Showing posts with label change?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label change?. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 02, 2025
Monday, March 18, 2024
Thursday, October 20, 2016
College hosts, pays for three-day ‘social justice summit'
Anthony Gockowski
Investigative Reporter@AGockowski
Today at 10:06 AM EDT
The summit was founded in 2009 to train students "in a social justice framework for campus leadership, community engagement, and change activism."
California State University-San Marcos is hosting a three-day, two-night social justice extravaganza where students will learn to “recognize their personal connection with systems of power and privilege.”
The all-inclusive event, formally known as the “Social Justice Summit,” will feature a weekend of “experiential activities, individual reflections, and group dialogues” where participants will come to learn the “distinct difference between equality and equity.”
"[T]he Social Justice Summit will set the foundation for individuals to explore diversity..." Tweet This
[RELATED: School holds pro-BLM conference exploring white privilege]
“In the spirit of community, the Social Justice Summit will set the foundation for individuals to explore diversity, become aware of the existence and impact of oppression, and initiate sustainable change, both in self and society,” a description of the event states, noting that participants will “engage in work that creates a paradigm shift in thought and action to attain an equitable society free of oppression.”
While student participants will be required to put down a “non-refundable $5 deposit,” all other costs, including “room, food, transportation, and all materials provided during the summit,” will be on the house.
The Social Justice Summit, founded in 2009, claims to train students “in a social justice framework for campus leadership, community engagement, and change activism” with the goal of increasing their “awareness of personal identity within the context of multiple types of cultures” while forming “relationships and support networks with other individuals committed to social justice.”
To help student participants prepare for the three-day event, the school has provided them with a list of possible resources to look over before attending, including a six step guide on “speaking up against everyday bigotry” and another set of readings on “white privilege.”
[RELATED: Students nationwide to attend four-day, university funded white privilege bash]
Cornel West, a well-known commentator and a prominent member of the Democratic Socialist party, will be kicking off the event with a talk on the subject.
Campus Reform reached out to the school for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski
Source
Thursday, January 07, 2016
America’s Transition from a Democracy to the National Security State. The Derogation of Civil Rights in the Homeland
In Five Easy Steps. And What We Can Do about It. Part II
By Robert Abele
Global Research, July 28, 2015
Part One of this analysis set out the main parts of the shift in U.S. government from democracy to National Security State. In this part, we will complete and analyze this development.
5) Do not count (foreign or domestic) civilians as important to State functioning
First, abroad, civilians are “collateral damage,” like destroyed property.
The Bush administration and its generals did not consider the category of discrimination to be of importance. The Obama administration has continued this policy. This is demonstrated by two facts: first, the U.S. military spokespersons have stated directly and consistently that the U.S. does not count the civilian dead in Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, the U.S. government either does not release or downplays civilian casualties in Libya, Syria, Yemen, or from U.S. drone attacks. If it was truly U.S. policy to protect noncombatants from a brutal dictator (e.g. Saddam Hussein; Muammar Gaddafi, Bashir al Assad, etc.) and to avoid injuring or killing them, one would think that knowing how many they have killed or for whose deaths they are at least partly responsible would be something the military would want to know and engage, not suppress.
Contradictory to that practice, by a long and time-honored tradition in ethics and in international law, when the practice of either ignoring (by not taking into account) or intending civilian deaths becomes commonplace, whether proportional or not to the good intention of defeating the enemy, any military action may be said to be conducted unjustly. How the civilians came to be killed is critical, because it tells us directly about the conduct of the war.
Second, the State becomes repressive of citizens domestically. When Supreme Emergency becomes the order of the day, it uses its force against its citizens. For example, Hitler’s February 28 “Decree for the Protection of the People” suspended the articles of the Weimar Constitution concerning personal liberties, and was never repealed.
We are witnessing a similar movement in the U.S. Beginning in 2001 with the USA PATRIOT Act, civil liberties have been deliberately and systematically eroded, while elite privilege has expanded. There are particular issues concerning due process rights and habeas corpus that were eroded under this model. This can be seen in the arrests of both Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi, both of which concern due process and habeas corpus rights, denied by the government. Both are U.S. citizens. Hamdi was arrested in 2001, and held without charge by the U.S. government in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was only with the Supreme Court decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that Hamdi was released. Padilla was arrested in 2002 and held without charge until 2006. For most of their period of detention without charge, neither was permitted legal counsel, or a hearing. It was only due to the pressure of civil liberty groups that each was finally given a hearing.
For Obama’s contribution to this, note his deepening of unchecked surveillance powers (including warrantless wiretapping of citizens, accessing personal records, monitoring financial transactions, and tracking email, internet and cell phone use), his position that the federal government cannot be sued for illegal spying on U.S. citizens, his claims of Executive privilege to order assassinations of U.S. citizens, and his continuation of torture and Guantanamo Bay prison.
All of these actions and others are instances of the direct legislative erasing of any legal status of the individual, in some cases individual U.S. citizens. As if to underscore this point, witness General Wesley Clark stated on MSNBC, on July 17, that dissident citizens should be put in internment camps “for the duration” of the U.S. war on terrorism—i.e. forever.
Kevin Phillips (Wealth and Democracy) and Chalmers Johnson (The Sorrows of Empire) have eloquently traced how these structural mechanisms of government in Rome, Spain, Portugal, and Britain all led to repressive governments which fell quickly when they began to govern through a structure of repression. Today we see the similar structures in place in the U.S., not only in such draconian pieces of legislation as the USA PATRIOT Act, but most chillingly in “continuity of government” (COG) plans, prepared twenty years ago by elite government insiders, which calls for warrantless surveillance, warrantless detention, and militarizing domestic security to keep dissent nonexistent (see Peter Dale Scott, “The Doomsday Project, Deep Events, and the Shrinking of American Democracy” The Asia-Pacific Journal, January 24, 2011).
Conclusion: Three steps for making change
The obvious question is: how can we stop this and make the critical changes needed to and in our government apparatus? I would conclude this essay by suggestion three actions that may be taken.
First, recognize that U.S. citizens themselves must make the changes required to and in government. With the foundational mode of state structure and purpose being to achieve and maintain complete state hegemony in the world, radical change of state structure is required. This can only be done with some kind of people’s push to return the power to themselves, as we saw in Egypt and Tunisia, and now see in Greece. It will come slowly and painstakingly, but without it, state mechanisms will continue to be structured as hegemonic agencies, and perpetual war and continued assault upon citizen rights will be the ongoing and deepening modus operandi of the state.
Second, focus objective analysis on ethical and legal prescriptions as well as empirical facts and consequences. Too often political analysis revolves around a theme of “this move, that consequence” by our political leaders. However, ethically speaking, objective analysis can be done by analyzing how government actions fit or do not fit universal ethical norms. A good norm would be, as the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas puts it, to recognize that for authentic communication between parties to take place, all affected must be able to accept the consequences of any proposed norm.
This strategy does two things: it pre-empts the charge from opponents that one believes only according to one’s ideology; and it allows one to see and show the pattern of a movement from democracy to fascism.
Here is an application of such analysis. Let us examine the crime of aggression of Obama’s drone strikes, specifically the U.S. use of drones in Yemen and Pakistan. The U.S. first said it used targeted killing in November 2002, with the cooperation and approval of the government of Yemen. But as of 2013, the U.S. had more than 6,000 drones, more than 160 of which were Predator drones controlled by the U.S. Air Force. These drones are being used in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, but most of all in Pakistan, where in eight years the drones killed close to 4,000 people (see Gregoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone).
On June 3, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) delivered a report sharply critical of US tactics. The report asserted that the US government has failed to keep track of civilian casualties of its military operations, including the drone attacks, and to provide means for citizens of affected nations to obtain information about the casualties and any legal inquests regarding them.
Obama’s response: ignore the U.N. report, and increase the drone attacks, thus instantiating what neocon architect Francis Fukuyama stated: the U.N. is “perfectly serviceable as an instrument of American unilateralism” When it isn’t, the National Security State can and does ignore them. (see Chomsky,Hegemony or Survival).
Contradictory to that, we would have a solid ethical and legal analysis of U.S. drone actions by quoting a tentative definition of aggression which was adopted by the U.N. International Law Commission on June 4, 1951. It stated:
Further, in 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal defined Crimes against Peace, in Principle VI, specifically Principle VI(a), submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, as:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
Again, we should apply the Geneva Conventions against Attacking Civilians. Article 51, Section 2 proscribes “indiscriminate attacks:” those not directed at specifically military targets; those attacks or weapons that cannot be limited to military objectives and that strike civilians or civilian objects as well as military ones; and attacking military targets that the belligerent has reason to believe in advance will cause excessive and disproportionate damage to civilians or civilian objects, the latter defined simply as non-military objects.
Protocol II, “relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts,” specifically calls upon all nations to refrain from all “violence to the life, health, and physical and mental well-being of [noncombatant] persons.”
Finally, the Hague Conventions of 1899 ban the attacking of towns and cities that are undefended, and collective punishment. Prescriptions to limit the conduct of war include the requirements to warn towns of impending attacks, to protect cultural, religious, and health institutions, and to insure public order and safety.
