Modern Trends in Christianity

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Religious historians, theologians and ministers have been unusually busy in the past couple of years. Religious books, magazine articles, television interviews, and sermons have investigated Jesus in terms of what historians have recently learned about the time of Jesus. New insights have been gained about the cultural conflict between the Romans and the Israelites, the class system that was in place in Israel at the time of Jesus – in other words, what was society like during the time of the ministry of Jesus and what role did he play as a man living in this society?

Religious writers also have focused on the failure of modern Christians to adhere to the mission Jesus commands of us. The targets of these writers are the selective policies of the religious right and Christian believers generally; there is heightened interest in this cultural phenomenon because American culture has an increasingly harsh class system just as Jesus experienced during his ministry. Further, while not a military occupation, the nation is run by the wealthy rather than the citizens – again, something that confronted Jesus during his life and ministry. Finally, there is an apocalyptic undertone in the United States and other countries as social, political, religious and global experiences approach a point of chaos.

It is the growing similarity between the times of Jesus and our times today that provides energy for this new wave of religious introspection. Jesus and his message have been revisited many times in history. The power of Jesus’ life and faith must be reinterpreted to relate to the changes that occur in society. Otherwise, his divine insights lose their meaning.

A good example among writers examining the role of Jesus historically is ‘Zealot,’ by Reza Aslan, a respected religious writer.  This book, just published, has received good reviews. In his book, Aslan highlights the aspect of Jesus as an activist who fought the abuses of the Romans and the rigid, self-righteous class system that existed among the Jews themselves. Large numbers of the population were despised, oppressed, and powerless. Jesus behaved as a zealot, fighting the injustices openly and without regard for his own safety.

Aslan’s book clarifies the context of the role Jesus played in a time of chaos. Knowing that Jesus was zealous and defending the discarded people of Israel speaks to us today with more substance and a better understanding of the Gospel message. For example, in those passages of the Gospels where the Pharisees visit Jesus, these are not intellectual discussions. They are confrontations by Judean authorities who did not approve of his work and his belief in love as the primary force among human beings. This belief in love disregarded the religious, political and military rule that controlled Israel at that time. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” evokes more pathos for Jesus and the literal, human meaning of his words when we understand his visible and outspoken rebellion against an unfair society. As Jesus grew more popular, his life was increasingly at risk.

We can relate to this role in modern times. To mention a few: Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela. What these names have in common with Jesus (though there is no intent to consider them equal to Jesus) is that they were zealots fighting against injustice for the displaced and oppressed people of their times.

The added disregard for the Jewish view of history, God, and the Old Testament rule fueled the flames of the authorities even more. Jesus brought to Earth a loving God, who did not judge, who did not control social history, and who bestowed divine importance equally on every human being – the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

The next post will discuss the focus on the forgotten message of the Gospels by today’s political and social environment.

Ancient Mariner

Our Duty to Know

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The mariner reported recently that only 42 percent of people polled knew about the existence of ObamaCare (Health Care Reform and The Affordable Care Act). One would think with the saturation of news stations, newspapers, magazines, and the political party battles, the percentage would be a lot higher. A citizen must cast the log from their own eye before they cast the forest out of the eye of Congress.

Our culture is changing ever faster in every respect. Money flies across the internet within seconds; within a decade plastic cards will eliminate paper money as the common format for financial transactions. Technology alters our daily habits. One simple example is the telephone. The mariner’s parents had one telephone from 1949 to 1963 then had to update their model when tone dialing replaced the clicking noises of the round dial telephone. In recent years, the telephone has changed not only its appearance and technology; it is changing every six months. It barely can be called a telephone as Internet technology has made it a toy, a movie theater, a television, a teletype machine and provides banking and retail services – oh, and voice communication.

The telephone is just one example of how our view of the world has changed and how we communicate – who would have thought that the U.S. Postal Service would become an anachronism? The mariner has mentioned in other posts the disappearance of privacy – a subtle but very important element of personal freedom.

Our duty to know goes beyond everyday habits. The advances in medicine and science will change the definition of what life means, how long we will live, what our medical policy for patient care will be in the future, even how we apply religion and faith to our behavior. Great moral issues will be tested as medicine extends the actuary tables beyond the age of 100; Social Security, Welfare and virtually all the laws, regulations and expectations associated with the human condition must change dramatically. This change is at our doorstep and modifies our financial security as we grow older.

