An Islamic Televangelist

From the Washington Post:

The rhythmic clapping began the minute Amr Khaled stepped through the door of the packed Crystal City ballroom. Surrounded by security guards, the Egyptian preacher had to weave his way through the crowd -- men both cleanshaven and bearded, women both fashionably coifed and dressed in conservative Islamic dress -- that had come from up and down the East Coast to hear him. Two massive screens projected his image to those in the back.

"My goal is that you leave happy," Khaled began softly, once he finally got to the lectern. "My goal is to fulfill the hadith of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, that says, 'Whoever puts joy in the hearts of the believers, his reward is not less than Paradise.' " The crowd ate it up. For the next 90 minutes, they laughed at his witticisms, smiled at his stories, nodded at his exhortations and clapped again -- spontaneously and often. But most of all, they listened intently.

The rock-star preacher in the designer suit, often called "the anti-bin Laden," had arrived in America with his new brand of upbeat, feel-good Islam...

In sermons, speeches and appearances throughout his first trip to the United States, in May -- he said he hopes to return often -- Khaled spoke consistently of compromise and coexistence. "My message is: Please be rightful representatives for your religion," he said in an interview. "Please show people here your good manners, your attitude of hard work, how you can succeed in this society, what you can add, your positive integration while maintaining pride in Islam -- so people know how really great this religion is."

The message resonates. Over the past decade, Khaled has emerged as the top-ranked televangelist in the Arab world, a New Age Islamic guru likened to tele-megastars Joel Osteen and Dr. Phil. His appearances are uploaded on YouTube. His Web site-- in 18 languages, including Danish, Turkish, Hebrew, English and Russian -- gets tens of millions of hits. This year, he ranked 62nd on Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people.

In programs broadcast worldwide on four satellite stations, Khaled has also revolutionized the way Islam is ministered and the focus of the faith's message. He tells folksy tales of the prophet adapted to modern life. In slangy Arabic, he preaches hard work, good works and good manners. Wearing a mustache but no beard, sometimes dressed in jeans instead of the trademark robe of Islam's clerics, he reaches out to the young and encourages women...

Additional 9/11 Rememberances

Dennis Kucinich's message on how we could honor the memory of the victims of 9/11/01:

Remembering 9/11

Let us on this day mourn for those who tragically lost their lives on 9/11. And let us commit that their lives not be lost in vain, but become the basis for a new America of peace and justice. America must regain the moral high ground in our efforts to recover from 9/11.

Let us not forget the world was with America in our sorrow on September 11, 2001. The world was prepared to unite with America in a cooperative effort to challenge terrorists who attempt to disrupt civil society. Instead, the Administration used 9/11 as an excuse to attack a nation that did not attack us. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, or with Al Qaeda's role in 9/11. Iraq did not have the intention or the capability of attacking the United States. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Yet the Administration deliberately and falsely conflated 9/11 with Iraq, with the cooperation of an unquestioning media.

As a result, nearly 4,000 of our brave soldiers have lost their lives, and tens of thousands have been permanently injured in combat in Iraq. The subsequent occupation has fueled the insurgency and will continue to result in more troop losses until the United States leaves. Also, nearly one million innocent Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of this war. This violence against an innocent people is a tragedy of immense proportions. It is also a violation of international law, and those who authored this war must be held accountable for their actions.

Americans will spend close to $2 trillion in Iraq by the time the costs of this war are totaled, but the longer term costs have included the undermining America's moral authority in the world, the separation of America from the nations and the peoples of the world, and the destruction of a domestic agenda which is being deferred while we borrow money from China to fight the war in Baghdad.

We need to call those who used 9/11 to take us into war against Iraq to an accounting under the U.S. Constitution, U.S. law, and international law. We must soon begin a period of truth and reconciliation in our own nation. We must have forums of open dialogue throughout the country where we can come together to remember who we were before 9/11, to share our personal narratives of the times when we felt most secure, most in love with our nation, most trustful of our democratic institutions. We must recover our capacity for civic action. We must reclaim our nation. The only way we can do that is to tell the truth.


Dennis Kucinich

Taking Credit for Gravity

From the New York Times editorial this morning:

The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would only bring American troops to the level that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity. The military does not have the troops to sustain these high levels without further weakening the overstretched Army and denying soldiers their 15 months of home leave before going back to war.

Petraeus tells us we need 6 more months. How many times have we heard that?

9/11

Another 9/11 anniversary and we are still at war with the wrong enemy in the wrong country, and still being mis-led by the wrong President.