Third, understand that civil disobedience is the only weapon citizens have to fight such overwhelming methods of force that are now in place. The state—on both federal and local government levels—now possesses so much military-level force and political-economic power that they can fairly easily respond to any type of violent action. Nonviolence is the only option, especially since, to work, nonviolence requires a force in numbers. When that happens, the fear moves from the people to the government officials and their economic elite controllers who currently rule the country.
The motivating factor for such disobedience is often said to be economic hardship, such as the citizens of Greece are undergoing. That is certainly true, but in addition to that, U.S. citizens are used to a more developed and robust conception of human and civil rights, and the practice of limited government in terms of such rights. This assumption of most citizens makes a full-blown totalitarian state such as Hitler’s or Mussolini’s unlikely. Nonetheless, it is certainly conceivable and possible that a totalitarian-light state can exist while leaving in place the main skeleton of a republican democracy that has long since been reduced to a minimal democracy, virtually without most citizens seeing it and without angering citizens too much. This is especially true if the citizens live in fear and are willing to grant the government significant leeway in its responses to the trumped-up fear of terrorists. That is precisely what has happened since 9/11, and precisely what civil disobedience attempts to overcome.
Objective, public analysis and civil nonviolent action are our best weapons against government power. They are, in fact, not just our best hope; they are all we have left with which to fight.
Dr. Robert Abele holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University and M.A. degrees in Theology and Divinity. He is a professor of philosophy at Diablo Valley College, in California in the San Francisco Bay area. He is the author of four books, including A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act, and The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq, along with numerous articles. His new book, Rationality and Justice, is forthcoming (2016).
We are witnessing a similar movement in the U.S. Beginning in 2001 with the USA PATRIOT Act, civil liberties have been deliberately and systematically eroded, while elite privilege has expanded. There are particular issues concerning due process rights and habeas corpus that were eroded under this model. This can be seen in the arrests of both Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi, both of which concern due process and habeas corpus rights, denied by the government. Both are U.S. citizens. Hamdi was arrested in 2001, and held without charge by the U.S. government in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was only with the Supreme Court decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that Hamdi was released. Padilla was arrested in 2002 and held without charge until 2006. For most of their period of detention without charge, neither was permitted legal counsel, or a hearing. It was only due to the pressure of civil liberty groups that each was finally given a hearing.
For Obama’s contribution to this, note his deepening of unchecked surveillance powers (including warrantless wiretapping of citizens, accessing personal records, monitoring financial transactions, and tracking email, internet and cell phone use), his position that the federal government cannot be sued for illegal spying on U.S. citizens, his claims of Executive privilege to order assassinations of U.S. citizens, and his continuation of torture and Guantanamo Bay prison.
All of these actions and others are instances of the direct legislative erasing of any legal status of the individual, in some cases individual U.S. citizens. As if to underscore this point, witness General Wesley Clark stated on MSNBC, on July 17, that dissident citizens should be put in internment camps “for the duration” of the U.S. war on terrorism—i.e. forever.
Kevin Phillips (Wealth and Democracy) and Chalmers Johnson (The Sorrows of Empire) have eloquently traced how these structural mechanisms of government in Rome, Spain, Portugal, and Britain all led to repressive governments which fell quickly when they began to govern through a structure of repression. Today we see the similar structures in place in the U.S., not only in such draconian pieces of legislation as the USA PATRIOT Act, but most chillingly in “continuity of government” (COG) plans, prepared twenty years ago by elite government insiders, which calls for warrantless surveillance, warrantless detention, and militarizing domestic security to keep dissent nonexistent (see Peter Dale Scott, “The Doomsday Project, Deep Events, and the Shrinking of American Democracy” The Asia-Pacific Journal, January 24, 2011).
Conclusion: Three steps for making change
The obvious question is: how can we stop this and make the critical changes needed to and in our government apparatus? I would conclude this essay by suggestion three actions that may be taken.
First, recognize that U.S. citizens themselves must make the changes required to and in government. With the foundational mode of state structure and purpose being to achieve and maintain complete state hegemony in the world, radical change of state structure is required. This can only be done with some kind of people’s push to return the power to themselves, as we saw in Egypt and Tunisia, and now see in Greece. It will come slowly and painstakingly, but without it, state mechanisms will continue to be structured as hegemonic agencies, and perpetual war and continued assault upon citizen rights will be the ongoing and deepening modus operandi of the state.
Second, focus objective analysis on ethical and legal prescriptions as well as empirical facts and consequences. Too often political analysis revolves around a theme of “this move, that consequence” by our political leaders. However, ethically speaking, objective analysis can be done by analyzing how government actions fit or do not fit universal ethical norms. A good norm would be, as the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas puts it, to recognize that for authentic communication between parties to take place, all affected must be able to accept the consequences of any proposed norm.
This strategy does two things: it pre-empts the charge from opponents that one believes only according to one’s ideology; and it allows one to see and show the pattern of a movement from democracy to fascism.
Here is an application of such analysis. Let us examine the crime of aggression of Obama’s drone strikes, specifically the U.S. use of drones in Yemen and Pakistan. The U.S. first said it used targeted killing in November 2002, with the cooperation and approval of the government of Yemen. But as of 2013, the U.S. had more than 6,000 drones, more than 160 of which were Predator drones controlled by the U.S. Air Force. These drones are being used in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, but most of all in Pakistan, where in eight years the drones killed close to 4,000 people (see Gregoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone).
On June 3, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) delivered a report sharply critical of US tactics. The report asserted that the US government has failed to keep track of civilian casualties of its military operations, including the drone attacks, and to provide means for citizens of affected nations to obtain information about the casualties and any legal inquests regarding them.
Obama’s response: ignore the U.N. report, and increase the drone attacks, thus instantiating what neocon architect Francis Fukuyama stated: the U.N. is “perfectly serviceable as an instrument of American unilateralism” When it isn’t, the National Security State can and does ignore them. (see Chomsky,Hegemony or Survival).
Contradictory to that, we would have a solid ethical and legal analysis of U.S. drone actions by quoting a tentative definition of aggression which was adopted by the U.N. International Law Commission on June 4, 1951. It stated:
“Aggression is the use of force by a State or Government against another State or Government, in any manner, whatever the weapons used and whether openly or otherwise, for any reason or for any purpose other than individual or collective self-defence or in pursuance of a decision or recommendation by a competent organ of the United Nations.”
Further, in 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal defined Crimes against Peace, in Principle VI, specifically Principle VI(a), submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, as:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
Again, we should apply the Geneva Conventions against Attacking Civilians. Article 51, Section 2 proscribes “indiscriminate attacks:” those not directed at specifically military targets; those attacks or weapons that cannot be limited to military objectives and that strike civilians or civilian objects as well as military ones; and attacking military targets that the belligerent has reason to believe in advance will cause excessive and disproportionate damage to civilians or civilian objects, the latter defined simply as non-military objects.
Protocol II, “relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts,” specifically calls upon all nations to refrain from all “violence to the life, health, and physical and mental well-being of [noncombatant] persons.”
Finally, the Hague Conventions of 1899 ban the attacking of towns and cities that are undefended, and collective punishment. Prescriptions to limit the conduct of war include the requirements to warn towns of impending attacks, to protect cultural, religious, and health institutions, and to insure public order and safety.
Third, understand that civil disobedience is the only weapon citizens have to fight such overwhelming methods of force that are now in place. The state—on both federal and local government levels—now possesses so much military-level force and political-economic power that they can fairly easily respond to any type of violent action. Nonviolence is the only option, especially since, to work, nonviolence requires a force in numbers. When that happens, the fear moves from the people to the government officials and their economic elite controllers who currently rule the country.
The motivating factor for such disobedience is often said to be economic hardship, such as the citizens of Greece are undergoing. That is certainly true, but in addition to that, U.S. citizens are used to a more developed and robust conception of human and civil rights, and the practice of limited government in terms of such rights. This assumption of most citizens makes a full-blown totalitarian state such as Hitler’s or Mussolini’s unlikely. Nonetheless, it is certainly conceivable and possible that a totalitarian-light state can exist while leaving in place the main skeleton of a republican democracy that has long since been reduced to a minimal democracy, virtually without most citizens seeing it and without angering citizens too much. This is especially true if the citizens live in fear and are willing to grant the government significant leeway in its responses to the trumped-up fear of terrorists. That is precisely what has happened since 9/11, and precisely what civil disobedience attempts to overcome.
Objective, public analysis and civil nonviolent action are our best weapons against government power. They are, in fact, not just our best hope; they are all we have left with which to fight.
Dr. Robert Abele holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University and M.A. degrees in Theology and Divinity. He is a professor of philosophy at Diablo Valley College, in California in the San Francisco Bay area. He is the author of four books, including A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act, and The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq, along with numerous articles. His new book, Rationality and Justice, is forthcoming (2016).
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Robert Abele, Global Research, 2015
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Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Google+ to be subtracted from YouTube, other services
Google+ to be subtracted from YouTube, other services
The Internet giant is changing its tune, allowing users to ignore Google+ and have just a general Google account to access everything. So what happens to the social network now?
by Richard Nieva @richardjnieva
July 27, 2015 10:43 AM PDT
Google is putting less of an emphasis on Google Plus as a gateway to the rest of its products.
