Chris Abraham » christians

Thank You Fresh Air Fund Holiday Bloggers!

Chris Abraham — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:46:30 +0000

In December, we at Abraham Harrison helped the Fresh Air Fund reach out to bloggers and folks online in order to remind the online Fresh Air Fund friends and family that they both need donations during this time of year as well as needing families to host children for the summer. Since the holidays, over ninety bloggers have responded to Fresh Air Fund’s call to action with the placement of banners, with tweets, and with blog posts. We are much obliged to you, Fresh Air Fund bloggers! (via Marketing Conversation)

Full text of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech 2009

Chris Abraham — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:54:50 +0000

This is the full text of President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration speech, courtesy of NowPublic, KansasCity.com, thanks to a link from @Aisle7

Full text of President Obama’s Inauguration Speech 2009
My fellow citizens:
I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land – a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.
The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted – for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions – who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control – and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.
And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort – even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].”
America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Barack Obama is the Rabies Shot America Needs

Chris Abraham — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:11:38 +0000

I am sitting here in Berlin, Germany, listening to NPR on 104.1 FM (yes, we have National Public Radio on-tap in Berlin, it is true), and I am rooting for Barack Obama. I have to admit that I voted Republican in the last two elections, in 2000 and 2004, because I was appalled by both Gore and Kerry. I was passionate about Bill Clinton during his eight years in office and preferred anything to Gore or Kerry, to be honest. That said, I want Barack Obama to win because the world wants Barack Obama to win.

After church yesterday, I got to talking to my fellow parishioners and they want Barack Obama. These are not your traditional European communists you hear about, they’re devout Christians — born again — who are probably considered pretty conservative in the context of Europe. However, in the context of America, even a right wing wingnut European is still relatively liberal by American standards.

When Berliners look at Barack Obama, they don’t see someone who will set race riots afire, they don’t see someone who will turn America into a Marxist-Leninist stronghold, they see a man who is sophisticated, education, trained, has a brain in his head, went to the best schools, has explored the world, cares about civil rights, and who will most likely be willing to span the broken bridges across the Atlantic to Europe and Russia and try his best to rebuild them and begin to regain the trust, admiration, and even envy that much of the world had fifty-years ago.

To them and to me, Barack Obama will be able to return the United States to the hands of the rational. A United States with a better separation between Church and State. Maybe even a country in which Jesus Christ is the co-pilot and not the pilot any more. Where saner, more peaceful, minds prevail. A nation willing to put away its herald and sword, stop with the Christian Crusades, the preemptive strikes, the unilateral military conquests, and the obsession with being Exceptional. Exceptionalism is the most dangerous aspect of the George W Bush and Neocon White House.

“When the United States looks abroad, it does so from an assumed position of moral and spiritual strength. For as long as the United States has existed, a perceived sense of its exceptionalism has permeated the way that Americans view the rest of the world . . . this view has been reinforced by the material reality of US economic and military strength. The essence of American exceptionalism is a celebration of the uniqueness and special virtue of the United States. It rests on the belief that the United States has a special role to play in the world, and unique qualities to bring to this role . . . The roots of the concept stem from the Puritan vision of America as a ‘shining city upon a hill’, a society designed to serve as a moral example to mankind.”

The idea that America is any better-suited than any other nation to lead based on some sort of Divine Inheritance or Plan is ludicrous and very insane, especially when no one else in the entire world agrees. I am a big fan of Mike Signer’s concept of exemplarism:

“Exemplarism is the principle that the United States could best serve the spread of liberal democracy by being an enviable example to the world—the shining light on the hill, the beacon. Being a good example requires strengthening the institutions that assure individual liberties, the rule of law, and the prosperity born of industry and commerce. Adherents to exemplarism would find themselves in agreement with Kant’s principle of noninterventionism into the affairs of other nations.”

Telling yourself and everybody around you how amazing, brilliant, noble, moral, and generous you are when you’re the biggest and meanest and best-armed and best-outfitted man in the room is hubristic and kind of pathetic. Delusional, actually, and certainly not the best way for a man — or a country — to be. America is kind of being an International douchebag.

I must admit that I have a special weakness for exemplarism’s belief in the “principle of noninterventionism into the affairs of other nations” even if you don’t like the way other nations are running their households. There is a certain amount of independence and internal liberty associated with being sovereign. Sovereignty, to me, is holy. To me, exporting culture, policy, morals, or any concept of character or politick is poor form, especially when it is at the tip of a sword.

What scares me about American Exceptionalism is that it allows just about any behavior based on the premise that we can do no wrong. That any move we take to help is helpful, that any gift we have to give is welcome, that any feeling a foreign nation could feel is grateful.

When America thinks the entire world is so “insane” and “drunk” that only America cane make the important, sober, choices, then it is in fact that America is the Nation suffering from mental illness. You know what they say, right? If you think the entire world has gone mad, that the entire world is against you, that the entire world is violent and full of unrest, the unappealing truth might just be that you’re severely paranoid and might be the most mentally ill in the room. There is no way that the entire planet is conspiring again the United States — unless, of course, we have gone one step too far.

I am told that we have gone one step too far; however, Europe and most of the world is willing to let bygones be bygones because we’re loved by the world, at least mostly. Berliners no longer trust America but they’re willing to give Barack Obama a chance — they’re not willing to give John McCain a chance, sadly.

They see in John McCain an angry, malicious, foolish man — which is fine; however, in Sarah Palin, they don’t even seen some harmless vice presidential candidate, they see a very dangerous indicator that the McCain/Palin ticket will more assuredly take the United States to an even darker, more jingoistic, more conservative, descent into fascism.

When I tell people these things, especially on Twitter, I get the strangest response, even from the Democrats: “America is the best country on earth.” “America may not be perfect but there is no better country on earth.” “I am proud to be an American — I am patriotic, surely.” Alternately, I also get, “I think we have gone too far as a nation — we have descended into a self-centered feeding frenzy rife with elbows and short-sighted land-grabbing.”

To me, I am somewhere in the middle. I love the foundation of the Nation. I love the literature, the heart, the soul, the worlds, the music, the history, the compassion, the Faith, the persistence, the curiosity, and confidence, the optimism, and even the cocksureness! I love the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. There is a reason why many nations worldwide have patterned and even plagiarized our Constitution, to be sure.

Hell, Europe loves the idea of America! Basically, we are a nation that, in its source code, has embraced all that is liberté, égalité, fraternité; however, the world had not been able to enjoy our uniquely American version of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all the foaming at the mouth and the bared fangs! There is a fear that this mad-dog may have gone too far into its rabies and is too far gone.

In Barack Obama, they see that maybe what America has been doing for the last eight years as been a sort of postpartum, post-911, depression. That the Nation, all big and clumsy, hung over, and feeling a little sick, is finally reemerging from darkness into light — luckily, just in time, when the world needs a leader in the community and not just a dangerous paranoiac who lives in the dilapidated house at the edge of town.

The rest of the world has not given up on us as Americans or as America. Have we as a nation give up on ourselves?

Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!

Chris Abraham — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:19:05 +0000

On behalf of the International Medical Corps and Abraham Harrison, thank you so much for all of your support over the last four weeks to get the vote out to help get the International Medical Corps into the top-five of the Members Project and then for securing the $100,000 from American Express, to be used to feed hungry children worldwide. Here’s a thank you video blog entry from Paige Strackman, who was the PaigeS who submitted IMC in the first place under the title, Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children.

Here’s the official, final, press release you can read, directly from International Medical Corps:

International Medical Corps Wins $100,000 Grant from American Express to Save Malnourished Children
October 14, 2008, Los Angeles, Calif. –International Medical Corps (IMC) has been awarded $100,000 through the American Express Members Project. The grant will be used to treat malnourished children worldwide. IMC is one of five organizations to receive funding in the nationwide campaign where American Express Card members submit and vote for projects that are meant to bring people and organizations together for positive change.
The funding will be used to implement the project, ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children.’ Submitted by American Express cardmember Paige Strackman, the project focuses on treating malnutrition through nutrient-rich, ready-to-eat food, which International Medical Corps provides to more than 35,000 children every month through a network of 215 supplementary and therapeutic feeding sites in some of the world’s most food-insecure environments, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. The project was selected by an elite panel out of 1,190 others and received more than 14,000 votes in the final round of competition.
“I submitted this project because, as a mother, I cannot ignore that five million children under five die every year due to malnutrition,” says Paige. “This funding will save thousands of malnourished children around the world who otherwise may not have been reached. I am so grateful to everyone who supported this project and helped make it a reality.”
While the project was submitted by one individual hoping to make a difference, it gathered public momentum. The project’s message was shared in the media from Los Angeles to New York, on nearly 200 blogs across the Internet, through thousands of emails and on social networking sites, including Facebook, My Space and Twitter.
The grant from American Express comes at an opportune time when rising food costs are driving millions deeper into poverty everyday while trying to afford basic staples. As a result, hunger and malnutrition kill more people each year than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.
“We are incredibly grateful to Paige for not only submitting the project, but also for fueling it with the passion to make it so successful,” says Rebecca Milner, Vice President of Institutional Advancement. “There are approximately 178 million children around the world who are malnourished and only 3 percent get treatment. This funding makes it possible for International Medical Corps to reach more of those children who desperately need our help.”
In Democratic Republic of Congo alone, International Medical Corps’ supplementary feeding centers admitted 3,500 new children in the past two months. At one center for severely malnourished children, IMC has a 35-bed capacity, but is accommodating 82. Another 30 children await treatment. This trend is symptomatic of the food insecurity affecting East Africa and much of the developing world. The World Food Program estimates that 15.7 million of those in need are in East Africa, and another 8.6 million are in Afghanistan.
With a mission that focuses on training, International Medical Corps works to empower individuals and communities, providing education on how to treat malnutrition, identify warnings signs, and intervene before malnutrition worsens. Health care workers and parents are educated on proper diet and hygiene, and communities are equipped to grow their own food and reduce their vulnerability to rising prices.
*The ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children’ project can be viewed here: http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/OZH1P1
**Videos of children’s dramatic recoveries from malnutrition can be seen on International Medical Corps’ YouTube Channel: http://ca.youtube.com/user/IMCMembersProject
For more information visit our website at www.imcworldwide.org.

Also, thank you to every single blogger and social media maven who was so generous as to help us spread the word out and get as much attention as possible for both the Members Project as well as for International Medical Corps as well. You were all more than generous and all of us at IMC and AHLLC would love to thank you for being so generous and selfless.

