Stolen Gilgamesh Tablets Recovered at Bible Museum

Anyone concerned with antiquities, including ancient historians and museum curators in particular, are rightly concerned about the trade in stolen artifacts from the ancient world.  Sites from Egypt to Mesopotamia have been looted regularly in modern times to sell stolen goods to private collectors and major museums, and in ancient times to obtain gold and precious jewels   After the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government a number of museums in Iraq were looted and some valuable statuary was destroyed by Muslim fundamentalists.

That is why the US government has filed suit against the Hobby Lobby seeking to return stolen tablets containing part of the story of Gilgamesh to the Iraqi government.  [Read the interesting story here.]  The Hobby Lobby’s owners are donors to extreme right-wing causes and political action groups who established the Bible Museum in Washington, DC and have been involved in a number of prior instances of dealing with dealers of ill repute to obtain artifacts for their museum.

Is Trump Challenging Mother Nature To A Duel?

Thomas L Friedman’s brilliant article outlines a dangerous flaw in Trump’s reopen strategy:

I try to ground all my thoughts on how to deal with this pandemic in the logic of Mother Nature and the laws of natural systems. If you don’t — if instead you start your analysis with politics or ideology, or the fact that you’re just tired of being locked down so what the hell, let’s throw back a few with the gang at the local bar and the virus be damned — you’re actually challenging Mother Nature to a duel….

All that registers, all that she rewards, is one thing: adaptation. She doesn’t reward the richest or the strongest or the smartest of the species. She rewards the most adaptive. They get to pass along their DNA….

For all these reasons it’s clear, or should be, that the holy grail every nation needs to be looking for is what Dr. David Katz, a public health expert, argued from the beginning of this crisis: a “sustainable strategy of total harm minimization.” That means a strategy that would save as many lives and as many livelihoods as possible at the same time….

We need to reopen and we need to adapt, but in ways that honor Mother Nature’s logic, not in ways that court a second wave — not in ways that challenge Mother Nature to a duel. That is not smart. Because she hasn’t lost a duel in 4.5 billion years.

Read the whole article in The New York Times [here]

Is Florida Manipulating Covid-19 Data?

CNN reported today that Florida and Georgia, both Republican-controlled states that seem eager to do Trump’s bidding by reopening their states to business before the data indicates that Covid-19 is sufficiently contained, may be manipulating their data to conceal some information from the public.  If true, and reports show that is likely, it is endangering the public by making it seem safer to open than it actually is. [see the report here.]

The most serious claim is that the manager of Florida’s well-respected Covid-19 data reporting website was removed from her job and apparently terminated for insubordination because she refused to change data that conflicted with Governor Ron DeSantis’ positive claims that the State was ready to fully reopen.  [See the story here.]  DeSantis is an altar boy and water carrier for Trump who has shown he is willing to support Trump’s message that the economy should be opened without regard to its consequences to help his reelection campaign.

Opening Up Safely

After being confined to our homes for so long as our economy suffered, our personal finances were devastated, our hopes for graduation and our entry to the world of work were dashed,  our health care workers and our elderly grandparents and occasionally our younger friends were killed, we are now beginning to experience the freedom of leaving our homes and venturing out again into the world of work and fun.  Let us not forget the lessons learned with such patience and endurance and hardship that our safety and the safety of our friends, neighbors and relatives require us to follow diligently the protocols for safety—to wear a mask, wash our hands, keep our hands away from our face, and stay at least six feet away from others. [AGB]

Evangelical Betrayal of Christianity

In the 1940s and 50s when I was a young man growing up in Southern Baptist churches in Washington DC and later in the Northern Virginia suburbs I was heavily immersed in the religious culture that I later knew as Evangelical Christianity. At that time it was generally conservative in tone, non-confrontational and non-political. Christians were expected to live a “Christian life”--and while what that meant was the subject of Sunday School lessons and sermons, there was an ideal held up of a Christian life that involved personal integrity, responsibility for one’s actions, love as the guide to interpersonal relations (which as a practical matter meant understanding our duty to “love” our “neighbor” broadly defined to include the stranger and even our enemy), and following Jesus’ imperative to his followers to house and feed the homeless, the poor and the hungry; to comfort the lonely and the stranger among us; to seek peace, and to do no harm. While Evangelicals were occasionally puritanical and self-righteous, typically they were not arrogant—they merely affirmed that being a Christian was a serious matter that involved being “called” out of the world to live life differently and to model to the world a life that reflected the teachings of Jesus.

