Real Crazy Preacher

Advent 2011 Reflections

2011-11-29T14:58:00.000-06:00

Day Two
Keeping it simple is a good way to enter the advent season. So much of advent needs explanation. What does the word advent actually mean? It gets explained every year by the preacher and at least one children's time in worship. You read the appointed texts and they are often apocalyptic. More explaining. The pastor down the street is preaching a Christmas series and I'm trying to get folks to wrap their heads around a strange apocalyptic text. More explaining. Last Sunday I decided to keep it simple. What are we about in the next few weeks? Simply put, we are proclaiming the following.

The universe is in God's hands, therefore, we do not need to worry or be anxious.

We are called to live as disciples of Jesus, who lived as a human being at full stretch before God.

To live like this means living with courage (faith),resilience (hope) and with compassion (love).

Advent 2011 Reflections

2011-11-29T14:43:00.001-06:00

Day 1

Introductions and Intentions
We usually think of the season of Advent as a time to wait for the coming of Christ, but waiting can also be understood as a time to let the scales fall from our eyes and see that Christ is with us here and now. In that regard, I recommend meditating on the reflection below as a way to begin the Advent season. This was posted on the web site http://www.sundaypapers.org.uk/?p=2822. The author is James Hawes.

The False Economy of Waiting

Children naturally live in the now
They are generally impatient and find it hard to wait
They want it now – they live in the present moment
But, parents like to teach them the importance of waiting
To practice delayed gratification
Not to be so emotional
And to calm down

Parents however, often live in the future
Trying to be mature, sensible and responsible
We must insure ourselves and save
Build your pension funds
Make sure you have security in the future

The materialistic parent encourages us to:
Consume now and put off the waiting –
Debt is good for you
Buy stuff you don’t need to occupy your mind and to entertain yourself
Buy products that will make you happier, make you cool or more loveable
Retail therapy will help you deal with your present difficult situation!

And Jesus, well he tells us to become like children!

Many of us either live in the past or the future and few of us risk being in the present.
Are you living in the past? Still longing for the good ole days,
Are you living for the future? And hoping ‘Things can only get better’

Or, are you able to be like the child and be right here, right now…
And risk the joy, sadness, anger, gladness, anxiety, love, pain, contentment, discontentment, happiness, embarrassment, frustration, or some other feeling that arises in each moment.
Dare you risk being fully present in this moment….
and this moment…
this moment…
this moment…!

The best present you can give others this Christmas is to be fully present.

Day Twenty Nine

2010-03-24T17:15:00.000-05:00

"The other person is a burden to the Christian, in fact for the Christian most of all. The other person never becomes a burden at all for the pagans. They simply stay clear of every burden the other person creates for them."

"Only as a burden is the other really a brother or sister and not just an object to be controlled."

These two statements taken together are very revealing. "Staying clear" is another way of saying "cut off." That's mostly what most humans do with those they do not like. So the Christian is known as someone who will stay connected to the other when the going is tough. A lot of Christians will hang with those in their community but they have in essence learned to stay clear of them. According to D.B. that is what the pagans do but the reality is that we have a lot of people acting like pagans in the church. Someone once said that Christians are so often way too nice. Nice means being in the same community and cutting someone off rather than confronting them with whatever is bothering you about them. Nice is letting things go to preserve the peace but the end result is that you stand clear of them. Being nice is one way to kill off the faith under the pretense of being Christian.

Day Twenty Eight

2010-03-24T16:48:00.000-05:00

"The other service one should perform for another person in a Christian community is active helpfulness."

A listening ear and active helpfulness is both building Christian community and being a witness all rolled into one. Neither one tends to be overly puffed up since their calling card is service and the service often appears in modest dress. " I just listened while she told me her story." "Just paid a visit and talked awhile." When you are helping you take your cue from what is needed, not your agenda. The situation is presented to you rather than you trying to control the situation. You react rather than define the terms of engagement. When you are giving unsolicited advise or trying to be a "do-gooder" but you want to do it your way and on your time then that isn't really the same as what D.B. calls active helpfulness since it is really more about you than the person you are supposedly helping.

Day Twenty Seven/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-24T16:26:00.001-05:00

"We do God's work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them."

"Many people seek a sympathetic ear and do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking even when they should be listening."

Sometimes people use talking as a cover for not acting or they say one thing but in reality the truth is just the opposite of what they confess. The church is always a very "wordy" place and I'm not just referring to preachers. Over the last generation some Christians have been very bombastic in their "dialogue" with those outside the Christian community, so much so that dialogue is not really an apt word for what is going on. We talk a lot about sharing our faith with the assumption that is is all about us "telling our story" to those outside the Christian community, but maybe the first port-of-call is to simply listen to those around us. All things considered, it might be the best truly humble beginning we could make in terms of Christian witness. The Christian witness might have more credibility if we would start by keeping our mouth shut more often and our ears more open!

Day Twenty Six/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-22T15:03:00.000-05:00

"Whoever cannot be alone should beware of community. Whoever cannot stand being in community should beware of being alone."

Along with D. B.'s well known reflections on "costly grace" the comment above is also widely known and quoted. The guide poses an interesting question that one could take in many directions.

"Why do so many churches seem to be mere aggregates of individuals rather than true communities of faith?"

The word aggregate reminds me of how that word is commonly used in reference to stones used in construction. A bunch of separate rocks thrown together to solidify concrete, for instance, yet they remain individual rocks. Beyond living in a very individualistic society many local churches do not have an internal dynamic shaped by a common DNA in regard to mission, vision, and values. They may all be baptized but folk can be miles apart in terms of understanding a common DNA for a local church. A local church can have "cultural Christians" and committed disciples under the same roof but they exist in different universes in terms of values and vision. Two ships passing in the night. Oil and water. No wonder so many local communities of faith are floundering under the weight their demographic makeup.

Review: Hubble 3D Takes You on Beautiful, Brief Space Journey

2010-03-21T05:33:00.000-05:00

Review: Hubble 3D Takes You on Beautiful, Brief Space Journey
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Day Twenty Five/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-18T09:56:00.000-05:00

"But God put this Word into the mouth of human beings so that it may be passed on to others. When people are deeply affected by the Word, they tell it to other people."

"Therefore, Christians need other Christians who speak God's Word to them. They need them again and again when they become uncertain and disheartened."

I read the first statement as the empowerment for evangelism. I then read it in counterpoint. If we are not telling others about what we have found then we are not being affected by the Word. Other questions come to mind. What is causing someone to not hear the Word? Is it resistance or are the human vessels carrying the Word somehow failing in the task?

D.B. is actually referring to the mutual encouragement of fellow believers. The Word is mediated through other people in the community. Sometimes that human incarnation of the Word is the only thing that holds things together. It is the difference between continuing on and quitting, life or death. The Word always has a human face.

Day Twenty Four/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-17T20:23:00.000-05:00

"Every human idealized image that is brought into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be broken up so that genuine community can survive."

D. B.'s plea on the side of realism. A lot rides on the definition of words and phrases. When is something an "idealized image?' Are the beatitudes an idealized image we should be suspicious of in the real world? What exactly does "genuine community" mean? When does a so called Christian community cease to be genuine? When might we call a Christian community a fake or sham community or does it get to be a Christian community as long as everyone has professed faith through baptism? If one leaves a "dysfunctional" (put in your own definition) Christian community are they being self-righteous idealists or faithful Christians? If someone stays in such a community are they enabling such a community to continue in such a state or are they unfaithful in departing? What is the base-line for legitimate (genuine) Christian community? Every renewal movement is almost always accused of being self-righteous and sowing disunity in the church. Is this true or are they simply calling the community to a greater level of faithfulness?

Day Twenty Three/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-17T17:38:00.000-05:00

"There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting and blissful experience of genuine Christian community at least once in her or his life. But in this world such experiences remain nothing but a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community."

B. H. is a preacher and his commentary on community is classic preacher. I should know since I've used such moves myself many times. You point to the so called ideal as D.B. has done thus far in his remarks on the Beatitudes and his famous reflection on cheap grace, for example. But then you cover your flank by moving over to the other side and offering an apologetic for Christian community that keeps expectations rather low. Every preacher wants to have their cake and eat it too and a dose of "bait and switch" can come in mighty handy. Playing two ends against the middle is one way to keep all the balls up in the air. Theology contains a lot of "both/and" otherwise known as you really can have it both ways. Most of the time people can stretch the boundary of the possible more than they think they can, thus the need to hold the ideal up as a goal. All of the time is is clear just how limited we are in actually approximating the ideal, thus the need to create a fall back position in the face of the facts on the ground. When is a community being overly idealistic and destroying Christian community? When does a dysfunctional community cease to be a functioning Christian community? Theology and the Christian life is no exact science for sure. D.B. is proof of that!

Day Twenty Two/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-16T20:17:00.000-05:00

"The measure with which God gives the gift of visible community is varied."

D.B. follows with a reflection on different forms community might take ranging from a letter or note from a fellow Christian or a brief visit by another individual Christian to the gathered Christian community at worship.

We may find a fellowship of believers in many places. Recently I mentioned in a sermon that the church is made up of concentric circles of "followers" ranging from the culturally Christian to focused disciples and everything in between. The wheat and the tares grow together even among the baptized. Disciples have been known to be asleep at the wheel. The 12 were asleep in the garden when Jesus needed them to be with him. The local church is no different. When it comes to finding life giving community why go looking for the living among the dead? Let the dead bury the dead! Discernment is necessary and fellowship that is healthy must be sought out. Your circle must be found. It might be a small fellowship. Where two are gathered together...

Lenten Reflections/Sunday March 21, 2010

2010-03-16T19:56:00.001-05:00

In spite of the fact that, in many ways, the bible contains a somewhat suspicious template on wealth, material goods, and to use one key word that currently sums up this whole area of human obsession: money, most of us fall on the side of obsession rather than suspicion. We shouldn't be surprised by this. From day one, whether we are in the context of family, navigating through the school system, or deciding on a specific direction for our life, our economic way of life is the defining factor in all these areas. Whatever "family values" are it is clear that families center most of their time around "making a living" or to use that one word that sums it up quite well: money. Is school about getting an education or getting prepared to make it in our economy? If you answered with the idealistic response we hear so frequently in public discussions you might be politically correct but also dead wrong.

You are saying to yourself, "Surely there is some nest somewhere where we are free from the all seeing eye of The Economy. You have that idealistic temptation once again and political correctness overcomes your better judgment and you somehow see the church as a divine nest securing you from our Economic Way Of Life and as you nestle into this cozy divine nest you hear a word that is uttered in sacred tones more frequently than the name of Jesus. Is it an divine object of veneration or a new name for God? No, this is no nightmare. If it were you could awaken and it would just be a bad dream. If you were Dorothy you could click your heels and it would be all over in a flash, but alas no glass slippers. You are in the nest called a church meeting and everyone is using that word which proves omnipresent everywhere: Money.

This Sunday in worship, "A Journey of Hope: Money" (Mark 10: 17-22, The Rich Young Ruler)

Day Twenty One/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-15T17:14:00.001-05:00

"The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe."

A very Wesleyan way of thinking.

More to the point, "You do not want to subject some sinful passion, an enmity, a hope, your life plan, or your reason to Jesus' commandment? Do not be surprised that you cannot receive the Holy Spirit, that you cannot pray, that your prayer for faith remains empty!

For the baptized believer being obedient is directly related to the experience of receiving God's grace and disobedience creates a barrier from that same grace.

While we may go through periods of doubt with related trials, temptations, etc., it seems that continuing to be in a "disciplined obedience" is the way through. Dangerous doubt is the kind that ceases the practices of a disciplined Christian life. Hope and obedience are directly related. Cynicism (the counter opposite of hope) is seen in the ceasing of the outward signs of obedience and would be a signal of a dangerous doubt that is a huge spiritual threat. One's faith is literally revealed in objective obedience. Keeping the disciplines is a clear ongoing sign of faith regardless of our emotional or intellectual context. A huge motivation for every form of outward daily Christian discipline. Lamp-posts along the way! This strikes me as a very encouraging. Motivation for the journey of hope!

Day Twenty/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-11T19:44:00.000-06:00

"Only the obedient believe."

Word play......

Action is belief. Belief is seen in action. Action therefore trumps ideology.
When you exchange the word ideology for theology it creates....invitation to humility...
If you do not act you by definition are a practical atheist or are you just an atheist pure and simple?
If an nonbeliever acts faithfully they are by definition what exactly...
Faith without works is dead. What exactly is works without faith?

Day Nineteen/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-11T19:10:00.000-06:00

"It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live."

Costly Grace....

hidden treasure (sell all to possess)
pearl of great price (sell all to possess)
if it causes you to stumble cast it out in order to possess
the door we must knock on to enter
costs your life, but response to costly action by God, it gives you life
condemns sin, but response to God's gift of justification
yoke of discipleship, but as response to God's gift the burden is easy and light

Day Eighteen/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-10T12:00:00.000-06:00

"For integrity's sake someone has to speak up for those among us who confess that cheap grace has made them give up following Christ, and that ceasing to follow Christ has made them lose the knowledge of costly grace."

It is common knowledge that more and more people understand themselves to be in some way a follower of Jesus but disconnected from an institutional expression of the faith. It is also true that the number of people understanding themselves to be within the boundary beginning with agnostic and ending with atheist is growing. Many of these people were at one time very active participants in a church. In spite of all the publicity surrounding mega-churches and all the recent emphasis on church renewal and a plethora a church consultants traveling to and fro, the percentage of the population professing Christianity is smaller in Europe and the US than ever before. This phenomenon can be sliced and diced in many ways and there are a myriad of reasons why this is the reality. But one thing is clear. The distance between what people usually understand the Gospel to be and the lived reality of what actual Christian communities can manage to embody is so great that the package really isn't credible to the thoughtful observer or the person on the street or to a growing number of those within Christian communities.

Day Seventeen/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-10T11:16:00.000-06:00

"Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church. Our struggle today is for costly grace."

The singular sentence doesn't do the entire passage justice. This entire passage is probably the most well known of D.B.'s reflections and maybe the most often quoted. Great piece of writing. Each paragraph begins with the phrase "cheap grace" and the reader hangs of each descriptive word or phrase with immediate recognition. Just superb and beautiful prose. The power of the text is this: It is just as devastatingly true, just as pin point accurate today as it was the day it was written. You could tack it to the door of almost any local church and the best within the congregation would have to confess, after reading it, that it is accurate.

Day Sixteen/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-10T10:41:00.000-06:00

"YOU ARE THE SALT"--NOT "You should be salt"!

The witness of the Christian is the communal experience that incarnates the beatitudes as a way of life. Witness is "being" the beatitudes. This is also what the Radical Reformers in the Anabaptist tradition understood as witness. In this context the beatitudes move from the world of the ideal to community standard. To take such texts with any measure of literalness this must be so. If we think about social life as a series of concentric circles emanating outward from small intimate associations to larger groups an argument can be made that the more intimate the group the more obtainable a "rule of life" will be. What an individual controls ends at the end of their nose. What a small group controls ends at the boundary of their group. Beyond the boundary things get progressively more complex and in the world of the nation-state the beatitudes are just platitudes. But reversing the journey and moving back toward the individual when can we begin to take the platitudes and make them beatitudes? Theoretically speaking a local church might be the place. When we take a look at the typical local church do we caste our eyes on a beatific vision or does it usually look more like the world outside?

Lenten Reflections

2010-03-08T20:19:00.001-06:00

When you are tired or discouraged how do you refuel?

When we are tired and discouraged we are vulnerable to a host of temptations. When you are empty so many unhealthy things seek to gain entry to fill the emptiness within. We can understand many addictions, on a psychological or spiritual level as attempts to be nourished by something that seems to medicate the void, pain or need we have.

When you are depleted where do you turn for renewal?

Many people I know are tapped out in several areas of their life, so some of the typical places people traditionally turn for strength are part of the problem. They are burned out on their job and when they go home they feel they are just going to another job with different tasks and responsibilities. Their church feels much the same as the job or home. The church needs something from you but right now you need to get some personal needs met. Church is one more place you are getting sucked dry. If the community of faith manages to be a context for intimate friendship the church may offer some respite but very often people discover that they have cultivated a number of acquaintances that don't add up to friendship.

How do you handle difficult times? How does the church as a corporate body confront difficult times? Where do we connect to the hope that will see us through?

Sunday, March 14, 2010 at New Covenant the message is:

Mark: 14: 32-40

"A Journey of Hope: Temptation"

Day Fifteen/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-08T16:38:00.000-06:00

"They will be offensive to the world...not recognition, but rejection will be their reward from the world from their word and deed."

The impression I get by reading D. B.'s commentary on The Beatitudes on a daily basis and experiencing the interplay of ideas and themes is much different from hearing a sermon on one Beatitude, for instance. For me it heightens the tension between the texts and commentary, on the one hand, and the realities "on the ground" so to speak as I understand them. My previous reflection on the use of violence is shocking when held up to the ideal even though everyone who isn't committed to nonviolent resistance might say something roughly like that. The chasm is great in regard to each of the Beatitudes but taken together the chasm seems even more daunting. How much tension between the ideal and the actual before the tension stretches credibility way too thin? Christians are very offensive to the world when they opt to take a literalistic approach to these teachings. Non-violent resistance normally elicits a good measure of disrespect from the person on the street up through the social pyramid but if you are not committed to that, well you are not too offensive on that count. People like me might be offensive to some because we place a lot of traditional parameters around when we would participate in violence (just war standards) but many non Christians accept such standards, so I'm actually in a big comfort zone. When I view the church through the lens of a local community of faith I don't see rejection as the typical reward handed out to individuals within the local community or the experience of the community as a whole. The church may be ignored because of a loss of credibility but that's not a rejection because the message causes reactivity and rejection. The large chasm I've been referring to continues unabated.

Day Forteen/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-08T11:25:00.001-06:00

"Jesus followers are called to peace."

"To do this they renounce violence and strife."

Most everyone agrees with the first statement. The second statement is about how we go about living out the peace we are called to. Here is where the rubber meets the road. Hypothetically almost every person who calls him/herself a Christian renounces violence and strife but beyond the theoretical ideal a different reality is normally acknowledged. You define when you will use violence and when and how you will be involved in strife, however this term is defined. For me, I would hope if I was in a position to protect potential victims from violence at the hands of someone I would want to be very effective at utilizing whatever violence is necessary to stop the perpetrator and defend myself in the process. I would even desire to be scary good at it since my goal is to deter the assailant by that knowledge or be completely successful in my attempt to defend others and myself.

Day Thirteen/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-08T10:58:00.000-06:00

"A pure heart is the simple heart of a child, who does not know about good and evil."

If by child D.B. means a person whose radical faith leads them to rely on God as a child must rely on others for every aspect of their survival, this is very true for the follower of Jesus. The second part of the sentence could be headed in a wrong direction. Again, we confront the world of the ideal in conflict with the real world. It is true that the young child as well as the mythic characters Adam and Eve do not "know" about good and evil but we generally assume such ignorance in adults is impossible and would be dangerous and irresponsible given the world in which we live. Christians want to be somehow be harmless as doves but the second half of the phrase about being wise a serpents is a counter-weight making the dove stuff possible. D.B. knew about good and evil. I would like to also believe he had the simple heart of a child in terms of his relationship with God.

Day Twelve/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-08T09:41:00.000-06:00

"These people without possessions, these strangers, these powerless, these sinners, these followers of Jesus live with him now also in the renunciation of their own dignity, for they are merciful."

Scholars typically understand the New Testament world as an "honor and shame" culture where words like honor, shame, dignity, and dishonor are on a continuum forming a pyramid in the social order. Everyone and every social interaction is understood to be related to this dominant template of understanding. I've never understood why scholars start out by leaving the impression that this is a phenomenon of the ancient, which implies that contemporary cultures are somehow not as focused on "honor and shame." To me more traditional cultures of the East and the Southern Hemisphere seem to be cultures operating along these same lines, which is the main reason the world of the bible is so naturally understood by people living in these areas. In the modern and post-modern West I don't see any real difference, except for the very important fact that Westerners try to be very adept at masking what is going on. It is not politically correct to be overtly elitist in the USA, so "smoke and mirrors" are used to cover over that fact that at the end of the day we are very similar to traditional societies in seeing social reality as hierarchical. This is a sign we may be more dishonest than traditional cultures but it is not clear that we feel any shame in that. We just think we are more clever and sophisticated in masking the realities than these other cultural expressions. Christians in the West should see this as particularly demonic and dangerous, much more threatening than the Roman world of the New Testament.

Terms like dignity and dishonor are socially constructed realities and for that reason they are particularly subject to manipulation on every side. Christians are subject to this same reality. We take things that others consider dishonorable (poor, meek, lowly, shameful) and re-frame the meanings in order to use the new meanings to destroy the dominant understanding of the terms. It's like gorilla warfare with words. The Beatitudes reflect this strategy, which should alert us to the fact that they are subject to dangerous
interpretations. Is it good to be poor? Is it poor in spirit? Is a meek person simply a dis-empowered person or are they drawing from a deeper strength? What is the difference in "healthy pride" and some other form of pride?

Day Eleven/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-06T19:42:00.000-06:00

"Disciples live with not only renouncing their own rights, but even renouncing their own righteousness. They get no credit themselves for what they do and sacrifice."

What has been glaringly true since B.H. to the present day is the fact that Christians as a group really aren't that different from non-Christians. Ideologies differ. A secular humanist lives by a very different framework than a Christian but in the end it is not apparent that a Christian is any more moral or has a better ethical sense than a secular humanist or anyone else for that matter. What is sometimes very surprising to the Christian is how often it becomes clear that the person outside the faith community is often morally superior in many ways. The reason for this is the fact that Christianity in general tends to make huge exclusive truth claims leading many to assume Christians somehow must have a superior moral life befitting these grandiose truth claims. In fact, many thoughtful people have questioned the exclusive nature of the truth claims based on the huge canyon between the claims made and the lived results. For the Christian to renounce their own righteousness would be one way to respond to the actual historic reality of things. The only righteousness we can claim is that which is found in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Day Ten/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-03T09:00:00.000-06:00

"No rights they might claim protect this community of strangers in the world. Nor do they claim any such rights, for they are the meek, who renounce all rights of their own for the sake of Jesus Christ."

D. B. continues his trek though the Beatitudes and the issues and problems continue to pile up, but this is nothing new. Are the texts hyperbole or do they represent some unreachable ideal? Christian ethics begins as answers to these questions are confronted. His own personal journey seems to contradict his commentary on the texts. It is questionable whether any liberation struggle is without use of power or some form of violence or threat of its use. The American Civil Rights Movement would be an example. While nonviolence was articulated by one arm of the struggle (King) other elements were clear that "by any means necessary" was justifiable (Malcolm X). Rioting in the streets and "illegal" protests signaled to those in control that the situation was unstable and negotiation seemed preferable to some form of collapse, plus protests against the Vietnam War, which were not always peaceful, further destabilized the social order. The use of power, sometimes used as implied threat and at other times more direct, changed the balance of power in the situation. The threat of possible economic ruin forced an end to the war and made possible a "negotiated settlement" to that chapter of the African American struggle. A far cry from the idealized world of the Beatitudes.

