Assessing Alabama's "Anti-Immigration" Act

After several disjointed conversations about what Christians should think and do about Alabama's new immigration law via Facebook wall comments, I've decided that a more sustained and focused explication of the various arguments is needed (as much for my own benefit of writing and thinking this through somewhat systematically as for anyone else's).

A major cause of the problem is that the issue is simply totally complicated from the very start. Even if one goes straight to the crucial point — whether Christians should approve of and support or disapprove and oppose the new law — one is still starting in the center of an ancient theological quagmire: the ontological relationship between church and the world. Some of the deepest thinkers and tallest giants in the world of theology — such as Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther — have spent gallons of ink and reams of paper writing towering tomes of tight theology on this very subject.

Paul (a political rabble rouser who was finally executed by Cesar) suggests that the world and the church simply operate by different rules and are a bit like oil and water. Augustine (a high ranking official in the Roman Empire) and Luther (a wanted man hiding out under the sanctuary of the Prussian prince) declare that God created secular governments to muzzle the dark toothy beast of human nature, and therefore the State is an ordained arm of God's will on earth (hello "divine right of kings" much). Aquinas (probably the Church's best damn theologian ever, writing in the academic void of the "dark ages" *ugh) synthesizes Paul and Augustine and argues that the State is only legitimately an agent of divine will if it is in fact doing God's will; so if the king does something that isn't in line with God's will then not only is the king not a legitimate king, but it is also every Christians duty to actively oppose the king! (And Aquinas wrote this in the middle of the 13th century France; can you imagine the ire of poor King Louis? BTW, if this sounds A LOT like Thomas Jefferson, then you're paying attention :)

Soo much could be said in comparing and contrasting the various theories of these saints (and how their various political interests and positions shaped what they wrote), but such a project is waay beyond the scope of a blog written in my spare moments. Nonetheless, here are a couple of open personal reflections (in the good ole fashion form of the catechism and Aquinas) that may help you to think through this spaghetti-like skein of theology.

Q: What should Christians think about the immigration law? 
A: A useful way to think about questions like this one is to put things in more general terms. So I think the starting question should really be: "What should Christians think about any law that the State creates?" The answer to this then is that the first thing the Church should do is to determine if the law in question is contrary to the Gospel. If it is, then the Church should work against it in appropriate ways, and if it isn't, then it's a happy accident that the State has passed either a morally neutral or a congruent law vis a vis the Gospel and the Church should either *shrug* or celebrate accordingly.

Q: So is this particular law contrary to the Gospel? 
A: Defining what "contrary to the Gospel" means, much less figuring out how one goes about evaluating if something is in fact contrary to the Gospel, and then actually analyzing it along the agreed upon terms are whole (and very involved) conversations in themselves, but for the sake of argument let's just say that "yes" it is.

{For the sake of full-disclosure though, I will say that in my estimation the immigration law is in fact contrary to the whole spirit of the Gospel. But that's not why I think the State should oppose the law; I think to convince the secular State of anything you have to make the argument based on the fact that the law is contrary its own self interest. This law will cost the State so much money, increase the cost of so many commodities, and put so many farmers out of business that passing it will be total folly.}

Q: "So I guess now the question becomes: What should the Church do when the World does something contrary to the Gospel?" 
A:  Firstly, the Church shouldn't be surprised that the World is acting worldly. The World is ruled by superpowers, market forces, conflicting self-interests, and other nefarious things and will always eventually work against the realization of the Gospel; even in "Christian nations" (wherever those things are; I've never actually seen a country baptized!).
      Secondly, the Church should preach the Gospel and prophetically speak the truth to the oppressive powers of the World. Basically the Church should shake it's long pointy finger and say to the World, "if you believed what we believe then you wouldn't do such-and-such." (But of course the World is simply going to respond, "We don't believe what you believe so why should we act they way you say?" At which point the impasse is realized.)
     Thirdly, the church should stand with the victims and work to help them even at drastic cost to itself.

Q: Shouldn't the Church also work to legally undo the immoral action and put a better law in it's place? 
A: Here's where I step out of the marching mob of Aquinas/Jefferson/MLK and hitch a ride on Mino Simons horse drawn cart. The whole project of working within the legal system to bring about faith-based convictions is a dangerous slippery slope and an inherently/ultimately violent endeavor. This is going to take a couple of sentences to explain, so hang with me here..

