Sarah Palin 3

So can’t Orthodox Monk go back to talking about something really spiritual without going on and on about Palin? We will get back to the more spiritual things but we feel obliged to conduct one last discussion of the spiritual aspects of the politics of the day. What concerns us is the intersection of the religious with the political or, put another way, the intersection of the commitment to a religious life (in the ordinary sense, not in the Roman Catholic sense of a life lived under monastic vows) with right-wing politics. In other words, is it necessarily true that to be a good Orthodox Christian and a good Orthodox monk, politically you have to be a right-wing fanatic?

As a starting point, what concerns us is the atmosphere that Sarah Palin was condoning and encouraging at her rallies—especially the Obama ‘pals around with terrorists’ line, of which we managed to see a video clip.

Some salient facts:

They say that Palin was going ‘rogue’—that she was not ‘following the orders of senior McCain staff’ in proceeding in this way. We think that this is not merely a self-serving distancing from Palin by the people around McCain but reflects the facts, although you never know.

Second, Palin professes herself to be Christian.

Third she has documented connections to the Alaska Independence Party both personally, according to the claims of Mr Chryson, the former leader of the AIP, and according to her documented appearances either personally or by video at AIP conventions; and through her husband who was a card-carrying member of the AIP. Mr. Chryson is quoted to the effect that he worked with Sarah Palin to pass an amendment to the Alaska State Constitution that makes it easier to raise private militias; he is quoted as saying he has enough weapons in his basement for a small army. The founder of the AIP was murdered during the course of a private transaction involving plastic explosives. He was buried in Canada to honour his wish not to be buried under the American flag. At the time of his murder, for which his assailant is doing time, he was scheduled to address the United Nations under the sponsorship of Iran. Topic? Independence for Alaska. The present leader of the AIP seems to think that the AIP’s founder was assassinated so that he couldn’t embarrass the United States by delivering his speech at the UN. It seems to us that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Sarah.

Fourth, our take on the video we saw of Palin delivering the line was that she was quite consciously manipulating her crowd.

Fifth, it is reported that the Secret Service gave a report to Obama that there was a spike in threats against his life that coincided with the period of more intense rallies where the crowds were being whipped up and shouts were heard that might be viewed as hateful if not downright dangerous (‘terrorist’, ‘kill him’ etc.).

Sixth, Obama gave his victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago protected by bullet-proof glass.

Seventh, the Secret Service was on the surrounding skyscrapers shining lasers down on to the stage to define lines of fire.

Eighth, when President-Elect Obama’s motorcade goes from his gym to his home in Chicago, the Secret Service agents scan the surrounding skyscrapers with binoculars—evidently for snipers.

Is Christianity the religion of hate? No. The Gospel is clear that we should love our enemies and pray for them.

Palin dismissed criticism of her behaviour saying that it was just the way party politics is done in America. The best line we have read concerning Palin’s attitude was by George Packer, in the New Yorker magazine—that Palin is too shallow to understand the forces she is playing with and that she is merely enthralled by the semi-erotic adulation of the crowds.

We would add that her primary political motivation seems to be personal narcissism.

When seen as an expression of narcissism, her several hundred thousands of dollars spent on clothing—including silk underwear for her husband—makes sense. While she claims to have had nothing to do with the purchases and that the clothing was merely stage props to be returned to the Republican National Committee after the election, custom-made underwear was being delivered to her up to the time that she appeared on Saturday Night Live. Underwear doesn’t get custom made for you unless you actively cooperate with the lingerie maker. Silk underwear for hubby as a stage prop? Well it is true that the great director Fritz Lang once had all his actors who were playing aristocrats, even the extras, wear silk underwear under their costumes so that they would get into the proper aristocratic mood. However, surely the Republican National Committee would rather cultivate the Republican cloth coat mood.

After the election, Sarah Palin offered her services to the Obama administration to help out on energy policy and special needs kids. If it seems odd that someone who thinks that the President-elect ‘pals around with terrorists’ would want to go to work with him, consider the possibility that the motivation is narcissism—getting into the limelight and staying there.

President-elect Obama showed remarkable magnanimity in offering Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton. He quickly arranged a private, personal meeting with John McCain and then stated that he would work with him. We wonder if his generosity of spirit is great enough for him to offer something to Sarah.

Now what we are interested in is this: at what point does a personal religious commitment as a Christian become a worldly commitment to a political faction or party? At what point does religion leave the Holy Spirit behind and become politics?

What we have in mind is this. Most if not all of the persons at the Palin rallies were of the ‘Christian right’. Yet there was an atmosphere at the rallies of hatred for the political opponent. Is this hatred something given by the Holy Spirit so that it would be consistent with these people’s professed Christian vocation? Now we are not prophets to know when the Holy Spirit is acting but our understanding is that Scripture says ‘party spirit’ is a work of the flesh and not of the Spirit. In other words, although the persons present at the rallies thought of themselves as Christians—committed Christians—their behaviour in shouting hateful slogans against Obama and threatening Obama’s supporters with violence does not commend itself as evangelical. These persons were not being moved by the Holy Spirit. They were being moved by another spirit. Anger and hatred are associated with the demons. They are not associated, ever, with the Holy Spirit.

Let us clarify certain things. We, Orthodox Monk, have for many years believed, in accordance with the dogmas of the Orthodox Church, that the fœtus is a person from the moment of conception just as St Basil the Great writes concerning the Incarnation of Our Saviour; and that abortion is wrong, a serious sin. Moreover, we also accept the social teachings of the Fathers of the Church. We would therefore be defined as a social conservative on a variety ‘hot-button’ social issues. However, we have no interest in right-wing politics. The Fathers were remarkably liberal on issues such as distributive social justice (see St Basil writing on the hoarding by the wealthy of wheat during famines so as to exploit the poor; see him writing on forcing the poor to take oaths concerning the veracity of their tax declarations; read St John Chrysostom).

