Smart people saying smart things

Last updated on: April 3, 2012 at 6:00 am by Fred Clark

Smart people saying smart things 2012-04-02T23:34:50-04:00 Fred Clark

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Carol Howard Merritt: “Navigating the Fullness of God’s Calling“

The only thing that seemed acceptable for women was playing the organ and singing in the choir. I sucked at both. With my complete lack of domestic and musical abilities, I was useless to the church. I wanted to serve God, but how?

I suppose that’s when I began to question “God’s intended order for women.” I read Jesus’s parable a thousand times. We were given talents. We were not to bury them, but to use them.

So why had God given me all the wrong talents? Why did teaching and studying theology excite me like nothing else?

What finally saved me was the fact that even more than serving people, I wanted to serve God. I began the painful and arduous path of trying to live into the fullness of what God beckoned me to be. I had to tune out the eternal chorus of people calling me a “feminazi.” I had to quit imagining how I embarrassed my parents. I had to tame my thoughts that taunted me for not being good enough, smart enough, or just plain enough to be in ministry. I kept plodding along the path God set out, one step at a time.

Katrina vandal Heuvel: “Republicans are causing a moral crisis in America“

It’s hard to point to a single priority of the Republican Party these days that isn’t steeped in moral failing while being dressed up in moral righteousness. This week, for example, they are hoping the Supreme Court will be persuaded by radical (and ridiculous) constitutional arguments to throw out some or all of the Affordable Care Act. Sure, you could argue that it’s really nice to make sure 31 million people who didn’t have health care can get it. Sure you could make the case that lifetime limits are a bad thing, that women shouldn’t have to pay more for health insurance just because they’re women, that the United States shouldn’t be a country where you die because you lost your coverage when you lost your job. But then again, liberty. Let’s not forget liberty. Also, freedom.

It is a very strange thing that the people who lecture most fervently about morality are those who are most willing to fight for policies that are so immoral. They watch Wall Street turn itself into the Las Vegas strip, take the economy down and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods. To that they say, “By God we need less regulation. Get me the hose, I have things to water down!” They see a CEO of a bank or a corporation, someone who passed off all of the risk and took on all of the reward, and they say, “Get that man a bigger bonus! In fact, get him two!”

Sara Robinson: “Conservative Bullying Has Made American Into a Broken, Dysfunctional Family: But There Are Ways to Regain Our Well-Being“

They also don’t trust diversity in any form. They’re actively hostile to the idea of E pluribus unum — out of the many, one. Anybody who’s not white, straight, Christian, conservative, and male is inherently not-American. And the only acceptable function of government is to keep those Others — both here, and abroad — firmly in their place. The nightly news is full of fresh assaults on the rights of those who don’t fit their narrow definition of Real Americans.

They have embraced bullying as a political strategy and an acceptable cultural norm, which has in turn coarsened our civil discourse to the point of democratic breakdown. Rush Limbaugh and his throng of hate-talking imitators have given their listeners wide-open social permission to say ugly things in public that would most assuredly get them fired if they said them at work (check your company handbook, which no doubt has firm guidance on this point), and would probably precipitate an immediate divorce if they said them at home. The tone alone says it all: this is not the way you talk to people you intend to have any kind of future with.

Conservative lawyers and courts are actively carving out a First Amendment right to bully racial and religious minorities, immigrants, gays, and women who won’t stay in their place. Almost every family (including mine, unfortunately) and every workplace has a FOX-trained bully who makes it almost impossible to have simply collegial conversations. Democracy is literally not possible where such bullies exist, because the give-and-take and nuanced discussions that lead to good decision-making simply can’t happen. Instead, all the power goes to the person who’s willing and able to throw the biggest tantrum. That’s not democracy, in any sense of the word.

Dianna E. Anderson: “Terrorism and Othering“

We encounter a lot of people in our lives, many of whom we’ll disagree with, and most of us manage to disagree peacefully. But we create a toxic environment, a world that encourages violence, when we Other the people we disagree with — when we make them, in our minds, into something so unlike ourselves that we strip them of their humanity and dignity.

This is what the pro-life movement consistently and successfully does to abortion doctors and to women who get abortions. This is the stuff of hate crimes — when a teenager on the street becomes nothing more than a black kid in a hoodie. This is the lifeblood of a political environment that breeds shootings, and shouting matches, that leads pundits to rip off their mikes and storm off set, that props up figures like Rush Limbaugh and scares off any moderate criticism. …

Othering is a bipartisan problem. However, it most consistently is connected with violence and terrorism within the pro-life movement, likely because the stakes are raised so high. It is genuinely believed that they’re preventing a “holocaust,” that “the most dangerous place for a black baby is in the womb” (thereby playing on race war rhetoric), that abortion doctors are “heartless baby-killers.” Rather than being halted and questioned and asked to be more nuanced, the most flagrant mongers of this hateful rhetoric are encouraged, celebrated and awarded.

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