Informationsmarktverzerrung durch Fundamentalismus am Beispiel der USA

Kapitel 8: Ausblick


von Margarete Payer

mailto: payer@payer.de


Zitierweise / cite as:

Payer, Margarete <1942 - >: Informationsmarktverzerrung durch Fundamentalismus am Beispiel der USA. -- Kapitel 8: Ausblick. -- Fassung vom 2005-06-30. -- URL: http://www.payer.de/fundamentalismus/fundamentalismus08.htm

Erstmals publiziert: 2005-04-19

Überarbeitungen: 2005-06-30 [Ergänzungen]; 2005-04-21 [Ergänzungen]

Anlass: Lehrveranstaltung an der Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart, Sommersemester 2005

Copyright: Dieser Text steht der Allgemeinheit zur Verfügung. Eine Verwertung in Publikationen, die über übliche Zitate hinausgeht, bedarf der ausdrücklichen Genehmigung des Verfassers.

Creative Commons-Lizenzvertrag
Diese Inhalt ist unter einer Creative Commons-Lizenz lizenziert.

Dieser Text ist Teil der Abteilung  Länder und Kulturen von Tüpfli's Global Village Library


0. Übersicht



1. Motto


THIS IS MY BIBLE

(Alright now I want y'all to settle down now.
see this, what I got in my hand?
I'm gonna tell ya little bit about it! Listen to me.)

This is my Bible--I am what it says I am,
I have what it says I have,
I'll do what it says I'll do.
Ya'll this is my Bible,
It has given me new life,
Because it is the Word of God!

(Can ya help me sing?)

This is my Bible--(This is my Bible)
I am what it says I am, (Am what it says I am)
I have what it says I have, (Have what it says I have)
I'll do what it says I'll do. (Do what it says I'll do)
This is my Bible, --(This is my Bible)
It has given me new life,
It is (it is) the Word (the Word) of God (of God)!

(Let me tell ya about it now)

When I'm lost and gone astray,
It helps me find my way!
When I quote it I will see--
The devil has to flee!

'Cause this is my Bible----(This is my Bible)
I am what it says I am, (Am what it says I am)
Have what it says I have, (Have what it says I have)
Do what it says I'll do.(Do what it says I'll do)
This is my Bible, (Help me say) it has given me new life,
It is (it is) the Word (the Word) of God (of God)!

(When I'm lost and gone astray)
When I'm lost and gone astray,
(It helps me find my way)
It helps me find my way!
(When I quote it I will see--)
When I quote it I will see--
(The devil has to flee!)
The devil has to flee!
(Has to flee, Has to flee From me, from me, hey hey hey!)

This is my Bible!----(This is my Bible)
Am what it says I am, (Am what it says I am)
Have what it says I have, (Have what it says I have)
Do what it says I'll do! (Do what it says I'll do)
Say this is my Bible, --(This is my Bible)
(C'mon y';all, what has it done, c'mon?)
It has given me new life,
It is (it is) the Word (the Word) of God (of God)!
(Say it again!)
(It is) It is (the Word) the Word (of God) of God!
(Cause it is) It is the Word of God!
Cause it is! (It is) It is the Word of God!

Woooh ohhh ohhh!
When I'm lost and gone astray
It helps me find my way
It's God's Word
Lamp unto my feet and a light to my pathway
It's my Bible, it's God's Word!
Helps me love my brother, yeah!
Talk right, Walk right!

Text und Musik: Carman (= Licciardello, Carman Dominc) (geb. 1956)

Klicken Sie hier, um "This is .." zu hören

Quelle von Text und mp3-Datei ("free download"): http://www.carman.org/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-12


2. Ist Fundamentalismus nur Schlafmohn des Volkes?


"Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüt einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks."

Karl Marx: Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. -- Einleitung. -- 1844

Was Karl Marx mit "Opium des Volkes" meinte, drückt sich in folgendem Lied aus:

I dreamed that the great judgment morning
Had dawned, and the trumpet had blown;
I dreamed that the nations had gathered
To judgment before the white throne;
From the throne came a bright shining angel,
And he stood on the land and the sea,
And he swore with his hand raised to Heaven,
That time was no longer to be.

Refrain

And O, what a weeping and wailing,
As the lost were told of their fate;
They cried for the rocks and the mountains,
They prayed, but their prayer was too late.

The rich man was there, but his money
Had melted and vanished away;
A pauper he stood in the judgment,
His debts were too heavy to pay;
The great man was there, but his greatness,
When death came, was left far behind!
The angel that opened the records,
Not a trace of his greatness could find.

Refrain

The widow was there with the orphans,
God heard and remembered their cries;
No sorrow in Heaven forever,
God wiped all the tears from their eyes;
The gambler was there and the drunkard,
And the man that had sold them the drink,
With the people who gave him the license,
Together in hell they did sink.

Refrain

The moral man came to the judgment,
But self righteous rags would not do;
The men who had crucified Jesus
Had passed off as moral men, too;
The soul that had put off salvation,
“Not tonight; I’ll get saved by and by,
No time now to think of religion!”
At last they had found time to die.

Refrain

Text: Bert Shadduck, 1894
Melodie: Leander Lycurgus Pickett (1859-1928)

Wenn Sie hier klicken, hören Sie "I dreamed"


Abb.: Ist Fundamentalismus Schlafmohn des Volkes?
Papaver somniferum = Schlafmohn.
[Bildquelle: http://www.kulak.ac.be/facult/wet/biologie/pb/kulakbiocampus/images/buiten-kulak/lage_planten/Papaver%20somniferum%20-%20Slaapbol/. -- Zugriff am 2005-03-20]

Dem Thema der Lehrveranstaltung entsprechend wurden in diesem Skriptum die Informationsmarktverzehrungen behandelt, aber nicht weitergehende Fragen, wie die nach der eigentlichen Funktion dieser Informationsmarktverzerrung. Dient dies alles vor allem der Ablenkung on den eigentlichen Zielen der Politik, nämlich der schamlosen und unbegrenzten Bereicherung und Machtanhäufung einer reichen Elite. Ist es so wie Thomas Frank über den "Great Backlash" schreibt  in seinem sehr lesenswerten Buch:

Frank, Thomas <1965 - >: Was ist mit Kansas los? : wie die Konservativen das Herz von Amerika eroberten. -- Berlin : Berlin-Verl., 2005. --  302 S. ; 22 cm. -- Originaltitel: Whats the matter with Kansas (2004). -- ISBN: 3-8270-0608-2. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}