Day Nine/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-02T08:07:00.001-06:00

Referring to disciples...and in reference to the Beatitudes.

"They are those who cannot be brought into accord with the world, who cannot conform to the world"

Being in "accord" and "conforming" are two social expectations that have been orchestrated, in a very deliberate way, over the last several hundred years in the West. The boundaries for what is "normal" are increasingly narrowed. Today there are many reasons people can be told that they are outside the box or that they have failed or come up short. In school you are under constant observation in regard to behavior and take endless tests that are designed to track, observe, and organize students based on the collected data. There are winners and losers based on what happens to be valued in the system. Each year a new number of "psychiatric disorders" is "discovered" which puts another group beyond being a part of "normalized" society. Parents understand that "normal" is a child that demonstrates an aptitude for math and science (business, engineering, medicine and related fields) in the classroom. These are skills that are deemed valuable in the marketplace. If you can teach these things in the classroom you also obtain some modest rank, although much lower than those who use these skills in the "real world" of business and commerce. By the way, you understand your rank by how you get paid. "Normal" people get paid the most. People who are abnormal get to be in mental institutions, prisons or on the street. Between the "normal" and "abnormal" exists a pyramid ranking system with rewards and ever narrowing parameters defining "normal." The farther down line you are the more you are objectified, studied and observed by those who are up stream.

D.B. rejects this as "the world" that a disciple will never come to terms with. The disciple doesn't just reject it but joins the "abnormal" in solidarity taking on the abuse, the constant disrespect that is the lot of those who are the rejects of the system. When you go to church is this what the Gospel is understood to be or is it actually very directly associated with what "normal" society values? Just asking....

Day Eight/Bonhoeffer

2010-03-01T10:19:00.000-06:00

"The disciples are needy in every way"

D.B. elaborates on just how "poor" the disciples seem to be. He says "the disciples" so his descriptions relate to the original followers, which is a necessary move since the descriptions raise all sorts of questions otherwise. It is unclear just how D.B. would apply his descriptions to followers of a later time but I think he would see these characteristics as constituting a "general guide" for disciples of every age, which means the "fat is in the fire" when taking stock of discipleship across time.

They have no security...most contemporary disciples in my neck of the woods seem reasonably secure. Arguing from exceptions to the general rule is begging the question.

No property to call their own....disciples have property and other assets. A large local church is a fairly large business enterprise. I'm sure the assets of an large institution like the Roman Church are simply astounding. Where and how did they get all that stuff? The combined assets of the United Methodist Church is a microscopic fraction of that these assets would still be impressive.

No piece of earth they could call their own....see above and just imagine the combined acreage of all Christian groups.

No earthly community to which they might fully belong....well, unless we happen to think the church is a heavenly community and not an earthly one, we belong to a community

They have no spiritual power of their own...there are plenty of people using power in all its multiple forms in a local church or denomination. Whose power is it? Is it the power of God? Is it spiritual?

They do not have experience or knowledge they can refer to and which could comfort them....for Christians at least 2000 years of experience, which we call tradition and knowledge, which we call theology, and we are always looking to both for comfort. Does it offer comfort or does it serve to make us comfortable?

The guide quotes Matthew 5:3 (poor in spirit) as a reference but D.B. looks to Luke 6: 20 as the benchmark (spirit does not qualify poor). Spiritual is a slippery word and once it gains entry anything can be justified. The word can be associated with both "power" and "poor". Wow. Does the word actually have any concrete meaning? Is it valuable because any meaning can nest there?

The guide has a suggestion for prayer that continues to compound the issues.

"Pray for the 'rich' that they may have compassion for the 'poor.' Pray for the 'poor' that they may have compassion for the 'rich.'"

This prayer makes an assumption that the dynamics of power remain unchanged. A rich person's compassion can be a tool to keep the present order in place. As to the poor, are they being "compassionate" when they see the "spiritual" ( that word again!) burden of the rich and take some of the material (or is it spiritual?) burden from them?

What is the actual focus of this prayer? Very slippery.....

Love and Knowledge

2010-02-27T11:43:00.000-06:00

Noticed this while surfing the net...if you didn't know who wrote it you might think it was coming from a thoughtful Christian.

by Bertrand Russell

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have scrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that the saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and thought it might seem too good for human life, this is what - at last - I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Day Seven/Bonhoeffer

2010-02-27T11:10:00.000-06:00

"It is our securing things for tomorrow which makes us so insecure today"

"The more a community of faith focuses on securing its future the more insecure it will be today."
"The more a church is obsessed with its survival the more anxious it becomes."
"The more a church is obsessed with its survival the more it secures its demise."
"The more a church is obsessed with being secure the more insecure its future will be."
"The more a church is obsessed with control the more out of control its future will be."

Just thought I would do some word play to see what turns up.

Day Six/Bonhoeffer

2010-02-27T10:34:00.000-06:00

"But where is the boundary between the goods I am supposed to use and the treasure I am not supposed to have? If we turn the statement around and say, What your heart clings to is your treasure, then we have the answer. It can be a very modest treasure; it is not a questions of size. Everything depends on your heart, on you."

D.B. wrote these words over 50 years ago. Since that time lifestyle issues associated with our economy have grown, like the economy, exponentially. We are so market driven today that a major reaction in the market causes every facet of our society to fixate on the news associated with commercial life. The idea of retirement investing as it is practiced today in the US would probably shock D.B. and confirm much of his thinking regarding material possessions. Today the market based economy, the stock market, and large corporations have more control over our daily existence than D.B. could ever image in his wildest dreams. To answer the personal questions D.B. poses we have to start with getting clear about the fact that "money" and everything that navigates around that word, frames whatever personal reflection we may have. Our heart and our head need to be deprogrammed (reformatted). Economic forces own us body, mind and soul.

Day Five/Bonhoeffer

2010-02-25T14:10:00.000-06:00

"How can God entrust great things to those who will not gratefully receive the little things from God's hand"?

Recently I came across a book, which chronicled the development of discipline and punishment in the modern West. As I scanned through the book for a first look I happened to notice a page, which mentioned the increasing emphasis on "little things" as institutions developed protocols for both discipline and punishment. I was surprised to learn that this writer saw a connection between the emphasis on "little things" in the Christian monastic tradition and the focus on this in areas of social control. Christian spirituality early on developed a focus on "little things" as spiritual a discipline for molding character. Ordering the day, repetitive times of prayer, discipline in various forms molded the person. At some point the focus went secular and various institutions such as prisons and schools began to understand the importance of controlling every "little thing" in a given social context in order to gain mastery of the minds and souls of the people in these institutions. Powerful stuff, especially in the wrong hands. We are molded for good or ill in a lot of little ways during each and every day. Going though the day and learning to thank God for all the little things that are graceful is a discipline worthy of attempting.

Day Four/Bonhoeffer

2010-02-23T10:18:00.000-06:00

"But the longest part of the day belongs to work"

Most everyone can relate to this. D. B. now reflects on work in relation to prayer. First, the whole idea of a pastor being called to their type of work creates all sorts of issues. When you place all sorts of theology around what you do for a living it is an accident waiting to happen. My wife works in the financial sector and I've seen her nurture her staff over the years seeing that they got good remuneration for their services, arranging their jobs to allow them to be with their families as needed, being there as a friend as well as a supervisor when difficult times arose. Basically having a huge impact on the lives of several people and their families. Beyond that, she has had a positive impact on the day to day operations of the business, which affects a large number of people. In many ways I think she has had a greater influence on these lives than I have had with the people I come in contact with and I am supposedly in "the ministry business". She is with them in the workplace, where most people spend the majority of their time. There is a lot of one on one interaction on a daily basis. When you can have an impact on daily lifestyle issues and paychecks you can rack up a lot of measurable ways you have made a contribution to people. I would say she has fulfilled her calling but there isn't this big ideology of "being called" that seems to have developed around pastoral vocation. At the end of the day Jan can say that her employment is "just a job" or a means to an end, but in an ironic twist this seems harder to say if you have this sense of "call" associated with church related work. It looks like a job, acts like a job, remunerates like a job, you can loose it or get released from it like a job, but somehow you still have an ideology that leads you to put it in some other category. It's not just a job, at least according to the ordination vows. But if something looks like, smells like, acts like, feels like, is understood like...but is somehow framed by your institution and you in some other way...what is really going on with that, beyond the obvious fact that the arrangement seems to be an accident waiting to happen?

Day Three/Bonhoeffer

2010-02-23T09:04:00.001-06:00

"The wasted time we are ashamed of, the temptations we succumb to, the weakness and discouragement in our work, the disorder and the lack of discipline in our thinking and in our dealings with other people--all these very frequently have their cause in our neglect of morning prayer."

Since his description of the human condition, without morning prayer, seems to reflect some of the things I see in my life I would be foolish to argue against a consistent discipline of daily prayer plus why disagree with someone who seems way up ahead of me in terms of walking with Jesus. In addition to that it seems the entire weight of Christian tradition agrees that prayer is foundational to personal spirituality.

That said, prayer raises a lot of issues...some scattershooting...

In the services where I worship it is safe to say that we have received more prayer requests for our US military personnel (every Sunday) than for the people of Iraq. Ditto for the ratio of personal needs vs. tragedies such as Haiti. The same scenario holds across the board...personal and local over whatever....

Prayer often looks and feels like naval gazing, so much so that pastors committed to mission brainstorm about how to somehow direct the "prayer time" to issues beyond the personal. In an ironic twist pastors are concerned that the prayer time not be an exercise in hospital chaplaincy, especially if you are trying to attract younger people. Prayer as a run down of the hospital chaplaincy list just doesn't seem to cut it. Is this just a contextual issue or does it raise some issues about the nature of prayer? Someone might respond by asking why we wouldn't pray for this or that since God "cares" for the sparrow that is here today and gone tomorrow. You can plug in whatever you want under the title of "this or that" and come up with some funny comedy central material.

The Lord's Prayer as good place to start think about what prayer is about. Hallow God's name, bringing in God's kingdom, recognizing and doing God's will in this world, sustenance for the day, forgiveness/reconciliation for us and others, overcoming temptation, affirming God as the origin and sustenance of all things. It seems to me that these are things we affirm and act upon more than narrow requests. I can see how D. B. would see such prayer as an "ordering of the day".

Out of bounds thought: Christian theology recommends not blaming God for anything bad but I can appreciate the usually unspoken counter idea that you won't be asking God for a bunch of stuff either.

Second Sunday of Lent

2010-02-22T17:32:00.002-06:00

What do people say about you? Do they really know you? Sometimes we think we our image is a unified whole and it all fits together and at other times we may look at ourselves and see several images of ourselves.
The world is very image conscious. The circus that we might call “The Tiger Woods Saga” reflects the importance placed on image and the issues that are front and center when the crafted image, for whatever reason, does not line up with reality.
When we think about self-image we turn more to our interior, to what we actually think about ourselves and to how that might relate to what others think about us. A lot of people in Jesus’ day had opinions and images regarding Jesus but he seemed to have a personal definition that never wavered as he went from a somewhat popular rabbi to a person executed as a common Roman criminal. He didn’t travel to Jerusalem for the accolades of the people and when that did occur he seemed unmoved by external circus that transpired.
Self –esteem is a big issue in our society. Plastic surgery and the many books on pop-psychology reflect this obsession. Some people look great on the outside with all the social trappings of success, while they are dying on the inside.
This coming Sunday, “Journey of Hope: Self-Esteem” (Mark 11: 1-11)

Day Two/Bonhoeffer

2010-02-22T13:43:00.001-06:00

"Therefore, we do not ask what this text has to say to other people. For those of us who are preachers that means we will not ask how we would preach or teach this text, but what it has to say to us personally."

This would be reading for personal transformation. This can be very unsettling. It may uncover some things that are typically sublimated in the rush to the pulpit. I have a lot of personal feelings, thoughts, arguments with texts that never see the light of day or they come out in a class discussion but with some of the edge dulled a bit for public consumption. I've been teaching a series based on the Psalms and many of my personal answers to the supplied questions are kind of like the attitude of those "politically incorrect" Psalms, which we quickly try to interpret with the help of the "larger tradition" that is more acceptable. The Psalms are fertile ground for uncovering repressed feelings and thoughts. A Psalm speaks of The Shepherd of the Flock and we are the sheep of His pasture and I'm thinking, "Who wants to be a lamb"? Better to be a hawk or an eagle. Years ago in a men's study group one of these pastoral texts came up and a man said very openly that he didn't like the text at all since sheep are dumb and weak. Last week I threw out the question about being a hawk rather than a lamb to a group of women and in unison they all said, "That's because you are a man!". Good point and very true. Being a man and a Christian just presents all sorts of problems. But a question to ponder: Was D. B. a lamb or a hawk? He was led to the slaugher but his legacy is understood in a heroic way. Was his "heroic act" done simply as a human being and disconnected from his Christian faith? Remember that he was part of a military plot to kill Hitler, which meant he had to ignore his earlier theological commitments. Not a very sheepish thing to do and some Christians wouldn't do what D. B. attempted, but maybe these folk are just a bunch of poor lost sheep.

Day One/Bonhoeffer

2010-02-22T12:15:00.001-06:00

"The burden is light... Discipleship is joy"

One way of approaching this is to say that if your discipleship is a burden and joyless it is a sure sign that whatever you are doing it isn't following Jesus. Something can be a great challenge and not seem to be a burden or it can be the biggest burden in the world. The key question is, "What makes the difference"? In many local communities of faith it seems that the "work" of the church has become the biggest burden in the world. If something is true, and the church makes huge truth claims for itself and its message, then why is the work so burdensome, and it seems that everyone is worn out with the weight of it all? Here defeat and regression is re-framed as the challenge of discipleship and folk are forever talking about planting seeds. When there is conversation about "harvest" they are usually "harvesting" something very different from what they planted. "Growth" that can't be measured in normal terms, (two plus two equals five but there's a method in the madness). Here the frustration of forever planting seeds is sublimated and made to be a test of faith where you come to understand the mysterious wisdom of two plus two supposedly equaling five or you understand it better by and by. You can confront this dilemma by creating a cleavage between the message of the gospel (joy in the midst of challenge, the burden is light, discipleship is joy) and the institutional form (the burden), which is either one more "slight of hand" maneuver or an answer worth considering. D.B. was on the outskirts of the institutional church, maybe even beyond it, so his burden wasn't the maintenance of some institutional form. His challenge was living in the "apocalypse of his generation" and deciding to be a disciple in the midst of those realities. A place where one might choose to be a part of a plot to commit violence even though you have had a commitment to non-violence. That would seem to be an unbelievable burden to bear. Your theology (ideology/ideals) in shambles and black and white replaced with shades of gray. This seems to be more of a burden than the heaviness of any institutional form, but D.B. does not agree. For him the burden lies with those whose discipleship exists within the institutional game of seed planting that results in a harvest that isn't really a harvest after all.

First Sunday of Lent

2010-02-22T11:59:00.004-06:00

"With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere”. (C. S. Lewis)
Well, we’ve formally begun the journey as of Ash Wednesday and we are assuming an Easter destination, so let’s believe the trip is not a vicious circle. It is a time to move toward a destination!
Wednesday night I talked about some of my traveling companions on my trips and I had some recent pictures proving it can sometimes be a good thing to go on a family vacation. Think about a time when a friend lifted you up when you were down. What difference did it make in your life? On one of my first mission trips it rained every day, we had a bunch of junior high kids scaling ladders to work on two story homes; we had some kids that had the attention span that really was way too small to actually measure. We ended up leaving one work group behind as they tried to finish the job in very challenging conditions. It was so bad that one of the best youth ministers in the region vowed to never do a junior high trip again unless it was simply a recreational trip and she didn’t! It was one of my most memorable mission trips, not because everything that could go wrong did go wrong, but because of the adult companions that went along with me. We managed to laugh and joke our way through the whole week. When we got back we had a bunch of “inside stories” to tell about all the drama that unfolded and the silly things that kids do and say and we had some stories about some adults who need more supervision than some of the kids. Some adults had some new nick-names but just how did they come by those new monikers? The stories grew with each passing year! They quickly became legendary! I still feel close to those people and I haven’t seen them in years. If they ran into me they might address me with the nickname I got during that week and I would answer with great pride and no shame and with laughter too.
Feeling alone is a very frightening experience. Being with others can be a painful experience. Sometimes married couples get in the way of one another’s relationship to Christ. Parents can get in the way if they have issues with their child’s spiritual direction. Friends can lead someone away from discipleship with Jesus. Who you hang with makes a difference. They can pull you up or drag you down. Have you ever vacationed with someone that tried to ruin the trip in some way? You were friends before the trip and afterwards, well, they are someone who is an acquaintance! This Sunday, “A Journey of Hope: Choosing Your Traveling Companions”. Who is with you on your journey of hope?

Pastor Mark

A Journey With Dietrich Bonhoeffer

2010-02-15T17:39:00.003-06:00

For a long time I have had a book on my library shelf a volume published by Augsburg Press, 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, designed perfectly for daily reflection during Lent. Along with my Lenten reflections 2010, which are based on a sermon series for Lent 2010, I'm going to see if I can reflect each day on the assigned Bonhoeffer passage each day of Lent 2010. This is quite a change of reading habits from Advent '09. I happened to pick up a collection readings from the writings of Frederick Nietzsche and ended up reading it during Advent, which I found both stimulating and troubling. F.N. is a worthy critic of Christianity. I'll go to another German for Lent and see what develops. The Bonhoeffer book is edited by Ron Klug, copyright 2007 if you want to journey along with me. Click the link above to go to Amazon.com for purchase. Kindle version is available.

I'm getting packed for the trip!!

2010-02-15T16:10:00.000-06:00

I'm getting my backpack filled up for the trip that's departing on Ash Wednesday!! Each Sunday and at our special weekday services I'll be pulling some things out of my pack each week to help me talk about the "journey theme" that is the focus of each service of worship. There's no telling what I will have in that old backpack each week or what I may have in there to pass out to you during the service. Do you pack well for your trips and leave plenty of time to get everything organized and in its place or are you one of those last minute packers purchasing items upon arrival?

Lenten Reflections 2010

2010-02-15T15:30:00.002-06:00

What traveling frustrations have you experienced? Would you have gone on the trip anyway?

When my oldest son was in the spring of his senior year of high school we decided to give him a senior trip with two of his high school buddies. We drove to Colorado in an old Chevy van that had made many family camping trips and had also been “driven hard and put up wet” pulling trailers on mission trips. Somewhere in New Mexico the van’s transmission blew and we were stranded on a stretch of highway about 80 miles from the nearest town. I told the family to secure the van and started trying to hitch a ride to the nearest town up the road. A fellow traveler took mercy on me and gave me a lift into town. I arranged to have the van towed into town and rode back to the van with the wrecker. Upon arriving back in town I arranged to have the transmission fixed and proceeded to the nearest UM church to see if per chance I could borrow a church van (with the promise of a generous offering) to continue the trip. Luckily, the van broke down late on a Wednesday afternoon and by the time I got into town the church was open for evening activities and I found the pastor. She threw me the keys and as far as I know didn’t bother about checking with anyone else before giving me the go ahead. While spending the night we ran into another family that was stranded because transmission issues and we invited them to pile into the van since we were both headed to the Colorado Springs airport for a flight to the slopes. The church van’s suspension was in poor condition and with all the extra weight the steep mountain passes had the tires bouncing around like basketballs! We got to the airport on time and caught our flights to Purgatory Co. We had a great time and managed to get the van back to the church with a generous gift to the church’s coffers for their help. My van was repaired when I returned and some more cash exited my wallet, but I had managed to get our guests and the family to the resort on time and had a dramatic adventure along the way. I would have gone on the trip anyway. In fact, except for fixing the transmission on a van that I was soon destined for trade-in, the unexpected events created some funny antics on the trip, which I happen to value! On Ash Wednesday we are beginning a journey that will take us to a destination we call Easter. Travel themes will be the order of the day. I hope you will travel with me. I like to travel in a group….Let’s go!!

Feb, 17, 2010 Ash Wednesday

“A Journey of Hope: Risking Adventure” (Mark 8: 31-37)

Feb. 21, 2010 First Sunday of Lent

“A Journey of Hope: Traveling Companions” (Mark 10: 13-16)

Feb. 28, 2010 Second Sunday of Lent

“A Journey of Hope: Self Esteem” (Mark 11: 1-11)

March 7, 2010 Third Sunday of Lent

“A Journey of Hope: Work” (Mark: 10: 35-44)

March 14, 2010 Fourth Sunday of Lent

“A Journey of Hope: Temptation” (Mark 14: 32-40)

March 21, 2010 Fifth Sunday of Lent

“A Journey of Hope: Money” (Mark 10: 17-22)

March 28, 2010 Palm/Passion Sunday

“A Journey of Hope: Suffering” (Mark 14: 43-64)

April 1, 2010 Holy Thursday

“A Journey of Hope: Nourishment” (Mark 14: 12-26)

April 2, 2010 Good Friday

“A Journey of Hope: Discovering Who We Are” (Mark 15: 1-39)

April 4, 2010 Easter Sunday

“A Journey of Hope: The Final Destination” (Mark 16: 1-8)

Each week I’ll be emailing members of my congregation a brief pre-service message and then one to follow up.

Peace,

Mark Moore

Mark T. Moore

Naked Black Hole Builds Future Galactic Dream Home

2010-01-05T14:58:00.000-06:00

Naked Black Hole Builds Future Galactic Dream Home

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Yo Galaxy

2010-01-05T14:57:00.000-06:00

More amazing stuff!!

Yo Galaxy’s Mama Is a Black Hole

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Elusive Supermassive-Black-Hole Mergers Finally Found

2010-01-05T14:32:00.000-06:00

As per my Christmas Eve sermon, which began with a reference to black holes. Interesting stuff!

Elusive Supermassive-Black-Hole Mergers Finally Found

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Ancient Role Models – Learning From Those Who Didn’t Get It Right … At First

2009-11-19T08:15:00.001-06:00

Ancient Role Models – Learning From Those Who Didn’t Get It Right … At First Learning from the book of Acts...true and challenging

Justice Revival

2009-11-03T11:35:00.000-06:00

Great information on the Justice Revival coming to Dallas in mid-November!! Check out the link below. Justice Revival

The Presence Based Church: The New Order of Levites (Chapter Eight)

2009-10-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

Chapter Eight

See the paragraph on the bottom of page 166 regarding a new generation of Levites and the quote from George Barna, beginning at the bottom of the page. Your response?