To give our readers some idea of our attitude, when we read right-wing blogs and right-wing comments on news stories and other right-wing material, we have the eerie feeling that we have entered a parallel universe that resembles the one we ourselves live in but that has things arranged completely differently. It is not a universe that attracts us. We think that some of the people writing could well do with psychiatric medication—unless we ourselves are utterly mad and they sane.

Lest it be thought we are not being even-handed, let us add the following: When we read left-wing material we are struck that the authors are generally quite better educated than writers on the right. Even when the writers on the right, even name writers, are formally well educated, we have the feeling that their education is only skin-deep: their relation to ideas is superficial, surface, lacking in real intellectual and spiritual depth. However, we are often struck by the hatred, anger and paranoia on the left.

Neither the left nor the right appeals to us.

To return to the issue at hand, we have the feeling that we are being manipulated both by rather naïve clerics who think that one must necessarily support any politician who is against abortion whatever his or her other positions might be; and by political operatives who use Christian social conservatism as a springboard to political power, perhaps to implement a political agenda that has nothing whatever to do with Christianity or Christian social conservatism.

It is not at all clear to us that the Gospel teaches monetarism, Reaganomics or deregulation to allow the free market to run amok. It is not even clear to us that the Gospel forbids these things. It seems to us that a devout Christian might still be a devout Christian and hold either pro or con views on a variety of such political issues—although there is a certain point at which Christian social justice does enter into the discussion.

Moreover, we are extremely uneasy with the shading of right-wing Christianity into what strikes us as eerily close to fascism.

In other words, although we believe that abortion is wrong, and that assisted suicide and euthanasia are wrong and so on and so forth, we have the feeling that we are being manipulated by persons who want to mobilize that sentiment to gain political power so as to accomplish an agenda that has ulterior purposes having nothing whatever to do with Christianity as we know it as a member of the Orthodox Church. Moreover, we get the feeling that there is a very grey area where persons who self-identify as conservative Christians are in fact being moved by a worldly spirit closer to fascism than to Christ.

There is a further problem. In the West today, Christianity is a minority religion.

In the United States, the matter is somewhat more complicated. Most people in the United States go to church. In the United States on Sunday there are traffic jams outside the churches. However, it is not entirely clear to us if all the people going to church in America actually understand the Gospel in a way that the Fathers of the Church would recognize.

Moreover, less than 25% of the American people are Roman Catholic and only 20% of these go to church at least once a week—for the Roman Catholic the essential indicator of a personal commitment to Catholicism. That means that less than 5% of the American people are committed Roman Catholics.[1] Of those, however, how many actually follow the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion? Surveys indicate that Roman Catholics receive abortions at the same rate as other members of society.

Moreover, every time abortion has been put to a public vote in the United States, the voters have voted to keep abortion on demand with very few if any restrictions. Hence, a politician in the United States, whatever his personal persuasion, has to take into account the fact that a majority of the American people, however religious they might consider themselves, want the right to abort an unwanted child. The politician has to take into account that the people want abortion on demand whatever his personal beliefs might be about its morality. He simply cannot ignore what the people want even if they are wrong.

Let us suppose that Orthodox Monk and all the conservative evangelical Christians and all the Roman Catholic hierarchy are correct and abortion is a serious evil. Still, we are in a minority position in a pluralist democracy.

Moreover, Obama has made an interesting observation concerning use of the courts to force a particular line on what are essentially political issues. He follows the school of constitutional law that sees the Supreme Court of the United States as essentially following public opinion, not defining or leading it. Hence, it is his position that using the courts is not the right way to attain, for example, redistribution of wealth. Similarly, one has to wonder about persons who want to pack the Supreme Court with conservative Justices who just might, perhaps, overturn Roe vs. Wade. This is not a democratic orientation given the fate of anti-abortion measures at the ballot box—even if one is to argue that Roe vs. Wade was never originally democratic either. Moreover, when you get a Justice who wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade, with that Justice you also get on other matters of serious import a number of very right-wing positions that are not intrinsically Christian and perhaps even contrary to Christian justice and charity. We do not feel that Americans should be blackmailed into supporting politicians and justices whatever their other positions just because those politicians and justices are against abortion.

What we are saying is that, yes abortion is wrong but the political situation concerning it is very complicated in a democracy like the United States. On the one hand, a majority of the people want abortion on demand. On the other hand, being against abortion is packaged with a number of right-wing political positions that are not intrinsically Christian and might even be anti-Christian. A true Christian would take these factors into account. He would not take the fanatical position that anyone opposed to criminalizing abortion was an arrant sinner, that under pain of going to hell every citizen had to vote for the anti-abortion candidate even if the candidate’s other political positions were wacky or dangerous, or even if the candidate were plainly unsuitable for high office.

This also applies to the hierarchy of the various Christian denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church. In the West, including the United States, the Roman Catholic Church clearly has a problem with its own internal evangelization. Nominal Roman Catholics just aren’t going to church; they just aren’t accepting the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrines concerning the matters under discussion. The Roman Catholic hierarchy simply cannot ignore these facts. If it wishes to change society to bring it more into line with Christian morality as understood by the Roman Catholic Church, it is going to have to think very hard about the Roman Catholic Church’s actual position in society. It cannot merely permit a priest to say that anyone who voted for Obama should stop receiving communion until he or she does penance because Obama is pro-choice. The Roman Catholic Church runs the risk of rendering itself irrelevant even to its nominal adherents with such naïveté. People will simply stop going to the Roman Catholic Church and go elsewhere.

