I generally try to avoid politics on this blog, but this is an issue that has been gnawing at me for some time now. This post could get me into lots of trouble, but here goes.

Simply put, my concerns over conservative speakers such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck continue to grow. I believe many far right conservatives have become masters at stirring anger but offer nothing in terms of solutions. As they rouse anger, they win supporters. Palin and Beck in particular know exactly which buttons to push and how to push them.

At risk of crossing Godwin’s Law, here is my fear. How do the cries of Palin, Beck, and others differ from the cries of Hitler when he was building support? He knew what issues stirred people’s fear and anger. As he lit and stirred the fires of anger, he won fiercely loyal followers. I see the same taking place with Palin and Beck. They do not sound like totalitarian dictators (did Hitler early on?) but they are certainly gaining a following based on little more than their ability to stir anger.

There are reasons to be angry. There are good reasons to be frustrated and fed up with politics as usual in Washington. But I see Palin and Beck as even greater threats. They are not offering solutions to the problem, they are pouring fuel on the fire and when things blow up, they (far right conservatives in general) hope it will launch them into positions of power. If this happens, they will have behind them a base of supporters angry about the way things had been and willing to grant the new leaders a great deal of trust and loyalty. And since the new leaders had stirred so much fear and anger, something drastic and dramatic will have to happen so that it will look like the new leaders are dealing with the problems. In Germany it meant targeting the Jews as the source of every social ill. In the U.S. it will likely be immigrants, starting with illegal immigrants but spreading from there. Then it will be anyone who differs too much from the far right dogma.

Now, I do not believe that Palin or Beck or any others have any intention or desire to be anything like Hitler. Palin does not dream about totalitarian rule. But I wonder if even Hitler had any intention of becoming what he became.

I also do not believe things will get that far. The anger is immense, but I think most people would recognize and back away from the threat of totalitarianism. But if the far left continues its decline into blind insanity (and I have my own speculation on how the far left might try to prevent the rise of the far right, and it is equally troubling) and if the far right continues its plunge into the fires of fury, someday something will have to give.

Warning: Totally non-theological, non-biblical post ahead. Politics and economics.

I’m no economist, I’m a pastor. But I’ve read a lot about the markets and here’s my perspective on things. This post was prompted by the following.

From the New York Times:

Administration officials committed to flood the financial system with as much as $2.5 trillion — $350 billion of that coming from the bailout fund and the rest from private investors and the Federal Reserve, making use of its ability to print money.

…
Another centerpiece of the plan would stretch the last $350 billion that the Treasury has for the bailout by relying on the Federal Reserve’s ability to create money, in effect, out of thin air.

Inflation is worse when money floods the market that isn’t based on a standard. The more money thrown out there without something behind it, the less that money is worth. Supply and demand applies to currency as well as goods. For an extreme example, see Zimbabwe.

Creating money out of thin air is not, however, altogether new. This is essentially what the stock market does. (Credit cards can do something similar, but that’s for another time.) Real money does go into the market when people buy stock, but when the value of stock rises there is no actual currency rising with it. If 10 people buy 100 shares each of a stock at $5 a share, they have invested $5,000 into that particular company. If 10 more people buy another 100 shares but at $10 a share, they have invested $10,000 into that company. At this point there are 2,000 shares in the hands of shareholders and the value of each share is $10. Total market value of that company, then, is $20,000 even though only $15,000 was invested. In a ledger somewhere $5,000 has been created out of thin air. There is no currency to back most of the money in the market (in truth, there is no currency to back any of it – you only make money on your stock if someone out there is willing to buy it. This is what drives prices down when everyone is trying to dump their stock. No one is buying, so sellers keep lowering their price until someone finally buys some.).

This is why determining someone’s value based on their market assets is somewhat odd. The money is imaginary. It doesn’t exist. When the stock market crashed no one actually lost anything. Nothing changed except numbers on a ledger and in a computer. But those numbers are considered all-important by economists and investors.

This says something about what America really trusts in. Fundamentally, nothing has changed in America. To that end McCain was right during the election in his often maligned statement that the fundamentals of the economy are sound. We still have companies, we still have businesses, we still have citizens. We still have all the elements that should make for a thriving economy. What we don’t have is confidence. Those numbers on a paper have all dropped drastically so companies have cut jobs and services in an attempt to build their cash reserve in order to weather inflation. This creates a problem, though, since firing people means less people are able to spend money and creates a nasty catch-22.