Garrison Keillor takes note in his daily The Writer's Almanac of Bruce Springsteen's response to the 9/11 tragedy:

One of the people who read the "Portraits of Grief" was the singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen, and he noticed how many of the victims of the attacks had loved his music. So he started calling the spouses of the victims on the telephone to express his condolences. One of the people he called said, "I got through Joe's memorial and a good month and a half on that phone call."

Less than a year later Springsteen released his album The Rising (2002), with songs written in response to the attacks, many of the lyrics based on the stories people told him in those phone calls.

Agony

This article in today's New York Times and also the accompanying slide show are agonizing. Backwards drug policies and societal attitudes in some countries and with some religions about the necessity of suffering leave many in despair and, as the title of the article states, "Dying From Pain". I personally can't think of anything more sadistic than not help to alleviate the suffering of these people. It is a form of torture imposed by government policy and religion/society.

Newsletter Article this Week

School started for many children this week. This week for the first time in 14 years I am not making lunches for Meagan or Ryan as both are off to college. Mary Ann and I are now emptynesters. Another change in life: it brings moments of sadness but also a sense of satisfaction and anticipation for the next stage of our life journey.

Change happens. It is happening at Open Circle as well. Perhaps the biggest change this fall is the addition of a second worship service, beginning Wednesday evening September 19. This will be a very different service. It will be a service that features silence: an opportunity to sit, pray, and meditate. It will include meditative music and singing, readings from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, and pagan traditions, weekly communion (also using a variety of traditions), and candle-lighting during prayer time. I am very excited about providing this opportunity to meet a different experience and need.

Our Sunday morning worship will continue to offer us an opportunity to engage scripture and biblical interpretation from a progressive perspective, as well as messages on a variety of issues current and historical. But we have changes coming Sunday morning as well. A new expanded song book is in the works. Hallelujah! This year you can expect to see a greater variety of musical ensembles and dramas and more opportunity to find a way to participate in worship.

If you have taken the summer off or have been away for awhile, we hope to see you back soon. If you are looking for some quiet time to meditate, join us on Wednesday evenings. If you are looking to sing in an ensemble, act in a drama, think about issues and scriptures, get your children involved in an education program, join us for Sunday morning. If you are looking for a small group experience or an opportunity to serve check out the numerous opportunities in the newsletter.

It is one of the unique challenges of being a progressive Christian (or spiritual) community that we don't teach - and we know you don't believe - that anyone is a bad person or destined for eternal punishment if they don't go to church. So why go? Here's my short list: to be part of a progressive community that is working together to effect change in our world through its mission and service; to be connected for support in times of need; to be challenged to think and to grow spiritually in the presence of other spiritual seekers who have different ideas and perceptions of the world; to be part of a religious community that is openly welcoming of gays and lesbians - Open Circle is unique in the south metro; to be reminded week in and week out that no matter where we have been on our life journey Love is our deepest essence: we are Love and we are loved. I will never tell anyone that life isn't ok without church, but I know for a fact that life can be better with it. I hope to see you soon.

The New Generation of Homeless

This article in today's Star Tribune newspaper previews the next generation of homeless in America.

For struggling homeowners, help may be too little, too late

The Bush administration has proposed changes in loan rules, but many borrowers can't qualify.

By H.J. Cummins, Star Tribune

The federal government is 0-for-2 with Miguel Salazar for the past week, as he tries to hold on to his north Minneapolis home.

Salazar wouldn't qualify for the first of two Bush administration plans -- a mortgage refinancing program through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) -- partly because he's not in default on the house he bought four years ago for $185,000.

The administration's second idea -- it's asking companies that administer mortgages to work with struggling borrowers -- is something he already tried. But the loan service "told me they're not a refinance company, that there's nothing they can do, that they expect payments in full and if they don't get them they'll report me to the credit bureaus," Salazar said.

The two administration proposals take aim at a problem that is rocking this country's housing, credit and stock markets: subprime, or risky, home mortgages. Congress is also expected to propose its own variety of solutions, including possible changes to bankruptcy laws to protect home ownership.

About 2 million of these risky loans, valued at more than $500 billion, are adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), with interest rates that will adjust upward by the end of next year, according to industry estimates.

"Most people expect delinquencies and defaults to double next year from the current level," said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry newsletter.

"And for someone who's been put in a house he can't afford and owes more than the house is worth, it's hard to say there are any good options out there."

Help has to come soon for Salazar, 41, after one of his two mortgage payments went up nearly 2 percentage points from the original 7.5 percent, and increased his monthly payment from $960 to $1,600 in July. A full-time social services counselor for Hennepin County, he has already taken a second, part-time job as a bilingual surveyor for a local foundation. He just made his two August mortgage payments -- $1,950 in total -- but he doesn't know where he'll find the money to make September's.