This is also true, although to a lesser extent, of the Orthodox Church.

There has to be a much deeper, spiritual approach to the matter, one that recognizes that persons of good will might have opinions opposed to ours. There has to be an attitude of true Christian love for one’s neighbour that recognizes that the issues are not cut and dried, not the natural campaign material of right-wing demagogues. There has to be an orientation that recognizes that society has to be evangelized in a loving, gentle way so that it comes to understand in love that the fœtus is a person from conception. Once this is achieved, then society itself will get the politicians and the judges to do its will. Moreover, an honest approach to educating society on the matter of abortion would also take into account elementary matters of Christian social justice so that the people understand that right-wing fanatics who clothe themselves in the garb of Christian anti-abortion righteousness might in fact be promoting values that are otherwise quite non-Christian or even contrary to the teachings of the Gospel.

Today the opponents of abortion are not always distinguished by the depth of their Christian spiritual life and are sometimes distinguished by their fanaticism, anger, hatred and violence. This is not the way to evangelize society. This is an indication that something is quite amiss in the anti-abortion movement.

We would like to return to the issue of right-wing Christianity and far right politics. As we pointed out, there seems to be a worldly partisan spirit among some of these people, a spirit that erupts into hatred, an emotion not associated with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Part of the problem is that these people are often divorced from the Mysteries of the Orthodox Church, where the Body and Blood of Christ, according to Christ’s word, makes Christ to abide in the believer and the believer in Christ—and often in a way that is consciously evident to the believer who receives the Mysteries worthily.

We are told, further, that the Christian right places more emphasis on the Old Testament than the New (in terms of actual values if not formal belief structure), something that to us shows the Christian right’s roots in New England Puritanism, itself descended from Calvinism. One characteristic of such a form of Christianity is a harsh sense of retributive justice, especially for deviant members of the group. Another is its emphasis on salvation by personal election and corresponding de-emphasis on the necessity for salvation of personal purification from the passions (i.e. repentance, or conversion of the interior man to put off the old man and put on the new). In such a case it is quite easy for the faith to become reified, so that the faith, to use Martin Buber’s terminology, becomes an I-it rather than an I-Thou relationship.

Let us explain what we mean. A woman goes into an Orthodox Church. There is an icon on the icon stand from Mt Athos. One of the famous miracle-working icons of Athos. The woman piously approaches the icon to venerate it invoking the prayers and protection of the saint depicted on the icon. This is an I-thou relationship.

Someone else comes in who is a Professor of Art History. He takes some pictures of the icon on the sly (photographs are banned); he studies the iconographer’s technique and assesses the degree of movement in the composition, a key to distinguishing the Macedonian School of iconography from the Cretan School. He considers whether the icon needs cleaning and restoration work, whether the wood needs preservatives to protect it from insects. He could care less about praying. He has his career to consider. This is an I-it relationship.

Another fellow comes in. He’s an investor. He’s wondering whether investing in icons is a good hedge against the current economic crisis or whether he’s just going to lose his shirt. He discusses with the Professor of Art History the value of the icon on the market, assuming that the Athonites could be persuaded to sell it. The investor doesn’t see God; he sees dollar signs in front of his eyes. This is an I-it relationship.

Someone else comes in. She starts shrieking that venerating icons is idolatry and that everybody has to destroy all their icons. She’s obviously disturbed. The pious Orthodox woman, the Professor and the investor all restrain her from destroying the priceless icon from Mt Athos. Outside, right-wing evangelicals, some of them former members of the very same Orthodox Church, picket and shout loudly and hatefully that all icons are idolatry and must be destroyed. This is an I-it relationship that is merging into a fanatical political movement.

In the context of the Calvinist Christian right it is quite easy for a personal faith commitment to turn into a commitment to a political ideology. That is, from being a loving commitment to the person of Jesus Christ, and through Christ a union with the Father by the insufflation of the Holy Spirit received in the Mysteries of the Orthodox Church, the Christian commitment becomes an ideology, a matter of social solidarity with like-minded members of the sub-group. There is no longer a shared aspiration for union with God in Jesus Christ and for the expression of charity to all, but rather a cementing of a sense of personal identity through membership in a minority social group that wishes to impose its values on the larger society, perhaps so as to validate the group members’ sense of identity. The Holy Spirit leaves to be replaced by a spirit of fanaticism. In the final stage, the faith becomes a political ideology. At that point, the person’s orientation is toward social issues that only tangentially have anything to do with Christianity. This is the intersection of religion with far-right politics.

A key point is that at which the doctrines of dominionism take hold. These are the doctrines that the United States was founded as an evangelical Christian country and that it is the will of God for evangelical Christians to take political power in the United States, perhaps by subterfuge, so to impose evangelical Christian values on the United States, perhaps against the will of the majority. However, as we have pointed out, these supposedly Christian values contain not only the anti-abortion stance that we have been discussing but also far-right political stances such as a completely free-market economy and so on, issues where it is not at all clear that the dominionist is following the Gospel of Christ. In other words, the dominionist agenda is not purely Christian; it is an alloy of Gospel values as seen through a Calvinist prism that emphasizes the Old Testament; and of far-right political positions independent of the Gospel.

It is at this point that we think Sarah Palin’s views need to be clarified.

To continue, add to these factors anger and hatred, an attraction for guns, a taste for private far-right militias and a sense of entitlement and dispossession—and you have trouble. It is here that the car can easily swerve off the road of acceptable discourse and land in the ditch of fascist action.

At this point it is fruitless to expect the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has long since left, leaving the members of the group to whatever spirit or demon wants to take them on.

