Now that I have finally succeeded in killing off any sort of hapless reader base I may have once had, it is time for another post.
Sometimes I wish I could have been a gypsy. I don't mean I want to be Romanian--although I would like to live in Europe for a while--I mean I want to be a gypsy in the popular conception of the term. Care-free and able to do as I please with only a small group of friends beside me. I don't want to have to worry about things, I realize that this is a sign of immaturity but my immaturity is something I need to own up to and move beyond.
I've been grappling with my future lately and quite frankly it scares me. I worry about money. I worry about finding a job. Contrary to what I know you think all the time, there isn't that huge of a demand for journalists these days. There are blindingly few high paying jobs in journalism. But I want to write news, opinion, fact, fiction, I like to write and that's what I think God has for me.
I've been less introspective over the last few months. Less, I don't know, 'artsy.' I hate the word "artsy" because it implies snobbish or rebellious and those kinds of things. I'm headed toward the mainstream and I don't have any idea when this began to happen to me. It kind of makes me mad to be honest. I guess everything gets swept away by the tides of conformity eventually and why should I be an exception?
I feel like Natalie Portman's character in Garden State, sometimes I just want to do something bizarre to break to monotony of time.
I talk a big game but I'm glad I'm not a gypsy.
-Caleb Williams
Monday, December 31, 2007
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Jordan Green is a Genius
If you haven't been reading the Burnside Writer's Collective you are wrong! Read this: http://www.burnsidewriterscollective.com/general/2007/07/the_emergent_churchal_qaeda_co.php
Do it now!
-Caleb Williams
Do it now!
-Caleb Williams
Monday, July 30, 2007
Kenyan Farmers’ Fate Caught Up in U.S. Aid Rules
By CELIA W. DUGGER
LOKWII, Kenya — As the United States Congress debates an omnibus farm bill, it is considering a small change that advocates say could make a big difference to the world’s hungriest people: allowing the federal government to buy some food in Africa to feed the famished, rather than shipping it all overseas from America.
The Bush administration, with odd-bedfellows support from liberal Democrats, has called for allowing the purchase of some food in poor countries to quicken responses to emergencies. But even so, its proposal would not have prevented the paradoxical deepening of hunger here during a long-term project to combat hunger in the harsh, arid reaches of northwestern Kenya.
Families participating in an American-financed irrigation project from 2002 to 2006 were promised payment in corn for clearing the land and digging canals. The Kenyan government objected to the importation of American corn because the country was awash in a bumper harvest that had caused corn prices to plunge.
The result: American officials, prohibited by law from buying the corn locally, could not deliver it. As the impoverished families waited in vain for sustenance from the American heartland, malnutrition among the youngest children worsened and five people died of hunger-related causes.
Ikai Moru, 19, still recalls the hunger that gnawed at her and her mother as they chopped down thorny acacia trees on their tiny plot, hoping one day to reap a bountiful harvest from the parched earth. She watched her mother grow thinner and paler, and finally sicken and die.
“My mother was a very hard worker,” Ms. Moru offered in a brief epitaph.
Through sheer grit, the 2,000 families finished the irrigation system last year and are successfully farming. But long-term projects to help Africa’s rural poor feed themselves are chronically underfinanced, charities say.
Across Africa, the United States is more likely to give people a fish — caught in America — that feeds them for a day than to teach them to fish for themselves. Since last year, for example, the United States has donated $136 million worth of American food to feed the hungry in Kenya, but spent $36 million on agricultural projects to help Kenyan farmers grow and earn more.
And even that small budget for long-term projects in Kenya is expected to dwindle. The United States Agency for International Development, known as Usaid, in seeking to concentrate scarce resources, has dropped Kenya from the list of countries eligible for undertakings like the irrigation project here.
Such efforts are dwarfed by the epic scale of the need. Viewed from a prop plane buzzing like a mosquito overhead, the irrigated land here shimmers as a tiny oasis in a vast, dun-colored landscape.
With the guidance of the Christian charity World Vision, which implemented the project, the families hacked an irrigation system from the barren landscape with machetes, hoes and shovels, clearing 1,000 acres and digging 99 miles of canals along the Kerio River.
Ms. Moru will soon be feeding her four younger brothers and sisters with an abundance of sorghum and corn harvested from their half-acre farm, fulfilling her mother’s dream.
The success is noteworthy, but the families’ sacrifices also illustrate the risks of an American food aid system that is designed to benefit domestic agribusiness and shipping interests and enmeshed in an intricate framework of farm subsidies.
Members of Congress who favor the current system say the support of influential commercial groups is needed to sustain political support for food aid. They warn that ill-timed purchases of food in Africa in times of scarcity could send food prices higher, harming poor consumers.
But critics in Congress contend that the United States could feed far more people more quickly if it could buy surplus food in Africa. It might also help boost the incomes of African farmers, by providing a market for their crops, they say.
The Bush administration is now trying to change the law so that up to $300 million of food can be bought in poor countries during emergencies.
The Senate Agriculture Committee chairman, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, where growers and landowners got $1.58 billion in corn subsidies in 2005, is advocating a $25 million pilot program to test buying food in poor countries for both emergency and long-term aid.
Even that modest proposal is meeting stiff resistance from farm state legislators. The House Agriculture Committee’s version of the farm bill includes no such pilot. The committee chairman, Collin C. Peterson, Democrat of Minnesota, said of his members,` “They’re still of the mode that this should be American products we’re using our tax dollars to provide them.”
Mr. Peterson’s district got $367 million in corn subsidies in 2005, according to government data analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization.
Even without the American corn that was supposed to keep them going, the families here were determined to grasp their once-in-a-lifetime chance at fertile plots of farmland. Ms. Moru, 14 years old when construction began, recalled how she and her widowed mother had taken on the acacia trees together. They lopped off branches barbed with thorns, burned the trunks and uprooted the stumps.
“It was the heaviest work we had ever done, but we had no choice,” Ms. Moru said. “It was the only way to get land to plow.”
Their success was all the more extraordinary given this desiccated region’s history as a graveyard for well-intended foreign aid efforts to help the Turkana tribe, mostly nomadic herders, escape punishing cycles of drought, hunger and death.
