I've been blog-stamped
If One Hand Clapping was a postage stamp, this is what Rusty Shackleford thinks it would look like.



I note that the figure is not clapping, nor does he in fact have a hand at all. But his expression of confused dismay is eerily accurate.

Rusty has quite a collection of stamps of bloggers far and wide and they are very creative.

by Donald Sensing, 8:28 PM. Permalink |  

Linkagery

Joe Gandelman sees the end game coming in Najaf now that al-Sadr has rejected the truce that he said he would accept. Hmm . . . "I voted in favor of the truce before I voted against it."

Les Jones asks why John Kerry wants Swift Boat Vets for the Truth to stop questioning his military record when he himself has been casting aspersions on President Bush's service since April.

Guess who wants us warmongers to go home but leave our money? Ingrates.

If the Washington Post can file a FOIA request and get the military records of Larry Thurlow, who commanded a swift boat alongside John Kerry, why can't they file a request for Kerry's records? Oops, wrong question. It should be, Why won't they file a request for Kerry's records?

Well, you know.

Michael Williams ponders God's purpose for your life.

Marine Corps Moms published a letter from a Navy chaplain serving the Marines in Iraq.

It is a shame so many people have missed the point that we all know so well and hold so dear. This is not about whether Iraq is worth it. It is about the character of America, and individual Americans and their families who have always been willing to sacrifice and suffer, even for the unworthy, just because it is the right thing to do. As the men and women of Task Force 3/7, we owe our deepest respect, thanks and love to all of you at home for so courageously and faithfully standing with us in doing what is right.

A Georgia bicyclist will bike from Los Angeles to Savannah starting in six weeks to raise money for the Last Wish Foundation , "a non-profit, non-partisan organization which provides funds to help support and educate the children of American service men and women who have died during Operation Iraqi Freedom." You can donate online atb his web site.

Canadian journalist David Warren surveys the war in Iraq and approves of the quagmire it may have become. "Or to put it another way, it is time to create a few more quagmires." He also applauds,

Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, who is reversing his country's 30-year experiment in "multiculturalism", after a parliamentary report concluded that it is an unambiguous disaster, responsible for institutional collapse, ethnic ghettoes, terrorism, hatred, and violence. He is using the current Dutch presidency of the European Union to spread the word that free Europe is threatened not by Americanization, but by Islamicization.

Uh, yeah.

by Donald Sensing, 8:05 PM. Permalink |  

What ho, Bronze Star?
Army veteran James Joyner explains why the Bronze Star Medal (note, all three words are the proper name) isn't that big a deal.

Indeed, it's not usually even awarded for valor; usually, it's for "Meritorious Service" or "Meritorious Achievement." They were awarded by the bushel in Vietnam, so there was a lag in getting them out. Award citations at lower levels tend to be rather boilerplate "Great credit on the United States Navy and the United States of America" and so forth. Until you get to Silver Star, Navy Cross, or Medal of Honor territory, they don't really say much.

In fact, regulations prescribe that it is the operations-theater equivalent of the peacetime Meritorious Service Medal, of which I have three. The BSM is awarded in lieu of the MSM to troops (almost always only officers or senior NCOs) serving in a defined operational theater.

For actual combat actions, the BSM is awarded with V Device, noting valor. That is a "real soldier" medal and is accorded immeasaurably higher respect than a bare BSM.

The real key to how much respect awards and decorations are accorded is the weight promotion boards give them. Word I got from my Personnel Command friends (one of whom actually managed officer promotion boards) was that anything less than a Silver Star was pretty much ignored. That may have changed in the years since, but I doubt it.

The official Army online page about the BSM and eligibility requirements is here.

by Donald Sensing, 7:53 PM. Permalink |  

Bullets, not, uh, "bouncies"?
MSBNC reports porn star Mary Carey is trying to lead a protest against the Army because it offers free breast augmentation to female soldiers (and, I have read elsewhere, dependent wives of soldiers). Carey favors the natural look.

Glenn Reynolds says that it's a protest

... I might be able to get behind.

Or not. I might have to look into things more closely before making up my mind

Let's go with the "or not." The surgeries are not done for the benefit of the women, but of the doctors.

The New Yorker reported,

The Army’s rationale is that, as a spokeswoman said, “the surgeons have to have someone to practice on.” “The benefit of offering elective cosmetic surgery to soldiers is more for the surgeon than for the patient,” [Dr. Bob] Lyons [chief of plastic surgery at Brooke Army Medical Center] said. “If there’s a happy soldier or sailor at the end of that operation, that’s an added benefit, but that’s not the reason we do it. We do it to maintain our skills”—skills that are critical, he added, when it comes to doing reconstructive surgery on soldiers who have been wounded.

But the report also quotes a civilian surgeon who says that cosmetic and reconstructive surgery are two separate skills, and there's no doubt that some women have availed themselves of the opportunity to get tens of thousands of dollars worth of self-improvement free. All manner of surgeries are performed, not just breast surgery. But I say, so what? Doctors stay sharp and troops benefit. Sounds like a good deal to me.

by Donald Sensing, 6:58 PM. Permalink |  

I want to veto war!
There is a blog called The Iraq War Was Wrong Blog, whose motto is, I am not kidding, "A wrong war like during the Iraq war was cannot just be sitted idly by by."

Anyway, it notes that opposition to the Iraq campaign included,

... ministers and other types of holy guys - it doesn't get much higher then that when it comes to whether or not something Just War.

