Revisionists

I once again allowed myself to get into a fight on someone's blog. It began with my poorly put attempt to shed some light on life in the US, where of those who are most often publicly proclaiming their faith on Jesus, also say some outrageous things about rape, marriage equality, school prayer, and the murders in Newtown. The blog's owner was very critical of our Presiding Bishop for not mentioning Jesus often enough by name in her Advent and Christmas messages to the members of the Episcopal Church. (I thought that we knew who she meant by the Prince of Peace and whose birth we are celebrating!)

Inevitably the thread moved far away from the content of the PB's message to the "apostate" positions some Episcopalians have taken on abortion and marriage equality, as well, somewhat strangely, to an assertion about I "think of evangelicals." Of course, it is clear to anyone who reads The Thin Tradition that I disagree with many positions that evangelicals have taken in recent years. But I also disagree with some positions that liberals have taken and those disagreements do not have much to do with what I think about brothers and sisters who identify themselves as progressive or evangelical.

In thinking about the comments about marriage equality that one evangelical Anglican cleric posted on the blog, I wonder how evangelicals will respond to the growing acceptance in this country of committed same-sex unions. As more and more young people raised in evangelical congregations have LGBT friends, how will they deal with the possible conflict between what they have been taught and what they see when these friends fall in love? Will the quality of the love they see, even the holiness of that love, encourage them to rethink the position they were taught was the only truly Christian one? Will they become, as I have become, revisionists, having convictions that are different from those they once held? I hope so.

Where Are the Poor?

As we move closer to next month's election, I have been struck by the fact that there has been little mention in the campaign of the needs of those among us who are poor. We have heard a great deal about the difficulties of the middle class during the Great Recession, but we have heard little about those in our country who are poor and getting poorer.

It makes sense for campaigns to focus there attention on middle class Americans, still a larger part of the population than the poor, but is it right? If government makes things better for middle class Americans, will the benefits trickle down? Families struggling to pay the mortgage certainly could use help, but what about the families that need a decent place to live and can only dream about one day having a mortgage?

For years I had the following quote from President Roosevelt tacked on the bulletin board in my office.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Since the Great Depression, we have made the kind of progress of which FDR spoke. There are fewer older Americans living in poverty, chiefly because of Social Security and Medicare. Poor children are more likely to be healthy, chiefly because of Medicaid and nutritional programs like WIC and Food Stamps. Poor families have better access to adequate housing because of programs like Section 8. But our work isn't done and in the wake of the Great Recession the very programs that have helped us make this progress are being threatened with budget cuts.

What is particularly sad about the proposals to make cuts in the funding of these programs is that they are short-sighted. Money spent on early child health care and nutrition saves us money in the future. These expenditures are investments which have been shown to provide good returns. Like the infrastructure investments that we need to make, these investments in poor children and their families are investments in the kind of America that we want.

When I vote next month, I will vote hoping that the people we elect will continue to make these important investments, investments in a better future for all Americans.

Apology Tour

Several Kenyans are suing the United Kingdom, claiming that they were tortured by British soldiers during the Mau Mau uprising. Although I had long assumed, as a confirmed Anglophile, that such atrocities could not have occurred in British colonies, I think the claims of torture are most likely true.

Reading about the case got me thinking about the GOP claim that the President went around the world apologizing for US actions in the past. Although the "apology tour" charge has been given PolitiFact's Pants on Fire rating, what is so wrong about apologizing for things our government has done wrong? What is wrong with a bit of repentance?

Dear Mr. Romney

Thank you for reminding me about my dependency upon the government. I had not realized how dependent I had been until your recent comments about the 47% were reported. I guess my dependency started very early when, because my mother couldn't afford private schools, I had to depend upon the government for my education from kindergarten through high school. I tried to be self-reliant and attended a small private college, but dropped out half through the first year. Then I was back into dependency, attending a state university. When I took a year off in the middle of college, I was still dependent on the government as I worked in Washington and Wilmington, Delaware in the VISTA program. I was able to escape from government dependency when I spent three years at the Episcopal Divinity School and remain free of it for about fifteen years, although I may not have been as free as I thought as my salary was paid by donations from church members who got to take the charitable giving tax deduction and I lived in church-owned housing which was exempt from property tax. When we bought a house and got the federal subsidy in the mortgage interest tax deduction, my level of level of dependency increased and it got worse when I went to work for county government in Buffalo, New York. I managed to break free again for a decade, but then I retired and became dependent upon Social Security and Medicare.

As dependent as I have been, I do pay taxes. Not only the payroll taxes that even the working poor pay, but also federal and state income taxes. That, of course, means that I am supporting the crippling dependency of other Americans, of those who depend upon government for public schools, for Medicare and Medicaid, for school lunch programs, for fire and police departments, for public transportation, and even for clean air and water. Maybe that means that we are all dependent on government "of the people, by the people, for the people" for so much that is important to us. Maybe depending upon others is not the evil that you seem to think it is. Maybe, if you become our President, you will learn how to be President not only for the privileged and independent Americans, but for all of us, dependent or not.

Hard Choices

One of the messages that has come from this week's GOP Convention is that Republicans are willing to make hard choices while Democrats aren't.

I find that puzzling as there has been little evidence that Republicans in Congress have been willing to make hard choices about the federal budget. Locked into a no new taxes ideology, many in the GOP are unwilling to see that one of the hard choices that must be made is to raise taxes. Budget cuts will not be enough to eliminate the deficit, and the trickle down theory that low tax rates for the rich will magically revive the economy and raise federal revenues is just a theory. What does work is making sure that middle and low income households have enough money to spend. Increased demand for goods and services creates jobs. A million dollars in the wallet of one person does not create as much demand as one thousand dollars in the wallets of one thousand working people.