Moreover, as we have pointed out, mixed up with all of this is an interpretation of the Revelation to John and of Christ’s words in Gospel and of Paul’s words in the Epistles that posits the quite imminent return of Christ and the unfolding in very short order of an End-Times scenario that involves the physical rapture of the evangelical believers into Heaven followed by a nuclear war among those left behind. We doubt that the interpretation of Scripture being purveyed is correct and we would be very worried if anyone holding such views were to be put into a position where he or she could launch a nuclear war. Moreover, these eschatological views seem to reflect a quite reified (I-it) relationship with the Christian faith, so that these views can very easily be converted into a political ideology divorced from a true relationship of faith with God through Jesus Christ that expresses itself in love for neighbour.

Clearly, people holding such views are exercising very strong pressure, in cooperation with citizens of the State of Israel, to set the direction of American foreign policy. For the Israelis, this is something of a Faustian bargain, as the Israelis themselves are well aware, since the ideology involves as part of the unfolding of the End-Times the conversion of most Jews to evangelical Christianity followed by the destruction of the remaining Jews in the subsequent End-Times war. Riding the tiger is a dangerous sport. The tiger might turn and devour you. For the rest of the world, if these people’s interpretation of Scripture is wrong their ideology is extremely dangerous.

What we see is a sort of Christianity that is not centred on the Gospel as a personal engagement with God together with personal purification from the passions as understood by the Fathers of the Orthodox Church but a Christianity that is mixed up with worldly values and fuelled by anger and hatred—we might even say angry and arrogant self-righteousness—together with a concern for the preservation of group or class power and privilege.

In the case of the End-Times, even though the believer is ostensibly concerned with a basic aspect of the Gospel—and the End-Times is a basic aspect of the Gospel—the orientation has shifted from a personal engagement with God and virtue to the advancement of a politicized agenda.

At this point the believer has ceased to be a Christian in any sense that a member of the Orthodox Church steeped in Orthodox Tradition would understand and has become a member of a far-right political grouping that makes use of Christian rhetoric.

This phenomenon of the transformation of religious faith into fanatical right-wing political commitment has been observed in a number of countries with an Orthodox presence—we Orthodox are not immune from this disease—and in those countries it has sometimes led to very serious crimes being committed against people who are not members of the group.

We think that Sarah Palin’s base is perilously close to such a condition, although we are certainly not aware of any crimes being planned by her, by any of her supporters or by any of her associates.

It is at this point that the devout Christian has to speak up and say: ‘These people are not speaking for me.’

These people are not speaking for me.

–Orthodox Monk

---

[1] Consider these data taken from

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0945928720080410

FACTBOX: America's Roman Catholic population

Thu Apr 10, 2008 7:59am EDT

(Reuters) - …

- According to a recent nationwide survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 23.9 percent of the adult U.S. population identifies itself as Catholic. This tallies with estimates by the U.S. Catholic Church itself.

- Since the early 1970s the percentage of the population counting itself as Catholic has remained stable at around 25 percent. But according to Pew, no other major faith has experienced greater net losses with 31.4 percent of U.S. adults saying they were raised Catholic and about one in 10 describing themselves as former Catholics.

…

- One indicator of the resiliency of Catholicism in any country is the Mass attendance rate among the flock. According to a 2007 survey by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, about one fifth of U.S. Catholics attend Mass at least once a week while 11 percent go almost every week.

(Sources: Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Reuters; Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate)

Settling Accounts with Eric

Eric replied to our last post and wants to see what we will say. However, we have been reluctant to get into discussing the details of his comments for fear of distorting the thrust of our Sarah Palin posts. However, President-Elect Obama has gone home; in the weak light before dawn the janitors are sweeping up the confetti; we can’t sleep and don’t know what to do. So we are going to discuss in detail why we said what we said, what Eric said and says, and why he’s wrong and so on. It’s going to be a very tedious post except for the diehard readers of this blog. Others would do just as well to skip it.

The first thing we want to say is that this is the 201^st post on our blog. We have been posting for over three years; that makes us something of a grandfather on the Internet, given its ferocious sociological velocity.

We have taken the text of Eric’s comments verbatim from the notification emails that we receive from Blogger. We are going to give the full text of Eric’s comments in footnotes, although somewhat repetitively we are going to give the text we want to comment on in-line indented, interspersed with our discussion without indent.

Let us begin our discussion starting with the first comment[1].

I've run into this blog and have been waiting for some more posts to get a read on what it is or who is writing it. It is not clear to me whether this is written by an Orthodox monk or not.

This is not a good beginning, Eric. If you had taken the trouble to read the back posts, you would have seen what we say we are—an Orthodox monk.

You have set yourself up as a judge—the man of means checking out the High Street boot maker.

"she would like Creationism taught in schools; she really believes the earth is 5000 years old; she wanted a book presenting homosexuality in a positive light removed from the town library; she seems to think that the war in Iraq was ordained by God"

I think all of the above claims need to be fact checked. While some are saying these things are true, I think her words have been twisted in at least the case of the Iraq war.

If you are sincere, Eric, this is a very odd way to proceed. We are confident of what we wrote, although the matter is complicated by Ms. Palin’s tendency to hide her beliefs. In the case of the Iraq war, we think that we have it right. Her use of the same language in discussing the proposed gas pipeline in a context where it is clear that she thinks that the project is ordained by God indicates that the explanation she gave on Iraq—that she was just reprising Lincoln—was merely ‘spin’ from her spin doctors. (No we aren’t politicians, but as stylists of the English language we feel quite capable of switching to a political or journalistic register when necessary.) To paraphrase Bentsen to Quayle: you ain’t no Lincoln, honey.

As regards her Pentecostal church past - She changed churches 6 years ago after about 28 years in the Pentecostal church, and apparently no longer identifies herself as Pentecostal (it appears her current church is far different). I read elsewhere that she was never altogether into the charismatic elements, however true that may or may not be.