When I read that I laughed so hard I almost spewed my coffee. I am glad to see that someone, at last, has such an elevated regard for ministers and other holy guys (sexist language alert!), but really, on the subject of foreign policy, and especially war decision, ministers and other holy guys are about the most ignorant class on the planet. And the higher their office, usually the more profoundly ignorant they are.

But wait! There's more! "What about this," the anonymous blogger says,

A Constitutional amendment prohibiting the United States from entering into ANY war unless it is deemed to be a Just War by appropriate theologicans (i.e. we could start by using the ones who told us as how The IRaq War was not a Just War - assembled into a kind of Council/Chamber (I'm flexible on termonology here)). I know a Constiututional amendment is usually considered extreme but I think a Just War amendment may be necessary at this point, How else are we going to stave off this worrying mixture of religion and state that Bush has ingendered)?

(All spelling errors are original.) Anon wants to "stave off" mixing politics and religion, so his solution is to give clergy - but only the clergy who agree with him - veto authority over the most serious issue ever to face the country.

At first I thought this blog was really a parody of the foolishness of Leftism today, but no, it seems Anon is serious. And I'm still laughing.

Anyway, here are relevant essays of mine:

The pacifist fallacies.

The backward thinking of anti-war religious pronouncements.

Why war objectors lack strategic vision.

Politics, national interest and just war.

Is America Justified to Use Force?

The problem with pacifism is pacifists.

An idea is not a plan! Wishful thinking passes for theological reflection nowadays.

by Donald Sensing, 5:33 PM. Permalink |  

Take a virtual tour
My church has just completed a streaming video to introduce readers of our web site to our congregation.

The video was entirely produced by Select Imaging, a subsidiary of Career Imaging in Brentwood, Tenn.

Please take a look at the video here, and leave a comment what you think! NB: This is a nine-meg WMV file, so broadband connection is best. For dialup, recommend you right click and select "save as."

-------------

I have a pretty packed day, so I'll be back online late this afternoon and tonight. Lots of good stuff!

by Donald Sensing, 12:04 PM. Permalink |  

Blacklisting Instapundit!
Joel Hart blogs Not That from Nashville, Tenn., my hometown and home of Vanderbilt University, whence both Joel and I have degrees. (Mine is the Master of Divinity, I don't know what his is.)

Both my parents graduated from Vanderbilt. Both my brothers have degrees from it. My niece just got her Master degree there. My dad's father graduated from VU in 1922. A building on the campus is named after my gandmother's uncle.

As a blogging neophyte, Joel didn't know until recently that the blogfather, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, is a law professor at (hiss!) the University of Tenessee Knoxville - Big Orange, Phil Fulmer country, where alumni Peyton Manning is still idolozed.

Asks Joel,

This leaves me in a moral quandary. As a Vanderbilt fan human being, I'm repulsed by all things UT. All things. Am I obligated to discontinue reading his site? Should I delete him from my links? I'm just not sure. Maybe it's too late; perhaps I've already been contaminated by Knoxville-itis. I suppose that since he's just a law professor (and has made no indications yet that he has a huge orange "T" on his car or anything), that I can let it slide.

Obviously, I caved to the Reynolds Charm Spell a long time ago, even to the point of buying his new Mazda RX-8 for him!

But Joel, listen, there is still time! Run! Run as fast as you can to Titans Stadium and remember the last time the Commodores played Yew Tee there, losing a million to three. Just like the time before that and before that and before that and before that and before ... well, you get the idea, I need not remind you.

Don't you feel the rage again? The bile coming up your throat? The clenching of your fists, the clouding of the mind?

Nope, not at all. The last time Vandy beat Yew Tee was about AD 932. Diehard Vandy fans - all three of us - don't go to a Yew Tee game to see Vandy actually, you know, win. We go because ... uh, because, well, I don't really know why we go. I mean, even the beer's flat at the concession.

So read Instaman without regret, Joel, and simply take solace in the fact that most of Prof. Reynold's law students will work for firms controlled by Vanderbilt grads. Or so we tell ourselves, anyway.

by Donald Sensing, 5:12 PM. Permalink |  

New site for news
You know about the invaluable Real Clear Politics, which posts links to the most read-worthy opinion pieces in major media every day.

Now Truthful News does the same for news articles, from a self-admitted conservative bias.

by Donald Sensing, 5:03 PM. Permalink |  

Al-Sadr, the Pope and sex
Frank Warner posted about a week ago concerning Pope John Paul II's "controversial statement against radical feminism" which "also reveals something startling, if not surprising. In heaven, there is no sex." Observes Frank,

So why doesn’t someone get this memo to the suicide-murderer boneheads of the Middle East who think 72 virgins are waiting for them in the afterlife? What do they think they’re going to do with those 72 virgins?

But wait, it gets better! Frank appended,

Well, here it is Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2004, and Moqtada Sadr is inviting Pope John Paul II to mediate the conflict between his extremist militia and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces in Najaf.

Do you believe in miracles? Well, OK, nothing will happen. But maybe the pope can tell Sadr about the no-sex-in-heaven thing.

Heh, as they say.

Update: Commenters have asked for my learned opinion on whether there is sex is heaven. Some pertinent points:

One, it doesn't matter. Really.

Sex is how people make babies. But Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven, Matthew 22:30: "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven." (NB, Jesus said "the resurrection," not heaven, but that is a topic for another day.)

The Jewish covenant firmly locked sex to marriage. Sexual relations outside the marriage bond were denounced. Anyone hearing Jesus say there was no marriage in the resurrection would have understood it also meant no sex.