"Diese geistige Verwirrung ist der Great Backlash eine Art Konservativismus, der als Antwort auf die Feste und Proteste der späten sechziger Jahre mit wütendem Knurren zum ersten Mal in Erscheinung trat. Hatte der Konservativismus älteren Schlages eine nüchterne Haushaltspolitik in den Vordergrund gestellt, so bringt der Backlash heute die Wähler mit brisanten gesellschaftlichen Fragen auf Trab, ruft sie wegen allem Möglichen zu öffentlicher Empörung auf, von der Busbeförderung der Schulkinder (in andere Schulen, zwecks Herstellung eines rassischen Gleichgewichts in den Klassen) bis zu unchristlicher Kunst, und das alles verbindet er mit einer unternehmerfreundlichen Wirtschaftspolitik. Man mobilisiert den Zorn über kulturelle Fragen, um seine wirtschaftlichen Zwecke zu erreichen. Und diese wirtschaftlichen Ziele - nicht die Geplänkel des nie endenden Kulturkampfs, die man getrost vergessen kann - sind die eigentlichen Denkmäler dieser Bewegung. Der in den letzten Jahren erreichte internationale Konsens über die freie Marktwirtschaft mit allem, was an Privatisierung, Deregulierung und Zurückdrängung der Gewerkschaften dazugehört, wurde erst durch den Backlash ermöglicht. Er sorgt dafür, dass Republikaner auch dann wieder gewählt werden, wenn die Wunderwirkung ihrer freien Marktwirtschaft nicht anschlägt, wenn ihre extrem wirtschaftsliberalen Projekte die in sie gesetzten Erwartungen nicht erfüllen und ihre »New Economy« einbricht. Der Backlash ist es, der den treibenden Kräften hinter dieser Politik erlaubt, der ganzen übrigen Welt ihre Phantasien von »Globalisierung« und einem Reich des Freihandels mit solcher Selbstsicherheit aufzudrängen. Weil irgendein Künstler beschließt, die Provinzler mit einem in Urin getunkten Jesus zu schockieren, muss die ganze Welt sich ändern, wie es der Republikanischen Partei der USA gefällt.

Der Great Backlash hat zwar das Wiederaufblühen des Wirtschaftsliberalismus ermöglicht, aber das heißt nicht, dass er zu uns spricht wie die Kapitalisten von einst, die sich auf das göttliche Recht des Geldes beriefen und von den kleinen Leuten verlangten, sich ihrer untergeordneten Stellung in der Gesellschaft bewusst zu sein. Der Backlash stellt sich vielmehr als Feind der Elite dar, als Stimme der zu Unrecht Verfolgten, als berechtigter Protest derer, die die Hunde beißen. Dass seine Fürsprecher heute in allen drei Bereichen des Staates das Sagen haben, spielt überhaupt keine Rolle. Dass seine größten Nutznießer die reichsten Menschen der Erde sind, gibt ihm nicht zu denken.

Tatsächlich wird die Bedeutung der Wirtschaftspolitik von den Anführern des Backlash systematisch heruntergespielt. Die Grundprämisse dieser Bewegung lautet, dass die Kultur als Gegenstand des allgemeinen Interesses wichtiger ist als die Wirtschaft, dass es vor allem auf die Werte ankommt: Values Matter Most ist der Titel eines ihrer Bücher. Damit schart sie Bürger, die einst verlässliche Anhänger des New Deal gewesen wären, um die Fahne des Konservativismus.2 In den Wahlreden der Konservativen mögen altmodische Werte zählen, doch sobald sie im Amt sind, interessiert sie nur noch eines: ein altmodisches Wirtschaftssystem niedriger Löhne und laxer Vorschriften. Sie haben in den letzten dreißig Jahren den Wohlfahrtsstaat zerschlagen, die Steuerlast für Unternehmen und Reiche verringert und insgesamt alles dafür getan, dass die USA bei der Vermögensverteilung in Verhältnisse des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts zurückgefallen sind. Das ist der Hauptwiderspruch des Backlash: es ist eine Bewegung der arbeitenden Menschen, die den arbeitenden Menschen unermesslichen Schaden zugefügt hat.

Die Anführer des Backlash mögen christliche Worte im Munde führen, aber in der Realität dienen sie vor allem den Unternehmen. Den Wählern mag es vor allem um die Werte gehen, aber wenn die Wahl gewonnen ist, müssen sie jedes Mal hinter die Interessen des Geldes zurücktreten. Das ist ein grundlegendes, über die Jahrzehnte immer wiederkehrendes Kennzeichen der Bewegung. Mit der Abtreibung wird nicht Schluss gemacht. Die Bevorzugung von Minderheiten wird nicht abgeschafft. Die Kulturindustrie wird nicht gezwungen, für saubere Verhältnisse zu sorgen. Selbst der größte aller Kulturkämpfer war ein notorischer Drückeberger, als es galt, seine Wahlkampfversprechen zu halten. »Reagan machte sich zum Vorkämpfer der traditionellen Wertes aber nichts spricht dafür, dass er ihrer Wiederherstellung besondere Bedeutung beimaß«, schreibt Christopher Lasch, einer der scharfsinnigsten Beobachter der Backlash-Mentalität. »Wirklich wichtig war ihm die Wiederherstellung des unregulierten Kapitalismus der zwanziger Jahre: die Widerrufung des New Deal.«"

(a.a.O. S. 10 - 12)

Verurteilt der Prämillenarismus zu politischer und sozialer Untätigkeit?

"Sociology, or social service as generally emphasized is, in its final outworking, a black winged angel of the pit. . . . Satan would have a reformed world, a beautiful world, a moral world, a world of great achievements. . .. He would have a universal brotherhood of man; he would eliminate by scientific method every human ill, and expel by human effort every unkindness; he would make all men good by law, education and social uplift; he would have a world without war.. . . But a premillennialist cannot cooperate with the plans of modern social service for these contemplate many years with gradual improvement through education as its main avenue for cooperation, rather than the second coming of Christ."

[Eli Reece. -- Zitiert in: Weber, Timothy P.: On the road to Armageddon : how evangelicals became Israel's best friend. -- Grand Rapids, Mich. : Baker Academic, ©2004. -- 336 S. ; 24 cm.  -- ISBN: 080102577X. -- S. 56. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

Dem entgegen stehen aber Aussagen wie Folgende:

"It is said that we carry our heads so high in the air, that we are so absorbed in our heavenly citizenship as to have no interest in the citizenship of earth. But this is not so. We love God, but we love our brother also; and while we believe that the highest expression of love to our brother is to seek the salvation of his soul, yet we would not keep back from him the good, if he will not have the best. We will preach the gospel first, last, and all the time, but we will work and vote against the saloon, and urge others to do the same, on every opportunity."

[James Martin Gray (1851-1935), 1914. -- Zitiert in: Weber, Timothy P.: On the road to Armageddon : how evangelicals became Israel's best friend. -- Grand Rapids, Mich. : Baker Academic, ©2004. -- 336 S. ; 24 cm.  -- ISBN: 080102577X. -- S. 57. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


3. Oder ist die christliche Rechte nur ein Papiertiger?



Abb.: Ist das die "Christian Right"? (Bild: MS)

Eine der witzigsten Verteidigerinnen der amerikanischen Reaktionäre ist Ann Coulter. Sie behauptet, "christliche Rechte" sei ein von den Liberalen erfundener mythischer Feind, ein Papiertiger.


Abb.: Ann Coulter
[Bildquelle: http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/photo.cgi?image=silver-dress.jpg. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-15]

Webpräsenz von Ann Coulter: http://www.anncoulter.com/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-15 

Zunächst als Hintergrund Informationen zu Ann Coulter:

Ann Coulter (born 8 December 1961, according to the New Canaan voter registration office, in New Canaan, Connecticut; born December 1963 according to her D.C. driver's license issued many years later) is a conservative American author and commentator. Her books include High Crimes and Misdemeanors, How to Talk to a Liberal, Slander, and Treason. All of Coulter's books have been on the New York Times bestseller list. Coulter is also a legal correspondent for the magazine Human Events, and writes a syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate, which is carried by several influential conservative websites such as Frontpagemag.com.