Science has left us in the dust as it redefines reality, how the Earth works, and what the role of technology will be in our society when computers and robots are as aware as we are and can think faster, and immediately understand emotions as a cause and effect phenomenon.

Then there is the whole issue of government in the grips of immoral forces that want to shut out those who need the government for survival: virtually all elected officials are in government to get rich, not to serve the democratic principles of a once great nation.

The point is this: Each of us, for our own wellbeing, must read more, listen more, and think more critically about our culture. It used to be one would go to school for a while, learn a trade or business, and spend our middle and later years becoming more experienced and skilled at the trade we learned when we were younger and at some point retire to a relatively comfortable lifestyle. This is no longer true. What we learned in school and in our early adult years lose value quickly. More and more workers are discovering that financial life ends at fifty – with medicine providing another fifty years of life with marginal income.

For our own survival, it is our duty to know what is happening around us in government, education, banking, earth sciences, medicine and our own security in what is a very volatile oligarchy.

Ancient Mariner

The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care)

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While we are focused on battles that take on the oligarchy, Obama Care is less a battlefield than a front line similar to the Maginot line between France and Germany during the Second World War. The health industry is a huge industry, perhaps a profit hungry octopus reaching into insurance, manufacturing, health care (shaped around profitability rather than health), pharmaceuticals, State health programs (mostly a battle over sharing costs), and the idea that under the present circumstances, that is, without a single payer solution, the cost of covering more people will be borne by each citizen through increased ‘taxes’ or premiums.

The following website is the official White House fact sheet. There are so many websites citing pro and con positions that the reader will have no difficulty finding information about the Affordable Care Act.

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/myths-and-facts

 

The following states have filed lawsuits against the Federal Government in spite of the fact that the Supreme Court upheld the key component (a mandatory health tax). These lawsuits are supported by the many arms of the octopus.

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Colorado

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Indiana

Kansas

Louisiana

Maine

Michigan

Mississippi

Nebraska

Nevada

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Pennsylvania

South Carolina

South Dakota

Texas

Utah

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Other states, like Iowa for instance, are inventing creative alternatives that virtually ignore the Affordable Care Act but, in fact, are financial failures.

Of all the statistics the mariner reviewed, the scariest one is that forty-two percent of Americans do not know Obama Care exists. In another post, he referenced the Stepford citizens we meet when we take the trash to the curb. This is evidence. It is no wonder there is not a balanced debate about any issue. Combined with unfair voting practices, crooked gerrymandering, and hidden legislative agendas, it is a wonder all of us do not live in homeless shelters.

The best weapon for restoring America’s balance is an educated voter.

Ancient Mariner

Hegemony/Oligarchy

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Some offline responses suggest that the word ‘hegemony’ may relate more to international relationships like the Imperialist Age of Great Britain at the height of its colonialism. The mariner is always willing to improve communication so the word ‘hegemony’ is replaced by the word ‘oligarchy’. As defined in the dictionary and Wikipedia, oligarchy means “governed by the few”; the second definition in the dictionary says, “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.

Under the definition of oligarchy, a subtopic in Wikipedia referenced the term “Crony Capitalism”, a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, etc.

Therefore, ‘oligarchy’ is the issue at hand. Still, all the posts previously written about this topic apply both as the subject and as the practices that confront the citizen today. Just swap the word hegemony for oligarchy.

The Agriculture Appropriations Bill was discussed recently as a sample battlefield where future failure and success are at risk. Another kind of battlefield is the appointment of judges not only at the Federal level but in State courts as well. A recent report said that there are eighty-eight vacancies in the Federal Court system. One Senator can hold up consent. Obviously, this is another battleground for the future failure or success of the United States. Judges hang around a long time; therefore, their ideology will have a long term impact. The Supreme Court is the extreme example. The mariner once mentioned term limits to assure government officials were young enough to understand the current culture. Unfortunately, Federal and Supreme Court judges are not subject to term limits.

Dealing with a top-down Federal oligarchy is too expensive and too large to introduce reform. The mariner has written in the past that State citizens have a better opportunity at the State level to begin reforming the unbalanced economic structure. The mariner suggests strongly that State citizens should participate in State and County political party activities to prevent a small number of cronies from sustaining the status quo. Attend monthly meetings. Meet your State and county representatives personally and have a conversation. Discover who the power brokers are. Use your post office, email, Tweet and Facebook accounts to communicate your opinion.