Help Feed Hungry Children via Danny Fisher.
Help Save Kids via Three Sons and a Princess.
Seeking $1.5 million to feed malnourished children via http://www.cabraham.com/node/693.
International Medical Corps Matched With Top 25 American Express Members Project, via The Colombo Times News Blog.
Altruism – For Whose Sake? via Jakartass.
Cast a Vote, Help Save a Child via The Blog That Ate Manhattan Goes to Italy .
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Here There and Everywhere.
International Medical Corps Matched With Top 25 American Express Members Project Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Samotalis.
International Medical Corps responds to the food crisis with emergency nutrition programs, food relief aid, agricultural assistance, and training via Holly’s Fight to Stop Violence.
Calling All American Express Card Members via All 4 My Gals.
Russia using cluster bombs and humanitarian efforts for children… via Glass City Jungle.
I’ve got this via E-Mail To Publish on this site, For the sake of children via The Triple Gem!.
In This Election, The Winners are the Children via The Blog That Ate Manhattan.
International Medical Corps via Christefideles.
saving malnourished children via Lotusinthemud.
Help Save the Lives of Malnourished Children With International Medical Corps via Myrtus.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Ontario.
International Medical Corps via Sakshum…cultivating dreams.
International Medical Corps Matched with Top-25 via Jumping Monkeys.
Banner on Site via Nerds Eye View.
Fabulicious Friday #26 via cookienotes.
Sharing Saturday – AmEx and Int’l Medical Corps via My Life as a Hot Professional.
Cause Everyone Needs to Eat via Grassroots Activism.
International Medical Corps via Yoga and Judaism Center.
Radyo Inteligentaindigena-09-20-2008 via Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo.
Help IMC save the lives of malnourished children in Africa! via A Romanian in Africa.
Fighting Deadly Malnutrition: This Time, A Morally Imperative Rescue via The Cogitamus Blog.
Fighting Deadly Malnutrition: This Time, A Morally Imperative Rescue via litbrit .
Do the right thing via Bloody Brilliant.
Let None Go Hungry via Pipecleaner Dreams.
Click to Help Malnourished Children! via A Red Thread Connection.
Tweet via Bloggapalooza.
Here’s Something Cool via Cool Mom Picks.
A Different Vote: Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Sexy Spanish Club in Buenos Aires.
Saving Lives for Malnourished Children via Connorcolesmom.
This won’t take a minute. via Miss Cellania.
People Watching in Lipscani via Writers Bloc.
A Good Deed via My Boyfriend is a twat.
Corporate do-gooding: Vote for the best ideas that American Express is sifting through via Religion Blog: Dallas News.
Please consider voting via Living in shkoder Albania.
Banner via Andres V.
Help Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Progressive U.org.
International Medical Corp via Jaden’s Journal.
We Get Stuff via Winds of Change.
International Medical Corps, Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Art of the Possible Online.
Banner via Postcards From Across the Pond.
Another AmEx Submission… via Fat Doctor.
Up to 5 million children a year die of malnutrition – with one mouse click, you can help via Shakesville.
Help International Medical Corp Save Starving Child With Just One Click via William K. Wolfrum.
International Medical Corps Needs Your Vote via The Rotten Word.
Give ‘em a vote via Army of Mom.
Int’l Child Relief NGO Needs Our Votes…1.5Million At Stake via The Democratic Daily.
Members Project by AmEx is amazing. Vote to send their money to help children here. via Craphammer.
Reaching Out in the Love of Christ via The Day of the Lord.
Do you Hear the Cry? via Christs Redeeming Passion.
Compassion that makes a Difference. via Passion that Redeems.
The Greatest Gift is Love via About the Father’s Business.
Making a Difference via Redeemed by the Passion of Christ.
Be a Light that Makes a Difference via Life in Christ.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via What’s a Delmer Look Like.
banner via The Legless Blog.
Contribution to a Noble Cause via Aa..Ha [Thinking Inside The Blog!].
Help International Medical Corps Earn $1.5M via Turning Left.
Help International Medical Corps Earn $1.5M via eNews Park Forest.
They Need Your Vote … via Freaked Out Fathers.
posted widget via Albtranslator.
Please check this out via Braveheart Does the Maghreb.
Saving the lives of malnourished children via Tongue and Cheek.
American Express’ Members Project International Medical Corps via Sugar and Spice.
International Medical Corps Matched With Top 25 American Express Members Project Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Budget Nomad – US Ex – Pat on the Move.
Vote for International MedicalCorps to Help Children in Need. via humorgrafe .
Voting for International Medical Corps via Tall Skinny Kiwi.
Revealing myself as a LOTR nerd via Journey Mama.
Thank You for Blogging About International Medical Corps! via Chris Abraham Because the Medium is the Message.
Dora, the sheep droppings explorer via The French Mountain Dweller.
Int’l NGO Needs Our Help To Win $1.5 M For Starving Children via Daily Kos.
Thank You Bloggers for Blogging about International Medical Corps via Memes.org.
Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers via Abraham Harrison.
“Vote for International Medical Corps to Help Children in Need” via Ben Heine.
Feeding Hungry Children via Kuru Lounge.
Your click could mean $1.5 million for malnourished children around the world via Pirate Pappa.
One Click to Save Lives via So a Blonde Walks Into a Review.
Members Projects via OBVI.
With One Click You Can Save Thousands Of Malnourished Children via Blogher.
Help International Medical Corps Feed Hungry Children via Chrisfernando.net.
Thursday, September 25, 2008 via Island In the Pacific.
Your click could mean $1.5 million for malnourished children around the world. via Fresh Motivation.
Click for $1.5 million – A win-win-win situation via Stet.
Vote to make a difference via Onlinefundraisingblog.
Something About Saving Lives? via NDAGHA.
Click to Donate via More Than An Army Wife.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via The Existential Lip.
International Medical Corps via Backyard Missionary.
International Medical Corps Matched with Top 25 American Express Members Project, ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children’ via Bio-Medicine.
Time is Running Out!!! via Pre School Mama.
“The International Medical Corps: Please Consider This Good Cause” via Working With Word.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via javajive.
Things I should have avoided whilst pregnant via Whitterer on Autism.
American Express Members Project: Join me in voting for the project, “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children.” via Make College Pay Off.
Interested in Saving a Child From Malnutrition? via Reservoir.
Go Vote for the International Medical Corps via Christian Spirituality w/ Edges.
Vote for the International Medical Corps! via Understanding The Psychology and Effects of Abandonment Issues.
International Medical Corps via Stories on Malawi.
The Least of These via Paravanes: Christian Meditations .
Vote to help feed hungry kids! via Happy at HFC.
Please support International Medical Corps and help feed hungry children via The Sreisaat Adventures in cambodia.
Tela’s Finds via Working Moms Against Guilt.
Save Lives with Your Vote via Servant of Chaos.
FYI via Left of Centre.
International Medical Corp via Desert Phoenix.
sidebar via Pardon Me For Asking.
One Day Left – the AMEX Members Project via A Mom a Blog and the Life In-Between.
widget via Psychiatryforpublic.
sidebar via Tamil Newsfeed.
Help Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Progressiveu.
A Little Charity Is All It Takes. via Anchor Rising.
When Snark Just Isn’t Enough via World-O-Crap.
International Medical Corps via Portrait of a Writer.
The Members Project via Earnest Parenting.
Vote to Feed Hungry Children via Looney Bin 4 Sure.
American Express Members Project via Big Blueberry Eyes.
Vote Now!! Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Lost Girl’s World.
International Medical Corp Matched… via Chris Zenzine.
We get letters via Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
Just a Note via Code Yellow Mom.
International Medical Corps – Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Awakening To Enlightenment.
Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Contented Woman.
Beyond THE FUTURE: International Medical Corps via Beyond Understanding .
Beyond THE FUTURE: International Medical Corps via Publishers Marketplace.
Banner via Arwin Soelaksono .
Vote to Help Feed a Hungry Child! via Three P’s in a Pod.
I get mail — worthy causes via The Reaction.
I get mail — worthy causes via Newshoggers.
I get mail — worthy causes via The Impolitic .
Vote to Help Hungry Children via Dad Talk.
Social Media News Release via Nandigram United.
IMC project: Saving the lives of malnourished children via Motherscribe.
Nobody likes to go hungry – especially kiddos. via Jelly Mom.
HELP FEED CHILDREN via Smart Christian.
International Medical Corps via Mama Speaks.
International Medical Corps–Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via This Mom.
I don’t usually do this, but… via Non-Essential Equipment.
Before I Forget (Again) via Drye Portents.
Haiti Update via Gonna Make a Change.
Vote to save hungry children! via Make it Happen.
Please vote via All 4 My Gals.
Att: American Express Card holders via Writers Bloc.
Hey..Vote Again via ZenZine.
Vote For These Guys and Save Some Children via Intuittech.
Widget via The Disenchanted Forest.
Vote for the International Medical Corps! via understanding the effects of unresolved abandonment issues.
Help the International Medical Corps Feed Hungry Children via Danny Fisher.
Help Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Progressiveu.
Saving the Lives of malnourished children via The French Mountain Dweller.
Last chance to Save The Lives of Malnourished Children via Simple Green World.
International Medical Corps’s Good Deeds Triumph!! via Three P’s in a Pod.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children – NEWS FACTS via Ontario.
$1.5 Million For Malnourished Children Around The World Possible – Your Vote In The American Express Members Project Could Help This Happen via Medical News Today.
International Medical Corp Vote Now! via Holly’s Fight for Justice.
International Medical Corp Vote Now! via Holly’s Fight to Stop Violence.
International Medical Corp via Jakartass.
widget via Andres V.
widget via Que es El Testamento Del Paisa?.
Part II Vote to Help Hungry Children via Dad Talk.
Continue Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via What’s Delmer Look Like?.
Sharing Saturday – Bloggers Rule! via My Life as a Hot Professional.
Banner via Earnest Parenting.
International Medical Corps needs your help via Sociolingo’s Africa.
Food Charities via Grasshopper New Media Presents….
That good deed that some of you did …. via My Boyfriend is a twat.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Paravanes: Christian Meditations .
Giving back to Africa via Africa Safari Blog.
Can Social Media Make the World A Better Place? via Digital Podcast.
Vote to Feed Hungry Children via South Africa.
Members Project Submissions Due 8/19 via The Drew Blog.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via International Medical Corps.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Chris Abraham.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Marketing Conversation.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Chris Abraham: Because the Medium is the Message.
Help International Medical Corps Save the Lives of Malnourished Children via Chris Abraham: Internet Analyst and Web Strategist.
Vote AGAIN!!! for “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children” via finding joy in Liberia .
International Medical Corps needs your vote ! 4 days left “ via Ben Heine.
International Medical Corps via Worldfoodvision.com.
Calling All American Express Cardholders via Everything Finance.
American Express Members Projects 08 via Ground.
Its Easy to Make a Difference via Baer This In Mind.
Hello guys! via Halo Scan.
Help Feed Hungry Children! via Friends of the World Food Organization.
International Medical Corps now in American Express Members Project Top 5, Vote Today via Yubanet.
American Express Members Project Contest: Support the International Medical Corps via The Human Trafficking Project.

Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers Part II

Chris Abraham — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:48:06 +0000

First off, if you haven’t voted yet, please vote. Secondly, as recently as Wednesday, September 24th, 2008, I posted a thank you for blogging about International Medical Corps as a thank you for all of the bloggers who were so generous as to blog about the current voting contest going on — 73 earned media posts — called the Members Project. International Medical Corps is being represented by the Member Project called Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children. Well, three days later, we have been lavished with another 30 earned media mentions, listed below:

Thank You for Blogging About International Medical Corps! via Chris Abraham Because the Medium is the Message.
Dora the sheep droppings explorer via The French Mountain Dweller.
Int’l NGO Needs Our Help To Win $1.5 M For Starving Children via Daily Kos.
Thank You Bloggers for Blogging about International Medical Corps via Memes.org.
Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers via Abraham Harrison.
Vote for the International Medical Corps! via Ben Heine.
Feeding Hungry Children via Kuru Lounge.
Your click could mean $1.5 million for malnourished children around the world via Pirate Pappa.
One Click to Save Lives via So a Blonde Walks Into a Review.
Members Projects via OBVI.
With One Click You Can Save Thousands Of Malnourished Children via Blogher.
Help International Medical Corps Feed Hungry Children via Chrisfernando.net.
Thursday September 25 2008 via Island In the Pacific.
Your click could mean $1.5 million for malnourished children around the world. via Fresh Motivation.
Click for $1.5 million – A win-win-win situation via Stet.
Vote to make a difference via Onlinefundraisingblog.
Something About Saving Lives? via NDAGHA.
Click to Donate via More Than An Army Wife.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via The Existential Lip.
International Medical Corps via Backyard Missionary.
International Medical Corps Matched with Top 25 American Express Members Project, ‘Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children’ via Bio-Medicine.
Time is Running Out!!! via Pre School Mama.
The International Medical Corps Please Consider This Good Cause via Working With Word.
Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via javajive.
Things I should have avoided whilst pregnant via Whitterer on Autism.
American Express Members Project: Join me in voting for the project Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children via Make College Pay Off.
Interested in Saving a Child From Malnutrition? via Reservoir.
Go Vote for the International Medical Corps via Christian Spirituality w/ Edges.
Vote for the International Medical Corps! via Understanding The Psychology and Effects of Abandonment Issues.

Anyway, bloggers and everyone else who has supported, thank you very much from both the IMC and AHLLC!

If you want more information, please check out the informational page we made for the project — the SMNR — and you can learn a lot more and see all the various and sundry assets the organization has provided for this noble campaign.

Finally, please let me know if I missed your post in the Chris Abraham comment area — and if you want to post about the contest and the issue, please feel free and pop the URL into the Chris Abraham comment section and I will add you and thanks in advance!

Sarah Palin is New Feminism According to Camille Paglia

Chris Abraham — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:01:32 +0000

I would have never guessed that Camille Paglia would be in awe of Sara Palin or perceive her as follows, “Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.” Whoa. (Via Salon.com)

Fresh blood for the vampire
Rip tide! Is the Obama campaign shooting out to sea like a paper boat?
It’s heavy weather for Obama fans, as momentum has suddenly shifted to John McCain — that hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub that many Democrats like me had thought was full of holes and swirling to its doom in the inky depths of Republican incoherence and fratricide. Gee whilikers, the McCain vampire just won’t die! Hit him with a hammer, and he explodes like a jellyfish into a hundred hungry pieces.
Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain’s imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain’s credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain’s sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let’s turn the damned page.We need a new generation of leadership with fresh ideas and an expansive, cosmopolitan vision — which is why I support Barack Obama and have contributed to his campaign. My baby-boom generation — typified by the narcissistic Clintons — peaked in the 1960s and is seriously past it. But McCain, born before Pearl Harbor, is even older than we are! Why would anyone believe that he holds the key to the future? And why would anyone swallow that preening passel of high-flown rhetoric about “country above all” coming from a seething, short-fused character whose rampant egotism, zigzagging principles, and currying of the gullible press were the distinguishing marks of his senatorial career?
Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama’s lunch. McCain’s weirdly disconnected persona (beady glowers flashing to frozen grins and back again) has started to look more testosterone-rich than Obama’s easy, lanky, reflective candor. What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren’s public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance — where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness — began his alarming slide.
As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama’s efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin’ his g’s like there’s no tomorrow. It’s analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not. Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes — be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.
The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick — there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly — though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into “Star Wars” — a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.
After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.
Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars.” (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in “The Phantom Menace.”) This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.
Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.
In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation — a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.
As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women’s studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me — and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).
Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America’s pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did — which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.
Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics — which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama’s campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don’t see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.
One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones — nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they’re sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along — poor dears!
It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin’s boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.
Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was an all-American version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother’s generation — agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.
Here’s one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, “Stop her!” as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, “Men!”
Now that’s the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism — a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.
Here’s another example of the physical fortitude and indomitable spirit that Palin as an Alaskan sportswoman seems to represent right now. Last year, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reprinted this remarkable obituary from 1905:
Abigail Becker Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830
A tall, handsome woman “who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all,” she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper’s cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.
Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today’s pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.
But what of Palin’s pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God’s plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We’ll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don’t believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.
The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.
Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women’s movement — leading to feminists’ McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women — an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.
But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, “Sexual Personae,”) has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.
Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.
On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?
What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.
The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.
If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society’s acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life. If McCain wins the White House and then drops dead, a President Palin would have the power to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, but she could not control their rulings.
It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism — one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.
But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.
Camille Paglia’s column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

52″ & 32″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TVs Already Coughed Up By the Life Changing Box

Chris Abraham — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:41:40 +0000

I don’t know where you have been, but if you’re not touching the Life Changing Box, you’re missing out on all sorts of opportunities to win killer televisions, rocking trips to Japan and New York, lots and lots of consumer electronics and prizes valued from $400-$14,000. Add the Life Changing Box game to your Facebook profile and then touch the Life Changing Box up to 24-times-a-day! That’s it! Oh, and check out the Life Changing Box Group and Life Changing Box Page. Here’s our winners so far — there are 8 more boxes that are still closed and will be opening soon!

Congratulations to Christian Jolicoeur of Farmington Senior High School who has won our second prize, a 52″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TV!
Congratulations to Marcus Baskerville of Sacramento, California, who has won our first prize, a 32″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TV!

On Survivor Corps’ Blogger Outreach

Chris Abraham — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:50:32 +0000

Norman Birnbach just posted the first part in a series of articles about a recent blogger PR outreach that my company, Abraham Harrison, did on behalf of Survivor Corps. It is a very generous article and everyone here is very pleased.

Our goal for the Survivor Corps campaign was to promote both the introduction of Survivor Corps, formerly Landmine Survivors Network, and Jerry White’s new book, I Will Not Be Broken. Jerry, the co-founder of LSN and Survivor Corps, has been the perfect client and we are so lucky that they have allowed us carte blanche. Of course, the products sell themselves.