Coulter has made frequent guest appearances on national television and syndicated radio programs. She has appeared on shows such as Hannity and Colmes, The O'Reilly Factor, American Morning With Paula Zahn, Crossfire, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Scarborough Country, The Today Show, Real Time with Bill Maher and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She also spoke in the movie FahrenHYPE 9/11, a conservative response to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

Personal background

Coulter was born into a family that she has described as "upper middle class". She claims to have developed both her conservative opinions and her acerbic rhetorical style growing up in Connecticut. Her father was a lawyer, known for his legal work in cases against labor unions. Coulter followed him into the legal profession.

As an undergraduate in Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences, Coulter helped to launch a conservative newspaper, The Cornell Review, with funding provided by Richard Mellon Scaife's Collegiate Network. She graduated with honors from Cornell in 1984, and went on to receive her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an editor of The Michigan Law Review. At Michigan, Coulter founded a local chapter of the Federalist Society. She also received training at the National Journalism Center. After practicing corporate law for four years, she became a congressional aide in Washington, D. C. in 1994, working as a staffer to Republican Senator Spencer Abraham, who served on the Senate Judiciary Committee before working for a public interest law firm.

In 1996, MSNBC hired Coulter as a legal correspondent and political pundit, which launched her media career. Though she was allowed to make many partisan and controversial comments as a panelist, she was fired in 1997 after an exchange with Bobby Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, in which she said "No wonder you guys lost." (MSNBC's NewsChat, October 11, 1997)

Coulter, when asked if she is a fundamentalist Christian, told interviewer David Bowman, "I don't think I've described myself that way, but only because I'm from Connecticut. We just won't call ourselves that." Though she seldom argues from a religious point of view, Coulter has stated that she admires Jerry Falwell, and opposes Pat Robertson (Slander, ch. 9). She is a strong supporter of Phyllis Schlafly, and, like her, opposes the Equal Rights Amendment.

Books

Coulter gained much of her recent prominence with two books. The first, Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, addresses what Coulter considers to be media bias in the United States. The book claims that many American journalists have past or present ties to the Democratic Party, which influences their reporting. Coulter argues that George W. Bush has faced a difficult and unfair battle for positive coverage in the media ever since he decided to run for president, and that a similar battle for fair coverage has been waged by practically every Republican presidential candidate since Calvin Coolidge. In effect, she asserts, news coverage is unkind to Republicans.

Her follow-up book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, claimed that Democratic politicians and the media have severely undermined much of America's foreign policy goals since the end of World War II, and that this is tantamount to conspiracy and treason. Summarizing recent history, she accuses Democratic presidents, including John F. Kennedy and Harry Truman, of having sometimes worked against the war against Communism and the Soviet Union, and charges Democratic members of Congress with similarly undermining the efforts of Republican presidents. In the final chapters, she argues that a similar process is undermining the present War on Terror.

Paula Jones controversy

Coulter debuted as a figure on the public scene during her days as a lawyer by helping Paula Jones sue President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. According to the website Coulterwatch, Coulter told writer Michael Isikoff "We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the president", even though that had been Jones' express intention since the beginning of the suit ("Oh, Paula"; par. 5, 2). The website also stated Coulter wrote in the Hartford Courant in 1999 that she leaked the details of Jones's testimony to the press in order to prevent Clinton from avoiding publicity by settling ("Oh, Paula"; par. 5). This does not necessarily mean, however, that Coulter actually acted contrary to Jones' best interests and/or wishes, which would constitute legal malpractice.

When the case did get to court, after Coulter had broken with Jones, it was summarily dismissed because Jones could not show that she had actually suffered any damages, even if her allegations proved true. Jones did eventually gain a settlement from Clinton in exchange for not appealing the decision, although at $850,000 it was only one-third of the amount she had been asking for and all but $151,000 went to pay her now-considerable legal expenses. However, the Jones case eventually led to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and to the movement lobbying for Clinton's impeachment, as Coulter had wished. She appeared on MSNBC as a commentator on the case (doing so before her legal involvement with Jones), and went on to write a critical exposé of Clinton, boasting on Rivera Live that she "got a bestseller out of it" (High Crimes and Misdemeanors), and telling Hannity & Colmes, "The reason we were doing it for Paula – well, was for Paula. She had been defamed and I think we can say we got her reputation back." (Coulter, 1999)

Jones, who had purchased a house and divorced her husband during the case, then posed for Penthouse, stating that she wished to use the money to fund her two grade-school-aged children's college education. Coulter publicly denounced her as "trailer-park trash", saying "I totally believed she was the good Christian girl she made herself out to be. Now it turns out she's a fraud, at least to the extent of pretending to be an honorable and moral person." (Coulter, 2000) Jones defended herself by saying, "I haven't been offered a book deal like everybody else in this huge thing has done. Ann Coulter's done books. I haven't seen her call me up and say: 'Paula, would you like for me to help you write a book, a really nice, decent book?' I haven't had any help from anybody whatsoever."

Coulter's communication style

Coulter gained prominence in the field of conservative commentators with her brand of outspoken criticism of many liberal and Democratic Party figures and policies over the past half-century. She quickly became known for being a controversial and colorful speaker, and indeed has relished this role (Coulter, August 2002). As she told The Sunday Times in 2002, "I am a polemicist. I am perfectly frank about that. I like to stir up the pot. I don't pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do."

Columnist and blogger Andrew Sullivan has created a parody Michelle Malkin Award for writing which he considers to be cliché-ridden, insulting, and in concordance with the reader's beliefs. Sullivan has declared that "Ann Coulter cannot be considered" for the award on the grounds that "No one else would stand a chance."

Relations with media outlets

When the editors of the National Review Online, the website of a well-known conservative magazine that carried Coulter's syndicated column, and of which she was the contributing editor, said they would like to discuss making changes to a piece written in 2001 directly after the September 11 attacks in which her friend Barbara Olsen had been killed (Coulter, July 2002), she went on the national television show Politically Incorrect and accused them of censorship, claiming her pay was only five dollars per article. National Review Online then dropped her column and terminated her editorship (Goldberg, 2001).

Coulter was contracted by USA Today to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention, but was replaced by Jonah Goldberg after a "disagreement over editing" (Memmot, 2004). The article began "Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston", and referred to an indefinite number of female attendees as "corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons". The newspaper did not print the article, but Coulter published it on her website.

Controversy regarding Coulter's accuracy

Coulter is frequently accused of being overly biased when reporting facts, and of twisting them to support her case. Even when she has taken pains to defuse these attacks by documenting her sources, as with the 780 footnotes provided in her book Slander, the criticisms have not abated. A large number of webpages have sprung up that take her Slander footnotes to task, prompting her supporters to launch equally vigorous campaigns in her defense amidst calls of unfairly partisan nitpicking.