See the quote on page 167 from Let the Nations Be Glad, by John Piper, in regard to the foundational nature of worship. Your response?

See Teykl's reflection regarding worship understood as a once a week one hour exercise on page 169. Your response?

"The Holy Spirit inspires praise and can open mouths and hearts to bring forth expressions of love for God. He can breathe life into liturgy and stimulate creativity. He pulls back the natural veil to reveal the splendor and wonder of Jesus, the new Ark." (p. 170)

See the first two paragraphs on page 171 describing the relationship of personal worship/praise to the corporate gathering of God's people. John Wimber's quote follows.

Note the wardrobe of praise, the seven aspects of praise reflected in the Old Testament, page 175.

Note the Matt Redman quote on page 176 regarding the unscripted and unpredictable in worship and the following remarks on Korean Christians use of posture as a mode of worship.

Questions 2-7, p. 182 will be the focus of our time together.

The Presence Based Church: Presence Based Worship (Chapter Seven)

2009-10-14T16:14:00.001-05:00

Presence Based Worship

In chapters five and six Teykl reflects on his theological framework for understanding the presence based church. He now turns to present day forms of "presence based churches" and describes some characteristics of these churches.

A passion for worship is the foundation on the church.

The primary question is not about attracting people. It is about the desire to attract the presence of God first and foremost.

It is not so much how we worship but why we worship, according to Teykl.

Three things are central to presence based worship: waiting, praising, prayer, and development of prayer rooms in local churches. On the concept of waiting see the story of Pine Castle UMC, in Orlando, FL. (p.152). The best Pentecostal worship is familiar with "waiting on the Lord" and the traditional early morning gatherings of Korean Christians for their prayer time would seem to reflect this as well. This is not typically well known in Western mainline denominations, with Pine Castle UMC being an exception to the rule.

On page 153, Teykl gives a good description of how a worship leader functions in this context: dynamic, fluid, direction based on how God is moving in the service, etc.

On page 154, Teykl describes a church that ceased their usual forms of worship for a time to seek to connect with the God who inhabits the form, which is similar to Pine Castle, that is waiting on the Lord.

Every aspect of church life beginning with worship is understood to be "sitting at the feet of Jesus," which is another way of describing a communities Christology (centered on Jesus, following Jesus, being in the presence of Jesus, etc.) These churches are Christo-centric and worship centered prior to any understanding of program or even mission. The church exists where the Holy Trinity is worshiped, the Word of God is preached and the sacraments (baptism, Lord's Table) are administered.

Production values are clearly secondary to sincerity when it comes to worship.

The questions on page 164 relate well to the discussion of the chapter, especially 2,3,6, & 7.

Living on Purpose: Seeking First the Vocation of the Kingdom (Chapter Seven)

2009-10-13T17:18:00.002-05:00

Seeking First the Vocation of the Kingdom

The subject of this chapter is our "vocation" to be a follower of Jesus in whatever context we are in and to remain especially vigilant to see "calling" as the something every Christian should possess.

"Those of us who claim to be followers of Christ need to recognize that faith isn't just about showing up at church and keeping things rolling. The call to follow Christ is a call for every believer to commit single-mindedly to a missio0n that calls us beyond ourselves." (p.168)

"We have come to rely on paid 'surrogate servants' to serve in our place. The problem is that there are not enough paid pastors, youth workers, Christian educators, missionaries, or development workers to deal with these growing needs . Unless we remember that all disciples are called into active mission, we could miss God's best for us, and many of those in need could miss discovering how much God cares about them." (p. 177)

Below is a statement meant to be "tongue in cheek" but in reality it catches the persona of more than a few pastors, which by the way, probably makes most parents feel much more comfortable with the "vocational call" of their pastor, but this conversation is laughable fantasy as I explain below.

After Jesus has finished his "commencement address" at the university the scene concludes...

"Fortunately, our pastor has a much more practical take on this whole business of life after graduation. He says there is a businessman in the church who could help us really find good paying jobs. He also knows a dealer who will help us get really good loans. (We can finally get that BMW we always wanted.) He knows we are committed to God the church and all that stuff. We assure him that we will show up at church when we can and give when we are able just like our parents. Cool!" (p. 184)

And my take on this...

Actually, these young adults may get the good paying job and the BMW but the take about being committed to God and "all that stuff" and having an interest in "showing up" at church and "giving when we are able" just like our parents reflects a narrow sliver of fantasy out of an "evangelical mind-set." In reality, "just like their parents" means this: good job/BMW minus all the other faith stuff, if in fact they were ever exposed to "church and all that other stuff," which is highly unlikely at best. The pastor would never have to help a young adult "get realistic" about the rules of success. They learned that from their parents, their church and their schools from the "get-go" and I must add, also from their pastor, which makes the Sine's attempt at mild cynical humor even more tragically hilarious than they even imagine!

One of the primary reasons the Sine's would give for writing the book is this very issue. If a church's spiritual formation is typically and easily over run by non-Christian values then something is wrong with how that church understands discipleship or maybe the church really doesn't do discipleship as it has been traditionally understood.

The Presence Based Church Chapter Six: Jesus The New Ark

2009-10-05T15:54:00.001-05:00

Chapter Six: Jesus: The New Ark

Teykl will now relate the historic function of the ark to Jesus.

The ark had limited access to the people but Jesus sets up residence in the disciple and we meet with God in the Holy Meal.

The ark was central in the wilderness camp and now Jesus must be central to the Christian. Currently, what theologians call Christology, our understanding of Jesus and the place he occupies in our community of faith is considered vital for staying on track as a faithful believing community.

Teykl spends the rest of the chapter showing from the New Testament how Jesus reflected the character of God as the ark reflected the character of God. In Jesus God communicates essential understandings of Godself.

Shows God's power and authority

Communicated God's will to us

Gives us the victory over "our enemies"

Demonstrates God's favor and delight toward us

Confirmed God's mystery and uniqueness

Atonement for sin

In Jesus the "temple" becomes the Body of Christ, the gathered Christian community

Living on Purpose: Seeking First the Kingdom in Community (Chapter 6)

2009-10-05T15:32:00.001-05:00

Chapter Six: Seeking First the Kingdom in Community

A key summary of the central theme of the chapter is:

"We strongly believe that the first call of the gospel isn't to proclamation (though we are committed to evangelism). Nor do we believe the first call of the gospel is to social action (though we are devoted to helping the poor). We believe the first call of the gospel of Christ is to incarnation. Only as we begin to flesh out something of the right-side-up values of the kingdom do we have any basis to speak or to act. We need to create communities of subversion that enable believers to resist and subvert the seductions of Boom City. But we also need to create communities of worship, celebration, and service that reflect a very different vision for the good life and a better future." (p. 143)

Actually, a good general statement of what the entire book is trying to articulate.

Tom and Christine take up a theme that has has become increasingly popular over the past 20 years or so. Namely, criticism of Western societies profoundly individualistic philosophy of life. They see this cultural value as directly increasing the rate of depression and suicide currently on the rise in our communities.

They also point out that various forms of "community" are marketed as substitutes for what they would understand as true community (Harley Davidson riding clubs as an example and similar consumer related associations, etc.).

The Sine's see much of the church's "community" as much like the secular versions currently available in our society. The Sine's quote Mike Riddell (Threshold of the Future) in regard to typical values around which "community" develops in the church, "Christians buy into 'middle class aspirations such as consumerism, individualism, careerism, and security.'" These are the actual values that shape the typical local church, according to the Sines.

The Sine's take on typical church sociology is held by many observers of the church scene in the US. People go to the church like they might go to the local mall, looking for a program to meet their needs and specifications, etc. If unavailable continue shopping around.

The upshot is that people who actually come to the church seeking authentic community find it lacking since the church is no more than an imitation of the community found in our consumer society.

The Sine's give their theological take on community by understanding a gathered community of faith as the "new family" of each follower of Jesus rather than a place to come to obtain services for you and yours. Families don't normally market programs. They nurture, mentor, care, offer discipline, etc. The first disciples of Jesus and the church in the book of Acts are the first places the Sine's look for images of the "community" of faith.

Some characteristics of a church that is truly faithful in the task of creating community:

More relational and less institutional

Cultivates and lives counter-cultural values. The community is a place to nurture and maintain these values.

Primarily missional as opposed to meeting own perceived needs. Not a lot of money is spent to do what is traditionally known as programming.

Centered on vital worship as foundational

Preaching that reflects counter-cultural values

Churches DNA reflects the importance of people actively listening for the voice of God as per life covenant material, etc. That is, it is understood as what everyone does as part of living their Christian life. Following Jesus on the road of discipleship is accepted as the reason for the church's existence.

Small group life (not Sunday School) is second only to the value of worship. Everyone participates in a small group as the second foundation of their spirituality. Again this is accepted as the bedrock DNA of the church. Small groups offer the accountability in regard to staying committed to the intentional life outlined in the life covenant.

Referring to churches that attract young adults (people in their 20s and 30s) the Sine's reiterate the persona of these communities of faith: no bureaucracies, no committees, no formal programs and rely on a relational model of being church.

Wringing Our Hands or … ?

2009-09-30T21:38:00.001-05:00

Good article about getting priorities straight in the church. Wringing Our Hands or … ?

Defining and Measuring Transformation

2009-09-30T21:26:00.001-05:00

Good review of what a healthy church should look like. Defining and Measuring Transformation

Living on Purpose: Creating a Way of Life You Can Love (chapter 5)

2009-09-30T15:39:00.001-05:00

Chapter Five: Creating a way of Life You can Love

The Sine's talk more specifically about whole-life faith now using the word "stewardship" but the stewardship they refer to remains much broader than money.

The undisciplined life leads to problems in two specific areas: the vitality of our faith and the vitality of our church and its mission.

The Sine's see a related issue affecting our individual faith and corporate life: Misunderstandings regarding the nature of whole-life faith, especially in the area of stewardship.

Myth of blessing model (prosperity Gospel)

Myth of tithe model (whole-life faith does not mean just 10% of your life, resources, etc.

Myth of down-scaling model (we shouldn't really be content with downsizing the American Dream, important as that might be, but we should be seeking to reinvent it, that is, replacing it with some other vision of the good life)

Focusing on freeing up both time and money is one way to begin different life-style commitments.

In regard to our life-style, the Sine's make a unique contribution by recommending a series of weekly/yearly celebrations, including observing the Sabbath in more ways than church attendance, and celebrating the rhythm of the church calendar with festivities in our private homes. Here the Sine's highlight celebrations/conviviality as significant for our families and communities of faith.

Presence Based Church: The Ark of the Covenant (chapter 5)

2009-09-30T13:48:00.000-05:00

This chapter simply deals with the function of the Ark and in chapter six the Ark will be interpreted though the lens of Jesus.

Purpose of the Ark

1. From the Ark, God displayed his power and authority.

2. From the Ark God communicated his will to them.

3. From the Ark his Presence gave them victory over their enemies.

4. From the Ark, God's Presence demonstrated his favor and delight for them.

5. From the Ark, he established his mystery and uniqueness

6. From the Ark, he offered atonement for sin.

The Presence Based Church Chapter Four "The Presence"

2009-09-22T16:06:00.003-05:00

This chapter is important as it sets the theological rationale for his understanding of worship. In my opinion, this part of the book, coming at a critical point in his argument, seems weak and creates a number of questions about his theological foundation for Christian worship.

Teykl turns to biblical metaphors found primarily in the first five books of the bible as ways to understand the presence of God as a community of faith.

"The Presence" of God, what some have called, "The Tremendous (terrible, awesome) mystery" creates a myriad of responses from human beings: joy, fear, terror, gratitude, etc.

Concealed in clouds/revelation yet mystery, revealed yet hidden

Fire/think of the human reactions to the presence of fire both comforting and dangerous

Terrible and terrifying (Romans 11: 22) "the severity of God" as per Teykl, also the idea of God's judgment and the related idea that worship consisted of doing all things as they had been instructed or face consequences.

The voice of God: The "call of God" either as an inner perception or understood as some audible voice

Teykl understands Christians as standing in the tradition of the Levites, orchestrating the worship of God as the a primary vocation of God's covenant people.

Discussion Questions (p. 95)

Discussion question three is a good question to discuss our personal experiences of God's presence and many thoughts, emotions, experiences associated with that.

Question five is an important question since the Old Testament is not as familiar as the New Testament in the experience of many Christians but that doesn't mean it is any less authoritative. Why is that so, or is it?

Question six goes to the heart of or understanding of God and to the heart of some of the images of God in the Bible, especially those that seem uncomfortable. What do you make of this?

Additional Question

Do you think Teykl's use of these selected images/metaphors is a good theological base for a Christian's understanding of Christian worship? Why or why not?

Living on Purpose: Setting Goals for a Whole-Life Faith

2009-09-22T11:56:00.000-05:00

Setting Goals for a Whole-Life Faith

The off-ramp 7 questions and exercises on page 94 are a good way to set the stage to begin goal setting. Keep in mind that the Sine's understand Christian faith as essentially "counter-cultural" in orientation and Christian faith is to have impact in our personal, moral and social/cultural context. They call this "whole-life faith".

Setting Goals for Your Spiritual Journey

Study of Scripture (what, individual or group, etc.)

Devotional reading of the Bible and other devotional material and prayer (various forms). Usually understood as practiced daily. When, where and how long?

Specific areas of growth for your discipleship such as participation in a discipleship group, commitment to weekly worship, commitment to focus on some aspect of your discipleship (improve a character virtue, specifically connect with people who are socially vulnerable, etc.) How, when, where, how much time spent?

Setting Goals for Your Kingdom Vocation

"The question we need to answer is, 'How does God want me to implement my mission statement in ministry to others?' What is one intentional way you can seek to advance God's kingdom in your workplace, your community, or through your home and family?"

Setting Goals for Your Intellectual Disciplines

Commitment to access quality news with a view to seek source(s) covering both national and world news and also sources outside your native country.

Subscribe to at least one quality weekly/monthly news periodical.

Subscribe to at least one quality Christian periodical.

Read at least one quality Christian book per month or commit to taking a class(s) that gives you the tools to understand and live your Christian life more faithfully. Keep in mind that "whole-life faith" seeks to detect where God is at work in the world and where disciples can be God's presence in the world. This means that taking a college class can be a very real spiritual discipline if it helps you understand the world better and causes you to ask meaningful questions about what is going on around us. In regard to books, for many people a goal of one book per quarter would be a good beginning.

Setting Goals for Your Relationships

Some possible questions to consider are the following:

What might you do to cultivate a better relationship with members of your immediate family?

Do you need to protect some time to be with a family member one on one?

Beyond the family, is there someone that you need to mentor?

How might your home become a place of hospitality for people in your circle on influence?

Is there a friend or family member you need to be reconciled to?

Do you need to set aside time just to be with friends?

Do you need to set aside time to be alone?

Have you scheduled family recreation as part of family time together?

Do you know someone who doesn't have their family as a support? What could you do to "adopt" them, especially in regard to holidays/special occasions?

Setting Goals for Your Creative Disciplines

Hobbies and interests outside our work and other obligations are important and with some reflection they can be connected to our faith. Our faith may redirect how we go about enjoying these recreational venues. Many people might have to confess that they don't really have any interests beyond family and work. In that case thinking about reserving the time to develop an interest is a good way to start.

Setting Goals for Your Physical Disciplines

One way to approach this is to start with some base-line. Walking is considered to be one of the most beneficial things we can do for our body. 45 minutes of brisk walking daily is considered a base-line since it can truly be said that anything beyond that is nice but the health benefits are not nearly as dramatic as the discipline of doing the base-line 45 minutes.

Setting Goals for the Use of Your Time and Money

Start with figuring out where your time and money is currently committed. As you begin to look at new goals coming out of this process you will need to reconfigure your time and resources accordingly. A goal is just an idea until your time and resources make it a reality.

The Smaller the Church, The Fewer the Christians

2009-09-21T23:10:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure I believe this reflection is an argument for larger churches but his characterization of the smaller church and their critical issues seems right on to me for sure. The Smaller the Church, The Fewer the Christians

Why Your Church Can’t Afford Mass Media Advertising

2009-09-21T19:09:00.000-05:00

This explains that the "Mary Church" is a great steward of resources since they don't really see the need to do much in terms of PR work.

Why Your Church Can’t Afford Mass Media Advertising

The Presence Based Church Chapter Three/The Mary Church

2009-09-15T13:04:00.000-05:00

Characteristics of "The Mary Church"

Spirit sensitive planning and well-managed unpredictability (relaxed flexibility).

The praise and worship time lasts anywhere from 30-60 minutes and no one would object if it took the whole service.

Personal and group prayer may occur during and as a part of the service of worship. A prayer room is usually available as an extension of worship and is utilized before, during and after the service.

Smaller gatherings will usually begin with a time of worship and prayer that is more than perfuctory.

Music is very important in worship and the music leaders are understood as worship leaders.

The services have passion, emotion and an expectation that people will encounter God in the services. People are called upon to respond to God in various ways within the service itself: praying, giving a testimony, coming forward to make a commitment or to pray with others, using various body postures as as response of worship.

Over time a number of members have been called into specific ministries (pastors, missions, music, etc.)

Doesn't do PR and doesn't need to. People are simply drawn to what is going on there, so no ad strategy is ever needed.

Small groups focus on discipleship and mission.

A prayer room is open and in use every day. A good number of the congregation spend some time there each week. Much of the prayer is focused on mission, outreach, etc.

Church leaders spend time praying about decisions and when decisions are made there is usually a broad consensus across the congregation.

The make up of the congregation is demographically diverse.

The pastor's first priority is connecting with God personally prior to any other aspect of leadership.

Pastor is focused on prayer, preaching and worship as central to the task.

Pastor is willing to take risks and encourages the people to do the same.

The seven questions on page 75 are all good and we should spend most of our class time talking about them.

Living on Purpose Chapter Three: Putting First things First

2009-09-09T14:38:00.001-05:00

Great exercise: Write a letter pretending it is your seventieth birthday and explain how you have sought over the course of your life to express your faith and use your time and money to put first things first. Now write down how many years you have until your seventieth birthday and identify specific ways you could still implement some of the ideas you expressed in your letter of how to put first things first in your life. (p. 70-71)

Listening For God's Best (pp. 78-85)

Retreat from distractions of Boom City
Listening for the call of God in stillness using scripture, prayer, meditation, etc. Cultivate a posture of thanksgiving as you prepare to listen.
Listening to God's call in your past
Listening for God's call through scripture
Listening to God's call through prayer
Listening to God through the needs of others
Listening to God's call through your gifts and talents
Listening to God's call on your life through the broken places
Listening to God's call through your dreams
Listening to God's call through your imagination
Listening to God's call through picturing new possibilities

Drafting a personal mission statement based on the above.

Write down the scriptures that speak most strongly to your sense of personal mission
Reflecting on 10 and 11 above begin to formulate the statement keeping in mind that it should be outwardly directed. See if you are able to incorporate scripture as a part of the statement.
As you are led to be interested in specific issues as this question: How does God want to make this right and what specifically can I do to be a part of God's solution?
A mission statement is not a "to do list" but a focused statement that will later allow you to list those things you will need to be about to fulfill this mission.
Make it clear and concise: one sentence, a 12 year old could understand it, it can be recited from memory very easily.
While it is focused it should remain broad enough to influence every area of your life.
A mission statement can be fulfilled through what we are currently committed to (career, job, workplace, etc.) but it can also require you to make major changes in these areas of your life.

I hope a number of people will work this exercise and present their work to their classes or in one or more services of worship here at NCUMC.

For those of you who are participating in the Saturday Java House discussion you can understand this process as defining your personal DNA just as we have talked about the importance of the church having a very specific DNA that frames all that the church is about. In fact the two processes actually overlap and support each other!

The Presence Based Church: (Chapter Two) The Consumer Based Church

2009-09-09T13:51:00.000-05:00

The Presence Based Church Chapter Two: The Consumer Based Church

Important point: The consumer based church has taken the paradigm of the marketplace, an understanding focused on meeting the needs of the customer/consumer and turned the church into an organization dispensing goods and services to the membership and community. This church is not about following Jesus but serving the perceived needs and desires of the membership.

"There is a big difference between a church embracing the new things God is doing, and trying to incorporate every new trend and fad that sweeps through secular society. Being relevant to the culture is not necessarily the same as being like it. As George Barna wisely concludes, 'We must be careful to adapt to our environment in ways that establish the relevance of Christianity without going overboard in our efforts to accommodate people's needs and desires.'" (p. 38)

In regard to Teykl's point that the so called growth of churches in America is no more than Christians transferring their loyalty to another brand, statistics confirm this reality. In spite of the development of mega- and seeker friendly churches institutional Christianity has lost ground in Europe and North America. This is true across the board and across the theological spectrum.

Teykl believes the consumer based church (Martha church) typically hides a lack of true spirituality (following Jesus on the road of discipleship) with program business. The internal dynamic will look like the following quotes.

"While all the activities at the Martha church serve a worth-while purpose and can be very helpful, if they fail to bring people into an encounter with the living God, and not just other people, then someone needs to ask the tough question: Are they really part of the kingdom agenda? Serving others is good and there is certainly nothing wrong with working hard, unless of course it causes you to completely ignore the fact that Jesus is in the other room."

Teykl quotes Sally Morgenthaler in regard to consumer worship, "Too often we worship our methodologies while feigning devotion to God. And when we do this, our pride and self-reliance belie a humanism more secular and infinitely more grotesque than anything we abhor in the world."

"All churches are defined by one central issue-control. An institution sold out to people is going to get only what people can offer. In the consumer church, everything is about people. Minister to the people. Fill the building with people. Meet the needs of the people. Convince the people to give."

"The problem is that when we sell church to the people, they own it. It becomes their sanctuary, their program, their pew, their building. The more they invest, the more ownership they feel. Furthermore, what people own they feel entitled to control."

"Since the consumer based church generally moves by vote and consensus, someone is always unhappy. Martha doesn't take it very well when things don't go her way. When she loses, everyone loses because she will vote again and again with her face, her finances, and her feet. She may leave the church, or simply hold a 'parking lot committee' meeting to undermine any progress that she opposes."

Referring to the pastor of the consumer church Teykl says, "He is the servant of the people and the keeper of the image. His primary job, whether it is stated or not, is to keep the people happy."

Key discussion questions (p. 56)

Discuss church advertising/marketing. Does it work? In what sense? Do you think churches should mount advertising/marketing campaigns?

When is activity, even worthwhile activity, not healthy for a church? How much is too much?

Why are control issues struggles so detrimental to a church?

Give a brief profile of Pastor Fetch.