I was aware that there were other Christians (both Protestant and Catholic) that had quite different beliefs than those taught in our Baptist tradition but they were often dismissed as Liberals or Modernists who were more inclined to “compromise” fundamental Christian traditions and beliefs in an attempt to modernize Christianity to conform to contemporary culture and consequently to make it relevant rather than to keep separate from the world.

That separation from the world and the unwillingness to compromise essential Christian values had two rather important corollaries: (a) Church (Religion) and State (Politics) were separate and distinct realms built into our nation’s Constitution that incidentally provided beneficial mutual benefits, namely that there was a wall between Church and State such that religion would not interfere with the government and government would not interfere with the churches; and (b) our separateness from the world was a source of pride that implied no interest in compelling those who did not share our beliefs or attitudes to live as we did or to conform their conduct to our standards and values.*  

Something dramatic and unfortunate happened to Evangelicals in subsequent years. Between the “then” and the “now” Evangelical leaders [such as Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, et al.] seem to have lost their way in the thickets of power, influence and money. They built megachurches and religious schools into empires; their megaministers built mansions and drove fancy cars, and they became wealthy and socially prominent. Increasingly enamored by power and money, they found the traditional teachings of Jesus inconvenient and ignored them or reinterpreted them in deference to the requirements of politics. They stood the Constitutional principle of separation of Church and State on its head in order to get subsidies from the public treasury for their religious entities, to limit the ability of civil authorities to enforce laws prohibiting discrimination in public services, and to make certain conduct unlawful on specious religious grounds (i.e., abortion, gay marriage).

Evangelicals found common cause with the Republican Party and, that unholy alliance of convenience consummated, both the Evangelical and the Republican leadership used each other to their mutual advantage. With the emergence of Donald Trump as a political force Evangelical leaders dropped any pretense that Christian or moral values played any significant role in their agenda. I have been shocked and surprised at the ease with which Christian values and norms have been compromised and surrendered to the interests of the wealthy and the corporations.

When questioned about their capitulation, Evangelicals have an answer, however unsatisfying and shocking in the enormity and depravity of its moral implications—they say it is all about political power, specifically they are supporting Donald Trump and the Republicans to guarantee the appointment of right-wing judges to the Federal judiciary including the Supreme Court. Their objective is to pack the Federal courts with judges who will support a theocratic approach to governance: judges who will support prayer and religious teaching in the schools; who will overturn Roe v Wade; who believe the President is above the law; who will permit the dismantling of governmental regulations that protect our environment, our health and safety, our food and our medicine; who will support corporations and property rights over the rights of individual citizens; who will overturn civil rights and anti-discrimination laws; and who will block any laws that attempt to reasonably regulate firearms.

Why they are betraying Christianity is not particularly important The political end does not justify the betrayal implicated by the means, particularly when both the ends and the means are essentially a betrayal of the message and the values of Jesus. There are Evangelicals who know that and are frustrated by their leaders.

Over the past several months I have been struggling with how to approach this discussion of the radical betrayal of Christianity by Evangelicals. Earlier this week I sat down and began to write. After several aborted efforts I felt I needed a break and while sitting on my patio drinking my third cup of coffee I turned to the New York Times on my laptop and very quickly one article grabbed my attention. For the next hour I was captivated by the many thoughtful voices of young Evangelicals (and some not so young) who spoke with passion and anguish about their struggle between what was important in their understanding of the teachings of Jesus in contrast to what they were hearing from their Trump-supporting parents and church leaders that seemed contrary to what they had been taught.

