Still Possible (from Christmas Eve 2021)

 Bishop Marianne Budde of Washington (DC) preached the sermon on Christmas Eve at the National Cathedral. She centered her message around times when people were called to service that they saw as "impossible". Abraham and Sarah, Moses, and finally Mary and Joseph. In the Christmas Gospel, the angel replies to Mary's "But how can this be?" with "All things are possible with God."

Bishop Marianne was very clear and forceful about one thing: God is not a magician. God does not swoop in to rescue us from whatever troubles we have. Rather, God provides us with the Grace to do those works that we and the world need, but we have to provide the courage and will to do God's work.

Just yesterday, I read an old account of a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania in 1939-1940 who issued thousands of visas to Jewish families as they escaped the Nazi Holocaust. This was an example of the "Righteous of the Nations", an honor higher than any Medal of Honor. Over 27,000 people have been recognized by Yad Vashem. As we look through history old and new, it is easy to recognize that this self-sacrifice demonstrated by the "Righteous" can be seen in many of humanity's most disgraceful moments. These are people who are ready to lay down their reputations, fortunes, freedoms or even their lives for others. The key point is that they are risking it all for complete strangers. There is something very pure and Godly in this, regardless of whatever motives these "Righteous" may have had.

And this is what ties into Bishop Marianne's sermon. The actions of these "Righteous of the Nations" were an example of God breaking into their lives, and of their responding with courage (and fear) to the call. The atrocities of the powerful in this world certainly seem impossible to resist, but with God, all things are possible. Still possible.

Protecting the Feelings of White Racist Students

October 10, 2021

What a conundrum! The state legislature of Missouri is pushing a bill to outlaw the teaching of "Critical Race Theory", the "1619 Project", or any similar subject that would make white students feel bad about being white.

Meanwhile, at Park Hill South High (near Kansas City, MO) there is a petition circulating among the students for the reinstatement of slavery.

The resulting tough question: Will the teachers and staff of Park Hill South be legally allowed to explain to the petitioning students that this was "wrong", or would this not be allowed because it would hurt their feelings?

Why the Democratic Party Cannot Steamroll Their Agenda.

 234 years of American History have created a system of checks and balances between two houses of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court that is designed to make radical change nearly IMPOSSIBLE. The radical changes after the Civil War were only possible because the states of the Confederacy were locked out of the system. The radical changes of 1933-37 were only possible because the American people were suffering so badly from the Depression that they almost erased the Republican Party. TODAY, although we need radical changes in all kinds of infrastructure, climate, and justice issues, The American people did not vote for the Party that would deliver. It's the American people who do not have the spine to reject the white-supremacist agenda of the Republican Party, leaving the GOP with enough leverage to obstruct everything.

The Death of Expertise

 Stevie Berryman:

One of the most dangerous ideas that has come about in the last 3 years is that all points of view are equally valid, and that Average Citizen (YOU) are just as equipped to judge which have merit as anyone else.

"Hear all sides, and judge for yourself!" No. I do not condone the death of Expertise, and neither should you.

I am an expert in very, very few things. But in those areas, my expertise is hard earned through study, work, experience, and aptitude. None of it comes from attending Google University. But unless you are an expert in exactly the same areas, your opinion is not just as valid as mine. It's not.

And my opinion is not as valid as experts' in other fields. That is why THEY ARE THE EXPERTS. So if our leading epidemiologists largely agree that "A" is correct, and a couple of discredited doctors make a video that says "B" is correct, our response should not be "I'll listen to both and decide which makes sense to me." Confirmation bias exists, and only fools think they are free of it. To paraphrase Asimov, your ignorance is not the same as their experience. Genuinely smart people look for answers from people who are smarter than themselves. Only ignorant people believe their guess is as good as anyone else's.

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States¹, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Isaac Asimov

Facebook Essay on Reaction to CRT, by Jack Morgan, Teacher

 Two days ago, I tried to explain Critical Race Theory to a friend of mine who had asked me, “So, are you going to have to teach CRT in your classroom this year?”

I swallowed hard and started to ask him questions instead of acting on my defensiveness. First, I wanted to determine what he knew about CRT. After a few minutes, I understood that it was little more than the talking points from right wing media, which by the way, all contain a tiny little kernel of truth that has been misrepresented and overblown to make it overly simplistic and scary to those who have never encountered CRT till now.

In the next few minutes, I drilled down to try to figure out what he was actually upset about. In the course of our conversation, I came to see that he is scared, actually terrified, that the world has changed, is changing and likely will change even more in the next few decades. The changes scare him because he sees people who don’t look like him or share his opinions, beliefs and background demanding equality, inclusion and respect. He sees them moving into positions of power, though too slowly, and he rightly understands that as they do so, people who look like him and feel as he does will have to re-assess lots of things they have assumed were true and taken for granted.