Her opponents have also attacked Coulter for what they consider to be her unreliability in live interviews, alleging in particular that she frequently misstates facts rather than admitting error or unfamiliarity with the topic being discussed. Although many of these criticisms have been dismissed by Coulter and her defenders, a few have become staples among her critics.

Democrats richer than Republicans

In Slander, Coulter expounds the view that liberals are out of touch with America and "have absolutely no contact with the society they decry from their Park Avenue redoubts".

In an August 2002 Newsday article, she argued that the media are biased to the left because Republicans don't have the wealth to start media outlets, while Democrats do. That Republicans are rich, she said, "is one of the stunning lies that Democrats have been able to palm off... Liberals really are the idle rich."

Her critics, including Joe Conason, the author of Big Lies, accuse Coulter of double standards, arguing that she is a highly-educated, affluent woman with a high-profile media presence who does not similarly accuse herself, or other privileged Republicans, of being out of touch.

Canada and the Vietnam War

In January 2005, Coulter gave an interview to CBC's The Fifth Estate) in which she argued that Canada's non-participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq demonstrated that Canada's "loyal friendship" with the United States was weaker than in the past. She attempted to contrast the situation with the Vietnam War, stating:

"Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"

The interviewer Bob McKeown countered, "No, actually, Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam." Coulter and McKeown then contradicted each other repeatedly before Coulter finally concluded, "Well, I'll get back to you on that."

Later in the show, McKeown stated that Coulter never did get back in touch with The Fifth Estate, and reiterated the filmmakers' position that Canada had not sent troops to Vietnam.

Canada remained officially neutral for the duration of the War, and no troops were sent to fight under the Canadian flag. In a subsequent interview on C-SPAN, Coulter admitted that she had erred, but also stated that thousands of Canadian-born Americans had gone to battle:

"Yes, 10,000 Canadian troops, at least. [...] The Canadian Government didn't send troops [ ... ] [ but ] they came and fought with the Americans. So I was wrong. It turns out there were 10,000 Americans who happened to be born in Canada."

Later in the interview, when asked about the taping of the CBC show, she added:

"I talked to him Bob McKeown for three hours and the topic was not Canada's war history. It was an incidental point that he challenged me on and I didn't believe him because I had read about Canadian troops in Vietnam. I was right. People keep saying 'well, he didn't tell you that they - 10,000 troops - ran across to sign up with the Americans' because I don't think he knew."
Quotations

The following quotes are examples of Coulter's flamboyant and polemical style, for which she is well-known. They cover a wide variety of topics, but each demonstrates Coulter's unwillingness to compromise her strong views for political correctness or media palatability. Many view these quotes as examples of a tongue-in-cheek use of hyperbole or satire, while others take them more seriously. Coulter herself once stated, "Liberals love to pretend they don't understand hyperbole." However, she has also stated, "I believe everything I say."

On the 9/11 attacks
  • Two days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, her syndicated column included discussion of her close friend Barbara K. Olson, who was killed on American Airlines Flight 77 when terrorists crashed it into the Pentagon. She closed by saying: "We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war." - National Review "We should invade their countries." 
  • A week later, she detailed a five-point plan guided by an "all-new standard for airline safety procedures:...procedures that [actually] make the airplane safer" of which point 3 proposed requiring "passports to fly domestically". "Passports can be forged", she continued, "but they can also be checked with the home country in case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males". Point 4 observed, "All 19 hijackers in last week's attack appear to have been aliens.... [Legally,] Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave."
On law and order
  • "I have to say I'm all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the 'hood to be flogged publicly." - MSNBC March 22, 1997.
  • "I think we had enough laws about the turn-of-the-century. We don't need any more." Asked how far back in time would she go to repeal laws, she replied, "Well, before the New Deal....[After someone suggests the time when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued] That would be a good start." - Politically Incorrect May 7, 1997.
  • "If those kids had been carrying guns they would have gunned down this one [teenage] gunman [who opened fire on a prayer meeting, killing three]." [Presumably she was asked what she would tell those who pray in school] "Don't pray. Learn to use guns." - Politically Incorrect, December 18, 1997.
  • "The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail." - Fox News, Hannity & Colmes August 24, 2001.
On the environment
  • "The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view." - from her column "Oil Good; Democrats bad"  October 12, 2000
On public "safety nets"
  • "Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal." - WorldNetDaily, December 2, 2003.
On liberalism
  • "When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." - at the Conservative Political Action Conference February 26, 2002.
  • "Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now." - (from Slander, pp. 5-6; published June 2002).
On the media
  • "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building." - in a New York Observer interview August 26, 2002.
  • "Of course I regret [the previous quote]. I should have added 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and the reporters.'" - in a rightwingnews.com interview June 26, 2003.
  • "The only standard journalists respect is: Will this story promote the left-wing agenda?" How to Talk to a Liberal, 2004.
On women
  • "It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted." -  May 17, 2003.
  • "I think [women] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote ... women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it ... it's always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care." - Politically Incorrect, February 26, 2001.
  • "Women like Pamela Harriman and Patricia Duff are basically Anna Nicole Smith from the waist down. Let's just call it for what it is. They're whores." - Salon.com November 16, 2000
  • "Like the Democrats, Playboy just wants to liberate women to behave like pigs, have sex without consequences, prance about naked, and abort children." - How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), 2004
  • "How many people have to die before the country stops humoring feminists? Last week, a defendant in a rape case, Brian Nichols, wrested a gun from a female deputy in an Atlanta courthouse and went on a murderous rampage. Liberals have proffered every possible explanation for this breakdown in security except the giant elephant in the room -- who undoubtedly has an eating disorder and would appreciate a little support vis-a-vis her negative body image." - "Freeze! I Just Had my Nails Done!" WorldNetDaily March 16, 2005.
On government
  • "I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote." Fox News, Hannity & Colmes, August 17, 1997.
  • "My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism." - MSNBC February 8, 1997.
On religion
  • "The Episcopals (sic) don't demand much in the way of actual religious belief. They have girl priests, gay priests, gay bishops, gay marriages -- it's much like The New York Times editorial board. They acknowledge the Ten Commandments -- or "Moses' talking points" -- but hasten to add that they're not exactly "carved in stone." - from column "The Jesus Thing"  January 7, 2004.
  • "Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed')". - from her column (at townhall.com) March 4, 2004.
  • "The Times was rushing to assure its readers that 'prominent Islamic scholars and theologians in the West say unequivocally that nothing in Islam countenances the Sept. 11 actions.' (That's if you set aside Muhammad's many specific instructions to kill nonbelievers whenever possible)" - How to Talk to a Liberal, 2004.

Weitere Zitate: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ann_Coulter. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-15

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Coulter. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-15]

Nun in Ausschnitt aus dem Kapitel "Shadowboxing : the apocryphal religious right" im Buch:


Abb.: Einbandtitel

Coulter, Ann H. <1961 - >:Slander : liberal lies about the American right / Ann Coulter ; [with a new foreword by Rush Limbaugh].  -- 1st pbk. ed. -- New York : Three Rivers Press , ©2002.  -- xviii, 327 p. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN 1400049520. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}

"Like all propagandists, liberals create mythical enemies to justify their own viciousness and advance their agenda. There is no bogeyman that strikes greater terror in the left than the apocryphal "religious right." The very phrase is a meaningless concept, an inverted construct of the left's own Marquis de Sade lifestyle. It functions as a talismanic utterance to rally the faithful against anyone who disagrees with the well-organized conspiratorial left.

