Craig Detweiler writes about Matthew Shepard’s death:
‘Reverend Red Phelps held a sign with Matthew Shepard’s picture on it that said, “Matt’s in Hell.” How could Christians picket a funeral? Basic : decency insists that friends and family be allowed to grieve in peace. Surely, the youth group at the Episcopal church that Matthew grew up in deserved some space to remember him. My friend Robert said “Even the most primitive cultures have a basic code about an enemy’s right to a proper burial.” ‘
Craig’s response? He wrote a letter for his church’s Sunday bulletin: “Newsflash: War is Over:”
Matthew Shepard’s funeral will go down in history as the culture war’s “D-Day.” The Christian Right may continue strategizing, protesting, and fighting, but the war is over. And the church lost. Why? Because silence=death. Why did the Christian right lose the culture war? Because as any military strategist will attest, when you surrender the high ground (especially the moraI high ground), you are doomed to defeat. Beatings, lynchings, snipings. These are the reckless acts of the defeated. Desperate men fighting desperately to hold their ground at a distance. Somebody needs to tell them the war is over. Before more civilians are mowed down in the name of Jesus. So why haven’t the “generals” of the Christian ight announced a cease-fire? Admitting we’ve lost is Jesus’ s only chance of winning.
Matthew’s death shook me. Deeply. After years of trying to mediate between my leftist humanistic friends and my rightist Christian brothers, I have given up. I will ride out the last days of the culture war in silence. Holding onto Jesus. Because our shame is too great. Our complicity too obvious. Our self-anointed leaders’ silence too deafening. Call me crazy. Call me chicken. Call me liberal, communist, or gay. But please, please, do not call me Christian.
I didn’t really choose sides. They were chosen for me. My decision was forged in Jesus’ first public reading of scripture in Luke 4:18-19. When Jesus announced good news for the poor, freedom for prisoners, release for the oppressed, I found a calling. When Jesus was accused of being a friend of sinners, I discovered my role model (Matthew 11: 19). My choice was made in passages where Jesus talked about being neighborly, stopping long enough to care for the beaten and bruised traveler (Luke 1O:25-37). Passages about caring for lepers, comforting widows, and loving orphans made my loyalties a foregone conclusion. Bur they didn’t make my commitment any easier to live out.
We will be continuing our conversation with John Marks and Craig Detweiler of Purple State of Mind online by sharing excerpts from their books and video and transcript clips from our dinner conversation. A limited number of signed copies of John’s “Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind” and Craig Detweiler’s “Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture” are available online
“September 11 was the worst day of my life in government. Watching 3,000 Americans die.” –Condoleeza Rice
Fact check on Countdown following the above video clip of Secretary Rice:
“Ms. Rice’s statement that 3,000 Americans died was factually incorrect. More than 300 of the dead were citizens of other countries. This, just a week after Ms. Rice told another group of students that the World Trade Center only has 80 stories, not 110.”
Oh, c’mon.
Let’s keep the debate to a real discussion of substance, which certainly holds plenty of room for debate, not a stupid numerical gotcha.
John Marks, writing in
“Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind:”
Dispensationalism, which has been around for about five hundred years, really came into fashion in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the era of the French Revolution and the industrial revolution. It wasn’t until the modern world erupted and began to threaten the bases for belief in Christ that the need for the world to end came into its own. The turn of the second millennium since Christ has seen a further deepening of the sense of doom, and that makes sense to me. The technological transformation that began in the late eighteenth century has continued at an alarming rate. One hundred years ago, the rapid growth in automation gave us trains, planes, cars, the cinema, the telephone, the telegraph. Right now we live in a period of comparable change, and the transformation is once again being driven by science, based in rational and materialistic beliefs about the nature of reality.
[In the "Left Behind" series] readers get to indulge in a revenge fantasy against the nonbelieving world that will preside over their extinction. They get to see the extemination of their enemies without any moral guilt, because God’s hand wields the sword.
We will be continuing our conversation with John Marks and Craig Detweiler of Purple State of Mind online by sharing excerpts from their books and video and transcript clips from our dinner conversation. A limited number of signed copies of John’s “Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind” and Craig Detweiler’s “Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture” are available online HERE.
Craig Detweiler writes about the need for the dueling worldviews of the 50′s and the 60′s to come together, to value the lessons of responsibility from the 50′s and the benefits of freedom from the 60′s. “A purple state of mind borrows from both, combining freedom and responsibility.”
From a secular perspective, this is a repetition of the Village Square lesson that we – as a society – are not really whole unless we can engage with people who don’t see it our way. Out of that engagement comes an understanding of our blindspots and hopefully – eventually – better ideas.