As there is no need for reproduction in the resurrection, since life is eternal, there is no need for sex.

As for the "what about pleasure" question, I recall C.S. Lewis writing that probably most seven-year-old boys can't imagine many things greater than chocolate. Suppose you told such a boy that when he grows up, he could never eat chocolate again, but don't worry, he can have sex.

Naturally, a young boy can have only the vaguest notion of what sex is like (vaguer in Lewis's day than now, I sadly note) and would probably not consider it a good tradeoff.

But, said Lewis, we have the Scriptures' promise of unimaginable joys of heaven, compared to which sex in this life must pale even more than chocolate for a little boy pales in comparison to sex for adults.

(BTW, I'm not sure Lewis's example is actually very good because sex and chocolate are too culturally linked, what with Valentine's Day and all. Maybe he should have used ice cream.)

by Donald Sensing, 3:21 PM. Permalink |  

Don't hearken to Harkin
(Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.)

I posted yesterday about how odd it was for Sen. Tom Harkin, who lied about having flown combat missions in Vietnam, to accuse VP Dick Cheney of cowardice for not serving in Vietnam.

Some doubts being raised about whether Harkin really did lie about combat service. Glenn Reynolds has access to an academic library and spent his lunch hour 8/18 researching Harkin's false combat-pilot claims. He says the truth, "is considerably worse for Harkin than [my] short summary." Not only did Harkin falsely claim to have flown combat patrols over North Vietnam, he also claimed to have flown combat sorties over Cuba!

There's a lot more, which Glenn documents conclusively. And as Glenn cogently notes,

I managed to do this research over my lunch hour, but it doesn't seem to be noted in the press treatment of Harkin's charges by the people who get, you know, paid to do this stuff.

Isn't it amazing what the major media manage not to cover? Well, uh, no.

I have said in the past that people who scoff at President Bush's Air Guard service or courage have no idea what it was like to fly the F-102 fighter he flew. It made many widows in peacetime operations. Likewise, Harkin was a naval aviator, which means he passed the most difficult basic aviation training program anywhere in the world - carrier flight operations. That ain't for sissies. As he told the WSJ in 1991 (not online, see Glenn's post for citation), he is proud of his Navy record, and, "I put my [posterior] on the line day after day."

Which is true. But so did Bush, flying F-102s in the Air Guard.

In fairness to Harkin's comments, he didn't attack President Bush's service like the Kerry campaign and its political allies have been doing for eight months at least. But I don't understand why Harkin, whose bona fides as a man of courage and skill were established just by being awarded the Navy's wings of gold, would pad his resume with lies about combat. Nor do I understand why, having done so, he would think it appropriate to hurl personal insults at the Veep.

Update: OpinionJournal has republished its 1991 editorial on Harkin's whoppers, "Candidate Harkin Stretches the Truth, Vietnam isn't the only instance." The WSJ quoted his as saying of his active-duty service, "One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions." A combat air patrol by military definition is intended to intercept and destroy enemy aircraft.

by Donald Sensing, 2:56 PM. Permalink |  

Fun with CS gas
CS is a riot-control agent, commonly known as tear gas. It is used the gas chambers of the military services to convince recruits and trainees that first, their protective masks work and second, that chemical warfare is no joke, for the masks are removed inside the swirling cloud. It is very unpleasant.

Matthew White explains what this was like when he went through Marine boot camp, and the cruel joke played on some of the recruits just after they left the gas chamber, hacking and gagging and burning. This is part three of his boot camp weekly saga, tracing the progress of my son there now.

Matthew's mother also writes about what it was like for her to send him off to Parris Island:

My precious son was at the mercy of a bunch of what I thought were insane Drill Instructions who would do everything within their power to break down so many things that made my son who he was and then they would rebuild him their way. And so began my own personal Crucible. . . .

Not quite like that for us, since my wife's dad is a retired colonel and I was an Army officer for the first 15 years our our marriage, but still, there are sometimes butterflies.

by Donald Sensing, 7:44 AM. Permalink |  

Brits make terrorist bust
British authorities have arrested eight men and charged them with "plotting to commit murders and to launch radiological, chemical, gas or bomb attacks" against targets in the United States related to financial industries.

All are accused of taking part in two conspiracies.

The first alleges a plot to murder unspecified persons between January 2000 and this month.

Sources said that if evidence had emerged of specific murder targets they would have been identified.

The second conspiracy alleges that the eight "conspired together and with other persons unknown to commit public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives to cause disruption, fear or injury contrary to Section 1 (1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977". Again no targets or locations are specified. But two further charges allege possession of "a document or record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism" - an offence under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

The documents in question relate to apparent reconnaissance of the Prudential building in New Jersey, the New York
Stock Exchange, the International Monetary Fund in Washington and Citigroup in New York. AUthorities also found

... two notebooks containing information on explosives, poisons, chemicals and related matters containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

One wonders whether all the yardbirds who accused President Bush of playing politics by issuing the increased alert for the Northeast will admit they were the partisan extremists. Oh, heck no.

by Donald Sensing, 9:38 PM. Permalink |  

Cave of John the Baptist found?
An archeologist who says he is not a religious man claims to have found a cave used by the John the Baptist, and says that artifacts found in the cave buttress his assertion.

His find is definitely of high archeological interest and is significant to understanding Jewish faith and practice in Jesus' day, but I find his argument that the cave is actually that of the Baptist to be unconvincing. Best I can say is maybe, maybe not.

by Donald Sensing, 8:50 PM. Permalink |  

"This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them"
That was an accusation made against Jesus of Nazareth by the religiously self-important of his day. Jesus, it seems, had this terribly unseemly habit of breaking bread with the awfulest folks, the kind you'd never take home to meet momma.