Despite the constant threat of the "religious right" in America, there is evidently no such thing as the "atheist left." In a typical year, the New York Times refers to either "Christian conservatives" or the "religious right" almost two hundred times. But in a LexisNexis search of the entire New York Times archives, the phrases "atheist liberals" or "the atheist left" do not appear once. Only deviations from the left-wing norm merit labels.

The point of the phrase "religious right" or "Christian conservative" is not to define but to belittle. It informs the reader that the object of the sobriquet is presumptively insane by saying he is a member of it. The "religious right" serves the function of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's 1984: "The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching."

Though neither "religious" nor "right" nor even "religious right" are inherently insulting terms, they are thrown out as if they are accusations. The media is repelled by the people it believes these terms describe. Just as some people once spat out the word "Jew" as an insult (causing polite people to start using convoluted euphemisms like "person of the Hebrew faith"), "religious right" has become a slur by usage. In one of the most astonishing uses of "religious right" to mean "lunatic," the New York Times explained that after September 11, 2001, leaders in Saudi Arabia were hesitant to crack down on militant clerics for fear that it "would have inflamed the religious right." In addition to jihad, do crazed homicidal Muslims support the devolution of power to the states ?

Presumably demonstrating the sort of warm ecumenical tolerance the religious right would do well to emulate, California Congressman Vic Fazio calls Christian conservatives the "fire-breathing Christian radical right." President Clinton's kindly Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders referred to citizens opposed to her condom distribution project as "the un-Christian religious right, selling out our children in the name of religion." Discussing the movie Cbocolat, set in prewar France, the Reverend Jesse Jackson claimed it was a parable about the religious right: "You can just see the religious right narrowly defining the rights of others."

If you threw a glass of cold water on a liberal in the middle of a sound sleep, he'd jerk awake denouncing the religious right.

During the 2000 election, the New York Times praised John McCain for attacking the religious right, saying his message was "badly needed" and "cannot be dismissed." Though the editorial did gently chastise McCain for having "withdrawn an earlier characterization of them as 'evil,' " it went on to denounce the religious right for exercising a "bullying influence" on politics. Unlike the calm persuasion on display daily at the Times, the religious right was eroding "the spirit of tolerance."

It is a thesis of long standing at the New York Times that the "religious right" is tyrannical because it has opinions at odds with the editorial page of the Times. In 1996, Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal denounced the religious right delegates (the "religious right" is now a state) for supporting Bob Dole at the Republican National Convention—provided they "control what he and the party do and say and where the party is going. That is agenda number one." Apparently other delegates were eagerly hoping to have their issues buried or forgotten by the party.

On a 1994 radio program titled "Christian Conservatives Defend Their Politics" (try to imagine a program called "Liberal Jews Defend Their Politics") National Public Radio host Bob Edwards raised the issue of the religious right's vast influence over the Republican party, saying "Christian conservatives showed their strength" by helping nominate a Republican gubernatorial candidate whose "platform is almost identical to the agenda of the Christian Coalition."

Of course, another explanation for the similar "agendas" is that "Christian conservatives" have fairly conventional Republican views. The media might as well refer to anyone who favors lower marginal tax rates as the "Tax Nuts" and darkly warn of the growing influence of Tax Nuts on the Republican Party. News items would begin noting sinisterly that the Republican Party platform on taxes mirrors the agenda of the Tax Nuts. Gradually, some Republicans would gingerly state their support for a reduction in the marginal gains tax rate while loudly proclaiming that they hold the Tax Nuts in contempt and denouncing the undue influence of the Tax Nuts on the Republican Party. Reductions in the base points for calculating the capital gains tax would take on sinister connotations by virtue of association with the Tax Nuts.

Implicitly—sometimes quite explicitly—the devil-words "religious right" connote irrationality, inflexibility, simpleminded-ness, and judgmentalism. In 1993, the Washington Post informed its readers that the religious right—or the "Gospel lobby"—is composed of people who are "largely poor, uneducated and easy to command." A correction the next day admitted there was "no factual basis for that statement." Attempting its own definition of the religious right, the New York Times reported in 1986, "Evangelical Christians are more easily led than other kinds of voters." The Times cited a college professor as its authority.

Without the pretend-accuracy, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Arthur Hoppe described the religious right as a woman named Maude who wants "to slog through the snow down to the Grange to pray for Pat Buchanan." Unlike Maude, Hoppe explained, left-wing sophisticates are "far too busy sampling restaurants, discussing films, or discovering the inner epicurean." This sneering account of "Maude" was intended to explain how such a comically ridiculous bunch as the "religious right" kept winning at the polls. "Maude"—imaginary Maude—has nothing else to do, Hoppe explained: "Maude doesn't jog, cruise the Internet, read Danielle Steel, play golf or otherwise waste her time." (Or apparently "sample" restaurants.)

Revealingly, Hoppe added, "These folks certainly have a right to their beliefs." Gee, thanks. Free speech is always a wildly counterintuitive concept for liberals. They believe free speech is something liberals magnanimously bestow on others. No matter how loathed Dan Rather is on the right, it would never occur to any conservative to proclaim that Rather, personally, on his own time, has a "right to his beliefs." Having generously conceded that religious conservatives have a "right to their beliefs," Hoppe immediately demanded to know "What can be done to save the country from this dedicated minority?"

A guest on National Public Radio described the religious right as "a very, very vocal minority with a lot of money that's doing most of the unconstitutional stuff out there." This was in contradistinction to the majority "who really don't want to bother with how I believe and really don't want to bother with forcing anybody to do anything that's against their will."

So the religious right is a "very, very small minority" whose goal is to force people to do things "against their will," populated by an army of "easily led" corn pones. They are "fire-breathing," sell out "our children in the name of religion," and enjoy "narrowly defining the rights of others." Also "evil."

It's hard to imagine that such an intolerant bunch would have much leverage no matter how "vocal" they are. But according to the frequent "religious right" updates in the press, this revolting minority possesses a staggering amount of influence—all the while operating under the watchful eye of a hostile media. So powerful is the left's imaginary enemy, that Norman Lear, a multimillionaire TV producer, was said to have "walked away from his prime-time kingdom" to found People for the American Way for the sole purpose of "combat[ing] the political influence of the religious right." (Imagine the Sturm and Drang if a conservative group purported to represent "the American Way.")

Referring to the "powerful influence" of the religious right, the Los Angeles Times has estimated its strength at "a third or more of the primary vote in many states." The Economist magazine put it at about a fifth. In 1998 Fortune magazine called the Christian Coalition alone the seventh most powerful lobbying group in Washington.

None of the figures about the religious right ever add up. The facts marshaled to demonstrate that this scary group is bent on total domination of America instantly collapse under the most cursory examination. And the members of the scheming religious right cannot be identified beyond the description of a fictitious character named Maude.

