I Pledge Allegiance...

I Pledge Allegiance...

As a Christian, I pledge allegiance first to Yahweh’s Kingship. This is not a statement against the United States but is, in fact, a statement for the kingdom of God. It is a statement for the teachings of Christ; for the Sermon on the Mount; for parables of the Good Samaritan and the Sheep and the Goats; and for the scores of verses in both the New and Old Testaments that command both church and secular peoples to adequately care for the poor and to love aliens living in their lands as if they were brothers and sisters.

As both a former UAW and USW member, I pledge allegiance to labor. This is not a statement against the United States but is, in fact, a statement for the rights of working people in the United States. It is a statement that recognizes the thousands of union members (and even their spouses and children) who lost their lives, too often from bullets fired by U.S. troops and state and local law enforcement, in labor’s fight against child labor and for the eight-hour day, the five day work week, job safety and a liveable wage. It is a statement that demonstrates which side I am on as today’s politicians in both prominent parties try to roll back laws protecting workers and working conditions.

In solidarity with the people I walked alongside in the 1960s voter registration drives in Mississippi (but admittedly always with the knowledge I could flee to a place of safety--i.e. White Privilege), I pledge allegiance to the Black Lives Matter Movement. For truly I believe that people who can’t bring themselves to say the words, “black lives matter,” don’t, in fact, believe they do matter. I say this because so many of the folks I know who insisted we can only say, “all lives matter,” made excuses for, or seemed to be ok with, the Trump campaign’s frequent use of memes, slogans, and video’s lifted directly off of white supremacist websites. Frankly, that scares me. It says to me that they are ok with the beatings I and my colleagues received at the hands of the KKK and WCC back then and would not raise a fuss if it happened again in our day.

And remembering when my wife was the assistant director of a public library but received no benefits because the library board said they could not afford them, but then gave full benefits to her male replacement “because he was a father and husband and needed to support his family,” I pledge allegiance to the Feminist Movement. I have been very fortunate to have always been able to find meaningful employment. I want to live in a society where that same opportunity exists for my daughters-in-law and my granddaughters. When my wife was a senior in high school she wanted to be a scientist. She was a National Merit Scholar. But her high school counselor would not help her apply for scholarships to college because, he told her, if she got one, it would mean a male student would not get it and he would need the degree to support his family after college. Instead, he helped her get into a local hospital’s nursing school. I want to live in a society where my granddaughters will be encouraged to excel in whatever excites and motivates them.

And finally, yes, I pledge allegiance to the United States of America. Not to the white male-dominated America of our past, but to the America envisioned by Thomas Paine, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, César Chávez, and the tens of thousands of people working today to build a society where every man, woman, and child is respected regardless of ethnicity, family background, or place of origin. I know I won’t live to see that day, but my prayers will eternally be with those working to that end.

And God bless all who endured to the end of my rant. 

The Truly Righteous Always Promote Justice

Any way you read it....

Proverbs 29:7 NIV -- The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

Proverbs 29:7 NASB -- The righteous is concerned for the rights of the poor, The wicked does not understand such concern.

Proverbs 29:7 CEV -- The wicked don't care about the rights of the poor, but good people do.

Proverbs 29:7 KJV The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it.

Proverbs 29:7 The Message -- The good-hearted understand what it's like to be poor; the hardhearted haven't the faintest idea.

Proverbs 29:7 NRSV -- The righteous know the rights of the poor; the wicked have no such understanding.

Proverbs 29:7 NLT -- The godly care about the rights of the poor; the wicked don’t care at all.

There is no state in America where a single parent with a child can afford the rent of a two bedroom house or apartment on a minimum wage salary. Yet most of the members of Congress who are fighting so hard to keep the minimum wage where is has been for over 20 years purport to be Christians. What version of the Bible do they read? I can find no justification in Scripture for their stance on the issue of a living wage. Corporate lobbyists who donate millions of dollars a year to the reelection campaigns of Representatives and Senators have successfully kept the minimum wage stagnate while CEO and congressional salaries have climbed steeply. Jesus famously warned in Matthew 6:24 that you cannot serve both God and Mammon (money), you either serve one or the other. It seems to me that many in Congress have made their choice.

Pro-Life? Really??

Only in America can you get away with being pro-war and pro-death penalty and yet call yourself pro-life. Rest in peace Troy Davis.

"The Righteous Care About Justice for the Poor"

Proverbs 29:7 – The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.

The Hebrew word translated as “righteous” is tsaddı̂yq (pronounced tsad-deek'). It literally means just, justified or lawful (in this case, obedient to God’s law). The Hebrew word translated as “wicked” in this verse is râshâ‛ (pronounced raw-shaw'). Though râshâ‛ is translated as wicked in a number of the Old Testament passages, it is also often translated as “condemned” or “ungodly”.

As forceful as these words were when Solomon first wrote them, they are even more so when translated in the light of the New Testament. The righteous person who cares about justice for the poor is the one who has laid aside ego and picked up his cross to follow Jesus wherever he goes... even into the hood or the barrio. The person who has “no concern” for the poor is the râshâ‛, the ungodly one who is eternally condemned.

It amazes me that so many professing Christians in our state and national legislatures can ignore warnings like this in Scripture as they hurry to dismantle or severely cut programs that provide formula for hungry new born babies and adequate health care for permanently disabled veterans in order to pay for the tax cuts requested by their corporate sponsors.

Great Quote!

"Civil disobedience is, traditionally, the breaking of a civil law to obey a higher law, sometimes with the hope of changing the unjust civil law. ... But we should speak of such actions as divine obedience, rather than civil disobedience. The term 'disobedience' is not appropriate because any law that does not protect and enhance human life is no real law."
- Sister Anne Montgomery, R.S.C.J.

Justice vs Six Flags Over Jesus

The prophet Micah wrote: “And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8 NIV)  Several centuries later, our Lord Jesus, speaking to religious leaders who apparently had forgotten the words of their own prophets said: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” (Matt. 23:23 NIV) 


And now, over 2000 years later, a large number of the Christian leaders in American, like their spiritual forefathers the Pharisees, are walking away from Jesus. Instead, many of them seem to be following after the Mormon demigod Glenn Beck who as all but said we should remove the word “justice” from our Bibles. The chief question of our Christian leaders in American today is not, “What can the church do for the “least of these brothers of mine?” (Matt. 25:40) But rather, “Which of us can build the biggest, gaudiest mega-church in the land?”  I just read about a church that was completed in 1998 at the cost of 88 million.  It has two indoor basketball courts, several racquetball and handball courts as well as indoor tennis and bad mitten courts. They also have a quarter mile indoor track and an Olympic sized heated pool. The energy costs for heating the pool while air conditioning the surrounding area costs more than the entire budget of the average 100-200 member church.   Meanwhile the hungry in that community remain hungry and the homeless are still without shelter. 


Oh that American Christians might strive more for mega-justice, mega-mercy and sharing God's love than for mega-churches and self love.