Ancient Mariner

 

House Agriculture Appropriations Bill

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The mariner recently has written about the battle with hegemony as the hardest task in moving the Country forward to success. The Agriculture Appropriations Bill passed by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is an excellent example that the battle is at hand.

The Republicans added government paid insurance to farmers to cover 90 percent of crop losses. This assures billions of dollars will be paid out for every ear of corn that did not grow right or any soybeans with an Asian beetle in the field or any damage to any crop a farmer grows – even the giant corporate farms that do not need the money any more than Bill Gates needs a loan. A clause was slipped into the bill at the last moment to remove sunset language to make the increases permanent.

Meanwhile, the Bill gutted the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that feeds 47 million citizens of the United States – most of whom work for inadequate salaries.

This is a clear example of war from those who would preserve hegemony. It is blatant legislation that moves more money to those who already have money – the exact opposite of what is required to have a successful future for the United States. At the same time, it is another blow to the middle and working class citizens, stripping even more of the quality of life from the population that must be restored to strengthen the future of the United States.

Pull up a chair; your future is playing out in front of you.

Ancient Mariner

 

Paving the Road to Future Success

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Overturning hegemony need not be a matter of violent war as in the past. It can be a continuous conversion of society, taking one bridge at a time. In the American democratic culture, we are lucky that many before us have given their lives and livelihoods to change the power structure. We have in place a seasoned democratic system by which financial and cultural imbalance can be restored without bloodshed on a grand scale.

Still, there are warriors today. The battle for cultural reform is active in many areas.

Consider women’s rights, both on the job and Planned Parenthood. Consider the battle between corporate profit and unions. Consider the attack on retirement funds. Consider deliberate underfunding of discretionary programs for support of education, health, financial safety nets. Consider the battle to make each vote count in an election without the corruption of outside money. Consider the battle on tax reform and reigning in the abuses written into law by corporations and opportunists. Consider the battle to rebuild infrastructure for a new age, a new energy program, and a distribution of tax income to local empowerment.

The American citizen is indeed in the midst of an ideological war that has waxed and waned through the centuries in many countries. There is a tendency for the lucky among us to accumulate wealth. While that in itself is not an issue, eventually wealth begets wealth and money begins to accumulate unfairly, debilitating the happiness and wellbeing of large numbers of the society. In terms of today’s society, battles for shared participation in the country’s wealth began with the New Deal and the government controlled modernization and equality until the late 1960’s. Since then, the hegemonic forces have been whittling away at the reforms that had been made. From the time of Reagan’s Presidency, the slide backward has accelerated.

If the United States is to remain a world power, the entire population must be armed with education, financial security, and a controlled distribution both of taxes and corporate reform. To remain the world power that we remember from the middle of the last century, every citizen must be a capably armed warrior.

War can be avoided by using the ballot box. Revisit the post, “How to Restore a Balanced and Fair Economy.” That post is a primer for turning around the direction of the war on hegemony.

Your vote is critical. Give your decision a long thought. Will you help pave the way to a successful future, or sustain the hegemony that grows stronger and stronger with each election?

Ancient Mariner.

The Road to Future Success is not a Paved Road

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The mariner received some interest in process. How does the Country move from failing point A to successful point B?

It is neither easy nor lacking in intense emotion and includes a large majority of active citizen interference to transition to a successful future. Most of the suggestions in the post, “How to Restore a Balanced and fair Economy” are tactics that will initiate change. There is much more beyond that list.

Hegemony will be the hardest task. Think about the following brief list of disassembled hegemony in history:

•Forcing the Magna Carta to be signed by King John in 1215. It curtailed the arbitrary declarations of the monarchy with principles bound by rule of law. Not as well known is that the premise of this document was not settled until 1651. The following, copied for its brevity, is from the Wikipedia:

“The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political problems between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers). The first (1642–46) and second (1648–49) civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third war (1649–51) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The Civil War ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

The English Civil War led to the trial and execution of Charles I, the exile of his son, Charles II, and replacement of English monarchy with, first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–53), and then with a Protectorate (1653–59), under Oliver Cromwell‘s personal rule. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament’s consent, although this concept was legally established only with the Glorious Revolution later in the century.” (1688)

•The American Civil War, which ended slavery and demolished an intensely racist hegemony in the South. The war killed 620,000 American Citizens and a President. The resultant social segregation, still a closed hegemonic class of whites, was not outlawed until 1954 when the Warren Court ended segregation. The final settlement, at least legally, was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – 100 years after the Civil War.