Let's approach this by way of example: Nation A passes a law which a religious body finds to be morally bankrupt according to their religious convictions. The religious group then works to undo the law and to replace it with a new and "better" law by voting and demonstrating and are eventually successful. What has happened here philosophically inside this rather innocuous looking exchange is actually quite profound.

First, speaking purely secularly, how would you like it if the above "religious body" were not your religion? For example, how would you like Islam, through the power of democracy, to legislate that everyone must pray 5 times a day?

Second, by using the State's legal system to impose it's own view of things and to legislate mandatory moral action the "religious body," has in fact participated in a very violent event. The State's legal system is based in violence and gets its authority from the fact that it can punish violators, take away their money, freedom, or even life. Therefore using this system to get your way is tantamount to threatening people with these things.  That doesn't sound very Christ like. The Kingdom of Heaven can't be built with the blood soaked bricks of Caesar.

Thirdly, more problems with this exchange emerge if the senario is carried out to it's ultimate logical conclusion. What if the Church was able to become a "super-lobbyer" and every piece of legislation it wanted passed got passed and everything it wanted shot down was defeated. What good would it do if a whole nation acted within the bounds of Christian morality under compulsion and under threat of legal action? Would people really be acting moral? (I think it was Roger Williams who once said that "forced worship stinks in the nostrils of God.") Intentionality has always been a center piece of moral dialogue, but beyond that, how Christian is it to violently impose behaviors on someone else? God didn't create puppets so why should the Church try and turn people into moral automatons?

Q: You seem to be drawing a pretty hard line between the State and the Church. But what if the public leaders of the State are Christian? Can't they be held accountable to the values of the Church? 
A: Firstly, we will all be held to account for the way we conduct our lives; perhaps especially public officials :)
Secondly, I don't think it much matters what religion a public official is, the Church, including Christian public officials, shouldn't participate in inherently violent social engineering.


I hope these thoughts have been helpful; comment below if you have questions, consternations, or ameliorations.

Book Review: "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" by Al Franken

A Theologian's Rubbernecking at the Strange World of Politics:
A Book Review of Al Franken's Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot: And Other Observations

It may seem odd for a blog about "life, faith, and God" to have a book review about contemporary politics in it. I mean, what about the whole "separation of Church and state" thing? It's a fair question, so here are two responses before we dive into a brief synopsis and analysis of Mr. Franken's witty work. 

The first reason this book review is on this blog is for the simple reason that "it makes fun of Rush Limbaugh by pointing out that he is a big lardbutt" (5). To me this is a compellingly winsome advantage for a book, and I thought that such an insight was worth sharing with the world on this blog. 

The second reason I feel that reviewing a book about contemporary politics is appropriate for a blog about religion is because politics is about how we live together in society, and a foundational dogma of Christianity is that God came to Earth incarnate in the person of Jesus. I sort of feel that 95% of my seminary experience at Duke revolved around unpacking the character and scope of the political, physical, and otherwise temporal implications of the doctrine of God-made-flesh, so suffice it here to say that the fact that God went through the trouble of coming in the flesh to Earth to redeem the same is more than sufficient reason for theologians to be very interested in politics, public policy, and big fat demagoguring idiots like Rush Limbaugh whose Reaganomic utopia might be completely antithetical to God's good future. (Oh yea, and one of Duke Divinity school's heros, John Howard Yoder, also wrote a book titled The Politics of Jesus, and if a theologian of Yoder's caliber thinks politics and Jesus mix well then that's adequate warrant for me to jump on the wagon.)

Ok, now that we've sorted out the whole "separation of Church and state" thing let's move on to actually reviewing the book. Mr. Franken's work is divided into forty five "essays" which cover a myriad of topics: insults towards Rush Limbaugh, personal anecdotes, tripe non-sequiturs, more non-sense off topic (occasionally funny) ramblings, and observations of other Republican leaders.

I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed to find that Franken spent so much time covering the "Other Observations" part of his book instead of any thing resembling a sustained analysis of Rush Limbaugh's arguments, claims, or facts. It seems fair that one would expect from looking at the front cover that the 36 sized font main title, "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot," in comparison to the 18 sized font subtitle, "And Other Observations,"that the lion's share of the content of the book would be mainly concerned with dissecting Mr. Limbaugh's platitudes. Instead, most of the book is concerned with scurrilous ad hominem attacks of other prominent Republican leaders, several totally pointless chapters, and uninteresting irrelevant personal narratives.