Living On Purpose: Chapter Two

2009-09-02T14:21:00.000-05:00

Living on Purpose: (chapter two) “Looking for God’s Best in an Ancient Story and a Future Hope”

Important point: We should critique Boom City with the values of the City of Shalom.

We will be citizens of Boom City until we take the values of the City of Shalom seriously.

Sine quotes Jim Wallis, "The gospel message has been molded to suit an increasingly narcissistic culture...modern conversion is about bringing Jesus into our lives rather than bringing us into his...conversion is just for ourselves, not for the world. We ask how Jesus might fulfill our lives not how we might serve his kingdom." (p. 43)

Sine asks, quoting a question that Australian Christians use to frame the issue, "What is God on about?" Once again, he points to the mission statement of Jesus (Luke 4: 18-21) for a place to begin. Sine calls this mission statement “the Shalom purposes of God." (p. 47)

Sine quotes David Bosch, "there is in Jesus' ministry, no tension between saving from sin and the saving from physical ailment, between the spiritual and the social." (p.50)

Important statement: "What we are arguing in this chapter is that the number one crisis in the church today is a crisis of vision." (p. 62)

Important question: What do you think Sine is talking about when he says this?

Important question: Think about your view of heaven. Is it more about some other reality and basically divorced from this world or do you see it as a part of what we are to be about in the here and now?

Important question: How many decisions that you made last week regarding how you used time or money were directly influenced by your faith or by biblical principles? Explain.

Important question: See off-ramp questions (pp.65-66), especially question one and compare Boom City and the City of Shalom using the images from scripture cited by Sine in this chapter.

Living On Purpose: Chapter One

2009-09-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

Living on Purpose: (chapter one) “Looking for God’s Best in All the Wrong Places”

Important point: Sine questions the central message that animates our daily lives.

According to Sine, one of the main messages of contemporary “empire” can be defined this way, "The dream of the good life and the better future at the center of this story is a dream of economic growth, individual up-scaling, and ever-expanding consumer choice that we call Boom City. And its dazzling skyline has become the most attractive dream for people all over the planet."

Important point: If we don't draft a mission statement that flows out of the "Jesus story" Boom City will define our mission (purpose) for us. Sine wants us to ask hard questions about the values that establish the tempo and priorities of our day to day existence.

In regard to the issue of time management, Sine (quoting Annetta Miller) lists some revealing statistics on p. 21.

The following reflects our lifestyle.

→43% are operating with sleep deprivation

→58% suffer from insomnia

→45% would be willing to sacrifice sleep in order to spend more time at work

→43% are sacrificing sleep to go on-line or watch TV

→55% of young adults feel that lack of sleep is a chronic problem

→55% of young adults involved in auto accidents are suffering from sleep deprivation

Key question: Are you, your family, or friends paying a high cost for your hurry sickness?

Important point: While we must live within the dominant message of our world we should not be defined by that message. Sine thinks Christians today should be more counter-cultural and critical of the values of Boom City.

"Essentially, the storytellers of the Enlightenment took the vertical vision of the pursuit of the kingdom of God that reigned during the Middle Ages and tipped it on its side. Their focus became the horizontal vision of social progress, economic affluence, and technological mastery. Today we call this dream the Western dream or the North American dream."

Important Question: What fuels Boom City?

Sine points to the reality that wealth has exploded for the top 20% of the world's population (the rich get richer) and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.

→Chronic discontent (You never have enough or you always need the latest version of whatever)

→The continual encouragement to purchase novelty

→The desire of shareholders to obtain large profit margins

→The necessity to work more hours to maintain a lifestyle defined by Boom City

→A market centered on "branding" youth and training them to be major players in the economy

Key question: Regardless of your income, do you and your kids feel some of the pressure to be extreme cool and pursue high status? How do you see that playing out in your family?

Key question: Is happiness simply the sum of economic success for us and our kids, or is it something more?

Key question: What is high status in your community (places to live, jobs, shopping, brands, vehicles, schools, etc.)?

Living On Purpose: Introduction

2009-09-02T14:11:00.000-05:00

Living On Purpose: Introduction

Important Idea: The gap between Sunday faith and daily living is a critical issue.

We have little sense of how to find a direction and a rhythm for our lives that flow directly out of our faith. When we fail to find a compelling sense of direction from our faith, we unwittingly allow others to define both our purpose and the pace of our lives. Many of us wind up exhausted and unfulfilled. The question we fail to ask is "Why does our faith seem to have so little influence in defining both the direction and the tempo of our lives?" p. 11

We are convinced that our faith has so little influence on the direction and tempo of our lives primarily because of a disconnect between our daily life and our Sunday faith. p.12

Quote from Richard Leider on the definition of purpose, "Purpose is that deepest dimension within us--our central core or essence--where we have a profound sense of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going." p. 12

Important Idea: Understanding the social, political and economic realities of the first century is essential for understanding and applying the Christian faith to our context.

First important theological statement in the text relates to two dominating stories that animated the ancient world in Jesus' time and Sine makes a key application point in regard to this. "One was the story of self-interest and commerce in an oppressive Roman world. The other was a story of an ancient Jewish faith that began with Abraham and Sarah--a faith that was destined to transform the world. As he grew into adulthood, Jesus lived in both stories and both worlds. But he made a very conscious choice not only to embrace God's Story but to make God's purposes his purposes. Sine understands Jesus "mission statement" as a text from Isaiah 61 and used by Luke (4: 18-19) to define the ministry of Jesus (good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, release of the oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord's Jubilee). According to Sine, this should be the foundation of our mission as Jesus' followers today.

Question: "What kind of people does God want us to be, and how does God want us to be involved both as individuals and families in the work of God's kingdom?" p. 16

Introduction/Chapter One (The Martha Church)

2009-09-01T14:13:00.000-05:00

Notes for the session to be conducted Wednesday, September 2, 2009 @ 6:30 p.m. In order for Teykl to argue for a "Presence Based Church" he begins by outlining other templates for doing/being church. In regard to the models Teykl outlines for understanding the life of local churches (pp. 9-11) NCUMC would be understood as Traditional/Program. A traditional church is almost always a program church unless it is a very small church, which does not contain enough people to do anything normally associated with church programming (children's ministry, youth ministry, senior adult ministry, etc., including hiring of program staff. Although Teykl doesn't discuss this, it is interesting to note that "program church" is a recent American invention related to the 20th century. That alone should make someone suspicious of this organizational framework. It is more of a fad than a tradition and it is possible only with the development of specialized (professional) staff to supervise programming and increased cash flow in churches during the first half of the 20th century. Program church should be understood as more of a temporary modern anomaly and a flawed way to be church. Since we have entered a period understood as "post-modern" it should also be understood to be outdated as well. This is confirmed by the growing influence of "Emerging Churches" who define themselves as the antithesis of a traditional 20th century program church. Teykl takes some space to define the values and action of a program church and in order to tie his analysis to scripture he uses the story of Mary and Martha giving hospitality to Jesus in Luke chapter 10. In his frame, Martha represents the typical program church in terms of values, sociology, assumptions, organization, etc., and being Mary, understood as a metaphor for the presence based church, is clearly a more faithful way of being church. I don't think much will be gained by being suspicious of the decision to use this particular story as a template. What is true is that he is very accurate in describing how and why program churches and their pastors operate as they do. After 25 years in the local church I have no argument with his descriptions or the negative implications he draws from that understanding. (pp.19-30) In chapter two he will replace the name Martha with "consumer" and will point to further signs that such a model of church is misguided and unfaithful to the foundational task of the church. Here he reflects the analysis of Tom Sine in Living On Purpose: Finding God's Best for Your Life and the importance of that should not be overlooked. They both represent a growing cadre of thoughtful visionary church leaders who correctly understand that we are at the end of one era and in critical need of moving on to a more faithful way of being church. Questions 4, 5, and 6 on p. 31 are the important questions to think about. You can put some of your thoughts on p. 4 of the study journal. I am particularly interested in your thoughts regarding question 6. I can assure everyone that I have some thoughts on this!

The Presence Based Church

2009-08-13T14:26:00.000-05:00

Beginning September 2009, a study group at New Covenant UMC, Sunnyvale, Texas will begin a weekly reflection on the book, "The Presence Based Church" by Terry Teykl, which focuses on worship and prayer as the cornerstones of the local church. I hope to post weekly reflections prior to each week's session to spur discussion. See link for information on the book.

Focus On Discipleship

2009-08-13T13:51:00.000-05:00

September through Sunday November 8, 2009 New Covenant UMC, Sunnyvale, Texas will be studying and reflecting on a book written by Tom Sine called, "Living On Purpose: Finding God's Best For Your Life," as a fall 2009 Discipleship Focus. Weekly worship will be based on the seven chapters of the book with groups studying the selected chapter each week. I hope to publish my reflections and sermon outlines here. See link for Tom Sine's web site and purchasing the book.

Easter for LEADERS « United Methodeviations

2009-04-10T20:13:00.000-05:00

Easter for LEADERS « United Methodeviations Three key things we need to be about to be radically faithful!

Mark Moore wants you to read this ZNet Article

2009-03-27T09:32:00.000-05:00

Demand, Don't Succumb

Mar 26, 2009 By Michael Albert
Michael Albert's ZSpace Page
The current economic crisis disrupts an already monumentally despicable system. The crisis makes what is horrible, horrific. But what can one do? Is it useful to propose paths forward that lead back to the past? Should we celebrate attitudes that have no hope for anything more than recycling attenuated hardship? Should we proceed as if we have not even an inkling of an inclination to seriously change basic economic relations? Or should we get radical? When elites look at a crisis that threatens the whole system, they too want to get out of it. But they want to minimize their own losses and ensure that the path out of temporary crisis doesn't reduce their advantages for the long haul. They want to escape current disaster, yes, but they also want to avoid what they consider permanent disaster - a system that works, but not solely, or even mostly, for them. In other words, for those pulling the policy levers, the highest priority is not fixing things but avoiding long-term losses for owners and to a lesser degree for managers and other rich folk. True, the government's concern is not for each and every rich person. Some of the most transparently egregious money hoarders will be tossed under the proverbial bus, so to speak. The government's concern is for the money hoarders as a whole. The government's intent is to maintain the relative position of the owning class. Thus, government proposals to escape the current debilitating disruptions and ward off impending disasters are constrained by what policy makers consider allowable. By dictate, corrective policies are not allowed to substantially raise the relative power of working people. That is the bottom line constraint that leads our government to enact half assed programs that pour social assets into rich people's institutions while not even considering for a second the possibility of stimulating the economy via charging the rich and benefitting the rest. It is as if someone's heart stops and the defibrillator is parked right near the patient's bed. However, there is also a silent order from the Hospital's administration - a kind of unspoken bylaw of medical policy - doctors cannot use the defibrillator. Doctors, and in our case it is doctors for the economy, have to resurrect the dying patient, but they can't do it with the defibrillator. What is the "defibrillator" the economic doctors have to avoid? Redistribution of wealth and power. The two most obvious elements of the economic mess the economy is currently spiraling ever deeper into are housing and jobs. This is not the whole of it, by any means, but let's focus on these two aspects, here. Houses were overvalued - the famed housing bubble. As housing valuations came back to earth, foreclosures ensued and banks lost assets. The banks' financial problems are hard to track due to incredibly convoluted trading of mortgages wrapped up in "leveraged" securities that are sold again and again among the rich. But the basic situation - the collapsing investment values of the banks, and the declining house values and increasing mortgage payments of homeowners, together percolate into massive foreclosures, reduced bank loans, and reduced consumer spending. Declining revenues from the resulting curtailed sales then produce more cuts in lending and still less spending. It all reduces demand for final products which in turn causes cutbacks in their production. The production cuts lead to pink slips. Next, those who lose their jobs, or who start to fear losing their jobs, defensively cut back their consumption, whether they have housing problems or not. Now we are in a real mess because this in turn leads to more firms reducing output, which means they fire more workers and have no jobs available for those who have been fired elsewhere. Housing begets slowdown begets firings begets more slowdown begets more firing. Other dynamics contribute, and radical and even a few mainstream economists have been offering plenty of good analysis of the very detailed proximate causes that have been at work. What has been largely missing, however, is commentary that clarifies that it isn't greedy individuals but an institutional framework called capitalism that brings the disruption and that compels escalating exploitation of the poor. But the issue that is getting even shorter shrift is formulating plausible, desirable proposals for going forward. Now I don't mean to say that finding such proposals is easy. I don't begin to understand macro economics - and I studied it in school, oh so long ago - though sometimes I wonder if the professional economists have all that much better understanding than me, or than the average person getting evicted or being handed a pink slip. Maybe the proposals I offer below would do the trick - or perhaps they would have effects I haven't foreseen that would need to be addressed by refinements. Maybe they would even have problems that would make them unwise or counter productive. That all has to be assessed. What I am sure about, however, is that the attitude behind the proposals offered below is very different than the most prevalent attitudes all around us. And we need new attitude. Regarding housing, to start, how about we simply pass a law, no more foreclosures. Period. It is not allowed. No one should be denied their home because of a crisis which has enriched the rich at the expense of the poor. Oh wait, we need a caveat. If mansions are foreclosed, so be it. No house valued less than, say, $1 million can be foreclosed. More than that, no problem. So we start with the end of non rich people losing their homes due to the crisis. Up until when we win the no foreclosure act of 2009, of course, we should continue to organize to prevent foreclosures case by case and to forcibly forbid evictions, as part of making the more comprehensive demand. But if the banks et al. can't foreclose, because we block their doing so, or we win a new law, what is to prevent people from simply ceasing to pay their mortgages? Answer: that's not allowed either, unless, that is, one can make a case that paying is beyond one's means due to the crisis affecting the value of one's home, the mortgage interest rate, or one's income. If any of that pertains, the mortgage is refinanced so it matches available means. How do we determine people's available means? Life is messy, and no procedure will be perfect, but how about all those who say they must refinance due to crisis conditions, and who live together in a legislative district, must gather together, present their cases openly, and then collectively settle the rates for their rewrites. The district's legislators help and mediate. So do local high school civics teachers. They all facilitate. Legislative districts are by the new law entitled to some total write down percentage on the sum of all their homes. The lower the average income if residents, the more overall write down is allowed. Yes, this means we are redistributing. Indeed, it is best to do that at every opportunity. Within a neighborhood, in light of its total write down options, and helped by legislators and high school teachers, neighbors who are seeking to reset their mortgages must cooperatively negotiate with one another the percentage of that total write down that each petitioner should have, given each person's plight as compared to the plight of others. In other words, people in the legislative district have to act together in light of their relative real needs, taking account of one another, in order to move the process forward. It is all done in public, in participatory, assembly style meetings. Full cases are offered. Maybe local journalists can investigate the veracity of suspect claims. Will some folks offer deceptive stories and get away with some lies and thereby gain when they shouldn't? Yes, it could happen in some cases. But so what? They have been ripped off of their dignity and material well being for ages. Anything that exceeds propriety after such public negotiations wouldn't begin to approach in scale or in impact the venality of what the rich do daily, much less what they do with taxpayer-financed bonuses. This housing approach would, of course, cut into the profits of many institutions. But that is not a problem, it is another virtue. Can we get that straight? We leftists who are concerned with justice do not genuflect to profit. So why do even leftists often act as though profits declining is a bad thing? Oh, yes, I know, it's because if profits drop, owners want to stop operating their workplaces. It turns out, therefore, that we need to impose another law. Any business with more than 20 employees or more than $5 million in assets cannot stop operations due to feeling that profits are going to be too low to warrant continuing. To retain their legal claim to own a profit making firm, owners must do their best to operate it to meet social needs. We are enduring a crisis. Owners should bear the brunt of the cost. Do owners want a supplement for lost income? No problem. They should try working. What would give this law teeth? Any owner of any firm that wants to forego serving the public interest by ceasing to produce and distribute to meet needs is free to personally stop. That's their choice. However, having chosen to stop, the owners' firm is immediately turned over to the workforce and the surrounding community to keep it operating. The owners' deed to the firm is abrogated. And there is no selling to overseas buyers, either, or moving the firm's residence. Try any of that that, and the firm is turned over to the employees. That's society's choice. What about employment? Demand has already dropped and is dropping further. To deal with needing to produce less output due to facing reduced demand, firms fire workers. We don't want that, so we need another law. There will be no firing until the crisis is passed. None. We don't want firing, so we outlaw firing. The owners won't like that. Tough. They are the masters of the old universe, not of the one we want to live in. But how can owners keep just as many workers, yet produce less output? They can cut back hours for each worker. That way they keep all their workers employed but they can also have a total output at whatever level is needed. But wait - unless we make another rule, cutting back work hours would reduce overall incomes the same as just some people getting pink slips would. It would reduce overall demand and continue the spiraling problem of less demand inducing less production causing less demand, further reducing production, etc. Well, we can just adapt our new law. Firms can and should cut hours in order to not overproduce when output must be reduced to avoid waste. That's fair enough. However firms cannot cut their total wage bill. Worker income cannot suffer due to the shortening of work time. If a workers' hours drop from 40 to 30, say, or more likely from 60 or 50 to 40, he or she still gets paid the total that he or she was earning at the greater number of hours. This means we are raising hourly wages. If you get the same income for 30 hours as you got for 40 hours and you were earning $10 an hour before, now you must be earning $13.33. With this approach, the total wage bill does not drop. Demand does not drop. Workers are working fewer hours, but with no cut in their total incomes. Additionally, we can impose that hourly wages cannot be cut during the crisis - at all. So be careful owners. If you unwisely cut back production, you will have to raise hourly wages. If you later increase production back up, increasing hours for everyone, you will have to maintain wages at their elevated level! It is probably better to drop your prices a bit and sell more, than to cut production when purchasing power declines. Let's suppose those hearing this program are really relentless about pursuing justice. They say, hold on, what about the millions of currently unemployed? Why should they continue to suffer? So let's deal with that too. How about, right off, all firms must reduce the work week of all staff by 10%. Then, to keep producing at current levels, they must immediately hire new employees to make up the ensuing loss in output. At that point, if the firm wants/needs to reduce hours further for everyone, so be it - wages stay up - as described above. But then someone points out that all this extra wage burden will decimate profits. But our reply is: so what? You bet it will. That's the point. For at least the duration of the crisis - and we can hope this kind of thinking will catch on and persist forever - owners will have to operate pretty much without profits, and even taking losses, which means we are finally redistributing in the ethically and economically right direction. So what have we got? We have no more people losing their homes. We have no more exploitative mortgages ruining lives. We have no more pink slips being handed out. We have new jobs for the currently unemployed, and yes, enlarging green jobs and expanding education and other infrastructure are totally compatible with and would be enhanced by all this. The above would fit with, and advance, additional programs to have local banks under community control finance socially valuable projects, provide loans to firms in trouble with conditions requiring enlarged worker participation in decisions and reduced wages for executives or profit sharing with all workers and perhaps even the surrounding communities, raised emission standards, etc. But even just addressing the two aspects highlighted in this essay, we also have increased wages per hour for everyone (or better, for everyone below some high target wage level) - and we have lots of new taxes on all that income for additional socially worthy programs. We also have workers enjoying leisure. And we have that the only people hurt by it all are the rich, and quite properly so. It is not, however, a punishment for bringing on the crisis. They didn't bring it on, capitalism did. They are losing wealth because they have too much, and need to be pulled back into this universe. Okay, is there some technical problem in all this? Probably there is. After all, the system is so ingrained to go berserk about even the most minuscule deprivation for the rich that there are bound to be many additional regulatory features needed to avoid a berserk system. Or maybe the whole proposal needs an overhaul. The point is, we need to conceive seriously radical options that can actually lead where we ought to be going. And then we need to fight for them. In other words, leftists should have demands that represent our desires, rather than having demands that assume that our desires shouldn't be uttered in polite company. If we aren't strong enough to win all the above, we work toward getting that strong. More, having demanded all the above, we will have so scared the rich and powerful about what kind of activism may be just over the horizon that they will agree to more than they would otherwise. We will have also opened the debate, begun the thinking that can lead forward, not back. More, just because we have a comprehensive program giving a coherent logic to our desires doesn't mean we seek nothing less, but on the way to that program. In workplaces and neighborhoods workers and residents pursue tactics, strategies, and local demands that make sense where they are. The overarching program discussed here means to provide a context in which local activity can better take place. It means to indicate where local activity should aims and threaten to go. You know the old joke about the economist who is trying to get a can of soup open on an island. Everyone else is trying to figure out how to get the top off the can by cleverly banging the can with sticks, or by carefully utilizing rocks to squeeze it, or maybe using a fire to make it explode. The economist, delusional and devoid of concern about being delusional, simply says, assume a can opener. Well the real version of this is that for any problem economists always tell us - implicitly - to assume the system must always aggressively benefit the rich and powerful, and then work within that constraint. I am sick of working within that constraint. We should all be sick of working within that constraint. By the way, the idea of reducing work hours and retaining total wages paid - say, paying 30 hours work 40 hours pay for those below $100,000 salary per year, and perhaps 30 hours work 35 hours pay for those between $100,000 and $200,000 a year, say, and 30 hours pay for 30 hours work for those between $200,000 and $300,000 per year, and significant hourly and thus total pay cuts for everyone making more than that - would be a wonderful demand any time at all. In fact, it would be fine by me if it was way more stringent. Let the people decide! Not only would such a campaign, in a crisis or not, be dramatically redistributive, it would also give people time to lead lives, and, dare I say it, to pursue the monumentally important work of further redesigning society.

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20982 Print

Mark Moore wants you to read this ZNet Article

2009-03-27T09:29:00.000-05:00

Keynes, Capitalism, and the Crisis

Mar 21, 2009 By John Bellamy Foster

John Bellamy Foster's ZSpace Page

Amandla: As governments across the world spend trillions to help private capital survive the global financial crisis, is it not misleading to talk of a shift to Keynesian policies?

JBF: I think there has been, as Paul Krugman says, a "return of depression economics," and in that sense we can talk about a revival of broadly "Keynesian" policies. Keynes advocated expansive fiscal policy and deficit financing in a depression, and all governments are now seeking to put such expansive policies in place to some degree -- although generally not on a big enough scale. Also Keynes clearly advocated government attempts to reflate the economy in the face of deflationary pressures, in the context of the banking crisis of the early 1930s. So in this sense too we can talk about a return to Keynesian economics.

But the real action right now is elsewhere, in the direct government salvaging of financial capital. This has little to do directly with Keynesianism and in fact reflects the continued dominance of financial capital in the crisis. Keynes was far from being a big supporter of speculative finance and argued for the "euthanasia of the rentier." In the course of this downturn the United States has committed up to $10 trillion in aid to financial institutions, by such means as guarantees of bank debts and asset-backed securities, direct investments, the establishment of currency swap lines with central banks, and programs for the purchase of mortgage-backed securities. In comparison to this, Obama's total fiscal stimulus is less than $400 billion a year. The annual public works spending for the entire country in the stimulus package is less than what Bank of America by itself has received in financial support commitments from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury in this crisis. What we are seeing therefore is a socialization of private financial losses on a scale never before conceived. None of this has much to do with Keynesianism as such.

