This looks like an important book. How can our theology incorporate conquest, murder and mass exploitation by our own ruling elite?
From the publisher's statement. "Four distinguished scholars here level a powerful critique of the rapid expansion of the emerging American empire and its oppressive and destructive political, military, and economic policies. Arguing that a global Pax Americana is internationally disastrous, the authors demonstrate how America's imperialism inevitably leads to rampant irreversible ecological devastation, expanding military force for imperialistic purposes, and a grossly inequitable distribution of goods--all leading to the diminished well-being of human communities. These four prophetic voices--three Christians, one Jew--persuasively indict the American empire as being diametrically opposed to divine values and powerful enough to threaten the purposes of God."
Harvey Cox writes: "I am convinced that this is an enormously urgent and important book. It not only represents the best of current theology and political wisdom, and accurately interprets our present desperate situation, but it also provides the basis for an authentically religious response to the end-time Armageddon "Left Behind" insanity that seems to be capturing the popular religious imagination. It builds on the finest new biblical scholarship in viewing the scriptural setting the Reign of God against Empire, but also suggests how all the religious traditions can - and must - contribute to an unprecedented civilizational transformation. I plan to use this book in my own teaching and to commend it to everyone I know. I only wish it had appeared ten years ago."
These are nasty theologians. Just as their forebears were in 1940.
David Gelernter writes about them and liberal intellectuals and the history we on the left have so convientently forgotten.
Today's students learn (sometimes) about right-wing isolationists like Charles Lindbergh and the America Firsters. They are less likely to read documents like this, which appeared in Partisan Review (the U.S. intelligentsia's No. 1 favorite mag) in fall 1939, signed by John Dewey, William Carlos Williams, Meyer Schapiro and many more of the era's leading lights. "The last war showed only too clearly that we can have no faith in imperialist crusades to bring freedom to any people. Our entry into the war, under the slogan of 'Stop Hitler!' would actually result in the immediate introduction of totalitarianism over here. . . . The American masses can best help [the German people] by fighting at home to keep their own liberties." The intelligentsia acted on its convictions. "By one means or another," Diana Trilling later wrote of this period, "most of the intellectuals of our acquaintance evaded the draft."
No theologian faithful to the Gospel of Love and Renewal of Right Relations could support this Empire. Yet over and over again Bill Blair shows that his loyalities are to the Powers and Principalities of this Era, so he judges theology that answers to transformation and higher values by that standard.
Playing the World War Two tape over and over and over again does not make for a interesting critique.
Clyde,
It's Baar, not Blair.
Yes, the World War II tape does play over and over for me.
The failures of Mainline Christian Churches in the US (not to mention Europe) to speak out against it are a major reason I could never join a Christian Church.
The Gospel of Love, Renewel, and Right often meant the oven and slaughter of someone else.
(Check Joseph Loconte's Auschwitz, and Yesterday's Religious Left http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/LoconteAuschwitz.shtml).
WWII, the reality of evil, and what UU's and American Liberal Prostentism did during those years, are some history --as David Gerlernter wrote-- American religous prefer to avoid.
I believe in Universal Salvation but I also don't think God's indifferent... at some point there is an accounting for the arrogance of claiming the moral high ground by doing nothing...
Also check Eve Garrard in the latest issue of the New Humanist:
http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/comments.php?id=2023_0_1_0_C
She writes of the double standards that have overtaken so much of Liberalism. The same double standards voiced in the 30s and 40s in the US that excused Hitler but condemed FDR and Churchill.
The reason for the ovens Bill was the church that supported Hitler. To put the ovens on the church that supported justice is absurd, ideological, and historical nonescene. The danger today is the Christian Right, not the Christian Left.
Yes, I know the Church supported the ovens.
A J Muste had the famous quote in a speech to the quakers about if I can't love Hitler, then who can I love? Or something along those lines.
It was a lethal gospel preached back then... and it's being preached again today.
Read the New Humanist...
Amnesty Internationa called the West the greatest threat --the New Empire if you well-- and as Gerrard wrote this throughout the decade when the greatest genocides were happening in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan... just like the late 30's except the victims now Muslims and Africans.
Zarqawi called for sectrain conflict...for genocide against Shia and Kurds.
Only a moderate Islam can defeat the Jiadists and we blong side them in the fight.
We must preach a gospel of social justice and universal rights that apply to all... not universal rights for Europeans and North Americans and indifference to barbarism for others...because their "culture" some how allows that...
Too preach anything else is shameful... how can we face God preaching anything else in the face of such cruelty?
The Christian Right supported Hitler just as the Christian right supports Bush. Too blame Hitler on Muste is silly. Anti fascism begins at Home.
