Imagine the Quaker
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archives | newquaker.comFriday, July 09, 2004
Amish in Hollywood Hell. Well, it's official. Viacom has decided to go ahead and air its exploitive reality TV series "Amish in the City" on its UPN network. The series, which airs on July 28 with a special 2-hour episode, takes 5 Amish teens from their simple rural communities and sticks them in a Hollywood Hills home with 6 other roommates, including a fashion-forward party girl, a swim teacher, and a club promoter. [Source: AP, Mercury News, July 9, 2004; archived at Religion News Blog]
Is this really necessary? Why not put them in small rooms, strip them, torment them with attack dogs, keep them sleep deprived, and just see what happens? Oh, wait—I'm confusing UPN with Abu Ghraib. My mistake, I'm sure.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:18 PM
Nader and Dean go to counseling. Today at 2:00 PM est Howard Dean and Ralph Nader got together for a Nader vs. Dean debate in a live broadcast on NPR's information show Justice Talking.
The debate was really about two issues: One, (Dean) "Ralph, please quit your candidacy and come home. We have to stop George W. Bush no matter what." Two, (Nader) "The Democratic Party is a mirror image of the Republican Party—both are joined at the hips with corporate special interests." Perhaps "debate" is the wrong word for their interchange. We already knew that the two respected each other, and that came across very clearly in what turned out to be simply an adoring couple at a marriage counseling session. We aren't sure if the marriage is saved, but we know they will remain friends.
The positive effect of the discussion was the realization that Ralph Nader will never be successful in a presidential campaign until he collects the necessary popular support to carry him up the steep hill of electoral balloting. That will require him to forge real political friendships and begin wearing a recognizable service mark, i.e., something "to identify and distinguish the services of one provider from services provided by others, and to indicate the source of the services." People really do like Ralph Nader. He's almost like Siddhartha, Confucius, or Gandhi—I mean, who really could be against this valiant crusader? The problem is that modern Americans don't have a tradition of voting for someone who stands so alone in the way he does. Maybe Kerry will give him a cabinet post after the election.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 4:13 PM
Sunday, July 04, 2004
The condoms of patriotism will set you free. Curse the ACLU—no, wait, long live the ACLU—no, wait, curse the ACLU.... You know, I've never really understood the hatred some Americans have for the American Civil Liberties Union. As an American institution, the group seems to be the most consistent guardian of traditional American values, at least so far as they spring directly from the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. That's exactly what the ACLU says it is:
"The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty. We work daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Our job is to conserve America's original civic values—the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."
I've rarely heard good things about the ACLU from the lips of Christians, perhaps because the group is always jumping in and pulling them out of the back seat of Democracy's car before things get too hot and steamy. And yet the ACLU remains vigilant even when Christians themselves face irrelevance from competing religious bodies and it doesn't hesitate to preserve the Christian's place within this secular state. I think the ACLU knows something American Christians haven't quite figured out yet—that our brand of democracy forbids any marriage between Christianity (or any religious faith, for that matter) and the civic values of our government.
The trouble with Christians and Democracy is that the union of the two must necessarily result in an incoherency. The child born of that marriage bed would have to be the ugliest bastard, incapable of loving one parent without despising the other. Democracy worships a free society governed by people and their laws; Christians worship a jealous God who demands spiritual allegiance to no one else. When our lord and master Jesus Christ said that his kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36), he was speaking directly to the failure of a society built around Democracy's civic values to be that kingdom. It is pure insolence for Christians to think that the US is God's chosen nation. As Christians, we are not of this world; this world is not even our home. On this earth we are nothing more than aliens and strangers [Hebr 11:13; 1 Peter 2:11] who are called to serve as ambassadors of Christ [2 Cor 5:20] with a ministry of reconciliation [2 Cor 5:18].
While personal liberty and freedom are esteemed in the US and we celebrate the adoption of the "Declaration of Independence" every year on July 4th, surely it is irony for the American Church that this celebration should fall today on a special day for Christians. Could the Apostate Church have a picked a better time to wear its disguise? American ministers should, like Paul, be doing everything to preserve the Church as a pure virgin [2 Cor 11:2], instead of passing out the condoms of patriotism. As followers of Jesus, liberty or freedom are not our highest virtues, for civic liberty is only a pale imitation, a surrogate for something more substantial—we know that genuine liberty, real freedom, comes only through knowing the truth of Jesus Christ.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 3:00 AM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