This seems quite evidently not to be true. The video of her being anointed by Pastor Muthee, her own recent recorded comments, even to Dr. James Dobson, where she uses language connected to the Muthee strain of Pentecostalism, the fact that the church she attends in Juneau is in fact an Assembly of God Pentecostalist Church that is rebranding itself without giving up its Pentecostalist orientation, the fact that she has very close and cordial relations with her old AOG church in Wasilla—all these things indicate that she is in fact a Pentecostalist of the spiritual warfare strain. There was a recent article in the New York Times that had information on this strain of Pentecostalism. The article was a little superficial we thought but it is well worth reading as an introduction (sorry no link). So the question is, Eric—do you believe what you’re writing or are we justified in wondering whether you are being sincere or not?

"Sarah Palin is on record as saying that she believes that Christ’s Second Coming will happen in her life-time"

I'm wondering how, exactly, apart from the "Rapturist school," this is, in itself, a negative thing. Aren't all Christians to be prepared both for death and the end of the world at all moments in time?

Here is the first source of our remark that we couldn’t tell whether we were dealing with someone who couldn’t think straight—or a shyster lawyer twisting logic to defend a guilty client. Your logic is faulty.

Scripture is very clear, Eric, that we should wait in eager expectation of the Second Coming. It is equally clear that no one knows when the Second Coming will be. Only the Father. So while we are to await the Second Coming—and Elder Paisios of Mount Athos once remarked that if a person dies, for him it is the Second Coming—we are not to time-limit the Second Coming. The historical record is full of deluded sectarians who thought the Second Coming was coming on a specific day.

To put the matter in a little more Orthodox fashion. Elder Porphyrios of Mount Athos relived in a spiritual ecstasy the whole of the Revelation to John (the Apocalypse) when he was on Patmos about 30 years ago (see his account in Wounded by Love). But Elder Porphyrios, who was noted for his prophetic gifts, somewhere also remarked that he had no more idea than anyone else when the Second Coming would occur. So, yes, the Orthodox eagerly await the Second Coming from day to day—and this is one of the foundations of the discipline called sobriety that forms an essential strand of the Jesus Prayer in the Orthodox Church—but only a fool says that the Second Coming is coming now or tomorrow or on such and such a day.

That Sarah Palin believes that the Second Coming will happen in her lifetime is not based on Scripture because it time-limits God.

Moreover, such a belief is disquieting from the point of view of her being in a position to launch nuclear weapons as President of the United States of America. For if we ourselves understand the ‘Rapturist’ School aright, and the ‘Joel’s Army’ people aright, these people are expecting a nuclear war involving Iran and Israel as part of the scenario they envisage for the Second Coming. Leaving aside the issue that there is room for discussion whether they are interpreting Scripture correctly concerning how the Second Coming will unfold, there is this problem: Sarah Palin seems to believe that the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime; hence, if we understand correctly, she would expect such a nuclear war to occur in her lifetime. She would, by hypothesis, be President of the United States of America, a nation armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. She would have authority as Commander-in-Chief to launch those nuclear weapons. President Bush himself is reliably said to have instructed the Pentagon to prepare to use nuclear weapons against the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The reason for this is that the Iranian sites are hardened and it is doubtful whether non-nuclear weapons would be effective against them. This was not just a theoretical exercise in war-gaming. He wanted the option. We are talking about serious stuff here, Eric. The Pentagon pushed back. The option seems to have come off the table. What would happen if Sarah Palin were President with the above beliefs? If she insisted on her legal authority to launch? Moreover, she seems to be connected to a strand of Evangelical and/or Pentecostalist Christianity that believes that Christians should take secular power in America to impose an Evangelical and/or Pentecostalist Christian agenda, and that leaders can be brought forth by God in America to do his will, much as the various Kings of Israel were prophetically anointed. This is heady stuff, Eric. If Sarah were to think that she were anointed by God to help the Second Coming out by launching a nuclear war against Iran or another country, what would happen? Where would things end? What if she is a deluded sectarian and the interpretation of Scripture she espouses is deluded—wrong—so that she wouldn't be helping the Second Coming out at all, but only causing disaster in the lives of millions? We don’t believe Sarah Palin is finished with her political aspirations although there will be a serious problem with her national career because of her narrow base. These questions simply have to be addressed. Moreover, there is also the very murky area where Evangelical/Pentecostalist Christianity merges into far right-wing political groups. Sarah Palin’s husband was a member in good standing of the Alaska Independence Party. Sarah Palin quite recently spoke by video to the AIP Convention in a positive way as Governor of Alaska. She spoke in person several years ago. The founder of the AIP was murdered during a private transaction involving plastic explosives. He was buried in Canada, evidently to honour his wish that he not be buried under the American flag but that his bones be returned to Alaska once it was a free and independent country. A certain Chryson gave an interview with a reporter discussing his relations with Sarah Palin during her rise to political power in Wasilla. He was at one time the leader of the AIP. He showed the reporter his Makarov automatic pistol and remarked that his basement was full of enough weapons for a small army. He discussed his associate Stoll’s relations with Palin and Palin’s attempt to put Stoll into a position of political power. What is not clear to us is where the Christianity stops and the far-right politics begins: i.e. what does Evangelical/Pentecostalist Christianity have to do with the AIP? We don’t know. This is complicated by the fact that one of the beliefs of some of these people is that in the End Times, Alaska will be a refuge state which will take in refugees from the Tribulation. These things have to be clarified.

"Never put someone unprepared in a position of authority and responsibility." It seems that ex-presidents routinely say that nothing prepares you for the job, though they do go on to endorse candidates.