The participants themselves credit a man who gave them fortitude when they faltered: Daniel Mwebi, a Kenyan engineer who managed the project here for World Vision.
From 1992 to 2004, he lived for much of each year in this remote place, far from his wife and children. He said he had been determined to avoid the mistakes of earlier aid projects that relied on heavy earth-moving equipment and diesel-run pumps that required costly fuel, expertise and maintenance.
So he designed a very basic system and trained the Turkana in the masonry, carpentry and welding skills they needed to keep it running. The earthen irrigation systems — built in two United States-financed projects — are powered only by gravity and the sweat of the local people.
What Mr. Mwebi could not have anticipated, however, was how the workings of the American food aid system would deeply complicate that plan, which Usaid financed for $4 million over five years.
When it came to tiding the families over with American corn, the Kenyan government objected, said Simon Nyabwengi, then World Vision’s Nairobi-based manager of the Turkana project. “They offered a very reasonable option,” he said. “They said we appreciate the project, it’s a good project, but we don’t want you to bring in maize.”
William Hammink, who heads the office of Food for Peace at Usaid, confirmed that the corn was never delivered because the United States was prohibited from buying it in Kenya or paying duties on imports.
“We kept waiting,” said Aemun Imong, a 32-year-old mother of four. “They told us, ‘Food is coming, food is coming.’ But we saw it wasn’t coming.”
The lack of food was particularly dire for children under age 5. World Vision surveys documented that the proportion of them stunted by malnutrition rose to about a third in 2004, from about a fifth when construction began in 2002.
The five people who died were Ms. Moru’s mother, another woman and three children, according to Mr. Lokolonyoi, who said he reported the deaths to district authorities.
Mr. Hammink of Usaid said he did not know what caused the worsening of malnutrition, though he said that provision of corn to the families would most likely have lessened it.
The United Nations World Food Program, with contributions from other nations, was able to obtain 75 percent more corn to feed Africa’s hungry from 2001 to 2005 by purchasing it in Kenya, Zambia and Uganda, rather than shipping it from the United States, Michigan State researchers found.
As the building stretched over years, a portion of the promised beans and vegetable oil from the United States was delivered in 2004, Mr. Mwebi said. Some corn bought in Kenya with private money also came. But it was too late to avert the hunger of the early years.
By 2005, the families each had a half-acre of cleared land to farm. They grew enough food to donate almost 14,000 pounds for the needy still around them, said Hosea Lotir, who heads the local water users’ association.
As they settled down to farm instead of wandering with their animals, the number of children in the Lokwii primary school more than doubled, to 857 — and would have doubled again if it had not closed its admissions, school officials said.
The families here continue to nurture their verdant green spots of progress. Nearby villages are clamoring for irrigation projects of their own, but American officials say they do not expect to have the money to finance them.
As the sun neared its zenith one recent morning, the main canal in Morulem — the site of the first irrigation project — was a cauldron of flailing hoes and shovels. Women glistening with sweat gouged out tons of silt to clear a clogged channel.
On a later shift, it was the men’s turn, and women squatting on the banks hectored them. Don’t just shovel at the sides of the canal, they yelled, dig out the middle of it. That’s the hard part!
“I know what I’m doing,” Julius Edukon barked back. “I don’t need your advice.”
Arupe Eoto, a withered old woman, sought to mollify him with praise and a nod to the tribe’s sternest taskmaster. “You really seem to know what you’re doing,” she told him. “The hunger has taught you well.”
-New York Times, July 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/world/africa/31food.html?ei=5088&en=bdc2058b2d1a8814&ex=1343534400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
LOKWII, Kenya — As the United States Congress debates an omnibus farm bill, it is considering a small change that advocates say could make a big difference to the world’s hungriest people: allowing the federal government to buy some food in Africa to feed the famished, rather than shipping it all overseas from America.
The Bush administration, with odd-bedfellows support from liberal Democrats, has called for allowing the purchase of some food in poor countries to quicken responses to emergencies. But even so, its proposal would not have prevented the paradoxical deepening of hunger here during a long-term project to combat hunger in the harsh, arid reaches of northwestern Kenya.
Families participating in an American-financed irrigation project from 2002 to 2006 were promised payment in corn for clearing the land and digging canals. The Kenyan government objected to the importation of American corn because the country was awash in a bumper harvest that had caused corn prices to plunge.
The result: American officials, prohibited by law from buying the corn locally, could not deliver it. As the impoverished families waited in vain for sustenance from the American heartland, malnutrition among the youngest children worsened and five people died of hunger-related causes.
Ikai Moru, 19, still recalls the hunger that gnawed at her and her mother as they chopped down thorny acacia trees on their tiny plot, hoping one day to reap a bountiful harvest from the parched earth. She watched her mother grow thinner and paler, and finally sicken and die.
“My mother was a very hard worker,” Ms. Moru offered in a brief epitaph.
Through sheer grit, the 2,000 families finished the irrigation system last year and are successfully farming. But long-term projects to help Africa’s rural poor feed themselves are chronically underfinanced, charities say.
Across Africa, the United States is more likely to give people a fish — caught in America — that feeds them for a day than to teach them to fish for themselves. Since last year, for example, the United States has donated $136 million worth of American food to feed the hungry in Kenya, but spent $36 million on agricultural projects to help Kenyan farmers grow and earn more.
And even that small budget for long-term projects in Kenya is expected to dwindle. The United States Agency for International Development, known as Usaid, in seeking to concentrate scarce resources, has dropped Kenya from the list of countries eligible for undertakings like the irrigation project here.
Such efforts are dwarfed by the epic scale of the need. Viewed from a prop plane buzzing like a mosquito overhead, the irrigated land here shimmers as a tiny oasis in a vast, dun-colored landscape.
With the guidance of the Christian charity World Vision, which implemented the project, the families hacked an irrigation system from the barren landscape with machetes, hoes and shovels, clearing 1,000 acres and digging 99 miles of canals along the Kerio River.
Ms. Moru will soon be feeding her four younger brothers and sisters with an abundance of sorghum and corn harvested from their half-acre farm, fulfilling her mother’s dream.
The success is noteworthy, but the families’ sacrifices also illustrate the risks of an American food aid system that is designed to benefit domestic agribusiness and shipping interests and enmeshed in an intricate framework of farm subsidies.