Richard Nieva/CNET
Google's ambitious social network, Google+, started with a bang, but four years later, it's only making a whimper.
The world's largest search company on Monday reversed its requirement to have a Google+ account to share content, communicate with other people or create a YouTube channel. Instead, people will be able to use their general Google accounts to access everything, the company said.
The change will eventually apply to all of Google's services, but the company is starting with YouTube, which has become one of Google's most important services as it looks to future revenue streams.
"While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we've needed to rethink," Bradley Horowitz, the chief of Google Plus, wrote in a blog post.
The change is a stark contrast from the company's position in 2013, when it started requiring people to use Google+ accounts to do mostly everything Google-related, from using Gmail to YouTube. The policy was a hard sell to get people to use the embattled social network, which reportedly came right from Chief Executive Larry Page.
But since then, Google has softened its push. In May, the company announced Google Photos, which split up Google+ Photos from the rest of the network. Carving out the service, which was by far the most well-received feature of the social network, raised several questions about Google+'s future.
Google+ is the company's biggest investment in trying to crack the social Internet. Facebook, which pioneered social at a large scale, has become a powerhouse in mobile-advertising revenue, making $7.4 billion last year. Google doesn't break out advertising specific to mobile, but has struggled to catch up.
For his part, Horowitz in May stressed that the social network wasn't dying, but that the service "will be changing."
Instead of being an all-encompassing product, Bradley said the social network has a new mission: to connect people based on shared interests. In May, Google announced a new feature for the product called Collections, which is similar to what rival Pinterest does with its online bulletin boards.
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Monday, July 14, 2014
Church Overhauls Publishing Operations
CHURCH OVERHAULS PUBLISHING OPERATIONS
June 19, 2014 · by Michelle Bernard · in Columbia Union News
Story by Adventist Review staff and Beth Michaels
At joint constituency meetings this week at the world headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., the Review and Herald and the Pacific Press publishing houses voted 153-66 (Review) and 42-1 (Pacific Press) in favor of the biggest restructuring in Seventh-day Adventist publishing’s 153-year history.
As a result, the Review will unwind operations at its facility in Hagerstown, Md., during the next several months, and will transfer some employees and assets to the Pacific Press facility in Nampa, Idaho. Pacific Press will become a North American Division (NAD) institution.
Dave Weigley, Columbia Union Conference president, responded to the closure, saying, “It’s the right thing for the NAD to own their own printing houses as determined in the voting; however, as we go forward with these assets, I hope we continually evaluate which asset is most effective in efficiently supporting the mission.”
Others noted challenges. “For East Coast ABCs, closure of the Review will raise costs due to shipping, create inventory challenges and result in fewer new titles each year,” says Lisa Myaing, general manager at the Potomac Adventist Book & Health Food Store in Silver Spring, Md.
Read more in the Adventist Review/Adventist News Network’s full story here.
Related Articles:
Hagerstown Church Members Pray for Review and Herald’s Future
Two Adventist Publishing Houses Recommend Restructuring Proposal
Is the End Near for Brick and Mortar ABCs?
RHPA Board Votes Smaller, Leaner Profile for Publishing House
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Sunday, June 15, 2014
The Priest and his Cathedral of Football
Duration: 29 minutes
First broadcast: Saturday 14 June 2014
Padre (Father) Alberto Gauci is a passionate and unconventional priest who has spent over 40 years in rural Honduras. Football is a passion in the country and Honduras have qualified for this summer’s World Cup in Brazil.
Driven by his faith and his devotion to St Francis, Padre Gauci has gone to extraordinary lengths to improve the lives of the people he lives amongst in one of the poorest and most violent countries in Latin America. He has come up with an astonishingly ambitious project - a 20,000 seater football stadium - built from nothing in the heart of the jungle.
On his wall is a poster of the Bishop Oscar Romero, the figurehead of the Liberation Theology movement of the 1970s and for Heart and Soul, Will Grant explores with Padre Gauci how his work has been inspired and is consciously carrying on the tradition of Liberation Theology movement.
As the Honduran national team prepare to begin their World Cup campaign in Brazil, Will tells the story of his stadium, the Estadio Juan Ramon Breve Vargas and hears the tale of one man’s belief, sheer stubbornness and unwavering faith in God, St Francis and in the ability of the people around him to shape their own futures.
Will visits the stadium, as well as the prison that Padre Alberto has inspired in the town, and hears about his other projects such as the nutritional centre and the Aids facility. It is a vivid successful, vibrant example of the church filling the areas where government fails to help. At the centre of this is the dynamic Padre Alberto, driven by his love of God, and his love of football.
Source
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
How retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens would amend the constitution
April 21, 2014 at 6:25 PM EDT
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens talks to Judy Woodruff about his new book, “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.” In his book, the 94-year-old liberal justice calls for major changes to the Constitution on issues such as the death penalty, firearms, redistricting and campaign finance.
SEE PODCASTS
TRANSCRIPT
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: A former Supreme Court justice takes on the U.S. Constitution and the court he stepped away from.
John Paul Stevens was known in his 35 years in office for views that evolved from the time he was appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford to one of the court’s most outspoken liberal voices.
Today, four years after retiring, the 94-year-old continues to make waves with an ambitious new book. It’s titled “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”
I talked to him last week in his chambers at the Supreme Court.
Justice John Paul Stevens, thank you for talking with us.
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS, U.S. Supreme Court: Well, I’m happy to be here.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You’re asking to amend the Constitution six different ways. How practical is that?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, it certainly would take time to do that job completely, but there’s no reason why — one or two amount amendments might be adopted before the others.
And I think the issues in each of the ones I discussed are sufficiently important that it’s worth spending time debating them and thinking about it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You single out rules, Justice Stevens, that were handed down, as you point out, by a slim majority of the court over the last 40 years that you say — and I’m quoting you now — “have had such a profound and unfortunate impact on our basic law, that resort to the process of amendment is warranted.”
You’re essentially taking on the modern Supreme Court.
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, because I have been trying to do that for a good many years.
But I think there were incorrect — incorrect decisions that were profoundly unwise, and really contrary to a lot of things that our country stands for. And I think they should be changed.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You’re speaking in a mild mannered way, Justice Stevens, but I can tell you feel pretty strongly about this.
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, I do.
(LAUGHTER)
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: There’s no doubt about that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Let’s talk about some of the ways that you would like to see the Constitution changed.
Among other things, you want an amendment that would require the states not to draw legislative or congressional districts in a way to increase partisan strength. We know, clearly, there is partisan redistricting. But most redistricting is done around where populations live, whether it’s an urban area, a suburban area. Why isn’t this something that is better left to the political process?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, because the political process has misfired.
And in a number of states, the dominant party has redistricted with its own objective of strengthening its control of the state in the future and of its congressional delegation at the time by drawing bizarre districts that have no purpose whatsoever, other than to enhance the political strength of the party in power.
Now, it’s my very profound view that a person in public office has a primary duty to follow — to make impartial decisions, not motivated by personal profit or personal gain or advantage just to the political party of whom — of which he is a member.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So you’re saying take it out of politics?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, not entirely. But don’t allow districts to be drawn for no reason other than political advantage.
There are times when political — political considerations can be taken into account in making certain minor adjustments such as that.
But the examples that I talked about in the book are examples of districts that are bizarre in shape and have absolutely — obviously no justification, other than the impermissible justification of partisan advantage to those who drafted the districts.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You also want to amend the Constitution to abolish the death penalty. People who have always opposed the death penalty lament how long they say it took you to change your mind, from the time you came on the court in 1975 until 2008.
Why do you think it took you as long as it did to change your mind? And was it for humane reasons or constitutional reasons?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, I think that what has happened in the period that I have been on the court is that the court has used death penalty litigation to develop rules that make conviction more likely than it should be, the rules governing the selection of the jury, for example, rules governing the admissibility of victim-impact evidence at the penalty phase of the trial.
Those rules have slanted the opportunity for justice in favor of the prosecutor. And I think it’s particularly incorrect to do it in the capital context, because the cost is so high. If you make a mistake in a capital case, there is no way to take care of it later on.
And the risk of an incorrect execution in any case to me is really intolerable. And the system shouldn’t permit that possibility to exist.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Another controversy you’re jumping right into is campaign finance. You believe Congress should be able to put limits on the amount of money candidates spend on their campaigns…
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: … and that the Supreme Court has made mistakes in several decisions, allowing corporations, labor unions to advocate and spend money on candidates.
Considering all the court has done, Justice Stevens, to open the door for huge money to pour into American politics, including the recent McCutcheon decision, what effect does all this have on American politics?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, I don’t think it’s a healthy effect.
And I think it’s a change from what the people who direct — framed our basic government envisioned. For the — as the chief justice said, I think, in the first sentence of his opinion in the McCutcheon case the other day, there is nothing more important than participation in electing our representatives.
But the law that developed in that case and in a number of other cases involved not electing the representatives of the people who voted for them, but electing representatives of — in other jurisdictions where the financing is used. In other words, that was a case that involved the right of the — of an individual to spend as much of its money as he wanted to elect representatives of other people. He didn’t use any of that money to elect his own representatives.