Another part of our campaign that Mr. Birnbach didn’t mention is social media outreach. We have created over 40 profiles on behalf of Survivor Corps, including very popular Facebook Groups for both I Will Not Be Broken and Survivor Corps, MySpace profiles for Survivor Corps and I Will Not Be Broken, as well as videos on YouTube. Please check out Norman Birnbach’s article, How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take a page from the campaign for Jerry White’s book:

[...] I got an email from Jerry White’s organization, the nonprofit Survivor Corps., asking whether I would review his book, “I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis.” It provides a terrific perspective that has a number of different elements to it — and that’s one of the first lessons I took away, after talking with Chris Abraham, who is handling the outreach to bloggers.
According to Chris, the book appeals to many segments, including cancer survivors, veterans and their families, Christians and leadership. They’ve developed outreach for each segment. While that makes sense, too often organizations do a one-size fits all approach, and miss out working with individual segments.
What they’ve also done is make it really easy for bloggers to write and post about the book with a download page that provides:

Facts about the books’ publication schedule (including availability as an audiobook).
A synopsis of the book.
Sample chapter downloads.
Reviews and testimonials.
About Jerry White.
An overview of The Five Steps.
Various Excerpts.
About Survivor Corps.
Contacts.
Multimedia Elements.
Additional Resources.

Social Media and Tags.
They even made it easy for people to join Survivor Corps’ mailing list.
I will continue to explore other elements about blogging relations, based on an interview with Chris Abraham over the next week.
I will continue to explore other elements about blogging relations, based on an interview with Chris Abraham over the next week. [...]

Blog Posts in Support of I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White

Chris Abraham — Sat, 24 May 2008 14:54:01 +0000

A big part of what my firm, Abraham Harrison LLC, does is online outreach and blogger relations. We’re doing our first book promotion campaign for our client, Survivor Corps, and Jerry White’s new book, I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis, and we have been having a lot of fun and plenty of success. We are very proud and excited by our work on this campaign. Here are a bunch of the blog posts that we have been able to collect over the last few weeks of active campaigning of people and bloggers who have chosen to be responsive to our blogger promotion in the form of blog and forum posts:

Carey from Parenting Tales is planning to write a review of I Will Not Be Broken, according to the post Just Call Me Critic:

I will also be reviewing a book from Survivor Corps co-founder as he writes about what he has learned from his personal struggles in life and how he was able to turn his tragedy into triumph.

Jennifer, The Army Wife blogs about Survivor Corps, Jerry White’s organization, in a post titled Survivor Corps:

One of their founders, Jerry White, has recently written a book entitled I will Not Be Broken. I’m lucky enough to be receiving a copy of it from Survivor Corps, and I’ll be posting a review of it when I’m finished. It talks about how to deal with adversity, and the ups and downs that life throws us all too often, and I know we can ALL benefit from some advice on that subject!

Ilori Olalekan revived a blog partially based on excitement over I Will Not Be Broken over on Parenting Cares in the post Dealing With Life Crises:

Life crises are unavoidable experiences which everyone of us must pass through. It is not to be bargained. These experiences though differing from one person to another is at the same time very similar in nature. This is why sharing ones experiences with another is of great help during these critical times, cause it infuses the courage and strength to bear the crises. Based on this truth mentioned above, I will like to introduce a book written by Jerry White, co-founder of Survivor Corps;”I will Not Be Broken Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis“. This book is aimed at helping us overcome life crises.

Outwitting crisis is a blog post about the interview that Guy Kawasaki did with Jerry White of Survivor Corps over on Angel 4 Angels:

We may have all faced or are facing crisis in our lives, in varying degrees. Some of us may have survived it, others may have given in. But there is always a lot to learn from those who have suffered unimaginably but triumphed by sheer grit and self will. Excerpts from an interview Guy Kawasaki had with Jerry White, whose life changed in 1984 after he lost one leg to that lethal litter called landmine. He later co-founded Survivor Corps and went on to share the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

Stephen Hershey of Reality Sandwich covered Survivor Corps and I Will Not Be Broken in the blog post Reframing Survival:

Jerry White, landmine survivor and cofounder of Survivor Corps, shares his own healing process while advising those who are suffering from tragedy in I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis. White seeks to turn “tragedy into triumph,” encouraging victims and their families to face facts, choose life, reach out, get moving, and give back. Voices include Lance Armstrong, Princess Diana, and Elie Weisel. The first chapter is available for download.

Deborah Evens over at Paravanes: Christian Meditations writes about Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken, in a post called No Middle Ground: I Will Not Be Broken:

After reading White’s five steps to overcoming, I realized there is no middle ground in recovery and reclaiming. Either you forever live as a shadow of your former self, or you emerge to become greater, more lovingly creative, and stronger. If you think you’re on the middle ground, you’re in shadow land. Perhaps this is what the Apostle Paul referred to when he asserted “…in all these things, we are more than conquerors…” (Romans 8:37). Properly understood (meaning from God’s point of view), we can not only survive our LAEs, we can “more than conquer” them.

Victor Kaonga of the blog NDAGHA writes about survivorship and Jerry White’s 5 Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis:

Jerry White, a cofounder of Survivor Corps, an organization that helps victims of war and terror. Our mission, and my passion, is to help survivors heal and get on with their lives. Sounds simple, but in many places where we work, the idea of overcoming doesn’t always resonate.
This sounds to be a very promising book. I should admit that though I have not read the whole book (I am under extreme pressure to survive writing…-will disclose later), I sense the book has inspiring stories that would give someone some needed strength or perspective on life as we survive.
Of course for me I wish the book clearly advocated for God’s help in life because human strength alone is not adequate. I strongly believe that survivorship is not complete without God and in any case our simple survivorship is simply a foretaste of what we really need to be. We need to be thriving and not surviving.

Scott Goodson write about the Interview that Jerry White did over on Guy Kawasaki’s blog on his blog, Scott Goodson’s Writings in his post, Five Steps For Overcoming a Life Crisis:

Jerry White has recently published an extraordinary book (entitled “I will not be broken”) which I have ordered on Amazon tonight. He is the co-founder of Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Newwork). His changed in 1984 when he lost his leg in a landmine explosion while visiting Israel. After this experience he has championed the cause of survivorship and became a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1997 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Jody Williams for his efforts. He recently published a book called I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis. Guy Kawasaki has a wonderful posting with an interview with Jerry today.

Kathi mentions I Will Not Be Broken over on her blog in a post entitled Monday Potpourri of Things to Pass On:

I received an email about a book that looked interesting, if you want to find out more about it, it’s called I Will Not Be Broken : Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis by Jerry White. I’m looking forward to reading it and will let you know what I think when I finish my copy.

Karine found I Will Not Be Broken over at Guy Kawasaki’s blog and mapped it to surviving entrepreneurial failure — and how to take that feeling of being a failure and the victimhood associated and turn it around and realize that just because you have a failed experience doesn’t — and shouldn’t — paint you as a failure — in a post called Surviving a failed project:

I read an excellent post from Guy Kawasaki’s blog, How to change the world. The post was an interview with Jerry White, the co-founder of Survivor Corps. The interview focused on the art of survival. How do you go on after a tragedy, how do you move away from that event?
It made me think about the aura that failure can give you. When you project fails, you can surrender to the failure or move on, determined to make the next project a success. You can also choose to become a victim of that failure, a let it taint the next project with defeatism.

The Interview that Jerry White did over on Guy Kawasaki’s blog on his blog really resonated with Shane over at What Leadership Demands in a post called Survival:

Of all the articles and stories I read this week this one stuck with me. I am fascinated by how much of what Jerry White has learned through is own personal tragedy translates to all of us and how we go through life.
At some point we are all confronted with a “life crisis”. This crisis will ultimately test our faith… the question for each of us is where, or in who, will our faith be placed? Pay specific attention to question #3. The five steps Mr. White identifies as essential to overcoming a crisis in this world looks a lot like the stages anyone would go through as they accept Christ and begin to follow him to get beyond their past without him.
Mr. White does not speak to his own personal faith journey so I can not offer an opinion on his source for his survival process. Truth, though, has only One source regardless how we think we arrive at it. He does quote the Dalia Lama but that does not necessarily point us to where Mr. White’s ultimate faith lies.

Jim and Brenda Johnson wrote a wonderful post about I Will Not Be Broken on their blog, Straight, Not Narrow, in the post “I Will Not Be Broken”:

That’s the title of a new book which, while it is not specifically about the LGBT community, it does cover some topics that are of value to everyone, perhaps every particularly LGBT people. The information below is from the official website for the book. I was contacted and asked if I would post something here about the book, and I am happy to do so.

Bruce Tomaso of the The Religion Blog of the Dallas News wrote a very lovely post about I Will Not Be Broken entitled Landmine Survivor Writes About Coping with Crisis

Jerry White, who lost a leg when he stepped on a landmine in Israel in 1984, is a co-founder of Survivor Corps, a group dedicated to helping the victims of violent conflicts around the world. He’s been active in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.
White has written a book, “I Will Not Be Broken: 5 Steps To Overcoming a Life Crisis,” in which he offers his advice on how to get through tough times — the loss of a loved one, a painful divorce, a serious injury, and so forth.

Jill Army of her eponymous blog, Jill Army, plans to review I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White — in fact, she was inspired to revive her blog partially in order to do the review! We really appreciate it (via I’m un-jinxing myself!):

I intend to begin blogging again…right after I scrub the residual sticker goo off my computer. I will be reviewing a book : “I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis,” by Jerry White, the co-founder of Survivor Corps http://iwillnotbebroken.org. I’ve already read the intro and first two chapters (thanks to the free download) and it’s going to be inspirational and help so many people. I know it is something all my readers (yes all two of them …hi dad!) will enjoy and pass on to those around them that need to hear the message and take the steps. I know I will. Looking forward to blogging again.

At 8 Hours & A Lunch, Deb Owen wrote a review of the Interview that Jerry White did over on Guy Kawasaki’s blog:

There’s a must-read interview with Jerry White on Guy Kawasaki’s how to change the world blog today that he is calling “The Art of Survival.” [...] I began to look for my “favorite snippet” in the interview, but the whole interview is worth the few minutes to read. It’s a great perspective with applications many of us could use in multiple areas of our daily lives. Check it out.

Heidi blogs about Jerry White’s book in a post called, “I Will Not Be Broken”: The Book by Jerry White, Survivor Corps, on here blog, Mommy Monsters:

I have not read this book … but this looks like a worthwhile read for those who are struggling to rise above circumstances from their past or present. So I wanted to pass it on to you!

Guy Kawasaki wrote a stellar blog post about his interview with Jerry White on the Art of Survival, about Survivor Corps, and about Jerry White’s new book, I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis:

Jerry White is the co-founder of Survivor Corps (formerly Landmine Survivors Newwork). His life changed in 1984 when he lost his leg in a landmine explosion while visiting Israel. After this experience he has championed the cause of survivorship and became a leader in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. In 1997 he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Jody Williams for his efforts. He recently published a book called I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis

Erin Burke of Liquid Heat wrote a forum post about the book, I Will Not Be Broken over on the forum SL Exchange:

I will be the first to admit that I am not a book reviewer or even a professional blogger for that matter. Recently a book was brought to my attention that I felt compelled to let everyone know about. The book is titled “I Will Not Be Broken” and the author is Jerry White.
It’s funny how life works sometime, the person that told me about this book thought I would be interested because I work with Relay for Life in Second Life. I work with Relay for Life because on June 21, 1996 I lost my mother to cancer and it makes me feel as if I am honouring her life by hopefully helping raise money to find cures for cancer, so that someone else will be saved the pain and fear she went through and the pain and fear I have continued to go through by losing her.
I Will Not Be Broken is not a book about cancer survivors specifically, it is a book about survivors period. Survivors of any crisis that enters their life and how to live with it and overcome it. There was a line in Jerry’s book that although very simple, really struck me
“They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It’s not quite that simple. I believe you have to decide it will make you stronger.”

There is a very thoughtful and Buddhism-focused blog post about Jerry White’s book over at Transparent Eye, I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis by Jerry White:

I don’t usually respond to press releases, but the one announcing I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis by Jerry White interested me enough that I checked out the intro and first chapter, which are available online.
White is the co-founder of Survivor Corps who lost his leg to a land mine. The book sounds like it has a self-help orientation, and is chock full of anecdotes. He distills it into a five-point program
o Face facts
o Choose life
o Reach out
o Get moving
o Give back
My sense is that it is compatible with Buddhist notions of compassion, though oriented more toward international humanitarianism.
Speaking now from my own knowledge, studies of human happiness have shown that it has little to do with actual circumstance, and more to do with predispositions are are either genetic or developmental. People can come back from tragedy, but a key step is to loosen attachment to the way things were but no longer are(Buddha’s Four Noble Truths). Once that block is overcome, finding new life goals and working toward them can provide a path to achieving satisfaction.

Sharon of The Reservoir wrote a very complete review post entitled Book Review: About I Will Not Be Broken, a Book by Jerry White:

From a leader of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning movement to ban landmines and founder of Survivor Corps comes an astoundingly effective guide to recreating a happy and fulfilling life after catastrophe strikes—a book that Bob and Lee Woodruff call “a road map for the individual and their family to re-enter the land of the living.” In I WILL NOT BE BROKEN, Jerry White reframes the question “why do bad things happen to good people?” and asks, given that bad things do happen, how do people absorb the blows and move through them?

Sharon also wrote a touching and insightful personal testimonial in a post called Dealing with loss (my experience):

In November of 2006 I lost my cousin to a fatal road accident. It was even more harrowing because I had known him for little over 10 years; both families had recently become reconciled. He was also one of my favorite cousins.
It was like most deaths of that sort, a needless one. I remember when I first heard the news, the question I kept asking was why? I needed to know why it happened. He was only 24 years old, he hadn’t even begun to really live life. How could he just be snuffed out like that?
I’d just been called to bar (in fact, he was buried on the same day I was called to the bar). So I just buried it deep down inside me and didn’t think about it.
Then less than a year later, I met my husband to be. In telling him about my family, I started to tell him about this cousin when I felt a deep flood of emotion threaten to drown me. I started crying and just couldn’t seem to stop. I cried so hard, I wanted to die. I was still asking why?
I finally dried my tears. I still don’t understand why. I became a lawyer and he wasn’t there to rejoice with me. I’m getting married soon and he never even met my fiance. I still haven’t deleted his email address from my inbox. Many times I think I’m over it and then I feel the grief well up again; and the tears start to trickle down unobtrusively.
But I have refused to allow the grief incapacitate me. Instead I tap into it and it makes me stronger. It gives me more compassion for others, keeps me in touch with my feelings. It reminds me of my own immortality and helps me keep my priorities straight.
In my own way, I have assimilated the 5 steps to dealing with crisis in Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken and made them work for me.
I know my cousin is gone and nothing I do will bring him back; not all the grieving in the world. I can’t shut down because of that (he wouldn’t want me to). So I have chosen instead to live and not merely exist. I get together with my brothers and his brother every now and then to reminisce about him. It keeps him alive in our hearts and we offer strength to each other. I live my life in a way I know will make him proud but more than that, the experience has made me more compassionate to others who are also grieving.
These steps are time tested and have been proven (especially in my own life). We can’t stop tragedy form happening but we can overcome tragedy. However it is a personal choice. But it is a choice that can be made if the steps in I Will Not Be Broken are diligently applied.

