Romans 13: Patriotism Vs. Nationalism

Henry Neufeld quoting from David Black Online:

*True patriotism is love of country, not love of government. Neo-patriotism is mindless worship of the state.

*True patriots refuse to honor government above God. Neo-patriots gladly deify government.

*True patriots understand loyalty as adherence to the ideals upon which the country was founded. Neo-patriots believe in blind submission to the bureaucrats currently running it.

*True patriots believe that eternal vigilance is necessary to keep politicians under check. Neo-patriots are willing to entrust their lives to politicians thinking this means loyalty to the ideals spelled out in the Constitution.

*Neo-patriots think that if you criticize U.S. foreign policy or the country’s obsession with security you are “unpatriotic.” True patriots believe that the exercise of critical judgment is absolutely necessary to any civilization that is to stand or forge ahead, and that it is both their right and duty to criticize their government.

In the final analysis, I concur with President Theodore Roosevelt who said, “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.”

Romans 13 is usually used to support Nationalism: blind patriotism rather than upholding True Patriotism which allows for the right to dissent from and critique government positions.

Some Thoughts On Mainline Protestantism

Henry Neufeld has this interesting quote from the Wesley Report:

Mainline Protestant Christianity has become known for leaving people in slavery, because somewhere along the way, our strategy changed from leading people out of Egypt to planting churches along the Nile. And that’s why mainline denominations continue to lose members. People don’t need churches to help them stay in slavery– they can do that by themselves!

Peter Wallace also has an interesting post on Mainliners:

Mainliners, Be a Little Brutal and Divisive | RD Blog: Daniel Schultz| ReligionDispatches: "What does all the quiet good work of Mainline Liberals really come to in a public square dominated by the right?"

September 11th Around The Blogosphere

Shuck and Jive: September 11:

Inhabitatio Dei: A Real 9/11 Reflection---

Dan has what I’d consider to be a reflection on 9/11 that really has some substance:

As today, is September 11th, I thought I would engage in a bit of remembering — it is, after all, important to recall moments of our history, for this is the story in which we live.

On this day in 1973, Augusto Pinochet’s American-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. This resulted in seventeen years of torture, terror, and disappearances in Chile, and (according to people like Milton Friedman, who saw Chile as a textbook example of the type of world he wished to create) set a precedent for the way in which the United States acted in Latin America (particularly in the ’70s and ’80s… although they are at it again, as Obama’s government backed the Honduran coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya in June of this year).

Sponsoring terror, imposing military rule, depriving local populations of their rights, their food, their land, their livelihood, their health, their children and their lives… this is the way that the US continues to engage with the world at large. It is enough to make some people want to fly planes into buildings. Which, not altogether surprisingly, is what happened on another September 11th.

Posted in American Politics, Peacemaking.

8 comments
By Halden – September 11, 2009

Threads from Henry's Web: The Problem with Revenge---preview:

It’s 9/11 and the events eight years ago are on most people’s minds. Many Christians will be praying today, as my wife wrote in her devotional. What will those prayers consist of? What is a Christian response?

Shortly before the second gulf war began, I wrote an essay simply titled Revenge! I want to quote from it here:

As a nation, we have been living in the role of Michael Palin’s character. We see the bad guys in our sights and we shout “Revenge!” in the hope that when revenge has taken place we will be safer, life will return to pre-9/11 normalcy, and we can forget all about this extra security. Most of us know this won’t be the case, but that doesn’t stop the wishful thinking.

This was illustrated during the bombing of Afghanistan, and later during the ground war. Repeatedly the reporters would ask various military spokesmen whether they had caught or killed Osama bin Laden yet. The answer? Nobody knew. But why was that the question? Did we really think that a bombing campaign could be so targeted as to kill a single individual? Sure, he might die, but bombs are not weapons of assassination in the normal course of events. Did we think that if Osama were caught or killed that the terrorism would end? Surely we aren’t that naive!

But there is that little program in our brains that wants to yell “Revenge!” and expects that life will be a little sweeter when it is accomplished.