They also accused Jesus of being a drunkard because he drank wine at suppers with sinners.

Someone emailed me a story about an ecumenical Bible study group called Single Focus Atlanta that meets in a Hooters restaurant, which is meeting the same kind of self-righteous criticism.

Social conservatives say the restaurant corrupts young children and attracts sexual predators, and feminists say it objectifies women.

"Everyone thinks it's hypocritical," said Victoria B. Pierce, president of the National Organization for Women's Cobb County chapter.

"Why would any church group go there?"

Uh, to preach the Gospel, Vicky? Baptist minister Dennis Rogers, a members of the group's board of directors, defended the meeting place.

Said Rogers: "It's something Jesus would've done because he looked past what people may think and looked at what people's needs are."

As I wrote in my essay, Jesus the Jew, Jesus was philosophically friendly to the Pharisees, and vice-versa, although the differed sharply and strongly on a key matter that prevented them from becoming overt allies:

One could argue that the primary concerns in
daily life of both Jesus and the Pharisees were basically the same: purity and cleanness. The Pharisees exhibited a defensive notion of cleanness: they want to avoid being infected by uncleanness. On the contrary, Jesus had an offensive idea of cleanness: cleanness overcomes uncleanness, not the other way round. Thus Jesus greatly offended the Pharisees by eating with sinners and speaking with prostitutes.

The problem with this line of reasoning as relates to the issue at hand, of course, is that neither side of the argument about Single Focus should assume that Hooters' customers and the women who work there are a functional equivalent of sinners or prostitutes of Jesus' day. But there is no reason to exclude them from the fellowship of the Gospel, either.

(Disclaimer: I have never been to a Hooters restaurant, so I don't really know anything about it, except how the chain markets itself.)

by Donald Sensing, 8:27 PM. Permalink |  

The War party
In De Moines today, Sen. Tom Harkin called Vice President Dick Cheney a "coward" for not serving in Vietnam.

Harkin said that it angered him to hear tough talk from Cheney.

"When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil," said Harkin.

FoxNews reports that Harkin also said that President Bush and Cheney are "running scared because John Kerry has a war record and they don't."

And, as countless bloggers and other commentati have observed, John Kerry is running for president based almost solely on his Vietnam service.

When it comes to lying about his service, Kerry's whoppers about infiltrating Special Ops guys into Cambodia don't hold a candle to what Harkin said, though. Harkin himself claimed to have battled Mig fighters over North Vietnam while a Navy pilot. He was a pilot, but never went to Vietnam.

How did a political party that last held the White House with a man who admitted he dodged the draft and said he loathed the military, who demonstrated against his own country while living overseas, come to be the party that now trumpets more militarism than any other?

When I was a kid I learned that the only kids who always talked tough were either bullies or were in reality just chicken. The real war heroes I have known hardly ever talked about it and certainly didn't want to be heroic again.

--------------

The Arizona Republic has a summary of the military service of "of prominent politicians and their military service histories" and also " the military service records of some of the more vocal journalists, pundits and bloggers. It's rather enlightening."

Update: The AzRep article says that Dan Rather never served. Incorrect, he was a US Marine. Fred Jacobsen also points out that William F. Buckley is also incorrecly characterized as not having served. Buckley in fact served in the Army in World War 2.

Update: Let credit be given where credit is due. John Cole beat me by a couple of hours in pointing out that Harkin had a truth deficiency about his Navy service.

See another, related post here.

by Donald Sensing, 7:40 PM. Permalink |  

Letter from England
I posted last Friday an appreciation of British and Commonwealth forces for being steadfast allies since Sept. 11, 2001. The post garnered this email from a British reader, who asked his name not be used.

I come from a Forces family in the UK, with 4 close relations currently serving (and one more seriously considering), and was going to serve myself before I messed up my ankle (and, typically for the NHS, after 3 years they still don't really know what's wrong with it, but I can't walk without some pain, a small thing but enough to dash a dream).

It thus makes me deeply ashamed and angry that the current government, despite its admirable work in supporting democracy around the world, treats its armed forces so shabbily. We are now deployed in more places than since demobolisation at the end of World War II. Every time this government has asked us to do a job we have done so, and done so well. And yet when it comes to coughing up the money to support us, to enable us to continue these tasks effectively, it cuts us off.

It makes me so embarrassed that currently the greatest supporters of my relations are Americans like yourself, and I cannot describe how grateful I am of the support you and others express.

I apologise for the somewhat emotional nature of the above, but matters like this are especially present in my thoughts at the moment since my younger brother has recently departed on his first active cruise (he is a submariner).

So really just a note to say that your moral support is much appreciated - by me at least. Your recent flag post especially, and was what really occasioned this email.

I also had previously linked to a WaPo pice about the British government's plan to slash their armed forces dramatically, to the point where when done, the all British services combined will not be much bigger than the US Marine Corps.

by Donald Sensing, 3:59 PM. Permalink |  

Asking for your vote!

The Washington Post is running a Best Blogs reader survey. Just click on the logo to the left - and remember where you found it!

(Registration on the Post's site is required to vote, and to read the site, for that matter.)

by Donald Sensing, 8:58 PM. Permalink |  

Bringing the troops home
So President Bush has ordered the redeployment of tens of thousands of American troops home from Europe over the next several years.