"My credit record is good, but if this goes on it will stain it, and make it harder for me to do anything to fix this," said Salazar, who is married with three children. "It's too scary. I just wanted the American dream for my family."

In Minnesota, foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2006, to 11,207, according to a study by HousingLink, and in some parts of the metro area they are on pace to double again this year.

Plans, with problems?

President Bush's new program through the FHA, which traditionally has insured loans made by banks and mortgage brokers to qualifying lower-income and first-time buyers, will extend this insurance for homeowners who are in default and looking to refinance.

The program, dubbed FHASecure, adds five extra qualifying criteria, because of the loans' already precarious state. One involves proving that timely payments ended only because of a higher interest rate. Another requires the owner to have at least 3 percent equity in the property -- which would disqualify Salazar, even if he goes into default.

Another big stumbling block is the expensive prepayment penalties of as much as $15,000 on most subprime loans, upfront cash that these borrowers would have to pay to refinance, Cecala said.

The FHA estimates 80,000 U.S. home buyers will qualify for this new help, mostly families that would have taken FHA loans if lenders hadn't steered them to ARMs, agency spokesman Steve O'Halloran said.

With an average value of about $250,000, those mortgages total about $20 billion. That sounds like a lot, Cecala said, but Americans take out mortgages totaling that amount every 36 hours.

The Bush administration also called on loan-servicing companies, hired by the mortgage owners, to modify loan terms for borrowers who are struggling.

More than half of homeowners who go through foreclosure make the mistake of not trying to contact their lenders, said Tracy Morgan, vice president of the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, a nationwide housing counseling agency based in Bloomington. As many as one in five don't even know what kind of mortgage they have, Morgan said.

Others don't expect much success, though, because about three-fourths of subprime mortgages quickly leave the hands of the original lenders, sold in big bundles to anonymous groups of investors whose only interest is the promised profits.

In the old days, Cecala said, a banker could simply agree to cut a struggling borrower's mortgage from $200,000 to $180,000, reflecting a housing market downturn and resulting in affordable payments. But these days, a loan servicing company would have to pluck that $200,000 mortgage from its original bundle, pay investors the full $200,000, and then resell the $180,000 mortgage in a new bundle, absorbing the loss.

Salazar had no luck with his loan servicer, Americas Servicing Co., based in Des Moines.

It is a division of Wells Fargo that services loans, under contract to other lenders, according to Wells Fargo spokeswoman Peggy Gunn in Minneapolis.

Another bank that Salazar recently approached turned down his request to refinance, he said, after his house appraised as low as $178,000.

Salazar said he didn't know that his original loan had an adjustable interest rate until he got word in April that his payment would go up in July.

"You're just so excited about getting the house," he said. "If somebody did tell me, I had no clue what it was."

He hopes that the scale of the mortgage crisis will force government and business to come up with solutions.

"There are other people in this boat, too," he said. "What's going to happen to everyone?"

H.J. Cummins • 612-673-4671
H.J. Cummins • hcummins@startribune.com

Another Evangelical Meets His Maker

Thursday, September 06, 2007

American Christendom, RIP /by Diana Butler Bass/

The Rev. Dr. D. James Kennedy, the Christian Right leader Rolling Stone magazine described as “the most influential evangelical you’ve never heard of,” died yesterday in Florida of complications from a heart attack. His passing, only months after the death of Jerry Falwell, signals the generational shift of leadership now occurring in evangelical Christian circles.

Unlike most people, I had heard of D. James Kennedy. In the early 1970s, he created the popular program “Evangelism Explosion International” to encourage churchgoers to be more assertive in witnessing to their neighbors. My then-congregation in Scottsdale, Arizona, used the program to great success. Kennedy was a hero to us—helping us all to be grassroots Billy Grahams and to double the size of our small church.

In 1979, Kennedy’s interests took a turn. As a founding board member of Falwell’s Moral Majority, he increasingly directed his preaching toward politics. His opinions on individual issues did not differ from other Religious Right leaders. His strongest contribution to the movement was his passionate belief that America was founded as a Christian nation and developing media to carry that message across the globe. “Our job is to reclaim America for Christ,” he proclaimed, “whatever the cost.” His preaching, politics, and public ministry flowed from this central idea: to restore Christian America.

And it is at that very point—the idea of a Christian America—that evangelicalism, along with American Protestantism more generally, is changing.