And I think that’s a distortion of the concept that we started with many, many years ago.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The last area that I want to ask you about is what this country should do about guns. You would change the wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution to say the right of people to bear arms to own a gun should apply only when serving in the militia.
Is it your ultimate hope that there would be no right to own a gun for self-defense?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, it would be my ultimate hope that legislatures would decide the issues, and not be hampered by constitutional restrictions, because, clearly, legislators are in a much better position than judges are to decide what could be permissible in different contexts.
And the effect of the Second Amendment as it is now construed is to make federal judges the final arbiters of gun policy, which is quite, quite wrong, I think, and quite contrary to what the framers intended when they drafted the Second Amendment, to protect states from the danger that a strong federal armed force would have been able to the states of their own militias.
JUDY WOODRUFF: When you look at all of these changes that you would like to see in the Constitution, and whether it’s campaign finance, redistricting or something else, do you believe the more conservative members of the Supreme Court have a partisan agenda? Do you think they are actually trying to get conservatives elected to office?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t question their motives at all.
I think they have come to the incorrect conclusion, but I do think they have — where they have had chances to take a different tack, I think they have acted incorrectly. But I wouldn’t suggest that any of them were improperly motivated.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think you should have stayed on the court longer?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Should I have stayed on — no.
(LAUGHTER)
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: If anything, I stayed on too long.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How does a justice know when it is the right time to retire? What do you think?
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Well, in my case, the time — I can remember the events that triggered the specific decision.
I announced my dissent in the Citizens United orally, and I stumbled in my announcement. I had a little difficulty expressing myself. And that was out of character. And I used to have no problem at all being articulate and coherent.
And I took that as a warning sign that maybe I had been around longer than I should.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Justice John Paul Stevens, thank you very much for talking with us.
The book is “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”
FMR. JUSTICE JOHN PAUL STEVENS: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure being here.
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Monday, March 24, 2014
Vice President Biden's Remarks from the 2014 HRC LA Gala
Human Rights Campaign
Published on Mar 22, 2014 Vice President Joe Biden spoke to over 1,000 LGBT rights supporters at the Human Rights Campaign Los Angeles gala on March 22, 2014. Vice President Biden's inspiring remarks in support of global LGBT equality represent the latest step from a White House that has made fairness and dignity for LGBT people one of its top priorities.
http://www.HRC.org
Jimmy Carter Issues 'Call To Action' Against Subjugation Of Women
by
March 22, 2014 2:44 PM
Morning Edition Weekend
5 min 35 sec
Editor's note: To hear our full interview with Jimmy Carter, tune into Weekend Edition on Sunday, March 23.
President Jimmy Carter has written more than two dozen books over the course of his career, about everything from the art of aging to how to achieve peace in the Middle East. All his writing is anchored by a deep-seated belief in the equality of all people.
In his new book, A Call To Action, Carter tackles a fundamental question of equality head-on: the subjugation of women in cultures around the world. Carter joins NPR's Rachel Martin to talk about the state of human trafficking and whether religion can be a conduit for lasting change around gender.
Interview Highlights
On how the Bible is used to argue for both equality and the inferiority of women
There are some verses ... [that] can be interpreted either way. And, for instance, St. Paul, who's looked upon as the chief theologian in the Christian church, has differing points of view.
In one letter, to the Galatians, he says there's no difference between Jews and gentiles; there's no difference between male and female; there's no difference between slaves and masters. That all of us are equal in the eyes of God.
Women, Religion, Violence, and Power
by NPR Staff
Hardcover, 211 pages
In another letter, written to Corinthians and others, he says that women should not adorn themselves, that women should not speak openly in church and that wives should be subservient to their husbands. But at the same time, in the same passage as the last one that I mentioned to you, it says that husbands and wives should respect each other on an equal basis and that the husbands should love the wives as Christ loved the church.
So you can pick out individual verses throughout the Bible that shows that the verse favors your particular preference, and the fact that the Catholic Church, for instance, prohibits women from serving as priests or even deacons gives a kind of a permission to male people all over the world, that well, if God thinks that women are inferior, I'll treat them as inferiors. If she's my wife, I can abuse her with impunity, or if I'm an employer, I can pay my female employees less salary.
On human trafficking
We have a terrible affliction here of slavery. There's a greater number of slaves sold now across international borders, according to annual reports by the U.S. State Department, than there was in the 18th and 19th centuries. And the total slavery income in these days, we call it human trafficking, is more than $32 billion.
On whether religion is a conduit for lasting change around gender
That seems to be the easiest answer, but I don't think it is the answer, because it's very difficult to get, for instance, the Catholic Church to change its policies. I've written to the pope, by the way, and I got an encouraging letter back from him saying that he believes that the status of women and the activity of women within the church needs to be increased, but there are some specific and very difficult things to overcome if the Catholic Church made that an ordained and official commitment. But at least the new pope is aware of it and is much more amenable, I think, to some changes than maybe most of his predecessors.
In the Southern Baptist Convention, from which my wife and I have resigned — we go to a more moderate Baptist church — I don't think that they are likely to change their policy that a woman must be not only inferior to her husband, but also deprived of an opportunity to be a pastor, or a missionary, or a chaplain in the Army, or to be even a deacon in the church.
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Saturday, February 22, 2014
NPR Morning Edition: Pope Welcomes New Cardinals, Many From Developing World
More Vatican Pro-paganda on America's National Public Radio:
by Sylvia Poggioli
February 22, 2014 8:00 AM
Weekend Edition Saturday
4 min 28 sec
Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday. The pope created 19 new cardinals in a ceremony Saturday in St Peter's Basilica. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
In a solemn ceremony at the Vatican, Pope Francis on Saturday bestowed red hats on his first batch of cardinals.
Ten of the 19 new princes of the church come from outside Europe, including some of the poorest countries in the world.
Their selection is a sign that the reforms Francis is introducing include a restructuring of how the Catholic Church will be governed.
The first pope from the developing world chose many of his new cardinals from the periphery of the globe. They come from the Philippines, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast and Haiti –- places that had never had a cardinal before.
John Allen, Vatican analyst for the Boston Globe, said the choices show the pope's desire to reduce the number of European cardinals and cardinals from the curia – the central Vatican administration.
It could be the start of a shift in the College of Cardinals to global south, where two-thirds of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics live today.
"Francis is making some choices," Allen said, "and one of those choices clearly is that he wants to shift the action in the church from the traditional centers of power to places that he thinks that for too long have been ignored and overlooked."
Only four members of the Vatican administration were tapped to become cardinals.
Bishops, wearing purple skull caps, are shown on Thursday at the Vatican. They were elevated to cardinals in a ceremony Saturday. Alessandra Tarantino/AP
Representing New Trends
One of those is Gerhard Mueller, head of the Vatican's doctrinal office and a known conservative. That's a sign that Francis does not want only prelates who are on his same wavelength, said Marco Politi, Vatican correspondent for the Italian daily Il Fatto.
"The pope wants the college of cardinals to represent the different trends within church as they are," he said.
When Francis announced his selections last month, perhaps the biggest surprise was the unprecedented letter he sent to each newly designated cardinal.
He told them that the red hat should not be seen as a promotion, much less an honor. He asked them to accept the nomination with joy, but in a way that avoids any sign of worldliness, because cardinals should see themselves as servants marked by humility, he said.
This is in stark contrast to the past when wealthy donors or friendly religious orders threw lavish celebrations on the cardinals' behalf, noted John Allen.
Normally, this week in Rome "is like Oscars week in Hollywood. Everyone has a party, a cocktail and often these are swanky black-tie affairs," he said.
Allen said Francis is trying to redefine leadership in the Catholic Church away from an image of power and privilege.
"It 's going to have to change in the direction of greater humility, simplicity, modesty," he added.
Seeking Consensus
In advance of Saturday's ceremony, Francis met with the entire College of Cardinals to discuss badly needed reform of the scandal-plagued Vatican Bank and preparations for an important worldwide bishops' assembly in October on the family.
The discussion likely included the results of a worldwide survey that revealed many Catholics in the U.S. and Europe rejected as unrealistic church teaching on birth control, homosexuality, marriage and divorce.
Before the cardinals began their discussion, Francis urged them to find what he called intelligent, courageous and loving ways to tackle these and other contentious issues.
Vatican analyst Marco Politi says Francis is inspired by the collegiality of the Second Vatican council in the 1960's and wants cardinals and bishops to play a more decisive role in church governance.
"He does not want to make changes by himself, like a monarch," Polti said. "He wants to create an atmosphere like in Vatican Council Two where the bishops discuss and then together in a common way they take their decision."
Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet, said Francis has begun not only reforming the Vatican but also the papacy itself.
"In its style, in its tone, the whole ethos surrounding the old Vatican court which he has basically just dismantled, he is sharing his power, he has begun to set down the foundation stones for a new model of governance, or rather a recovery of an old ancient model of governance," Mickens said.
If he's able to carry it out, Mickens added, it will be the biggest change in the Catholic Church in a thousand years.
Source
More gratuitous Vatican Propaganda from NPR
Related:
Meet The New Pope, Mostly The Same As The Old Popes
February 22, 2014 8:00 AM
Weekend Edition Saturday
5 min 12 sec
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5 min 12 sec
Theologian George Weigel tells NPR's Scott Simon that Pope Francis is actually very similar to his papal predecessors.