In the next part of our conversation, I asked when he learned about the race massacres in various cities around the country in the decades following the end of Reconstruction and leading up to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. I asked him about redlining and the other racially motivated practices that have created the wealth gap, the education gap and the health gap. I asked him about a lot of historical events. To his credit, he took the questions seriously, offered his objections and then listened when I offered him ways to verify what I was telling him. He asserted that it was actually LBJ’s Great Society that created the “culture of dependence” and poverty that we suffer from now. I asked him if he thought that a incomplete social overhaul that came after the Civil Rights Act and was intended to right some of the generational inequalities and injustices could actually have been the primary cause of the struggles that still face so many people. I asked him if that program was more to blame than the century of systemic discrimination, prejudice and racism of Jim Crow. I pushed him hard. In the end, he agreed that common sense would indicate that three and and a half centuries of built-in racism probably had more of an impact. I assured him that this fuller story of our history is what most of the loudest voices on the right have neatly, but erroneously, packaged as CRT.

As we wrapped it up, I returned to his initial question,but I posed it to him in a different form. I asked him if he thought I should teach all of the facts, the full story of history, in my classroom or if I should neglect to mention the facts when they reflected negatively on our past choices and policies. He is a musician, so I asked him to consider how he learned to play. Did he only play the easy passages over and over when he was learning songs or did he hunker down on the tougher bits and rehearse them over and over, slowly at first, then up to speed, till he could play them. He understood what I was saying. We ended as friends but on a deeper level. He is a good dad, a good husband and a great songwriter. I am worried about him. I love him. But I am not going to make it easy on him, nor should he make it easy on me. We are friends. The iron for each other’s steel.

That’s what all this about. A more perfect union. It was never supposed to be finished. When it’s finished, it will no longer exist. A song is a song only when it’s playing. A kiss is a kiss only when we’re kissing. To quote W.H. Auden, “We will love one another or die.”

So, yes, to answer his question, I will use ideas from CRT in my classroom when they are illustrative and helpful, just as I will use New Historicism, Structuralism, New Criticism, Reader Response, and any number of other critical approaches to literature and history, both “conservative” and “liberal,” if they promote deeper reflection, critical thinking, discernment and learning. My job is to create better humans and to give them the tools that will allow them to be the better humans they are meant to be based on their choices and their beliefs, not mine. But none of us can be better humans if we fight straw men instead of the real enemies that threaten to destroy us all—poverty, inequality, injustice, and the lies that propagate and perpetuate them.

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Critical Race Theory Bans - Will there be a 21st Century "Scopes Monkey Trial"?

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is controversial today largely because no one understands it. It is being used as a stand-in for the wide range of issues surrounding race in America. In a way, CRT is to social and political science as Einstein's Relativity is to Physics. Both are academic and philosophical attempts to understand a reality that lies hidden from normal personal experience. Unless you work with high-energy particle accelerators or with deep-space radio astronomy, you will never meet up with Einstein's weird science. Likewise, unless you are writing a city's zoning laws or managing a mortgage company's lending standards, you will not see under the covers of America's hidden constraints on its non-white citizens. 

So what are we to make of the sudden surge of attempted legislation that is aiming to prevent schools from exposing students to CRT? It may be partly due to the perfect storm of the George Floyd murder conviction of Derek Chauvin and the many related cases of police misconduct toward minorities, met with the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre as it displayed evidence of an awful history that has been swept under the rug. 

Since the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman for that, there have been a series of other killings of Blacks that have gone remarkably unpunished. If there is no clear video evidence, there is no accountability. The constant rationalizations (he was selling loose cigarettes, he wasn't following orders, etc) finally fell apart with the Floyd murder. 

Then there was Tulsa. As that anniversary came closer, we heard a chorus of shock and confusion from ordinary people in all corners of the US. "Why didn't my high school history teacher ever mention anything like this?" A simple Google search now shows us dozens of similar massacres, wiping out dozens of communities of Black citizens throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of those even happened in the NORTH! 

The obvious truth of these revelations has made the cynical "fake news" epithet obsolete. Those who benefit from the status quo are now forced to find a way to put the genie of reality back in the lamp. This is where legislation to prevent the "indoctrination of youth" with the Critical Race Theory is coming from. The defenders of the status quo are even summoning the ghost of Joe McCarthy by labeling CRT as "Marxist". 