The frustration and the disappointment is evident in the words of one young Roman Catholic:

I have a cousin who is gay. She is a beautiful, loving, kind person. I don't understand how family members can say that they love her, yet still vote to deny her the right to marry the person she loves. I don't understand how a person can be pro-life, but be okay with taking babies away from their mothers at the border. I don't understand how you can strive to be Christ-like, yet treat immigrants and poor people as less than human. Or not want people to have access to doctors. Or not want children to have free lunches. I don't understand how you can live the values espoused in the bible, and vote for a man who lies, cheats, who never goes to church, who's never asked God for forgiveness. Donald Trump is the epitome of everything Jesus preached against.

That says it all quite succinctly.

____________  

*Regardless, it was our duty as citizens of society both to teach and to model Christian values and standards of conduct to the society at large.

The Loss of our Democracy

I have tried to be cautious and careful in my writing and I am not inclined toward the dramatic—but for the first time in my 82 years I am genuinely fearful about the upcoming election and what it could mean for our democracy.  I do not think it is an exaggeration to suggest that this upcoming mid-term election is critical and that, if the opposition to Donald Trump is not successful in gaining control of the Congress, the survival of democracy and democratic values is in serious danger and we will face the political reality that fascism has emerged as a serious threat that has gained more than a foothold in our once great nation.

If you doubt that, go back and read anew the history of Europe in the 1930s—the rise of fascism in Germany under Adolf Hitler and in Italy under Benito Mussolini; the call for national unity in the face of amorphous threats; the increasingly totalitarian one-party rule, suppressing voices of the opposition party, attacking or intimidating newspapers that did not support the ruling party; intimidation through threats and violence; demonizing opponents and the leaders of the opposition party as essentially evil; preparations for war and increased armaments and military spending; uncritical loyalty and devotion to the leader; repeated public lying by the leader under the premise that the lie that dominates the public discussion will become true for the masses by repetition; control of the message by the leader and his propaganda media that drowned out or sabotaged any competing voices; racism and fear of non-whites and those who are different in culture or language who will overwhelm us and pose a threat to our culture and traditions; the use of militarized police and chain link and barb-wire enclosures for holding those who must be forcibly removed from our nation.  And so it goes.

The legitimate press (disparagingly called “Fake News” by Trump and his fawning followers) has been frustrated by relentless attacks on press freedom and personal (often vicious) attacks on journalists and the threats that they pose both to democratic values and to a free and independent press.  Those of us who care for democratic values, including the press, have been slow to call out Trump and the leaders of the Republican Party, for their complicity in undermining democracy and the fundamental principles of our nation.  Until now.

Yesterday Jennifer Rubin, an opinion writer in the Washington Post quoted[1] approvingly words[2] from Yascha Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard University, to the effect that

In all democracies, politicians occasionally lie to cover up scandals or exaggerate their legislative accomplishments. In the United States, the rise of the right-wing news media in recent decades has tempted politicians to play to their own supporters without worrying whether their rhetoric is inflammatory or fair. But the construction of an alternate reality that obviates the very possibility of conducting politics on the basis of truth is a novelty in this country. And it is increasingly becoming obvious that it will serve a clear purpose: to prepare the ground for egregious violations of basic democratic norms.

In other words, lying creates an alternative reality that lays the groundwork in which fascism thrives.

This upcoming election is nothing less than a referendum on fascism in the United States.  Those who do not vote, or who vote for Republican candidates, whether or not they realize it, become complicit in the big lie, the potential loss of our democracy, and the move toward fascism.

---

[1] “What if Democrats are the only democrats?”  October 24, 2018

[2] “The Real Coup Plot is Trump’s, New York Times, December 20, 2017

The Children Be Damned

Why did you send your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,  

Your wretched refuse, your homeless, from your shore 

Crossing our border from far across the sea? 

  

We do not want them here. 

Go away, 

We have shut the door. 

If you sneak in 

We will take your children away from you, 

We will cage them in conditions that  

even murderers do not endure. 

We will not keep track of where we send them. 

We will not facilitate your contact with them. 

We do not care if they are scared and lonely. 

We do not care if parents are worried. 

We do not care if the children are lost in the ICE bureaucracy. 

We are the US government. 

We are turning off the lamp. 

  

 [with deference to Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” 1883] 

Actual Dr. Seuss cartoon from 1941.  Used under "fair use" provision of copyright law.