Those who might reasonably be called "Keynesians" of a sort today (though not nearly as critical of the system as Keynes himself), such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, represent a different policy mix. They would argue for a bigger fiscal stimulus and would probably be less immediately responsive to financial capital. (Another Keynesian or post-Keynesian figure of a more radical sort is James K. Galbraith.) But such individuals are not in charge today in Washington, while more decidedly conservative economists who represent the interests of Wall Street, such as Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers, are ensconced in the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the White House.

The fact that Keynesianism, even of the mild sort represented by Krugman and Stiglitz, is still on the outside in all of this has to do, in my view, with the shift in the nature of capitalism from monopoly capital to monopoly-finance capital beginning in the 1980s. This meant that financialization was increasingly the focal point of the economy. I wrote at length on this together with Fred Magdoff in our recently published book, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences. The present economic catastrophe is in many ways a crisis of financialization (i.e., the shift in the center of gravity of the economy in the last three decades or so from production to finance) overlaid on deeper problems of stagnation. Hence, financial capital is still the focus during the downturn.

Keynesianism, classically, was concerned much more with what economists call the "real economy" related to production of goods and services (as measured by GDP), than with the financial economy, geared to speculation in asset prices. So in that sense Keynesianism, though given some impetus by the crisis, is still secondary to what is going on immediately, since the center of attention is still on the financial implosion.

One reason that Keynes's theory is considered so relevant today of course has to do with what he called the "liquidity trap": the interest rate falls to a near-zero level and hence monetary policy is no longer able to stimulate the economy through reductions in the interest rate. This was a description of what happened in the Great Depression and it was repeated in Japan in the 1990s. It is this that brings "depression economics" into play. Bernanke, Geithner, et al., argued that if banks were restored to solvency they would resume lending. But the destruction of the supposed assets on the bank balance sheets, still unquantifiable, has been to date beyond repair. Banks therefore hold on to every scrap of tangible equity -- cash -- they obtain. Keynes long ago explained that this was what the banks necessarily would do in such a situation. Fiscal stimulus offers hope of halting or slowing the collapse, but far greater sums are poured into what still seems to be an intractably insolvent banking system. Such policies are not Keynesian.

Amandla: In a recent interview you spoke of the bastardization of Keynes' ideas. What did you mean and who was the real Keynes?

JBF: Keynes even before The General Theory was recognized as an outstanding, perhaps the most illustrious figure, in orthodox economics of his day, the heir to Alfred Marshall at Cambridge. But in response to the Great Depression he became both a critic of economic orthodoxy and of capitalism itself. However, his criticisms of capitalism, though far-reaching, suggested that there were technical ways out that could save the system from some of its worst faults. He is thus an ambiguous figure. There is the pre-Keynesian Keynes (prior to The General Theory), Keynes as a critic of capitalism, Keynes as a system savior, as well as the later "bastard Keynesianism," invented in the 1950s and '60s by those seeking to reestablish the neoclassical orthodoxy, with only small concessions to the "Keynesian revolution." All of this of course creates complex issues of interpretation. When we speak of Keynes we are usually referring to the Keynes of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which was published in 1936, and related works and not the Keynes of his earlier A Treatise on Money (1930).

Keynes, as he himself emphasized in the preface to The General Theory, fought hard in response to the Great Depression to free himself from the orthodox neoclassical economics of his earlier years. This required something of a revolutionary break, which he never followed out to completion, leading to various interpretations of his theory. Monetarists, like Milton Friedman, preferred the A Treatise on Money Keynes (what we would call the pre-Keynesian Keynes) and mostly rejected The General Theory. The main group of so-called "Keynesians," like Paul Samuelson, tried to repair the damage resulting from Keynes's break with economic orthodoxy, so as to create the neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis or what is more commonly called the "neoclassical synthesis." Joan Robinson famously called this in 1962 "bastard Keynesianism," since it jettisoned all of Keynes's major criticisms of the system.

One way to understand the evolution of bastard Keynesianism (as I explained in the March 2008 issue of Monthly Review in an article entitled "A Failed System") is in terms of the way that Keynes employed the concept of "the general theory" and how that later came to be subverted. Keynes explained in the beginning of his magnum opus that orthodox economics (what we now call "neoclassical economics") was a "special theory" pertaining to a full employment economy, which in reality hardly ever existed under capitalism. In that sense his "general theory" was meant to address the usual case of an economy of unemployed resources. However, neoclassical economists after the Second World War argued that partly due to Keynes's own influence, which had led to fiscal and monetary fine-tuning, the main dilemmas that Keynes had raised hardly ever applied. As a result Keynes's own economics was reclassified as a "special theory" while the orthodox neoclassical economics, which saw the economy as naturally tending to full employment, was pronounced the true "general theory."

Under Friedman's inspiration, full employment was redefined to be compatible with actually existing unemployment through the introduction of the notion of the "natural rate of unemployment." Keynes was pronounced dead, since a depression/deflation, in which his ideas would be operative, could never occur again. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and an academic scholar of the Great Depression, said a few years ago that we had entered the Great Moderation, in which the business cycle had essentially smoothed out. In fact these views played a role in getting him appointed as Fed chairman. I have discussed this (together with Fred Magdoff) in The Great Financial Crisis.

Of course the truth was that Keynes's critique of capitalism never ceased to be relevant, as is now readily apparent. But economic orthodoxy was unable to move beyond Keynes to address the larger issues he raised (nor did Keynes himself in the end do so). Paul Sweezy was thus right in saying somewhere that Keynes represented the last major scientific representative of bourgeois economics. From Keynes on there was nowhere to go but the rejection of capitalism itself. Far from an apologist for the system, Keynes had written in the Yale Review in summer 1933: "The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the [first world] war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous -- and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it." But he did not follow his views to their logical conclusion in the rejection of the system, while mainstream, bastard Keynesianism retreated from his view.

Amandla: What was the essence of Keynes's ideas and why are his ideas suddenly seen as relevant again?

The essence of Keynes's contribution was the demolition of Say's law of markets. (A secondary element was Keynes's rejection of the then orthodox theory of interest, and its replacement by one based on liquidity preference.) Say's Law argued that supply created its own demand, so that there could never be an actual glut of production. Hence, full employment was regarded as the natural tendency of the system. If there were limits to economic expansion they were on the supply (cost) rather than the demand (sales) side.

Marx had rejected Say's Law from the beginning, calling it "the childish babbling of a Say, but unworthy of Ricardo." But neoclassical economics was built on it. Keynes had to undergo a great struggle to overcome this. Part of the problem was that neoclassical economics was erected on the notion of a kind of barter economy model with money laid over the top like a veneer. Once monetary exchange was viewed as central to the inner workings of the capitalist economy it became apparent that it was possible for overproduction or insufficient effective demand to emerge. In working this out, Keynes, in his early notes to The General Theory, actually used Marx's shorthand of M-C-M¢ (Money-Commodity-Money¢ [the last equal to M + âÂˆÂ†m or surplus value]) as a way of figuring out the contradiction in Say's Law. (Keynes got this from a secondary source rather than from Marx himself.) Meanwhile Richard Kahn, a close associate of Keynes and the originator of the Keynesian multiplier, came up with a way of conceiving the savings and investment relation that replicated (unbeknownst to him) Marx's reproductive schema. As a result of this critique, Keynes was able to separate out more clearly the two sides of accumulation (savings and investment) and to argue that it was investment that determined savings and not the other way around as previously thought. The famous "paradox of thrift" could be explained then as excess savings (ex ante) that could not find investment outlets. In terms of effective demand as a whole, the problem was a lack of consumer demand due to income inequality, and then leading fairly naturally, but not inherently, to weaknesses in investment demand, as a normal shortcoming of the system. For Keynes the proper policy response was to increase government spending to compensate for a lack of consumption and investment demand -- to the point that full employment was reached. But this of course ran normally straight into the class barriers of the system.

Amandla: What was the substance of Keynes' critique of capitalism and how does it differ from the other great critic of capitalism Karl Marx? What are the short-comings of Keynes critique of capitalism?

JBF: Keynes, as I explained in "A Failed System," pinpointed what he called two "outstanding faults" of capitalism: an enormously unequal division of income and persistent, built-in unemployment, tending toward what was to be called an "unemployment equilibrium." Orthodox economics was by nature blind to both of these flaws, and thus was, in his view, "incompetent to tackle the problems of unemployment and of the trade cycle." Keynes made it clear that he believed that the investment or accumulation function of the mature capitalist economy was systematically depressed over the long run. As Joan Robinson wrote in 1955 in a piece on "Marx, Marshall, and Keynes," Keynes showed "that there is a natural tendency for an advanced capitalist economy to run into chronic stagnation, with permanent unemployment, and that it is by its very nature highly unstable." Yet, Keynes never provided an actual theory of stagnation, and those early Keynesians who did so based on his suggestions, such as Alvin Hansen, also fell short of what could be seen as a complete theory of the stagnation tendency of advanced capitalism. It was thus left to Marxist theorists, such as Michal Kalecki, Josef Steindl, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, to develop this further.

Keynes by the time he wrote The General Theory no longer believed in the harmonious self-regulation of capitalism, along orthodox lines, as represented by Hayek and neoliberalism. As Robinson said, Keynes represented "the disillusioned defence of capitalism." He tried to deal with what he saw as the system's major flaws through various technical fixes, probably knowing that this would never be sufficient. He could never get himself to wage a full-fledged critique. Keynes still hoped for a kind of rational capitalism, as I explained in my article "The End of Rational Capitalism" (Monthly Review, March 2005). Still, his critique was so radical in its implications that his analysis was not acceptable to the system except at those moments when its back was against the wall. Keynes went so far as to point to the need of a "somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment," the "euthanasia of the rentier," lessening of income inequality, and limited controls on international capital flows. All of this meant that he remained a "dangerous" figure from the standpoint of the system.

To get an idea of Keynes's limitations from a Marxist perspective it is useful to compare him to the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, who developed most of the essentials of the "Keynesian revolution" before Keynes himself. Kalecki was a Marxist economist, whose work also became crucial in defining Keynesianism. In Kalecki one finds the legacy of Marx and Luxemburg. His work contains not only a powerful critique of class-based accumulation and imperialism, but also a developed theory of monopoly capitalism. Keynes lacked all of these elements. A particular deficiency was Keynes's continued adherence to notions of pure and perfect competition, even though his younger colleague Joan Robinson, part of the Cambridge "circus" that helped generate The General Theory, was one of the foremost developers of the theory of imperfect competition. (Paradoxically, Robinson herself did not integrate this into most of her later work.) Kalecki's concept of the "degree of monopoly" (focusing on the price markup on labor and raw material costs) became a way of integrating class income distribution under capitalism (governed in Marx by the rate of exploitation), with concentration and centralization, and economic stagnation. All of this was essentially derived from Marx and placed in a contemporary context. Kalecki's work led to the development of Josef Steindl's Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism and Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy's Monopoly Capital.

The most important concept in Marx's economics is the rate of exploitation. For Keynes this is entirely missing. Kalecki, however, provided a link between Marx and Keynes (from the Marxist side) with his theory of long-run income distribution: workers spend what they earn, and capitalists earn what they spend. The trouble is that capitalist spending on accumulation is affected by expected profits on new investment, which become depressed if (among other factors) consumption is weak due to growing inequality and unemployment. "The tragedy of investment," as Kalecki said, "is that it is useful." Capital will not invest if it has a large idle capacity of plant and equipment and expects this excess capacity to grow as a result of the building of new factories and the anticipated weakness of final markets. This contradiction of accumulation, ultimately related to income distribution, explains why the U.S. and other advanced capitalist economies have been experiencing creeping stagnation over recent decades -- a fact partly disguised by the secular build-up of debt before the crash (i.e. financialization).

Recently, it has been more and more recognized that Keynes also pinpointed a third outstanding flaw of capitalism, and that this was crucial to his overall theory. Thus he stressed that, with the rise of the market for industrial securities and the developed financial system, there were two price structures under capitalism, one related to GDP and the other speculation in asset prices. And the correlation between the two price structures was unstable, and dependent upon unpredictable social-psychological pressures. This created enormous speculative binges, which strongly impressed themselves on Keynes, particularly following the 1929 Stock Market Crash. The socialist economist Hyman Minsky drew out the importance of Keynes's critique in this respect in John Maynard Keynes and subsequent works. From this Minsky developed his famous theory of financial instability.

Minsky's analysis, though, was still oriented towards explaining periodic financial bubbles/crises and not so much the secular process of financialization building up over decades. The analysis of financialization as a response to stagnation was dealt with systematically by Marxist economists Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, in a series of works -- The Dynamics of U.S. Capitalism, The End of Prosperity, The Deepening Crisis of U.S. Capitalism, Stagnation and the Financial Explosion, and The Irreversible Crisis, written between the early 1970s and the late 1980s (with subsequent essays in the 1990s). These works were rooted in Marx-Kalecki, but also drew on Keynes, and particularly in the later years, on his critique of speculation. Magdoff and Sweezy understood that the financial explosion was not merely a phase immediately prior to the peak of the business cycle -- ultimately Minsky's view -- but a process causally interconnected with stagnation extending over multiple business cycles.

Amandla: Is it likely that as the crisis deepens there could be a shift to Keynesian policies especially if there is a new wave of struggle and resistance in the face of the bailouts.

JBF: There has already been something of a switch toward Keynesian-style policies, out of sheer necessity. But Keynesianism is inadequate to deal with the overall crisis of capitalism. Further, there is a great deal of resistance to Keynesian measures structurally from the capitalist class, as well as resistance to Keynes's ideas at the level of economic theory and policy. One has to remember that Keynes helped account for the Great Depression, but Keynesianism and civilian government spending did not lift the economy out of the depression. Rather the Great Depression ended when it merged into the Second World War. So there is no historical case of an effective Keynesian response to conditions of depression (unless you count so-called "military Keynesianism" of the kind that began in Germany with Hitler and reached full flower in the Second World War).

We talk in the United States of the possibility of a new New Deal associated with the expansion of civilian government spending. The New Deal itself was never Keynesian in inspiration, but it did lead to a moderate (though inadequate) increase in civilian government spending and, more importantly, in the creation of jobs and work relief programs, Social Security, etc., i.e. programs that genuinely benefited the majority of the population. A new revolt from below (such as that associated with the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s) in the United States and other countries could produce similar programs, which might be justified this time around on the basis of a Keynesian stimulus. Some have tried to interpret Obama's stimulus in the United States that way. But the current stimulus is far too small to have much of an effect under present circumstances, and 40 percent is taken up by tax cuts. (Nor, it should be noted, is Obama's stimulus package progressive in the sense of the later New Deal.)

In the United States, in fact, there has been a ceiling on civilian government spending as a share of GDP (as Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy were the first to point out) that has lasted for seventy years. Given that it has persisted so long, we can conclude that there are enormously strong class forces keeping that ceiling in place. So any attempts to increase the share of civilian government spending in national output, even in the deepest crisis since the Great Depression, face strong resistance, as we are already now seeing. (The fact that the ceiling on civilian government spending has remained in place does not mean that the level of government expenditure benefiting the general population has been maintained. Instead there has been a vast growth in recent decades of the "criminal justice system," police and prosecutors, prisons, and incarceration, giving the United States by far the largest percentage of its population incarcerated of any country on earth.)

If you look at those economists who are taking a kind of Keynesian stance -- figures such as Krugman or Stiglitz, both of whom received the Bank of Sweden's Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their services to the economics mainstream -- the level of criticism of the system is very muted compared to Keynes himself. There is here no mention of the "outstanding faults" of the capitalist system or the "somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment." Until fairly recently, Krugman was a strong critic of what he called, in the title of a 1997 article (originally published in Slate), "Vulgar Keynesians." In that piece he wrote:

You might think that raising wages would reduce the demand for labor; but some early Keynesians argued that redistributing income from profits to wages would raise consumption demand, because workers save less than capitalists . . . and therefore increase output and employment [through their spending]. Such paradoxes are still fun to contemplate; they still appear in some freshman economics textbooks. Nonetheless, few economists take them seriously these days. There are a number of reasons, but the most important can be stated in two words: Alan Greenspan. . . . Indeed, if you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God. (Krugman, The Accidental Theorist, 1998, 30-31)

In his introduction to the 2007 edition of Keynes's General Theory issued by the Royal Economic Society, Krugman observed that Keynes was "wrong" in thinking that the economic contradictions of the 1930s would persist and that problems of stagnation would continue. I mention Krugman only because he is one of the very best liberal economists, and frequently identified with Keynesianism. He and Stiglitz and some others are certainly "disillusioned defenders of the system." But they are a far cry from Keynes himself in this respect. To be sure, Keynes, as I have noted, offered no real solution to the problems of deep stagnation, financialization, and widening inequality that currently beset the capitalist economy. Nor were his criticisms of the system ever acceptable to the vested interests.

What this means is that real solutions to the contradictions of capitalism lie not in Keynesian economics but in a revolt from below of the population, which holds out the potential for a change in the rules of the game. Joan Robinson said somewhere that a political movement strong enough to reform capitalism would also be strong enough to introduce socialism. Therein lies our hope and their fear.

Amandla: Can there be an exit from this crisis through a shift to green capitalism, i.e. massive investment in renewable energy, green technologies -- a kind of "green Keynesianism" as proposed by the folk of New Economics Foundation.

JBF: There is a lot of talk recently about "green Keynesianism." Robert Pollin and others at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts issued a report last year on Green Recovery, which was conceived in essentially these terms -- as is the work of the New Economics Foundation in Britain, with which I am less familiar. In this context, Obama's stimulus package has been interpreted by many as a "Green New Deal" or as "Green Keynesianism," due to its emphasis on the development of energy saving technology. Theoretically, any increase in government spending at this time can help soften the downturn and even contribute to the eventual restoration of economic growth. As Keynes said, if the government simply put people to work by having them dig holes in the ground it would help stimulate the economy under such circumstances. So there is no doubt that spending on the environment would, like any other spending, serve to promote growth.

What kind of spending one does of course matters economically in the degree to which it immediately provides jobs and socially in its usefulness. Dollars spent on investments in future technology are certainly less efficient in putting people to work immediately than work relief programs. Environmental spending can of course be of either kind, but the bulk of green spending in the Obama plan is, I gather, directed at research and long-run technology and investment projects. This will not give as much bang for the buck in terms of current job promotion and in fact is heavily geared to subsidies to industry. We might even say that what is being advanced is not so much green Keynesianism as "green Schumpeterianism," since it is primarily aimed at stimulating investment with new technology.

In spending on the environment in a capitalist economy one runs up, like everywhere else, on deeply entrenched class forces of resistance. Those things that could be done to address the ecological crisis, such as the closing of coal plants and their massive replacement by other forms of energy, or the establishment of a national carbon tax with 100% dividends to the public, as proposed by NASA's James Hansen, are not done, because the vested interests won't allow it. Either it interferes with economic growth or with profits or both. Obama heavily committed himself during the presidential campaign to the continued support of big coal.

Indeed, there are really two questions here. Can a green Keynesianism lead to economic recovery? And can we save the environment this way? My take on green Keynesianism is that it is much too limited in nature, and too technologically driven, to constitute the nucleus of a full economic recovery. In fact, we are faced with a deep, long-lasting problem of economic stagnation and the crisis of financialization, as discussed in The Great Financial Crisis, which Keynesianism by its nature can do little to address. With regard to the environment -- to be understood as by far the most serious challenge of our time since the climate, the earth's species, and human civilization are all threatened -- what is currently needed is not an economic recovery plan or faster economic growth, but an ecological revolution. This would necessarily be a social revolution, on a far more massive scale than anything yet imagined. This is an issue that I have addressed in my forthcoming book (to be published in April) The Ecological Revolution.

Keynes can help us understand the flaws of capitalism but he cannot take us very far down the road to meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century. His practical suggestions were in the end simply limited to trying to fix what he called "magneto" (or alternator) problems. He avoided directly addressing the larger contradictions or "outstanding faults" of capitalism that he saw. He never got beyond advocating more in capitalist terms, while we live in a world where we need to focus on enough. For this we need not Keynes (or Schumpeter), but the much more revolutionary -- economically, socially, and ecologically -- figure of Marx. (See my Marx's Ecology.) Keynes represented the last great scientific defender of a "rational capitalism" that has now proven to be impossible.

This interview also appears in Amandla.

