We often hear America described as: "the great Experiment in Freedom".
Some would say that that "experiment" is now in serious danger of failing. That we've failed to know the difference between "freedom" and "license". (The "envelope" is always getting pushed further.)
Do we have any basis for knowing the difference between the two, so that "The Experiment" can avoid chaos and the military dictatorship resulting?
I propose a new and needed National Forum, a debate to be scheduled in high schools and colleges and (wouldn't it be great) for candidates to national public office.
RESOLVED: "The American Experiment in Freedom is in danger."
a) Having no bounds to "Freedom" will produce the greatest society of human beings every imagined. b) Having no bound to "Freedom" will lead to a totalitarian state in which most freedoms we honor will be abolished.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Community-organiser
"Community-organizer" is not the trivial thing it's being made. (Watch the curve.) ". . . Just a 'community-organizer'" is like saying, ". . . just a housewife." But "community-organization" involves both a vision and a strategy. A mode-of-operating. It is significant enough that Hillary Clinton did her Harvard degree-paper on "Community-Organization"---namely, on Saul Alinsky, the political-change, community-organizer master!
We knew Alinsky's name while Elma and I were in inner-city Detroit in the '60s and '70s, as part of our commitment to change in the interracial community of that period. Alinsky was the radical Marxist trainer of community organizers, effective and a bit scary, but we weren't quite sure why "scary" . . .
We were living post-Riot by then. But wounds of the Detroit were far from being healed. I'd helped in pulling together an organization of 36 churches---black / white/Catholic/Protestant---on Detroit's East Sector: CESSA ("Churches on the East Side for Social Action"). We took steps to address the needs in a more radical fashion. As the CESSA Board---of which I was a part, and of which [the to-be-Bishop] Woodie White was "chairman"---we interviewed to hire a community organizer, and brought one in from Chicago---Frank Ditto. Ditto's tactics proceeded to polarize our CESSA community. He recruited an honor guard of young blacks, bereted, in uniform and with mock rifles, to march into each subsequent large CESSA Community meeting and to stand guard around the edges of the room. Disconcerting maybe, but not undoing; for we knew he was attempting to build Black Pride.
But his news-sheet rhetoric and subsequent methodology involved playing one against another. His labeling of some of our adult, black CESSA leadership as "“Uncle Toms” opened the rift. Some of the white liberal suburbanites, enchanted with Ditto's mystique, joined Ditto in alienating that significant inner-city leadership; and with that happening, the project dissolved. In name, CESSA continued for maybe a year or so after that, but mostly with outside funding and the churches once again scattered.
I don't recall if Ditto was "Alinsky-organization trained", but I know the techniques to be classic Marxist---to play to discontent, stir it, identify "an enemy"---and thus, build a power-base for themselves. It offers itself to ambitious (and idealistic) people as a political technique, anywhere, any time, any party.
Just don't underestimate "community-organization" as a work, and as a tool.
We knew Alinsky's name while Elma and I were in inner-city Detroit in the '60s and '70s, as part of our commitment to change in the interracial community of that period. Alinsky was the radical Marxist trainer of community organizers, effective and a bit scary, but we weren't quite sure why "scary" . . .
We were living post-Riot by then. But wounds of the Detroit were far from being healed. I'd helped in pulling together an organization of 36 churches---black / white/Catholic/Protestant---on Detroit's East Sector: CESSA ("Churches on the East Side for Social Action"). We took steps to address the needs in a more radical fashion. As the CESSA Board---of which I was a part, and of which [the to-be-Bishop] Woodie White was "chairman"---we interviewed to hire a community organizer, and brought one in from Chicago---Frank Ditto. Ditto's tactics proceeded to polarize our CESSA community. He recruited an honor guard of young blacks, bereted, in uniform and with mock rifles, to march into each subsequent large CESSA Community meeting and to stand guard around the edges of the room. Disconcerting maybe, but not undoing; for we knew he was attempting to build Black Pride.
But his news-sheet rhetoric and subsequent methodology involved playing one against another. His labeling of some of our adult, black CESSA leadership as "“Uncle Toms” opened the rift. Some of the white liberal suburbanites, enchanted with Ditto's mystique, joined Ditto in alienating that significant inner-city leadership; and with that happening, the project dissolved. In name, CESSA continued for maybe a year or so after that, but mostly with outside funding and the churches once again scattered.