Do you really believe what you’re saying here, Eric? What do you teach? Surely not philosophy or law or mathematics. This is faulty logic, the second egregious example.

I have a brain tumour. I talk to a few Professors about how to select a brain surgeon. They say: ‘Well you know, nothing really prepares you to be a brain surgeon; there’s nothing that can prepare you for starting to drill into someone’s skull then peeling back the various layers of tissue to get at the grey matter to cut the tumour out.’ So what I am to infer? That it doesn’t matter if the fellow who’s going to cut open my skull has only finished Grade 3? I am sure that the Professors would then go on to say: “But for all that, get the most qualified brain surgeon you can find even if he hasn’t done your particular kind of tumour before. Don’t go with someone from a quack school. Go with someone who’s properly educated.” Yes, Eric, nothing prepares you for the office of President of the United States of America. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter if you have no preparation at all. Why did so many experienced Republican Washington insiders jump to Obama saying that Palin was not qualified to stand a heart-beat away from the Presidency? Surely not to curry favour in an Obama administration. Not all of them.

I share the concern about putting someone so inexperienced in such a position, but I have not been convinced that the leader of the opposing ticket has significantly more, and he was not mentioned here - she was.

Barack Obama’s beliefs and attitudes can be fairly easily tracked. There is his first book; there are the examinations he set as Senior Lecturer in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School, there is his discussion of Reinhold Niebuhr with David Brooks. We personally are not so worried about Obama’s lack of experience, or even about his beliefs. For us it is quite clear where he is coming from, seeing some videos of his speeches—including his speech on race—reading transcripts of other speeches, and, above all, looking a little at his examination questions in con law and knowing a little about Reinhold Niebuhr. We are an Orthodox monk and believe what the Orthodox Church believes but while on a number of serious issues Obama’s, or even Niebuhr’s, positions are not those of the Orthodox Church, it is quite clear that Obama has thought his positions through very carefully. He knows where he’s coming from. Moreover, he is clearly someone with whom a person of reasoned but opposing views can have a serious discussion of the proper public policy to implement. At one point the Dean of the Law School sat him down and said to him—Barack your political career is going nowhere; accept tenure here at the Law School. (This is going to go down in history as one of those famous biographical footnotes.) You don’t get tenure at U of C Law without academic credibility—without intellectual respectability. Obama declined. On the libertarian-conservative Volokh Conspiracy academic blog that discusses US legal issues, one legal scholar remarked that Obama would have made a great Professor of Con Law. We can see it in his examination questions. Barack Obama has an intellectual formation that is very strong. We think that this compensates for his lack of formal experience to be President. He has, as they say, judgement. Another word for it is prudence.

Now as to why we did not discuss Obama but discussed Palin. Obama, as far as we know, does not have eschatological beliefs that raise the question whether he might want to start a nuclear war. Palin seems to have such beliefs. The issue of Palin’s eschatological beliefs and whether they might be deluded and dangerous is a theological issue. It is fair game for this blog. The issue of whether Obama has the proper understanding of con law is an issue only insofar as we want to discuss Roman Catholic moral theology. We don’t.

(Here we would like to interject a remark that relates to comments on the Palin posts made by others. We remarked that public policy is not the same as ‘personal morality’. We should have said ‘private morality’. What we meant is that public policy—especially in a secular culture, or in a culture in which the Orthodox Church is in a minority—is not simply a projection into law of the confessor’s handbook. There is more to it. Some of this can be seen at this post and this post, written by Roman Catholics from a Roman Catholic perspective. Read especially the comments. What we do not mean is that legally in an Orthodox society ‘anything goes’, or even in a secular society in which the Orthodox live. We just mean that you can’t automatically translate the confessor’s handbook into law. You have to weigh other issues.)

Also, the beliefs of his church have been widely discussed, but it stands to repeat that they are, as well, quite extreme in ways, and he did not leave that church 6 years ago.

For the reasons we have just given in discussing Obama’s intellectual formation, we think that Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s views are a non-issue—and we went to the trouble of watching the complete National Press Club talk he gave, and Obama’s press conference after. We personally think that Obama made an actual personal conversion to active Christianity but not to an Evangelical form of it. Well, of course, he would have been better off becoming Orthodox, but he didn’t and we’re not going to hold our breath waiting for it. But we think that it is because of this conversion, in which Pastor Wright played an important part, that Trinity United Church became an emotional home for him. It is where he was married. It was where his children were baptized. That is why it took so long for him to break his ties. It’s like leaving your alcoholic parent who is beating you. You should but you can’t and you don’t.

Moreover, Eric, you do not seem to have comprehended that what is important to us is not church membership—we do not believe in either salvation by association or guilt by association—but what Palin’s and Obama’s personal beliefs are as grounds for their actions. In other words, it is clear that Palin believes what she grew up with at Wasilla Assembly of God. In Obama’s case it is quite clear from the other sources that we mentioned that there is no possibility of his holding such wacko views as his Pastor was pleased to espouse when making a spectacle of himself at the National Press Club. We ourselves had the feeling that there Pastor Wright wanted to put the upstart Obama in his place—a kind of reverse Oedipal resentment. Well, we suppose he would now like to have done things differently.

Frankly, I appreciate your concern but am disappointed that this post was made on a site that I believed was about monastic life and Orthodox spirituality. With all love, please fully investigate the context of a person's actions and hear their own words before educating others publicly (even pupils of Christian spirituality) about his or her character and leadership style. And as I believe our lives are to be models of love, this would not include increasing political division or creating scary hypotheticals that are truly improbable in American society.

We don’t buy this, Eric.

Eric’s second comment[2]:

My comments were not sarcastic.

Thank you for making a response. Again, I appreciate your opinion on political matters as a citizen (I presume) but its presence on this site shows me it’s not the kind of blog I was looking for.