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20930 Print

Mark Moore wants you to read this ZNet Article

2009-03-27T09:28:00.000-05:00

Taking Up The Task

Mar 09, 2009 By Michael Albert

Michael Albert's ZSpace Page

In the March 21st Nation and the Nation online on March 4, there is a welcome foray into addressing vision and strategy, a symposium built around Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher's provocative essay, "Reimagining Socialism." Ehrenreich and Fletcher report that capitalism, always despicable, is now in a "death spiral," wisely adding that today's horrible dislocations warrant seeking a better system, not voyeuristic celebration. They also claim with some exaggeration, I think, that there is not much U.S. economy left to redefine, merely paper thin banking, insurance, and the like, but then accurately add we would need much new Green, humane, creation to meet needs and develop potentials. But the main contribution is that they then ask: "do we have a [shared] plan?" and they forthrightly and accurately answer that we don't, and that we need a "deliberative process for figuring out what to do." Immanual Wallerstein replied in the Symposium that indeed there is a "death spiral" of capitalism and what will follow will be worse unless we have a "clear and coherent" shared vision and related strategy. Wallerstein argued compellingly that we must create militant opposition now, to push Obama and other elites in desirable directions, but also "organize at a thousand levels and in a thousand ways to push things in the right direction." But what is the right direction? Tariq Ali questioned, in the Symposium, the "death spiral" expectation, but mainly added that "until the emergence of a viable sociopolitical and economic alternative, perceived by a majority as such, there will be no final crisis of capitalism." I agree, but then mustn't we prioritize developing and advocating such an alternative? Ali also concisely argued, "Without action from below, there will be no change from above." But then don't we need to soon create organization that has program and structure sensitive to future vision? In my own view, all this has been the priority case for a long time, so of course we should re-offer or newly offer ideas about vision and strategy. Here are ten related claims (actually first offered at a Z sponsored Symposium in 2006), that may help get the ball moving a bit faster and further than otherwise. Claim 1: Need Vision First, as Ehrenreich and Fletcher highlight, we need shared institutional vision to inspire hope, incorporate the seeds of the future in the present, and guide gains that will take us where we desire. Opponents of the importance of vision emphasize that a proposed vision can congeal inflexibly to exclude new insights, can fuel sectarianism, can overextend into details that aren't knowable, consequential, or a matter for prior determination, and can become frivolous and divert attention from more important concerns. Worst, a proposed vision can be monopolized as a bludgeon to aggrandize power. These worries are warranted, however the answer is not to reject having vision, but to collectively deliberate on and arrive at vision flexibly. We should focus on essentials and not overextend. We should share and continually refine results widely, openly, without elite jargon or posturing. Claim 2: Classlessness Classlessness ought to be part of our economic goal. We know we must end the rule of the capitalist class over labor. But for classlessness, we must also end the rule of the coordinator class over labor. To have classes means to have groups that by their economic position have different access to income and influence, including benefiting at one another's expense. Attaining classlessness, in contrast, means establishing an economy in which everyone is equally able to participate, utilize capacities, and earn income. We cannot eliminate the distinction between those who own means of production and those who do not own means of production, unless no one owns means of production, or, conversely, and what amounts to the same thing, unless everyone owns means of production equally. That much is an obvious tenet of advocating a new classless economy beyond capitalism. All socialists, past and present, accept this view. But class division can also arise due to a division of labor that affords some producers, who I call the coordinator class, far greater influence and income than other producers, who I call the working class. A modern capitalist economy has owners or capitalists. It also has people who have no economically structurally built-in power other than owning their own ability to work, or workers. An additional insight we need to share is that capitalism also has a third coordinator class, who, though they sell their ability to work like workers, unlike workers have great power and standing built into their position in the economic division of labor. These coordinator class lawyers, doctors, engineers, managers, accountants, elite professors, and so on, by their position in the economy accrue information, skills, confidence, energy, and decision making access. They largely control their own tasks. They largely define, design, determine, and even control the tasks of workers below. They utilize their empowering conditions to enhance their position both at the expense of workers below and capitalists above. Yes, they are subordinate to capital and can be pushed down from above. But they are also above workers, and push them down still lower. Capitalism is by this account mainly a three class system. Seeking classlessness therefore means not just eliminating capitalist rule, but also not constructing coordinator class rule in its place. "Out with the old boss in with the new boss" does not end having bosses. To eliminate private ownership but retain the distinction between the coordinator class and the working class would ensure that the coordinator class rules the working class. This type change can end capitalism, but it will not attain classlessness. In other words, our desire for classlessness must take us beyond what have been called market socialism and centrally planned socialism - which systems have in fact been market coordinatorism and centrally planned coordinatorism due to the fact that they elevate the coordinator class to ruling status above workers. Our movements and projects must not only be anti-capitalist, that is, they must be pro-classlessness. They must prioritize both eliminating the monopoly of capitalists on productive property and also the monopoly of coordinators on empowering work. Claim 3: Our Values Forefront Beyond classlessness, we also ought to seek positive economic values including equity, solidarity, diversity, self-management, ecological balance, and economic efficiency. To be against something bad - such as class division and class rule - is very desirable, of course. But rejecting bad features does not easily generate clear standards for positive goals and claim 3 is about positive values. Economics affects how much we each get from what we all produce. We want equitable outcomes and what's equitable is that each person who is able to work receives back from society in proportion to what they expend at a cost to themselves in production. We should be remunerated, that is, for the duration, intensity, and, when it varies from person to person, the onerousness of our socially valued work. This is a matter of preference, of course, not proof. It is a value, an aim, a norm, not some kind of natural law, but it is certainly consistent with history's most morally enlightened thought. Moreover, remunerating effort and sacrifice also provides appropriate incentives to elicit what each individual has the ability to in fact withhold or provide, which is his or her socially valuable time, intensity, and willingness to endure hardship. Economics also affects relations among people. Anyone who isn't pathological would presumably prefer to have people concerned with and caring about one another in a cooperative social partnership - rather than seeking to fleece one another in an anti social competitive shoot out. Thus, a second value we can seek to implement is solidarity. Economics affects our range of available options. We are limited beings who have neither time nor means to each do everything. We are also social beings who can enjoy vicariously what others do that we cannot. And finally we are thinking and pragmatic beings who can benefit from avoiding over dependence on narrow options that leave us stranded if some of those limited options are flawed. Diversity of options, our third value, enriches possibilities and protects against errors. Economics affects how much say we each have over what is produced, in what quantities, by what methods, with what apportionment of people to tasks, and with what product allotted to people. Economic decisions determine outcomes that in turn affect us and even the act of decision making itself also affects our mood, our sense of involvement and efficacy, and our sense of personal worth. There is no moral or operational reason any one able person should have excessive say compared to how much they are affected, nor insufficient say compared to how much they are affected. One decision-making norm can apply to all socially involved people, yet also respect the variation of conditions from case to case. That is, we should each have a say in decisions in proportion as those decisions affect us. No single methodology such as majority vote, two thirds vote, consensus, or single method of information dissemination and deliberation will optimally fit all cases. What will suit all cases, however, is the overarching self management norm by which we choose among possible means of decision making in each instance. Economics also affects relations to our natural surroundings. An economy should not compel us to destroy our natural habitat nor should an economy compel us to so protect the natural habitat that we are left no means with which to fulfill ourselves. An economy should reveal the full and true social and ecological costs and benefits of contending choices, and convey to workers and consumers control over what choices to finally implement. In that way we can cooperatively care for both our environment and ourselves, in proportions that we freely choose. Economics finally of course also affects the social output we have available for people to enjoy. If an economy abides the above values but wastes our energy and resources by failing to meet needs and develop potentials, by producing harmful byproducts that offset the benefits of intended products, or by splurging what is valuable in inefficient actions that waste assets needlessly, it will diminish our prospects. Even as an economy operates in accord with equity, solidarity, diversity, self management, and ecological balance, it should also efficiently utilize available natural, social, and personal assets without undo waste or misdirection of purpose. Claim 3 is that economic institutions should by their operations and outcomes advance equity, solidarity, diversity, self-management, ecological balance, and productive efficiency, not violate much less obliterate them. Claim 4: Economy is only part of Society A new and better world will include new and better economics, yes, but also new and better relations of kin and family, religion, race, and culture, law, adjudication, and collective action, ecological arrangement, and international organization, as well as more specific parts of life in these and other dimensions as well, such as science, art, education, health, and so on. We therefore need vision to learn, inspire, rebut cynicism, and guide practice not only for economics, but for kin relations and socializing, cultural and community relations, legislative and juridical relations, ecology, and international relations. More, just as our economic vision and strategies provide a context that feminist vision and strategy, cultural vision and strategy, political vision and strategy, ecological vision and strategy, and global relations vision and strategy must abide and augment, so too, in reverse, feminist, cultural, political, ecological, and global relations vision and strategy provide a context that pareconish economic vision and strategy must abide and augment. In every case, new arrangements in one realm if life will have to fit compatibly with new arrangements in other realms of life. Movements for a new world will have to combine vision and strategy across entwined centrally important aspects of social life and should not prioritize one key area above others as that would be morally bankrupt and strategically suicidal. Claim 5: Rejecting Dead Options Seeking classlessness, positive values, and accommodating economy to gains in other spheres of social life and vice versa, compels us to reject private ownership of productive property, corporate divisions of labor, top down decision-making, markets, and central planning. Without belaboring the obvious, each of these institutional possibilities intrinsically violates one or more (and usually all) of the norms set forth above. For example, private ownership produces capitalist class rule over coordinators and workers. It obliterates equity by remunerating property and power. It obliterates self management by vesting primary power in the hands of owners. Corporate divisions of labor produce coordinator class rule over workers. They negate self-management by disempowering some and aggrandizing power to others, as does top-down decision making. Markets obscure true social costs and benefits of all items that involve positive or negative effects that extend beyond immediate buyers and sellers. They lead to incredible misallocation of assets, particularly ecological, not to mention orienting output to maximizing surpluses rather than human well being. Markets also impose anti-social behavior, nice guys finish last, and produce class division between coordinators and workers because firms must compete by cutting costs and because to cut costs firms will create and employ an elite that is freed from the implications of their cost cutting choices and callous to the immediate human implications of their choices, and this is precisely the coordinator class. Central planning intrinsically violates self-management and imposes coordinator class rule to ensure obedience. Central planning typically also aggrandizes the ruling coordinator class at the expense of workers below, including centralizing control in ways that yield ecological imbalance. Beyond economics, capitalist relations also aggravate hierarchies of power, status, and wealth generated by other spheres of social life, for example aggravating and exploiting sexual, gender, racial, and political hierarchies born of extra-economic relations. Capitalism likewise produces ecological imbalance and even violates ecological sustainability. It produces as well a competitive rat race that, writ large, internationally unleashes colonialism, imperialism, neo colonialism, empire, unimaginably extreme destitution, and war. It follows that if we are serious about classlessness, economic equity, solidarity, diversity, self-management, ecological balance, and socially oriented efficiency, as well as about broader aspirations for race, gender, political power, ecology, and peace, we must reject typically available economic institutions and must seek alternatives. Claim 6: New Economic Institutions Seeking classlessness, the proposed positive economic values, and the broader social aims, and rejecting capitalist and coordinator institutions, leaves us needing to advocate new economic institutions, which for me leads to advocating the defining structures of participatory economics, or parecon. These are: self-managing workers' and consumers' councils, remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued work, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning. For workers and consumers to influence decisions in proportion as they are affected by them requires self-managing councils where they can express and tally their preferences. Equity requires that ethically workers are remunerated for the personal cost to them of their participation in time, intensity of effort, and harshness of conditions, and that economically they are remunerated only for socially useful work to ensure incentives consistent with eliciting fulfilling output. Self-managed decisions require confident preparation, relevant capacity, and appropriate participation and therefore lead to advocating apportioning to every worker a balanced mix of empowering and disempowering tasks so that no sector of actors monopolizes empowering work while others are left disempowered and unable to even arrive at much less manifest a will of their own. Balanced job complexes eliminate the monopoly on empowering labor that differentiates coordinators from workers by giving each worker a job of average empowerment implications so that all workers are enabled by their work related conditions to participate comparably in self-management. Finally, to make all the above viable, allocation should be accomplished in accord with the freely expressed will of self-managing workers and consumers and should be undertaken via cooperative and informed negotiation in which all people's wills are proportionately actualized and in which operations, mindsets, and structures further the logic of self-managing councils, balanced job complexes, and equitable remuneration rather than violating each. All this implies, I believe, what advocates of parecon call participatory planning. Insofar as worker and consumer self-managing councils, equitable remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued work, balanced job complexes, and participatory planning treat all actors economically identically, they also counter any possible social hierarchies among actors generated outside the economy. Insofar as these institutions properly value ecological effects and convey decision making power to those affected, and insofar as writ large, internationally, they progressively eliminate inequality of wealth and power between nations, they also accommodate and even augment aims for natural and international arenas of social life. Claim 7: Program Must Reflect Aims Requirements for our own projects, organizations, and movements ought to include patiently incorporating the seeds of the future in the present, including self-managed decision-making, balanced job complexes, equitable remuneration, and cooperative negotiated planning, as well as central features of other dimensions of the new world we seek. Creating institutions in the present that incorporate seeds of the future makes sense as an experiment to learn, as a model to inspire, as a way to do the best possible job now for current fulfillment, and to begin developing tomorrow's infrastructure today. Of course, we need to keep in mind that even in our own operations we cannot have perfect future structures immediately, both because of surrounding pressures and because of our own emotional and behavioral baggage. But the fact that we need a sense of proportion about what future seeds we can experimentally harvest now is not the same as calling for entirely rejecting contemporary harvesting. Just as movements should foreshadow a future that is feminist, poly-cultural, and also politically free and just, to avoid being internally compromised in their values, incapable of inspiring diverse constituencies or even prone to alienate them, incapable of overcoming cynicism, and weak in their comprehension even of current flaws and potentials, so should movements for the same reasons foreshadow a future that is classless, including incorporating self-managing council organization, balanced job complexes, equitable remuneration, and self-management. Put strategically, constructing movements that embody coordinator class assumptions, mannerisms, and aspirations would violate our aims and cripple our prospects just as horrifically as constructing movements that embody sexist, racist, or authoritarian assumptions, mannerisms, and aspirations would cripple our prospects. Claim 8: Seeking Reforms Without Succumbing to Reformism Seeking participatory economic institutions requires that we not only create in the present new institutions, but that we also fight for changes in existing capitalist institutions. Demands made against existing institutions ought to enhance people's lives, advance the likelihood of further successful struggle, and advance the consciousness and organizational capacity to pursue those further aims. As valuable as experiments in creating visionary economic (or gender, race, or politically inspired) organization in the present are, to only prioritize creating forward oriented experiments would consign those who work in existing institutions to observer status as well as callously ignoring pressing needs of the moment. The path to a better future includes creating experiments in its image in the present, but it also includes a long march through existing institutions, battling for changes that improve people's lives today even as they auger and prepare for more changes tomorrow. Changes in existing institutions which do not replace those institutions down to their defining core, are undeniably reforms, but the effort to win such reforms need not accept that only reform is possible. On the contrary, efforts to win reforms can enable a process to win a whole new economy. We can utilize demands, language, organization, and methods, all in accord not only with winning sought short term gains but also with increasing the inclination and capacity of people to seek still more victories in the future. Rather than presuming system maintenance, battles around income, workplace conditions, decision-making, allocation, jobs, work day length, and other facets of economic life should enlarge and empower future-oriented desires. We should win reforms now not only to enjoy the benefits, but also to pave the path to win more gains later. This is a non-reformist approach to winning reforms. Claim 9: Change Is Not Automatic At some point in the future vast movements will have features such as those noted above, and will become vehicles toward winning new societies. This will not happen, however, automatically. Change will not arise from an unfolding inevitable tendency that sweeps us, uncomprehending, into a better future. Change will come, instead, via self-conscious actions by huge numbers of people bringing to bear their creativity and energy in a largely unified and coherent manner that will have internal debate but that will also overarching shared aims and steadfast purpose. It we travel into the future in our minds, and we imagine looking into the past, we will see a historically relatively brief period, at some point, during which people in one nation or another, or in many at once, form projects, organizations, and movements that thereafter persist to become centrally important vehicles for fighting for, constructing, and even finally merging into a new world. We can reasonably ask what attributes such a lasting project, organization, or movement would incorporate. We can also reasonably act on our shared answers, once we feel we have them more or less in hand, to try to create such vehicles of change. Might we get our efforts wrong? Yes, we might. But if we don't try, then we have no chance of succeeding. And if we do fail, we can take lessons from our mistakes, and try again. It follows that at some point building vehicles not just of opposition but for self-conscious creation of a new world must become our agenda. We should undertake this with exaggerated images of instant success, or with inflated ideas of ease, or utilizing impatient approaches that limit participation or bias outcomes, but we should also refuse to succumb to cynical delay. Claim 10: What's Next? When a capable and caring group agrees on claims like those offered above, however refined and adapted by their deliberations, it will become incumbent on them to collectively seek wider agreement from a still larger group and to solidify their inspiring intellectual unity into a more practical organizational and programmatic unity. That is the injunction of justice and revolution. And if not now, when?

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20826 Print

Mark Moore wants you to read this ZNet Article

2009-03-27T09:27:00.001-05:00

Reimagining Socialism

Mar 08, 2009 By Barbara Ehrenreich

Source: The Nation.

If you haven't heard socialists doing much crowing over the fall of capitalism, it isn't just because there aren't enough of us to make an audible crowing sound. We, as much as anyone on Wall Street in, say, 2006, appreciate the resilience of American capitalism--its ability to regroup and find fresh avenues for growth, as it did after the depressions of 1877, 1893 and the 1930s. In fact, The Communist Manifesto can be read not only as an indictment of capitalism but as a breathless paean to its dynamism. And we all know the joke about the Marxist economist who successfully predicted eleven out of the last three recessions.

But this time the patient may not get up from the table, no matter how many times the electroshock paddles of "stimulus" are applied. We seem to have entered the death spiral where rising unemployment leads to reduced consumption and hence to greater unemployment. Any schadenfreude we might be tempted to feel as executives lose their corporate jets and the erstwhile Masters of the Universe wipe egg from their faces is quickly dashed by the ever more vivid suffering around us. Food pantries and shelters can no longer keep up with the demand; millions face old age without pensions and with their savings gutted; we personally are consumed with anxiety about the future that awaits our children and grandchildren.

Besides, it wasn't supposed to happen this way. There was supposed to be a revolution, remember? The socialist idea, prediction, faith or whatever was that capitalism would fall when people got tired of trying to live on the crumbs that fall from the chins of the rich and rose up in some fashion--preferably inclusively, democratically and nonviolently--and seized the wealth for themselves. Such a seizure would have looked nothing like "nationalization" as currently discussed, in which public wealth flows into the private sector with little or no change in the elites that control it or in the way the control is exercised. Our expectation as socialists was that the huge amount of organizing required for revolutionary change would create an infrastructure for governance, built out of--among other puzzle pieces--unions, community organizations, advocacy groups and new organizations of the unemployed and nouveau poor.

It was also supposed to be a simple matter for the masses to take over or "seize" the physical infrastructure of industrial capitalism--the "means of production"--and start putting it to work for the common good. But much of the means of production has fled overseas--to China, for example, that bastion of authoritarian capitalism. When we look around our increasingly shuttered landscape and survey the ruins of finance capitalism, we see bank upon bank, realty and mortgage companies, title companies, insurance companies, credit-rating agencies and call centers, but not enough enterprises making anything we could actually use, like food or pharmaceuticals. In recent years, capitalism has become increasingly and almost mystically abstract. Outside manufacturing and the service sector, fewer and fewer people could explain to their children what they did for a living. The brightest students went into finance, not physics. The biggest urban buildings housed cubicles and computer screens, not assembly lines, laboratories, studios or classrooms. Even our flagship industry, manufacturing autos, would require major retooling to make something we could use--not more cars, let alone more SUVs, but more windmills, buses and trains.

What is most galling, from a socialist perspective, is the dawning notion that capitalism may be leaving us with less than it found on this planet, about 400 years ago, when the capitalist mode of production began to take off. Marx imagined that industrial capitalism had potentially solved the age-old problem of scarcity and that there was plenty to go around if only it was equitably distributed. But industrial capitalism--with some help from industrial communism--has brought about a level of environmental destruction that threatens our species along with countless others. The climate is warming, the oil supply is peaking, the deserts are advancing and the seas are rising and contain fewer and fewer fish for us to eat. You don't have to be a freaky doomster to see that extinction may be what's next on the agenda.

In this situation, with both long-term biological and day-to-day economic survival in doubt, the only relevant question is: do we have a plan, people? Can we see our way out of this and into a just, democratic, sustainable (add your own favorite adjectives) future?

Let's just put it right out on the table: we don't. At least we don't have some blueprint on how to organize society ready to whip out of our pockets. Lest this sound negligent on our part, we should explain that socialism was an idea about how to rearrange ownership and distribution and, to an extent, governance. It assumed that there was a lot worth owning and distributing; it did not imagine having to come up with an entirely new and environmentally sustainable way of life. Furthermore, the history of socialism has been disfigured by too many cadres who had a perfect plan, if only they could win the next debate, carry out a coup or get enough people to fall into line behind them.

But we do understand--and this is one of the things that make us "socialists"--that the absence of a plan, or at least some sort of deliberative process for figuring out what to do, is no longer an option. The great promise of capitalism, as first suggested by Adam Smith and recently enshrined in "market fundamentalism," was that we didn't have to figure anything out, because the market would take care of everything for us. Instead of promoting self-reliance, this version of free enterprise fostered passivity in the face of that inscrutable deity, the Market. Deregulate, let wages fall to their "natural" level, turn what remains of government into an endless source of bounty for contractors--whee! Well, that hasn't worked, and the core idea of socialism still stands: that people can get together and figure out how to solve their problems, or at least a lot of their problems, collectively. That we--not the market or the capitalists or some elite group of über-planners--have to control our own destiny.

We admit: we don't even have a plan for the deliberative process that we know has to replace the anarchic madness of capitalism. Yes, we have some notion of how it should work, based on our experiences with the civil rights movement, the women's movement and the labor movement, as well as with countless cooperative enterprises. This notion centers on what we still call "participatory democracy," in which all voices are heard and all people equally respected. But we have no precise models of participatory democracy on the scale that is currently called for, involving hundreds of millions, and potentially billions, of participants at a time.

What might this look like? There are some intriguing models to study, like the Brazilian Workers Party's famous experiments in developing a participatory budget in Porto Alegre. Z Magazine founder Michael Albert developed a detailed approach to mass-based planning that he calls participatory economics, or "parecon," and one of us (Fletcher, in his book Solidarity Divided, written with Fernando Gapasin) has proposed a locally based network of people's assemblies. But all this is experimental, and we realize that any system for mass democratic planning will be messy. It will stumble; it will be wrong sometimes; and there will be a lot of running back to the drawing board.

But as socialists we know the spirit in which this great project of collective salvation must be undertaken, and that spirit is solidarity. An antique notion until very recently, it flickered into life again in the symbolism and energy of the Obama campaign. The Yes We Can! chant was the slogan of the United Farm Workers movement and went on to be adopted by various unions and community-based organizations to emphasize what large numbers of people can accomplish through collective action. Even Obama's relatively anodyne calls for a new commitment to volunteerism and community service seem to have inspired a spirit of "giving back." If the idea of democratic planning, of controlling our destiny, is the intellectual content of socialism, then solidarity is its emotional energy source--the moral understanding and the searing conviction that, however overwhelming the challenges, we are in this together.

Solidarity, though, is an empty sentiment without organization--ways of thinking and working together, and of connecting the social movements that are battling injustice every day. We see a tremendous opportunity in the bleak fact that millions of Americans have been rendered redundant by the capitalist economy and are free to dedicate their considerable talents to creating a more just and sustainable alternative. But if we are serious about collective survival in the face of our multiple crises, we have to build organizations, including explicitly socialist ones, that can mobilize this talent, develop leadership and advance local struggles. And we have to be serious, because the capitalist elites who have run things so far have forfeited all trust or even respect, and we--progressives of all stripes--are now the only grown-ups around.

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20816 Print

Mark Moore wants you to read this ZNet Article

2009-03-27T09:27:00.000-05:00

The Crisis and the Consolidation of Class Power

Mar 15, 2009 By David Harvey

Source: CounterPunch.

Does this crisis signal the end of neo-liberalism? My answer is that it depends what you mean by neo-liberalism. My interpretation is that it's a class project, masked by a lot of neo-liberal rhetoric about individual freedom, liberty, personal responsibility, privatization and the free market. These were means, however, towards the restoration and consolidation of class power, and that neo-liberal project has been fairly successful.

