliance, inflamed Kirkpatrick last month when he raised concerns in two Florida newspapers about a CIW proposal for improving farmworker wages and working conditions.

Kirkpatrick said Grover inaccurately portrayed the Florida-based CIW as receiving payments directly from McDonald’s Corp. and Taco Bell, payments that are earmarked for farm workers harvesting for these companies. He also asserted that the CIW asked Burger King to sign a check to them and sought to benefit monetarily from a "secret agreement."

"These claims are false and not only do a disservice to CIW, but to Burger King as well,"Kirkpatrick wrote in a Sept. 21 letter to Grover. "I respectfully ask you to swiftly and publicly retract these statements . . . "

Kirkpatrick, who participated in meetings that led to the agreements with Taco Bell parent Yum! Brands, Inc. and had also engaged McDonald’s on these issues, told Grover in his letter that the Coalition specifically "rejected any and all proposals" that might direct a corporation’s increased payment to farm workers through the CIW.

Testimony: You Shall Be My Witnesses
Thursday afternoon, November 1, through Saturday noon, November 3
Trinity Presbyterian Church
3003 Howell Mill Road, Atlanta

And if you are coming, you should register this week, because our negotiated rates go up on October 10 at one of the conference hotels.

"Open Space Technology" -- time (and space) for do-it-yourself small group discussions

On the first evening of the conference, Libby Hunter and Kori Phillips spoke in a dialogue about their one-year experiences as YAVs – Libby in Northern Ireland and Kori in Lima, Peru.

We reported on their talk earlier, but now we can share the full script of their presentation.

Three Presbyterians were among a delegation of more than 100 religious leaders who met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sept. 26 during his visit to the U.S.

The two-hour dialogue, held at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York City, was the second in a series of conversations focused on establishing a dialogue between people of faith in the United States and the p