slacktivist

Javanese metallurgy

2009-12-08T10:05:49-05:00

Hope you had a good weekend. If it didn't go that well, you might take some consolation from the fact that it still may have been more enjoyable than the past few days have been for dozens of interns at Fox News, talk radio and the Republican National Committee.

Those kids probably expected to do whatever passes for fun in such circles, but their plans were spoiled by the recent attention drawn to the posthumous publication by Duke University Press of an arcane anthropological dissertation on the role of blacksmithing and other cottage industries in an Indonesian village.

That new book, Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, happens to have been written by Dr. Ann Dunham, the late mother of President Barack Obama. And that means if you're Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Steele or John Boehner, then you need to be against this book and everything it may or may not stand for.

So this weekend, while the rest of us were doing whatever it is we were doing, the interns of all these right-wing luminaries were busily scouring Dunham's dissertation, highlighters in hand, looking for anything that might be distorted, misquoted, misrepresented or otherwise cast in an unflattering light if taken out of context and tossed sideways before the public as something insidious, invidious, socialist or secretly Muslim.

We probably won't hear the full story until years from now, but I'm predicting that this hastily ordered "opposition research" fishing expedition in the president's mother's dissertation will produce at least one convert. Most of the interns -- unquestioning true believers -- will do their best to stick to the parameters of the assignment, highlighting words and passages that might be made to sound frightening to a reflexively xenophobic and anti-intellectual audience. But somewhere, in some sub-basement of Fox News or Heritage or one of the other such institutions of the noise machine, some lonely intern is finding himself or herself surprisingly fascinated by Dunham's description of village life and of the exotic, challenging and rewarding calling of the field anthropologist.

And somewhere down the line, perhaps, Duke University Press will be publishing that former intern's own dissertation, exploring the eerie similarities between the tribal animosities and fetishes of some remote people group and the practices of their former bosses at Fox News.

TF: Spies like us (and we like spies)

2009-12-04T13:10:23-05:00

Tribulation Force, pp. 113-117

On page 111 of Tribulation Force we read about Nicolae Carpathia's insidious breaking down "of the barrier between the superior and the subordinate" through the clever manipulation of office furniture.

Two pages later, Jerry Jenkins spends half a page describing Hattie Durham's sneaking back into the office to rearrange that same furniture to reassert Nicolae's authority over his subordinates.

Buck thought that very strange, this seemingly scripted arrangement of the entire meeting, from the formal announcement of his presence, to the staging of who would be there and where they would sit.

He's right, it is very strange. And it's even stranger to try to portray this scripted, staged formality as simultaneously smooth and subtle. This busy business with the office furniture might have worked had it been played for laughs, like Chaplin's high-chair bit in The Great Dictator, or maybe played in fast-forward, accompanied by "Yakety Sax" (bop-bop-ba baaa-ba bop-ba bop-ba baaa-ba bop-ba-ba bomp ...).

With the office now back to the way it was when Buck entered and Carpatha ensconced behind his massive desk, all pretense of equalizing the power base was gone. Yet Carpathia still had the charm turned all the way up. He intertwined his fingers and stared at Buck, smiling.

If there were any logic in this scene, or if Nicolae were even a semi-competent diabolical supervillain, then right here is where he should pull the pen-set lever on his desk, opening the trap door that would send Buck "One thing he could not and would not do was apologize" Williams plummeting into a cistern far below filled with man-eating sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads.

But alas, Nicolae seems to have flunked out of Supervillainy 101. No sharks or lasers or one-way ferry rides await Buck, despite his stubborn refusal to say or do anything that might convince Nicolae that he isn't a threat in need of elimination. So our Antichrist decides, instead of appropriately killing Buck, to spend the next several pages flattering him.

"Jerry Jenkins," he said slowly, "How does it feel to be the best-selling fiction writer of your time?"

Oops. Sorry. The author's self-flattery is very slightly less overt than quite that.

"Cameron Williams," he said slowly, "How does it feel to be the most celebrated journalist of your time?"

You'll recall that this conversation started with Nicolae asking, "May I call you Buck?" and Buck responding "You always have." But he never does. I can't decide if this is meant to be a running joke.

Having completely abandoned both the original pretext for this encounter (Nicolae's probing to see if Buck is a threat in need of elimination) and the original reason Buck accepted the invitation (to speak to Hattie in the hopes of rescuing her from the Antichrist), Jenkins simply moves on to a new rationale for why we're all here: Nicolae needs the popular legitimacy that can only be provided by the most celebrated and trusted journalist of his time.

I think that may have also been the rationale for Buck's presence at the U.N. meeting in the last book during which Nicolae partitioned the earth and then murdered a couple of bankers. The GIRAT's journalistic credibility might have been more helpful to Nicolae on that occasion had he not subsequently brainwashed everyone into believing that Buck wasn't there.

And, if you think about it, once Nicolae proved he could do that, it would seem he doesn't need Buck to actually be present for his next big public event. He could just reverse the trick with Buck absent this time and everyone brainwashed into believing that they'd seen him there.

But I suppose that could get complicated and so, for simplicity's sake, Nicolae tries again here by inviting Buck to witness and report on his signing of a peace treaty between the OWG and the only (and inexplicably) sovereign nation outside of its domain, Israel.

I can't vouch for his choice of Cameron Williams as the source of the vicarious credibility that Nicolae is seeking, but I'm charmed by the innocence of his belief that any print journalist could serve this function. Can you imagine any canny politician today saying, "We need to focus the attention of the world and ensure the trust of the people. Dammit -- get me James Fallows"? Me neither. But the Left Behind series seems to be a kind of alternate universe of print-journalism celebrity, a world in which Joan Rivers and her daughter work the red carpet at the prime time broadcast of the Pulitzer Prize ceremony, accosting Seymour Hersh with shouts of "Who are you wearing?"

Buck's alleged celebrity might have been more credible had Jenkins made him a TV journalist (as in Left Behind: The Movie), but that still wouldn't have made the notion of his universal respectability any more believable. That universal respect died with Walter Cronkite.

To achieve the effect Nicolae is hoping Buck's presence will provide at the treaty signing, he'd be better off bringing Oprah with him. Or maybe Bono. Or Oprah and Bono. (I'm fairly sure, the way LaHaye and Jenkins' god keeps score, they'd both be among those left behind.)

Nicolae piles on the adulation until it begins to seem almost threatening, but Buck Williams can withstand flattery far longer than most people.

Carpathia paused as if he expected Buck to respond. Buck was becoming more and more fond of silence. It seemed to be the right choice with Carpathia, and it certainly was the way God had led him during the murderous meeting when Carpathia had polled everyone to assess what they had seen. Buck believed silence had saved his life.

Silence can, indeed, be prudent. But it depends on the kind of silence, the quality of that silence.

Silence comes in many different shades, tones and characters. It can be cautious, resigned, stupified, icy, serene, stoic, oafish, oracular, mournful, watchful, fearful, restful, blissful, sated, sullen, sluggish, substantial, nervous, unnerving, comforting, fraught, ignorant, polite, awkward ... we could go on.

Buck's problem here is that he settles on the absolute worst sort of silence for a person in his situation. His is a hostile, petulant, challenging silence, and considering who it is he's talking to that's almost suicidal.

