Provisional
Truth | Book Reviews | September 2006
Why The Christian Right Is Wrong :
A Minister's Manifesto for Taking Back
Your Faith, Your Flag, Your Future
by Dr. Robin Meyers, 2006
  Dr. Robin Meyers, progressive
minister of Mayflower Congregational Church (United Church of
Christ) in Oklahoma City, expands upon a speech (full text and link
below) delivered at an
interfaith peace rally at the University of Oklahoma in November
2004 following George Bush's re-election. That speech was transcribed and posted on the internet,
where, at the speed of light, it circled the globe and put into
words what so many people have been feeling.
Dr. Meyers rips into the Jesus-as-superhero
image prevalent among “Left Behind” series readers and other
“chosen” who see the world in the simplistic overtones of
the present administration and the leader of the free world
who have divided humankind into the good guys and the
evildoers, those who either are with us or are for the
terrorists.
As he notes, "fundamentalists,
by definition, are not content to 'live and let live.'
Everyone must be converted. If 'nonbelievers' fail to
see the light, they will spend eternity regretting it."
Regrettably this applies both to Christianity and Islam,
and, over the course of centuries, each faith at their
extremist ends have added to the misery of the world's
inhabitants.
Meyers notes further, "The
dreaded military-industrial complex that the departing
President Eisenhower warned us about has now lost the hyphen
and become one word. We cut taxes on the rich and pass the
costs of a misbegotten war on to our children. We fiddle
with fashion, trumpet gossip, and hawk get-rich-quick
schemes while our own empire, our Pax Americana,
burns."
(On a historical note, in
Eisenhower's original draft he used the term
"military-industrial-congressional" complex,
accurately identifying the necessary enabling element of
this threesome which controls the federal power of the
purse. "Congressional" was omitted in the final version of
this prophetic speech, but, as has become woefully evident
in the present day, without the collusion of a willing
Congress, there would be no military-industrial complex.)
In Part Three, "A Call to
Nonviolent Resistance," Meyers says, "I'm tired of people
thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter
of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and
gay rights, I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of
people saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the
war.
"This country is bankrupt. The
war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to
be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn
things around are people like you - people who are just
beginning to wake up to what is happening to them. It's your
country to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's
your future to take back."
He concludes, "There is no
resistance without sacrifice. Those in power today are
convinced that the rest of us have lost the capacity to
sacrifice for the common good. They believe that we serve
only ourselves and will never lie down in front of the train
of history to throw it off the tracks. They are
depending on us to go right on consuming mindlessly, living
for the moment, wasting the future, and cheering the troops
as they march off to war.
"If we do, their hold on power
will be permanent. If we go on amusing ourselves to death,
flicking the TV remote through hours of mind-numbing
unreality, frozen in the blue light of isolation, nothing
will change. If we go on shopping ourselves to an oblivion
of the soul, we will all perish together in a soulless
oblivion. If we do not help to build and to fund and to
energize a true opposition party, we may indeed wake up some
day to discover that it is too late.
"That is unless we act now.
Unless we resist now. Unless we find or create
communities of dignified indignance now. For there
has come again what martin Luther King Jr. called 'the
fierce urgency of now.' If we don't do it now, when
might we do it? And if we don't do it at all, what are we
saying? What have we decided?
"That our kids aren't worth it?
That God's creation isn't worth it? That we aren't worth it?
"And what is the dream of the
prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should
beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning
hooks. Who would Jesus bomb indeed? How many wars does
it take to know that too many people have died? What if they
gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.
"Time to march again, my
friends. I love this country. Let's take it back."
What
Others Are Saying About
Why The Christian Right Is Wrong at
Amazon.com.
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Text of Dr. Robin
Meyer's 2004 Speech
Link to PDF Version
A Minister Fights Back on
Moral Values
Dr. Robin Meyers'
November 2004 Speech
Interfaith Peace Rally
University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
As some of you know, I am
minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an
Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma
City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University.
But you would most likely
have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I
have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the
most number of angry letters to the editor.
Tonight, I join ranks of
those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has
been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but
whose actions are anything but Christian.
We've heard a lot lately
about so-called "moral values" as having swung the election to
President Bush.
Well, I'm a great believer
in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this
country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value—I mean what
are we talking about?
Because we don't get to make
them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We
have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is
as moral does.
Let me give you just a few
of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral
values are on their side:
When you start a war on
false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified
because you are doing God's will, and that your critics are either
unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given
our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this
is not only not moral, but immoral.
When you live in a country
that has established international rules for waging a just war,
build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then
arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the
world, you are doing something immoral.
When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to
acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or
turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like
that we must never return violence
for violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the
sword), you are doing something immoral.
When you act as if the lives
of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American
soldiers, and refuse to even count them,
you are doing something immoral.
When you find a way to avoid
combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and
came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.
When you ignore the
fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the
strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical
test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong
will get stronger and the weak will
get weaker, you are doing something immoral.
When you wink at the torture
of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules
of the Geneva Convention, which
your own country helped to establish and insists that other
countries follow, you are doing
something immoral.
When you claim that the
world can be divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice
up your own nation into those who
are with you, or with the terrorists—and then launch a war which
enriches your own friends and seizes
control of the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us
to kick the habit, you are doing
something immoral.
When you fail to veto a
single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit
strategy and no end in sight, creating an
enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks
of our children, you are doing something
immoral.
When you cause most of the
rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved
country in the world, and act like it
doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you,
you have done something immoral.
When you use hatred of
homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of
evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of
discrimination, you are doing something immoral.
When you favor the death
penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye
for an eye was the old way, not the way
of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
When you dismantle countless
environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift
to us all, so that the
corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make
higher profits while our children breathe dirty
air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The
earth belongs to the Lord, not
Halliburton.
When you claim that our God
is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while
theirs is evil, we have begun to
resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We
have met the enemy, and the enemy is
us.
When you tell people that
you intend to run and govern as a "compassionate conservative,"
using the word which is the essence of
all religious faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for
anyone who disagrees with you, and
no patience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing
something immoral.
When you talk about Jesus
constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make
sure that anyone who is sick can go to
see a doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you
are doing something immoral.
When you put judges on the
bench who are racist, and will set women back a hundred years, and
when you surround yourself with
preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.
I'm tired of people thinking
that because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter of President
Bush, or that because I favor civil rights
and gay rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people
saying that I can't support the troops but
oppose the war.
I heard that when I was your
age—when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that war was
wrong, and you know that this war is
wrong—the only question is how many people are going to die before
these make believe Christians are removed from power?
This country is bankrupt.
The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be
Christian is bankrupt. And the only
people who can turn things around are people like you—young people
who are just beginning to wake up to what
is happening to them.
It's your country to take back. It's your
faith to take back. It's your future to take
back.
Don't be afraid to speak
out. Don't back down when your friends begin to tell you that the
cause is righteous and that the flag should be
wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut.
Real Christians take chances for
peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real
Buddhists--so do all the faith traditions of the world at their
heart believe one thing: life is precious.
Every human being is
precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite
of charity. And believing that one has never
made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.
And war—war is the greatest
failure of the human race—and thus the greatest failure of faith.
There's an old rock and roll song, whose
lyrics say it all: War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
And what is the dream of the
prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should beat our
swords into plowshares and our
spears into pruning hooks.
Who would Jesus bomb, indeed?
How many
wars does it take to know that too many
people have died?
What if they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one
day we will find out.
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