Oh WELS

My recent affiliation with a conservative wing of the Lutheran denomination called the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod was a hangover from my earlier tendencies toward charismatism, which eventually landed me and my young family in a cult led by one Rev. Beatrice R. Hicks. I left the cult because it disappointed in innumerable ways, but when I moved with my second wife and family to our current locale in Maryland, this WELS Lutheran church was handily only a few miles away. We joined and were functionaries through many years. Now, it's time to grow up some more.

I have to draw a line on the matter of creation and the WELS' literal interpretation of the Genesis story. In reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, I've come to understand the implications of allowing oneself to ignore the question of evolution and prehistoric man. I've also read an irrefutable volume by David Cunningham on the geological evidence for an ancient Earth called, The Rocks Don't Lie. I've always figured evolution and geologic aging to be true, but suspended judgement so as to not rock the boat. I avoided the issues because they seemed irrelevant.

These issues are important enough that I must walk away from WELS. Quinn surmises that the whole mess that the world is in today is a result of the growth of agro-industrialism. Yet, the Genesis story, taken at face value, would posit that there was never any other way of dwelling on the earth (except for the first family before their fall). Only when you factor in the millions of years prior to the rise of agrarianism does it become clear that agro-industrialism was a relatively recent curse from which so many of today's problems were spawned.

For a while, I thought I could hang around and try to convince others and possibly even the pastor of my former congregation to open up their minds to the evidence of science, but after reading an article in the church's rag, Forward in Christ, by some numb-nuts Ph.D. (in "creation science", I'll guess) spouting biblical literacy as the only standard, I realized any efforts to change this church would be hopeless. Time for me to let go, leaving them to amble toward extinction utterly blind to the disservice they do to the planet.

Whatever is next in my religious journey may be presaged by the evening assembly we attended last week at the National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C. Reclaiming Jesus was the theme. The service and subsequent demonstration in front of the White House gave us a chance to listen to other sects' take on current issues. The formal declaration, which I mainly support, is more in tune with reality than the deliberate ignorance of fundamentalist sects like WELS.

America's Approaching Storm

Most people think that fascism is a political concept that emerged in 20th century Europe, but the first use of that label in a political context appeared five centuries ago when Gustavus Eriksson (popularly known as Vasa, from the Latin fascis, meaning "bundle") unified Swedish rebel mobs to overthrow their Danish colonial overlords.  The image evoked is that of a bundle of straight sticks held tightly together, thereby forming an unbreakable pole.

"Hurricane" by jaci XIII

Today's use of the word "fascist" carries the same meaning, modernized by recent historical occurrence under Mussolini and his ilk. Fascism places unity above everything else, including individual liberty. It demands a mindset of ruthless efficiency, leading to acts of inhumane expediency. It is extremely undemocratic, i.e. tending to totalitarianism, relying on conformity at all levels of society. The most obvious example of a fascist government today is North Korea.

North Korea's fascism can be understood by the desperation that arose from that country's circumstances following the Korean war. Sometimes fascism is necessary for a nation's survival when beset by overwhelming odds. Continual fascism could result in national collapse, or, at best, widespread disenchantment among the citizenry. External opposition, meanwhile, fuels a fascist regime's resolve.

The trajectory of last century's experiments in fascism was boiled down to the following per Columbia University professor emeritus Robert Paxton:

1. Ideological formation and the creation of a party with quasi-military cadres. Talk of national humiliation, lost vigor, and the failures of liberalism and democracy.
2. Entry of the party into national politics. Intimidation of rivals, and planned acts of “redemptive violence” against suspect minorities and radical rivals.
3. Arrival in government, often in alliance with conservatives.
4. Exercise of power, in concert with institutions and business. The regime expands its control at home: restricting the press and democratic processes, corporatizing business, and collectivizing the people. Abroad, it asserts itself militarily.
5. Radicalization or entropy: Some fascists go down in a Götterdämmerung, but most die of boredom.

It is not North Korea that has sparked fascist stirrings in the American polity. For that, we need only look one state away, at China which is emerging from their fascist past that originated with Mao Tse-Tung. Surprised by China's emergence as an economic superpower, the U.S. is feeling threatened to the point that a significant percentage of Americans are veering toward fascism as protection of all that they have ever hoped for in life.

This growing sector of the populace is not commonly associated with white supremacist groups, but their racism is manifested in xenophobic ideas and behaviors for which "Make America Great Again" is their catchphrase. Fascism is fashionable in America today. We can see the five-step trajectory above being followed by Old Blowhard's populist revolt, now at step 4. Tom Toles' keen eye has detected a trajectory that breaks the first item in that step down into more detail. His forecast storm track puts governing norms, rule of law, peace, and voting rights in Hurricane Donald's destructive path. When the storm makes landfall and democracy is devastated, fascism will be seen as the path to recovery. After that, prepare for business to be more corporatized, i.e. oligopolized, society to be collectivized, and militarism pervasive. 