Buck doesn't quite come right out and say, "Look, the jig is up. I know you're the Antichrist and I'm your sworn enemy and along with the other Tribulation Saints -- Bruce Barnes of Mount Union, Ill., and Rayford and Chloe Steele of 472 Poplar in Naperville -- I'm going to oppose your every move." But then he doesn't have to come right out and say it. His every dismissive, disdainful response and non-response to Nicolae fairly screams exactly that.

And unfortunately for him, Buck isn't being nearly as silent as he seems to think. He's really just uncooperative, defensive and kind of verbally spastic. Such as when Nicolae asks if he has his article on the disappearances with him:

"I would love to see it."

"I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to show it to anyone until the Weekly gets the final draft."

"Surely they have seen your working copy."

"Of course."

"Steve said you might want a quote or two from me."

"Frankly, unless you have something new, I think your views have already been so widely broadcast that they would be old to our readers."

Carpathia looked hurt.

Hurt, probably, by the thought that the henchmen-contractors working beneath his office won't have the shark-cistern ready for at least another week.

Buck continues in the same hostile, chilly tone.

"I thought the question was whether I needed a fresh quote from you. Unless your view has changed, I do not."

It makes no sense for Buck to cut him off like that, preventing him from commenting directly -- an "exclusive" quote -- on the disappearances. The guy is head of the OWG. This comment would be news. Even if he repeats exactly what he said before, Buck doesn't have to use the new quote, but he gains nothing from refusing even to hear it other than whatever thrill he's getting here from just being as obnoxious as possible throughout.

Carpathia looked at his watch. "As you know, I am on a tight schedule. Your trip was all right? Accommodations acceptable? A good lunch? Dr. Rosenzweig filled you in some?"

Buck nodded to every question.

"Assuming he told you about the U.N. treat with Israel and that the signing will be a week from today in Jerusalem, let me extend a personal invitation to you to be there."

"I doubt the Weekly would send a Chicago staff writer to an international event of that magnitude."

Aha. It seems Buck's hostility throughout this conversation has less to do with the fact that Nicolae is the Antichrist, Beast and embodiment of evil and more to do with the fact that Nicolae is the guy who is responsible for Buck's recent demotion and his exile to the Chicago bureau. That is what is really eating at him here. Not only is he unable to scream at Nicolae for the setback to his precious career, but he also has to sit there and pretend that Nicolae's invitation is somehow generous and not simply something to which he is entitled as "the most celebrated journalist of his time."

And so, even though prior to this meeting he had agonized over his moral duty never to lie, even to the Antichrist, Buck winds up doing just that. But not to protect his friends, only to protect his wounded professional pride:

"I am not asking that you join the press corps of thousands from around the world who will be seeking credentials as soon as the announcement is made. I am inviting you to be part of my delegation, to sit at the table with me. It will be a privilege no other media person in the world will have."

"Global Weekly has a policy that its journalists are not to accept any favors that might --"

Too late, Mr. McGillicuddy. After accepting the free first-class deluxe plane ticket, the bottle of Dom and the ritzy lunch at the yacht club, it's too late to raise this ethical objection credibly. ("What kind of journalist do you think I am?" "We have already established that. Now we are just haggling over price.")

Nothing ever comes of Buck's junketeering, of course, but if Nicolae were a more competent Antichrist, he would recognize that all of these gifts -- the tickets, champagne and meals -- mean that Buck is now compromised. Buck's rival journalists have been portrayed as resentfully jealous of his success and it would be an easy thing to, at a minimum, leak this information to someone who would turn it into an unflattering story, a portrait of Cameron Williams as a corrupt, on-the-take journalist. The threat of such exposure could be used as leverage to persuade Buck to further compromise himself, etc. and so on until eventually he was completely in Nicolae's control.

Carpathia tells Buck not to worry about the Weekly, because very soon he expects Buck to be working for him:

"And though you turned down an offer of employment from me before, I truly believe I have an opportunity for you that will change your mind."

Don't count on it, Buck thought. But he said, "I'm listening."

Throughout this conversation, Buck seems to think it's safe, or possible, to indulge in such thoughts as long as he doesn't explicitly state them out loud. The problem is that we humans don't work that way. If we say, "I'm listening," while intently thinking, "Don't count on it," that thought will be expressed and conveyed just as clearly as the contradictory words. And I think Buck realizes this. Here with Nicolae as with Verna earlier, he follows a juvenile impulse to make faces and roll his eyes behind the teacher's back until he gets caught doing so, at which point he'll say, "What? All I said was 'I'm listening.'" I'm not sure what he thinks he gains from this, or why Jenkins thinks it makes Buck seem smarter, cooler or more admirable.

Imagine that you were in Buck's situation here. Imagine that you were part of a secretive underground resistance network struggling to thwart the schemes of a diabolical cabal led by an evil mastermind.

I would think that part of your agenda would be to learn as much as you could about that cabal and its nefarious plans. It would be immensely helpful if somehow you could manage to plant a bug in the cabal's inner sanctum, a tap on their phones or a secret backdoor access into their computer network. Better still, ideally, would be if you could somehow infiltrate the cabal yourself, becoming the resistance force's undercover agent on the inside. From there you would be able to track the cabal's movements firsthand while also, when the opportunity presented itself, engaging in whatever sabotage you could manage undetected.

That's what you would do, anyway, if you were part of such a resistance group. Because you are not a sophomoric, dimwitted, incurious moron.

Over the next few chapters, both of our protagonists, implausibly, are invited to play exactly this undercover insider's role. The evil mastermind begs them to join his team, to accept from him a pass-key to his innermost secrets.

And yet neither of them willingly seizes this opportunity. Neither of them even seems to recognize that it is an opportunity.

I suppose their reluctance and lack of initiative here is due to their belief that the Tribulation Force already has all of the inside information it will ever need. They're confident they already have sufficient intelligence on Nicolae's specific plans thanks to the Rev. Billing's sermon notes and the 66th book of the Bible. The Tribulation Saints don't need to spy on Nicolae to figure out what he's up to because the Bible already tells them everything they need to know. Just like the Real True Christians living today don't need to learn anything about the world they live in, because the Bible already tells them everything they need to know.

And in any case, the resistance's master plan -- dig a big hole and hide in it for the next seven years -- isn't really dependent on carefully tracking the enemy's movements.

But for whatever reason, Buck and Rayford come across in these chapters as the most inept and unimaginative spies in the history of espionage. This scene between Nicolae and Buck will continue for several more pages. The Antichrist desperately tries to persuade Buck to take notes on his evil schemes while Buck stubbornly -- and rudely -- refuses. Worst. Spy. Ever.

Father to Fearless

2009-12-04T05:18:00-05:00

I nearly always give it my best shot

"Father & Son," Cat Stevens
"Father Explains," Daniel Amos
"Father Feed Me," The Clock Work Army
"Faust Arp," Radiohead
"Favorite T," The Lemonheads
"Favourite Hour," Elvis Costello
"Favours," The Delgados
"Fear," Jeffrey Gaines
"Fear," Sarah McLachlan
"Fear Only You," The Choir
"Fearless Heart," Steve Earle

The fatuous foolishness of the Manhattan Declaration

2009-12-01T16:14:47-05:00

I had meant to conclude with a final post on this subject reserved simply for laughing at the Manhattan Declaration and the comical preening of its pompous prose.