So who asked you?

Eric’s third comment[3]:

I did come back to see whether or not you had responded to my protest, and I think I should apologize and answer for myself. I am indeed a Protestant seeking Orthodoxy and a teacher in Chicago. I did not mean to question your credibility by asking if you were a monk or American citizen but to state the lack of knowledge that I had about the writer of the blog in general, and especially then when I was surprised about the post topic.

It’s true that I am not your customer, I do not pay you, but I assumed you wanted ears for your voice. I assumed since you put your words onto a blog that you wanted readers to come and learn from you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t post them. When I was offended (or at least, unhappily surprised) by this post I thought I would let you know how I reacted to it so that you could consider that in your decisions about future posts.

To us it came across as political pressure.

Basically, it turned me off and did make me question the wisdom of the writer if he was one to take part in what I considered misinformation and fear mongering.

We stand by what we wrote.

The presidential campaigns and many of their followers at this point appear to be patently unloving toward one another, slandering or demonizing their opponents at every turn. I see it around at work with co-workers and all around an obviously pro-Obama town – Sarah Palin is called “retarded” and her down syndrome baby is alternatively her daughter’s or John McCain’s baby.

You’ll notice that we didn’t discuss her child.

I don’t know why you continue to ask if I am sincere, but I’m not being facetious or “sarcastic.”

See above.

I do believe that the claim she thinks Iraq is God’s war is from a quote taken out of context, among various other claims.

See above. One of the good things about her losing is that to pursue a national career with any chance of going anywhere outside her base she is going to have to submit to press conferences and interviews, to explain her beliefs, to put up with books by investigative journalists vetting her life, to put up with muckraking tabloids and so on. The claims will soon be tested, although we expect that there will be a healthy dose of prevarication about her actual beliefs.

I do not believe that her Pentecostal background will necessarily lead her to treat people any worse than Barack Obama, especially since she will be a relatively powerless vice president (unlike our Dick Cheney).

Do you really believe this? After her rallies which could only be called demagoguery, and dangerous demagoguery at that? Moreover, the central issue that we raised was how her eschatological beliefs might impinge on her conduct of American foreign policy and on her actions as Commander-in-Chief with the legal authority to launch nuclear weapons on command—given that McCain was an old man who might easily die in office.

Some of the examples you raised above involved very murderous or incestuous people, and if you are comparing this situation with some of those, I believe you are assuming too much about what decisions she will make with what little power she may have.

Our assumption, well-founded we think—we are quite sure that McCain will soon be shown to be in very poor health indeed—was that Sarah Palin was too close to succeeding a dead McCain to the presidency for her to be a rational choice. We thought that we were clear on that. If you are being sincere, why is it that you don’t understand what we write?

I do believe that you are right that a holy man should tell the truth and confront people with their misdeeds from time to time – especially when they are great and have not yet been stopped. Palin has not yet been stopped but from what I don’t yet know. She had the “troopergate” investigation, which had mixed results.

Have you looked at the text of Branchflower’s report? While we haven’t read it all, we have looked at some of it. The thrust of the report is the Ms. Palin violated State of Alaska ethics laws but notwithstanding that she was within her legal rights to fire Monegan—not because she wasn’t violating ethics laws but because in Alaska a Governor has complete discretionary authority to fire the Director of Public Safety for good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons at all. There is moreover a disturbing history, documented both in Branchflower's report and in independent journalistic accounts, of the use of public office for petty vindictive revenge and, something that Branchflower explicitly states was not within his brief and hence something he could not discuss, a disturbing element of her husband Todd acting as co-Governor.

Most of the other legitimate (in my opinion) criticisms have to do with the debt left to her town or state after major projects went over budget (after she’s left).

These are purely political issues that we avoid on this blog.

I suppose I could understand a holy man bringing up concern about abortion policies or economic policies that would negatively affect the poor, but I still find it strange to confront Palin or people who might vote for Palin with her Christian faith background, which in my eyes has not yet proved to be a major impediment, in itself, to actions of love in her previous jobs.

You just don’t get it, Eric. It is precisely because Palin’s eschatological beliefs are faulty and dangerous that we felt obliged to raise them. ‘Actions of love’? Read Branchflower. It is not because Palin has faith that we took issue with her but because her particular faith is deluded on matters of serious import with regard to occupancy of the Oval Office.

I apologize for coming off as haughty. I believe I was mimicking behavior I have seen or read before. Please forgive me. I received the post as a contribution to the spiteful rhetoric influencing both sides of this debate, and I was disappointed. If you find it as a legitimate place for warning, perhaps I should not assume the position as critic.

Though, comments like these: “We believe that somewhere St Basil states that a person who winks the eye is not to be trusted.”

You would, we think, have to read the passage of St Basil. You say that you are interested in Orthodoxy. We believe that it is in the Long or Short Rules, in his ascetical writings. You might find it useful to read all of St Basil’s ascetical writings. He is remarkable for his discernment, given by the Holy Spirit.

It is scandalous for a woman to wink: there are only two known uses of the wink as body language: as a sign of sexual availability—clearly what was involved in the debate—or as a sign of deceit. Do you seriously think that a serious Christian woman should wink repeatedly in explicit sexual invitation to millions of men, let it be through the medium of television, in order to win their votes? The latter meaning—i.e. the wink as a sign of deceit—is probably what prompted St. Basil’s remark. But we are sure that St. Basil, all of whose family are recognized Saints of the Orthodox Church, would not be amused by the use of a sexual invitation to garner votes. There is nothing in Scripture to justify winking. And this is the point about St. Basil’s discernment: to the Fathers this is not a trivial matter: the Fathers of the Church had very high standards of the acceptable. If you are genuinely interested in Orthodoxy, you will have to pursue this aspect of Orthodoxy.

and “We couldn’t tell whether we were dealing with sincere persons who couldn’t think straight or with operatives who were engaging in the sophistic tricks that unscrupulous lawyers use to defend their clients.” made me wonder how serious you were in your statements, as well.