One of the basic principles that was set up in the 1970s was that state power should protect financial institutions at all costs. This is the principle that was worked out in New York City crisis in the mid-1970s, and was first defined internationally when Mexico threatened to go bankrupt in 1982. This would have destroyed the New York investment banks, so the US Treasury and the IMF combined to bail Mexico out. But in so doing they mandated austerity for the Mexican population. In other words they protected the banks and destroyed the people, and this has been the standard practice in the IMF ever since. The current bailout is the same old story, one more time, except bigger.

What happened in the US was that 8 men gave us a 3 page document which pointed a gun at everybody and said ‘give us $700 billion or else'. This to me was like a financial coup, against the government and the population of the US. Which means you're not going to come out of this crisis with a crisis of the capitalist class; you're going to come out of this with a far greater consolidation of the capitalist class than there has been in the past. We're going to end up with four or five major banking institutions in the United States and nothing else. Many on Wall Street are thriving right now. Lazard's, because it specializes in mergers and acquisitions, is making megabucks. Some people are going to be burned, but overall it's a massive consolidation of financial power. There's a great line from Andrew Mellon (US banker, Secretary of the Treasury 1921-32), who said that in a crisis, assets return to their rightful owners. A financial crisis is a way of rationalizing what is irrational - for example the immense crash in Asia in 1997-8 resulted in a new model of capitalist development. Disruptions lead to a reconfiguration, a new form of class power. It could go wrong, politically. The bank bailout has been fought over in the US Senate and elsewhere, so the political class may not easily go along - they can put up roadblocks but so far they have caved in and not nationalized the banks.

But this can lead to a deeper political struggle: there is a strong sense of questioning why are we empowering all the people who got us into this mess. Questions are being asked about Obama's choice of economic advisers - for example Larry Summers who was Secretary of the Treasury at the key moment when a lot of things started to go really wrong, at the end of the Clinton administration. Why would you now bring in so many of the characters who are pro-Wall Street, pro-finance capital, who did the bidding of finance capital back then? Which is not to say that they aren't going to redesign the financial architecture because I think they know it's got to be redesigned, but who are they going to redesign it for? People are really discontented about Obama's economic team, even in the mainstream press.

A new state financial architecture is required. I don't think that all existing institutions like the Bank of International Settlements and even the IMF should be abolished; I think we will need them but they have to be revolutionarily transformed. The big question is who will control them and what their architecture will be. We will need people, experts with some sort of understanding of how those institutions do work and can work. And this is very dangerous because, as we can see right now, when the state looks to see who can understand what is going on in Wall Street, they think only insiders can.

Disempowerment of labor: enough is enough

Whether we can get out of this crisis in a different way depends very much upon the balance of class forces. It depends upon the degree to which the entire population says ‘enough is enough, let's change this system'. Right now, when you look at what's been happening to workers over the last 50 years, they have got almost nothing out of this system. But they haven't risen up in revolt. In the US over the last 7 or 8 years, the condition of the working classes in general has deteriorated, and there has been no mass movement against this. Finance capitalism can survive the crisis, but it depends entirely upon the degree in which there is going to be popular revolt against what is happening, and a real push to try and reconfigure how the economy works.

One of the major barriers to continuous capital accumulation back in the 1960s and early 70s was the labor question. There were scarcities of labor both in Europe and the US and labor was well organized, with political clout. So one of the big barriers to capital accumulation during that period was; how can capital get access to cheaper and more docile labor supplies? There were a number of answers. One was to encourage more immigration. In the United States there was a major revision of the immigration laws in 1965 that in effect allowed the US access to the global surplus population (before that only Europeans and Caucasians were privileged). In the late 1960s the French government was subsidizing the import of Maghrebian labor, the Germans were bringing in the Turks, the Swedes were bringing in the Yugoslavs, the British were drawing upon their empire. So a pro-immigration policy emerged which was one attempt to deal with the labor problem.

The second thing you go for is rapid technological change which throws people out of work and if that failed then there were people like Reagan, Thatcher and Pinochet to crush organized labor. And finally capital goes to where the surplus labor is by off-shoring, and this was facilitated by two things. Firstly technical reorganization of the transport systems: one of the biggest revolutions that happened during this period is containerization which allowed you to make auto parts in Brazil and ship them for very low cost to Detroit or wherever. Secondly the new communications systems allowed the tight organization of commodity chain production across the global space.

All of these solved the labor problem for capital, so by 1985 capital has no labor problem any more. It may have specific problems in particular areas but globally it has plenty of labor available to it; the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of much of China added something like 2 billion people to the global proletariat in 20 years. So labor availability is no problem now and the result of that is that labor has been disempowered for the last 30 years. But when labor is disempowered it gets low wages, and if you engage in wage repression this limits markets. So capital was beginning to face problems with its market, and there were two things which happened.

The first was the gap between what labor was earning and what it was spending was covered by the rise of the credit card industry and increasing indebtedness of households. So in the US in 1980 you would find that the average household would owe around $40,000 in debts now it's about $130,000 for every household, including mortgages. So household debt sky-rockets and that brings you to financialization, and that was about getting the financial institutions to support the household debts of working class people whose earnings are not increasing. And you start with the respectable working class, but by the time you get to the year 2000 you start to find these sub-prime mortgages circulating. You are looking to create a market. And so finance starts to support the debt-financing of people who have almost no income. But if you hadn't done that what would have happened to the property developers who are building the houses? So you try and stabilize the market by funding that indebtedness.

Crises of asset values

The second thing which happened was that from the 1980s onwards the rich are getting far richer because of that wage repression. The story we are told is that they will invest in new activity but they don't; most of them start to invest in assets, i.e. they put money in the stock market, the stock market goes up so they think it is a good investment so they put more money in the stock market, so you get these stock market bubbles. It is a ponzi-like system without the Madoff's organizing it. The rich bid up asset values, including stocks, property, and leisure property as well as the art market. These investments involve financialization. But as you bid up asset values this carries over to the whole economy, so to live in Manhattan became all but impossible unless you went incredibly into debt, and everyone is caught in this inflation of asset values, including the working classes whose incomes are not rising. And now we've got a collapse of asset values; the housing market is down, the stock market is down.

There has always been the problem of the relationship between representation and reality. Debt is about the assumed future value of goods and services, so it assumes the economy is going to continue to grow over the next 20 or 30 years. It always involves a guess, which is then set by the interest rate, discounting into the future. This growth of the financial area after the 1970s has a lot to do with what I think is another key problem: what I would call the capitalist surplus absorption problem. As surplus theory tells us, capitalists produce a surplus, which they then have to take a part of, recapitalize it, and reinvest it in expansion. Which means they always have to find somewhere else to expand into. In an article I wrote for the New Left Review called ‘Right to the City' I pointed out that in the last 30 years an immense amount of the capital surplus has been absorbed into urbanization: urban restructuring, expansion and speculation. Every city I go to is a huge building site for capitalist surplus absorption. Now, of course, many of these projects stand unfinished.

This way of absorbing capital surpluses has got more and more problematic over time. In 1750 the value of the total output of goods and services was around $135 billion, in constant values. By 1950, it's $4 trillion. By 2000, it's $40 trillion. It's now around $50 trillion. And if Gordon Brown is right it's going to double over the next 20 years, to $100 trillion by 2030.

Throughout the history of capitalism, the general rate of growth has been close to 2.5% per annum, compound basis. That would mean that in 2030 you'd need to find profitable outlets for $2.5 trillion dollars. That's a very tall order. I think there has been a serious problem, particularly since 1970, about how to absorb greater and greater amounts of surplus in real production. Less and less of it is going into real production, and more and more into speculation on asset values, which accounts for the increasing frequency and depth of the financial crises we've been having since 1975 or so; they are all crises of asset value.

My argument would be that if we come out of this crisis right now, and there's going to be capital accumulation at 3% rate of growth, we've got a hell of a lot of problems on our hands. Capitalism is running into serious environmental constraints, as well as market constraints, profitability constraints. The recent turn to financialization is a turn of necessity, as a way of dealing with the surplus absorption problem; but one that cannot possibly work without periodic devaluations. That's what's happening now, with the losses of several trillion dollars of asset value.

The term ‘national bailout' is therefore inaccurate, because they're not bailing out the whole of the existing financial system - they're bailing out the banks, the capitalist class, forgiving them their debts, their transgressions, and only theirs. The money goes to the banks but not to the homeowners who've been foreclosed on, which is beginning to create anger. And the banks are using the money not to lend to anybody but to buy other banks. They are consolidating their class power.

The collapse of credit

The collapse of credit for the working class spells the end of financialization as the solution for the crisis of the market. As a consequence of this we will see a major crisis of unemployment and the collapse of many industries unless there is effective action to change that. Now this is where you get the current discussion about returning to a Keynesian economic model, and Obama's plan is to invest in a vast public works and investment in green technologies, in a sense going back to a New Deal type of solution. I am skeptical of his ability to do this.

To understand the current situation we need to go beyond what goes on in the labor process and production to the complex of relationships around the state and finance. We need to understand how the national debt and credit system have from the beginning been major vehicles for primitive accumulation, or what I now call accumulation by dispossession - as you can see from the building industry. In my ‘Right to the City' article I looked at how capitalism was revived in second empire Paris because the state along with the bankers put together a new nexus of state-finance capital, to rebuild Paris. That provided full employment and the boulevards, the water systems and sewage systems, new transport systems, and it was through those types of mechanisms that the Suez Canal was built. A lot of this was debt financed. Now that state-finance nexus has undergone a massive transformation since the 1970s; it's become far more international, it's opened itself to all types of financial innovations including derivative markets and speculative markets, etc. A new financial architecture has been designed.

What I think is happening at the moment is that they are now looking for a new financial set-up which can solve the problem not for working people but for the capitalist class. I think they are going to find a solution for the capitalist class and if the rest of us get screwed, too bad. The only thing they would care about is if we rose up in revolt. And until we rise up in revolt they are going to redesign the system according to their own class interests. I don't know what this new financial architecture will look like. If we look closely at what happened during the New York fiscal crisis I don't think the bankers or the financiers knew what to do at all, now what they did was bit by bit arrive at a ‘bricolage'; they pieced it together in a new way and eventually they come up with a new construction. But whatever solution they may arrive at, it will suit them unless we get in there and start saying that we want something that is suitable for us. There's a crucial role for people like us to raise the questions and challenge the legitimacy of the decisions being made at present, and to have very clear analyses of what the nature of the problem has been, and what the possible exits are.

Alternatives

We need in fact to begin to exercise our right to the city. We have to ask the question which is more important, the value of the banks or the value of humanity. The banking system should serve the people, not live off the people. And the only way in which we are really going to be able to exert the right to the city is to take command of the capitalist surplus absorption problem. We have to socialize the capital surplus, and to get out of the problem of 3% accumulation forever. We are now at a point where 3% growth rate forever is going to exert such tremendous environmental costs, and such tremendous pressure on social situations that we are going to go from one financial crisis to another.

The core problem is how you are going to absorb capitalist surpluses in a productive and profitable way. My view is that social movement must coalesce around the idea that they want more control over the surplus product. And while I don't support a return to the Keynesian model of the sort we had in the 1960s, I do think there was much greater social and political control over the production, utilization and distribution of the surplus then. The circulating surplus was put into building schools, hospitals and infrastructure. This was what upset the capitalist class and caused a counter movement toward the end of the 1960s - that they were not getting enough control over the surplus. However, if you look at the data the proportion of the surplus which is being absorbed by the state has not shifted very much since 1970, so what the capitalist class did was to stop the further socialization of the surplus. They also managed to transform the word government into the word ‘governance', making governmental and corporate activities porous, which enables the situation we have in Iraq where private contractors milked the possibilities ruthlessly for easy profit.

I think we are headed into a legitimating crisis. Over the past thirty years we have been told, to quote Margaret Thatcher, "there is no alternative" to a neo-liberal free market, privatised world, and that if we didn't succeed in that world it's our own fault. I think it's very difficult to say that when faced with a foreclosure crisis you support the banks but not the people who are being foreclosed upon. You can accuse the people being foreclosed upon of irresponsibility, and in the US there is a strong racist element in this argument. When the first wave of foreclosures hit places like Cleveland and Ohio they were devastating to the black communities there but some peoples' response was ‘well what do you expect, black people are irresponsible. We are seeing right-wing explanations of the crisis which explain it in terms of personal greed, both in Wall Street and those who borrowed money to buy houses. So they attempt to blame the crisis on the victims. One of our tasks must be to say ‘no, you absolutely cannot do that' and to try and create a consolidated explanation of this crisis as a class event in which a certain structure of exploitation broke down and is about to be displaced by an even deeper structure of exploitation. It's very important this alternative explanation of the crisis is discussed and conveyed publicly.

One of the big ideological configurations we are going to have is what is going to be the role of home ownership in the future once we start saying things like you've got to socialize much more of the housing stock, as since the 1930s we have had huge pressures towards individualized home ownership as in a way of securing people's rights and position.. We've got to socialize and recapitalize public education and health care long with housing provision. These sectors of the economy have to be socialized along with the banks.

Radical politics beyond class divides

There is another point we have to consider, which is that labor, and particularly organized labor, is only one small piece of this whole problem, and it's only going to have a partial role in what is going on. And this is for a very simple reason, which goes back to Marx's shortcomings in how he set up the problem. If you say to that the formation of the state-finance complex is absolutely crucial to the dynamics of capitalism (which it obviously is), and you ask yourself what social forces are at work in contesting or setting it up these institutional arrangements, labor has never been at the forefront of that struggle. Labor has been at the forefront in the labor market and over the labor process and these are vital moments in the circulation process, but most of the struggles which have gone on over the state-finance nexus are populist struggles in which labor has only been partially present.

For example in the US in the 1930s there were a lot of populists who supported the Bonnie and Clyde bank robbers. And currently many of the struggles going on in Latin America are more populist than labor led. Labor always has a very important role to play but I don't think we are in a position right now where the conventional view of the proletariat being the vanguard of the struggle is very helpful when it is the architecture of the state-finance nexus (the central nervous system of capital accumulation) that is the fundamental issue. There may be times and places where proletarian movements may be highly significant, for example in China where I envisage them playing a critical part which I do not see them having in this country. What is interesting is that the car workers and automobile companies are in alliance right now in relation to the state-finance nexus, so in a way the grand dividing line of class struggle which has always been there in Detroit isn't there anymore or at least not in the same way. We have a completely different kind of class politics going on and some of the conventional Marxist ways of viewing these things get in the way of a real radical politics.

There is also a big problem on the left that many think the capturing of state power has no role to play in political transformations and I think they're crazy. Incredible power is located there and you can't walk away from it as though it doesn't matter. I am profoundly skeptical of the belief that NGOs and civil society organizations are going to change the world, not because NGOs can't do anything at all, but it takes a different kind of political movement and conception if we are going to do anything about the main crisis which is going on. In the United States the political instinct is very anarchist, and while I am very sympathetic to a lot of anarchist views their perpetual complaints about and refusal to command the state also gets in the way.

I don't think we are in a position to define who the agents of change will be in the present conjuncture and it plainly will vary from one part of the world to another. In the United States right now there are signs that elements of the managerial class, which has lived off the earnings of finance capital all these years, is getting annoyed and may turn a bit radical. A lot of people have been laid off in the financial services, in some instances they have even had their mortgages foreclosed. Cultural producers are waking up to the nature of the problems we face and in the same way that the 1960s art schools were centers of political radicalism, you might find something like that re-emerging. We may see the rise of cross-border organizations as the reductions in remittances spread the crisis to places like rural Mexico or Kerala.

Social movements have to define what strategies and policies they want to adopt. We academics should never view ourselves as having some missionary role in relation to social movements; what we should do is get into conversation and talk about how we see the nature of the problem.

Having said that I would want us to propose ideas. An interesting idea in the US right now is to get municipal governments to pass anti-eviction ordinances. I think there are a couple of places in France which have done that. Then we could set up a municipal housing corporation which would assume the mortgages, pay off the bank at so much on the dollar because the banks have been given a lot of money to supposedly deal with this, but they're not.

Another key question is that of citizenship and rights. I think that rights to the city should be guaranteed by residency no matter what your citizenship is. Currently people are denied any political rights to the city unless they happen to be citizens. So if you're an immigrant you don't have any rights. I think there are struggles to be launched around the rights to the city. In the Brazilian constitution they have a ‘rights to the city' clause which is about the right to consultation, participation and budgetary procedures. Again I think there is a politics which can come out of that.

A reconfiguration of urbanization

In the US there is the capacity to act at a local level, with a lot going on about environmental questions, and over the past fifteen to twenty years municipal governments have often been more progressive than the federal government. There's a crisis in municipal finance right now and there is likely to be significant agitation and pressure upon Obama to recapitalize a lot of municipal government (which is proposed in the stimulus package). He has said this is one of the things he is concerned about, especially since a lot of the issues which are happening are local ones, for instance the sub-prime mortgage crisis. As I have been arguing the foreclosure stuff must be understood as an urban crisis not just a financial crisis; it is a financial crisis of urbanization.

Another important question is to think strategically about how the social economy in some alliance with labor and the municipal-based movements such as Right to the City could also be a component in a strategy. This relates to the question of technological development - for example I see no reason why you couldn't have a municipal-based support system for the development of productive systems such as solar power, to create more decentralized employment apparatuses and possibilities.

If I could develop an idealized system now I would say in the US we should create a national redevelopment bank and take $500 billion out of that $700 billion they voted and the bank should work with municipalities to deal with neighborhoods which have been hit by the foreclosure wave, because the foreclosure wave has been like a financial Katrina in many ways; it has wiped out whole communities, usually poor black or Hispanic communities. You go into those neighborhoods and bring back the people who used to live in those communities and re-house them on a different basis of tenure, residency rights, and with a different kind of financing. And green those neighborhoods, creating local employment opportunities in those fields.

So I could imagine a reconfiguration of urbanization. To do anything on global warming we need to totally reconfigure how American cities work; to think about a completely new pattern of urbanization, with new patterns of living and working. There are a lot of possibilities the left should be paying attention to - this is a real opportunity. But it is where I have a problem with some Marxists who seem to think, ‘yes! It's a crisis; the contradictions of capitalism will now be solved somehow!' This is not a moment for triumphalism, this is a moment for problematizing. First of all I think there are problems with the way Marx set up those problems. Marxists are not very good at understanding the state financial complex or urbanization - they are terrific at understanding some other things. But now we have to rethink our theoretical posture and political possibilities.

So there is a lot of theoretical re-thinking that is needed as well as practical action.

Transcribed by Kate Ferguson. Edited by Mary Livingstone.

David Harvey is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of various books, articles, and lectures. He has been teaching Karl Marx's Capital for nearly 40 years. He can be reached through his website, http://davidharvey.org

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20876 Print

Building a Better Bible « United Methodeviations

2009-03-18T12:58:00.000-05:00

Building a Better Bible « United Methodeviations Using the Wesley Study Bible for a yearly reading of the bible in conjunction with a weekly discipling group is a great idea!!

Why the Mainline is Shrinking …

2009-03-17T20:51:00.001-05:00

Interesting article on mainline church renewal efforts.

http://www.billtennybrittian.com/got-a-foundation-lets-build/why/

-- Sent by Add to Any: http://www.addtoany.com

Methodeviations

2009-03-16T22:19:00.000-05:00

Methodeviations

2009-03-16T22:12:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! News Story - More Americans say they have no religion

2009-03-11T22:38:00.001-05:00

Mark T. Moore (pastor.mark@sbcglobal.net) has sent you a news article. (Email address has not been verified.) ------------------------------------------------------------ Personal message:

The article I have associated with the so called "regression" of Evangelicals. Upshot: We are living in a post modern/post Christian time in the northern hemisphere and that will have an impact on Christians in the US and Europe.

More Americans say they have no religion

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090309/ap_on_re/rel_religious_america

============================================================ Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/

The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com

2009-03-11T20:36:00.001-05:00

Reflects the regression of the Christian faith in the USA from the perspective of one Evangelical commentator. A sister article to the widely circulated piece detailing the loss of numerical strength across the Christian community in the USA.

Latest Commentary on Economy/Joseph Stiglitz

2009-03-06T19:43:00.000-06:00

Obama Has Confused Saving the Banks with Saving the Bankers

Mar 02, 2009 By Joseph Stiglitz

Source: Democracy Now.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about President Obama's speech, I'm joined in the firehouse studio by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University, former chief economist at the World Bank, and co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Nice to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Your first assessment of the speech last night?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Oh, I thought it was a brilliant speech. I thought he did an excellent job of wending his way through the fine line of trying to say—give confidence about where we're going, and yet the reality of our economy—country facing a very severe economic downturn. I thought he was good in also giving a vision and saying while we're doing the short run, here are three very fundamental long-run problems that we have to deal.

The critical question that many Americans are obviously concerned about is the question of what do we do with the banks. And on that, he again was very clear that he recognized the anger that Americans have about the way the banks have taken our taxpayer money and misspent it, but he didn't give a clear view of what he was going to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to the clip last night. During his speech, President Obama acknowledged more bailouts of the nation's banks would be needed, but didn't directly say, as Joe Stiglitz was saying, whether the government would move to nationalize Citigroup and Bank of America.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times. And when we learn that a major bank has serious problems, we will hold accountable those responsible; force the necessary adjustments; provide the support to clean up their balance sheets; and assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy.

Now, I understand that on any given day Wall Street may be more comforted by an approach that gives bank bailouts with no strings attached and that holds nobody accountable for their reckless decisions. But such an approach won't solve the problem. And our goal is to quicken the day when we restart lending to the American people and American business and end this crisis once and for all. And I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama on Tuesday night. Joe Stiglitz, is he holding the banks accountable?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, so far, it hasn't happened. I think the more fundamental issues are the following. He says what we need is to get lending restarted. If he had taken the $700 billion that we gave, levered it ten-to-one, created some new institution guaranteed—provide partial guarantees going for, that would have generated $7 trillion of new lending. So, if he hadn't looked at the past, tried to bail out the banks, bail out the shareholders, bail out the other—the bankers' retirement fund, we would have easily been able to generate the lending that he says we need.

So the question isn't just whether we hold them accountable; the question is: what do we get in return for the money that we're giving them? At the end of his speech, he spent a lot of time talking about the deficit. And yet, if we don't do things right—and we haven't been doing them right—the deficit will be much larger. You know, whether you spend money well in the stimulus bill or whether you're spending money well in the bank recapitalization, it's important in everything that we do that we get the bang for the buck. And the fact is, the bank recovery bill, the way we've been spending the money on the bank recovery, has not been giving bang for the buck. We haven't gotten anything out.

What we got in terms of preferred shares, relative to what we gave them, a congressional oversight panel calculated, was only sixty-seven cents on the dollar. And the preferred shares that we got have diminished in value since then. So we got cheated, to put it bluntly. What we don't know is that—whether we will continue to get cheated. And that's really at the core of much of what we're talking about. Are we going to continue to get cheated?