From a Christian perspective, he writes in his book
Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture:
Our desperate need for freedom and responsibility rests in the seemingly contradictory letters of the apostle Paul. He applied his godly advice in a unique way for the audience he was addressing. To Corinthian Christians navigating a libertine culture, he preached caution. Yet to the uptight church in Galatia, Paul preaches freedom. Is Paul contradicting himself? In each letter, he concludes with an appeal to love. He preaches freedom to Galatia and responsibility to Corinth because they each need to apply the message in a unique way.
Unfortunately, we often fail to identify our particular blind spots. Legalistic churches will often reiterate the call to purity given to the Corinthians. Lax churches will return to Paul’s letter to the Galatians to justify more license. Those who need freedom cling to responsibility. Christians who need to learn responsibility insist upon the freedom Paul grants to Galatia. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
We will be continuing our conversation with John Marks and Craig Detweiler of Purple State of Mind online by sharing excerpts from their books and video and transcript clips from our dinner conversation. A limited number of signed copies of John’s “Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind” and Craig Detweiler’s “Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture” are available online HERE.
John Marks, writing in “Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind:”
While I believe that secular attempts to erase the Christian past in this country have gone disgracefully far and should be challenged by courts and by public opinion, I completely disapprove of any attempt to turn back the clock and re-create a time and an era that is lost. I believe in the reality of the past, but I do not subscribe to the notion of that past as our destiny. Demographics suggest that, in the future, more Americans will be Catholics and Muslims and Hindus. There will be plenty of Protestants, but they will be Protestants in a land shared by a majority that isn’t. Attempts to turn back the clock in such an environment don’t smack of faith-based politics. They smack of politics masquerading as faith. And they can only lead to disaster. At best, they will result in an ethnic Christianity on the model of Serbia and Croatia, where the faith becomes a cross on a flag to demarcate a geographical territory.
We will be continuing our conversation with John Marks and Craig Detweiler of Purple State of Mind online by sharing excerpts from their books and video and transcript clips from our dinner conversation. A limited number of signed copies of John’s “Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind” and Craig Detweiler’s “Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture” are available online HERE.
This morning I thought it about time to do a little sleuthing to decode the add running in Tallahassee (and possibly elsewhere in Florida) on the “Dosal tax.”
Thanks to the “Mediablog” guy or gal, I didn’t have to look too far.
Bottom line, the legislature is considering taxing cigarette sales from off-brand companies not included in the tobacco settlement, which includes the Dosal Tobacco Corporation. The address of the group running the add “Floridians for Tax Fairness” shares an address with the company.
Check out the whole Mediablog post here.
Posted under
Florida by Liz 05.01.2009
If you didn’t catch
Purple State of Mind, John and Craig’s journey to “Purple” started after 60 Minutes Producer John Marks interviewed Evangelical Christian couple, Don and Lillie McWhinney. Don pointedly asked John: “
Will you be left behind?” After his initial impulse to shrug it off, instead John started a two-year journey across America, back 30 years to his college roommate Craig and deep inside himself, just to answer Don McWhinnie’s question. John explains:
“I have come to feel that Don and Lillie McWhinney, and every other Christian who asks, deserves a real answer to their question. I have come to feel that it can no longer be ignored by anyone. Not answering, I believe, now constitutes a threat to the democracy. Not answering means a silence resulting in dreadful things that don’t even want to contemplate as yet. After all, the askers are my fellow Americans… So here it is, from the bottom of my heart, using every ounce of my intellect and emotion, plumbing the depths of what I once believed, traveling the country and the world with my skills as a reporter, my attempt to respond fully and completely. Will I be left behind? You’re holding the answer in your hands.”
John fell in love with and married a Jewish woman and has decided to raise his son in the Jewish faith. He looks squarely at the effect this has on struggle with answering the “left behind” question.
“For me, Debra and Joe are the most precious creatures on earth, and they have nothing to do with faith or prophecy or religious truth. They are as immediate, as elemental, as sunlight, air, and water. But for Don and Lillie McWhinney and tens of millions of others, they become… prophetic race-markers, if you will, and God has a special plan for them. In my eyes, this doesn’t elevate my wife and son in stature. It reduces them to a biblical statistic.
It didn’t occur to me at the time that I was reducing Don and Lillie to equally simplistic figures.”
We will be continuing our conversation with John Marks and Craig Detweiler of Purple State of Mind online by sharing excerpts from their books and video and transcript clips from our dinner conversation. A limited number of signed copies of John’s “Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind” and Craig Detweiler’s “Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture” are available online HERE.