Eventually, the New York Times set its logicians to cracking how a small minority intent on forcing people to do things against their will could wield such vast power. The key to the disproportionate influence of the religious right—despite its universal unpopularity at the Times—was (1) money, and (2) a predilection to engage in bloc voting. These Christians, according to the Times, were using "bloc voting and substantial financial resources to single out politicians in both parties who do not share their religion-based views." (Is that "Maude" with the deep pockets?) This set them apart from other Americans who tirelessly promote politicians who disagree with them.

For twenty years, evangelical Christians had been portrayed as toothless hicks preaching for a nickel in the Ozarks. Then— seamlessly, without remark on the shift in the Orwellian propaganda—they were transformed into Howard Hughes money men, expertly manipulating the system. Overnight, the Beverly Hillbillies became the Boys from Brazil. In fact, there is no possible method of calculating political contributions that supports the Times's thesis about the "substantial financial resources" of Christian conservatives."

[...]

"Liberals hate religion because politics is a religion substitute for liberals and they can't stand the competition. There's a reason the left's rhetoric bears such a striking resemblance to some of the nuttier religions: Abhorring real religions, liberals refuse to condemn what societies have condemned for thousands of years—e.g., promiscuity, divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality. Consequently, the normal human instinct to condemn something bubbles up against a legion of quite modern vices, such as smoking, fur, red meat, excessive consumption, and land development.

Loathing of the religious right becomes an end in itself, a consuming passion. Liberals denounce Christian conservatives for being moralistic, for imposing their morality on others, for not separating morality from politics, and for bringing religious zeal to public life—and then work themselves into a frothing frenzy of righteous, moralistic zeal over their own moral excellence for being so rational, calm, and detached. One is reminded of the sadistic moralists from Dickens novels, who latch on to the idea that whipping is good for the child, so they can beat the hell out of him and feel good about themselves while doing it."

[Quelle: Coulter, Ann H. <1961 - >:Slander : liberal lies about the American right / Ann Coulter ; [with a new foreword by Rush Limbaugh].  -- 1st pbk. ed. -- New York : Three Rivers Press , ©2002.  -- xviii, 327 p. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN 1400049520. -- S. 211-216, 247{Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


4. Oder führt der Marsch durch die Institutionen zu einer Theokratie?



Abb.: America is not a theocracy
[Bildquelle: http://www.nickbarlow.com/pics/events/godless/theocracy.JPG. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-089

"Theokratie (griech.), »Gottesherrschaft«, Staatswesen, bei dem die Gottheit selbst als oberster Regent gedacht ist (s. Staat); zunächst eine dem Josephus (»Gegen Apion«, 2,16) entlehnte Bezeichnung des Mosaismus, sofern hier der im Gesetz und durch den Mund der Richter, Priester und Propheten sich kundgebende Wille Gottes die oberste Norm für das Gemeinwesen war. Ähnliche Vorstellungen sind übrigens dem antiken Staatswesen überhaupt eigentümlich, und ihre großartigste Verwirklichung fand die Idee eines »Gottesstaates« in der mittelalterlichen Kirche."

[Quelle: Meyers großes Konversations-Lexikon. -- DVD-ROM-Ausg. Faksimile und Volltext der 6. Aufl. 1905-1909. -- Berlin : Directmedia Publ. --2003. -- 1 DVD-ROM. -- (Digitale Bibliothek ; 100). -- ISBN 3-89853-200-3. -- s.v.]


Abb.: Homeland Theocracy / Cartoon by Kevin Moore. -- 2004
[Bildquelle: http://www.incontemptcomics.com/toonarchives.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-08]

Hat TheocracyWatch mit seinen Befürchtungen Recht:

"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy." U.S. Representative Christopher Shays, R-CT, (New York Times, March 23, 2005)

Theocracy is derived from the two Greek words Qeo/j(Theos) meaning "God" and kra/tein (cratein) meaning "to rule." Theocracy is the civil rule of God, or the belief in government by divine guidance.

The powerful Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, Tom DeLay (R-TX) embodies government by divine guidance:

He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for a biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am. He is training me.

Tom DeLay represents an ultraconservative religious movement seeking to impose a narrow theological agenda on secular society. Chip Berlet and Margaret Quigley, senior analysts at Political Research Associates, have named this movement the theocratic right:
The predominantly Christian leadership envisions a religiously-based authoritarian society; therefore we prefer to describe this movement as the "theocratic right."

Television preacher Pat Robertson sent out a memo to his political organization in 1986 calling on his followers to "Rule the world for God." That call to arms sums up the goals of the theocratic right, and explains their Congressional leadership which suspends the basic rules of Democracy: all that matters is winning, because it is for God. The ends justify the means.

This web site explores the narrow theological agenda that the theocratic right is imposing on secular society. Twenty-five years ago it targeted the Republican Party as the vehicle through which it could advance its agenda. Today it has extraordinary power in the U.S. government, with two branches solidly in its pocket and the third, the judiciary, just a couple of retirements away. It is also making great strides in schools, in the media, and in State Legislatures.

This movement values guns and the death penalty. It values the rich at the expense of the poor. It favors corporations at the expense of individuals. It seeks to eliminate virtually all regulations that protect the environment, worker safety, and public health.

It opposes international treaties and the United Nations. In his book The New World Order, Pat Robertson accused Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and the first President George Bush of being agents for Satan because they supported international groups of nations such as the United Nations.

In an effort to fulfill the dominionist belief in the manifest destiny of "Christian" nations, the theocratic right values an aggressive foreign policy. And It claims that the principle of separation of church and state is "a myth."

It is possessed of absolute moral righteousness. It tolerates no dissent.

The theocratic right is not a conservative movement. It is striving to radically change the status quo. From a training manual of the theocratic right:

We will not try to reform the existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them. "

[Quelle: http://www.theocracywatch.org/. -- Zugrif am 2005-04-08]

Intellektueller Hauptvertreter einer theokratischen (theonomen) USA war Rousas John Rushdoony (1916 - 2001)

"Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) was the major intellectual figure of the Christian Reconstructionist theology in the United States. He was the founder, in 1965, of the Chalcedon Foundation, and the editor of its monthly magazine, the Chalcedon Report.

Rushdoony was born the son of recently arrived Armenian immigrants in New York. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and the Pacific School of Religion.

Intellectual Career

Rushdoony's first focus was on behalf of homeschooling, which he saw as a way to combat the secular nature of the U.S. public school system, and he vigorously attacked the liberal philosophers who had influenced the development of said education system, such as Horace Mann and John Dewey. He also stressed that Christianity had always been present in U.S. history; and while he supported separation of church and state at the national level, he claimed that the First Amendment was designed to protect the already existing "state churches" in each of the colonies—thus, the amendment had not been designed to wholly secularise society, as it had been used to do.

His first book, in 1959, was an analysis of the philosophy of Christian Apologist, Cornelius Van Til entitled, By What Standard? He also wrote several book reviews that were published in the Westminster Theological Journal, and many other books applying the Van Tillian Presuppositional philosophy to critiquing various aspects of secular humanism.

Perhaps his most famous work, however, was The Institutes of Biblical Law. With a title modelled after Calvin's The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Rushdoony's Institutes were arguably his most influential work. In it he proposed that biblical law should be applied to modern society—to wit, that there should be a theocracy; and discussed how to go about doing this. He also proposed great freedom in the economic realm of public life, following in this the ideas of Ludwig von Mises and calling himself a Christian libertarian."