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Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Democracy's Road to Tyranny
Photos (Courtesy) http://voloth.geo.do/web/ipertesto/pages/fototeca_fascismo.html
MAY 01, 1988 by ERIK KUEHNELT-LEDDIHN
Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a European scholar, linguist, world traveler, and lecturer.
Plato, in his Republic, tells us that tyranny arises, as a rule, from democracy. Historically, this process has occurred in three quite different ways. Before describing these several patterns of social change, let us state precisely what we mean by “democracy.”
Pondering the question of “Who should rule,” the democrat gives his answer: “the majority of politically equal citizens, either in person or through their representatives.” In other words, equality and majority rule are the two fundamental principles of democracy. A democracy may be either liberal or illiberal.
Genuine liberalism is the answer to an entirely different question: How should government be exercised? The answer it provides is: regardless of who rules, government must be carried out in such a way that each person enjoys the greatest amount of freedom, compatible with the common good. This means that an absolute monarchy could be liberal (but hardly democratic) and a democracy could be totalitarian, illiberal, and tyrannical, with a majority brutally persecuting minorities. (We are, of course, using the term “liberal” in the globally accepted version and not in the American sense, which since the New Deal has been totally perverted.)
How could a democracy, even an initially liberal one, develop into a totalitarian tyranny? As we said in the beginning, there are three avenues of approach, and in each case the evolution would be of an “organic” nature. The tyranny would evolve from the very character of even a liberal democracy because there is, from the beginning on, a worm in the apple: freedom and equality do not mix, they practically exclude each other. Equality doesn’t exist in nature and therefore can be established only by force. He who wants geographic equality has to dynamite mountains and fill up the valleys. To get a hedge of even height one has to apply pruning shears. To achieve equal scholastic levels in a school one would have to pressure certain students into extra hard work while holding back others.
The first road to totalitarian tyranny (though by no means the most frequently used) is the overthrow by force of a liberal democracy through a revolutionary movement, as a rule a party advocating tyranny but unable to win the necessary support in free elections. The stage for such violence is set if the parties represent philosophies so different as to make dialogue and compromise impossible. Clausewitz said that wars are the continuation of diplomacy by other means, and in ideologically divided nations revolutions are truly the continuation of parliamentarism with other means. The result is the absolute rule of one “party” which, having finally achieved complete control, might still call itself a party, referring to its parliamentary past, when it still was merely a part of the diet.
A typical case is the Red October of 1917. The Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party could not win the elections in Alexander Kerenski’s democratic Russian Republic and therefore staged a coup with the help of a defeated, marauding army and navy, and in this way established a firm socialistic tyranny. Many liberal democracies are enfeebled by party strife to such an extent that revolutionary organizations can easily seize power, and sometimes the citizenry, for a time, seems happy that chaos has come to an end. In Italy the Marcia su Roma of the Fascists made them the rulers of the country. Mussolini, a socialist of old, had learned the technique of political conquest from his International Socialist friends and, not surprisingly, Fascist Italy was the second European power, after Laborite Britain (and long before the United States) to recognize the Soviet regime.
The second avenue toward totalitarian tyranny is “free elections.” It can happen that a totalitarian party with great popularity gains such momentum and so many votes that it becomes legally and democratically a country’s master. This happened in Germany in 1932 when no less than 60 per cent of the electorate voted for totalitarian despotism: for every two National Socialists there was one international socialist in the form of a Marxist Communist, and another one in the form of a somewhat less Marxist Social Democrat. Under these circum stances liberal democracy was doomed, since it had no longer a majority in the Reichstag. This development could have been halted only by a military dictatorship (as envisaged by General von Schleicher who was later murdered by the Nazis) or by a restoration of the Hohenzollerns (as planned by Bruning). Yet, within the democratic and constitutional framework, the National Socialists were bound to win.
How did the “Nazis” manage to win in this way? The answer is simple: being a mass movement striving for a parliamentary majority, they singled out unpopular minorities (the smaller, the better) and then rallied popular support against them. The National Socialist Workers’ Party was “a popular movement based on exact science” (Hitler’s words), militating against the hated few: the Jews, the nobility, the rich, the clergy, the modern artists, the “intellectuals,” categories frequently overlapping, and finally against the mentally handicapped and the Gypsies. National Socialism was the “legal revolt” of the common man against the uncommon, of the “people” (Volk) against privileged and therefore envied and hated groups. Remember that Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler called their rule “democratic”—demokratiya po novomu, democrazia organizzata, deutsche Demokratie—but theynever dared to call it “liberal” in the worldwide (non-American) sense.
Carl Schmitt, in his 93rd year, analyzed this evolution in a famous essay entitled “The Legal World Revolution”: this sort of revolu-tion-the German Revolution of 1933-simply comes about through the ballot and can happen in any country where a party pledged to totalitarian rule gains a relative or absolute majority and thus takes over the government “democratically.” Plato gave an account of such a procedure which fits, with the fidelity of a Xerox copy, the constitutional transition in Germany: there is the “popular leader” who takes to heart the interest of the “simple people,” of the “ordinary, decent fellow” against the crafty rich. He is widely acclaimed by the many and builds up a body guard only to protect himself and, of course, the interests of the “people.”
In the Name of the People
Think of Hitler’s SA and SS and also of the tendency to apply wherever possible the prefix Volk (people): Volkswagen (people’s car), Volksempfänger (people’s radio set), des ge-sunde Volksempfinden (the healthy sentiments of the people), Volksgericht (people’s law court). Needless to say that this verbal policy continues in the “German Democratic Republic” where we see a “People’s Police,” a “People’s Army,” while Moscow’s satellite states are called “People’s Democracies.”
All this implies that in earlier times only the elites had a chance to govern and that now, at long last, the common man is the master of his destiny able to enjoy the good things in life! It matters little that the realities are quite different. A very high-ranking Soviet official recently said to a European prince: “Your ancestors exploited the people, claiming that they ruled by the Grace of God, but we are doing much better, we exploit the people in the name of the people.”
Then there is the third way in which a democracy changes into a totalitarian tyranny. The first political analyst who foresaw this hitherto-never-experienced kind of evolution was Alexis de Tocqueville. He drew an exact and frightening picture of our Provider State (wrongly called Welfare State) in the second volume of his Democracy in America, published in 1835; he spoke at length about a form of tyranny which he could only describe, but not name, because it had no historic precedent. Admittedly, it took several generations until Tocqueville’s vision became a reality.
He envisaged a democratic government in which nearly all human affairs would be regulated by a mild, “compassionate” but determined government under which the citizens would practice their pursuit of happiness as “timid animals,” losing all initiative and freedom. The Roman Emperors, he said, could direct their wrath against individuals, but control of all forms of life was out of the question under their rule. We have to add that in Tocqueville’s time the technology for such a surveillance and regulation was insufficiently developed. The computer had not been invented and thus his warnings found little echo in the past century.
Tocqueville, a genuine liberal and legitimist, had gone to America not only because he was concerned with trends in the United States, but also on account of the electoral victory of Andrew Jackson, the first Democrat in the White House and the man who introduced the highly democratic Spoils System, a genuine invitation to corruption. The Founding Fathers, as Charles Beard has pointed out, hated democracy more than Original Sin. But now a French ideology, only too familiar to Tocqueville, had started to conquer America.
This portentous development lured the French aristocrat to the New World where he wanted to observe the global advance of “democratism,” in his opinion and to his dismay bound to penetrate everywhere and to end in either anarchy or the New Tyranny—which he referred to as “democratic despotism.” The road to anarchy is more apt to be taken by South Europeans and South Americans (and it usually terminates in military dictatorships in order to prevent total dissolution), whereas the northern nations, while keeping all democratic appearances, tend to founder in totalitarian welfare bureaucracy. The lack of a common political philosophy is more conducive to the development of outright revolutions in the South where civil wars tend to be “the continuation of parliamentarism with other (and more violent) means,” while the North is rather given to evolutionary processes, to a creeping increase of slavery and a decrease of personal freedom and initiative. This process can be much more paralyzing than a mere personal dictatorship, military or otherwise, without an ideological and totalitarian character. The Franco and Salazar regimes and certain Latin American authoritarian governments, all mellowing with the years, are good examples.
Slouching Toward Servitude
Tocqueville did not tell us just how the gradual change toward totalitarian servitude can come about. But 150 years ago he could not exactly foresee that the parliamentary scene would produce two main types of parties: the Santa Claus parties, predominantly on the Left, and the Tighten-Your-Belt parties, more or less on the Right. The Santa Claus parties, with presents for the many, normally take from some people to give to others: they operate with largesses, to use the term of John Adams. Socialism, whether national or international, will act in the name of “distributive justice,” as well as “social justice” and “progress,” and thus gain popularity. You don’t, after all, shoot Santa Claus. As a result, these parties normally win elections, and politicians who use their slogans are effective vote-getters.
The Tighten-Your-Belt parties, if they unexpectedly gain power, generally act more wisely, but they rarely have the courage to undo the policies of the Santa parties. The voting masses, who frequently favor the Santa parties, would retract their support if the Tighten-Your-Belt parties were to act radically and consistently. Profligates are usually more popular than misers. In fact, the Santa Claus parties are rarely utterly defeated, but they sometimes defeat themselves by featuring hopeless candidates or causing political turmoil or economic disaster.