Matt loses his job at company X so Matt is not able to buy the things he might normally buy from store Y. Store Y makes less money so they have to cut back on the kinds of things they put on their shelves. Namely, they decide they need less products from company X so they buy less from company X. Company X responds by firing Sally to protect themselves. On and on it goes. Declining sales means the loss of jobs which means an overall reduction in spending which means declining sales which means the loss of jobs which means…

The problem with bailouts and stimulus packages is they won’t do much when people are nervous. They might create a few extra projects here or there but at the end of the day companies are trying to protect themselves by building or preserving a cash reserve. If something the government does provides them extra cash, they are more likely to store it somewhere safe than use it to create more jobs.

What’s the solution? I have no idea. Where will this lead? I have no idea. But most of the solutions I’ve seen thrown out so far look more like desperate measures to try _something_ rather than well reasoned responses to a true economic crisis. The end result may well be greater and greater suffering and increased turmoil. Moving back to the sort of thing you usually see here, turmoil should not surprise Christians. We should expect it and be ready for it. The church thrives in hard times. God is most glorified in suffering Christians who continue to proclaim the wonder of the savior. I pray we will be those people if true suffering comes to America.

Piper has made public his views on the issue in a blog entry entitled Why a Woman Shouldn’t Run for Vice President, but Wise People May Still Vote for Her. Two quotes from the entry:

Therefore, I am not able to say that God only speaks to the role of men and women in home and church. If our roles are rooted in the way God created us as male and female, then these differences shape the way we live everywhere and all the time.

…a person with my view may very well vote for a woman to be President if the man running against her holds views and espouses policies that may, as far as we can see, do more harm to more people than we think would be done by electing a woman President and thus exalting a flawed pattern of womanhood. In my view, defending abortion is far worse sin for a man than serving as Vice President is for a woman.

I generally stay away from politics on here and this isn’t really a political post, but I just had to say it: Politicians ain’t actors! Since when are presidents picked by how well they perform in front of the camera? Facial expressions, body language, gestures, delivery of words… You’d think the election was some form of American Idol!

That’s all I’m sayin.

Don’t worry, I’m not planning a stream of anti-Obama posts. But this caught my eye this morning from the First Things blog: Thoughts on “Roman Catholics for Obama ‘08″.

Basically, the author writes that there may be moments when pro-life individuals can be justified in voting for pro-choice candidates, but the reason for doing so must be clear and compelling. He says:

But [Catholics who support pro-choice candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a “proportionate” reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life—which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.

Thanks to Justin Taylor for pointing this out. 

Barack Obama delivered a speech last year to Planned Parenthood. During the speech he said that the issues being defended by planned parenthood were issues at stake in this election, issues that he also defends and will fight for.

When I first started to hear about Obama I was interested. I love the thought of seeing a black man elected president. Our country still has a lot of work to do toward race relations, but Obamas candidacy shows we have come a long way. But some of Obama’s positions, particularly regarding abortion, are inexcusable. I cannot vote for a pro-abortion candidate, and Obama seems to be about as far to the left on abortion as a person can get.

The document An Evangelical Manifesto has been released (I first blogged about it here). The website offers visitors a full version (20 pages), a summary version (6 pages), and a study guide (29 pages). At the website you can also read who the steering committee and initial signers were. You can also sign the document yourself.

I have read the document and am very pleased. I had feared it would be little more than a watered-down statement against the politics of the religious right. Instead it is a very careful document that does far more than talk about religion and politics. The bulk of the document contains a discussion about what it means to be an Evangelical, with the writers talking about what makes Evangelicals distinct from other believers and other religions. The document then contains a section about ways Evangelicals have failed to live up to Evangelical ideals, and it presents some ways we can address those failings. Finally, the document contains a section presenting a good, balanced approach to living as a Christian while being involved in politics.

I plan to post more on the document later but I want to give it one more run-through to pick up some pieces I might have missed. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you read it.

Also, Justin Taylor has posted a good summary of the document. Like all summaries, it can’t cover everything. Be sure you also read the manifesto itself.

Darrell Bock has posted that an evangelical manifesto will be released on Wednesday. Initial details have already been covered through CNN. 

The manifesto addresses the tendency of evangelicals to turn faith into a political agenda. Details are sketchy thus far, but the information provided by CNN sounds encouraging thus far. Christians have often had a tendency to over-politicize the faith, seeking to transform culture through laws rather than through the life-changing power of the gospel. This very issue was recently discussed at the Pyromaniacs blog.

Christians should raise a voice in government. We are citizens of a country run by representative democracy, a government which is of the people, by the people, and for the people. We should try to guide this country to operate in ways which are pleasing to God. But government is not gospel, and government is not ultimately the tool that God will use to change hearts. That is always done through individuals – individual witness, individual example, individual proclamation. This is how the gospel spread like wildfire in the book of Acts, it is the only way the gospel will spread today.

I look forward to hearing more about the manifesto and seeing whether it strikes a good, healthy, and much needed balance.