I wonder whether the homeward bound soldiers will include these brave men, whose return I said last year was long overdue:



Cemetery of American war dead from World War I in Somme, France, one of 24 overseas cemeteries maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission.

I would also say that the rebasing plan pretty much kicks the legs out from under the "America is an empire" cabal.

by Donald Sensing, 8:41 PM. Permalink |  

SEAL Teams to Cambodia?
The Kerry in Cambodia fairy tale continues to unravel. I've already reported that Kerry's own accounts of Christmas 1968 in Cambodia contradict each other. Tony Snow wrote,

Kerry's account of this list has shifted and changed constantly over the last 35 years. Some versions have him spending the day in Cambodia, dropping off spies. Others have him in a barracks, 55 miles from the Cambodian border, scribbling entries into his diary. [Kerry advocate Jim] Hurley offered a hybrid today, saying Kerry was ordered onto the water Christmas day, made his way to the Cambodian border, endured three separate engagements with the enemy, and returned home. I count at least six distinct versions of Kerry's whereabouts on that day... .

Now Kerry's authorized biographer, who previously pinned Kerry 50-plus miles from Cambodia on Christmas, in Sa Dec, Vietnam, tells the UK Telegraph,

Kerry went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 [that is, not at Christmas - DS] on clandestine missions. He had a run dropping off US Navy Seals, Green Berets and CIA guys.

Problem is, a Vietnam SEAL member says,

SEALs typically used the Medium SEAL Support Craft (MSSC) or the LSSC. My dad's platoon, had one of each assigned. These boats were designed by SEALs and specially built for the Teams to use on clandestine riverine insertions at night of usually no more than 8 operators. Swift boats operated in groups as independent entities, and not as insertion/extraction platforms for small units. ...

Waterborne infiltrations done illegally into a "neutral" country if performed would be done by small groups of operators (less than 8), at night, in a small tributary, by a boat with a very shallow draft and jacuzzi, not propeller drive. To do otherwise, would be ridiculous. ...

He also points out that SEALs were so fanatic about security that for them to go outside special operations channels for transportation would have been "extremely unlikely to the point of absurdity."

The former SEAL also relates that he doesn't know of anyone "inserted anywhere by a Swift boat during Vietnam. It just wasn't done. It wasn't something SEALs wanted, and it wasn't something Swifties did." (hat tip: Hugh Hewitt)

All it would take to settle this is for a single SEAL, Green Beret or CIA operator from one of Kerry's missions to come forward and confirm Kerry's account. Or someone with first-hand, contemporaneous knowledge of them. Or a record of the orders sending a team into the country. But even Kerry's own crew members deny they were ever in Cambodia.

Kathleen Parker writes,

If Kerry didn't fabricate, he exaggerated. Or misspoke. Or got confused. Or something. But whatever the differences among versions, the story is part of a larger narrative that may matter more than the details.

And what matters is whether he can be trusted with the safety of the Republic. Nothing about the way Kerry has used this phony story to advance himself, or the way he and his organization have bungled addressing it now, lead me to answer the question affirmatively.

by Donald Sensing, 7:59 PM. Permalink |  

Will California courts cause the schism of the United Methodist Church?
California attorney Peter Sean Bradley represented St Luke's UMC in what promises to become truly a landmark case involving the denomination.

As background, there is a mandatory trust clause in the real-property deeds of all local United Methodist churches that states that the local church holds the deed in trust to the Annual Conference (equivalent to a diocese) to which the church belongs. Further, it states that the Conference has final authority on how the property - including the church building - may be used, and that is possession of the property is ever surrendered by the church, the Conference has the right to take title, deed and possession before anyone else.

As you can imagine, congregations of the UMC that wish to become independent find that this deed of trust is a brick wall.

But perhaps no longer, reports attorney Bradley.

The California Court of Appeals holds that an incorporated local church can terminate a trust in favor of the Methodist denomination.

What this means is that the "barrier to exit" - the forfeiture of the real and personal property that the members of the church have donated for generations - for churches that are unhappy with the leftward tilt of their denomination has been essentially vaporized in California (and in other states with statutory schemes similar to those in California). What it may mean, further, is that the traditional mainstream denominations that organize themselves in quasi-hiearchical or connectional polities will find it necessary to start paying attention to their moderate congregations, lest those congregations "vote with their feet."

Bradley explains that this decision may have "changed the dynamics of ecclesiastical relationships far beyond Fresno" and that he he expects, "that there will be an appeal to the California Supreme Court." You can read the decision here.

It needs be remembered that at this year's UMC General Conference, the supreme body of the denomination, a resolution was offered and voted on to bring the denomination to schism. The issue was, as Bradley explains in his post, the theological liberalism of the dominant officials and bishops of the Church. The resolution was overwhelmingly defeated, but its sponsors insisted they were not merely making a gesture.

If the California ruling is upheld and similar rulings are made elsewhere, the UMC may indeed splinter. Bradley thinks that would be a good thing.

I think it's good news for the coming split in the UMC and PCUSA; a moderate or conservative form of Methodism or Presbyterianism can survive, the liberal version will die on the vines.

I would much rather see the denomination whole and reformed, but there are lines drawn so starkly now that I don't think it can happen. Perhaps, though, the silent majority of UMC laypersons will now have some clout to insist their clergy pay attention to them.

by Donald Sensing, 7:47 PM. Permalink |  

This is a problem
This is a screen grab of an American M1A1 Abrams tank being destroyed by enemy action in Iraq today. The main gun barrel can barely be seen pointing toward the middle of the picture.