Sandy Carlson writes about Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis by Jerry White, in the post Review: I Will Not Be Broken:

The book outlines a program of five steps for coping with disaster. He draws on his experiences as well as those of famous persons such as Lance Armstrong; Diana, Princess of Wales; Christopher Reeve, the American Psychological Association, and the not so famous–his college roommate, his mom, Bosnians who survived the warn in their country, a little Cambodian girl who also lost a leg to a landmine. His drawing on the wisdom of persons from all walks of life underscores he beliefs that wisdom is a collective resource as well as an individual one and that all life is interconnected. White’s book approaches the challenge of trauma positively by focusing on individual strengths rather than dwelling on what went wrong and why.
I Will Not Be Broken is an earthy, conversational, and real testament of the beauty and wonder of all life.

Burkitt wrote a post about I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White in the the British Cancer Survivors forum:

I received an email from somebody recommending this book: I will Not be broken. I had a look at the website and I think the book is worth recommending to others, even though it was not written by somebody affected by cancer.

Carl Wilton wrote, in May 12, 2008 – Unbroken, on his blog, A Pastor’s Cancer Diary, how the experience of a man who has lost his leg to a Landmine in Israel has a lot in common with someone suffering and surviving cancer. That illness and tragedy is transforming and always immensely difficult to overcome — to survive and then thrive:

I think White’s conclusions can be generalized to include the experience of being diagnosed with a slowly-progressing disease like cancer. In the book, he recalls a conversation he had with Princess Diana, with whom he worked as an anti-landmine activist. Touring Bosnia and speaking with survivors, they observed that everyone seemed to have “their date.” They could all state precisely on which date they had been injured or bereaved.
Many of us cancer survivors can do the same with our dates of diagnosis (mine was December 2, 2005). Before that date, we may have a suspicion something is wrong, but we still have the luxury of hoping it’s nothing serious. After that date, we can never return to such naiveté. We will, forever after, be cancer survivors.

Mommy blogger, Robin, wrote a powerful post on her blog, Around the Island, Rebuilding a better world, one survivor at a time:

Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Jerry White, let alone known that he is a leader in the international fight against landmines. I didn’t know that he has this calling because he himself lost his leg to a landmine when he entered an unmarked minefield in the north of Israel, my own country, in 1984. I didn’t know about his struggle to redefine his life after his accident, to choose survival, and I didn’t know that he had taken it one step further, going on to found the Nobel Peace Price-winning Landmine Survivors Network (LSN), the same organization that Princess Diana was involved with.
I didn’t know that he had recently expanded LSN’s mission from aiding those injured by landmines to aiding all those who are victims of the worst epidemic of all – the very preventable epidemic of war and violence. The new mission bears a new name as well – Survivor Corps – which reflects both its calling and its philosophy.
Now I know, and I am proud to help spread the word.

If you’re interested in blogging about either Survivor Corps or the book, I Will Not Be Broken, pop me an email and I can hook you up.

Let’s Go Check out the Clärchens Ballhaus!

Chris Abraham — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:16:05 +0000

Mark pointed me to this article in the NY Times with this simple comment, “Berlin really is the best city in the world.” Anybody game to checking this place out? I have yet to go out dancing at all in Berlin. For me, it has been 100% dinner parties, lounges, bars, restaurants, and homes. It looks like my first Berlin nightclub experience will surely need to be this democratic, egalitarian, Prenzlauer Berg night spot, Clärchen’s Ballhaus.

There is no door policy at the nearly 100-year-old Clärchen’s Ballhaus, no bored-looking blond Berlin fashion design student dressed like an American Apparel ad surveying the late-night crowd. There is a coat check, run by the same nattily dressed mustached gentleman who’s been running it since the 1960s, when Clärchen’s was a dance hall in Communist East Berlin. His colleague Klaus Schliebs, dressed in a tuxedo every weekend night, takes your ticket after you’ve paid the cover charge of 3 euros, about $5 at $1.60 to the euro.
All come all served.
“As long as you don’t look like you have a seriously high blood-alcohol level, we’ll let you in,” says the owner Christian Schulz.
The democracy at the door is immediately evident inside, where couples of varying ages and sartorial styles dance with abandon to songs from Jimi Hendrix to Abba to the schlager singer Udo Jürgens played by a cover band. Mothers from the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, ignoring the baby sitter’s calls for just a few minutes longer, groove with Italian foreign-exchange students and older men dressed in their Sunday suits. Cellophane streamers contributed by a stage designer from the nearby Volksbühne theater lend the place an “Enchantment Under the Sea” vibe. The atmosphere is flirtatious, uninhibited and eclectic.
“You’re there, and you think, you’re in an Austrian film of the late 1980s,” says Thomas Demand, a Berlin-based photographer and installation artist. Like most Clärchen’s regulars, Mr. Demand is an after-midnight guest, when dinner has been cleared from the white cloths of the restaurant tables, leaving only empty coffee cups and half-full bottles of prosecco.
“People come here with the hope that they will find the love of their life,” said Mr. Schulz, who took over Clärchen’s (Auguststrasse, 24; 49-30-282-92-95; www.ballhaus.de) in 2005 with his partner, David Regehr, and transformed it from a faltering restaurant to a wildly successful dinner and late-night dance club.
A veteran of the theater, Mr. Schulz sees Clärchen’s as the stage on which a night’s adventures are improvised. There are some star players as well: Willem Defoe, Bjork, the artist Matthew Barney, Charlotte Rampling and other names Mr. Schulz is too tired to tick off, have come to Clärchen’s. But they come because they can, unperturbed, perform elegant tangos, grind to James Brown or drink wine upstairs amid the cracked mirrors and haunted atmosphere of the Mirror Salon. No longer the main attractions, they dance on parquet made sticky by spilled alcohol and become bit players in the late-night show.

Martin Marty is a Gift to America and My Favorite Theologian

Chris Abraham — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:40:28 +0000

I got to spend some time hanging out with Martin Marty at Renaissance Weekend a couple years ago. All I knew about him was gleaned from lunches, dinners, and panels together. During last night’s run, my friend Marty Marty started speaking into my iPod earbuds in the form of an interview on Speaking of Faith, America’s Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty Download MP3, Listen, Podcast, and uncut interview with Martin Marty (1:38). God bless Martin Marty and thank you, Krista Tippett.