It provides a hilarious, real-world example of the kind of wince-inducing misplaced self-importance and lack of perspective that I've always enjoyed when it's performed by people like Ricky Gervais or Rowan Atkinson or Steve Coogan. The document begins with the authors comparing themselves to those who defended Christendom against the onslaught of "barbarian tribes." Then they declare themselves the heirs of John Wesley and William Wilberforce and compare themselves to all those who suffered injustice during the long struggle for civil rights. And they're still just warming up on their primary subject -- their righteous courage and courageous righteousness. By the end of the document, they're presenting themselves, without qualification or perspective, as a combination of Augustine, Aquinas and Martin Luther King Jr. and comparing their document to King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" -- blissfully disregarding the ways in which a "Press Release from the National Press Club" isn't quite the same thing.

Their own awesomeness is a topic the authors address with relentless relish. Everything else in the document is merely a foil for this central subject. The threat of The Gay is grave, ominous and potentially world-altering, they warn, repeatedly, before reassuring us that their heroic resolve and moral superiority will save the day. Even the passages in which they luxuriate in their own massive humility are saturated with this swaggering self-regard.

This all-consuming self-absorption coupled with an utter lack of self-awareness plays like something from a Christopher Guest movie. I'm only half-convinced at this point that Robert George is even a real person and not a Fred Willard improv run amok. The authors possess that same remarkable knack for straight-faced seriousness while making uproariously ridiculous assertions.

And at one level it's impossible to view these pretentious peacocks, these Malvolios grimacing and strutting in their yellow stockings, without succumbing to the derisive laughter they deserve. Such self-inflation demands deflation. And anyway it can't be helped. I mean, just listen to them:

We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.

The whole thing is like that -- like a bad parody of the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V. Except of course that Henry was outnumbered. Here instead we have a group of powerful elites, men at the center of political, cultural, academic and ecclesiastical privilege bemoaning their oppression at the hands of the homosexuals and religious minorities they claim run the world. They are overlords posing as underdogs. (It's hard out there for a pope.)

And while that's ridiculous, it's not really funny. The claim of oppression is laughably bogus, but the blood on their hands is all too real. A parody of the St. Crispin's Day speech has comic potential, but a parody of the St. Crispin's Day speech as delivered by the pilot of the Enola Gay is too bitterly callous even for my bleak taste in comedy.

So ultimately, even though we're being treated to grand examples of the Blowhard Fool -- a comic type that dates back before Plautus -- this isn't funny. And formally, structurally, we're dealing with tragedy. There is no resolution, no reconciliation, no marriage. (Shakespearean shorthand: Tragedy means everyone dies; comedy means everyone gets married.) Indeed, the whole production here is an explicit rejection of the possibility of reconciliation and an adamant denial of marriage. So this isn't comedy. We can't help but laugh at these tragic clowns, but the laughter has a bitter aftertaste.

The important thing here, though, is to recognize why these buffoons have embraced this buffoonery. Their silliness is not a sideshow. The pompousness is the purpose. The fatuousness is the function. This is, as the kids on the Internets like to say, a feature, not a bug.

The anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-religious minority Manhattan Declaration is not primarily about opposing any of those things. That's all just collateral damage. The primary purpose of the Manhattan Declaration, its raison d'etre, is to help the authors and signatories convince themselves that they're better than everyone else. The ridiculous, overweening pride is what it's for.

Chuck Colson, Robert George and Timothy George are blitzed out of their minds on the drug of smug. They're hard-core umbrage junkies, snorting offendedness, mainlining grievance, freebasing uncut self-righteousness.

This is your brain on smug. Just say no.

Don't know much about history

2009-11-30T16:51:35-05:00

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. ..."

So begins Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and if you ever set out to write a novel you should try if you can to produce an opening sentence as good as that one. But don't bother trying to do better, it can't be done. That's perfection, right there -- a memorable quip that presents, in miniature, the world, plot and central conflicts of the novel while simultaneously and indelibly establishing the sardonic voice and view of the narrator. Genius.

Anyway, I repeat this line here not just to bask in the brilliance of Jane Austen -- although that's always worth doing -- but to point out that Jane would have been mystified by Ron Sider's recent description of marriage as an institution wholly unlike the economic arrangements described in her novels. Sider's further assertion that his conception of marriage represents a constant, enduring description of the institution as it has existed throughout all of human history -- in every culture and every civilization -- would likely have left Jane not just baffled, but furious.

This discussion of marriage comes in a conversation with Stephen Thrasher of the Village Voice in which Sider gamely tries to defend his endorsement of the Manhattan Declaration which states, among other things, that opposition to marriage equality for same-sex couples is a non-negotiable Christian duty.

It's an interesting thing to watch a peaceable, gentle man attempting to defend a belligerent, aggressive document while trying to avoid personally insulting and demeaning the people the document he just signed insults and demeans. That leads to some curious developments, such as Ron's surprising endorsement for the first time I've seen of civil unions. Similar comments on NPR's Fresh Air wound up costing Richard Cizik his job with the National Association of Evangelicals -- to the NAE's great shame and detriment. Cizik went on to help lead the evangelical movement against climate change -- an effort that, according to Manhattan Declaration author Chuck Colson, this new document explicitly was created to counteract.

(How do you make homophobia even more wrong-headed and harmful? By trying to use homophobia to suppress action against climate change. Colson stands by his "principles" come Hell or high water because, apparently, Hell and high water are his principles.)

It's not easy to provide a pithy quote summarizing the vision of marriage Sider is trying to defend in his conversation with Thrasher, because that vision isn't coherent enough for such a summary. But what he's trying to do is to ground opposition to same-sex marriage in a sociological, rather than a sectarian, argument:*

I would be open to a legal category of civil partnership. Gay people could have a specified number of legal rights that would encourage their ongoing commitment. But what really matters, and what's really decisive, is what marriage means ... the reason every civilization in history has defined marriage between men and women, is that society has a lot at stake in preserving continuity, in a wholesome way. It's quite clear that when men and women who have sex and make babies stay together. It's better for their children, and it's better that children grow up with their moms and dads -- and that's why societies have defined marriage, to protect making babies. The real question is, what is marriage?
This is precisely not a religious argument. It's an argument about what a society needs, to preserve itself, to preserve what is wholesome from generation to generation. The core of that argument is historic, from every civilization. ...
My argument [is] not a religious argument. It is about what marriage means. It's true, a lot of contemporaries have redefined marriage. Marriage now means an emotional, romantic relationship between people. If that is what marriage is, then it should ought to be available to gays or lesbians. But if marriage is what every culture has always said it was, then it makes no sense to offer it to everyone ...

This argument, by his own admission, hinges upon the idea that "every culture ... in every civilization ... has always said" the same thing about what marriage is and what it means. It requires that every culture and civilization throughout human history must regard or have regarded marriage as a lifelong, monogamous commitment between one and only one heterosexual male and one and only one hetersexual female, and that this commitment exists primarily for -- in the celibate cleric's language used in the Manhattan Declaration -- "procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life."

And this claim of a constant, unchanging and enduring singular form of marriage across history, civilizations and cultures is insupportable. It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that such a claim requires a staggering ignorance of history, civilizations and cultures.