Members of Congress who favor the current system say the support of influential commercial groups is needed to sustain political support for food aid. They warn that ill-timed purchases of food in Africa in times of scarcity could send food prices higher, harming poor consumers.
But critics in Congress contend that the United States could feed far more people more quickly if it could buy surplus food in Africa. It might also help boost the incomes of African farmers, by providing a market for their crops, they say.
The Bush administration is now trying to change the law so that up to $300 million of food can be bought in poor countries during emergencies.
The Senate Agriculture Committee chairman, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, where growers and landowners got $1.58 billion in corn subsidies in 2005, is advocating a $25 million pilot program to test buying food in poor countries for both emergency and long-term aid.
Even that modest proposal is meeting stiff resistance from farm state legislators. The House Agriculture Committee’s version of the farm bill includes no such pilot. The committee chairman, Collin C. Peterson, Democrat of Minnesota, said of his members,` “They’re still of the mode that this should be American products we’re using our tax dollars to provide them.”
Mr. Peterson’s district got $367 million in corn subsidies in 2005, according to government data analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization.
Even without the American corn that was supposed to keep them going, the families here were determined to grasp their once-in-a-lifetime chance at fertile plots of farmland. Ms. Moru, 14 years old when construction began, recalled how she and her widowed mother had taken on the acacia trees together. They lopped off branches barbed with thorns, burned the trunks and uprooted the stumps.
“It was the heaviest work we had ever done, but we had no choice,” Ms. Moru said. “It was the only way to get land to plow.”
Their success was all the more extraordinary given this desiccated region’s history as a graveyard for well-intended foreign aid efforts to help the Turkana tribe, mostly nomadic herders, escape punishing cycles of drought, hunger and death.
The participants themselves credit a man who gave them fortitude when they faltered: Daniel Mwebi, a Kenyan engineer who managed the project here for World Vision.
From 1992 to 2004, he lived for much of each year in this remote place, far from his wife and children. He said he had been determined to avoid the mistakes of earlier aid projects that relied on heavy earth-moving equipment and diesel-run pumps that required costly fuel, expertise and maintenance.
So he designed a very basic system and trained the Turkana in the masonry, carpentry and welding skills they needed to keep it running. The earthen irrigation systems — built in two United States-financed projects — are powered only by gravity and the sweat of the local people.
What Mr. Mwebi could not have anticipated, however, was how the workings of the American food aid system would deeply complicate that plan, which Usaid financed for $4 million over five years.
When it came to tiding the families over with American corn, the Kenyan government objected, said Simon Nyabwengi, then World Vision’s Nairobi-based manager of the Turkana project. “They offered a very reasonable option,” he said. “They said we appreciate the project, it’s a good project, but we don’t want you to bring in maize.”
William Hammink, who heads the office of Food for Peace at Usaid, confirmed that the corn was never delivered because the United States was prohibited from buying it in Kenya or paying duties on imports.
“We kept waiting,” said Aemun Imong, a 32-year-old mother of four. “They told us, ‘Food is coming, food is coming.’ But we saw it wasn’t coming.”
The lack of food was particularly dire for children under age 5. World Vision surveys documented that the proportion of them stunted by malnutrition rose to about a third in 2004, from about a fifth when construction began in 2002.
The five people who died were Ms. Moru’s mother, another woman and three children, according to Mr. Lokolonyoi, who said he reported the deaths to district authorities.
Mr. Hammink of Usaid said he did not know what caused the worsening of malnutrition, though he said that provision of corn to the families would most likely have lessened it.
The United Nations World Food Program, with contributions from other nations, was able to obtain 75 percent more corn to feed Africa’s hungry from 2001 to 2005 by purchasing it in Kenya, Zambia and Uganda, rather than shipping it from the United States, Michigan State researchers found.
As the building stretched over years, a portion of the promised beans and vegetable oil from the United States was delivered in 2004, Mr. Mwebi said. Some corn bought in Kenya with private money also came. But it was too late to avert the hunger of the early years.
By 2005, the families each had a half-acre of cleared land to farm. They grew enough food to donate almost 14,000 pounds for the needy still around them, said Hosea Lotir, who heads the local water users’ association.
As they settled down to farm instead of wandering with their animals, the number of children in the Lokwii primary school more than doubled, to 857 — and would have doubled again if it had not closed its admissions, school officials said.
The families here continue to nurture their verdant green spots of progress. Nearby villages are clamoring for irrigation projects of their own, but American officials say they do not expect to have the money to finance them.
As the sun neared its zenith one recent morning, the main canal in Morulem — the site of the first irrigation project — was a cauldron of flailing hoes and shovels. Women glistening with sweat gouged out tons of silt to clear a clogged channel.
On a later shift, it was the men’s turn, and women squatting on the banks hectored them. Don’t just shovel at the sides of the canal, they yelled, dig out the middle of it. That’s the hard part!
“I know what I’m doing,” Julius Edukon barked back. “I don’t need your advice.”
Arupe Eoto, a withered old woman, sought to mollify him with praise and a nod to the tribe’s sternest taskmaster. “You really seem to know what you’re doing,” she told him. “The hunger has taught you well.”
-New York Times, July 30, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/world/africa/31food.html?ei=5088&en=bdc2058b2d1a8814&ex=1343534400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
Saturday, July 28, 2007
A Good Idea is Hard to Come By
It's funny how long it takes me to update these days. Used to be I could just sit down and start typing and ideas would fill my head and I could just write for the sake of writing. Now, however, I feel like every time I begin to write a post I just can't get past the first couple of sentences. I feel almost as if I have something to prove to the world, which is funny because probably no one reads this.
I was talking about God with a friend of mine over a cup of hot tea not too long ago. Wow, that last sentence had a lot of prepositions! We came to the conclusion that the debate over free-will and predestination is only because Christians can not wrap their heads around the fact that the two are one-and-the-same.
The nitty-gritty is that when one submits to God's will that person's will ceases to exist, this is what we like to call predestination because our actions were predestined by God, but we have sacrificed our free-will to His glory. Free-will is only our ability to disobey, that is to go against the will of God. In essence predestination is the sacrifice of free-will and the adoption of God's will in its place.
Tell me what you think, anyone can comment.