[Quelle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rousas_John_Rushdoony. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-08]


Abb.: R.J. Rushdoony

"Rousas John Rushdoony, born in 1916, the son of Armenian immigrants, was ordained as a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and distinguished himself as a missionary on the American Indian reservations. One of his early books, The Messianic Character of American Education, was a major influence in the fledgling home school movement in California. During the 1960s, Rushdoony was called upon in court cases as an expert historian on home schooling as a legitmate alternative to public education. Rushdoony was primarily influenced by the teachings of Cornelius Van Til's Presuppositional Apologetics and began to work to restore the historic Christian doctrines of Postmillennialism and Christian Dominion in the church. Not until 1973 with the publication of R. J. Rushdoony's The Institutes of Biblical Law was there an attempt at a Biblical social philosophy that uncompromisingly affirmed the validity of biblical law. Since then over 100 volumes have been published elaborating the details of Calvinistic social philosophy from a "theonomic" perspective. Led by Rushdoony, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, James Jordan, and Gary Demar, theonomic authors have expounded the Mosaic law with a fullness of application to modern society never before seen in Church history.

Question:-- Can we really legislate the biblical standards of morality on non-Christians? The non-Christian doesn't even believe in the Bible, so how can we even talk about building a society based on the Law of God?

One of the things most people don't understand about Christian Reconstruction is that first it is nothing new. It has been the historic position of the Christian church over the centuries. In Western Europe and the America it has receded in the past century or two, but it has been the Christian way of life. Then what we have to understand is that in our time, we've had a totally false picture of reality -- a top-down view of whatever faith it is that people hold -- that we have to capture the upper echelons of society, or the machinery of the state, and impose something on the people.

We have never had a more top-down culture than for about 1500 years, than since Rome fell. Rome fell because it confused simplicity with efficiency. They simplified the state and centralized more and more as if that were the answer. The more they centralized, the more they destroyed the fabric of society. We are following the Roman pattern. We are centralizing as though that were the answer and we are destroying the pattern of society.

Now as Christians we believe that the basic starting point is the regeneration of man. Then man takes and applies that faith. For Christians the basic government is the self-government of the Christian man. Then the basic governmental unit is the family. This means that every father and mother will be more important in the sight of God than heads of state, because He controls children, property and the future. Then the third is the church as the government, fourth the school as a government, fifth your job governs you, then sixth society governs you with its ideas, beliefs and standards, and seventh, one among many forms of government, is the civil government.

Today, we are implicitly totalitarian. We speak of the state as the government. That's totalitarian. So we have to rid ourselves of such things. The Christian theonomic society will only come about as each man governs himself under God and governs his particular sphere. And only so will we take back government from the state and put it in the hands of Christians.

Question:-- Was the New Testament Church really a "New Testament" Church as we think of it today? In what ways was their situation different from ours?

The New Testament: Consider what Paul was doing: offerings to alleviate the poverty of the saints during the famine in Palestine; counseling that the needy be cared for, but "He who will not work, let him not eat." We do know that anyone who became unemployed was given three days income. After that they found work for him. Another Christian would hire him, but at lower than his normal pay so there would be no incentive to stay under that diaconal care. We know from 1 Corinthians 6 [paraphrase] that Paul said: "Don't go to the civil courts. They're ungodly. Create your own courts." And they did. They were so efficient that after a while pagans were coming to the church courts and saying: "Adjudicate our problems for us. It takes years to get a case heard in the civil courts and it bankrupts us and then we don't get justice. Would you do it for us?" When Constantine became Emperor, he called in the bishops and he said, "The courts of the Empire are failing. We have cases that have been in the courts forty years with no justice. I want you men when you go out in the streets to wear the garb of a Roman magistrate by my orders so that the people of Rome and of the Empire will no that they can come to you for justice. Well, that's where the bishop's garb comes from. Unless a bishop has heard me lecture on the subject, he doesn't know where his own bishop's robe originates.

Then the deacons took care of the sick, the poor, the orphans and the widows, of needy people in general, of captives, because as the Roman Empire began to breakdown, pirates and lawless bands would take men for ransom, hold men captive. One bishop in the early church ransomed 15,000 captives. When Rome fell, for six centuries, the only courts of Europe were the church courts for arbitration. When Rome was gone, the government, the state was gone, but Europe had justice because the church provided it. This was the pattern through much of the Middle Ages. It was the pattern of the Reformation. I have written of Calvin and Geneva and of the work of the diaconate. There were two offerings taken every Sunday: one for the work of the deacons so that all of the needy were cared for so that apart from crime, the church through these diaconal courts and through various independent Christian agencies provided for the basic government of the community.

Question:-- How did Christian philosophy influence our form of civil government?

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD declared that Jesus Christ was "very God of very God and very man of very man, truly man and truly God, two natures without confusion but in perfect union." Now what this did was to block the possibility of any other incarnation of God. The most common such incarnation was in the state. The state either through its office or through its ruler or through a particular line was held to be divine, god walking on earth. So that the Prime Minister, like Joseph in Egypt, was a high priest. That's why he married priest's daughter. He could not be the Prime Minister and the high priest of Egypt without that marriage. With the Council of Chalcedon the church made clear that there could be no confusion. Jesus Christ is the unique Incarnation. Since then, we've had Hegel tell us that the state is God walking on earth. And whether you are a member of one of the parties on the left or right, you are Hegelian. Republicans and Democrats each in their own way are Hegelian.

Then the Church has seen itself in ancient pagan terms as a continuation of the Incarnation. Protestants reject that doctrine, but it's creeping into Protestantism on other grounds. The Church is the Body of Christ and therefore somehow the Church is God's voice on earth. But the Body of Christ refers to the humanity of Christ. The regenerate of Christ are the new humanity of the new Adam, the last Adam, Jesus Christ. We were born in the old humanity of Adam; we are reborn in the new humanity of Jesus Christ. The Church as the Body of Christ is not divine. It represents the new humanity, the Body of the last Adam, Jesus Christ, not His deity.

Question:-- But wouldn't a Christian Republic run according to God's Law become oppressive to non-Christians?

Law is the will of the sovereign for his subjects. Thus Law represents the word of the God of the society. Now whose Law you have, He is your God. So if Washington makes our laws, Washington is our God. As Christians we cannot believe that. For centuries, God's law has functioned wherever God's people have been, whether in Israel or in Christendom. This is a new and modern thing that we turn to the state's law. One professor of law, the dean of a law school, told me that he found that even into the 1840s, courts in the United States, decided cases out of the Bible -- out of God's Word, out of His Law -- because He is God.

Now we do not recognize God as God over the United States. The oath of office for the president of the United States used to be taken on an open Bible on Deuteronomy 28 invoking all the curses of God for disobedience to His law and all the blessings of God for obedience to his law. Now basically you can have two kinds of law: theonomy -- God's law, or autonomy -- self-law. That's what it boils down to and autonomy leads to anarchy, which is what we are getting increasingly.

Question:-- What about the idea that the government should be neutral and should recognize that we live in a democratic, pluralistic society?