Consider the historical and cultural record of the book that the Manhattan signatories claim is their favorite: The Bible. Examples of this allegedly constant marital ideal of a heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong union of shopkeepers primarily for procreation are remarkably rare in the Bible. The patriarchs, kings and prophets who dominate the Hebrew scriptures almost never conformed to this model. Nor do the apostles and missionaries who dominate the New Testament. We can find a scattered handful of examples of such marriages in the Bible -- Moses and Zipporah, Priscilla and Aquila, maybe Pontius Pilate -- but as a historical document of human families and marriages, the Bible offers a dizzying diversity of polygamists, economic alliances, political alliances, concubines, serial adulterers, celibates, devout absentees and kinsman-redeemers, and none of those support Ron's contention of a monolithic, unchanging universal form of marriage.

And anyone who imagines that our world, today, does not contain just as diverse an array of models, forms and kinds of marriage must not get out much.

Seriously, Ron's supposedly exclusive, historically constant model of marriage doesn't even encompass my family -- and there are many millions like mine across America. No one is yet explicitly advocating that marriages like mine ought to be denied full legal legitimacy, relegated to second-class status as mere "civil unions," but that is, in fact, what a great number of Ron's co-signatories of the Manhattan Declaration -- celibate men in funny hats -- believe ought to be the case.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
* The acknowledgement that a solely sectarian argument wouldn't be a sufficient basis for civil law is another place where Sider contradicts the Manhattan Declaration. It advocates for "religious liberty," redefining that as the asserted right not to have to present non-sectarian arguments. The suggestion that the declaration's Catholic and evangelical signatories might need to present such nonsectarian arguments if they want wider support for their religious opposition to abortion and homosexuality is what those signatories mean by religious persecution. They view pluralism and secularism as affronts to their religious liberty.

Pulling a Lieberman

2009-11-29T21:18:14-05:00

First let me say a word in praise and defense of my former boss, my professor, mentor and friend Ron Sider. I need to start off with this affirming word because by the end of this post -- and in the one to follow -- I'm afraid I'm going to have to be rather harshly critical of my old friend.

Sider's book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger is an unflinching, uncompromising assessment of the Christian obligation to share with those in need. I know of few people able or willing to live up to that book's powerful call to sacrificial generosity, but Sider himself has done so for many decades. He is a gentle, irenic man and a Good Man.

But he is a Good Man in a Bad System -- a system that requires a pervasive and unavoidable kind of badness that seeps into and infects the good of Good People trapped within it, preventing them from even imagining any alternative. More on that in a moment.

For now, I just want to reiterate that I have enormous respect and affection for Ron Sider, so much so that my regard for him is able to withstand even something like his dismaying endorsement of the overwrought, corrupt and corrupting "Manhattan Declaration."

In partial defense of Ron, though, we should note that his signature and support were secured under false pretenses. It seems he was lied to.

The organizers of this right-wing manifesto du jour needed a token liberal to provide a bipartisan fig-leaf, so they turned to Ron Sider (about as close as the evangelical world allows to a liberal) to be their Lieberman. But to convince him to play this role, they had to lie to him.

I don't know which or how many of the declaration's three author-organizers did the actual lying. My money would be on convicted felon and would-be domestic terrorist Chuck Colson. (Yes, terrorist. Plotting to burn down the Brookings Institution in order to silence opposition from centrists is political terrorism.) The two Georges -- Robert and Timothy -- strike me as less cynical true believers. They're more like the moral philosopher equivalent of one of those physicists who becomes obsessed with his design for a perpetual motion machine -- railing against friction and entropy and insisting that they'll make the thing work some day.

But someone -- one of those three -- deliberately misled Ron Sider about the content and intent of the Manhattan Declaration and Sider, to his discredit, took their word for it.

Here, from a recent e-mail to members of his nonprofit, is Ron Sider's description of how he understands the Manhattan Declaration:

Last Friday I joined a circle of prominent Catholic, Orthodox, and evangelical leaders at the National Press Club in Washington to launch the Manhattan Declaration, which places the issues of sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty in the context of longstanding Christian concern for combating poverty and racism and promoting the dignity of women.
For decades I have sought to promote what the Manhattan Declaration calls a “truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.” I agree strongly with the Declaration, that the sanctity of human life, the historical definition of marriage, and robust religious freedom are under serious threat at this point in our history. The Declaration does NOT say that these are the most important moral issues of our time. It only says that these are crucial moral issues.

This is utterly wrong. I don't just mean that he's wrong on this issues -- which I think he is. Or that it's utterly wrong to champion bigotry while calling it an "ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances" -- which of course it is. What I mean specifically is that the Declaration does claim that abortion, homosexuality and the "religious freedom" to enforce the criminalization of both are the most important moral issues of our time. The Declaration exists to say precisely that. It's entire purpose and intent is to "declare" that these three things stand above and apart from any other issues -- to declare that they must not be viewed "in the context of longstanding Christian concern for combating poverty" or the context of anything else.

The whole point of this document was to threaten younger evangelicals who were perceived as getting a bit wobbly in their opposition to homosexuality. Evangelical Christians under 30 just don't seem to see that as a paramount moral concern -- and they can't see how gay couples wanting to marry could possibly be viewed as more morally significant than the fact that, by the time these younger evangelicals get to be Colson's age, Bangladesh will be under water.

The Manhattan Declaration was created to threaten these younger evangelicals to get back in line with the precise priorities of their elders. Get back in line or be cut off. When talking to The New York Times' Laurie Goodstein, Colson is much more candid about this than he seems to have been when suckering Ron into pulling a Lieberman:

The signers ... say they also want to speak to younger Christians who have become engaged in issues like climate change and global poverty, and who are more accepting of homosexuality than their elders. They say they want to remind them that abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom are still paramount issues.
“We argue that there is a hierarchy of issues,” said Charles Colson, a prominent evangelical who founded Prison Fellowship after serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. “A lot of the younger evangelicals say they’re all alike. We’re hoping to educate them that these are the three most important issues.”

Paramount. "Hierarchy." "These are the three most important."

That's three ways of saying the exact opposite of what Sider was led to believe.

So, yes, I think that Colson lied to get Ron to sign on and that Ron fell for it.

The question is why. What did Ron think was in it for him? The answer isn't pretty. Not for Ron or for the evangelical world that, as a matter of routine, forces everyone in it to behave ignobly and disingenuously.

At the paper overnight it's just me and Betty, the security officer who comes through every half hour on her rounds. Private security is all about "loss prevention," which means, more or less, that it's Betty's job to circle the building every half hour to confirm that it's not on fire. But Betty's bosses and the insurance company don't just take her word for it that she's making her rounds. She has a little electronic wand that she has to wave over little electronic checkpoints throughout the building to confirm and record that she's faithfully doing her job. If she ever slipped up and missed a checkpoint, the wand would record this omission and she'd be in a world of trouble.

That's basically how the evangelical subculture works. Everyone within that closed system has to check in, regularly, to reaffirm their allegiance to the two core principles of the religion: opposition to legal abortion and the legal and cultural marginalization of homosexuals.

It doesn't matter if those things have little to do with the work to which God may have called you. You might be a nurse in a mission hospital or you might run a soup kitchen or a rehab center or you might be the choir director for a local church. It doesn't matter. You're still going to have to check in regularly to confirm your opposition to The Gay and to legal abortion.