-Caleb Williams
I was talking about God with a friend of mine over a cup of hot tea not too long ago. Wow, that last sentence had a lot of prepositions! We came to the conclusion that the debate over free-will and predestination is only because Christians can not wrap their heads around the fact that the two are one-and-the-same.
The nitty-gritty is that when one submits to God's will that person's will ceases to exist, this is what we like to call predestination because our actions were predestined by God, but we have sacrificed our free-will to His glory. Free-will is only our ability to disobey, that is to go against the will of God. In essence predestination is the sacrifice of free-will and the adoption of God's will in its place.
Tell me what you think, anyone can comment.
-Caleb Williams
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Rain and the New York Times (or I'm Bored)
I am starting to hate rain. I swear, it has rained almost everyday this summer and before that it rained everyday in Oklahoma while I was still up there. I am just tired of it. Oscar, my dog, hates storms. One day while my parents were moving houses he got left outside in a storm--mind you, at this time he was still a puppy--ever since he has been terrified of thunder storms. If Oscar hears even the faintest thunder clap he is at the door whimpering, jumping and clawing at the door. Don't get me wrong, Beagles are smart animals--they are right up there with politicians, only the dogs lick their own butts while politicians lick each others--but what I'm trying to say is that I'm tired of the rain. At least I have some sunshine, I leave for Norman on Wednesday and I get to see the woman I love!
The New York Times made me mad this morning, too many mistakes in the headline story (which can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/politics/19repubs.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin ). Somebody buy them a copy of the AP stylebook, then again I guess if you're the New York Times you can do what you want when you want, screw the system.
-Caleb Williams
The New York Times made me mad this morning, too many mistakes in the headline story (which can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/us/politics/19repubs.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin ). Somebody buy them a copy of the AP stylebook, then again I guess if you're the New York Times you can do what you want when you want, screw the system.
-Caleb Williams
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Alberto Gonzales v. Thomas Jefferson
"He who trades liberty for security deserves neither and will lose both."
-Thomas Jefferson
I think he said it better than I ever could.
Sorry for the lack of posts in the last two weeks, I just recently returned from a vacation in Hawaii. Check out the news about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Other than that I have nothing to say.
-Caleb Williams
-Thomas Jefferson
I think he said it better than I ever could.
Sorry for the lack of posts in the last two weeks, I just recently returned from a vacation in Hawaii. Check out the news about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Other than that I have nothing to say.
-Caleb Williams
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Sanctity of Life
Go to earth.google.com download the free version of Google Earth. In the Layers folder there is a drag down labeled "Global Awareness." Open this icon and find the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM): Crisis in Darfur tab and enable it.
Once you've done this double click any of the icons in that drop down folder and it will take you to Darfur. Click on any of the destroyed or damaged villages and a pop-up box will appear. One of the options in there is a link that says "Download Additional Information" click on that and a lot of quote boxes will begin to appear over Darfur.
Take an hour and read these; they will break your heart and hopefully encourage you to take some form of action. Even if it is just spreading information and doing research.
NEVER AGAIN!
-Caleb Williams
Once you've done this double click any of the icons in that drop down folder and it will take you to Darfur. Click on any of the destroyed or damaged villages and a pop-up box will appear. One of the options in there is a link that says "Download Additional Information" click on that and a lot of quote boxes will begin to appear over Darfur.
Take an hour and read these; they will break your heart and hopefully encourage you to take some form of action. Even if it is just spreading information and doing research.
NEVER AGAIN!
-Caleb Williams
Monday, June 18, 2007
Europe's Christian Comeback
The West is awash with fear of the Islamization of Europe. The rise of Islam, many warn, could transform the continent into “Eurabia,” a term popularized by Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and other pundits. “A youthful Muslim society to the south and east of the Mediterranean is poised to colonize—the term is not too strong—a senescent Europe,” Ferguson has predicted. Such grim prophecies may sell books, but they ignore reality. For all we hear about Islam, Europe remains a stronger Christian fortress than people realize. What’s more, it is showing little sign of giving ground to Islam or any other faith for that matter.
To be fair, the trend is counterintuitive. Europe has long been a malarial swamp for any traditional or orthodox faith. Compared with the rest of the world, religious adherence in Europe is painfully weak. And it is easy to find evidence of the decay. Any traveler to the continent has seen Christianity’s abandoned and secularized churches, many now transformed into little more than museums. But this does not mean that European Christianity is nearing extinction. Rather, among the ruins of faith, European Christianity is adapting to a world in which its convinced adherents represent a small but vigorous minority.
In fact, the rapid decline in the continent’s church attendance over the past 40 years may have done Europe a favor. It has freed churches of trying to operate as national entities that attempt to serve all members of society. Today, no church stands a realistic chance of incorporating everyone. Smaller, more focused bodies, however, can be more passionate, enthusiastic, and rigorously committed to personal holiness. To use a scientific analogy, when a star collapses, it becomes a white dwarf—smaller in size than it once was, but burning much more intensely. Across Europe, white-dwarf faith communities are growing within the remnants of the old mass church.
Perhaps nowhere is this more true than within European Catholicism, where new religious currents have become a potent force. Examples include movements such as the Focolare, the Emmanuel Community, and the Neocatechumenate Way, all of which are committed to a re-evangelization of Europe. These movements use charismatic styles of worship and devotion that would seem more at home in an American Pentecostal church, but at the same time they are thoroughly Catholic. Though most of these movements originated in Spain and Italy, they have subsequently spread throughout Europe and across the Catholic world. Their influence over the younger clergy and lay leaders who will shape the church in the next generation is surprisingly strong.
Similar trends are at work within the Protestant churches of Northern and Western Europe. The most active sections of the Church of England today are the evangelical and charismatic parishes that have, in effect, become megachurches in their own right. These parishes have been incredibly successful at reaching out to a secular society that no longer knows much of anything about the Christian faith. Holy Trinity Brompton, a megaparish in Knightsbridge, London, that is now one of Britain’s largest churches, is home to the amazingly popular “Alpha Course,” a means of recruiting potential converts through systems of informal networking aimed chiefly at young adults and professionals. As with the Catholic movements, the course works because it makes no assumptions about any prior knowledge: Everyone is assumed to be a new recruit in need of basic teaching. Nor does the recruitment technique assume that people live or work in traditional settings of family or employment. The Alpha Course is successfully geared for postmodern believers in a postindustrial economy.