I agree with you about Europeans, (and their White settler colonies) they have been a menance to the worlds people since at least 1491.
Meanwhile read theologians, (John Dewey and Muste were never theologians.)
I knew Muste, he was a working clergyperson, but no theologian. . He may have been when he was young, but the man I knew was a dedicated activists with some firm opinions.
Working clergy are sometimes theologians, mostly they they are not.
Dewey was non believer, the empiral theologians you mention were not pragmatists.
footnote,
John Dewey's essay Faith and Its Object listed under notable American Unitarian Friends
http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/dewey.html
His theology ok. In fact it's mine too. It's just his politics badly screwed up on the fundamental moral issue of his time... the war against Hitler.
The American Empire?
Griffin and a cast of distinguished scholars and peaceful globalists have collaboratively written an interesting collection of essays on American imperialism.
This book has a different title and content than the previous two best selling books by Griffin "The New pearl Harbor," and the 9/11 Commission Report, Omissions and Distortions." However, Griffin remains sincere, determined, undeterred, unhampered, and unco-opted (unlike the author of "The War on Freedom") and continues his quest for the truth about 9/11 and the American Empire while some of his co-authors danced around it, in order to be to be politically correct. This truth has become irrelevant nowadays, and has been replaced by credibility and propaganda. I guess it is best for some truth to remain unknown for the sake of social order. That is why, the 9/11 truth movement was infiltrated, discredited, dismantled, and rendered impotent. Griffin's new book with his co-authors takes a different approach to the truth. They discuss and analyze the historical, political, religious, and economical factors behind the build-up of the American Empire. An unadmitted empire that is portrayed by the creators as benign, because it is decorated with a flag and a popular socialist motto that appeals to the masses that is, liberty, equality, and justice for all.
"The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God" gives the reader a panoramic view rather than in depth discussion of American imperialism. A core issue that was left out in this volume is the discussion of the financiers behind the empires. There is an overwhelming evidence out there that connects the financial Anglo-American Cartel to the ownership and the financing of the American empire. This same Cartel had previously financed the Soviet Union, and other socialists regimes, as well as theocracies, and pseudo-democracies all over the world. This Cartel consists of a globalist/racist group that classifies themselves as citizens of the world to justify their self-serving divisive and fiscal policies. They have a foot in every camp and they argue as well as fincance both sides of a conflict. This Cartel thrives on conflict!
These elites tend to see the peace process as a threat to their survival as well as to the foundation of society that was based on war. They perceive war as a political necessity to legitimize the power of the government and to create nationhood. War is a political, economical, and social stabilizer, as well as a necessary tool for population reduction. Controlled and contrived conflict becomes imperative, in order to create stability and a new order that would behoove these masters of the universe. New monsters must be regularly created and slayed by the freedom fighters, in order to perpetuate conflict. This process would provide the cartel with massive profits, which in turn would engender more power for them. What motivates these financial moguls? Narcissism is definitely the original sin! Man desperately continues his illusive pursuit to become god, and his main tool to achieve this goal is "money." Another critical issue that should have been emphasized by the authors of this book is the actual foundation of the American empire. This foundation is actually made up of paper (called fiat money or Federal Reserve notes) which could be made to collapse overnight just as the Soviet Union did, when the financial Cartel decides to weaken or kill their golden goose for higher profits or globalization purpose. This same cartel has also been heavily financing and investing for many years in two prospective Eastern regional powers, India and China that have the nuclear capacity to annihilate each other, in the hope that the future will bring a contrived conflict to that region, which will prove to be lucrative, and would serve as a population reduction measure in these overcrowded nations. Unfortunately, an empire cannot be run by peaceful means as the authors of the book suggest.
Empires require wars, fiat money, dictatorship, ruling class, no middle class/bourgeoisie, new forms of slavery (low wage earners), blood shows and sports, mighty military, propaganda, hybrid politicians (half CEOs and half politicians), global corporations, divisiveness, dumbing down of the population, government controlled media, fear, total information awareness, domestic secret service, foundations, WMD, space programs,weather manipulation, and even Marshall laws if needed to achieve the goal of complete control. Fear is an intrinsic part of the political process in an empire that is conducive to regressive behavior, which would render adults into incapacitated children. Fear mongering must continue to manufacture consent. Yesterday, we had Nazism and Sovietism, today we have Islamism, and tomorrow we shall have Chinism and environmental crises that will threaten the eradication of the planet. Finally, "The American Empire and The Commonwealth of God" is a fairly unbiased view of an evasive truth, and a thought provoking volume. This book will provide the reader with an edifying jolt of reality that would awaken the oblivious person to the current state of affairs.