What sort of apology do you make that follows up with another attack?

Thank you for responding to both of my earlier messages.

Let’s hope that this is it, Eric.

–Orthodox Monk

---

[1] Just a few thoughts...

I've run into this blog and have been waiting for some more posts to get a read on what it is or who is writing it. It is not clear to me whether this is written by an Orthodox monk or not.

"she would like Creationism taught in schools; she really believes the earth is 5000 years old; she wanted a book presenting homosexuality in a positive light removed from the town library; she seems to think that the war in Iraq was ordained by God"

I think all of the above claims need to be fact checked. While some are saying these things are true, I think her words have been twisted in at least the case of the Iraq war.

As regards her Pentecostal church past - She changed churches 6 years ago after about 28 years in the Pentecostal church, and apparently no longer identifies herself as Pentecostal (it appears her current church is far different). I read elsewhere that she was never altogether into the charismatic elements, however true that may or may not be.

"Sarah Palin is on record as saying that she believes that Christ’s Second Coming will happen in her life-time"

I'm wondering how, exactly, apart from the "Rapturist school," this is, in itself, a negative thing. Aren't all Christians to be prepared both for death and the end of the world at all moments in time?

"Never put someone unprepared in a position of authority and responsibility." It seems that ex-presidents routinely say that nothing prepares you for the job, though they do go on to endorse candidates.

I share the concern about putting someone so inexperienced in such a position, but I have not been convinced that the leader of the opposing ticket has significantly more, and he was not mentioned here - she was.

Also, the beliefs of his church have been widely discussed, but it stands to repeat that they are, as well, quite extreme in ways, and he did not leave that church 6 years ago.

Frankly, I appreciate your concern but am disappointed that this post was made on a site that I believed was about monastic life and Orthodox spirituality. With all love, please fully investigate the context of a person's actions and hear their own words before educating others publicly (even pupils of Christian spirituality) about his or her character and leadership style. And as I believe our lives are to be models of love, this would not include increasing political division or creating scary hypotheticals that are truly improbable in American society.

Posted by Eric Friday, September 26, 2008 1:14:00 AM [note from Orthodox Monk: these are the Blogger time stamps; we have our clock arbitrarily set to UTC.]

[2] My comments were not sarcastic.

Thank you for making a response. Again, I appreciate your opinion on political matters as a citizen (I presume) but its presence on this site shows me its not the kind of blog I was looking for.

Posted by Eric to Saturday, October 11, 2008 2:28:00 PM

[3] I did come back to see whether or not you had responded to my protest, and I think I should apologize and answer for myself. I am indeed a Protestant seeking Orthodoxy and a teacher in Chicago. I did not mean to question your credibility by asking if you were a monk or American citizen but to state the lack of knowledge that I had about the writer of the blog in general, and especially then when I was surprised about the post topic.

It’s true that I am not your customer, I do not pay you, but I assumed you wanted ears for your voice. I assumed since you put your words onto a blog that you wanted readers to come and learn from you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t post them. When I was offended (or at least, unhappily surprised) by this post I thought I would let you know how I reacted to it so that you could consider that in your decisions about future posts. Basically, it turned me off and did make me question the wisdom of the writer if he was one to take part in what I considered misinformation and fear mongering. The presidential campaigns and many of their followers at this point appear to be patently unloving toward one another, slandering or demonizing their opponents at every turn. I see it around at work with coworkers and all around an obviously pro-Obama town – Sarah Palin is called “retarded” and her down syndrome baby is alternatively her daughter’s or John McCain’s baby.

I don’t know why you continue to ask if I am sincere, but I’m not being facetious or “sarcastic.” I do believe that the claim she thinks Iraq is God’s war is from a quote taken out of context, among various other claims. I do not believe that her Pentecostal background will necessarily lead her to treat people any worse than Barack Obama, especially since she will be a relatively powerless vice president (unlike our Dick Cheney).

Some of the examples you raised above involved very murderous or incestuous people, and if you are comparing this situation with some of those, I believe you are assuming too much about what decisions she will make with what little power she may have.

I do believe that you are right that a holy man should tell the truth and confront people with their misdeeds from time to time – especially when they are great and have not yet been stopped. Palin has not yet been stopped but from what I don’t yet know. She had the “troopergate” investigation, which had mixed results. Most of the other legitimate (in my opinion) criticisms have to do with the debt left to her town or state after major projects went over budget (after she’s left).

I suppose I could understand a holy man bringing up concern about abortion policies or economic policies that would negatively affect the poor, but I still find it strange to confront Palin or people who might vote for Palin with her Christian faith background, which in my eyes has not yet proved to be a major impediment, in itself, to actions of love in her previous jobs.

I apologize for coming off as haughty. I believe I was mimicking behavior I have seen or read before. Please forgive me. I received the post as a contribution to the spiteful rhetoric influencing both sides of this debate, and I was disappointed. If you find it as a legitimate place for warning, perhaps I should not assume the position as critic.

Though, comments like these: “We believe that somewhere St Basil states that a person who winks the eye is not to be trusted.” and “We couldn’t tell whether we were dealing with sincere persons who couldn’t think straight or with operatives who were engaging in the sophistic tricks that unscrupulous lawyers use to defend their clients.” made me wonder how serious you were in your statements, as well.

Thank you for responding to both of my earlier messages.

Posted by Eric Wednesday, October 22, 2008 1:47:00 PM