In some ways we face a similar situation with Iraq. I know there is a powerful motivation for revenge. I am a veteran of the 1991-1992 gulf war. It annoys me every time I see Saddam Hussein expressing himself on television. I confess I wouldn’t mind having the driver’s seat of a steam roller with Saddam’s feet stuck in setting cement. I’d yell “Revenge!” and “Take that!” and roll over him, and on the other side I’d feel good!

But then would my family be any safer? Would my country be more secure? Would anything be more normal when all was said and done? Very likely not.

I need to let that resentment go. I need to tone down the shout “Revenge!” I need to consider what will actually make things more secure.

Finally here are 2 posts of mine on the subject from last year: TheoPoetic Musings: 9-11 Remembered and TheoPoetic Musings: 9-11 Continued.

More Thoughts on Contemporary Worship

This comes by way of my friend Steve Jeffcoat's Facebook notes:

Thoughts on Contemporary Worship
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Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 12:28am

A little rant on what annoys me about the contemporary worship movement...please don't take this personally or get offended. I like singing "praise songs" every now and then, but I like other stuff too.

1. "Praise and Worship" songs

First off, who came up with this term for contemporary church music? It seems to imply that traditional hymns and even Gregorian chants, et cetera, are not praise songs or worshipful. Worship consists of way more than just singing interspersed with prayer. Communion is part of worship. Discussion and thinking are part of worship. Reading scripture is part of worship. Fasting and baptism are part of worship. Of course, dancing and singing and prayer are also part of worship, but it seems that often when people now say let's praise God or worhship Jesus, they only mean sing (with guitar, of course), and pray. "Hymns" do not just encompass songs written prior to 1975. There are many active current composers of hymns; they are not dead. The words and meaning within the hymns are quite deep and sincere, and most definitly edifying to God. Also, there are more than just 10 words in the average hymn. I'm sure God doesn't get bored with hearing "this is the air I breathe" sung 500 times like a broken record, but I get bored and irritated singing it 500 times in the same song. I wish that these contemoprary church songwriters would add a couple more verses to their songs.
Contemporary church music shares some of the same bad characteristics as a fire-and-brimstone tent revival preacher. It gets you all worked up into an emotional frenzy singing the same words over and over and over again, without even halfway paying attention to the words. For instance:

in "Holy is the Lord" how many times are you actually lifting up your hands when you sing "we stand and lift up our hands"

in "I could sing of Your love" are you actually dancing when it says "They will dance with joy like we're dancing now?"

In "Your grace is enough" why are we telling God "remember your people, remember your promise?" Are we afraid He'll forget?

Also, why is it that the same 5-10 praise songs are sung every time, despite the supposed vast array of praise songs. Even 10 years ago, it was just the same 5-10 songs every time, just different ones than today. In my church, we can go over a year without repeating a hymn.

2. LCD Projectors

These devices (and their predecessor, the overhead projector) are the worst thing to happen in modern church singing. First off, they often have typos, are in the wrong order, and the operator forgets to change the slide in time. Also, they don't show the music, just the words. Granted, that's often because the song being sung has just 1 or maybe 2 lines of melody repeated ad infinitum, but that's beside the point. If I've never heard one of the 600+ songs in the hymnal before, or a new one that's copied and used as a bulliten insert, I can use some rudimentary music-reading skills to figure out the melody. With a new praise song, I have no idea what to sing. Also, I typically sing the bass line of the four-part harmony in the hymnal, and it's pretty difficult to get good multi-part harmony without having the notes.
Even worse than any of this, however, is the churches that put traditional hymns on the LCD screen, when the same song is in the perfectly good hymnal right in front of you.