Alongside these older Christian communities are hugely energetic immigrant congregations. On a typical Sunday, half of all churchgoers in London are African or Afro-Caribbean. Of Britain’s 10 largest megachurches, four are pastored by Africans. Paris has 250 ethnic Protestant churches, most of them black African. Similar trends are found in Germany. Booming Christian churches in Africa and Asia now focus much of their evangelical attention on Europe. Nigerian and Congolese ministers have been especially successful, but none more so than the Ukraine-based ministry of Nigerian evangelist Sunday Adelaja. He has opened more than 300 churches in 30 countries in the last 12 years and now claims 30,000 (mainly white) followers.
Ironically, after centuries of rebelling against religious authority, the coming of Islam is also reviving political issues most thought extinct in Europe, including debates about the limits of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to proselytize. And in all these areas, controversies that originate in a Muslim context inexorably expand or limit the rights of Christians, too. If Muslim preachers who denounce gays must be silenced, then so must charismatic Christians. At the same time, any laws that limit blasphemous assaults on the image of Mohammed must take account of the sensibilities of those who venerate Jesus.
The result has been a rediscovery of the continent’s Christian roots, even among those who have long disregarded it, and a renewed sense of European cultural Christianity. Jürgen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, “Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.” Europe may be confronting the dilemmas of a truly multifaith society, but with Christianity poised for a comeback, it is hardly on the verge of becoming an Islamic colony.
Written by Philip Jenkins for foreignpolicy.comThe article can be found at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3881
Dreams of America
Baseball caps and cigarettes and hypocrites on stage,
This is my
Wanton schemes, soda machines, so the story goes…
No regrets; men, place you bets, dig yourself a hole.
Lobbyists in the capitol fight their fights and take their toll
From leaders send to represent those citizens from whom they’re sent.
Good ol’ boys with guitars, getting gritty on the waves
“This is our home, you don’t belong, you do not have a place.”
The silver eye on the silver spoon, prime time in the afternoon;
No one knows what no ones sees, West Coast dramas: the American Dream…
Sex and drugs and booze and guns yet we think we are the chosen ones.
Houses standing in the hills, medicine cabinets filled with pills;
While across town a baby cries, for want of mother’s lullabies.
She had to take a second shift, work twice as hard to stay adrift
In this sea so tempest tossed, no chart or compass leaves her lost.
While bombs, missiles, planes and, tanks from
Fight the fight of “democracy” all in the name of peace and liberty.
Money keeps rolling down the drain while our neighbors feel the pang
Of AIDS, hunger and, poverty; sure we know but we refuse to see.
-Caleb Williams
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Freedom of Ignorance (A Rant on American Priorities)
Some might say that the recent trend of Americans, especially the teen and college aged, to get their news from late-night comedians such as John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Jay Leno is a serious problem. These people would argue that such sources offer little bearing on what is actually important in the world today. While generally I agree with the basic statements--and I must say that I love the Stewart/Colbert hour and Leno's monologue--I have to wonder what the alternatives are.
Today, a relatively popular and well respected 24-hour news network, MSNBC, reported at length on the developing Paris Hilton scandal; namely. that after being sentenced to three weeks (on a reduced sentence) in prison Hilton was told she could go back to her home for house arrest because she refused to eat the prison food (one wonders how this would have worked for Ghandi). Today, Hilton was forced to go back to prison by a California judge--now my hero.
During this time MSNBC had live helicopter footage for two solid hours of Hilton's house, waiting for the heiress to emerge to be taken back to the prison. A reporter, the editor I believe, then broke in for a 30 second spot detailing that Marine Gen. Peter Pace had been succeeded by Navy Adm. Mike Mullen as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a decision that has far-reaching implications on the war in Iraq which is appearing to become even more of a Vietnam-esque quagmire everyday.
Nevermind that most young Americans don't know whom the Joint Chiefs of Staff are. Nevermind the situation in Iraq, or in the Middle East, or the growing concern over Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez; nevermind that former aid to Vice President Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was just recently sentenced to 30 months in prison for his involvement in the leak of a CIA operative's identity. Nevermind the AIDS pandemic in Africa or the G8 conference and its possible impact on global poverty and forget the conflict on troop withdrawal deadlines, immigration and the rumors and accusations of the Council of Europe against alleged secret prisons run by the CIA in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Instead the "news" is Paris Hilton--a woman whom I dare say has offered nothing to society except a couple dirty videos--is going back to jail.
Where is the justice?
We decry the decline of voter turnout and political apathy while we celebrate and publicly scorn, condemn, and praise the sordid lives of people like Paris Hilton! The news media is to blame! Hilton is not news, she is a spoiled rich trust fund baby who squanders her familys' [relatively] good name and vast fortunes on a shallow and trite life of partying, sex, drugs and name-calling. At least some people are looking for news from the likes of the late-night talk show gods because often far more intelligent and relevant information and social commentary (albeit largely biased) comes from show like these, whereas news about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and, Sanjaya Malakar come from sources like MSNBC. As a future journalist I am personally outraged and as a citizen I am disgusted.
-Caleb Williams
Today, a relatively popular and well respected 24-hour news network, MSNBC, reported at length on the developing Paris Hilton scandal; namely. that after being sentenced to three weeks (on a reduced sentence) in prison Hilton was told she could go back to her home for house arrest because she refused to eat the prison food (one wonders how this would have worked for Ghandi). Today, Hilton was forced to go back to prison by a California judge--now my hero.
During this time MSNBC had live helicopter footage for two solid hours of Hilton's house, waiting for the heiress to emerge to be taken back to the prison. A reporter, the editor I believe, then broke in for a 30 second spot detailing that Marine Gen. Peter Pace had been succeeded by Navy Adm. Mike Mullen as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a decision that has far-reaching implications on the war in Iraq which is appearing to become even more of a Vietnam-esque quagmire everyday.