Now, why that's so important is, one way of thinking about this—end of the speech, he starts talking about a need of reforms in Social Security, put it—you know, there's a deficit in Social Security. Well, a few years ago, when President Bush came to the American people and said there was a hole in Social Security, the size of the hole was $560 billion approximately. That meant that if we spent that amount of money, we would have guaranteed the—put on sound financial basis our Social Security system. We wouldn't have to talk about all these issues. We would have provided security for retirement for hundreds of millions of Americans over the next seventy-five years. That's less money than we spent in the bailouts of the banks, for which we have not been able to see any outcome. So it's that kind of tradeoff that seems to me that we ought to begin to talk about.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you say Obama, too, has confused saving the banks with saving the bankers.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: Should they all have been fired?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think one has to look at it on a bank-by-bank basis. Clearly, the banks that have not been managed very well, we need to not only fire them, we have to change their incentive structure. And it's not just the level of pay; it's the form of the pay. Their incentive structures encourage excessive risk taking, shortsighted behavior. And in a way, it's a vindication of economic theory. They behaved in the irresponsible way that their incentive structures would have led them to behave.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, if you get an incentive structure where you say you get huge pay if things go well, but you don't pay any consequences if things go badly, and you're going to look at it only in terms of the profits that you make this year, not the losses that you make next year and the year after, then of course you're going to try to get a gamble, because if you gamble and you win, you walk off with the money; if you lose, somebody else picks up the losses.

So what happened was, the banks gambled. They gambled very big. They had big profits for four years. But in the fifth year, the losses were greater than all the profits that they had in the first four years. But meanwhile, they walk off with the bonuses based on the four-year performance, and then, the fifth year, they don't—I mean, it was quite remarkable, they didn't even—they even got big bonuses for the record losses. Then that's what, of course, has gotten Americans angry, so that the bonuses were described as incentive pay. But that was all a charade.

But the basic thing is, you know, our bankers are—many of them, not all of them—are, you might say, ethically challenged. But even were not they ethically challenged, the fact is they had incentive structures that led them to behave in the way they did.

AMY GOODMAN: Should the banks be nationalized?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Many of the banks clearly should be put into, you might say, conservatorship. Americans don't like to use the word "nationalization." We do it all the time. We do it every week.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, if banks don't have enough capital so that they can meet the commitments they've made to the depositors, at the end of every week the FDIC looks at the balance sheet, and it says, "You don't have enough capital. You're not allowed to continue." And then what they do is they either find some other bank to take it over and fill in the hole, or they take it into government control—it sounds terrible, to take it into government control—and then sell it.

And that's what other countries have done when they faced this kind of problem—the countries that have done it well. One of the important lessons is this is the kind of thing can be done well, could be done badly. And the countries that have done badly have wound up paying to restructure the bank 20, 30, 40 percent, even 50 percent of GDP. We're on our way to that kind of debacle. But that shows you how bad things can be, how costly it can be, if you don't do it well.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Joe Stiglitz. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001, professor at Columbia University, former chief economist at the World Bank. We'll be back with him in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Joe Stiglitz, our guest, he's the Nobel Prize-winning economist from Columbia University and co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.

So, you're saying small and big banks are being treated differently.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Very much so. The small banks were shut down. The big banks—Citibank, Bank of America—we're giving huge bailouts.

Most interesting case is actually AIG, not even a bank, and we poured in $150 billion. Originally, they said they only needed $20 billion. And then, every few hours, every few days, the losses got bigger, [inaudible] another $60 billion. Now, that fact, the fact that we keep getting bad news and have to pour money in, should make us really worried. The question is, why did we bail out AIG? What they said is, the reason we bailed it out is if we didn't bail it out, there would be consequences somewhere else. They didn't tell us where.

It would make much more sense if we looked at where the consequences were and deal with the problems as they turn out. Just for instance, some of the, quote, "insurance policy derivatives" were not in the United States. The people that would have problems may be gamblers, may be other institutions abroad. Do American taxpayers want to be bailing out institutions abroad? That's a question we ought to be debating. There may be pension funds that may be hurt. Well, some of the pension funds may be able to withstand it; other pension funds will need to have assistance. But let's get the money going to where we think it ought to go, rather than this trickle-down approach that we've been using with AIG.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, which countries do you think did things well, and which didn't?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, Sweden and Norway did things very well back in the end of the '80s, beginning of the '90s.

The UK, I think, has been doing it much better than the United States. Its problems are bigger— we have to realize that—because its banking sector was a more important part of the economy, and one of the banks actually had liabilities greater than the GDP of the UK. So it's going to be facing a very difficult time. But the fact of the matter is, the way Gordon Brown did it, replacing the heads of the banks—it was real sense of accountability there. Government got control and shares commensurate with the money that it was paying in—it wasn't a giveaway—and now trying to make sure that they start lending, forward-looking. So it's clearly—they have a much clearer concept of what is needed.

AMY GOODMAN: Why is Obama saving these bankers?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, we could all guess about the politics. We know one of the problems about American politics is the role of campaign contributions, and that's plagued every one of our major problems. Under the Bush administration, we couldn't deal with a large number problems, like the oil industry, like the pharmaceutical, the healthcare, because of the influence of campaign contributions. Now, my view is, one of the problems is that whether it's because of that or not, it lends an aura of suspicion. The fact that there was so much campaign contributions from the financial sector at least raises the concern.

Now, there is one other legitimate concern, that Wall Street has done a very good job of fear mongering. They say, "If you don't save us, the whole system will go down." But, you know, when these banks that I talked about before, when they go down, there's not even a ripple. The fact is, you change ownership. It happens on airlines all the time. An airline goes bankrupt, a new ownership, financial reorganization—not a big deal. What they've succeeded in doing is instilling a sense of fear, so that it's a kind of paralysis that hangs over what we're doing. And you could understand a politician. He's been told if you do one thing, the whole system—the sky is falling, it's going to fall. That induces political leaders to try to do the smallest incremental step, and that's what got Japan in trouble.

AMY GOODMAN: And your thoughts on Geithner and Summers? Can they handle this? What do you think of them as the economics team?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, the question is, are they willing to take the bold measures that are necessary? Everybody keeps saying we need to take bold measures, inaction is not a possibility. That's not the issue on the table. Action will be taken. The question is, which action? Is the action pouring more money into the banks without any effect on lending, increasing the deficit, which the President talked about, or the actions which could be taken, starting on new banks, looking forward rather than looking to the past, significant financial restructuring?

Are we going to bail out the shareholders, bail out the bankers, rather than focusing on saving the systemically important parts of these institutions? There are some important parts of these institutions that we'll have to save. The question is, are you going to go do it like with a bludgeon, throw money at it, or are you going to try to do it more surgically and save the parts that need to be saved? And one of the things that went wrong is when we went—let Lehman Brothers go. It caused this enormous trauma. And that's increased the fear about—but that's an example of doing things wrong. We didn't ask the question. There was a systemically important part of Lehman Brothers.

AMY GOODMAN: Which was?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Which were the commercial paper that was part of the money market funds that were—people were using like banks, like part of our basic payment mechanism. We could have saved that part and let the gambling part of Lehman Brothers, which is not part of the payment mechanism, go down. And because we took this blunt approach, we failed. And what the financial markets are doing are saying, "You have to save everything, if you're going to save anything." And that's just wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: Tomorrow, President Obama is going to announce plans to cut the deficit in half. Do you think that's the right way to go?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: What we have to remember is we are in for almost like—most likely a long and extended downturn. Now, we will eventually recover. That's not a question. But in 2011, 2012, will we be in a sharp recovery or in a more slow recovery?

One of the lessons from Japan was that in 1997, when they were in the beginning of their recovery, they increased taxes because they wanted to get rid of their deficit, and the economy sank down back into a downturn.

The way to look at it is the following. Right now, in 2009, 2010, we're talking about, per year, something like a stimulus bill of $350 billion per year. To cut the deficit in half, with a deficit as we go into—without the stimulus is one-and-a-half trillion dollars, so we're talking about pulling out $600, $700, $750 billion. That's the reverse of an expenditure, taking out the stimulus and cutting back expenditures by another $600 billion—we're talking about a turnaround of a trillion dollars. Do you really believe that by 2010, by 2011, 2012, our economic recovery will be so strong that it can withstand that kind of taking out of expenditure? I don't think so. And so, if you went ahead and did that, we will go back into a downturn.

AMY GOODMAN: Joe Stiglitz, you co-wrote The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Talk about the effect of war on the economic crisis. And now we're not only talking about Iraq. But your thoughts on increasing the number of troops, intensifying the war in Afghanistan?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, first, let me say, one of—the President did have two things that I really welcome. And several of the suggestions that we made in our book, he has adopted. For instance, in the past, under the Bush administration, the war was totally funded by—or almost totally funded by emergency appropriations. It was as if every year was a surprise. And he said he's going to put that on the books so that we can evaluate it, make sure their money is going in the best possible way.

A second thing in our book that was, you know, really—was really, I found, very moving was the way we treat our veterans is terrible. And he said, you know, they fought for us; we have to fully fund the Veterans Administration. So those were really important moves in the right direction.

But on the other side, the move into Afghanistan is going to be very expensive. Things are not going very well. Our European—those who—NATO partners are getting disillusioned with the war. I talked to a lot of the people in Europe, and they really feel this is a quagmire, we're going into another quagmire. And one of the things that we do talk about in our book is that if you keep a residual force in Iraq, it's going to be very expensive. That's the experience that Britain has had. They've kept a relatively few troops, and the result of that is the savings that they had hoped weren't materialized. So that goes back to the part that he talked about at the end of his speech: the deficit. If you're going to be spending all this money in Afghanistan and in Iraq, that deficit is just going to be that much greater.

AMY GOODMAN: So you think Obama is wrong on Afghanistan?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think so.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you told him? Have you been talking to him?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Not on that issue.

AMY GOODMAN: You've been talking to him, though?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: During the primary and the period afterwards in some discussions about what to do with the banks. There were discussions. The—

AMY GOODMAN: Meaning you talked to him—

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —on the telephone.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response—after President Obama spoke, the Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal gave the Republican Party's official response. He blasted President Obama's stimulus bill as an irresponsible piece of legislation.

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL: Democratic leaders in Washington, they place their hope in the federal government. We place our hope in you, the American people. In the end, it comes down to an honest and fundamental disagreement about the proper role of government. We oppose the national Democratic view that says the way to strengthen our country is to increase dependence on government. We believe the way to strengthen our country is to restrain spending in Washington, to empower individuals and small businesses to grow our economy and to create jobs.

AMY GOODMAN: Louisiana Governor Jindal. Your response, Joe Stiglitz?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I wish he had taken an economics course. The fact is that when the economy is weak, as it is, you need to stimulate aggregate demand. If you don't do that, the economy gets weaker. And what's good about most of Obama's plan is that it's creating assets. So, while the liabilities go up—we're going to have to borrow—we also are creating assets. If we had spent a few billion dollars under the beginning of the Bush administration on the levees in New Orleans, we would not have had to spend so much money in the cleanup, in dealing with the devastation that it brought. That would have been money that would have had an enormous return. $5 billion would have saved $150 billion. And so, that's an example where there are certain kinds of investments—investments in technology, investments in people—that the private sector can't do and the government can do in ways that give us a very high return.

AMY GOODMAN: Joe Stiglitz, very briefly, the whole issue of globalization—we're in the tenth anniversary of the mass protests in Seattle, the Battle of Seattle. What about the questions raised in corporate-led globalization?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think two very important issues. One of them is the model that was behind much of the impetus for that globalization was a model based on free unfettered markets. And we know that model, deregulation, has failed. That was the kind of thinking that led into the problems the United States is in today.

The second point is that while we talk about free and open markets, what the United States has been doing has destroyed a level playing field and will have profound implications for the evolution of globalization going forward.

AMY GOODMAN: And for developing countries?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: And for developing countries, it's having a devastating effect. I mean, just a couple days ago, the other American banks were complaining about the huge subsidies that were given to Citibank. They say, "How can we compete when the government is subsidizing Citibank to that extent?" Now, if you think these other American banks that have gotten massive subsidies are complaining, you can imagine the kind of feelings that people have in developing countries that say, "We can't afford those mega-subsidies. How can we compete against Washington being able to write a check any time anything goes wrong?"

AMY GOODMAN: And healthcare? He's called for universal healthcare, but he does not call for single-payer healthcare.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think that there are some fundamental problems in the efficiency of our healthcare system. And what we've seen is that the private healthcare insurers do not know how to deliver an efficient way.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you support single-payer healthcare?

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think I've reluctantly come to the view that it's the only alternative. You know, we've tried a lot of other things. And we've been—you know, I was in the Clinton administration, and we debated a lot of alternatives, and I've watched things as they've emerged and, you know, evolved over the last twelve, sixteen years, and I think there's a growing consensus that the private market exclusion is not going to work.

AMY GOODMAN: Joe Stiglitz, I want to thank you for being with us, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor at Columbia University, co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20745 Print

Life Journal

2009-03-04T12:17:00.000-06:00

Thursday March 5, 2009 Duet. 1-2 Mark 12 Observation Two sections of Mark 12 seem to be related. Jesus instructs the disciples to "render to Caesar what is his and render to God the things that are God's and later Jesus points to a poor widow who puts her offering into the temple treasury and he indicates that this woman has given more than the wealthy since the wealthy will never miss their donation while the woman gave sacrificially, giving away that which was essential for her. Both stories point to a central theme: Hold material possessions lightly. Jesus new rule appears to be that the 10% rule has been replaced by the 100% rule. All that we have is in service to God. Money is not our deepest need nor is it the one key to our partnership with the reign of God. Application A truth that must be actualized by a miracle of God since it is like "going through the eye of the needle" as per Jesus' earlier comments regarding the wealthy. Prayer "Jesus, I am far away from this teaching in my discipleship. I can only ask for your mercy and help in this area of my life. Amen."

Life Journal

2009-03-04T11:55:00.000-06:00

Wednesday March 4, 2009 Numbers 34-36 Mark 11 Observation Jesus' observations regarding prayer remind me that my attitude with prayer seems very removed from Jesus' teachings here. Eugene Peterson paraphrases the words of Jesus in this way, "That's why I urge you to pray for absolutely everything, ranging from small to large. Include everything as you embrace this God life, and you will get God's everything." I'm not inclined to have "small talk" with God but Jesus affirms that as a natural part of prayer. In other biblical texts people are found asking for signs, bargaining with God, arguing with God, attempting to manipulate God, etc. Much like all of my kids have done in regard to their parents! Application I need to take this teaching seriously and practice it till I become comfortable with it. Prayer "Jesus, help me to appreciate this teaching on prayer. I confess it isn't a natural thing for me. Help me to understand and practice what you have taught. Amen."

Life Journal

2009-03-04T11:32:00.000-06:00

Tuesday March 3, 2009 Numbers 32-33 Mark 10 Observation The truth of the Gospel is such that only by a miracle of God is one able to enter the reign of God. Two examples are found in Mark 10. Jesus commentary on divorce points to the fact that the ability to be the kind of marriage partner that is able to make the partnership an "artwork of God" (The Message, Eugene Peterson) can only come from divine strength. His commentary on the wealthy points to a similar conclusion. It takes a miraculous transformation for the rich to enter the reign of God. Those already on the bottom of the pyramid already understand their powerlessness. Others have to obtain this as a gift. Application What is a supernatural miracle? Two people who reflect "God's artwork" in a life long commitment that is more than just staying together and a rich person who is willing to give material possessions up as God directs. Prayer "Jesus, these things are impossible outside of your help. May I cast myself on your mercy in these things. Amen."

Life Journal

2009-03-03T13:36:00.000-06:00

Monday March 2, 2009 Numbers 30-31 Mark 9 Observation Two observations come to mind in regard to Mark 9. First, as the disciples argue over who would be on the top of the pyramid, Jesus proclaims a great reversal by stating that the last shall be first and the first last using a child as his object lesson. Across the southern hemisphere the Christian faith has proved very popular among the poorest socio-economic groups. For us who live in the North our task is to join with them partnering with God, who is now lifting them up. M. L. King Jr. once said that the forces of history favor justice. That understanding came from his Christian faith. Christians are asked to get on the right side of history and recognize that each generation plays a part in the great reversal. Second, it is interesting that a disciple outside the inner circle seems to be successfully ministering in Jesus name while the core group is unable to handle the needed exorcism of the boy who could not speak or hear. Once again the "in group" thinks more highly of itself than is merited. Another example of "the great reversal" at work. Application The least, the last, the lost, are a part of God and as we live out that truth we find God in the trek of "downward mobility". Prayer "Jesus, the vortex of your community are the "riff-raff" of our world. Help me see that every person is equally worthy of your love and that your love must be my love. Amen."

Life Journal

2009-03-01T15:00:00.001-06:00

Sunday March 1, 2009 Numbers 28-29 Mark 8 Observation The Message, a paraphrase by Eugene Peterson, has these words as part of Jesus' commentary on his mission, "Don't run from suffering, embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how." People have often misunderstood the purpose of suffering in regard to the Christian faith. It seems that Jesus suffered because he chose to live his life by the truths of the radical tradition within the Hebrew scriptures (non-violence, inclusion, mercy, grace, speaking the truth, justice, etc.) and in doing this he ran afoul of both religious and political power brokers. It seems this should be our fate as well. Application If I'm not feeling the discomfort of being a Christian them maybe I'm not really following Jesus after all. Prayer "Jesus, help me to see that my following might be defined as not really following if I really thought of just what you asked of your followers. Amen."

Life Journal

2009-03-01T14:55:00.000-06:00

Saturday February 28, 2009 Numbers 24-27 1 Corinthians 13 Observation The two readings seem far removed from each other. One is an apologetic for Jewish superiority in regard to their non-Jewish neighbors and if full of retributive violence as an appeasement for God's anger. The other is praise for the virtue of love and could be affirmed by many who are not part of the Christian community. The scriptures contain a huge diversity of texts and they all must be interpreted within the context of the social and cultural world of that time with due regard for the author's template in constructing the story as he did. In this case the author(s) continues a theme that runs throughout much of the Pentateuch: The Jewish God is the One Holy God and failure to acknowledge this God brings judgement, which is a major theme of the post-exilic Jews after their return from captivity. Exclusivity is the heart of the message. Application How can one be loving and still maintain exclusive boundaries or an exclusive claim to truth? This debate continues today. Prayer "Jesus, help me to be a good student of the bible and a Christian willing to ask the tough questions about my faith and my own faithfulness. Amen."

Kicking Habits

2009-02-24T15:49:00.000-06:00

Here is an email from the leadership of the United Methodist Church regarding the current economic/social stress we are experiencing. This document places things in proper perspective and please notice the paragraph about local church's "rethinking" how to be in ministry given where we find ourselves. This points to one of the reasons Kicking Habits Discipleship group is meeting weekly: To rethink how we can be in ministry given our current context. A Message to the People of The United Methodist Churchfrom the President of the Council of Bishops,Chair of the Table of General Secretaries, and the Chair of the Connectional Table The global financial crisis is bringing hardship and suffering to people in every part of the world. For those in wealthy nations, it causes anxiety and uncertainty about declining pension accounts and the threat of lost jobs. Others are coping with unemployment and foreclosed mortgages. And for still others who live in places with scarce resources or exist in conditions of poverty, it means empty stomachs, lack of care for urgent health needs, and no prospects to earn a day's bread.The International Labor Organization projects a loss of 50 million jobs globally by the end of 2009. The World Bank warns that an additional 53 million people will fall into poverty (living on less than $2 per day) and that 200,000 to 400,000 more children will die by 2015 if the crisis persists.Local congregations, annual conferences, and the general agencies likewise face economic constraints, requiring them to reassess how they carry out ministry and to seek greater effectiveness and economies while keeping focused on loving God and neighbor.In addition, the crisis is generating increasing global unrest and violence, creating even more misery and an insecure world. It is a prophetic reminder that our destiny as a worldwide community and a global church is interwoven with complex bonds of prosperity, security, dignity, and justice. We are no more secure than the most vulnerable among us; no more prosperous than the poorest; and no more assured of justice and dignity than those who live in the shadows of power, void of fairness and equity. We reclaim anew Jesus' teaching, “as you [cared for] the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40), as an urgent appeal for how we can live today.At all times, but especially in fearful and dangerous days, we followers of Jesus are called to live in hope and in the assurance that God is present with us. Facing hard times, the Apostle Paul asked: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35 and 37, 39).To the Israelites, having lost everything and living in exile, God offered assurance: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you” (Is. 41:10). The psalmists are similarly convinced: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear” (Ps. 46:1, 2).With this firm assurance that the whole of creation lives within the embrace of a loving God, we are confident that the Four Areas of Focus for the mission and ministry of the people of The United Methodist Church affirmed by General Conference 2008 are among the most important ways we faithfully bear witness to the Gospel. We urgently need principled Christian leaders for the church and the world. People searching for meaning are seeking new places of welcome and hospitality for worship, prayer, and spiritual growth. It is abundantly evident that United Methodists must engage in ministry with the poor and tackle the diseases of poverty that rob people of the fullness of life, health, and wholeness.As we enter into the season of Lent we are called to reflection, repentance, and sacrificial living. Lent is a time of preparation when we look beyond human frailty and the brokenness of the world to resurrection, hope, and new life. We are reminded that our faith does not rise and fall with the financial markets but resides in the enduring love of God who is present with us as we struggle and strive to love God and our neighbors. This Lent can be a time when we recommit to practice every day the Wesleyan values to do no harm, do good and stay in love with God.A churchwide conversation is asking that we envision ways to reinvigorate our outreach to a hurting world and offer hospitality to those seeking deeper spiritual understanding. Local congregations are engaging in self-examination to “Rethink Church” and strengthen their outreach beyond the doors of the church buildings. Annual Conferences are working to ensure the human rights of the poor, to address the diseases of poverty, and to offer direct intervention to relieve human needs arising from poverty, including those of women and children in local communities and of persons who lack opportunity for artistic expression.The general agencies of the church are finding ways together to achieve economies and assure greater effectiveness in support of annual conferences and local churches. Information on the Four Areas of Focus can be found by contacting the general agencies of the church directly and at www.umc.org/focusareas.“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18) calls for individual and corporate responsibility. John Wesley wrote, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social. No holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection” (Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739, ¶ 5). As we pray and reflect this Lenten season, may we embrace life with hope, expectancy, and the assurance that God through Christ Jesus is calling us to prepare our hearts, minds, and hands to work for the New Creation. And may we nurture and care for one another and for those to whom we are inextricably connected by God’s grace around the world.With expectancy and hope, Bishop Gregory Palmer Neil M. Alexander Bishop John HopkinsPresident, Chair ChairCouncil of Bishops The Table of General Secretaries The Connectional Table