A politicized Saint Nicholas is a grim taskmaster. Gifts cannot be distributed without bureaucratic regulation, registration, and regimentation of the entire country. Countless strings are attached to the gifts received from “above.” The State interferes in all domains of human existence—education, health, transportation, communication, entertainment, food, commerce, industry, farming, building, employment, inheritance, social life, birth, and death.
There are two aspects to this large-scale interference: statism and egalitarianism, yet they are intrinsically connected since to regiment society perfectly, you must reduce people to an identical level. Thus, a “classless society” becomes the real aim, and every kind of discrimination must come to an end. But, discrimination is intrinsic to a free life, because freedom of will and choice is a characteristic of man and his personality. If I marry Bess instead of Jean, I obviously discriminate against Jean; if I employ Dr. Nishiyama as a teacher of Japanese instead of Dr. O’Hanrahan, I discriminate against the latter, and so forth. (One should not be surprised if an opera house that rejects a 4-foot tall Bambuti singer for the role of Siegfried in Wagner’s “Ring” is accused of racism!)
There is, in fact, only either just or unjust discrimination. Yet, egalitarian democracy remains adamant in its totalitarian policy. The popular pastime of modern democracies of punishing the diligent and thrifty, while re warding the lazy, improvident, and unthrifty, is cultivated via the State, fulfilling a demo-egali-tarian program based on a demo-totalitarian ideology.
Democratic tyranny, evolving on the sly as a slow and subtle corruption leading to total State control, is thus the third and by no means rarest road to the most modern form of slavery.
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Thursday, June 27, 2013
Buoyed by a new pope, priests gather to urge church reform
David Gibson | Jun 14, 2013
(RNS) The death of liberal Catholicism has been proclaimed so often in recent decades that few even bother to check to see if the body still has a pulse.
Father Ernie Davis blesses the communion during Catholic mass at St. Therese Little Flower parish in Kansas City, Mo. RNS file photo by Sally Morrow.
This image available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.
But a fledgling organization of priests believes the obituaries are premature, and as the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests gathers this month to discuss an agenda for church reform, its leaders are pointing to support from the laity as well as inspiration from the top: Pope Francis.
“For me, his papacy so far has been a lifesaver,” said the Rev. Dave Cooper, a priest from Milwaukee who is head of the AUSCP, which will hold its second annual assembly at Seattle University from June 24-27.
Not that Francis is a starry-eyed liberal who is about to ordain women priests or turn the church into a representative democracy. He’s not. Rather, it is the new pope’s repeated exhortations for the church to engage the world, to be humble and open to dialogue, and above all to show people – including Catholics – a welcoming face that has buoyed Cooper and others in the AUSCP.
“The pastoral style is most encouraging to me personally,” Cooper said. “I hope it will grow and deepen and continue.”
The AUSCP was started in August 2011 by about two dozen priests from 11 states who met at a seminary near Chicago with the goal of trying “to keep the best of Vatican II alive,” referring to the landmark church council of the 1960s that opened Catholicism to the modern world.
Like similar groups of reform-minded clergy in Ireland, Austria and elsewhere, these priests were, as one put it, “more than mildly distressed by the ecclesial turn of events” in the past 30 years that has seen the Vatican and local bishops take strong measures to enforce orthodoxy and curb anything that smacks of dissent.
From that modest start two years ago, the AUSCP has grown to nearly 1,000 members from about 120 of the 195 dioceses in the country.
This month’s meeting is expected to draw about 250 of those priests, who will listen to church experts and debate 15 proposals that focus on promoting collaboration and transparency in the church. Proposals include a call for lay people and priests to have a say in selecting bishops, who are now chosen solely by the pope through a secret process.
But one proposal bumps up against the third rail of orthodoxy by calling for a study of ordaining women and married men to the priesthood. Just raising the ordination topic publicly raises the hackles of conservatives — especially younger clergy who entered the priesthood under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI and tend to be more orthodox.
One of the critics is the Rev. Martin Fox, who wrote a long blog post ripping the AUSCP as the “swan song” of aging liberal Catholics who were enamored with a “spirit of Vatican II” that has been quashed by a younger, more tradition-minded generation of clergy and laity. “Utterly pointless,” Fox said of the AUSCP’s agenda.
What’s telling is that Fox is not just any priest, but heads the Office of Priestly Formation for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. After a few of his fellow clerics objected to the broadside, Fox later apologized for some of his remarks and amended his original post.
But the thrust of his objections – which have been standard fare among church leaders for years – remained, and underscored a division that may not be overcome anytime soon. “If we keep inviting them, that’s all we can do,” Cooper said of his conservative brethren.
Another AUSCP leader, the Rev. Bob Bonnot of Youngstown, Ohio, rejected the idea that the association is a rallying point for disaffected older priests. “There is no question of dissent,” Bonnot said. “These are open questions in the life of the church and various priests want us, as priests, to discuss them.”
What’s more, he said, almost all of the proposals – the calls for collegiality, ordaining women as deacons, and allowing use of the previous translations of the Mass – are ones that have been debated and sometimes supported by top church leaders.
“Are all the cardinals dissenters because they discuss these items?” he added.
Bonnot noted that the “vast majority” of his members are workaday parish priests rather than clerics who work in academia or church bureaucracies, and their proposals reflect the concerns of parishioners that they serve.
“Regardless of the ages of the priests that might be involved, the issues are enduring issues that are very much in play,” he said.
And discussing those issues openly is vital to the future of the church, said Cooper.
“The Catholic Church is a living organism and all living organisms change and adapt. As the Catholic Church continues to grow and expand, the genius of Vatican II would say that it must take root and grow among the people,” he said.
“We have to be where the people are. That is our passion.”
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Monday, June 17, 2013
God Doesn't Care If You Smoke Weed; Pastors Focus On Decriminalizing Unjust Drug Laws
Posted: 06/15/2013 9:20 am EDT | Updated: 06/15/2013 1:50 pm EDT
A network of pastors is speaking out against the so-called "war on drugs" and the devastating effect it has had, particularly on the black community.
At a conference called "View from the Pulpit: Faith Leaders and Drug Decriminalization," held at American Baptist College in Nashville, religious leaders focused on the moral injustice of the drug laws, rather than the morality of drugs themselves.
In a press release released in advance of the conference, potential attendees were reminded that African-Americans comprise only 13 percent of the U.S. population and 13 percent of drug users. Yet, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug law violations and 59 percent of those convicted of drug law violations.
One conference attendee, the Rev. John Jackson from Trinity United Church of Christ in Gary, Indiana, spoke on camera (see video above) about his beliefs on God and weed:
"I have had several people share with me privately, 'Reverend, I smoke weed and I know I shouldn't.' I say, 'Let me stop you right there. I don't believe the God we serve is that small or petty to be concerned about you smoking weed. I don't think God cares about that.' I let them know that our God is too big to be concerned about somebody smoking a joint."
The group of black pastors has a strange bedfellow in the televangelist Pat Robertson who indicated to his largely conservative audience last year that he also supported the decriminalization of drugs:
"I just think it's shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had a possession of a very small amount of controlled substance. The whole thing is crazy."
The conference was sponsored by The Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, American Baptist College and The Drug Policy Center.
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Friday, June 14, 2013
Cremation: The New American Way of Death
Thursday, June 13, 2013 | By Josh Sanburn
Lars Tunbjörk—Agence Vu for TIME
A dead body ready for cremation has just been inserted into an eco-friendly Resomator machine. Instead of flames, this stainless steel chamber owned by Bradshaw Funeral and Cremation Services uses a combination of water, potassium hydroxide and heat to break down bodies into peptides, soaps, salts and sugars.
Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk has documented frenzied consumerism, the soul-deadening effects of office life and the strange theatrics of U.S. politics, always displaying a sense of humor and a grasp of the absurd that would not be out of place in a George Saunders short story. For our feature on the increasing popularity of cremation around the country, TIME sent Tunbjörk deep into the American heartland to chronicle the goings-on at three separate crematories.
For decades, burial has been by far the most common form of disposition in the United States. Most Americans never gave it a second thought: their grandparents were buried; their great-grandparents were buried—it just made sense that they’d get buried, too, in the family plot, beside their closest relatives.
(Click here to read TIME’s special report on cremation and find out why our changing attitude toward this final rite of passage says everything about the way we live now.)
But today we’re a far different society than we were just a few decades ago. Within the next few years it’s projected that, for the first time, more Americans will get cremated than buried.
Much of the recent rise of cremation’s popularity can be credited to the Great Recession. Cremations can cost as little as a quarter as much as traditional burials. But it’s not just the price tag that makes cremation a popular alternative.
For one, we’re a much more mobile society today. We don’t buy family plots the way we used to because more of us get an education, start a family, get a job and retire far from our birthplaces. When it comes time to find a final resting place, transporting an urn is much easier than dealing with a casket.
Historically, the U.S. has been a majority Christian nation, and Christianity favors burial for a number of reasons. But Americans are becoming increasingly secular and many of us now identify as atheist, agnostic or, even if we consider ourselves religious, aren’t affiliated with a particular faith. That separation from a religion with ties to traditional burial has led to more Americans exploring other options of disposition.