Nevermind that most young Americans don't know whom the Joint Chiefs of Staff are. Nevermind the situation in Iraq, or in the Middle East, or the growing concern over Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez; nevermind that former aid to Vice President Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby was just recently sentenced to 30 months in prison for his involvement in the leak of a CIA operative's identity. Nevermind the AIDS pandemic in Africa or the G8 conference and its possible impact on global poverty and forget the conflict on troop withdrawal deadlines, immigration and the rumors and accusations of the Council of Europe against alleged secret prisons run by the CIA in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Instead the "news" is Paris Hilton--a woman whom I dare say has offered nothing to society except a couple dirty videos--is going back to jail.
Where is the justice?
We decry the decline of voter turnout and political apathy while we celebrate and publicly scorn, condemn, and praise the sordid lives of people like Paris Hilton! The news media is to blame! Hilton is not news, she is a spoiled rich trust fund baby who squanders her familys' [relatively] good name and vast fortunes on a shallow and trite life of partying, sex, drugs and name-calling. At least some people are looking for news from the likes of the late-night talk show gods because often far more intelligent and relevant information and social commentary (albeit largely biased) comes from show like these, whereas news about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and, Sanjaya Malakar come from sources like MSNBC. As a future journalist I am personally outraged and as a citizen I am disgusted.
-Caleb Williams
Thursday, June 7, 2007
The Great Debate, Ending?
The New York Times reported today a group of biologists in Kyoto, Japan may have found a way to produce human stem cells without harming an embryo. As of today, June 7, 2007, the procedure is only applicable to mice but biologists worldwide are optimistic it can be applied to humans too.
The procedure involves injecting skin cells from the mouse with a virus that has been injected with four genes so as to induce pluripotency, that is the regenerative nature or stem cells. The study's results have been confirmed by several other groups.
If the technique can be reproduced in human cells it could potentially end all debate regarding the moral issues regarding stem cell research. No embryos would have to be destroyed in this method of producing stem cells.
The full New York Times article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/science/07cell.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th
-Caleb Williams
The procedure involves injecting skin cells from the mouse with a virus that has been injected with four genes so as to induce pluripotency, that is the regenerative nature or stem cells. The study's results have been confirmed by several other groups.
If the technique can be reproduced in human cells it could potentially end all debate regarding the moral issues regarding stem cell research. No embryos would have to be destroyed in this method of producing stem cells.
The full New York Times article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/science/07cell.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th
-Caleb Williams
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
The Shifting of Political Sands
This is a trend piece I wrote for my JMC 2033 class this past semester. Sorry about the poor formating, that's Word for you.
On August 9, 1974 a well-dressed man ascended the steps of a helicopter emblazoned with the flag of the
Richard M. Nixon then turned around and boarded the helicopter and left the White House. Nixon’s term was marred with success and scandal alike. He received one of the most resounding reelections in presidential history, and was the first U.S. President to resign from office.
Nixon was at the nation’s helm during the closing stanzas of the
The political world has undergone some enormous changes since Nixon was elected the first time.
Larisa Yun, a graduate teaching associate, working toward her doctorate in political science at the
“Generally, we’ve seen a decline [in trust] since the 1970s with Nixon and the Vietnam War,” Yun said. “But trust increased after September 11, because of the ‘rally around the flag effect.’ But now, it is on the decline again since we have not found weapons in
Samantha Bershears, an OU political science senior, said she agrees. “The distrust of the American public toward the government started around Watergate.”
Episodes like Watergate, the Whitewater real estate scandal,
Visiting assistant professor of political science, Dr. Shad Satterthwaite, said this trend of public dissatisfaction with government proceedings manifests itself in voter participation.
“There has been a decline in voter participation since 1960, it hit a low in 1996, when it dipped below 50 percent,” Satterthwaite said. “And then it went above 50 percent again in 2000.”
According to statistics at infoplease.com, in 1960, 63.1 percent of eligible voters turned out for the general elections. Since then numbers have steadily decreased, bottoming out at 49.1 percent in 1996. However numbers have increased slightly since the ’96 election, with 55.3 percent of eligible voters showing up in 2004. Numbers in midterm elections are staggeringly low, striking bedrock in the mid 30th percentile.
“It went up a little bit from 1996 to 2000,” Satterthwaite said. “When you have no incumbent you have a close race and there is an increase in interest.”
Satterthwaite said he attributes voter apathy to a lack of political and social motivation. “In 1996 the economy was starting to go pretty well, there was no major problem, which is why we see low turnout.”
The theory also works to explain student voting patterns, Satterthwaite said. “Students do not care because there is nothing impacting them right now. Like in the 1960s, for example, you had the draft and students protested, because it meant something to them.”
Indeed, the 1960s saw unprecedented student political involvement and massive campus protests over the Vietnam War.
Bershears echoed this mentality. “If it does not affect them, they are not going to care about it,” Bershears said. “People will not see past the tips of their noses.”
Satterthwaite said public apathy is also in large part due to increased media activity since the ‘60s and ‘70s. “The media really are to blame, their role is to inform the people,” Satterthwaite said. Simply opening the morning paper or watching the evening news confirms this statement.
All of the news coming out of
“I think that it has to do with what sells,” Bershears said. “People want to hear about scandal and competition, not bipartisanship.”
Yun said she also blames the media for recent political changes. “It is easier than ever to avoid information,” Yun said. Although the news media makes information more readily available, the rest of the media offers itself as a distraction from world events, Yun said.
“These distractions lead to less political knowledge and thus less political interest.”
For example, many Americans do not know whom Jack Abramoff or “Scooter” Libby are; however, many of those same people know of Sanjaya Malakar and his recent departure from American Idol.
This is not the only impact of the media on the political field, Yun said. She said she believes the media is changing the way the American political machine is run. “I think you see a move from party centered politics to candidate centered politics because of television and the internet,” Yun said. “This is because you no longer need to be connected to a party to get your name out there.”
Mike Jones, another graduate teaching assistant at OU, claims this is the reason for the recent successes of third party candidates. “Just look at Ross Perot, in 1992 he received almost 20 percent of the popular vote,” Jones said. Yun and Jones both agreed all a person needs to run for office is money.
Satterthwaite said he sees a problem in that. “I think the two party system is plenty entangled and it would be hard for a third party to get into office,” he said. “Because of the way the system is set up now I do not see it as being in danger, but I do see a lot of dissatisfaction in politics.”
