Fwd: Political words of the season - Immorality, Mr Bush

[El Supremo]

This was just an e-mail intended for friends, but is is
rapidly becoming a chain e-mail.

Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 2:48 PM
Subject: Fwd: Political words of the season

Dr. Robin Meyers Oklahoma University Peace Rally November 14,
2004

As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational
Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and
Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of
Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University.  But you would most
likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma
Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold
the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.

Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have
watched as the faith I love has been taken over by
fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose
actions are anything but Christian.  We’ve heard a lot lately
about so-called “moral values” as having swung the election to
President Bush. Well, I’m a great believer in moral values,
but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about
exactly what constitutes a moral value — I mean what are we
talking about?

Because we don’t get to make them up as we go along,
especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited
tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral
does. Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take
issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their
side:

·	When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if
your deceptions are justified because you are doing God’s
will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking
in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to
teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not
only not moral, but immoral.
 
·	When you live in a country that has established
international rules for waging a just war, build the United
Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly
break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world,
you are doing something immoral.
 
·	When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet
fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential
teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the
Mount stuff like that we must never return violence for
violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the
sword), you are doing something immoral.
 
·	When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as
important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to
even count them, you are doing something immoral.

·	When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then
question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight,
and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.
 
·	When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel,
which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the
ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest
among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get
weaker, you are doing something immoral.
 
·	When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive
so-called “enemy combatants” of the rules of the Geneva
Convention, which your own country helped to establish and
insists that other countries follow, you are doing something
immoral.
  
·	When you claim that the world can be divided up into the
good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into
those who are with you, or with the terrorists—and then launch
a war which enriches your own friends and seizes control of
the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us to
kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.
 
·	When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to
pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight,
creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone
around the necks of our children, you are doing something
immoral.
 
·	When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a
country that was once the most loved country in the world, and
act like it doesn’t matter what others think of us, only what
God thinks of you, you have done something immoral.
 
·	When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn
out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the
Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing
something immoral.
 
·	When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a
follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way,
not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
 
·	When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to
protect the earth which is God’s gift to us all, so that the
corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will
make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and
live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The
earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.
 
·	When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and
that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have
begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that
is immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.
 
·	When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a
“compassionate conservative,” using the word which is the
essence of all religious faith-compassion, and then show no
compassion for anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience
with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something
immoral.
 
·	When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of
the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick
can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn’t have a penny in
her pocket, you are doing something immoral.
 
·	When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will
set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself
with preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing
something immoral.
 
I’m tired of people thinking that because I’m a Christian, I
must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor
civil rights and gay rights I must not be a person of faith.
I’m tired of people saying that I can’t support the troops but
oppose the war—

I heard that when I was your age, when the Vietnam War was
raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you know that
this war is wrong—the only question is how many people are
going to die before these make-believe Christians are removed
from power?

This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The
claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And
the only people who can turn things around are people like
you—young people who are just beginning to wake up to what is
happening to them. It’s your country to take back.  It’s your
faith to take back. It’s your future to take back.
 
Don’t be afraid to speak out. Don’t back down when your
friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and that
the flag should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of
us keep our mouths shut. Real Christians take chances for
peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and
real Buddhists—so do all the faith traditions of the world at
their heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every human
being is precious.

Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of
charity.  And believing that one has never made a mistake is
the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.  And war—war is
the greatest failure of the human race—and thus the greatest
failure of faith.
There’s an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all:
War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.  And what is the
dream of the prophets?  That we should study war no more, that
we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into
pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars
does it take to know that too many people have died? What if
they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find
out.
 
Time to march again my friends. Time to commit acts of civil
disobedience. Time to sing, and to pray, and refuse to
participate in the madness.  My generation finally stopped a
tragic war. You can, too!

[genieroze]

1. Amen. eom