As you may be tired of reading me bring up, my eldest son entered the Marine Corps last month. He signed up to be an Abrams crewman. The Marines have two tank battatlions, plus a platoon assigned to each MEU (this from memory, don't hold me to it).

In large measure Stephen signed on for armor because of my counsel. I explained last April,

Like any father, I want my son to come through his military service alive and well. Where can he serve and do so? At the junior enlisted level, there are really no safe jobs any more, because any soldier can be assigned to a combat theater. And once there, all soldiers are liable to attack in some way. But paradoxically, there is a combat assignment that has been safer than most any other for many years: Abrams tank crewman. So I told my son to consider enlisting in the armor.

I am encouraged, though, that all the crewmen of the burning tank above are reported to have survived with minor injuries.

by Donald Sensing, 7:08 PM. Permalink |  

Churches and taxation
Some debate has come up recently (at a low level, tbs) about legal restrictions on political activities by churches. For example, I linked, without comment, to Paul Greenberg's recent op-ed in which he claimed,

Now a Baptist minister in little ol' Springdale, Ark., has been accused of crossing the line. How did he get into trouble? Well, it seems that over the years a vague and mischievous distinction has been drawn between politics and partisan politics in the law — that is, churches may address political issues but not explicitly endorse a party or its candidate if they want to keep their tax-exempt status.

La Shawn Barber writes that a "group of conservative Christians" is "sending spies into liberal churches to find out if they advocate a particular politician while preaching in the pulpit." And if they do, "the group has said it will report that church to the Internal Revenue Service, which could revoke their tax-exempt status." La Shawn inexplicably seems to think this is a good thing.

Both Greenberg and Barber misunderstand what the real situation is. They both think, erroneously, that the government's granting of tax-exempt status depends on preachers never being involved in partisan politics.

I became deeply involved in Tennessee's political process as part of a formally-organized United Methodist group campaigning to defeat a ballot measure allowing a state-sponsored lottery in 2002 (we failed). I did a lot of research about what the IRS code actually has to say about this issue. So here's the deal.

Partisan politics deals with the election of a particular candidate or slate of candidates for elective office. Issue politics deal with ballot matters, such as the lottery issue in Tennessee, that don't elect a candidate to an office.

A common belief is that the latter are permitted to churches and the former are forbidden. No so. Remember that the only issue here is a church's tax exempt status, and as far as the IRS is concerned, there is no difference between a church's partisan political activities and its issue activities.

The issue, you should be unsurprised to learn, is money, not speech (or not speech per se ). Overtly political organization are not tax-exempt. Charitable organizations can apply for and receive tax exemption under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. This exemption means the organization or church does not pay a corporate income tax on funds it earns or receives to do the charitable work. Likewise, it is much easier for churches to furnish donors with the certifications the IRS requires them to have in order to deduct their donations from their personal income taxes.

The reason a church's political activities are related to tax code is to prevent a purely political organization from chartering itself as a religious organization, gaining tax exemption, and then doing nothing but campaigning, perhaps dressed up with some religious language now and then. Think about it: if your business could describe itself as a "charitable organization" and so gain tax exemption, why wouldn't it do so?

If it were that simple, the DNC and the RNC and MicroSoft and General Motors would all call themselves churches or charities, file for 501(c)(3) and merrily oppress the working class even more!

Section 504 of the IRS code says that exempted organizations can lose their 501(c)(3) status by “carrying on propaganda” or attempting in influence legislation or elections. But the IRS has never described clearly (surprise) how it may decide that a church is doing so. The test seems to be (I say seems because with the IRS little is ever certain) how much money the exempted organization is spending on political activities. If a "substantial part" (the IRS's expression) of the organization's activities "consists of carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation," then tax-exempt-status can be either denied or revoked.

But - and there is always a "but" with the tax code - there is an expenditure ceiling for political activities in effect, below which political propagandizing is quite okay. Good luck trying to determine what the ceiling is.

The point is that while churches do give up some measure of political influence to accept tax exemption, it is not what people think. The IRS doesn't care how political a preacher's sermon is; its concern seems to be how much money the church spends on political activities rather than religious and charitable ones.

And again, the issue is also whether churches are "attempting to influence" legislation or other political matters (by extension).

Problem is, as Servant News explains,

The Internal Revenue Service enforces Code sections at its own discretion—sometimes doing nothing for decades, then slowly beginning to enforce them. From 1956 through the 1960’s, very few churches lost their 501(c)(3) status for any reason. A landmark case occurred in Christian Echoes National Ministry, Inc. v. United States, 470 F.2d 849 (10th Cir. 1972); cert. denied, 414 U.S. 864 (1973). This description comes from the IRS web site (www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/topic-p.pdf), an article entitled “Lobbying issues”:

Christian Echoes National Ministry published articles and produced radio and television broadcasts that urged recipients to become involved in politics and to write to their representatives in Congress to urge that they support prayer in public schools and oppose foreign aid. The organization argued that attempts to influence legislation would occur only if legislation were actually pending. The Tenth Circuit concluded that the regulation properly interpreted the statute, and that the organization was engaged in attempting to influence legislation, even if legislation was not pending.

There are Christian ministries that do the same things today, and, for whatever reason, have not had the 501(c)(3) status removed. Nevertheless, this case did establish that obtaining section 501(c)(3) status is a privilege for which churches trade their constitutional rights Quoting from the Court opinion of Christian Echoes v. United States:

In light of the fact that tax exemption is a privilege, a matter of grace rather than right, we hold that the limitations contained in section 501(c)(3) withholding exemption from nonprofit corporations do not deprive Christian Echoes of its constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of speech.