How Budgets Get Balanced in a Crisis

Civil asset forfeiture is nothing new (we've had it in some form since the colonial days), but it is now more likely with Jeff Sessions in charge of Justice. The colonials had the practice handed down to them from the royals of England, with the starkest example being the replenishment of Henry VIII's coffers from church assets by Thomas Cromwell beginning in 1536. After collecting a litany of accusations through "visitors" sent to look into the foibles of England's 600 monasteries and 130 nunneries, Cromwell brought his "Black Book" before a kangaroo Parliament, which agreed to shut down these politically wayward establishments and turn their assets over to the crown. The precedent made it easier for the guilds to be similarly plundered less than a decade later.

"Civil asset forfeiture" is the euphemistic description of the government seizing personal property, often before guilt can be determined by trial. There have been cases where police and federal agents have been overly eager to apply the practice, but in an era of bankrupt government and endless military expeditions (as also with Henry VIII), overreach is more likely to become endemic.

The Green Party's solution to civil asset forfeiture is simply to end the practice. This would necessitate more emphasis on justice, i.e. court activity, rather than enforcement (police prerogative). The majority of citizens across the political spectrum also appear to want the practice curtailed.

Old Blowhard, on the other hand, is a gung-ho law-and-order guy, as shown by his egregious pardoning of "America's toughest sheriff," Joe Arpaio, for his crimes against individual rights. Sessions is apparently no different. He may think the drug problem, including marijuana, can be tamped down by causing pain in other areas of people's lives, but I doubt if he minds the power and material benefits CAF gives his department.

by William Cho

The creeping police state brought on by the war on terror could bring about the ruthlessness of a totalitarian government much like that of Henry VIII. Then, it was the Catholics who were out of favor. Now, we have Muslims whose community properties are probably being eyed by some DOJ task force. Latino communities are also in the crosshairs. National emergencies wrought by unnatural natural disasters only lend more urgency to the swing toward martial law. The miseries wrought by Henry VIII and his henchmen devastated Englanders for decades thereafter. Can we afford to allow his emulator to continue in the same vein?

Five Centuries Ago: Henry VIII. Today: Donald the Deplorable.

The Maryland Renaissance Festival begins this month and, if you think a 500 year reset is too far from present reality, then you haven't kept up on your English history. While reading through Will Durant's agonizing rendition of how the West was spun, The Story of Civilization: The Reformation, the reign of Henry VIII of England takes the pathos prize, so far. The calamitous king had so much in common with America's current head of state that the parallels kept popping into my consciousness while mourning over every page. The Renaissance Festival may have had no intention of shining a light on our current political fiasco when it selected a storyline that brings the old ogre and his court back in the flesh, but let's hope the audience doesn't miss the irony.

Henry VIII and the Barber Surgeons, by Hans Holbein the Younger. Wikimedia Commons

Historians recognized the pattern much earlier than I, and published those observations in Newsweek, Foreign Policy, and The Economist, as well as this e-zine and another, Pajiba. In case you missed those, let me add my own, with inevitable repetition of some of the previous commentary.

The upshot of my historical observations is that USAnians (as Amy Siskind keeps warning us) may find themselves ruled by an autocratic regime before they know it. Here we go:

• H.VIII's administration suffered from the upheaval of sudden dismissal (or worse) of numerous high-level officials, as it pleased the king.
• H.VIII was enabled to appropriate unprecedented power to himself by a complicit Parliament
• The self-absorbed church paid deference to the tyrant, even as he despoiled their holdings.
• H.VIII married multiple times.
• H.VIII's focus was on prolonging the Tudor dynasty through a male heir.
• H.VIII denigrated faiths other than his own.
• H.VIII brought autocracy to England by audacious and unprincipled domestic power grabs.
• Thomas Cromwell, his chief assistant (a role formerly claimed by Stephen Bannon), made it his main aim "to make the King supreme over every phase of English life."
• H.VIII engaged in futile wars.
• By personally participating in these wars, H.VIII showed that he was a militarist.
• H.VIII lived extravagantly and his greed waxed larger, even as his people suffered lack.
• H.VIII rewarded his political supporters with ill-gotten wealth.

In the bitter end, the King plundered monasteries and guilds through appropriation and taxation. A modern U.S. version might entail levies on non-profits and unions, but might include any sector with a surplus. We should be wary of any tax bill that doesn't detail sources of revenue or budgets that underestimate costs. Rationalization of extreme fiscal measures by a policy of uncompromising victory over military enemies (even if the money doesn't make it to the front lines) looks like the newest stratagem the White House might employ.

I needn't detail further the parallels with Donald J. 'Blowhard." If history is a guide to forecasting, then the fact that freedom and prosperity became ever more rare as Henry pomped on gives us reason to act quickly in saving our country by squelching this upstart tyrant before he can inflict further damage on America's psyche and treasures.