Here are some of my comments from that note:

Well reasoned rant---but check out some weird hymns like: http://dominickadamo.blogspot.com/2007/09/god-of-earth-and-outer-space.html or http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=5278. It's sad how good CCM like Larry Norman or Bill Mallonee or even Rich Mullins' other songs get left out in favor of banal pop praise songs. Part of the reason for this is because of (apologists) like (the evangelical) Ravi Zacharias and (Calvinazi) John MacArthur telling Christians to reject post-modernism in favor of dogmatic modernism: fundamentalism/Evangelicalism or anti-intellectual Christianity Lite. Although it's true fundies hate newness, they are willing to accept Praise music in the name of God-ordained American Capitalism: modernism's triumph. See they need a banal commercial in order to sell their product ie. anti-intellectualism, moral legalism, pastor worship, bible literalism/inerrancy, bibliolatry and deification of bible translators. It all boils down to capitalist materialism/consumerism. Yeah, I agree with you, Steve: " Contemporary church music shares some of the same bad characteristics as a fire-and-brimstone tent revival preacher. It gets you all worked up into an emotional frenzy singing the same words over and over and over again, without even halfway paying attention to the words."---but that's because today's church is consumer and market driven. Most traditional churches are being replaced by large shopping mall like compounds in which preachers are the salesmen selling a product (their view of Christianity) to the consumers (congregation), in which critical thinking (especially in fundie/Christianity Lite churches but occaisionaly moderate/liberal churches) is bypassed, so that a theological worldview can be quickly consumed by the masses. Thanks alot, modernism. Harry Emerson Fosdick was right, when he said:

"As I plead thus for an intellectually hospitable, tolerant, liberty-loving church, I am, of course, thinking primarily about this new generation. We have boys and girls growing up in our homes and schools, and because we love them we may well wonder about the church which will be waiting to receive them. Now, the worst kind of church that can possibly be offered to the allegiance of the new generation is an intolerant church. Ministers often bewail the fact that young people turn from religion to science for the regulative ideas of their lives. But this is easily explicable. Science treats a young man’s mind as though it were really important. A scientist says to a young man, “Here is the universe challenging our investigation. Here are the truths which we have seen, so far. Come, study with us! See what we already have seen and then look further to see more, for science is an intellectual adventure for the truth.” Can you imagine any man who is worthwhile turning from that call to the church if the church seems to him to say, “Come, and we will feed you opinions from a spoon. No thinking is allowed here except such as brings you to certain specified, predetermined conclusions. These prescribed opinions we will give you in advance of your thinking; now think, but only so as to reach these results.” My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church."

Sorry for the long post/rant---but nice note, Steve.

Insipid Contemporary Christian Music And Shallow Hymns

Henry Neufeld has an interesting post on his Blog entitled: Worship: Few Words, Boy Friends, and Girl Friends. Here are some snippets from that post:

David Ker is complaining about modern worship songs (since the 90s), and Peter Kirk has partially taken him to task about it, wondering about the air down in Mozambique and whether it causes David to rant. (Personally I suspect it’s looking at too many hippos, but in non-essentials charity, I say!) David continues with a more in-depth piece, Droning, desymbolization and Christian mantra. I think the latter is especially well worth reading, though all three will help set the stage.

Now I’m going to try to “let my words be few,” but I’ve already written quite a number of words, so that may not be easy. [Note after completing this--I failed.] Since I have an eclectic readership, let me note here that this is written to Christians. It’s internal shop talk and will probably be simply boring or weird to others.

I’m personally in sympathy with David on this from the point of view of music quality and what makes me worship. Over the years, however, I’ve tried to learn to be less critical. If I find it difficult to handle a song, I look around the congregation and inevitably I see plenty of other people who are quite deeply drawn into the crowd. If I focus on that community, I often find myself drawn in as well–to the worship, not really the music.

And:

Having said this to members of the congregation, I would like to emphasize a paragraph from David’s second post:

But, worship leaders also have a key role in this. On the stage, it’s easy to get swept away in the beauty of the music and the enjoyment of the moment and not realize that a hundred people in the congregation have their hands in their pockets and are bored out of their minds. Open your eyes, worship leaders! Be aware of the temperature of the congregation. You are supposed to be leading others in worship not zoning out in the front.