Cremation has also appealed to those looking for a more eco-friendly solution than burial, which involves placing a body filled with embalming fluids on a plot of land that will need to be maintained in perpetuity. And while flame-based cremation is a more environmentally sensitive solution than traditional burial, a new breed of eco-friendly cremations is just starting to become popular. “Green cremations,” which use a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide, are available in a handful of states and are outpacing flame-based cremations in the areas where they’re offered.
The practice of cremation will in all likelihood only grow as we become more mobile, secular and eco-conscious as a society. In fact, in the not too distant future, burial might well be seen as a peculiar option in light of the eminently reasonable, less expensive and environmentally sound method now so widely available—and increasingly embraced.
Click here to read TIME’s special report on cremation and find out why our changing attitude toward this final rite of passage says everything about the way we live now.
Lars Tunbjörk is a photographer based in Stockholm. He previously photographed the 2012 Iowa Caucuses for TIME.
Josh Sanburn is a writer/reporter for TIME in New York. Follow him on Twitter @joshsanburn.
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Lars Tunbjörk—Agence Vu for TIME
A dead body ready for cremation has just been inserted into an eco-friendly Resomator machine. Instead of flames, this stainless steel chamber owned by Bradshaw Funeral and Cremation Services uses a combination of water, potassium hydroxide and heat to break down bodies into peptides, soaps, salts and sugars.
Swedish photographer Lars Tunbjörk has documented frenzied consumerism, the soul-deadening effects of office life and the strange theatrics of U.S. politics, always displaying a sense of humor and a grasp of the absurd that would not be out of place in a George Saunders short story. For our feature on the increasing popularity of cremation around the country, TIME sent Tunbjörk deep into the American heartland to chronicle the goings-on at three separate crematories.
For decades, burial has been by far the most common form of disposition in the United States. Most Americans never gave it a second thought: their grandparents were buried; their great-grandparents were buried—it just made sense that they’d get buried, too, in the family plot, beside their closest relatives.
(Click here to read TIME’s special report on cremation and find out why our changing attitude toward this final rite of passage says everything about the way we live now.)
But today we’re a far different society than we were just a few decades ago. Within the next few years it’s projected that, for the first time, more Americans will get cremated than buried.
Much of the recent rise of cremation’s popularity can be credited to the Great Recession. Cremations can cost as little as a quarter as much as traditional burials. But it’s not just the price tag that makes cremation a popular alternative.
For one, we’re a much more mobile society today. We don’t buy family plots the way we used to because more of us get an education, start a family, get a job and retire far from our birthplaces. When it comes time to find a final resting place, transporting an urn is much easier than dealing with a casket.
Historically, the U.S. has been a majority Christian nation, and Christianity favors burial for a number of reasons. But Americans are becoming increasingly secular and many of us now identify as atheist, agnostic or, even if we consider ourselves religious, aren’t affiliated with a particular faith. That separation from a religion with ties to traditional burial has led to more Americans exploring other options of disposition.
Cremation has also appealed to those looking for a more eco-friendly solution than burial, which involves placing a body filled with embalming fluids on a plot of land that will need to be maintained in perpetuity. And while flame-based cremation is a more environmentally sensitive solution than traditional burial, a new breed of eco-friendly cremations is just starting to become popular. “Green cremations,” which use a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide, are available in a handful of states and are outpacing flame-based cremations in the areas where they’re offered.
The practice of cremation will in all likelihood only grow as we become more mobile, secular and eco-conscious as a society. In fact, in the not too distant future, burial might well be seen as a peculiar option in light of the eminently reasonable, less expensive and environmentally sound method now so widely available—and increasingly embraced.
Click here to read TIME’s special report on cremation and find out why our changing attitude toward this final rite of passage says everything about the way we live now.
Lars Tunbjörk is a photographer based in Stockholm. He previously photographed the 2012 Iowa Caucuses for TIME.
Josh Sanburn is a writer/reporter for TIME in New York. Follow him on Twitter @joshsanburn.
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Sunday, May 19, 2013
NCU Sports Day 2013 - Chisholm Cheerleading Team
NCU Sports Day 2013 - Chisholm Cheerleading Team
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Could this be the Adventist University just outside of Mandeville, Jamaica once called West Indies College?
It sure has changed since 1970!
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Who let the ADVENTISTS out? Who, Who, Who?
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Thousands rally in Brooklyn against gun violence
More than 3,000 young Seventh-Day Adventists rallied against gun violence in Cadman Plaza Park on Saturday. Photo: Mary Frost
By Mary Frost
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
March across Brooklyn Bridge; 400 acts of ‘compassion’
More than 3,000 young Seventh-Day Adventists from ten states came together in Downtown Brooklyn on Saturday to rally against gun violence. Wearing T-shirts depicting two hands forming a heart and the word “Compassion,” the crowd heard speeches and prayed in Cadman Plaza Park and marched with drums, banners and flags over the Brooklyn Bridge to various stops in Manhattan, ending in Foley Square.
“We are tired of seeing violence in our streets, our communities and homes,” said Pastor Jose Cortez, Jr., Director of Adventist Youth Ministries for the Atlantic Union Conference. “We long for a day when children, women, elderly and all people can live peacefully and without fear of violence in this city. This is the reason we are marching today.
“Let’s unite in making New York City the Capital of Compassion,” he added.
Mary Frost
“Violence is not the answer,” said Congresswoman Yvette Clark (D-Brooklyn’s 9th District). “When young people make their minds up, they can teach us all a lesson: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Clark said the Seventh-Day Adventists were “brilliant” in asking young people “to demonstrate what they learn every day in their congregations.”
Pastor Rohann Wellington, spokesperson for the Greater New York Conference, said the march was about creating change from “the depressing statistics of our community” suffering from “senseless acts of violence.”
More than 400 “compassionate meetings” took place across the city over the weekend, said Dr. Donald King, President of the Atlantic Union Conference. Some of these included packing meals for those hit by Superstorm Sandy, and donating blood. “We believe in walking the acts of compassion,” he said.
“Violence is not the answer,” said Congresswoman Yvette Clark (D-Brooklyn’s 9th District). “When young people make their minds up, they can teach us all a lesson: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Clark said the Seventh-Day Adventists were “brilliant” in asking young people “to demonstrate what they learn every day in their congregations.”
Pastor Rohann Wellington, spokesperson for the Greater New York Conference, said the march was about creating change from “the depressing statistics of our community” suffering from “senseless acts of violence.”
More than 400 “compassionate meetings” took place across the city over the weekend, said Dr. Donald King, President of the Atlantic Union Conference. Some of these included packing meals for those hit by Superstorm Sandy, and donating blood. “We believe in walking the acts of compassion,” he said.
March 25, 2013 - 1:39am
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Monday, December 31, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
Vatican II Changed The Catholic Church -- And The world
Religion News Service | By John Pope Posted: 10/11/2012 8:53 am EDT Updated: 10/11/2012 8:53 am EDT
Tourists arrive on Saint Peter's Square on September 19, 2012 before Pope Benedict XVI's weekly general audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS
(RNS) Fifty years ago on Thursday (Oct. 11), hundreds of elaborately robed leaders strode into St. Peter's Basilica in a massive display of solemn ecclesiastical pomp. It signaled the start of a historic three-year assembly that would change the way members of the world's largest Christian denomination viewed themselves, their church and the rest of the world.
It was the first day of the Second Vatican Council, more popularly known as Vatican II, which was designed to assess the church's role in a rapidly changing world. Leading the prelates was Pope John XXIII, who said frequently that he convened the council because he thought it was time to open the windows and let in some fresh air.
For many Catholics, the air came in at gale force.
As a result of Vatican II, priests started celebrating Mass in the language of the countries in which they lived, and they faced the congregation, not only to be heard and seen but also to signal to worshippers that they were being included because they were a vital component of the service.
"It called for people not to have passive participation but active participation," said New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who chairs the Committee on Divine Worship for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Prayer is not supposed to be a performance. We're supposed to be actively participating."
The changes didn't stop when Mass ended. As time went by, many nuns shucked their voluminous habits in favor of clothes similar to those worn by the people they served. And men and women in religious orders started taking on causes, even risking arrest, when they spoke out in favor of civil rights and workers' rights and against the war in Vietnam.
Such changes represented an about-face from the church's defensive approach to the world before Vatican II, said Christopher Baglow, a theology professor at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans.
"It wasn't that the church wasn't committed to human dignity before Vatican II," he said. "With Vatican II, the church began to look closely at the ways with which modern thinkers tended to promote human dignity and showed how they and the Gospels are complementary."
With Vatican II, the Catholic Church sent out the message that it was part of the modern world, said Thomas Ryan, director of the Loyola Institute for Ministry. "Not against, not above, not apart, but in the modern world," he said. "The church sought to engage, not condemn."
The council documents say there must be a conversation between the church and the world, Aymond said. "The church, by its teaching and by its discipleship, has something to say to the world. At the same time, the world is saying something to the church."
"We can't just say we're not going to be involved in these conversations," he said. "As the church, we have to be in conversation with others who agree and disagree with us."