Transcript of America’s Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty
Billboard:
Krista Tippett, host: I’m Krista Tippett, today a conversation about religion in America, with one of the great public theologians of our time, Martin Marty. For decades, Martin Marty has been watching developments that are now the stuff of daily headlines: the rise of religious fundamentalism across the world, the decline of the Protestant majority in American culture, and the vigor of evangelical Christianity in American life. Marty offers historical and personal perspective.
Mr. Martin Marty: I’ve often thought — I’ve often said, ‘If Billy Graham had been born mean, we’d be in terrible trouble,’ because he had so much power, so many gifts, and so on. One of my distinctions in religion is not liberal and conservative, but mean and non-mean. You have mean liberals and mean conservatives, and you have non-mean of both.
Ms. Tippett: Martin Marty on America’s changing religious landscape. This is Speaking of Faith. Stay with us.
[Announcements]
Ms. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett. For decades, Martin Marty has been watching developments that are the stuff of daily headlines and partisan rhetoric: the vigor of evangelical Christianity in politics, the decline of the Protestant majority in American culture, and the rise of religious fundamentalism around the world. Today we’ll probe the historical perspective of this leading scholar of religion. We’ll discuss what’s really new in religion as a force in American culture, politics, and daily life.
From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio’s conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty.”
Martin Marty has been called the foremost interpreter of religion in America today. The National Book Award, the National Humanities Medal, and the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences are just a few of the honors he has amassed. He’s served on U.S. presidential commissions and directed a visionary research project on religious fundamentalism. The University of Chicago Divinity School, where he taught for 35 years, has created the Martin Marty Center to continue his work on public religion.
But for all his celebrity and scholarship, Martin Marty draws crucial insight from his own personal grounding in the mainstream religious life of American culture. He began his working life not as a scholar but as a pastor. He was born into a Lutheran family in 1928, in the Nebraska of Dust Bowl and Depression, where his father was a teacher and a church organist.
Mr. Marty: We were a churched family, of course, it was my father’s profession, and I’ve reminisced with some folks about how I got babysat next to the organ bench and had to sit through long funerals as a child, and somehow it didn’t turn me off from it all. I have a brother and a sister, and the three of us were well-schooled in literature and music and art, and also a very close basic sense of the faith of ordinary people, and I’ve tried to keep some sense of that in my lifework.
Ms. Tippett: Much of Martin Marty’s investigation into American religious life has centered on the dominant majority religion at the heart of our culture, the many denominations of mainline Protestant Christianity. But in our time, surveys show that majority is disappearing even as many Americans perceive the influence of evangelical Protestant Christianity to be growing. In his 2004 book, The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism, Marty describes the centuries from 1607 to 1955 as an era in American history in which “Protestants ran the show.” That began to change and take on new dimensions in the 1960s, an era vivid in the American popular imagination for political movements and the Vietnam War. For Martin Marty, it was also a decade of astonishing religious turning points whose significance went unnoticed. I asked him to walk me through the religious watersheds of the 1960s that began to erode the dominance of mainline Protestantism.
Mr. Marty: The biggest single event that hit this country happened in Rome, and that’s the Second Vatican Council. That is, Protestantism always knew what it was because it knew what Catholicism was, and it was over against that. Suddenly, Catholicism is friendly. It moves out into the public sector. The GI Bill puts Catholic young people into universities. They soon became the most educated group in the country, and Protestants were thrown off balance by that.
Secondly, it’s the beginning of the surge of evangelicalism within Protestantism, which — in those days, I imagine a lot of the Protestant leaders kind of sneered at Billy Graham and looked down their nose at tent revivals and so on and didn’t pay much attention to see how it was coming. And suddenly in the ’60s, I visited Berkeley, you had the Jesus People, little girls getting baptized in their bikinis, and change of worship from a certain kind of formality. The rock bands were coming in. And another huge infusion was an awareness of the religions of the East. You might keep going to your Presbyterian church, but you start doing yoga and you start doing Buddhist disciplines, etc. And you didn’t stop being Presbyterian, but you were of a different sort. You didn’t take it all for granted.
Ms. Tippett: I also think that something we’ve lost a memory of is how much tension there was between Catholics and Protestants, right, in this country, between different kinds of Christians, in a way that is absolutely unimaginable now. And I mean, personally for you, was that shift surprising?
Mr. Marty: I, in 1956, was invited to join the staff of The Christian Century, which was the towering Protestant voice. Today it still is, if not towering, a strong voice, but it’s ecumenical. It has a lot of Catholic writers; it has a lot of evangelical writers. But at that time, it was Protestant, and it was anti-Catholic. In 1950, on the cover of The Christian Century, there was an article, “Pluralism, A National Menace.” Pluralism was they’re worried about Catholicism. When I joined the staff five years later, pluralism was the best game in town. My first visits to campus, you always had one priest, one minister, one rabbi; that was called pluralism back then. But through that all, the Protestant still was in a privileged position. It simply was a kind of a reflex: ‘We’re the largest. We’re the ones who left our stamp on America’s literature, its poetry, its statecraft, etc.’
I’m going to say something in case I’m sounding critical.
Ms. Tippett: You can sound critical if you’d like to.
Mr. Marty: I’d be happy to be critical, but I don’t want to be distorting what I want to be. And that is to say, for all of that reflexive sense of establishment, I think I’m being a neutral, value-free historian when I say I don’t know any time in human history that somebody that powerful yielded that gracefully. In the previous century, Protestantism was often used — white Protestantism — to enslave, and it was used to justify the reservating of the Indians. But in the 20th century, Protestants have sort of said, ‘All right, you’re making your case. We’ll make room for you.’ They weren’t doing that much before the mid-’50s, but from then on in, they have done it even at the expense to their own identity.
Ms. Tippett: And I’m sure you’ve read these statistics that are now coming out, that perhaps today or tomorrow or six months from now, there will no longer be a Protestant majority in this country. And it depends on how people measure these things but, still, it seems significant when what is replacing the number of people who say that they’re Protestant are more people who say that they have no religion at all. In fact, it’s very high among people who were born in 1980 or later. And then there’s a category that’s doubled, of people who call themselves just Christian, right, who don’t identify with a specific tradition. How do you explain these statistics?
Mr. Marty: First of all, I think that Protestantism and Catholicism have very common fates here. They both have had trouble holding their younger generation. In some respects, the Protestants, Catholics, and Jews of the northern part of the United States share a lot with Canada, which is far less involved with church, or Western Europe, which is far, far less involved. Incidentally, that little section, I call it the spiritual ice belt: Western Europe, the British Isles, Canada and the northern U.S. We are really exceptions in the world, and we are really having a hard time catching up with understanding the rest of the world.
Protestantism is not in trouble around the world. I am a Lutheran, and we’ve had 300 years to get about eight million people. In 15 years from now, the African Lutheran churches will have added as many people as it took us 300 years to get. And that’s true of many other Protestantisms and Pentecostalisms. Every day there are 23,000 new Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, and half of them would be called Protestant, if often in the Pentecostal version. So around the world, it’s not a losing force. No longer, however, does it make the reference it once did to Western Europe and its daughter, the United States.
What will that mean for the United States? I don’t think we’re going to wake up some day and see total change. There’s a strange thing that hundreds of years after the vital life of a religion is past, there’s still a strong influence. We’re still living off some of the Greek religious influences. We’re living off a lot of medieval Catholicism. Our very universities are inventions of that. Our hospitals are inventions of that. So in a sense, meanings, ideas — in this case, ideas of liberty, freedom — that came very often from Protestants will live on even if not everybody goes to church. Still, the churches have been the places where these stories get renewed regularly.
Ms. Tippett: OK. I mean, I just wonder, personally, is this something that troubles you?
Mr. Marty: I don’t think I wake up in the morning having great worries about that. You can tell from what I’ve said I have a global view of humanity and of religion, and it moves around a lot. In the 1930s a great Catholic, Hilaire Belloc, said, “Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe.” Well, that was true then. Now the cathedrals are empty, but their granddaughters are full in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. I certainly think that some things borne by the Protestant message would be a great loss. One of its gifts to America was its sense that we’re scripted. It’s a scriptural faith, it’s a Christ-centered faith, but it doesn’t mean that all virtue and all morality goes with you. And I think that’s been a nice irritating voice in classic Protestantism, which is, no matter how far along you’d come, God was holding you to a higher standard.
Ms. Tippett: Religious historian and author Martin Marty. One of the most popular of his over 50 books is Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in American. He is considered by some to be a bridge between the devotional and scholarly worlds of liberal mainline Protestantism and evangelical Christianity.
Ms. Tippett: Let’s talk about evangelical Christianity, which at the same time that there are some statistics of people becoming less religious, there’s certainly a sense that religion in some ways is more of a force now. I mean, I think there would be people who would take your phrase, “When Protestants ran the show,” and say that a certain kind of Christianity is becoming almost a controlling force or, you know, we have an evangelical Christian in the White House. I mean, how are you observing what’s happening now, with your broad view of things and of history?
Mr. Marty: I think those of us who write this kind of history are a little puzzled by the naiveté of the — well, people in journalism, in the media, in the general public, who think all this just got invented in the last four years and couple months. It has very deep roots. I trace it not to the ’20s. Nobody cared about the religion of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover. And Roosevelt was a mainline Protestant, Episcopalian, and he could draw upon these themes very much. Harry Truman was a salty Baptist. Truman and Carter and Clinton, the three Baptist presidents of the century, know the Bible best. They can just recite reams of it at any moment. Eisenhower started having Billy Graham come by. When we say “evangelical” today, it’s almost a long shadow originally of Graham. Today, evangelicalism is multi-headed. It’s all over the place. You can’t really generalize about it much anymore, but in its purer form, it came up in that way.
And, yes, in ’64, they really galvanized around Barry Goldwater and the kind of conservatism. And they didn’t get very far because he didn’t get very far, but they got angry about being dismissed and so on. In 1976, when Jimmy Carter ran, he’s the first one who would say, ‘I’m born again,’ first one to say, ‘I had a personal experience with Jesus,’ but they soon dropped him because they didn’t like him politically. Ronald Reagan was not born again, but he was friendly to them. But you could see this long trend coming.
Robert Handy, one of our major historians, once wrote a little book on The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935, because the mainline churches were already beginning to lose some of their membership, their status. They were depressed. But Joel Carpenter, another historian, has since pointed out, through it all the fundamentalists who’d been disgraced in the 1920s started organizing. They bought radio stations. They started Bible colleges. They had magazines. And they were building a world inside the world. And suddenly along come people like Billy Graham and presidents who favor it, and you have a very different kind of pattern, so that by the time — I would say by the time of Ronald Reagan, it became so vivid that the normal clergy in the White House would be evangelists, usually, until recently, of a rather moderate sort.
Ms. Tippett: It also seems to me, though, that a mistake is made in media in lumping together — as you said, evangelicalism is a — there’s a multiplicity of evangelicalism, and evangelicalism has a very different history and theology in some cases from Pentecostals and certainly from fundamentalists, although there is some overlap. How would you explain the distinctions?
Mr. Marty: All right. To the sociologists, the slightly more than one-fourth of America that would be called evangelical includes fundamentalists, evangelicals, Pentecostals, Southern Baptists, and conservative Protestant denominations. And they really have tremendous differences except when they converge on highly focal and, let’s say, useful political points: gay marriage or something of that sort. But for the most part, they’re much more diverse.
Until around the turn of the last century, all Protestants were called evangelicals; all evangelicals were called Protestant. During the century, though, you started having the liberal churches accenting more the Biblical story applied to social life, economic life, cultural life, whereas those who were evangelical started dealing with private life, personal life. That still goes down in our own time.
Ms. Tippett: Why did that happen? How did that happen?
Mr. Marty: Well, I think the Protestants who ran the show had the sense that you can pass a law and get rid of slavery, you can join secular people to get antitrust laws, you could have child labor laws. All the while then, the revivalists, Billy Graham’s ancestors — the greatest being Dwight Moody, a Chicago evangelist — looked out at the world and saw it in trouble, and he said, ‘The world is a flood, and God gave me a lifeboat and said, “Moody, rescue all you can.”‘ And I think they concentrated on heaven, on saving souls. And then on moral issues, they chose those over which an individual could have control: You shouldn’t gamble. You shouldn’t swear. You shouldn’t drink.
Now what’s so interesting today is, what have come to be called social issues in recent campaigns are not social, they’re personal enlarged. In other words, the evangelicals and the fundamentalists and the Catholic conservatives concentrate on what goes on in the bedroom, and they don’t talk much the way classic Protestants did about should the government be involved with poverty, with waging peace, all of those kinds of things. It’s been their genius to organize that in our own time so they have great political power. The Republican Party in particular has seen that that can be amassed and help get votes for things outside of the bedroom.
Ms. Tippett: Although there certainly are Catholics and evangelicals who are mobilized around poverty and those more classic kinds of social justice issues.
Mr. Marty: Oh, my, yes. Catholics are very much upfront. And some of the strongest social involvements of today are among evangelical Protestants. But that kind of Catholic and that kind of evangelical and that kind of Protestant are themselves in a kind of a loose coalition today. Not as powerful as the personal morality people, but there’s a lot of power there. A lot of witness goes on.
Ms. Tippett: Religious scholar and author Martin Marty. I’m Krista Tippett and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today we’re exploring Martin Marty’s historical and personal perspective on the changing religious dynamics in American culture. For a half-century, he has studied the effect of increasing pluralism on American Christianity. He’s also been a visionary scholar of religious fundamentalist movements around the world.
Ms. Tippett: I want to talk about the Fundamentalism Project that you did but, I mean, before we actually talk about fundamentalism, I’d like to note something that I thought was very interesting. I was reading your address that you gave at the conclusion of that project to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. You titled it, “Too Bad We’re So Relevant: The Fundamentalism Project Projected.”
I’ll just read this quote: “The Fundamentalism Project scholars have found that fundamentalists tend to turn intimate and private issues into public affairs. Concern for the zones of life closest to the self — world view, identity, sexuality, gender differentiation, family, education, communication — tend to take priority over macroeconomic concerns.”
So my question to you is, is there something at the origins of fundamentalism that is also moving our culture as a whole right now?
Mr. Marty: OK. One quick word about fundamentalism. The fundamentalism we studied, to which you’re referring, is not your friendly neighborhood fundamentalist down the block. Our assignment was to study the militancies. When we started this, a historian friend said, ‘When you’re studying American fundamentalism, Marty, remember there are no machine guns in the basement of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.’ We were really studying a different kind of thing there, and yet there are certain things everybody had in common.
In the roots of fundamentalism in our culture, it started, of course, anti-evolution, anti-biblical criticism, and then it started taking a moral cast. But its moral cast, again, was the things that you should take control of. Virtue, advice were their big terms, not social justice and social change. Take what is a virtuous person; pass laws to promote that virtue. And I certainly am leaving a wrong impression if I’m suggesting that bedroom and clinical issues don’t have social consequences. They have huge social consequences. If divorce becomes more easy and grows and families disintegrate and children don’t have models in the parental world and they’re not educable, it’s a huge difference in the culture. So they don’t have a monopoly on it either in its invention or its present carrying out, but I think more of them restrict their energies to that and, again, it’s a very politically popular thing to do.
Ms. Tippett: But here’s my question: This description that you gave of fundamentalism, that people turn to intimate and private issues and that these take priority over macroeconomic concerns, could actually, I think, describe maybe a majority of Americans this year. So what I’m wondering is if there’s something that you see that gives rise to that tendency within fundamentalism that is actually alive in our culture as a whole right now.
Mr. Marty: I think two things are going on. On one level, around the world people are having trouble with their identity, their belief — whom do I trust, who trusts me? And so a phrase we used in The Fundamentalism Project, around the world, there is a massive, convulsive ingathering of peoples into their separatenesses and over-againstnesses, to protect their pride and power and place from others who are doing the same thing. Now, look at American life. We don’t do it the way they do it in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. We don’t veil women or anything like that, but we’re clustering more tightly. ‘We’re the virtuous, and they’re the vicious. We’re the good, they’re the evil.’
Ms. Tippett: I guess I’m still wondering how you understand the human and spiritual–maybe not theological, but the spiritual roots of this focus that seems to have become so definitive in our public life, on private issues of morality as the issues of morality.
Mr. Marty: I think that all through Christian history, anything related to sexuality was troubling and exciting. Clerical celibacy for 1700 years in Catholicism shows this, how much of an upheaval was caused when Martin Luther got married and when the Protestant clergy married. Every change in sexual mores is troubling because that’s so close to the roots of creation and transmission of life. Now what’s happened in our own time, I argue, every church body from the Mennonites to the evangelicals to the Roman Catholic Church are torn up over two words: sex and authority. By sex, I mean everything in the biological cycle, from in vitro fertilization or stem cell research, abortion, birth control, cohabitation outside of marriage. All these things are troubling all the churches, some of them sweeping…
Ms. Tippett: And dividing people in them.
Mr. Marty: Oh, yes. Some people sweep these things under the rug or close their eyes to it or whatever. But I think it’s very hard to get to the root of your part of the question as to why this longtime concern for personal morality, sexual morality, suddenly became so politically powerful. On one level, let’s be honest, it’s very exploitable. Everything else I’ve talked about — caring for peace, caring for justice, caring for feeding — these are all relative things. How much foreign aid budget you’re going to put into it, how much energy you’re going to put into it. With abortion, you either have an abortion or you don’t. You either perform gay right marriage or not. So it can be a big matter of identity and boundary, and I think that’s very popular in a time when people lose their identity and their boundary. I always say that the laws on gay rights and the practices toward them will be changed when every tenth evangelical minister’s daughter comes out. That is, when it gets close to you, you see these differently.
Ms. Tippett: So liberal — let’s say, Democrats and even liberal religious people who also have been struggling to find a voice in this last period will often hearken back to the days when it was the social justice issues that mobilized people and that had political force. Did those issues somehow achieve that force in the ’60s because they became more personal for people and, I mean, could you imagine that happening again?