I send a separate message to leaders and congregants. Leaders, if you see your congregation bored, uninvolved, uninterested, or simply not worshiping, then you have some work to do. It’s fine for someone like me to tell people (especially myself!) to get over themselves and worship. But that’s not an excuse for some of the careless crap that goes on in worship.

People treat a stumbling presentation of the liturgy as a joke, something nice and folksy about the church. Communion is done so frequently that many pastors don’t take time to connect it to the message and the rest of the liturgy. One gets the feeling of “oh yes, we’ve gotta hand out some bread and wine” from such presentations. Worship leaders don’t pay attention to scripture or theme.

Rather than being folksy and fun, such things make the congregation treat worship as something unimportant and casual. If the minister can’t even find one sentence to insert in the communion liturgy at the appropriate points (marked conveniently with asterisks in the United Methodist hymnal), or the worship leader can’t be bothered to communicate with the minister and provide musical settings with a sense of connection, then the worshipers are justified in concluding that somebody doesn’t really care.

But finally, what is this business about boy friends and girl friends? Yes, I finally got to that point. It has to do with “I am so in love with you.” (No, not YOU, someone else!) I believe that in scripture one of the strongest metaphors for the way in which God seeks people and for the bond between myself and God is sexual passion. I don’t mean sanitized, hand-holding, going on a date level passion. I mean the kind of passion that makes one unable to wait to get to the bedroom before the clothes are coming off. I imagine that image offends some. Enjoy being offended.

Then read Ezekiel 16, for example, and see God’s passion for us represented as the passionate desire of a lover, while unfaithfulness is represented as the passion for someone other than our true spouse. There are many other texts. The problem with “lover” music, in my view, is not so much that we trivialize our love for God by expressing it in the form of cheap love lyrics; rather, it’s that our love for God is often so much more shallow than those cheap lyrics.

Hmmm. I intend none of this as judgmental about any particular person. There are many of you, such as both David and Peter, whose service for God indicates that they speak from a depth of passion that most stay-at-home American Christians cannot hope to match. If you’re in that situation, please don’t be offended at my suggestions here.

But if you’re just checking off the boxes of your supposed weekly activities, then give it some consideration. Is your relationship with God a casual date or a life-long covenant?

And from David Ker's post---Droning, desymbolization and Christian mantra:

Stare at the watch in your hand and repeat: “watch,” “watch,” “watch,” “watch,” “watch,” “watch,” “watch.” You can keep going. It shouldn’t take long. In a few seconds the familiar word detaches itself, and hardens. You find yourself repeating a series of strange sounds. A series of absurd and meaningless noises that denote nothing, indicate nothing, and remain insensate, formless, or harsh.

This process, of desymbolization disassociates a word from its meaning and is a central component of the Hindu and Buddhist practice of repeating mantras. By repeating a word or phrase over and over again it allows us to focus our minds in meditation. David Crowder Band and Darrel Evans are contemporary examples of this phenomenon. But, it is by no means an innovation in Christian liturgy. Medieval chants of Sanctus or Kyrie Elieson right through the Masses of Bach or Mozart all include reductionist prose as the basis of spiritual exaltation.

I’ll take Paul’s words slightly out of context here but I think they capture the gist of what I’m trying to say:

What should I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind. I will sing praises with my spirit, but I will also sing praises with my mind.

1 Cor. 14:15, NIV

There is a place for both content-packed hymns and emotion-packed worship songs. If those leading the congregation are sensitive to the congregation and individuals are willing to enter into the collective experience, a full spectrum of musical genres can be beneficial.

Are Christian mantras an orthodox expression of worship? See here and here for proponents of this practice. Peter Kirk also responds to my previous post.

Both of these posts offer valid critiques of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and are why fundamentalist nutjobs like John MacArthur criticize it as in: although I have to say I agree with R. C. Sproul's comments in the video. Hymns can be just as repetitive as CCM is ie. Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. I agree with David Ker in that:"there is a place for both content-packed hymns and emotion-packed worship songs" and I am glad to be in a church that utilizes both styles.