I don't recall if Ditto was "Alinsky-organization trained", but I know the techniques to be classic Marxist---to play to discontent, stir it, identify "an enemy"---and thus, build a power-base for themselves. It offers itself to ambitious (and idealistic) people as a political technique, anywhere, any time, any party.
Just don't underestimate "community-organization" as a work, and as a tool.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Why "Huper"?
My blog's domain name has in it the word, "huper".
"On behalf of" is the phrase used over and over in the NT to mark the "proxy-exchange" taking place there.
The 2 Corinthians 5:15 testimony marks the high point of it:
"...and he died [huper] on-behalf-of all
so that the ones living would live no more for themselves,
but for him who died and was raised [huper] on-behalf-of them."
Over and over again,huper is used [1] when dealing with the most critical matters done for us through The Son. It is the promethean Greek preposition that carries the full scope of "grace".
(See samples, all as taken from the RSV/IntGE):
“…while yet sinners, Christ died on-our-behalf.” (Rom. 5:6ff.);
“…made to be sin on-our-behalf...“ (2 Cor. 5:21);
“… a curse on-our-behalf …” (Gal. 3:13);
“…so that by the grace of God he might taste death on-behalf-of everyone.” (Hebrews 2:9)
But , correspondingly, the same expression is called on to note "the Kingdom life-pattern" designed for the People of God—"on-behalf-of" one another, on-behalf-of the LORD and on-behalf-of his enterprise.
“…worthy to suffer shame on-behalf-of His Name”. (Acts 5:41);
“…the members of the Body to have the same care on-behalf-of each other.” (1 Cor. 12:25);
“…to fill up in my own flesh the afflictions lacking of Christ on-behalf-of the Body.” (Col. 1:24)
[1]
With the genitive, 134 times, mostly with regard to God’s activity; op. cit., J.B.Smith'ss Greek-English Concordance, 5128a.
"On behalf of" is the phrase used over and over in the NT to mark the "proxy-exchange" taking place there.
The 2 Corinthians 5:15 testimony marks the high point of it:
"...and he died [huper] on-behalf-of all
so that the ones living would live no more for themselves,
but for him who died and was raised [huper] on-behalf-of them."
Over and over again,huper is used [1] when dealing with the most critical matters done for us through The Son. It is the promethean Greek preposition that carries the full scope of "grace".
(See samples, all as taken from the RSV/IntGE):
“…while yet sinners, Christ died on-our-behalf.” (Rom. 5:6ff.);
“…made to be sin on-our-behalf...“ (2 Cor. 5:21);
“… a curse on-our-behalf …” (Gal. 3:13);
“…so that by the grace of God he might taste death on-behalf-of everyone.” (Hebrews 2:9)
But , correspondingly, the same expression is called on to note "the Kingdom life-pattern" designed for the People of God—"on-behalf-of" one another, on-behalf-of the LORD and on-behalf-of his enterprise.
“…worthy to suffer shame on-behalf-of His Name”. (Acts 5:41);
“…the members of the Body to have the same care on-behalf-of each other.” (1 Cor. 12:25);
“…to fill up in my own flesh the afflictions lacking of Christ on-behalf-of the Body.” (Col. 1:24)
[1]
With the genitive, 134 times, mostly with regard to God’s activity; op. cit., J.B.Smith'ss Greek-English Concordance, 5128a.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
About Me
To be who I am . . . I got here via small-town, Nebraska prairie and cowboy revivalism. Via college, anti-war pacifism and a close scrape with time in prison. Via Army medic time at Walter Reed; arrest in D.C. for inner-city, inter-racial activity. A stint at seminary in New York City, then Scotland's "Iona Community". Via marriage in Scotland, then 17 years with Detroit's inner-city churches, via school-teaching as second job as we raised our 3 children. Through the '67 Detroit Riot, and increasing stress on our marriage.
To Hoosier-Country (southern Indiana) as conference director, building teams for ADVenture and Challenge, and focusing adult conferences with focus on truth-issues, deep hurts, and major ills in our society (such as "The Father-Deficit", men's role, and marriage). Always with the vision of Ephesians 4 :11ff.: to shape up God's People for impacting the world with the power of God's invading Kingdom.
To Hoosier-Country (southern Indiana) as conference director, building teams for ADVenture and Challenge, and focusing adult conferences with focus on truth-issues, deep hurts, and major ills in our society (such as "The Father-Deficit", men's role, and marriage). Always with the vision of Ephesians 4 :11ff.: to shape up God's People for impacting the world with the power of God's invading Kingdom.
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