Fail to do so with the requisite enthusiasm and you're out, you're done, you're anathema.

Formal structures for enforcing this are unnecessary -- it's woven into the fabric of the subculture. Periodically, this implicit requirement is made explicit through formal "declarations" like this Manhattan thing, but such formal reinforcements are hardly needed.

Playing along with this system is easy. Just wave the little wand over the checkpoint and pretend that it makes perfect sense to regard abortion and homosexuality as the "paramount" concerns of the Bible, of the Gospels, of Jesus Christ. Pretend that it makes perfect sense to view the requisite stances on those issues as compatible with what the Bible, the Gospels and Jesus Christ have to say.

Just play along and say what you're required to say and they'll let you go back to whatever lesser things you might have been trying to do for a little while. Embrace the smug on cue. When asked, pledge your allegiance to the idea that self-righteous pride -- the cardinal vice -- is a worthy replacement for the cardinal virtue and you'll be an evangelical in good standing.

And even if you personally don't require a disingenuous claim of persecution to get your jollies, what does it cost you to play along with the lie? What does it really cost you to pretend that your privileged, hegemonic majority is being persecuted by minorities forced to live on the fringes of your culture? What does it really cost you to pretend that your own religious freedom requires the restriction or eradication of others?

What does it cost you, I mean, besides your soul?

That's the bargain Ron was willing to make, whether or not he was lied to about it. And I'm afraid that willingness is indefensible.

Toxic smugness

2009-11-24T16:59:33-05:00

Hey kids! It's time to play "Stupid? Or Evil?"

Today's contestant is Chuck Colson:

"If someone walks in our church and says, 'You preach a sermon on [homosexuality], we're going to arrest you as a violation of the hate crimes,' then they'll have to arrest us."

I'm going to have to go with "Evil" here. Colson knows this is utter nonsense. He's enjoying the posture of self-aggrandizing bravado, but he knows full well that hate crimes has nothing to do with his fantasies about Gay Stormtroopers invading churches.

Colson knows that he's spinning falsehoods here. He knows that what he is saying is not true, but he has chosen to bear false witness. He's deliberately lying about the aims of his political opponents, portraying them through the lens of a paranoid fantasy concocted and refined to appeal to those who are prone to such paranoid fantasies. He is lying about the supposed evil of others to stroke his own pride and luxuriate in the feeling of righteousness it gives him.

And that's pretty much evil. Evil means (bearing false witness) in service of evil ends (pride). For bonus points, this is all done in God's name -- so add in the evil of blasphemy too.

In a single sentence, Colson manages to break three out of 10 commandments. Not a record, but still impressive.

For another look at the same sordid stew of toxic smugness, see Kathryn Joyce's disturbing look at the "Men's Rights" movement: "Men's Rights Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective."

Joyce discusses, among many other things, the way "Men's Rights Advocates" abuse or invent statistics to try to show that women abuse men with the same frequency and intensity that men abuse women. She cites Portland State University professor Jack Straton on this disingenuous research:

“The biggest concern, though, is not the wasted effort on a false issue,” writes Straton, but the encouragement given to batterers to consider themselves the victimized party. “Arming these men with warped statistics to fuel their already warped worldview is unethical, irresponsible and quite simply lethal.”

That "encouragement given to batterers to consider themselves the victimized party" is not a bug, but a feature of this research. It's what this research was intended and designed to produce.

It exists, in other words, to fulfill precisely the same function that Colson's lying about the Gay Gestapo exists to fulfill.

The group with the power is desperate to convince itself that it's actually powerless and persecuted. The batterers are trying to convince themselves that they are the victims of battering. The hegemons are trying to convince themselves that they are the ones threatened with legal sanctions for failing to conform.

And having almost half-convinced themselves of this, they bask in the glow of their courageous stand against such hardships, citing that courage as evidence of their moral superiority.

Bruce Barnes must die

2009-11-23T15:16:34-05:00

I apologize for the recent lack of regularly scheduled Left Behind Fridays here lately. (And, for that matter, the lack of much of anything else.)

We'll never get through the seven-year Great Tribulation at this rate, and the stalled progress on our weekly Bruce Barnes Death Countdown is getting frustrating.

But let me beg your indulgence for one more week and let's set our calendars for December 4 to resume our journey through the World's Worst Books.

This Friday is a holiday, after all, a national Holy Day during which it is the sacred duty of every American to go out and buy lots of stuff, thereby generating the Consumer Demand that is the basis of our national and global economy. (There's an alternative view that seeks economic growth from making and producing stuff rather than through buying stuff, but that's just crazy talk. And these people are dangerous heretics.)

Fresh thread

2009-11-19T03:43:58-05:00

From Mark Noll's The Civil War as Theological Crisis:

American national culture had been built in substantial part by voluntary and democratic appropriation of Scripture. Yet if by following such an approach to the Bible there resulted an unbridgeable chasm of opinion about what Scripture actually taught, there were no resources within democratic or voluntary procedures to resolve the public division of opinion that was created by voluntary and democratic interpretation of the Bible. The Book that made the nation was destroying the nation; the nation that had taken to the Book was rescued not by the Book but by the force of arms.

Nobel theology

2009-11-12T17:22:43-05:00

Listening to an interview with Elinor Ostrom on NPR's Planet Money podcast, I was delighted to learn that one can, in a way, be awarded a Nobel Prize for theology.

Technically, Ostrom was awarded the prize in economics "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons." But the gist of that work, it turns out, is an affirmation of the principle of subsidiarity.

This is the idea, developed over the centuries since St. Thomas Aquinas, that decision-making ought to take place as close as possible to those directly affected by and responsible for the decision. Formally, subsidiarity is described as the principle that "a community of higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."

That higher and lower business in the official Catholic phrasing reflects the origins of this idea from a more hierarchical time. That formulation troubled later Protestant thinkers who reworked subsidiarity into the idea of "sphere sovereignty" -- restating the notion without reference to higher and lower, but rather in terms of "spheres" of sovereignty closer to or further from the decisions in question. Think of it kind of like a 3-D Venn diagram.

The implication of subsidiarity and/or sphere sovereignty is that responsibility is pervasive and complementary -- that it is shared by every sphere, or by all levels or orders of society. No order or sphere or actor is irresponsible, but the form and the priority of responsibility varies depending on each level/order/actor's relation to the matter at hand.

I've written a good bit about this on this blog -- see, for example, "More on subsidiarity" and "Who is You?". The latter post there offers a look at how this principle can be seen at work in the way society seeks to care for orphans. Since that discussion was from more than five years ago, it might be worth running through that again briefly.

Parents have the primary responsibility for caring for, feeding, sheltering and nurturing children. Orphans, by definition, have lost their parents, so this primary responsibility moves farther out to the next-best option and the next order or sphere. The primary responsibility for those orphans next falls, in other words, to other relatives or close friends. Those heroic grandmothers we often hear about raising their grandchildren on behalf of their dead, absent, addicted or incarcerated parents are subsidiarity in action. These grandparents may have previously played only a subsidiary role in raising these children, but when the parents are out of the picture, they step up to play the primary role.