A lot of that dissatisfaction is arising from issues of money and campaigning. Politicians are already beginning to campaign for the 2008 presidential race in early 2007. “A lot of the early campaigning is just raising money,” Yun said. “If you are interested you have to keep up. If one person starts you have to do the same thing.”
By the time Election Day rolls around many citizens are tired of the endless political banter that consumes the news media in the weeks and months prior to an election.
Money is not the only thing that keeps third parties out of office, however. “Third party voters are very specific, often voting on single issues,” Jones said. He went on to say the mainstream parties often incorporate successful third party issues.
“In the 1990s politics started becoming more partisan,” Satterthwaite said. However, he points out that most party members are not extremists but rather closer to political moderates.
“Party identification has decreased,” Yun agreed.
Jones said he is skeptical of the people who call themselves moderates. “Either moderates are incredibly informed or incredibly ignorant,” he said. “Most people who claim to be moderate actually identify with one of the parties more than they realize.”
One example of a growing moderate climate exists in the state of
However, the CBS News website reports a 66 percent majority voted for Governor Brad Henry, a Democrat, in the 2006 midterm elections.
“There are more registered Democrats in
Jones and Satterthwaite do not see eye-to-eye on this subject. Different populations vote in local elections than in national elections, Jones said, therefore the results will be different. Still, the CBS website shows that every other seat open for election in 2006—again except for Dan Boren’s—was won by Republicans.
This moderate climate that is apparently developing in
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Why the Christian Right is Wrong
This is a speech given at a peace rally held here at the University of Oklahoma sometime in 2004 by Robin Meyers, a minister at an Oklahoma City church. While some of the points he makes in this speech I do not fully agree with, the majority of it is dead on. This is transcribed directly from Meyers' book Why the Christian Right is Wrong.
I would like to know what anyone who reads this to tell me what their opinions on this speech.
"As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church UCC 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 most number of angry letters to the editor.
Tonight I join the 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're 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 gie you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim that 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, built 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 never returning violence for violence and 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 teaching of the Gospels, which say that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so that 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 establish and insistss 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 'evildoers,' slice up your own nation into those who are with you or with the terrorists--and then launch a war that enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted instead of helping us 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 use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters and seek to 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 and eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the Kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
Whe 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 a word that is the essence to 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 constantly about Jesus, 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 head that when I was your age, when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that 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 thei 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 if 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.
As for war, war is the greatest failure of the human race--and thus the greatest failure of faith. There's an old rock 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 pears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb indeed? How many wars does it take to know that oo many people have died? What if the gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.
Time to march again, my friends. Time to commit acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. My generation finally stopped a tragic war. Yours can too" (Robin Meyers).
-Caleb Williams
I would like to know what anyone who reads this to tell me what their opinions on this speech.
"As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church UCC 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 most number of angry letters to the editor.
Tonight I join the 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're 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 gie you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim that 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, built 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 never returning violence for violence and 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 teaching of the Gospels, which say that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so that 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 establish and insistss 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 'evildoers,' slice up your own nation into those who are with you or with the terrorists--and then launch a war that enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted instead of helping us 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 use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters and seek to 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 and eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the Kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
Whe 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 a word that is the essence to 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 constantly about Jesus, 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 head that when I was your age, when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that 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 thei 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 if 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.
As for war, war is the greatest failure of the human race--and thus the greatest failure of faith. There's an old rock 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 pears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb indeed? How many wars does it take to know that oo many people have died? What if the gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.
Time to march again, my friends. Time to commit acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. My generation finally stopped a tragic war. Yours can too" (Robin Meyers).
-Caleb Williams
Sunday, May 27, 2007
A Moment of Silence, Please
Where are the moments of silence for Iraqi children?
I'm hoping for peace soon.
-Caleb Williams
I'm hoping for peace soon.
-Caleb Williams
Friday, May 25, 2007
Politics
I've been thinking lately a lot about politics. I know it seems like a very boring subject to most anybody who would read this but to some people it is profoundly fascinating. More specifically I have been thinking about the politics of Jesus; further, I've been wondering if such a thing can exist.
For the last two years I have been trying to reconcile my political beliefs with my spiritual beliefs and most of what has arisen is pure rubbish (I never get to use that word, it sounds too British).
Is a set of political beliefs oriented solely to God possible? It seems that the American two-party system the answer is emphatically "NO." Obviously, most Evangelicals are registered Republicans, toting the party line of Regan, H.W. and, W. at least the latter two of whom built careers for themselves through the votes of the "Religious Right."
But why is it that people who call themselves Christian seem to be so aligned with the party of Regan? Not that anything was wrong with Regan in particular--I'm not here to argue against one party or for another—but why have Christians (and I’m assuming that the Religious Right is indeed devout, which might be a very dangerous assumption) so aligned themselves with Republicans?
Republicans also will tend to favor tax cuts which benefit the rich, while Democrats will typically want to increase welfare and social programs throughout the
So Democrats are largely more socially responsible, advocating increased internal welfare and aid to impoverished counties around the world, some Republicans are in these ranks too do not get me wrong but the idea is more based around the Democrat platform. But Democrats also largely support issues like homosexual marriage and abortion ‘rights.’ I, as a believer in Christ, have a very difficult time swallowing these things. I do not want to get into the thought process on legislating morality (this post is already longer than anyone will read) but how do I reconcile the two?
I do not pretend to believe that the
-Caleb Williams
Thursday, May 24, 2007
The Ballad of Catherine Barkley
Marry me my love, and we’ll run away
From this damn war and this damn rain.
Take me, dear, to the Falls and to the Gate
If we leave now we can escape our fate.
See, oh sweet, the clouds are parting;
They may yet give way to our son’s rising.
Switzerland
To life anew, the lie is true and now our sun is falling.
Still I hope, and still I pray, though praying is for fools,
That the rain will slow and our son can grow
In a land without all this fighting.
Curse the curse, and damn the falling rain.
Shut up the skies and stop pain.
Don’t worry, love, and don’t you fret, I am strong—
And I am brave.
But the world it has taken me.
Our son too soon has set.
And I must follow him beyond that horizon.
-Caleb Williams
From this damn war and this damn rain.
Take me, dear, to the Falls and to the Gate
If we leave now we can escape our fate.
See, oh sweet, the clouds are parting;
They may yet give way to our son’s rising.