To you, I’m an atheist. To God, I’m the loyal opposition.
–Woody Allen, Stardust Memories
From Craig Detweiler’s Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture:
In listening to [John's] hard questions, I am processing my own. German theologian Jurgen Moltmann asks the humbling question, “Is not every unbeliever who has a reason for his atheism and his decision not to believe a theologian too?”
Perhaps atheists offer Christians a great gift, some much-needed perspective. We can be strengthened and even encouraged by the loyal opposition…
Today’s atheists continue Nietzsche’s important idol-smashing work. They rightly expose toxic expressions of faith. They decry abuse of power and resistance to scientific progress, places where organized religion brought death rather than life. Just as ancient Israel needed correction, so the Christian community needs such critics. It is far too easy for us to get defensive.
We will be continuing our conversation with John Marks and Craig Detweiler of Purple State of Mind online by sharing excerpts from their books and video and transcript clips from our dinner conversation. A limited number of signed copies of John’s “Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind” and Craig Detweiler’s “Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture” are available online HERE.
In case you missed it, The Village Square sponsored an essay contest during our program “Purple State of Mind: Finding Middle Ground in a Divided Culture.” Everyone who entered got into the IMAX screening of Purple State of Mind at no charge. One impressive essay writer, Joshua Meyer, won 2 tickets to Dinner at the Square. Joshua writes in his essay “Credo:”
“…let us ask questions of others and let us wait to hear their answers, really listen in full. But more importantly, let us open ourselves to new questions. Before we speak up, let us examine our own motivations, to see how pure-hearted they are.
Why is it that the words of that person “across the aisle” rankle us so? Is it because we truly believe that what that person is saying is wrong, or is it because there is a part of us, deep down inside, that secretly fears that person may be right?”
Read Joshua’s essay in its entirety HERE.
(Joshua Meyer is a student at Florida State University. He will be graduating this semester with a B.A. in English. If you’re looking for a smart – and civil – employee, maybe Joshua is your guy.)
I think the south keeps us a little conservative.
The north keeps the south a little secular.
The marriage works.
It’s like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
–Chris Matthews on Hardball
The Tallahassee Democrat’s Editorial Page Editor Mary Ann Lindley writes today that “It isn’t just about you:”
I tend to agree with something a lobbyist said the other day, that many lawmakers “think history started as soon as their shadow was cast across the Capitol,” he said, fatigued with trying to educate ill-informed lawmakers who are too soon drunk with power.
The thing is, this lobbyist is not wrong when it comes to our culture as a whole.
We’re an increasingly narcissistic population that’s conversely less concerned with the greater good and the longer view of things or even history’s important lessons. We’re all quite inclined to think “it’s all about me.”
As that iconic comic strip character Pogo Possum — described as the wisest and probably sanest resident of the swamp — put it so famously: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Our Purple State of Mind speakers Craig Detweiler and John Marks are interviewed by Ceasefire Strategies an organization that “encourages positive Christian involvement with media and culture.”
Find Craig’s beautiful appreciation of Tallahassee in full at www.purplestateofmind.com.
Thank you, Tallahassee for honoring us with the Audience Award at the 2009 Tallahassee Film Festival. This glass trophy goes a long way towards validating a little movie fueled by big dreams. The Purple State project presumes that two friends airing their differences across the religious and political divide could be of interest to others. John Marks and I even dared to consider it entertaining. And for one glorious weekend, Tallahassee agreed. We got prime newspaper coverage in the Tallahassee Democrat. We even got to see our movie on an IMAX screen (thanks to Gil and Gail at Ziffer-Stansberry!).
What a marvelous reminder of the enduring charms of Southern hospitality.
We were driven down tree-lined canopy roads to Bradley’s Country Store. We sampled Bradley’s homemade sausage and stocked up on their signature grits. Nothing better than sipping a Dr. Pepper and eating a moon pie in a rocking chair.
But I write to thank you Tallahassee for so much more. Lea Marshall found our little movie through a Google search. And Liz Herbert Joyner found in our project a catalyst for her our effort to chase windmills—the Village Square. Liz and Lea may come from opposite sides of the political spectrum. But as citizens (and parents), they’re equally concerned about our civic discourse.
Will their children inherit an endless shouting match, characterized by slander, half truths and more than mud slinging? Both the Village Square and the Purple State of Mind project hope not. One hundred fifty people joined us for dinner, an old fashioned town hall meeting, where John and I shared our story and invited Tallahassee to bare its collective soul. It was a marvelous evening of questions and answers, faith and doubt, renewing our bonds as Americans committed to the (un)common good. Bravo to Liz and her amazing team of board members and volunteers!
