I hope this of interest. I have an uncle in Georgia who is a Republican, anti-choice, born-again type. Who (my mother informs me) wants to buy a Hummer. In short, a Bush voter. He forwards me these emails, and honestly, I normally delete anything he sends w/o opening it. But not the other night. I was in a mood, I guess. (I'm sure you all know the mood!)
So I open the thing and in a big oversized colorful font is this message:
"This Pastor has guts!!
Thought you might enjoy this interesting prayer given in Kansas at the opening session of their Senate. It seems prayer still upsets some people.
When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but this is what they heard:
"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.
We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and call it Pluralism.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem.
We have abused power and called it politics.
We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Amen!"
The response was immediate. A number of legislators walked out during the prayer in protest. In 6 short weeks, Central Christian Church, where Rev. Wright is pastor, logged more than 5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls responding negatively. The church is now receiving international requests for copies of this prayer from India, Africa and Korea. Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, "The Rest of the Story," and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired. With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called "one nation under God." If possible, please pass this prayer on to your friends. "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for everything." Think about this: If you forward this prayer to everyone on your e-mail list, in less than 30 days it would be heard by the world."
UGH!
So this was my response:
"Uncle Doug,
Thank you for sharing this with me. Perhaps like you, I have long been aware that we have sharp disagreements on many issues. However, unlike you, I have up till now chosen not force my views on you. But no longer:
"We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and call it Pluralism."
You call it "the absolute truth of your word". I call it your beliefs. They are not my beliefs. They are not the beliefs of vast swaths of humanity. It absolutely your right to believe whatever you care to, but to think for one second that your faith has any more claim to TRUTH than other faiths-- just as ancient, just as divinely inspired, and believed as passionately by just as many (or more) millions is not only arrogant as hell, but ludicrous too. Climb up outside your limited perspective, and look down on earth and you may see. In essence, how dare you? So yes, call it "pluralism". I call it having respect for the fact that we are all just limited human beings, and that our sacred texts (Bible, Koran, Torah, Sutras, etc.) are all the same thing- glimpses of Truth presented in a way our very limited human minds can grasp and use. I believe anyone who thinks they have a monopoly on truth is mind-bogglingly pompous and presumptuous and arrogant, and ultimately, pretty sad.
"We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery."
This is true. Don't forget 'the stupid' too.
"We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare."
This is partly true, but ignores the fact that it is and always has been far from a level playing field, and you cannot begin to fathom what it would be like to be an innocent child born into extreme poverty and ignorance and to never have a chance. Welfare has saved many lives, and lifted many up, and given many a chance to move out of poverty. However, the system was rife with abuse, needed reform, and got it. It is a work in progress.
"We have killed our unborn and called it choice."
I happen to be passionately devotedly pro-choice. This is an issue where good people will have to agree to disagree. If you wish to continue to have a relationship with me, you will leave this issue alone. But since you brought it up, I will say this: If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. I guarantee it. I think abortion is generally an unnecessary tragedy, and more resources should be devoted to preventing it (better sex education and access to contraception for a start) but it is absolutely vital that it remain legal, safe and available, and this is a belief I am literally willing to fight for. I understand the anti-choice point of view. The difference is that I am not telling them what to do with their bodies.
"We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable."
Obviously true. Can we say "hypocrisy"?
"We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem."
Absolutely true! Hey, we agree on few things!
"We have abused power and called it politics."
Very true. I'm so glad you brought it up! The absolutely PRIMO A #1 example is our current administration, and there are literally dozens (hundreds?) of appalling examples. For a start, the utterly unjustified war in Iraq, the corporate tax breaks, and unlimited greed and cronyism, out of control pollution and environmental degradation in the name of "wise use", the general exploitation and repression and abuse of people in the name of further enriching his obscenely wealthy friends, including, by the way, the Saudi royal family and the Bin Ladens. (Osama Bin Laden and 15 of the 19 highjackers were all Saudi's, but as Saudi Arabia owns about 7% of America, and has all the oil we are so desperately addicted to, we give them a free pass on 9/11 and instead go after Iraq, which had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL to do with it. In fact it was a regime hated by Al Qaeda for being so secular, but for which Bush already had plans to invade BEFORE 9/11 to avenge Daddy and secure oil fields and, oh, sure, why not, kill a whole bunch totally innocent Muslims, because well, they are all the same aren't they? At least a majority of Americans are ignorant enough to think so.) But back to examples of Bush abusing power...
· Awarded a multibillion-dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton--a company that still pays Vice President Cheney hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred compensation each year (Cheney also has Halliburton stock options). The company then repeatedly overcharged the military for services, accepted kickbacks from subcontractors and served troops dirty food.
· Relentlessly pushed an energy bill containing $23.5 billion in corporate tax breaks, much of which would have benefited major campaign contributors.
· Installed as top officials more than 100 former lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee.
· Let disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay--a close friend of President Bush--help write its energy policy.
