WHERE IS THE CHURCH?

(This is a second heavily dated entry, posted now in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of America’s war in Iraq. It was written five years ago, long after my initial support of President George W. Bush’s policies turned into a shocked and disgusted repudiation. As the reader will see, it is not a finished entry, but an initial sketch of one, which I never bothered to finish in its present form. Yet I am never opposed to letting my reader into the kitchen, where some of my unbaked dough is stored, probably indefinitely, in my computer's refrigerator. Here it is, then.)

[A note to myself:

This stinging denunciation of the passive, or outright negative role America’s Church leadership is playing in the current political events, meekly tolerating, or fawningly applauding the shameful acts and policies of the Bush Administration, probably the most obscenely immoral, as it turns out, Presidency in all American history, particularly in its cynical indifference to the lives and thoughts of the American people, in its use of the fear factor to curtail civil freedoms, and in its conduct of the disastrous war of choice in Iraq, is quite proper, in my view. However, it is still a blueprint for a potential larger piece, where I will be naming more names, but will also identify the opposition to the Bush policies, which may be too tame, yet it does exist, and it must be mentioned, to keep a certain balance in the eventual piece. I must emphasize that the worst perpetrators here are the Establishment Evangelical preachers, the so-called Religious Right, who have rudely violated the line of separation between Church and State, intruding in the matters of this nation’s foreign policy, and going out of their way to consecrate ex cathedra (yes, I am talking about the Evangelical preachers such as John Hagee, and Pat Robertson’s crowd, to name just these two out of many names) the highly controversial and glaringly immoral aspects of the neoconservative agenda. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church in America is hardly enthusiastic about President Bush’s policies, yet it is by no means vocal enough in their own repudiation.
From its first sentence, the dated nature of this entry becomes apparent: it was written at the time when Israel was bombing civilian areas of Beirut, Lebanon--- a military operation that was both despicably immoral and militarily doomed to fail. The final draft of this piece probably ought to focus more on what the Church has been doing about the actions of the American President, but, considering that Washington and Tel Aviv have long been joined at the hip, the American Evangelical Church’s predictably enthusiastic responses to the objectionable policies of Israel are also of major interest. And, of course, the contrarian attitudes of the oppositionist churches in America, such as the recently getting into the spotlight church of the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright, are quite telling, revealing, perhaps, the Pendulum effect, which I describe and comment on, in one of later entries in this section.]

On the American church leaders’ silence over the outrage in Iraq, and now in Lebanon.

In my Lecture Summary on International Justice I made the following important assertion:

“We must become philosophers before being scientists. But, unfortunately, modern philosophy is virtually bankrupt, as a result of the growing divergence between secular and religious thought that has reached the point of incompatibility… Instead of firmly taking the path of ethical social activism, religious (leaders) of today are consumed by their narrow proselytizing agendas, as if their only mission in life is to get converts for their specific denominations…”

That was written at a time when I was primarily concerned with the American Church’s virtual indifference to the life of the nation as a whole, almost like it was in the Dark Ages of yore, when the Church effectively separated itself from the woes and aspirations of the secular world behind the walls of the monasteries and universities, paying no attention to wars, pestilences, and other miseries of their fellow human beings. But today things have changed, and changed a lot. These days, the Church has stepped right into the mud of the most repulsively secular kind, throwing its considerable weight behind the neoconservative agenda, values, and practices of the George W. Bush Administration. This is not to say that the Church leaders have abandoned their former ways. Far from it. A large part of them still inhabits the Dark Ages. But the most active among them have definitely plunged their allegiances into the even darker ages of an unholy political activism.

Yes, these are not solely matters of denominational religion, that today preoccupy so many of the American religious leaders. Even more reprehensibly, they get themselves strongly involved in matters of international and domestic partisan politics, usually on the Republican side, where they are quick to attack a morally decent church-going individual, who happens to be a Democrat, while supporting the scum of the earth, just because they run for a national office on the Republican side.

The bottom line here is not to mull over how many religious leaders are thus reprehensible not only for men of faith, but even by the standards applied to ordinary human beings, but that, most regrettably, these church leaders of America have miserably failed their nation as a whole.

Forget their duty of spiritual guidance, forget their supposedly being the conscience of the nation and forget their claim to personal integrity and intellectual honesty (which, when caught, they always like to excuse by “we are all sinners redeemed by the Blood of Christ”). American Protestant Churches represent religion in the worst sense of the word. They have no clue to the meaning of “ecclesiastic integrity,” let alone any inclination for “writing with their own blood.” Yet, they are crudely but effectively versed in agitprop, and in the darkest arts of dirty politics. They have shamelessly pretended to enlist Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures in their unholy political machinations, thus showing their complete lack of belief in God, in Heaven, or in Hell.

As for most other Church leaders, apparently, theirs is “a life of tranquility and reflection, that is not to be disturbed at home” (except for the so-called church scandals, that occupy a lot of their attention, clouding an otherwise cloudless sky) “and meddles not in the affairs of the world keeping their mind at ease and their thought in one even course.” (I am quoting George Long, from my entry L’Après-Midi D’Un Philosophe. See my comments there as well.) In other words, a Philistine’s Paradise! What else would you expect from an Establishment Church? Ask Kierkegaard!

Am I offending somebody here? I hope I do! Where are you, Church Fathers, when your nation needs you so much,--- not to wage yet another immoral war, but to protest against it?!