To show the arbitrariness of enforcement of section 501(c)(3), we include the following from the Charities and Non-Profits article from the IRS web site: www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=96099,00.html, [bolding ours]:

An IRC Section 501(c)(3) organization may not engage in carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities. Whether an organization has attempted to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities is determined based upon all relevant facts and circumstances. However, most IRC Section 501(c)(3) organizations may use Form 5768, Election/Revocation of Election by an Eligible Section 501(c)(3) Organization to Make Expenditures to Influence Legislation, to make an election under IRC Section 501(h) to be subject to an objectively measured expenditure test with respect to lobbying activities rather than the less precise “substantial activity” test.

Churches do not have the option to use form 5768 (which is a paperwork nightmare anyway), so they are evaluated by the “less precise ‘substantial activity test’” that is “based upon all relevant facts and circumstances”—in other words, the IRS has no openly available standard that it must follow and can therefore do whatever it wants. There may be a more codified procedure in the future, or there may not be. It may be more or less restrictive. The IRS has free reign, since all 501(c)(3) status churches have already agreed that no substantial part of their activity will be “carrying on propaganda” (propagating information) about anything.

Yeah, that's clear. My overall point, though, is that the IRS is full of auditors, not speech critics, and when its auditors want to determine what a church is "substantially" doing, it will follow the money trail.

There are nonpolitical things that can cause a church to lose its tax exemption. I knew of one church that leased land to a communications company for towers and relay stations. The IRS considered this - rightly - a commercial enterprise. Because the lease payments amounted to a majority of the church's income (it was a small church) the IRS said that the church had become a for-profit business, and yanked the exemption.

Our very large church in Virginia operated a bookstore inside the building. It didn't have to pay taxes on the profit because there was no exterior entrance to the bookstore. But if a church runs a bookstore with an exterior entrance, it has to pay taxes on the profit. That's how complex this issue can be.

Church's that want to become deeply involved in politics may do so, but they have to be willing to be taxed just like any political organization. That means the congregants' tithes won't be tax deductible on personal income tax returns, too. Guess how many churches want to be political so much they'll accept a 30-50 percent reduction in offerings? Not mine, buddy.

by Donald Sensing, 5:05 PM. Permalink |  

US troops to leave Germany?
More bad news for the weak German economy - a report that says President Bush will announce 100K American troops to leave Germany permanently. Let's hope so.

by Donald Sensing, 2:19 PM. Permalink |  

What would you sacrifice your child for?
The Sunday sermon

One evening during the Democratic National Convention, talk show host Bill O'Reilly interviewed far-left-wing film maker Michael Moore, whose latest movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, is two hours of anti-Bush venom. Heavily criticizing the Iraq war, Moore pointedly asked O'Reilly whether he would sacrifice his son to take Fallujah. The question took O'Reilly off guard, but he replied, reasonably enough, no. But, he said, he would sacrifice himself.

Moore and O'Reilly thrashed back and forth about the topic for a little while longer, and that was that.

The question was of more than casual interest to me, since my son had just left for active duty in the Marine Corps, and Ken and Patricia's grandson, Marine Sergeant Nicholas Waller, was then in Iraq.

I remember thinking at the time that Moore's question was pretty stupid, since the obvious answer to the question is what O'Reilly said: No. Remembering my own years of service, I discovered when Stephen went off to boot camp that it is much easier to go yourself than to watch your child go.

This week in the Washington Post, Jeff Bergner, former staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, addressed Moore's question. "The question," he wrote, "caught my attention because our youngest son had just returned from discussing post-college options with a Marine recruiter." I tell you, the Marines are everywhere!
Anyway, Bergner said, Moore's question was...

... a rhetorical device and not a substantial question at all. This is true in four aspects.

First, it has the high standard of "sacrifice." No normal parent is prepared to sacrifice his child for any reason or objective, including military objectives. The same could be said of any desirable objective. Would you, for example, sacrifice your child to expand health care to the uninsured? Or even ... to save the life of another of [your] children? It is hard to imagine any objective for which one would sacrifice one's child. ...

Second, the question is addressed to the wrong person. All [members of the armed forces] are adult men and women in their own right. And it is they, not their parents, who choose to serve in the armed forces. ...

Third, the objective of Fallujah's pacification is too narrowly stated. Would anyone [even] enlist for the specific purpose of keeping supply convoys moving into Baghdad? Or to open a road to a dusty town? Or to pacify a town or the occupants of a house? Or to be killed by friendly fire? Many young Americans have lost their lives in just such ways. But these are tasks incidental to the larger purpose of military service: protecting the interests of the United States. ...

Finally, the question ignores the issue of consequences. We all know that the full consequences of our decisions are impossible to predict. So are the consequences of our indecisions. If there are risks and sacrifices entailed by action, there are also risks and sacrifices entailed by inaction.

All of these things are true, but after reflecting on the issue for a little more than two weeks, I am nagged by a thought that Moore was on to something, he just didn't know it. Bergner says correctly that the free will and adult status of service members means that however supportive of their service a parent may be, no parent is sacrificing a child in Fallujah or anywhere else. And while not one of us sitting here today would make a positive decision to sacrifice, or even endanger, one of our children, the question and its answer probes more deeply than what any individual would commit or accept.

During America's four great wars of the twentieth century - world wars one and two, Korea and Vietnam - the United States enforced a draft, which coercively took young men, someone's sons every one, from their homes and sent them into combat, where many died.