· Top officials accepted $127,600 in jewelry and other presents from the Saudi royal family in 2003, including diamond-and-sapphire jewelry valued at $95,500 for First Lady Laura Bush.
· Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge awarded lucrative contracts to several companies in which he is an investor, including Microsoft, GE, Sprint, Pfizer and Oracle.
· Used images of firefighters carrying flag-draped coffins through the rubble of the World Trade Center to score political points in a campaign advertisement.
· Gave Accenture a multibillion-dollar border control contract even though the company moved its operations to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.
· In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to pay down the national debt to a historically low level. As of September 30, the national debt stood at $7,379,052,696,330.32, a record high.
· As major corporate scandals rocked the nation's economy, reduced the enforcement of corporate tax law--conducting fewer audits, imposing fewer penalties, pursuing fewer prosecutions and making virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes.
· In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to protect the Social Security surplus. As President, he spent all of it.
· Under funded the No Child Left Behind Act by $9.4 billion.
· In 2000, candidate George W. Bush promised to increase the maximum federal scholarship, or Pell Grant, by 50 percent. Instead, each year he has been in office he has frozen or cut the maximum scholarship amount.
· The nonpartisan GAO concluded the Bush Administration created illegal, covert propaganda--in the form of fake news reports--to promote its industry-backed Medicare bill.
· Created a prescription drug card for Medicare that locks seniors into one card for up to a year but allows the corporations offering the cards to change their prices once a week.
· Gutted clean-air standards for aging power plants, resulting in at least 20,000 premature deaths each year.
· Created a massive tax loophole for SUVs--allowing, for example, the write-off of the entire cost of a new Hummer.
· Said that even though the weed killer atrazine was seeping into water supplies--creating, among other bizarre creatures, hermaphroditic frogs--there was no reason to regulate it.
· Broke his campaign promise to end the maintenance backlog at national parks. He has provided just 7 percent of the funds needed, according to National Park Service estimates.
· Refuses to release twenty-seven pages of a Congressional report that reportedly detail the Saudi Arabian government's connections to the 9/11 hijackers.
· Spent millions of dollars and defied numerous court orders to conceal from the public who participated in Vice President Cheney's 2001 energy task force.
"We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition."
True, I guess. Most folks don't seem to understand what is really important in life--loving and helping one another, enjoying the simple pleasures, and striving to improve our minds and actions.
"We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression."
True. But guess what? You can turn off the TV and radio. I have. And if enough people did, it would no longer be profitable for them to air that garbage. You want a country where the air is not polluted with profanity and pornography? Where there is not this distasteful "freedom of expression"? Where very godly religious men are in charge, and control these things for everyone? Then move to Saudi Arabia.
You know what is amazing to me? Fundamentalist "Christians" have so much in common with Islamic fundamentalists, and they cannot see it: The same narrow minded pompous presumption to have a monopoly on TRUTH. The same perverted need to worry about what is going on in other people's bedrooms. The same myopic drive to ignore the REAL (difficult) message of their religion's core teachings, which is to love each other (everyone, not just the people who look like them), and to feed and clothe the poor, etc... And to look in the mirror a little more, and point fingers a lot less.
"We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment."
Which values? 'Might makes right'? The "time honored values" of our forefathers included enslaving fellow human beings, oppressing and devaluing women, and limiting democracy to white male property owners, among others. However, we have often been guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The freedom and democracy of our forefathers may have been flawed and incomplete, but it was the seed of what it has now become, and for that it deserves respect.
I am so tired of conservatives acting like they have some sort of monopoly on "values". My values include:
· Safeguarding the cleanliness of the natural environment (a public trust) so that the right of all Americans to breathe clean air and drink clean water trumps the right of industry to trim it's bottom line by polluting and exploiting.
· Respecting the right of innocent Iraqis to not be massacred, and in general respecting the right of sovereign nations to not be invaded, occupied, and slaughtered on false pretenses and hidden greedy reasons.
· Respecting the right of all people to find love and form family with whom they choose, and recognizing that we STRENGTHEN our communities and families when we do so.
· Harnessing the power of the government to ensure that all citizens have access to justice, civil rights, and basic food, shelter and health care. To provide to them some semblance of a defense against the out-of-control greed and rapaciousness of our current corporate-military-industrial complex (for which George W. Bush is the biggest friend they have EVER had), which is gobbling the resources of this planet, trashing the environment, and exploiting and killing the people, all in the name of capitalism and profit. [I do believe in capitalism, but only when it is truly a free market, one that recognizes the triple bottom line of profit, people (communities), and resources (environment), and values them all evenly.]
I love you because you are family. And I am sorry if my anger is showing. I am still reeling with sadness and disappointment and rage at the tragic result of this election, so I received your email at a bad time. I think perhaps it would be best if you please stopped sending me these emails.
Love,
Amy"
So I sent that yesterday. Not sure whether to expect a reply. But damn it felt good to send it!
Please forgive the lack of clear formatting. It mostly disappeared when I copied and pasted this from the Word doc I saved it as. I am (obviously) not computer savvy...