But perhaps I'm being unfair. I mean, if I really wanted a serious book about the faults of Rush Limbaugh why pick up a book by a comedian instead of one from an actual political analyst. That's fair enough (even if Franken is a Harvard educated professional political satirist), but at least we should expect to find in Franken's book some good humor. Unfortunately this is not the case. While some of Franken's jokes did make me LOL, a majority of them were a bit flat, and others were just flat repetitive. For example, Franken makes good on his title's implicit promise by pointing out that Limbaugh is big and fat, but after 3 million incarnations this joke gets a bit old. (On a side note, even though pointing out that Rush is fat is apparently a crucial part of Franken's project, no where is there one footnote verifying Mr. Limbaugh's alleged obesity. But who really cares right, it's still funny!)

However despite the book's faults, it does offer those of us who are desperately searching for political ammunition against the infamous windbag several nuggets of insight and quips next time a Limbaugh devote starts spouting Rush-ism durring the next workplace coffee break:

• Some of Rush's adamant followers voluntarily call themselves "dittoheads"(6).
• Statistically, "Limbaugh listeners thought they were the best informed, and yet were the least informed" (12).
• Rush has been married three times (13).
• "The poor in this country are the biggest piglets at the mother pig and her nipples...I don't have compassion for the poor"- Limbaugh (15).
• "Limbaugh has himself fed off the largesse of the government. In the form of unemployment insurance...[Rush] filed for unemployment at a time when he was able-bodied and spending his days sitting around the house eating junk food, too lazy to even mow his own lawn" (15).
• Rush never voted for Reagan; in fact he never even registered to vote until he was shamed into it by a reporter at age 35 (16)
• In face-to-face interviews, Rush gets hammer by his opponents. 
• "During spin-the-bottle game, cheerleader refuses to kiss 'Rusty'" (26).
• "1974-78: Hired and fired by four different radio stations" (27).
• Rush's fact checker, Waylon, is a moron. 
• "There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived" - Limbaugh (52)
• Limbaugh doesn't think smoking causes cancer (52)
• Newt Gingrich served his wife divorce papers on a yellow legal pad just as she was waking up from cancer surgery (this is an example of Franken's irrelevant, yet politically/argumentatively useful, facts) (44)
•  Rush Limbaugh failed out of college (16).
• Rush thinks styrofoam is biodegradable, and Hilary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered (124).
• Nice summary of Limbaugh's obsession with Reagan: "Other lies bug me a lot. These are the rational, carefully constructed, deliberate lies of a man running a giant propaganda factory dedicated to two things: convincing people who were screwed sideways by Reaganomics that it was actually good for them, and encouraging the people who turned the screws to feel good about themselves...This gets to the heart of supply-side economics: the less you tax the rich, the faster the economy will grow. Take for example the fifties. We taxed the shit out of the rich. The top marginal rate was 88 percent" (124). 
• Rush is dead wrong about the way taxes affect the poor (125-130). Tax cuts for the wealthy cause a disproportional burden on the poor.
• Rush thinks there are more acres of forestland in American today than when Columbus arrived. Problem is, he's off by about 250,000,000 acres. (198)
• Rush thinks that if the polar ice caps melted it wouldn't affect sea levels. Problem is, sea levels would rise by about 200 ft. (199)
• Rush doesn't think that humans can destroy "creation." I guess pollution doesn't exit then?? (201)
• Rush is big and fat, and has a disgusting, puss filled, hairy open sore on his arse caused from being sedentary.
• And finally, Franken admits that making fun of Rush Limbaugh's idiocy "has gone from an amusing to a sad reminder that millions of Americans are being lied to every day by an obese millionaire with a repugnant political agenda." (201)

In sum, if you want a book about why Rush Limbaugh is a fat idiot you can probably find a better source of political commentary, and if you want a good laugh at Rebublican's expense try watching "Saturday Night Live" reruns (Franken wrote some of those too). Thanks for book Mr. Franken, when is Sarah Palin is So Stupid She Scares Me coming out?