Mr. Marty: Oh, I think so. The personalization of civil rights, you suddenly had a face: Martin Luther King. You suddenly had causes: the four little Birmingham girls who were bombed. These are very, very vivid things so that the president of the United States had to get on television one night, and after you’d seen the pictures of the dogs attacking children and police attempts to put down blacks in the South, suddenly it did become personal.
I should also say in fairness — I’m really trying to be as accurate as I can — these involvements of white Protestants in peace movements and civil rights movements that was never massive. That was often leadership. Some people would call them generals without armies. And there’s where I think we historians have kept saying a lot of evangelicals were up close, they were getting their hands dirty. The Salvation Army, for example, is an evangelical movement, one of the oldest. So we don’t have any absolute lines here at all. I just think that the sudden choice to organize on the virtue-vice line, the ‘we’re entirely right and they’re entirely wrong’ line, was very exploitable in politics, and in many, many states that has come to prevail as the main political agency. Nobody would have dreamed of that 20 years ago.
Ms. Tippett: Historian and author Martin Marty. This is Speaking of Faith. After a short break, more of his reflections on the nature of fundamentalism, separation of church and state, and the future of religion in America.
Mr. Marty: I once spoke in eastern Iowa and they said, ‘Well, you live in pluralism.’ I said, ‘Where’s the oldest mosque in American? It’s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.’ And they have Postville Lubavitcher Jews north of them, and they have transcendental meditation south of them, and they have gypsies east of them, and Amish west of them. That’s the America we have. It doesn’t mean it’s all easy, doesn’t mean everybody likes everybody.
Ms. Tippett: Visit our Web site, speakingoffaith.org. Subscribe to our free weekly podcast so you can listen to this and other archived programs again. Listen when you want, wherever you want. Discover more at speakingoffaith.org.
I’m Krista Tippett. Stay with us. Speaking of Faith comes to you from American Public Media.
[Announcements]
Ms. Tippett: Welcome back to Speaking of Faith, public radio’s conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. I’m Krista Tippett, today exploring America’s contemporary religious landscape with Martin Marty.
Martin Marty is a celebrated historian and interpreter of American religious life. This hour he’s been reflecting on the religious dynamics of contemporary America from his perspective of half a century of scholarship. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century and into the present, he’s been involved in many large-scale analyses of American Protestantism in particular, including its cultural influence and its pluralistic impulses.
And from 1987 to 1993, well before religious fundamentalism had become a feature of daily news headlines, Marty directed a global fundamentalism project that was commissioned by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. That project studied militant religious fundamentalist cultures around the world, and resulted in a five-volume publication. I asked Martin Marty what he learned that surprised him and what shapes his reaction to fundamentalism now.
Mr. Marty: The first thing we learned was that it is religious. That is, we didn’t let the psychologists in the first couple of years. This was a six-year study. We wanted to make sure that we caught the religious dimension and were convinced of that. And therefore fundamentalists, by and large, saw us as being fair. Our main instrument was the tape recorder. We sent out a couple hundred scholars around the world and they would ask, ‘Why are you this?’ and ‘Why do you raise your family that way?’ We studied it in 23 religions, by the way, Jains and Sikhs and everybody; it wasn’t just Christians and Muslims and Jews.
What else did we learn? Number one, fundamentalism is not the old-time religion. Fundamentalism is a very modern packaging. That is, it’s born when there’s an assault on values that you have and are uncertain about. There has to be a threat to you as a group identity or to you as an individual. So the most important word in fundamentalism is you react. Very few fundamentalists are concerned about things that traditionalists and regular conservatives and orthodox are. You can’t get a phone booth full of an argument on the most important Christian doctrines like the divine trinity and the two natures of Christ and the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper. They care about evolution. They care about being left behind as the world ends. But there’s a very selective agenda. The whole left-behind theology is not the old-time religion. It was invented in the 1840s, which is really the modern world.
Ms. Tippett: For someone like you.
Mr. Marty: That’s right. I move glacially, not with a hurricane. And many other features were modern. Everywhere we studied them, they were better at the use of mass media than modernists were.
Ms. Tippett: Now, that’s interesting.
Mr. Marty: Yes. I once spoke in a church in — I think it was Dallas, and the pulpit looked like a 747 panel. A red light would go on, a baby’s crying in nursery 23C, and another blue light and that means a Jaguar’s lights were left on in parking lot D, and I could raise the temperature and the volume and everything else. And the minister in his sermon later on blasted technology, which he was using. In other words, he blasted the energy put into it, I suppose you’d say.
Well, I can go to a liberal Methodist church and I’m pretty sure the microphone won’t work. I’m kidding, I’m kidding, but Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution was done through tape recordings from France. Al-Qaeda is very much at home with the Internet.
Ms. Tippett: Very savvy, yeah.
Mr. Marty: Mass media helped produce fundamentalism because — first stage was born in the early radio; the second stage, Billy Graham, early television; the third stage now, Internet. What do you do? It comes at you with full force. You might try laws against obscenity and pornography. You might try to boycott Disney World. That doesn’t do much. You’re better off starting your own television networks. ‘Mass media are what messed up the intimacy of my family life; I’ll turn it right back upon itself.’
Ms. Tippett: So as late as on September 11th, 2001, the word “fundamentalism” became a part of our public vocabulary. And I’m curious, as you watched that happen and have watched all the discussion since then, having spent this good block of time studying fundamentalism a decade earlier, what have you found to be missing in our analysis of fundamentalism recently?
Mr. Marty: I think, unfortunately, the word is used to clump everybody together. The overuse of the word “fundamentalism” — I should be claiming a patent on it because we did those five big fat books on it. But one of the themes of those five books was there are an awful lot of things out there and there’s a lot of internal diversity. We would remind people — for example, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s had 450,000 members in Indiana, in the North, and every meeting had a Protestant minister, it had a cross, it had the open Bible, it had prayer, and the rest of Protestantism and the rest of Christianity would say, ‘That’s not a bit representative of the one billion of us out there.’ So I think when al-Qaeda came on the scene that was our first message: Show the diversities. Make it easier for moderates to be moderate. Don’t demonize the enemy. Do all that you can to show their varieties and to make it easy for them to be diverse.
Ms. Tippett: Esteemed religious historian and author Martin Marty. I’m Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty.”
Ms. Tippett: You’ve lived a good long time as a public theologian and a religious thinker, and you quote a lot of great thinkers in all your works. I wonder, if I asked you who you think of as the most formative and influential religious figures in American life in the 20th century, who would you want to describe?
Mr. Marty: Among the well-known people, I would have to say the two Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, who towered at Union Seminary and Yale when Protestantism was strong. They both were strong for the prophetic principle. They weren’t good at leading you into worship, though they did write prayers. But they were up close. They were in the thick of things.
Reinhold was a “cold warrior.” He was a consultant in the Truman era to the Dean Achesons and then the John Foster Dulleses. He’s there. But his interpretation of human nature — on one level, there was a group called Atheists for Niebuhr, but he once said, ‘You’ll never understand me if you don’t know that I believe in Christ crucified.’ He always went back to his roots in the gospel, but they also appreciated his analysis of human nature was so realistic, and his interpretation of history and the place nations played.
Ms. Tippett: Here’s a favorite quotation of the 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, with which Martin Marty ended an address at the White House in 1998.
Reader: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”
Ms. Tippett: From Reinhold Niebuhr.
My guest, Martin Marty, is describing some of the most interesting and influential religious forces in his lifetime.
Mr. Marty: I certainly would have to put Billy Graham in the front rank. And I may not have always been in the same camp, we’ve exchanged a few nice letters and have never had a sour word in 30, 40 years, but there’s no doubt about it that I’ve often thought — I’ve often said, ‘If Billy Graham had been born mean, we’d be in terrible trouble,’ because he had so much power, so many gifts and so on. One of my distinctions in religion is not liberal and conservative, but mean and non-mean. You have mean liberals and mean conservatives, and you have non-mean of both. But he’s not a mean. And I think you’d have to say that’s just been an enormous influence on many people.
Paul Tillich, of German import, was highly influential theologically. But I really think that people whose names you’ll never know were influential.
Ms. Tippett: Right. And who are some of those that are important to you?
Mr. Marty: Well, a custodian at a high school I went to. You’d come there in the morning and, as busy as he might be pushing a broom, he read your face better than the counselors did as to what your trouble was.
I personally have a lot of interest in the arts and I have hung out with people who are in music. Recently I was at the dedication of a new organ in honor of Paul Manz, a great, great organist who brought back something as corny-sounding as hymn singing into the great cathedrals. He and I have been on a couple of CDs together. I assure anybody listening that I don’t sing, I narrate. But certainly Paul Manz would be in my front rank of people who shaped me.
A theologian named Joe Sittler, not among the best-known theologians in America, blind in the last years of his life, nearly deaf, had a way with words and a way of discernment and a good-humored understanding of ethics that made the world richer for me.
Reader: A reading from Joseph Sittler in the 1986 book Gravity and Grace:
“St. Augustine, at the beginning of his Confessions, makes a great and beautiful statement: ‘Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.’ Back of that statement lies a proposition which says that the human is created for transcendence … that we are by nature created to envision more than we can accomplish, to long for that which is beyond our possibilities.
“We are formed for God. …Faith is a longing. Humankind is created to grasp more than we can grab, to probe for more than we can ever handle or manage.
“…This restlessness may make us want to throw in the towel — or to pull up our socks. You can either be creatively restless, as before the unknowable, or you can simply collapse into futility. One of the goals of the Christian message is to join together the people of the way, the way of an eternally given restlessness, and to win from that restlessness the participation in God, which is all that our mortality can deliver.”
Theologian Joseph Sittler, from the book Gravity and Grace.
Ms. Tippett: You often mention a Dutch philosopher.
Mr. Marty: Oh, yes.
Ms. Tippett: How do you say his name?
Mr. Marty: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, who was a Swiss-German Jew and Christian. He’s one of those geniuses that you can quote 20 pages of and then the 21st page is so nutty you’re not sure you can use it. But I’ll give a quick illustration of what I get from him. For example, he says — and this is extremely important in my life. He says you can write the history of learning in the western world in three Latin phrases.
The first is, in Latin, Credo ut intelligum — “I believe in order that I may understand.” It’s the birth of the universities in Europe, Bologna, Paris, Oxford. You believe to apprehend the universe; truth is divinely revealed and can be appropriated. And that’s the charter that believers should never be afraid of learning.
Secondly, modern learning, without which we couldn’t do, is Descartes. René Descartes. Cogito ergo sum — “I think, therefore I am.” Modern university is born on skepticism and doubt and inquiry and criticism, and you want that. I don’t want a med school in which they’re just taking things on faith. I want them to be extremely critical. But he said, ‘That, too, gets sterile.’ And so he says, in the 20th century, that we also have to learn that truth has a social character. I’m learning from this conversation with you. We learn from conversing with someone else, we learn from the meaning of “I” and “thou.”
And his third motto was Respondeo etsi mutabor — “I respond although I will be changed.” I’m not changed when I argue with somebody because I know an answer and I got to defeat them. I’m always changed in a conversation because they’re going to surprise me. It’s kind of a game, it’s kind of play. And I think that that’s the kind of learning we need more in the churches, in theology, in politics, and in personal life.
Ms. Tippett: You’ve done a lot of projecting in your life. I mean, I found one book written in 1971 where you were projecting the church in that century, and there was projecting in The Fundamentalism Project. I wonder what you have been wrong about, as you look back, and also I wonder, as you look forward, where you are finding your hope and nurture.
Mr. Marty: Well, looking ahead, it’s a very foolish thing for a historian to do because we have nothing to say until something’s happened. I mean, our specialty is the past. But when you’re involved in the worlds in which I’m involved, you do hang out with the people who do projecting and you go along with them. My biggest misses were I didn’t foresee three huge things: One, the explosion of evangelicalisms; number two, the highly individualized spirituality of which you spoke earlier, the people who are on a spiritual search but they’re doing it at the coffee shop, at the mega bookstore, or they’re doing it in a little chanting group, and they’re not doing it in the churches. That’s certainly a force I hadn’t foreseen. And then I think the vitality that has come with the new pluralism, and that’s because I did a lot of writing before 1965 when the immigration laws changed.
Ms. Tippett: That’s another one of those points in the ’60s that you say how important that was for our religious life, that we never talk about as a turning point in the ’60s.
Mr. Marty: Well, it’s huge. It was the year of the Selma March. It was the year of the engagement in Vietnam. It was the year of all the LBJ Great Society legislation, and Congress made a little change in the immigration laws, after 41 years. And it was just in time for all the boat people. It’s just in time for people from Africa to come direct, and so on. And it was just a huge change…
Ms. Tippett: Because it gave rise to a pluralism and a multiculturalism in a new way.
Mr. Marty: Yes. It makes new demands on hospitality, etc. Lewiston, Maine, suddenly has people from Somalia. I once spoke in eastern Iowa and they said, ‘Well, you live in pluralism.’ I said, ‘Where’s the oldest mosque in American? It’s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.’ And they have Postville Lubavitcher Jews north of them, and they have transcendental meditation south of them, and they have gypsies east of them, and Amish west of them. That’s the America we have. And when you go to a hospital today, your doctor’s probably Pakistani and your nurse is Filipino, and your clinician is Jewish, etc. That’s our future. It doesn’t mean it’s all easy, doesn’t mean everybody likes everybody, but it does mean that your interpreting is being done on a larger scale.
And, again, the two biggest of those — and I guess you could say I probably didn’t foresee that either, since we’re talking about what I didn’t foresee — is that half of everything we’re talking about today is done by women. And that was not true in the ’50s. When I was writing the third volume of my three-volume work on American religion, I said to my class, half of whom were women, ‘Help me out. I need women who are big in religion in the ’50s. I can’t have an index of all men.’ And they couldn’t find hardly anybody. And then one of them said, ‘I’ll bet they were seething.’ And I said, ‘OK, Julie, you’re going to right a history of seething women of the ’50s,’ and she found interesting stuff. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Catherine Marshall, all these people whose husbands are up front, and they’re seething. They’re all ready to change along the way. So I didn’t foresee how sudden and total that is.
It’s hard to think your way back to when very few women added work outside the home if they had children at home. And I think the…
Ms. Tippett: That’s a piece of pluralism we don’t really think about, in terms of how people are active in our public life. Women are more of a force in that way.
Mr. Marty: Oh, yes.
Ms. Tippett: Religious historian Martin Marty. We’re exploring how his historical and personal insights shed light on the religious dynamics of contemporary America.
Ms. Tippett: I think that there is a real sense among many people in our time that the whole relationship between church and state–as we define that, it’s not really just church and state anymore, right, it’s mosque, synagogue, church, and state, and many other variations of religious expression, but that that is shifting profoundly. But I wonder, with your perspective as a historian, you know, how new, how profound is this shift and how do you view this?
Mr. Marty: On one level, the image of the wall of separation never worked. We did never have a wall. For example, tax exemption of churches probably pays more to the churches in America than being established governmental churches in Europe ever did. I like James Madison’s word, there’s a “line of distinction,” a line of separation between religion and civil authorities.
I think of it more, too, as zones. Most people know when you’ve really overstepped. Most people don’t want religion utterly in a box. When the astronauts looked at the Earth on Christmas Eve, they read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.” I think Madalyn Murray O’Hair and one or two other people protested, but most people thought, ‘That’s great.’ And when you have the space shuttle disasters, the president gets up and is at his most eloquent invoking religious language. Well, if you read real separation of religion and the state, you wouldn’t do that.
It gets more complex in some other areas. There is much more eroding of that line than there had been. I think, though, again, many of us who are nervous about crossing the line are also interested in religion in public life. I’m all for the teaching about religion in public schools. I think you should know that Martin Luther King was a black Baptist and what that did for him. You should know why the Puritans came. You should know why your Hindu neighbor does something different. But a lot of people want to convert that and say, ‘But we should teach the majority religion as the truth about life, and we should worship in that tradition.’ And that’s where we get nervous, and yet there’s a strong popular appeal. ‘If only we had prayer amendments. If only we had stipulated prayer.’ And here’s where a Protestant of the old school or a real Protestant would say, ‘Watch out. Give religion privilege and it gets corrupt. And look at Europe if you want a sample of that.’ So in my view, religion has its place all over the public sphere as long as it is persuasive and voluntary. And the minute it gets to be coerced and privileged and assumed, somebody’s going to run it at the expense of others or it’ll get fat and corrupt.
Ms. Tippett: Where do you look for nourishment and hope? Where do you look around and say, ‘This is exciting. I’m happy for my grandchildren to be living in this time’?
Mr. Marty: The most important thing in my world, when I mention public life I don’t mean only politics. A lot of people equate the two. Politics is one branch of it. Public life is town meeting, it’s the mall, it’s the supermarket, it’s the college, it’s all those things. And I’m greatly cheered by artists, by musicians, by people who live out their vocation. It’s almost a hobby for me to pursue people who just never get their name in print and do heroic things.
I’m cheered by — I never know how to speak without proper nouns. I like a group called Opportunity International, which is one of a number of microeconomic ventures around the world that lends money, put 140,000 people around the world to permanent work last year. Now, they’re religiously motivated people and they give me tremendous hope, as do the people on the other end, 92 percent of whom pay their loans back in two years, which inspires me. That kind of thing.
In the city where I live, Chicago, there are all kinds of groups that provide leadership in the inner city without condescension, without imposing on them. There are others that train people. In one of these groups, the Christian Industrial League, trains people, mainly Mexican men, to start their landscaping companies and women to start their homemaking companies — not just to do the work, but to start companies. And they plant the flowers that we see in the city of Chicago. Come see them.
And family is very important. I draw nurture from the family. We love friends. I can’t say enough — I once wrote a book about friendship. In a cold, brutal world, you can’t do much better for somebody else than to stimulate friendship. And the model there again is God. As distant as God’s supposed to be, God also condescends and is our 3:00-in-the-morning friend. So I’m nurtured by all those kinds of things.
Ms. Tippett: Martin Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. The Martin Marty Center has been founded there to promote public religion endeavors. He’s the author of more than 50 books, including, recently, The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism, When Faiths Collide, and the Penguin Lives volume on Martin Luther.
Contact us at speakingoffaith.org and read listeners’ reflections on this conversation. Also, sign up for the free Speaking of Faith podcast. You’ll never have to miss another program again. Listen on demand, when you want, wherever you want. Discover more at speakingoffaith.org.
The senior producer of Speaking of Faith is Mitch Hanley, with producers Colleen Scheck and Jody Abramson and editor Ken Hom. Our Web producer is Trent Gilliss, with assistance from Jennifer Krause. Kate Moos is the managing producer of Speaking of Faith, the executive editor is Bill Buzenberg, and I’m Krista Tippett.