•The New Deal (1933-1936) was a series of Presidential Executive orders backed by a Democratic Congress. The New Deal was caused as a response to the Great Depression where as many as 25 percent of working men were jobless (women were not a significant part of the workforce until the Second World War; given today’s heterosexual workforce, that statistic may be equivalent to 50 percent today). Republicans fought against the New Deal then and still do to this very day. The battle over the New Deal is not over even as we prepare to move into a new economy.

One of the major arguments for the Great Depression and the New Deal response is the observations that the population was under-spending while the financially better off were over-investing. Does this sound familiar today? (See the post, “Where does the money Go” with its analogy of nonexistent horses) Finally, the 1929 stock market collapse brought the economy down. That, too, sounds familiar. Remember the bank collapse of 2008?

There are many overthrows of hegemony throughout history: The French revolution, Glasnost in Poland and many more. Is it inevitable that the American citizen today must endure violence and debilitating living standards to reach future success?

Perhaps we can avoid a lot of agony if we elect a government that understands what it must do to overthrow the current hegemony.

Ancient Mariner

The Future: Failure and Promise

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The tone of many posts on the Ancient Mariner blog have been accusative, depressing and wanting for answers regarding the dilemma of the economy, culture and politics that exist today. The mariner has played the role of Grim Reaper, warning that death is near. These posts have set an accurate description of the times we live in. The recovery from the 2008 recession is not really a recovery. It is more a symptom of a far greater transition in our lives. The bank failures, simultaneously tied to high stock prices and the rapid decline in the standard of life for American people, indicates that the United States is off balance. The time to regain balance shortens daily and the big question is will the United States fail or succeed?

Failure will be to stay on course, an economy where corporations draw the last blood from employees, inventory, markets, and their own ability to exist in twenty-five years. Those who can afford it invest in the stock market; they are trying to catch the last flight out of this economic mess – similar to the last days of occupation at the end of the Vietnam War. This is why stock prices are high; there is nothing else left. In our hearts and pocketbooks, we know that to continue with today’s economic model, today’s cultural biases, and today’s political ignorance, the United States will no longer be a world power.

Where is the promise of the future? Where is a resurgence of pride, success, and a wholesome life for the common citizen?

Take a long look at the major changes in American history, both economically and culturally. A young America rode the wave of natural resources into the Industrial Age; farmers became factory workers; an emerging infrastructure foretold a mobile and distributed economy; society reorganized itself away from stiff hegemony to a growing middle class economy.

The culture changed along the way, too. New State governments forged a new national citizenry; slavery was abolished; women were allowed to vote; unions were legalized; the banks invested in the power of the working class; civil rights were enforced; segregation was banned; Social Security assured a minimal safety net; the GI Bill encouraged upward mobility and an educated population. The economy could not have grown without lifting cultural fairness for the common citizens.

It is time again. It is time to transition to a new America. We, and our government, and our corporate wealth have a choice to make. America can readjust to a lower standard of power, wealth, and cultural stagnation by becoming a service economy, recognizing that is what we already are experiencing, or we can become a nation of creators and pioneers for the rest of the world.

The nation experienced such a role during the early space program. That leadership role created hundreds of new technologies, new products, and new jobs across many industries. It is that feeling we must regain if we are to see the promise of the future. We must insist that our elected government has the same vision and that our corporations begin again to invest in educating and underwriting the middle class to be an asset to progress and profit.

There is resistance to this transition, just as hegemony was disempowered in the past, it must be again. The Governments must turn their ear back to the citizenry (and close their pocketbooks). Ask what is the best path for the American citizen? As farmers became factory workers, the working force must be turned into a new working force – educated in new technologies, new ideas, and fully capable of creating and pioneering a new world order.

Creativity has always been the strong suit of the American culture – when it was cared for and encouraged. The middle class must be strengthened and drawn into the cutting edge of new technology, new cultural fairness, and new lifestyles.

That is the promise of the future. Will government, business, and us pull together? It is the only way to get a ticket out of this troubled time.

Ancient Mariner