If no such relatives are willing or able to care for our hypothetical orphans we turn to the next-best, next-closest alternative -- to foster parents who had previously been only distantly, tangentially subsidiary to the lives of these children but who would be next in line to take over as primarily responsible for their care. In the absence of any such capable foster parents, the care of these children would fall to some actors or agencies even more distant or higher-order, until ultimately -- should all such subsidiary actors fail -- we would reach the final, most distant, highest-order actor, the federal government.

The failure to appreciate subsidiarity results in a great deal of the thudding stupidity that infects our political discourse. Almost every topic is addressed as though the world consisted of two and only two actors -- the individual and the federal government. And those two actors are regarded as mutually exclusive, having no shared or complementary responsibilities. This creates a world in which our hypothetical orphans above can only be imagined to exist in either an intact, two-parent nuclear family or else as wards of some monolithic centralized federal orphanage.

This either/or absurdity shapes arguments about everything from health care to education to employment. Either the individual is solely responsible for X or else the federal government is. This form of argument allows for and imagines no other agencies, levels, spheres, orders, communities or possibilities. Nor does it allow for the underlying, fundamental reality, which is that none of these various responsibilities are exclusive or even competing. No one is ever irresponsible.

The illustration with our hypothetical orphans above shows how each higher or more distant actor has the responsibility to step in and take a greater responsibility when the lower/closer actors fail, but before that happens, these more-distant actors first have the responsibility to support and sustain the closer, "lower-order" actors and thereby to prevent them from failing. The federal government is not only responsible for providing a last-desperate-measure National Home for Unwanted Children -- it's responsible for supporting Grandma so that she will be able, in turn, to care for her grandchildren. This is better for the children and cheaper for the government. It can and should support Grandma both directly and indirectly, by helping to create a context and climate in which she is better able to meet her new responsibilities to these orphaned children.

So -- sticking with the more Catholic hierarchical approach, just because it's easier to visualize -- the higher orders have a responsibility not just to step in when the lower orders fail, but to bolster and support those lower orders so that they do not fail, and to ensure a broader context that makes their failure less likely. The lower orders, in turn, have to meet their responsibilities so as not to bog down the higher orders with having to take a greater role in what ought to be, for them, subsidiary, distant and tangential functions.

This is true not just for the very highest and the very lowest, but for every level in between. The dual role of direct support and improved context applies not just to the federal government as the agent of last resort, but to every other actor at every other level or sphere as well.

What I found most endearing and admirable about Elinor Ostrom in that interview with Planet Money was her fierce anger and frustration with the blunt stupidity that tries to take her work on subsidiarity and cram it into their pre-existing arguments against "Big Government," as though the cooperative, local governance she describes among Swiss farmers were some sort of Randian libertarian utopia.

I share that same anger and frustration. Particularly with the obtuse Randian types whose own agenda can only lead, perversely, to the very kind of Very Big Government they're always going on about. If everyone adopted their way of thinking, then the very thing they claim to oppose would inexorably come to pass. By advocating a form of radical individualism that denies all mutual, interdependent and differentiated responsibility, they guarantee the failure of every level/sphere/agency other than the agent of last resort. They create a world in which only that agent of last resort -- the federal government -- has any responsibility, and therefore a world in which it must have every responsibility.

A world of irresponsibly detached individuals, families, neighbors, neighborhoods, charities, clubs, associations, corporations, unions and congregations can only result in those farthest from the situation being forced to take up the responsibilities those other agents have abandoned. If people will not accept the responsibility of being citizens and neighbors, then the government will be forced to act in their stead.

My greatest frustration with the alleged opponents (and unwitting advocates) of "Big Government" is that they have it backwards. Government is not expanding because its usurping the responsibilities of those other, nearer actors. It is getting bigger because those other, nearer actors are abdicating their responsibilities, foisting them off onto the actor of last resort.

When there exists a healthy civil society -- which is to say, a responsible one -- it is unnecessary and nearly impossible for the government to take over the rightful functions of all these other spheres and agencies. But if they refuse to play their role it becomes nearly impossible for the government not to do so. If we refuse to be our brother's keepers, we're inviting Big Brother to take over the job instead.

Evangelicals and immigration

2009-11-11T16:52:39-05:00

On the one hand, you've got your religious evangelicals. They're born-again Christians who go to church twice every Sunday, read their daily devotions, try not to say "geez" because that's almost just as bad as swearing, feel guilty that they haven't done more to witness to you because they genuinely don't want you to go to Hell, and they just really Lord they just really just pray, Lord, all the time that, Lord, Jesus would just really just guide their daily lives.

We're talking about Ned Flanders. Nice folks. I like them a lot. I mean, I wouldn't want them designing the science curriculum for my kids' school, and I almost never vote for the same people they vote for, but those things aren't these folks' main focus. They're mainly about serving Jesus as their personal Lord and savior and trying to get others to do the same.

On the other hand, you've got your political evangelicals. On paper, these people look very similar to the Ned Flanders types. The difference is what they regard as paramount, as most important. For your political evangelicals, who you vote for and what is taught in science class is all that really matters. They may go to the same church as Ned, and they may attend just as often, but when push comes to shove that religious stuff isn't nearly as important to them as the pride and power of politics.

For a quick and easy illustration of the difference between these two groups, ask either one about immigration policy.

For religious evangelicals, immigration is looked at through the lens of two centuries of the missionary movement. Immigration, they believe, brings the mission field home. The categories of documented and undocumented are irrelevant in this view. The only categories that matter are saved and unsaved. Unsaved immigrants are a field white unto harvest. And saved immigrants are brothers and sisters in Christ. The former should be considered the focus of evangelism, the latter of fellowship.

Hence the existence, dating back to the 19th century, of evangelical "home mission societies" which have long helped to settle refugees and newly arrived immigrants, helping them find housing and learn the language and customs of their new home. And the existence, also, of ethnic immigrant congregations -- often called "missionary" churches -- sharing facilities with established English-speaking congregations.

This piece in today's Chicago Tribune nicely captures the attitude toward immigration that arises from a primarily religious evangelicalism.

The discussion within Wheaton Chinese Alliance Church reflects a shift among the nation's evangelical community as more pastors push for comprehensive immigration reform. In recent years, many influential evangelical leaders have moved from silent opposition to outspoken support for immigration reform, citing biblical foundations and Christian duty to care for strangers.
Last month, the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents about 45,000 U.S. churches, called on the Obama administration to establish a process by which undocumented immigrants could earn legal status. NAE President Leith Anderson said the group recognized the surging number of immigrants, mainly Latino and Asian, filling evangelical churches. ...
Matthew Soerens, immigration counselor at World Relief DuPage and co-author of the book Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate, said the stronger support for reform is due to the realization that immigrants are changing the face of the American evangelical church.
"We see this as a biblical issue grounded in the Scriptures, and primary to what we believe," Soerens said. "But what is also true is the demographics of our country is changing with immigration, and evangelical leaders realize that the fastest growth they are experiencing is among immigrant congregations."
Two of the largest evangelical churches in the area, Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington and Wheaton Bible Church in West Chicago, now have Spanish-speaking congregations and support immigration reform. ...

That's interesting. Here in America, "evangelical Christian" almost unfailingly also means "Republican," and the Republican Party is adamantly opposed to the sort of liberalized immigration reform being endorsed by these religious evangelicals.