Mara Vanderslice Helps Democrats Communicate their Faith

Chris Abraham — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 13:18:03 +0000

“Party strategists and nonpartisan pollsters credit the operative, Mara Vanderslice, and her 2-year-old consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, with helping a handful of Democratic candidates make deep inroads among white evangelical and churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

Via the New York Times

“The Strategist : Mara Vanderslice of the consulting firm Common Good Strategies, who works the campaign trail, helping candidates build relationships with diverse religious communities.”

Via The Washington Post

“‘There’s been a huge sea change,’ says Mara Vanderslice, former religious outreach adviser to defeated presidential candidate John Kerry. ‘When we started this work on the Kerry campaign there was a lot of disagreement over how much to emphasise reaching out to religious Americans… there’s almost universal understanding now that we need to do a better job of reaching out.’”

Via the BBC

“Casey is “pro-life,??? and Strickland a minister, but similar shifts occurred in other races featuring more-traditional Democratic candidates. Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm, for instance, a “pro-choice??? and relatively liberal governor, won 35 percent of the white evangelical vote, a percentage significantly higher than the House Democratic average. All in all, about a half-dozen races impressed Green as scrambling many of our culture-war assumptions. In each of these races, you can argue about the strength of the opponent and other local dynamics, but all of them turn out to have one thing in common: the winning candidate worked extensively with a small political consulting outfit called Common Good Strategies.
Mara Vanderslice, a thirty-one-year-old born-again Christian, founded Common Good in 2005 and later brought on Eric Sapp, thirty, as a partner. Both belong to the small but growing club of evangelicals who are also Democrats. Vanderslice had worked on a couple of Democratic presidential campaigns, and she had found that the reactions of many campaign staffers around her ranged from “ambivalent to hostile??? when she suggested reaching out to religious voters or constituents. But she and Sapp suspected that while the machinery resisted, the candidates themselves might be amenable. This year, Common Good worked closely with seven candidates, testing a new strategy for Democrats trying to court religious voters. All of these candidates won in November.
In each race, Vanderslice and Sapp began by helping candidates build the infrastructure necessary to reach religious voters, often from scratch. “In many cases our party had completely written them off,??? says Sapp. In none of the states in which they worked did the Democratic Party have a complete list of pastors, for example, so Common Good staffers created those lists. In Michigan, they met with about 500 conservative and moderate members of the clergy; in many of the meetings, particularly with evangelical ministers, they would hear something like “Where have you all been???? According to Sapp, “At a fundamental level they just want candidates to give God his due, more than they care about specific issues.???
Common Good helped recruit pastors to write op-eds in response to criticisms and arranged for campaigns to buy mailing lists of religious-minded voters. Vanderslice and Sapp encouraged candidates to buy ads on Christian radio, a medium considered more intimate than television. Strickland did a large radio buy in July—early enough to look like more than an afterthought. For ten years he’d had a quote from Micah on his office wall: “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.??? With uplift-y music in the background, he talked in his ad about how that quote had guided his career and would guide him as governor.
Vanderslice and Sapp helped the candidates create a new language to use in talking about faith and values, aimed in part at neutralizing hot-button issues. On abortion, for instance, they banned the word choice and pushed reduction, going one step further with Clinton’s idea that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare???: “We must work together across our differences to reduce the need and numbers of abortions by reducing unplanned pregnancies and helping women and families get the support they need when facing a crisis pregnancy,??? read a brochure for Sherrod Brown, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio. The idea was that a lot of voters who oppose abortion don’t actually want it to be criminalized; they just want the issue to be recognized as important.
The two consultants also advised candidates to attack Republican positions on moral grounds, from the left. Where anti-gay-marriage amendments came up, for example, they expanded the issue and talked about how many marriages were disintegrating because of financial stress, which they name as the No. 1 cause of divorce in America.”

Via Atlantic Monthly by way of Faith in Public Life

“Should Kerry run for president a second time, such values-based defenses of Democratic policies would no doubt play a greater role than in 2004 when the candidate paid little attention to Casey or evangelical adviser Mara Vanderslice—despite the pair’s involvement with the campaign.
Vanderslice has since proved her counsel is worth heeding. From her new role as director of Common Good Strategies, an independent consulting firm she founded in 2005, the born-again strategist significantly boosted the Democrats’ midterm landslide. Exit polls showed that the candidates she advised pulled in an average of 10 percent more evangelical voters than other Democrats.
Fellow Common Good Strategies consultant Eric Sapp told WORLD such results could signal the beginning of a grand reshaping of the political landscape: “My hope would be that Christians become a perennial swing vote.”"

Via World Magazine by way of Faith in Public Life

Our Deepest Fear Quote Incorrectly Credited to Nelson Mandela

Chris Abraham — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 09:44:15 +0000

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It’s in everyone. And as we let our light shine we give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Actually written by Marianne Williamson

Actual Nelson Mandela Inaugural Speech:

Date: 09 May 1994
Title: MANDELA: INAUGURATION ADDRESS, CAPE TOWN
——————————————————————————–
NELSON MANDELA’S ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF CAPE TOWN, GRAND PARADE, ON THE OCCASION OF HIS INAUGURATION AS STATE PRESIDENT, 9 MAY 1994

Mr Master of Ceremonies,
Your Excellencies,
Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
My Fellow South Africans:

Today we are entering a new era for our country and its people. Today we celebrate not the victory of a party, but a victory for all the people of South Africa.

Our country has arrived at a decision. Among all the parties that contested the elections, the overwhelming majority of South Africans have mandated the African National Congress to lead our country into the future. The South Africa we have struggled for, in which all our people, be they African, Coloured, Indian or White, regard themselves as citizens of one nation is at hand.

Perhaps it was history that ordained that it be here, at the Cape of Good Hope that we should lay the foundation stone of our new nation. For it was here at this Cape, over three countries ago, that there began the fateful convergence of the peoples of Africa, Europe and Asia on these shores.

It was to this peninsula that the patriots, among them many princes and scholars, of Indonesia were dragged in chains. It was on the sandy plains of this peninsula that first battles of the epic wars of resistance were fought.

When we look out across Table Bay, the horizon is dominated by Robben Island, whose infamy as a dungeon built to stifle the spirit of freedom is as old as colonialism in South Africa. For three centuries that island was seen as a place to which outcasts can be banished. The names of those who were incarcerated on Robben Island is a roll call of resistance fighters and democrats spanning over three centuries. If indeed this is a Cape of Good Hope, that hope owes much to the spirit of that legion of fighters and others of their calibre.

We have fought for a democratic constitution since the 1880s. Ours has been a quest for a constitution freely adopted by the people of South Africa, reflecting their wishes and their aspirations. The struggle for democracy has never been a matter pursued by one race, class, religious community or gender among South Africans. In honouring those who fought to see this day arrive, we honour the best sons and daughters of all our people. We can count amongst them Africans, Coloureds, Whites, Indians, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews – all of them united by a common vision of a better life for the people of this country.

It was that vision that inspired us in 1923 when we adopted the first ever Bill of Rights in this country. That same vision spurred us to put forward the African Claims in 1946. It is also the founding principle of the Freedom Charter we adopted as policy in 1955, which in its very first lines, places before South Africa an inclusive basis for citizenship.

In the 1980s the African National Congress was still setting the pace, being the first major political formation in South Africa to commit itself firmly to a Bill of Rights, which we published in November 1990. These milestones give concrete expression to what South Africa can become. They speak of a constitutional, democratic, political order in which, regardless of colour, gender, religion, political opinion or sexual orientation, the law will provide for the equal protection of all citizens.

They project a democracy in which the government, whomever that government may be, will be bound by a higher set of rules, embodied in a constitution, and will not be able govern the country as it pleases.

Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.

In the political order we have established there will regular, open and free elections, at all levels of government – central, provincial and municipal. There shall also be a social order which respects completely the culture, language and religious rights of all sections of our society and the fundamental rights of the individual.

The task at hand on will not be easy. But you have mandated us to change South Africa from a country in which the majority lived with little hope, to one in which they can live and work with dignity, with a sense of self-esteem and confidence in the future. The cornerstone of building a better life of opportunity, freedom and prosperity is the Reconstruction and Development Programme.

This needs unity of purpose. It needs in action. It requires us all to work together to bring an end to division, an end to suspicion and build a nation united in our diversity.

The people of South Africa have spoken in these elections. They want change! And change is what they will get. Our plan is to create jobs, promote peace and reconciliation, and to guarantee freedom for all South Africans. We will tackle the widespread poverty so pervasive among the majority of our people. By encouraging investors and the democratic state to support job creating projects in which manufacturing will play a central role we will try to change our country from a net exporter of raw material to one that exports finished products through beneficiation.

The government will devise policies that encourage and reward productive enterprise among the disadvantaged communities – African, Coloured and Indian. By easing credit conditions we can assist them to make inroads into the productive and manufacturing spheres and breakout of the small-scale distribution to which they are presently confined.

To raise our country and its people from the morass of racism and apartheid will require determination and effort. As a government, the ANC will create a legal framework that will assist, rather than impede, the awesome task of reconstruction and development of our battered society.

While we are and shall remain fully committed to the spirit of a government of national unity, we are determined to initiate and bring about the change that our mandate from the people demands.

We place our vision of a new constitutional order for South Africa on the table not as conquerors, prescribing to the conquered. We speak as fellow citizens to heal the wounds of the past with the intent of constructing a new order based on justice for all.

This is the challenge that faces all South Africans today, and it is one to which I am certain we will all rise.

Issued by: ANC, Department of Information and Publicity, Johannesburg.

Regina Spektor is Tori Plus Ani Plus Joni Plus Björk Plus Nora Plus Wow

Chris Abraham — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 09:57:34 +0000

I must admit that my first exposure to Regina Spektor was in Regina Spektor’s Boundless Talent on CBS Sunday Morning this AM. I must also admit that my first reaction was visual and visceral: Regina Spektor is a monumentally beautiful and compelling young woman. Although I lost the first five minutes of the segment to Regina Spektor’s beauty, I lost the remaining minutes to Regina Spektor’s story of being a Russian immigrant, her talent as a classically-trained pianist, her experience as an anti-folk singer-songwriter, her modestly as just a tough girl from the Bronx, her whimsy as just a girl, and her playfulness as a wordsmith. I am mesmerized and besotted. Give Regina Spektor a look and listen and I guarantee that you, too, will be besotted, compelled, and mesmerized, be you man or woman, gay or straight.

Regina Spektor entry on Wikipedia

Regina Spektor (born February 18, 1980) is a Soviet-born American singer-songwriter and pianist. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centered on New York City’s East Village.

Early life
Spektor was born in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union to a musical family. Her father, a photographer, was also an amateur violinist, and her mother was a music professor in a Russian conservatoire; she now teaches at a public elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York.

Spektor studied classical piano from the age of six, and was also exposed to the music of rock and roll bands such as The Beatles, Queen, and The Moody Blues by her father, who obtained such recordings in Eastern Europe and traded cassettes with friends in the Soviet Union. The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, when Regina was nine, during the period of Perestroika when Jewish citizens were permitted to emigrate. The seriousness of her piano studies led her parents to consider not leaving Russia, but they finally decided to emigrate, for religious and political reasons.

Travelling first to Austria and then Italy, the family settled in the Bronx, New York, and eventually moved to Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where she finished the last three years of her high school career. Spektor has stated that she was originally interested only in classical music, but later became interested in hip hop, rock, and punk.

Beginnings as a songwriter
In New York, Spektor gained a firm grounding in classical music from her piano teacher, Sonia Vargas, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music. Spektor studied with Vargas—whom Spektor’s father had met through violinist Samuel Marder, Vargas’s husband—until she was 17.

Although she had always made up songs around the house, Spektor first became interested in songwriting during a visit to Israel with the Nesiya Institute in her teenage years. Attracting attention from the other children on the trip for the songs she made up while hiking, she realized she had an aptitude for songwriting. Following this trip, she was first exposed to the work of Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, and other singer-songwriters, which gave her the idea that she could create her own songs. She began writing her first a cappella songs around age 16, and wrote her first songs for voice and piano when she was nearly 18.

Spektor completed the four-year studio composition program of the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College in Purchase, New York within three years, graduating with honors in 2001. She worked briefly at a butterfly farm in Luck, Wisconsin. She gradually achieved recognition through performances in the anti-folk scene in downtown New York City, most importantly at the East Village’s Sidewalk Cafe. During this period, she sold her self-produced CDs 11:11 (2001) and Songs (2002) at such performances.

Style
Spektor’s songs rely on a mixture of styles and techniques, often starting with a piano riff but ending with moans, nonsense words, warblings, and other noises. Spektor has said that she has created 700 songs, but that she rarely writes any of them down. Spektor’s songs are not usually autobiographical, but rather are based on scenarios and characters drawn from her imagination. Her songs show influences from folk, Jewish, Russian, hip hop, jazz, and classical music. Spektor has said that she works hard to ensure that each of her songs has its own musical style, rather than trying to develop a distinctive style for her music as a whole.

Spektor possesses a broad vocal range and uses the full extent of it. She also explores a variety of different and somewhat unorthodox vocal techniques, such as verses composed entirely of buzzing noises made with the lips, beatbox-style flourishes in the middle of ballads, or the use of a drum stick to tap rhythms on the body of the piano or chair. Part of her style also results from the exaggeration of certain aspects of vocalization, most notably the glottal stop, which is prominent the single “Fidelity”. She also uses a strong New York accent on some words, which she has said is due to her love of New York and its culture.

Her lyrics are equally eclectic, often taking the form of abstract narratives or first-person character studies, similar to short stories or vignettes put to song. Spektor usually sings in English, though she sometimes includes a few words or verses of Latin, Russian, French, and other languages in her songs. Spektor’s music is further set apart from mainstream folk music by its frequent literary references, such as to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in “Poor Little Rich Boy”, The Little Prince in “Baobabs”, Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood in “Paris”, Ezra Pound and William Shakespeare in “Pound of Flesh”, Boris Pasternak in “Après Moi”, and Oedipus the King in “Oedipus”. Recurring themes and topics in Spektor’s lyrics include love, death, religion (particularly Biblical and Christian references), city life (particularly New York references), and certain key phrases have been known to recur in different songs by Spektor, such as references to gravediggers, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the name “Mary Ann.”