This shift included the Catholic Church's attitude toward other religions. Before Vatican II, Catholics weren't supposed to visit other denominations' houses of worship. "Catholics looked down on other religions and thought of them as condemned to hell," Ryan said.
But one document from the council acknowledged that these disparate faiths had a common belief in God, said Ryan, who described it as nothing less than "a revolutionary approach."
Perhaps the biggest of these changes came in the church's approach to Judaism. Before Vatican II, Jews were stigmatized as the people who killed Jesus Christ. That changed with the council, when the Catholic Church acknowledged its Jewish roots and Jews' covenant with God, Ryan said.
"It had the effect that the sun has when it comes up and interrupts the night," said Rabbi Edward Cohn of New Orleans' Temple Sinai, whose best friend as a child had to get permission from the archbishop to attend Cohn's bar mitzvah. "It was no less dramatic than that. It provided an entirely new day. It changed everything."
Not all the changes brought about by Vatican II have been welcomed, and many would say there haven't been enough changes regarding the status of women. This spring, the Vatican orthodoxy watchdog launched a full-scale overhaul of the largest umbrella group of American nuns, accusing the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching and promoting several "radical feminist themes" that are incompatible with Catholic teachings.
Although Vatican II was a catalyst for a great deal of change, it didn't happen in a bubble, Aymond said. The 1960s was a decade of change, with protests against racism, war, sexual behavior, the status quo and authority in general.
"If that's going on in the world and in society, that's bound to affect the church because we're both a divine and a human institution," Aymond said.
"Vatican II isn't about replacing what the church is," said Baglow, the theologian at Notre Dame Seminary. "It's about helping it be more vitally what God intended it to be in the first place."
(John Pope writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.)
Source
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Tourists arrive on Saint Peter's Square on September 19, 2012 before Pope Benedict XVI's weekly general audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS
(RNS) Fifty years ago on Thursday (Oct. 11), hundreds of elaborately robed leaders strode into St. Peter's Basilica in a massive display of solemn ecclesiastical pomp. It signaled the start of a historic three-year assembly that would change the way members of the world's largest Christian denomination viewed themselves, their church and the rest of the world.
It was the first day of the Second Vatican Council, more popularly known as Vatican II, which was designed to assess the church's role in a rapidly changing world. Leading the prelates was Pope John XXIII, who said frequently that he convened the council because he thought it was time to open the windows and let in some fresh air.
For many Catholics, the air came in at gale force.
As a result of Vatican II, priests started celebrating Mass in the language of the countries in which they lived, and they faced the congregation, not only to be heard and seen but also to signal to worshippers that they were being included because they were a vital component of the service.
"It called for people not to have passive participation but active participation," said New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who chairs the Committee on Divine Worship for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Prayer is not supposed to be a performance. We're supposed to be actively participating."
The changes didn't stop when Mass ended. As time went by, many nuns shucked their voluminous habits in favor of clothes similar to those worn by the people they served. And men and women in religious orders started taking on causes, even risking arrest, when they spoke out in favor of civil rights and workers' rights and against the war in Vietnam.
Such changes represented an about-face from the church's defensive approach to the world before Vatican II, said Christopher Baglow, a theology professor at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans.
"It wasn't that the church wasn't committed to human dignity before Vatican II," he said. "With Vatican II, the church began to look closely at the ways with which modern thinkers tended to promote human dignity and showed how they and the Gospels are complementary."
With Vatican II, the Catholic Church sent out the message that it was part of the modern world, said Thomas Ryan, director of the Loyola Institute for Ministry. "Not against, not above, not apart, but in the modern world," he said. "The church sought to engage, not condemn."
The council documents say there must be a conversation between the church and the world, Aymond said. "The church, by its teaching and by its discipleship, has something to say to the world. At the same time, the world is saying something to the church."
"We can't just say we're not going to be involved in these conversations," he said. "As the church, we have to be in conversation with others who agree and disagree with us."
This shift included the Catholic Church's attitude toward other religions. Before Vatican II, Catholics weren't supposed to visit other denominations' houses of worship. "Catholics looked down on other religions and thought of them as condemned to hell," Ryan said.
But one document from the council acknowledged that these disparate faiths had a common belief in God, said Ryan, who described it as nothing less than "a revolutionary approach."
Perhaps the biggest of these changes came in the church's approach to Judaism. Before Vatican II, Jews were stigmatized as the people who killed Jesus Christ. That changed with the council, when the Catholic Church acknowledged its Jewish roots and Jews' covenant with God, Ryan said.
"It had the effect that the sun has when it comes up and interrupts the night," said Rabbi Edward Cohn of New Orleans' Temple Sinai, whose best friend as a child had to get permission from the archbishop to attend Cohn's bar mitzvah. "It was no less dramatic than that. It provided an entirely new day. It changed everything."
Not all the changes brought about by Vatican II have been welcomed, and many would say there haven't been enough changes regarding the status of women. This spring, the Vatican orthodoxy watchdog launched a full-scale overhaul of the largest umbrella group of American nuns, accusing the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching and promoting several "radical feminist themes" that are incompatible with Catholic teachings.
Although Vatican II was a catalyst for a great deal of change, it didn't happen in a bubble, Aymond said. The 1960s was a decade of change, with protests against racism, war, sexual behavior, the status quo and authority in general.
"If that's going on in the world and in society, that's bound to affect the church because we're both a divine and a human institution," Aymond said.
"Vatican II isn't about replacing what the church is," said Baglow, the theologian at Notre Dame Seminary. "It's about helping it be more vitally what God intended it to be in the first place."
(John Pope writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.)
Source
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Saturday, April 28, 2012
A Q&A Loma Linda Adventist Pastor Randy Roberts
The long-time Pastor looks back on the his church and community.
By Gina Tenorio
April 27, 2012
Loma Linda and Redlands has changed a lot in the 25 years since Pastor Randy Roberts, senior pastor at Loma University Seventh-day Adventist Church, settled into the area to minister to the community.
Roberts heads one of the largest Adventist congregations in the world. As time has passed, both the church and community have changed. In a two-part interview, we talk to the Pastor - who ministers to the spiritual needs to roughly 7,000 members of the church - about his work, the church and the community.
Part two will run Saturday.
How long have you been in the ministry?
Just overall, about 30 years in some branch there - of either pasturing or chaplaincy or teaching. But overall, about 30 years.
How many at Loma Linda University Seventh-day Adventist Church?
Almost 12 years.
Are you a Loma Linda native?
No. My family is originally from Texas, although I grew up outside of this country. I grew up in a lot of Latin American countries. Quite a few. My dad was a pastor also. In that day and time (we) tended to move a lot. I was born on Columbia, South America. We lived in Columbia, Venezuela, Curacao, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Mexico; Quite a few places.
Did you always know you wanted to be a pastor?
Fairly early on, probably mid-teen years, yeah, something like that.
Was it because it was logical you would follow in your father’s footsteps?
I’m sure that the fact that my dad was a minister had an affect on that, no question, but I had deeper sense that that’s where God was leading me, guiding me, calling me.
What do you find the most fulfilling about what you do?
Being able to have a positive influence on people’s lives, moving them maybe in a more God-ward direction; being able to share with them a vision of a God of love; A god who has a big heart; A God who desires a forever friendship with us. I think some of those things are part of the same package of wanting to make a difference in people’s lives in a positive way for God.
Do you live in Loma Linda?
We live in Redlands. But I’ve lived Loma Linda/Redlands a little over 25 years. I worked first at the Chaplain's office in the (Loma Linda University) Medical Center. I was there a little over seven years. And then I taught at the School of Religion at the university. I was there for 6 1/2 years or so. And I’ve been at the church since.
How important do you think the Adventist church and Adventist community is to Loma Linda?
There are a lot of us as Adventists in Loma Linda just by sheer numbers. But I hope that we’re important in a greater sense than just our numbers. I hope we’re important because this specific church and other churches are making a difference in the community. We’re trying to be cheerful neighbors and helpful neighbors. We’re trying to reach out and touch them in ways related to health, in ways related to needs for food, money, clothing, shelter, whatever or spiritual needs, a deeper and better understanding of God. We strive to be a church that, if it was gone, would be missed and not an isolated, insulated group of people.
But a group of people involved in their community, loving their community and trying to be a positive influence on the community.
There have been a few figures on the size of the population of Adventists in Loma Linda. Does the church track that? Pastor Roberts answered that the church does not, but he did make some observations on the subject:
I think it has changed over time. If you go back 20 years, maybe 25 years when (his family) first moved here, I would say that Loma Linda was probably heavily weighted in the Adventist direction. If you drove up here on Anderson (Street) up to Lawton and that whole subdivision up here, my guess would have been that most of the people would have been Adventist. Not all, but most of them. But then when the building boom came, buildings were going up everywhere. There were new subdivisions were built south of Barton (Road) and on Mission Road and on all these other areas all around, not just Loma Linda, around this area and certainly in Loma Linda.
Then I think many, many other people moved in and this became, as is true down this corridor, a bedroom community to people working more down in the LA and Orange County direction. The housing was cheaper. Then I think the percent, because of the growth that came into Loma Linda, I suspect that the percentage of Adventists went down pretty significantly. That’s all anecdotal. That’s just my observation.
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