Busy and productive day, but it entailed activities of little interest, such as washing four loads of clothes. We had a heavy rainstorm after dinner, but no tornado, about which our neighbor had warned. Nevertheless, the last day of July was curiously satisfying--not sure why, but maybe just because it was quiet.
It's already August! Must re-learn the part of the hostess for the Murder Mystery we're doing at the Elks Club on August 29. Rehearsal on Wednesday.
Wider: Ray Govern, in "Christians Largely Mum On Torture" in Anti-War.com, quotes Chris Hedges:
'"The utter failure of nearly all our religious institutions — whose texts are unequivocal about murder — to address the essence of war has rendered them useless. These institutions have little or nothing to say in wartime because the god they worship is a false god, one that promises victory to those who obey the law and believe in the manifest destiny of the nation."'
There are a few exceptions, I guess: Quakerism and Unitarianism, for two (although I'm puzzled as to whether the last is a religion or not), and McGovern mentions some major religions that harbor pockets of resistance to our country's on-going policies of death and destruction. However, none of the major religions are vocal against either torture or unprovoked war. The religion into which I was born, Roman Catholicism, is officially silent on these abominations, but hitches its authority to anti-abortion, a much safer practice to be against. After all, it revolves around all that nasty sex stuff and is a lesser challenge to the authority of the ruling class than messing with their ties to the war machine.
2 comments:
The state-idolatry of the church and its enthusiastic acceptance of government mass murder is indeed a vast and enduring shame. And how it is that so many self-identified "followers of Jesus" can do the dispensational shuffle and explain why His many plain teachings and instructions (most of the Sermon on the Mount, for example) don't apply to them -- at least not when they're wearing a government-issued costume -- is difficult to fathom.
I'd like to add a small plug for the communion of which I'm a member, the Church of the Brethren, which actually does have a historically-credible peace witness. I'm not in agreement with some of the denomination on some things, but at least there's no worship at the war altar that I've ever heard of.
I admire The Church of the Brethrrn and the handful of other churches who actually do follow Jesus' teachings. How can priests, ministers, and rabbis "serve" as chaplains to members of the military? Shouldn't they be admonishing their members to lay down their arms? I've actually questioned several priests about this at different times. They were all very glib and had all kinds of convoluted "reasons" why the church couldn't do that, but still insisted they were followers of the Prince of Peace.
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