Liberation Theology - The Stuff of Real Revolutions

By reversing recent progress in civil rights enforcement, the Blowhard administration's budget runs counter to one of the fundamental ideals of the Green Party. The Green Party's Ten Key Values places Social Justice And Equal Opportunity second only to grass-roots democracy:

As a matter of right, all persons must have the opportunity to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment. We must consciously confront in ourselves, our organizations, and society at large, any discrimination by race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, nationality, religion, or physical or mental ability that denies fair treatment and equal justice under the law.

To confront is to stand up to another, to "meet (someone) face to face with hostile or argumentative intent." Confrontation places the parties on the verge of (but doesn't necessarily provoke) physical conflict. The intent can be hostile or merely argumentative. My advice is try to keep it argumentative. On a train in Portland this week, it cost two people their lives when they confronted and provoked an unruly white supremacist.

Before confronting others, the Ten Key Values tells us that we need to confront our own prejudices. Furthermore, before we take on society at large, we need to be willing to challenge our own family members and associates over any discrimination. Confronting society at large before attending to these more familiar relationships would be hypocritical. After all, upsetting a stranger, though their attitude toward certain groups may stink, is easier to live with (or die from) than upsetting an associate or family member in similar need of correction.

Personal confrontation is one thing, but taking on an institution, either from within or without, requires many more resources. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a huge movement against long-standing racist policies and norms. The campaign consumed, and ultimately cost him, his life. It was admiration for another Martin Luther that inspired King's father, also a preacher, to adopt the name for himself.

Martin Luther was not only an outstanding clergyman, but also a defender of his countrymen against the oppressions of the Holy Roman Empire and the Vatican. The Reformation was not a theological dispute divorced from secular concerns. In An Open Letter to The Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, 1520, the celebrated monk wrote:

I believe that Germany now gives much more to the pope at Rome than it gave in former times to the emperors. Indeed, some estimate that every year more than three hundred thousand gulden find their way from Germany to Rome, quite uselessly and fruitlessly; we get nothing for it but scorn and contempt. And yet we wonder that princes, nobles, cities, endowments, land and people are impoverished! We should rather wonder that we still have anything to eat! Since we here come to the heart of the matter, we will pause a little...

The letter goes on to call for separating the German church from the church in Rome. Will Durant apprises the letter by noting, "Luther now planted his standard of revolt not in theological deserts, but in the rich soil of the German national spirit.  Wherever Protestantism won, nationalism carried the flag." Without the support of popular opinion in favor of reformation, Luther would have been burned at the stake and remembered as just another religious extremist.

Both of these movements, the Reformation and civil rights, were righteous causes with massive active support by those whose lives had been degraded. Both were led by virtuous men who persisted in making non-violence a core value of their movements. They were not hellraisers, but icons of social justice under the mantle of divine appointment. No preacher in America today stands out as a challenger to our creeping fascism, but does not the Christian world have such a leader today in Rome who could inspire and enable a needed revolution? This new social justice revolution may not begin in America, but, like the Reformation, it could sweep over the whole continent.

Photo by Gary A.K.

Roots

Being a Navy brat, and later navigating my own Navy career, nothing I could call home ever left much dust on my shoes before being washed away with the next tide. Having retired in the same southern Maryland town where I finished my Navy career, I haven't felt anyplace drawing me back home. Yet, intriguing information that my older brother just discovered, now makes me feel like Calvert County, Maryland is where I belong anyway.

According to my brother, who has long been curious about the Gillett family genealogy, our

great¹¹grandparents are Leonard R. Calvert and Alicia Grace Calvert through their daughter Mary and son-in-law Isaac Chapline. George Calvert, my great¹⁰grandmother Mary's brother, was responsible for arranging the chartering of Maryland as a colony apart from Virginia. He was a baron with the title Lord Baltimore, after which there followed six others with the same title. I've long had a vague sense of being deeply rooted in America because family oral history noted that our ancestors arrived shortly after the pilgrims. Only now am I able to feel a special attachment to a historical place of origin, and it happens to be the place where I have been living for the past 15 years 😃.

I feel that through this discovery a personal desideratum has, in part, been fulfilled. As Sister Miriam MacGillis put it:

It really matters that we exist. Not to be shoppers or professionals or this-that-and-the-other -- those things are secondary; but what really matters is this deep, deep, deep identity and meaning.

Thirteen generations is deep.

Photo by Matti Frisk

In terms of genealogy, it is possible to go deeper, but Sister Miriam is referring to reaching even further back into cosmological unfoldings to gain awareness of evolutionary history as the ongoing process of creation.

My next step back in time is to finish reading the 940 page tome by Will Durant given to me by my late mother on The Reformation - A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300 - 1564 (covering Leonard and Alicia Calvert's early years). Reading this now is very fitting for another reason, as this year marks the 500th anniversary of Luther's nailing of the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. Come September, we will also try to attend our first Renaissance Festival, which is a pretty big deal in Maryland.