Born in 1930, Kennedy lived in a world so distant from our own that it may well have been possible to believe in a Christian America. Churches stood on every public square; members of the clergy shaped public opinion on every issue; schoolchildren uttered Protestant prayers and read Protestant scriptures daily. Many people from Kennedy’s generation remember—or imagine they remember—a vanished Christian world, an ordered society with Protestant faith at the center. Much of the Religious Right’s energy derives from a desire to restore that world, or to “reclaim America for Christ.” To that end, Kennedy mixed evangelicalism with classical Reformed theology and a kind of soft Christian Reconstruction, creating the spiritual fuel for a right-wing political and media empire that meshed with the longings of a certain age.

While Kennedy’s generation was ascendant, new Christian voices began questioning such nostalgia. “Sometime between 1960 and 1980,” wrote Methodist leaders Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, “an old, inadequately conceived world ended, and a fresh, new world began.” They recounted “the end of Christendom” in Greenville, South Carolina (the home of Bob Jones University), when the local Fox Theater opened—for the first time ever—on a Sunday in 1963. “The gradual decline of the notion that the church needs some sort of surrounding ‘Christian’ culture to prop it up and mold its young, is not a death to lament,” they claimed. “It is an opportunity to celebrate.”

The contrast between Kennedy and Hauerwas and Willimon is dramatic. Kennedy believed in Christendom, an American Christian nation divinely designed as the leader of a global spiritual empire, and in creating a Christian politics toward that end. Hauerwas and Willimon believe that Christendom, the ideal of a Christian nation, was historically wrongheaded from the start. “The church,” they argue, “doesn’t have a social strategy; the church is a social strategy.”

The contrast defines the generational shift regarding attitudes toward Christendom. Older evangelical leaders, for the most part, want Christendom back. Emerging leaders, influenced by theologians such as Hauerwas and Willimon, are less interested in “reclaiming” Christendom and more interested in strengthening a confessing church based on the model of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s alternative community in Hitler’s Germany. For younger Christians—evangelicals and progressives alike—Kennedy’s nostalgic world bears no resemblance to their own. The vision of a post-Christendom church, a community of pilgrims joined together in practices of faith and justice, energizes their hope for the future. As the Christendom generation passes away, a post-Christendom faith will, most probably, take its place. That may take some time, but it will eventually recreate Christian political theology in America.

D. James Kennedy, RIP. And while we are at it, let us bury American Christendom, too.

Diana Butler Bass is the author of the award-winning Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (Harper One). She holds a Ph.D. from Duke University—where Hauerwas and Willimon taught—in American religious history.

Contribution

I've been doing some research to help decide content in the Stewardship packet for this fall. Coincidently this excerpt was today's Daily Buddist Wisdom quote. I think I'll use it!

From Beliefnet.com...

In this world, in order to enable society to develop, all its members have to assume responsibilites and make their contribution. If we do not make collective contributions then there will be no development.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
From "The Pocket Dalai Lama," edited by Mary Craig, 2002. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com.

The Go-It-Alone President

Jack Goldsmith was hired in October 2003 to head the Office of Legal Counsel, the division of the Justice Department that advises the president on the limits of executive power. Goldsmith, back teaching at Harvard, is a conservative legal scholar who largely agrees with the President's approach in the "war on terror." But at the Justice Department he found himself at odds with what he considered the constitutional excesses of the people making decisions about how to prosecute the war on terror, including his former friend John Yoo, author of the "torture memos" that narrowly defined torture, giving the Administration broad latitude to interrogate terrorism suspects. Goldsmith was also present for the now-famous hospital visit of then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales with Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Goldsmith has a new book out about his time in the White House, The Terror Presidency. He recently spoke with Jeffrey Rosen of the New York Times. Goldsmith's most insightful comment concerns the way, in his view, the President has weakened the power of the Presidency by relying on secret legal decisions to prosecute his war on terror instead of using the political power of the presidency to persuade and find allies in Congress and with the public. Goldsmith notes that his favorite war-time Presidents Lincoln and FDR were both lawyers who stretched the law during war-time but used their massive political skills to create a broad-base of support for their policies. Bush showed none of their political skills:

The Bush administration’s legalistic “go-it-alone approach,” Goldsmith suggests, is the antithesis of Lincoln and Roosevelt’s willingness to collaborate with Congress. Bush, he argues, ignored the truism that presidential power is the power to persuade. “The Bush administration has operated on an entirely different concept of power that relies on minimal deliberation, unilateral action and legalistic defense,” Goldsmith concludes in his book. “This approach largely eschews politics: the need to explain, to justify, to convince, to get people on board, to compromise.”