Will the legislated suppression of America's true history and its present racial reality succeed? I'm not sure. This is one potent genie that may resist its return to the lamp. A 9-minute video of a Black man dying under a police officer's knee and the bulldozers in Tulsa exhuming mass graves are pretty compelling to most of us. The eventual court cases where the status quo defenders attempt to enforce their "gag orders" could be the 21st Century equivalent of the "Scopes Monkey Trial", leaving the CRT-banning legislators as a laughing stock in front of the nation.

We can dearly hope.

WE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO OUR OPINIONS - by Rod Kennedy

Americans assume that they have the right, if not the obligation, to express their own opinion. Well, I challenge that assumption. You are not entitled to your opinion, at least not philosophically or in the field of argumentation. You are only entitled to what you can argue for. If you can’t construct and defend an argument, you don’t have a right to an opinion. If you can’t recognize when a belief becomes indefensible, you are not entitled to an opinion. “I’m entitled to my opinion” often becomes a defense for beliefs that should be abandoned. It becomes the “middle finger” to those with whom we disagree and it another way of saying, “I can say or think whatever I like and argue with false rhetorical claims. It’s a way of attacking a person without giving any attention to the arguments that person makes.

If “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion” just means no one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true but fairly trivial. No one can stop you from saying that vaccines cause autism, no matter how many times that claim has been disproven. But if ‘entitled to an opinion’ means ‘entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth’ then it’s pretty clearly false. Opinion doesn’t elevate to “truth” simply because someone makes a statement on television.

There are differences between opinions, beliefs, convictions, true beliefs, and truth. To promote opinion to truth with no backing in sight is an absurdity. You can say, but you are not entitled to having it treated as if it is just the "other side" of the argument. This is one of the weaknesses of having a climate scientist make a statement and then finding an anti-climate spokesperson to offer opinions when that person has no relevant experience or expertise. That person can argue against climate change policy, but has no right to express opinions about the science itself.

It is complicated to insist that you have the right to an opinion about subjects about which you have no knowledge. It is true that you can say whatever you wish to say, but it is false that what you have to say about subjects beyond your level of expertise is also entitled to be a truth claim. Not all opinions are true, valid, or useful. Some opinions are simply dangerous. It doesn’t stop anyone from expressing opinions, but philosophically, it is important to know that you are only entitled to what you can argue for. This means that your arguments must have warrants, truth claims, evidence, and supporting material. Otherwise, you are not making an argument, you are expressing a trivial opinion.

What matters is the ability to make good arguments and to have the ability to back up your arguments. If your opinion can’t do this, then it fails to gain the right to be expressed in the arena of truth claims. It’s just another batch of poorly constructed words repeated over and over to no good end. In this sense, everyone is not entitled to an opinion. Perhaps we are all possessed by habits too corrupt for us to be expressing opinions not rooted in fact, reality, or truth.

If you are offended by this notion, please make any contrary argument you wish, but if it is not an actual argument but just emotional blather, don’t expect it to be taken seriously. You are not entitled to your opinion is a philosophical assertion that goes against the grain of American notions of opinions. Argumentative rebuttals are welcome Ad hominem attacks are not.

The Rev. Dr. Rodney W. Kennedy is a professor of Homiletics at Palmer Theological Seminary, St. Davids, PA

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Kristof on "Think Again" by Adam Grant

From a New York Times op-ed (5 March 2021) by Nicholas Kristof reviewing the book "Think Again" by Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton:

Research suggests that what wins people over is listening, asking questions and appealing to their values, not your own. Grant cites evidence for “complexifying” issues so they become less binary and more nuanced, enabling someone on the other side to acknowledge areas of ambivalence. 

Researchers find that it is easier for people to reach agreement on difficult issues if they have been prepped to see the world as complicated and full of grays. It’s a painstaking, frustrating process of building trust, keeping people from becoming defensive, and slowly ushering them to a new place.

All this is tough to do after four traumatic and polarizing years, especially when fundamental moral issues are at stake. But it’s precisely because the stakes are immense that we should try to learn from the science of persuasion and emphasize impact over performance.

Republicans Need to Teach Us to Trust Them.

 What we need from the Republican "leaders" who have been feeding the media ecosystem of lies and distortion for 20 years is some real repentance. Turn away from the falsehoods and start to explain to the rest of us how we can begin to trust you all again. You can start small. 

Tell us where your real suspicions with elections come from, then help to design a system that is both secure AND accessible to all (regardless of race or economic status). 

Then move on to Science and Justice Reform and Employment Economics. Take the steps that show non-Republicans that you are willing to engage us with verifiable facts. And while you are at it, destroy/discredit Qanon, the albatross around your neck.

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