In Spektor’s early albums, many of her tracks had a very dry vocal production, with very little reverb or delay added. However, Spektor’s more recent albums, particularly Begin to Hope, have put more emphasis into song production and have relied more on traditional pop and rock instruments.

Performances
Since roughly January 2005, Spektor has performed on a bright red Baldwin baby grand piano. She opened for The Strokes in 2003, on her first North American tour. Subsequently, she appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien twice, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno twice, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and Last Call with Carson Daly twice. She has toured the United States and Europe. Although she generally only performs original material, she performed her first covers in 2005, of songs by Leonard Cohen and Madonna for the 2nd Annual Jewish Music & Heritage Festival at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

While with The Strokes on their 2003–2004 Room on Fire tour, Spektor performed “Modern Girls & Old Fashion Men” alongside the band.

In 2006, Spektor embarked on a successful headlining tour of the United States and Europe, selling out numerous clubs and theaters.

Media coverage
Beginning in 2005, Spektor’s music has been used in various television programs and commercials. In late 2005 “Us” (from Soviet Kitsch) was used in a commercial as part of the What Do You Want To Watch? series for the United Kingdom’s Sky Television. The advert features a clip from a documentary on skateboarder Danny Way. In the summer of 2006, a clip from “Us” was used for the teaser website for Microsoft’s Zune project at ComingZune.com, as well as for a promotional campaign for MtvU. “Somedays” was used in a 2005 episode of CSI: NY and “Samson” was used in a 2006 episode of the same series. “On the Radio” was used in an episode of ABC’s popular Grey’s Anatomy. “Field Below” was used in a 2006 episode titled “The Last Word” of CBS’s Criminal Minds. “Fidelity” was also used in a recent episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” titled “Sometimes a Fantasy”, in an episode of Veronica Mars titled “Friday Night Sleights”, and in an episode of “Brothers & Sisters” titled “Sexual Politics”. “Better” is currently being used in a commercial for XM Satellite Radio. Spektor also sang the title song “Little Boxes” of Showtime’s television series Weeds in the 2006 episode “Mile Deep and a Foot Wide” and her “Ghost of Corporate Future” was used both at the beginning and end of the episode.

Regina Spektor gained much media attention in 2006 when her video for “Fidelity” was viewed over 200,000 times in two days on the YouTube website. On SIRIUS Radio’s Left of Center channel, her single “Fidelity” was voted by listeners as the #1 song of 2006.

In Australia particularly, Spektor’s music has rapidly gained popularity in mainstream culture primarily due to Begin To Hope being played on the nation-wide radio station Triple J, where it eventually became a feature album. Prior to Begin To Hope, Regina Spektor had only a small following in Australia in comparison to the US and Europe.

Discography
Most of Spektor’s early albums have been released exclusively in the United States. Her compilation, Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories, has been released worldwide.

Albums
2001 – 11:11 (Regina Spektor)
2002 – Songs (Regina Spektor)
2004 – Soviet Kitsch (Sire/London/Rhino)
2005 – Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories (Transgressive)
2006 – Begin to Hope (Sire) US sales 160,720

Singles and EPs
2003 – Reptilia b/w Modern Girls & Old Fashion Men by The Strokes (Rough Trade)
2004 – Your Honor / The Flowers (Shoplifter)
2005 – Live at Bull Moose EP (Sire)
2005 – Carbon Monoxide (Transgressive)
2006 – Us (Transgressive)
2006 – On the Radio (Sire) UK #60
2006 – Fidelity (Sire) US #84*

Compilations
2006 – Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories (Transgressive)

REGINA SPEKTOR
Begin To Hope (SIRE)

A mere five years ago, Regina Spektor was hypnotizing small crowds at hole-in-the-wall venues on New York ‘s Lower East Side . After playing hundreds of shows in and around NYC, Spektor became the talk of the burgeoning music scene. Though she was selling many copies of CDs she had recorded and produced with friends ( 11:11 and Songs), it was her next album, “Soviet Kitsch,??? that would become her calling card. Originally released as a CDR and handed out at shows, Spektor signed with Sire Records who re-released “Soviet Kitsch??? in 2003. While touring nationally and abroad in support of “Soviet Kitsch,??? Spektor began as an opening act but by year’s end was the main attraction. Going from 200-capacity venues to selling out 1,300 capacity-venues like New York ‘s Irving Plaza and London ‘s Shephard Bush Empire, this Russian-born chanteuse’s songs have gone from being burned in her bedroom to receiving a worldwide fanfare. Though in love with playing shows to her rapidly growing audience, Spektor had written hundreds of songs since “Soviet Kitsch??? and was eager to get back into the studio.

Abandoning her usual method of production and opting for a new experience, Spektor holed herself up at New York Noise Studios in NYC’s Meatpacking District with seasoned producer David Kahne (Paul McCartney). Spending two months during the summer of 2005 working on her fourth release (this new album is also considered her major label debut), Spektor had the opportunity to experiment “until a little Frankenstein was born.” Taking two months to record was a huge amount of time by Spektor’s standards, since she had recorded her “Songs??? record in 1 day and “Soviet Kitsch??? in 10. “To work like this had been a dream of mine, but I thought it would be years before it happened. I definitely tried to put every aspect of myself into it. We played with wires and sounds, set the lab on fire a bunch of times, laughed and started again.???

“Before I even started I knew I was going to experiment with things I’ve only thought about, like beats and drums,” explains Spektor, a multi-instrumentalist. “I really wanted to play with electronic instruments and bigger arrangements. Still, on this record, there are some songs where it’s really sparse. You don’t want to arrange just for the sake of arranging. I had to be careful so the music wouldn’t be more fun to make than to listen to.”

Judging from the final product, we’d say mission accomplished. On “Begin To Hope??? Spektor took the lyrical vignettes and sparse instrumentation she crafted for “Soviet Kitsch??? and pushed herself more in every direction—both lyrically and musically. From the staccato strings plucking the opening chords to the album’s first song, “Fidelity,??? to the blues-infused homage to Billie Holiday “Lady,??? Spektor isn’t able to pinpoint the exact inspiration behind her musical musings.

“You don’t ever know the true lineage of your songs,??? reveals Spektor. “Maybe I’m becoming less of a narrator and more of a character these days. I was always used to observing and writing third-person narrative stories about things I was seeing. Then, as time went on, I started placing myself in these scenes, more like an actor.???

“I don’t fully understand the fascination of people wanting to know the ‘real’ you after listening to your songs” says Spektor, who is still extremely careful when it comes to sharing her personal life with the public. “I understand the fascination of people to want to know you,??? admits Spektor but “ People always want to know which part of the song really happened, they want to know some sort of a “Truth.” For some reason they can see the same actor acting in 17 different movies, using 17 different hair colors, using fake props, changing their voice, changing their accent, being evil or being the victim, and they are okay with that. They understand that it’s just a movie, they understand that it’s an art. But with music they forget. Music, somehow, is life.”

Always willing to damn convention for the sake of creativity, Spektor is one of those rare talents who manage to outrun the trends and force the rest of the world to keep up. “The more I experience in this world, the more questions I seem to have about where this life is leading,??? reveals Spektor . Begin To Hope might still mark the beginning of her career, but Regina Spektor has been carving out her place in music history since she sang her first note.

Vanity Advertising on PayPerPost is Addicting

Chris Abraham — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 19:24:29 +0000

I have been playing around with a $100 credit that PayPerPost granted me to try out the service as an advertiser. “Cool,” I thought, “this is going to be fun.” I wrote my PayPerPost ad campaign blurb, “write About Chris Abraham’s Blog: Blog your very own opinion about my personal blog.” Amazingly egocentric, me.

So, put together an ad campaign as follows: “Go ahead, take a look. Write a blog entry about any part of my blog that tickles your fancy. Have fun. The only requirement is to mention me name, Chris Abraham and have the name link to the site, either the main site or any article therein. Explore your creativity. I don’t mind getting beat up a little if you think me a dork, a geek, or full of myself. I would, of course, prefer you to think of me as cool and interesting. It’s up to you.”

So, here’s everyone who has blogged me, out of full disclosure, eh?

PR Blog Post, Chris Abraham, Chris Abraham’s Blog, Best?, Blog Review, Site Review: ChrisAbraham.com, Crypto Christians and Carnivals, Who is Chris Abraham?, Why say more?, My online friends *are* real friends!, Free Online Video Tutorial On How To Start A Blog, Chris Abraham blog, Chris Abraham, Because The Medium Is The Message.

This can be totally addicting and addictive. I can’t wait until I have lots of overflow cash — I would do this constantly.

I love PayPerPost. Elegant is the idea that is so simple that nobody thought of it first. Abstract expressionism “could have been done by anyone” but wasn’t. I mean, how obvious is the PayPerPost plan? If paying bloggers between $5-$20-per-post, per blogger, is such a “duh” idea, why is Ted Murphy the only guy who thought of it and why is PayPerPost the only site that is doing it well?

Father Abraham Had Seven Sons

Chris Abraham — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 13:18:52 +0000

“Abraham (between 2000 BC/BCE and 1500 BC/BCE) is regarded as the founding patriarch of the Israelites whom God chose to bless and be a blessing to all the families of the earth. He is a critical figure in Judaism later adopted by other religions like Christianity, Islam, and the Bahá’í Faith. The accounts of his life found in the Book of Genesis (and for Muslims and Bahai, those in the Qur’an also) are believed to be accurate within the major religions respectively associated with these books, but they have sometimes been assumed to be myths (as opposed to factual) by some secular historians.”

Via Wikipedia

Father Abraham, had seven sons. Seven sons had Father Abraham.
And they never laughed, and they never cried. All they did was go like this:
With a left! (punch left fist into air) With a left!
(Now, move your left fist up and down in time to the music.)
Father Abraham, had seven sons. Seven sons had Father Abraham.
And they never laughed, and they never cried. All they did was go like this:
With a left! (punch left fist into air) With a left!
And a right! (punch right fist into air) And a right!
(Now, move both fists up and down in time to the music.)
Father Abraham, had seven sons. Seven sons had Father Abraham.
And they never laughed, and they never cried. All they did was go like this:
With a left! (punch left fist into air) With a left!
And a right! (punch right fist into air) And a right!
And a left! (move left leg) And a left!
(Now, move both fists up and down, AND move left leg in time to the music.)
Father Abraham, had seven sons. Seven sons had Father Abraham.
And they never laughed, and they never cried. All they did was go like this:
With a left! (punch left fist into air) With a left!
And a right! (punch right fist into air) And a right!
And a left! (move left leg) And a left!
And a right! (move right leg) And a right!
(Now, move both fists up and down, AND move both legs in time to the music.)
Father Abraham, had seven sons. Seven sons had Father Abraham.
And they never laughed, and they never cried. All they did was go like this:
With a left! (punch left fist into air) With a left!
And a right! (punch right fist into air) And a right!
And a left! (move left leg) And a left!
And a right! (move right leg) And a right!
And the head! (shake head) And the head!
(Move both fists up and down, both legs, AND your head in time to the music.)
Father Abraham, had seven sons. Seven sons had Father Abraham.
And they never laughed, and they never cried. All they did was go like this:
With a left! (punch left fist into air) With a left!
And a right! (punch right fist into air) And a right!
And a left! (move left leg) And a left!
And a right! (move right leg) And a right!
And the head! (shake head) And the head!
And the body! (shake body) And the body!
(Move everything in time to the music.)

Proud Alumnus of Saint Louis School

Chris Abraham — Wed, 25 May 2005 09:50:14 +0000

Upon Kalaepohaku’s rugged slope
St. Louis High School with her noble aim,
Proclaims the blessings of our fondest hope
And heralds the praises of a glorious name.

Long may Hawai`i’s tropic breeze
Unfurl your Red and Blue,
And He who guides our destinies
Our hearts keep true to you.

Saint Louis School

History
Since 1846, Saint Louis School has been preparing and motivating young men in Hawaii to achieve academic excellence and personal growth. Saint Louis is an independent Catholic Marianist School that gives students a strong college preparatory education emphasizing academics, service, faith and moral values.
Saint Louis School is the successor of the College of Ahuimanu in Windward Oahu begun in 1846 by the Catholic Missions under the direction of the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. In 1881 the school moved to its second location on Beretania Street adjoining Washington Place, the Governor’s present residence. The name “College of St. Louis” was given to the institution in honor of Bishop Louis Maigrit’s patron saint.
In the years following, it became evident that the elementary and high school departments were in need of still larger quarters. Encouraged by the parents and alumni, the Marianists laid plans for a greater Saint Louis College. In the 1920′s, land was purchased and plans were developed for moving to the present location.
Classes began on Kalaepohaku in September 1928.
In 1949 Saint Louis began phasing the lower grade levels out one at a time, until only the high school remained. In 1979, the school’s Board of Trustees voted to re-incorporate intermediate grades seven and eight into the school’s operation to begin in the fall semester, 1980. Sixth grade was added and the intermediate grades were converted to a middle school beginning with the fall semester of 1990.
Special programs have been developed for the middle school to provide for a balanced and sequential approach to Christian education in the Catholic tradition for all Saint Louis students.
Our Mission Statement
The Mission of Saint Louis School is to educate and challenge students of various religious, ethnic and economic backgrounds that they may achieve a quality education and become gentlemen in character, reaching individual potential through the Catholic Marianist tradition of spiritual, academic, physical and emotional maturity.Our Purpose
The outstanding characteristics one finds at Saint Louis School is the excellent quality of education for all of its students, with a varied curriculum designed to fill a wide range of educational and personal needs. Our principal concern is instilling truths and values that are carried over into students’ lives that go beyond Saint Louis.
We strive to teach and to develop a sense of family, the “Saint Louis Family” – faculty, students, parents, administrators – working together to build an awareness of individual dignity and spiritual worth.
Our Philosophy
Our curriculum is firmly rooted in the Catholic faith, welcoming and respecting other beliefs. We seek to meet the varied needs, talents and abilities of our students through academic programs of critical thinking and experienced learning designed for general, advanced and college preparatory students.