That conflict hasn't gone unnoticed by the political evangelicals. Professional douchebag Mark Tooley -- whose job as president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy is to politicize American Christianity for the benefit of the right-wing foundations that fund IRD -- denounced the religious evangelicals at the NAE and elsewhere for failing to adhere to a strict Lou-Dobbs, xenophobic, Tea Party chauvinist, barbarians-at-the-gate party line scapegoating of immigrants.

"Several NAE members have denied endorsing the immigration resolution. Did the stance actually emerge from NAE's constituency? Or was it simply 'handed down from on-high' by NAE elites?
"This controversy is not only about immigration policy ... It is also about NAE's increasing politicization and elitism, a dangerous trajectory veering towards irrelevancy and pioneered by the National Council of Churches."

The NAE's position on immigration arises directly and organically from its religious perspective. Tooley's position on immigration arises directly and inevitably from his partisan politics. How they each respond is a function of what each regards as most important -- what drives them and shapes their identity.

For the Ned-Flanders types, that essential identity has to do with their Christian piety. That's why religious evangelicals are such nice people and why they make excellent next-door neighbors.

For the Mark-Tooley types, that essential identity has to do with their anything-to-win grasping after partisan power. That's why political evangelicals are such despicable assholes.

TF: Showdown let-down

2009-11-08T07:11:49-05:00

Tribulation Force, pp. 108-113

Buck Williams is hogging the spotlight.

So far in Tribulation Force, the Buck pages are outnumbering the Rayford pages by more than 2-to-1. And even when we do check in briefly with Buck's co-star here it's mainly in order to eavesdrop on Chloe's side of Buck's romantic subplot, in which Rayford plays the role of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

This imbalance isn't surprising, given the way our dual protagonists function as fantasy stand-ins for our dual authors and that Jerry Jenkins does all of the actual typing for these books. Writing about someone else's Mary Sue just isn't as much fun. So over the next 24 pages, we get 22 pages of Buck and two pages of Rayford talking to Chloe about Buck.

Eventually -- whether out of a sense of fair-play or from a fear of angering his boss -- Jenkins begins to correct this imbalance by conspiring to have Rayford hired as the civilian pilot of Nicolae's personal Air Force plane. Until then, though, Tim LaHaye's surrogate in these pages is reduced to the role of the hero's girlfriend's dad.

Rayford calls Chloe from his car phone:

"Wondered if you wanted to go out with your old man tonight," he suggested, thinking she needed to be cheered up.

That's astute fatherly intuition, given that the last time he spoke with her she was sobbing over the mistaken identity business with spiky Alice. She's a bit more composed now, but she's dreading their 8 p.m. prophecy study group with Bruce, knowing that Buck will be there.

"I'm just afraid of what I'll say, Dad. No wonder he's been cool toward me with that, whatever-you-call-her in his life. But the flowers! What was that all about?"
"You don't even know they were from him."
"Oh, Dad! Unless they were from you, they were from Buck."
Rayford laughed, "I wish I'd thought of it."
"So do I."

If you're thinking that a romantic bouquet of flowers from your father would be more disturbing than consoling, that's probably because you're not the sort of person who would also indignantly stammer "that, whatever-you-call-her" when trying to describe someone's POSSLQ.* The Victorian prudishness that renders someone inarticulate with horror at the thought of such cohabitation is directly proportionate to the creepy sort of attitude that would make a 20-year-old woman wish that the bouquet of flowers she just received came from her father. (See also, Purity Balls.)

Speaking of creepy -- those flowers turn out later to have been sent by Bruce Barnes, who thus serves as an even starker example than Buck of the sort of awkward, passive-aggressive fumbling that LaHaye-style evangelicals refer to as "courtship." Bruce, whose wife disappeared less than a month ago, doesn't see anything inappropriate about sending anonymous flowers to a much-younger woman over whom he wields a kind of spiritual authority.

Having fulfilled his obligation to check in with Tim's character every once in a while, Jenkins quickly returns to Buck Williams, who is being led into Nicolae Carpathia's U.N. office by Hattie Durham.

Hattie works for Nicolae because Buck introduced the two of them. And she knows that Steve Plank is Buck's oldest and closest friend. Yet she ushers Buck into the room like she's the sergeant-at-arms for a joint session of Congress and they're all strangers:

"Mr. Secretary-General and Mr. Plank, Cameron Williams of Global Weekly."

Nicolae greets Buck with a bit less pomp and circumstance, reaching to shake his hand:

"Buck!" he said. "May I call you Buck?"
"You always have," Buck said.

After not even bothering to grunt in response to greetings from Chaim and Hattie, Buck here at least has the courtesy to express out loud the scarcely hidden disdain he shows whenever he encounters anyone outside of Bruce's inner-inner-circle. Just like with Hattie, Buck is too busy checking out Steve's outfit to say hello to him:

Steve, despite his position as executive editor of one of the most prestigious magazines in the world, had not always dressed the way you might expect a journalist to dress. He had always worn the obligatory suspenders and long-sleeved shirts, of course, but he was usually seen with his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up, looking like a middle-aged yuppie or an Ivy League student.

This takes me back to the day I was hired at the newspaper, when I first received my obligatory suspenders along with a stern reminder than I must never, ever loosen my tie or roll up my sleeves, because we're journalists and we can't go around looking like a bunch of undergrads from Yale.

Today, however, Steve looked like a clone of Carpathia. He carried a thin, black-leather portfolio and from head to toe looked as if he had come off the cover of a Fortune 500 edition of GQ. Even his hairstyle had a European flair -- razor cut, blow-dried, styled and moussed. He wore new, designer-frame glasses, a charcoal suit just this side of pitch-black, a white shirt with a collar pin and tie that probably cost what he used to pay for a sports coat. The shoes were soft leather and looked Italian, and if Buck wasn't mistaken, there was a new diamond ring on Steve's right hand.

I've complained repeatedly that Jenkins almost never provides physical descriptions in these books. Now that he has, I wish he hadn't. Apart from getting the clothing details wrong, note that here, as with Hattie last week, we've been given a detailed picture of what Steve is wearing, but we still have no idea what Steve himself looks like. We know that his outfit is straight off the cover of the Esquire edition of Vanity Fair, but what does he look like? Tall or short? Fat or thin? And what color is his 1980s hair? We still have no idea.

Carpathia pulled an extra chair from his conference table, added it to the two before his desk, and sat with Buck and Steve. Right out of a management book, Buck thought. Break down the barrier between the superior and the subordinate.

Treating subordinates decently sets off Antichrist alarm-bells for Buck. Because, apparently, people who don't lord it over their supposed inferiors must be viewed with the same suspicion as he has for peacemakers and those who want to feed the hungry.

And now, some red meat for all of you Nicky/Buck shippers out there (you know who you are):

Every time Buck looked at Carpathia's strong, angular features and quick, seemingly genuine disarming smile, he wished with everything in him that the man was who he appeared to be ...

In between those yearning glances at Nicolae, Buck looks on Steve with a measure of pity. Here is yet another friend, the third on this trip, from whom he will have to keep secret the knowledge that would save his soul:

Buck felt for Steve, and yet he had not been consulted when Steve had left Global Weekly for Carpathia's staff. Now, much as Buck wanted to tell him about his newfound faith, he could trust no one.

So just like with Chaim, Hattie and everyone who eventually reads his deliberately obscure cover story on the disappearances, Buck withholds the truth he knows from Steve. But he feels really bad about it.