Switzerland
To life anew, the lie is true and now our sun is falling.
Still I hope, and still I pray, though praying is for fools,
That the rain will slow and our son can grow
In a land without all this fighting.
Curse the curse, and damn the falling rain.
Shut up the skies and stop pain.
Don’t worry, love, and don’t you fret, I am strong—
And I am brave.
But the world it has taken me.
Our son too soon has set.
And I must follow him beyond that horizon.
-Caleb Williams
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Portrait: Sherron Hughes-Tremper
This is something I wrote for my JMC class this last semester. It is a personality profile of Pastor Sherron Hughes-Tremper, whom I consider to be a beacon of the Christian faith:
They say nothing spells lovin’ like something from the oven. As the scent of fresh cake spread throughout the house this was probably the thought of one Texas woman, visiting her father for the weekend.
The cake took the shape of a heart as it was expertly crafted and adorned by hands that have done this many times. The woman, who bakes wedding cakes for a living, was not baking this particular cake for a bride and groom, but instead to say “Thank You” to the staff at the Manos Juntas Free Medical Clinic for treating her father the week before.
Manos Juntas is located in
“I love cultures, I love people,” Hughes-Tremper said. It is this love of people that she says has inspired her to devote her life to making her world a better place.
As 9 a.m. rolls around, patients begin to file through the doors of the church. Hughes-Tremper makes a point of greeting each patient in their own language; at last count she knew 11 different greetings. Though she knows several ways of welcoming patients, Hughes-Tremper is only fluent in Spanish and English.
“On average we have about 80 [patients], we can go as high as 130; sometimes we only have one doctor,” Hughes-Tremper said. In the past the pastor of the church has not always worked at the clinic, she said; but Hughes-Tremper does.
“The clinic is the biggest mission of the church,” Hughes-Tremper said with a smile. “We have more people here on Saturday than are at the services on Sunday, so as a pastor how could you not be here?” She said she sees the clinic as a way to serve the community.
Service has always been an important part of Hughes-Tremper’s life, she said. “In 1967 through 1969, I served in the Peace Corps in
“I had to go to seminary,” Hughes-Tremper said. She has been in ministry ever since. “In 1981 I started working as a chaplain supervisor,” she said. “For 20 years I have taught people how to be chaplains. Then five years ago I felt called to be a pastor.” For the last two years she has done just that.
Hughes-Tremper does mostly managerial work at the clinic, including meet-and-greet, organizational work, and designating jobs for volunteers to do. Without computer records, however, the organizational aspect of her job can be a tall order. Sometimes patient files go missing and have to be tracked down. One such patient was left waiting for about an hour.
After a massive search for the prodigal file, an exhausted Hughes-Tremper, half-buried in manila folders, exclaimed, “This is eureka!” as she held up the elusive folder with the exuberance of someone who had just won the Super Bowl.
Alongside the clinic Hughes-Tremper facilitates other community minded ventures, including a thrift store known as Le Shoppe, where people can buy garbage bags of clothing for one dollar.
Hughes-Tremper has also instituted legal clinics and adult education programs, including English lessons for the large Hispanic and Vietnamese population in the area.
She has also offered programs in art and dance. “Everything is the same if you do it in love,” Hughes-Tremper said.
This type of community involvement was exactly what Elaine Gragg was looking for when she moved to
“I knew I wanted to be a part of a missions oriented church,” Gragg said, claiming she had found that at Epworth and with Hughes-Tremper.
Hughes-Tremper has faced many obstacles in her journey to where she is now. Not only was she the first female Methodist Reverend but when she became pastor at Epworth she inherited a building in decay.
Water drips through the ceiling of the fourth floor of the church, into trash cans and old paint buckets while the wood floor underneath has warped with age and the elements. “This is our bucket room,” said Hughes-Tremper with an amused sarcastic grin. Someday she said she hopes to use the floor for classrooms.
The third floor is in only slightly better condition, having just been repainted after being vandalized in recent months, said Hughes-Tremper, who seems only to focus on the potential the area holds.
The second floor used to look the same way, but one would never guess looking at it today, she said. “When I got here I was very discouraged about getting all of this cleaned up. “But I realized that we just have to take it one job at a time.”
Even though much of the upper floors of the church are in disrepair, Hughes-Tremper said she still thinks it better to give back to the community. “It costs the church $20,000 a year to operate the clinic,” Hughes-Tremper said. She added that they had just received the Racial and Ethnic Minority Grant for $5,000 for the work they have done in the community.
The clinic also offers some students on-the-job experience. Grace Taylor, an OU zoology senior, volunteers at the Manos Juntas Clinic regularly. “I started volunteering at the clinic a little over a year ago; about 13 months,” Taylor said.
Though there are other opportunities to gain experience closer to
Taylor describes Hughes-Tremper as genuine, patient and congenial. “All three of those are exemplified in her work with the patients,”
After taking care of a patient Hughes-Tremper asked herself, “What did I eat this morning?” in a rare idle moment in the Manos Juntas Clinic. She never came to a conclusion, for she immediately began attending to the next order of business. Maybe she should have tried the cake.
Idealism
Is there a place for idealism in this world today? I have been accused recently or being overly idealistic in some of my political and religious views. This is not, by any means, to say that my belief in Jesus as the Christ have been called into question, but really the level or idealism I associate with my societal paradigm.
I realize that idealism—from a sociological standpoint—is often vain and utterly naïve but should it be overlooked? Overlooked is the wrong word. Should I, or for that matter should anybody, allow themselves to succumb to idealism, especially when they know that the world never deals in the ideal?
It might make me out to be a fool but I can’t help but believe that I am called to be an idealist. I think Christ was an idealist and I am called to be like Him so it seems only logical that I too should deal with society in the same manner.
In this light am I justified in hoping for a world without poverty, hunger and war? I know none of these will be eradicated in my lifetime; in fact, it seems all three are elemental to the human experience. These things will continue as long as humans exist—as Donald Miller put it—in a world absent God.
I see little promise or future for blogging, other than as a manner to express my views on world events. I still refuse to write about my daily life. Maybe this constitutes a revival of this decrepit blog or perhaps this is just a stab at curbing the tide of boredom, either way I’m fine with it.
-Caleb Williams
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