There are those who say that Bush has these skills and that he used them as Governor of Texas to lead in a bipartisan way. But never once in seven years as President have these skills been in evidence. And it is important to remember that it hasn't mattered whether Congress was controlled by Republicans or Democrats.

Prayer for Today--Peace in Troubled Times

This prayer adapted from today's Beliefnet Prayer for Today


Prayer for Peace in Troubled Times

Dear God, in these troubled times make your presence known to all the peoples around the world so that they may know peace. Replace the anger and violence in our hearts with joy and tranquility and help us to seek the good in everyone. Cause us all to realize that without love, we can do nothing that will bring us peace and joy. Amen.

Holier than Thou, NOT.

This is what happens when people/political parties try to set up a standard of moral/ethical behavior and run politically on this standard...

Turns out that in the end we are all just human in oh so many different ways!

I love the image of Reed pulling his hair out that comes to my mind when reading this article in the NYTimes today. Here's a brief quote:

It is enough to make a self-respecting Republican want to tear his hair out in frustration, especially as the party is trying to defend an unpopular war, contain the power of the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill and generate some enthusiasm among voters heading toward the presidential election in 2008.

“The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” said Mr. Reed, sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. “You can’t make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country.”

The Bigger They Are...

The harder they fall. It was disclosed today that Republican Idaho Senator Larry Craig was arrested in Minneapolis in June and charged with "inappropriate" behavior at MSP airport. he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge. It hasn't been a good day for the GOP. What does that G stand for anyway?

Anarchists to hold planning meeting

Isn't this an oxymoron? This is the headline in a Star Tribune article about plans for anarchist protest next year at the GOP convention in the Twin Cities.

A Prayer for Everyday Blessings

Dear God,
Open my eyes to the beauty of this day.
The yellow of an egg yolk in a blue bowl.
The scent of bacon frying in the pan.
The soft caress of the morning breeze.
The sound of children at play.
Awaken my senses.
Let me see, hear, and feel the beauty around me.
And be aware of the presence of the Great Artist in my everyday world.


- William Webber

Appropriate for many faiths
source: "Prayers for Every Need: Volume One: Celebration” (Guideposts)

Gonzales Gone

How bad is it inside the White House? In a matter of weeks the President loses his two most trusted friends and advisers, Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales. The two men who have done the most inside the administration - aside from the Vice President - to turn the entire federal government into a political arm of the Republican Party. Gonzales may be the most inept and dishonest Attorney General the country has ever known.

So now it will be interesting to see if the President chooses to nominate a replacement who will have to go through Senate confirmation, or if he will try and skirt the confirmation process in some way and ride out the rest of his term with an acting AG. And if he does nominate someone for confirmation it will be interesting to see if the Dems in the Senate show any spine and refuse to confirm anyone who is a pal or member of the President's political circle. The possible nomination of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff, for instant, should be dead in the water. We need an outside, independent, widely trusted nominee.

The President has just said that it is "sad that the good name of Alberto Gonzales has been dragged through the mud for political reasons." This man has completely mastered the skill of speaking bald-faced lies with a straight face.

Update: Via Talking Points Memo the best quote so far on the Gonzales legacy:

...from Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL): "Alberto Gonzales is the first Attorney General who thought the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth were three different things."

Michael Vick Finds Jesus

I am listening on CNN to (former?) Atlanta Falcons star quarterback Michael Vick apologize for his crime of organizing illegal dog-fighting and relate gambling operations. With sentencing yet to come and a possible long jail term facing him, he was appropriately contrite. And not surprisingly I suppose, he said that through this event he "found Jesus" and is going to turn his life over to God. "I think that is the right thing to do right now," he said. Right now?

Mind Over Mind

This very exciting article was in today's NYTimes about the possibility of using "realtime" MRIs to train your brain and treat a variety of ailments in a form of "selfhelp"...In the meantime, I'll keep working on developing a yoga and meditation practice...

Equally Speaking at the Human Rights Campaign

HRC has had two "big news days" in a row--today and yesterday.

If you'd like to listen too, here's the link:

Learning from Jesus

From Beliefnet.com today...

Ten Ways Jesus Showed Love
By Stephen Post

Jesus expressed his great love for people in ten dramatic ways. The gospels show us his immense compassion for the suffering, his attentive listening presence, and his energetic celebration of the lives around him. Explore this gallery to see how Jesus demonstrated agape--the Greek word for unconditional, self-sacrificing love--and what we can learn from him.

Adapted from Why Good Things Happen to Good People with permission of Broadway Books.