Unless Carpathia had the supernatural ability to know everything, Buck hoped and prayed he would not detect that Buck was an enemy agent within his camp. "Let me begin with a humorous idiom," Carpathia said, "and then we will excuse Steve and have a heart-to-heart, just you and me, hmm?"

Wait -- weren't we told that this guy speaks flawless English?

"Something I have heard only since coming to this country is the phrase 'the elephant in the room.' Have you heard that phrase, Buck?"

OK, I suppose that is a "humorous idiom." But the thing about idioms is that you're supposed to use them as idioms and not ...

Anyway, you can see where this is going. Nicolae is preparing to confront Buck directly about what he does or doesn't remember after the whole Stonagal-shooting, mass-brainwashing incident.

The set-up for this scene suggested that Buck would be struggling here with a moral dilemma involving whether or not to lie to Nicolae.

That might seem like a no-brainer. Nicolae is the Antichrist, the ultimate evil, a man destined to become a global tyrant who is already responsible for the murder of four people Buck knew personally. If Buck fails to deceive Nicolae, it likely means that he, Chloe, Rayford, Bruce and everyone else at New Hope Village Church will be killed. But Buck, as a good RTC, believes in moral absolutes,** and he cannot tell a lie because lies make baby Jesus cry.

In addition to that potential moral conflict, there's also a more pressing practical question: Even if Buck does decide to lie, he still can't possibly know what it is he should say to convince Nicolae that he isn't a threat. The trick here for Buck is to figure out what it is that Nicolae wants to hear him say and then to figure out a way of saying it that doesn't involve explicitly lying.

That almost seems promising -- not a bad set-up for what ought to be a tense, suspenseful scene.

This being Tribulation Force, of course, such a scene never unfolds. The confrontation begins:

"I confess I was confused and a little hurt that you did not attend the private meeting where I installed the new ambassadors. However, as it turned out, it would have been as traumatic for you as it was for the rest of us."

Can it be that simple?

Nicolae seems to be asking only for an apology. Here is Buck's opening, his escape. He can save his own life and that of his beloved Chloe and the lives of the rest of the Tribulation Force just by saying, "I'm so sorry. Please accept my apology, I did not mean to insult you." He can say that without lying, and if he does so Nicolae will apparently be satisfied without seeking any further unknowable details about the false memories he tried to brainwash Buck into believing.

All Buck has to do is apologize and Nicolae will be convinced that the brainwashing succeeded, that Buck is not "an enemy agent within his camp," not a threat that needs to be eliminated.

But this is Buck Williams we're talking about:

It was all Buck could do to keep from being sarcastic. One thing he could not and would not do was apologize. How could he say he was sorry for missing a meeting he had not missed?

Buck's refusal to apologize has nothing to do with his qualms about the moral necessity of not telling a lie. It has to do with his injured pride at being falsely accused.

"I wanted to be there and wouldn't have missed it for anything," Buck said. Carpathia seemed to look right through him and sat as if waiting for the rest of the thought. "Frankly," Buck added, "that whole day seems a blur to me now."
Carpathia ... looked from Buck to Steve and back. He looked peeved. "So, all right," he said, "apparently there is no excuse, no apology, no explanation."
Buck glanced at Steve, who seemed to be trying to communicate with his eyes and a slight nod, as if to say, Say something, Buck! Apologize! Explain!
"What can I say?" Buck said. "I feel badly about that day." That was as close as he would come to saying what they wanted him to say.

After all that build-up leading to this confrontation, this is what it comes down to -- to Buck acting like he's a moody teenager and Nicolae is some cheery adult asking, "So, how was school today?" He responds to Nicolae's questions with a sullen hostility and the mistaken belief that he is keeping his sarcasm in check, sounding for all the world like Napoleon Dynamite.

The crux of this scene was whether or not Buck would be able to figure out "what they wanted him to say" and to say it in time to save himself. It ends with Buck realizing exactly what it is he needs to say, but refusing to do so because, "One thing he could not and would not do was apologize."

And just like that Buck's big showdown with the Antichrist fizzles into nothing. It doesn't matter whether or not Nicolae is convinced by anything he's said because this scene winds up following the same pattern as every other conversation between these two in these books. Neither character is allowed to do the thing they ought to have done right away -- in Buck's case, flee for his life, in Nicolae's case, kill Buck really hard -- because they're doomed to work together keeping Buck both alive and in proximity to Nicolae so that Jenkins' can use him to tell us what's going on there at Antichrist central. So the conflict between them isn't resolved here. It doesn't come to an end, but just kind of stops.

"All right," Nicolae says, abruptly and inexplicably switching gears. "Now, Buck, I want to talk to you as a journalist, and we will excuse our friend Mr. Plank."

And it's over. Buck stays here, in Nicolae's office, for another 45 pages, but from here on out it's all exposition, with the Antichrist reciting items from LaHaye's End Times check list out of his day-planner.

Is Buck safe now? Has Nicolae been convinced he was successfully brainwashed even though he refused to offer the requested and required apology?

Who knows? It doesn't matter. Nicolae's got a peace treaty with Israel to sign, a One World Government to arrange and a Whore of Babylon to impregnate. He's swamped.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* A Census Bureau acronym for "persons of opposite sex sharing living quarters," immortalized in Charles Osgood's poem, "There's nothing that I wouldn't do / If you would be my POSSLQ."

** A thriving cottage industry in the evangelical subculture involves intellectual-ish author/speakers whose primary theme is railing against the loss of "moral absolutes." Their sermon -- it's the same spiel for all of them -- consists of half-understood snippets of C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer cobbled together to arrive at the conclusion that what they call "situational ethics" (which is not the same thing as what ethicists mean by that phrase) and what they call "moral relativism" (ditto) are leading us down a slippery slope toward legal abortion, gay marriage and universal health care. This is the theme, for example, of every third column published under Charles Colson's byline, of every fourth column written by Cal Thomas and of at least one article in any given issue of First Things.

Thanks to the popularity of this garbled deontology, "moral absolutes" has become, for most American evangelicals, a buzzword meaning, roughly, "opposed to legal abortion." The upshot of all of that is that for many American evangelicals, the idea of that it might be necessary in a given situation to tell a righteous lie -- such as by lying to the Antichrist himself to prevent his slaughtering your entire community -- is tied up with the collapse of all morality, all truth, all meaning. Any concession that rules might sometimes need to be broken could, in their minds, lead directly to a slippery slide down the slope to gay abortionist indoctrination camps for preschoolers. Man was made for the sabbath, after all.

Evangelicals haven't always been this way. Corrie ten Boom's Holocaust memoir The Hiding Place was an enormously popular and beloved book among American evangelicals in the early 1980s. That book tells the story of her devout Dutch Reformed and piously evangelical family and how they became righteous gentiles in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, hiding Jewish neighbors in a secret room of their home. The ten Booms never hesitated to lie, lie, lie when they had to in order to protect those they were sheltering. They forged identity papers and ration cards, and never paused to agonize over whether such deceptions conflicted with their "moral absolutes." Corrie's father, Casper ten Boom, was a good Calvinist who would have said that such necessary lies were an example of what it means to live dependent on grace in a fallen world.

For the politicized proponents of "moral absolutes," talk like that just proves that Calvin was totally depraved and will burn in Hell with all the other moral relativists.