As a nation, we have indeed decided on more than one occasion to sacrifice our children. The lives of our children are of ultimate value, yet we have offered them up over and over in war, always, however, for the preservation of ultimate worth, that, as Lincoln put it, government by, of and for the people should not vanish from the earth, or today even more basically, for the preservation of American lives against terrorist attack.

The lives of our children are so precious that it is impossible to imagine offering them up for anything except something of ultimate value, and even for ultimate value we accept only a possibility of sacrifice rather than certainty. Combat does not mean certain death: even at Iwo Jima most Marines survived.

But I have a heretical question: is this inability or unwillingness to sacrifice our children with certainty mean that we are morally deficient? Is there anything we treasure so absolutely that we would with certainty part with even our most beloved ones to preserve it?

That is, I think, the dilemma that confronted Abraham so many centuries ago.

Gen. 22:1-2: Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. 2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

It's impossible to imagine what must have gone through Abraham's mind when he understood what God was requiring of him, to say nothing of what this command tells us about the mind of God. Religious child sacrifice was done in the eastern Mediterranean lands in Abraham's day and before. There was a place outside Jerusalem called Gehenna, where pagan Canaanites had once burned their children in sacrifice to their god Molech. The Jews were so repulsed by this place and practice that when Jesus wanted to describe what hell was like, he simply called it Gehenna.

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” 8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.

10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

By the time we reach this point of the story, if we have any moral sensibility at all we are ready to curse both Abraham and God alike. The deed God requires of Abraham is more than merely brutal, it is also senseless. There is no reason God offers Abraham for the killing of his son, Isaac. He simply tells him to do it. God promised Abraham no reward. There is no hint that some great danger to Abraham's community will be staved off by Isaac's death. God's orders nothing but a religious execution of innocent Isaac, who is undeserving even of a bare-hand spanking.

For two years, until not long ago, the intifada of the Palestinians against Israelis was going full bore. One of its main weapons was the suicide bomber. Suicide bombing hasn't disappeared from the Middle East - it remains one of the favorite tactics of foreign terrorists fighting the Iraqi government - but the Palestinian twist was that many of the suicide bombers were still children, and most of them blew themselves up not merely with their parents' knowledge but their approval. One such bomber was a teenager named Sayeed Hotari, who strapped a belt of dynamite to his waist. He walked into a crowded Tel Aviv disco and blew himself up. Twenty-one Israelis, most of them teenagers, were killed."I feel no regret for my son's death," his father said. "I hope all Palestinian men will do the same."

I have the same question for Sayeed's father and for Abraham: Why did you not offer yourself to save your son? If Sayeed the elder says that all Palestinian men should do the same, why did he not put his life where his mouth was? If Abraham loved Isaac as God said he did, why did he not try to make a deal with God, even offer himself to save his son? He had bargained God out of destroying the righteous along with the unrighteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, so where were his negotiation skills when it came to saving his son? Perhaps God would have struck him dead for his impertinence, but would not Abraham have thought it was worth it? We would offer ourselves to save our children - think of mothers and fathers throwing themselves over their children in Florida last week when the roof started to rip away. But Abraham does nothing to save Isaac.

11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

There was a death on the mountain that day, but it turned out to be the lamb of God, not the son of Abraham. "Without the shedding of blood," says the book of Hebrews, "there is no forgiveness" of sins (9.23). Theologically, there seems to be a grim symmetry to salvation: to gain the perfect and ultimate value of eternal life with God requires the sacrifice of the most valuable thing of all, life itself.

What is it that you most desire in all the world, the one thing that if accomplished you would find fullest contentment possible? What would you sacrifice to make it happen? We actually face this question all the time, for good or ill. I had two friends who craved success in business so much that they knowingly sacrificed their marriages to achieve it. My wife desired my call to ministry to succeed so much that for several years she gave up new clothes, nice things, vacations, leisure time and quite a bit of my companionship in order to make it possible for me to attain my M.Div. degree.

But for what would you take a life, or give it? This question is asked of few of us, thankfully, but is dreaded by police officers and soldiers, for whom the question is not academic. And it was no academic question for God, faced with how to accomplish the salvation of creation.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" (John 3:16-17).

I knew a man a few years ago who lost his son, eight, to cancer. The man said that at first he knelt by his son's bed and prayed to God to heal his son. As his son worsened, the man said he finally started offering himself in prayer to God, asking God to take the cancer from his son and put it inside himself. I am sure that each mother or father here would pray the same thing.

We tend to think of sin judicially and see it dealt with in a kind of theological court, where we are found not guilty based on the pleading of Christ. But I think it is helpful also to see sin as a deep illness in the human being that we cannot cure ourselves. In the mind of God, healing this illness must be the accomplishment of ultimate value, the capstone of creation and indeed, the perfection of creation. So out of love for his children, God became born of woman and took upon himself all the spiritual deficiencies of the human race. The prophet Isaiah put it this way:

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isa 53:4-6).

The apostle Paul wrote in Second Corinthians,

... God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting human sins against them. ... God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor5:19, 21).

And the book of Hebrews offers this insight:

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death ... (Heb 2:14).

The tragedy of the human condition is that our salvation cost God the life of his Son, but the deep mystery of the divine nature is that in Christ's death, God sacrificed himself, for the Son and the Father are the one and the same.

So the questions, what would you sacrifice your child for, and what would you sacrifice yourself for, are questions that ask the same thing of God. And the answer is for you and me and all humanity.

by Donald Sensing, 7:47 AM. Permalink |