Our Lord said, "Occupy until I come." We are told that the kingdoms of this world must become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. The Old Testament if rife with prophecies concerning the nations being under the Christ the Messiah. Now this is clearly an important aspect of our faith. Some years ago, Weingarten wrote a book made up entirely of the texts of the Old Testament that predict the triumph to come in Christ, how all the nations shall be His. Isaiah says that even in Egypt, being a type of the unregenerate world, five cities out of six will call upon the name of the Lord, an image of great victory. So if we are going to fight with an eye towards winning, we've got to have a postmillennial faith. Now you can go to heaven without it, but you'll do better in this world and in the world to come, if you stand in terms of the fact that we are to bring everything into captivity to Christ.

All our thinking is presuppositional. We begin with axioms of thought, premises that we believe, and we think in terms of that. As Christians we think in terms of the fact that God is, and all things must reckon with God and make an accounting to God. If we do not believe, we begin with the premise, God is not and I am alone in this world. It's a dog-eat-dog world. It's survival of the fittest. So you live accordingly and the world goes to hell in a hand basket. It becomes trashier. So ideas do have consequences. To believe that we are the people of victory that Christ is going to triumph and only when all things are put under His feet will the last enemy, death, be destroyed.

Question:-- Didn't the Apostle Paul say that we are no longer under law but under grace? If so, then what is the use of the Law of God under the New Covenant?

I am glad you used that word: "covenant." Covenantal thinking has all but disappeared. That's why in my Systematic Theology, I gave it particular space, because it is foundational. The Bible is divided by two covenants, really one Covenant, the original renewed again and again, in the New Testament from a nation to the Church, the nation symbolized by twelve tribes, twelve Apostles now in the church, as the new Israel of God. Paul refers to the Church in Galatians 6:6 as the new Israel of God. This means that we have a duty. We have to occupy the whole world. The Great Commission is to make disciples of all nations. To bring them all into the fold together with all their peoples because Christ is the ordained King of all creation. We have a magnificent calling. I don't believe God programmed us for defeat.

I know that some of my premillennial friends in the ministry feel a little bit out of sorts because of our stress on victory. They say, "It has an unfortunate appeal for our people. They don't like to be losers. As amils or premils, they feel that they are on the losing side. And you talk about victory and it has a real tug on their heart-strings. They like the idea." And they should. I believe that the impulse in all their being is God-given. We are a people called to victory not defeat. "This is the victory," the Apostle John tells us, "even our faith."

Question:-- In a Christian republic based on biblical law, would non-Christians be banned or would they have as much freedom as they have now?

Calvin in Geneva there are points where I would disagree with him Calvin was born and raised a Catholic. The Catholic model was still in the minds of the reformers. They wanted to reform the Catholic Church. That was their goal. So they began with the belief that the society had to be Christian. Now Calvin in Geneva never commanded the city. He was an outsider brought in as kind of an efficiency expert to make a city that was a business community function. Prior to his coming, drinking, gambling and fornication occupied too much of the people's time and efficiency was going down hill. They liked Calvin because he brought about efficiency. He made people sober, God-fearing. But they didn't like it for themselves. The rulers of Geneva were happy with the results, but unhappy that Calvin expected the same type of behavior of them. The libertines were really very close to controlling the city most of the time. They brought in Servetus to challenge and oust Calvin. During the time of the trial, Calvin actually had his bags packed ready to leave. But the Catholic model was still in the background there.

With Cromwell it was different. Cromwell was faced with churches who wanted an established national church still the old Roman model. The Presbyterians, who were the most powerful group, were emphatically for an established group. That to them was salvation. The Separatists disagreed with them, but the other groups wanted to command the establishment. Cromwell wanted not a church establishment, but a Christian establishment. He wanted England committed to a Christian faith, not to a church. That's what he worked for. He had to fight the churches. It was the churches that defeated Calvinism and most of all the Presbyterians. It's the great blot in Presbyterian history that they brought in Charles II, a thoroughly degenerate man, and believed he would keep his word to them that he would go along with their idea of an establishment. Of course, he broke his word to them and 2000 clergymen had to leave the Church of England. Over a course of time, the Presbyterians virtually died out in England.

Question:-- What about the "establishment of religion" clause in the U.S. Constitution? Doesn't the U.S. Constitution forbid the display of religion in the civil sphere?

Among the early colonists were separatists or independents or people who maintained the form of establishment but really wanted no part of it. The Congregational Church of Massachusetts was the established church of Massachusetts and legally part of the Church of England. They never broke with the Church of England. The actually had Church of England men in some of the pulpits. In fact, the man at Salem whose family was deeply involved in the witchcraft trials was Church of England. It was only subsequently that they came to a belief that there should be a Christian establishment rather than a church establishment. However, with the Constitution it was believed that legally and on good grounds, the states if they chose could establish a church or several churches or simply say that Christianity is the established faith, but not impose it on the states and counties. In many cases, they settled down to a county by county establishment.

Even in my lifetime, especially in the west, you could go to a county in Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and everything would be controlled by a particular church which was the dominant church in that area it could be Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed they were not intolerant of each other. In some places, where I spoke, the priests or the nuns would ask me into the parochial schools to talk about my work among the Indians. Or the Lutheran pastor would ask me into the public schools to speak. He ran it. In some cases the priests ran the public schools and the nuns taught. No one saw anything wrong with that, they were not intolerant one of another. It worked out beautifully on the local level. But we shattered all of that because of Madelyn Murray and her lawsuit.

Question:-- What can Christians begin to do from a practical standpoint to begin to rebuild their nation according to the standard of the Law of God? What would a Christian nation look like?

At the beginning of this century, 80 percent of the world's Christians were in the Americas and Europe. Now only 40 percent, because more and more of the new Christians are in Asia and Africa. We have today a country in Africa that is Christian Reconstructionist. Now here are blacks running a country trying to reorder everything according to the Word of God. We don't hear these things because we feel that we are the center of the world and what we are and what we do is all important. But things are happening very dramatically.

The media isn't given to reporting on Christian successes or Christian martyrdoms. They act as though Christianity is dead and we are too stupid to lie down and be buried. But the reality is much different. That's why there is so much animosity to what we are doing. They know it is catching on. When the President and Vice President of a country in Africa have affirmed that they believe that God's law should rule the country, that is major news, but the media won't touch it."

[Quelle: http://www.forerunner.com/revolution/rush.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-08]


5. Oder bahnt sich ein amerikanischer Bürgerkrieg an? Ziviler Ungehorsam oder Gewalt?


Die Frage des Widerstandes gegen den Staat stellt sich für Fundamentalisten nicht bei den verschiedenen Angriffskriegen und militärischen Interventionen der USA, auch nicht bei der Todsstrafe, sondern bei der Erlaubtheit von Abtreibung und passiver Sterbehilfe (Terri Schiavo).

Während die Staatshörigen den langen Marsch durch die Institutionen praktizieren, gibt es bei den christlichen Fundamentalisten auch Revolutionäre. Die Grenzen zwischen zivilem Ungehorsam und aktiver Gewalt scheinen dabei manchmal zu verschwimmen.

Das Buch A Pro-Life Manifesto fordert 1988 in der Frage der Abtreibung einen neuen amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg:

"If armed aggression were the answer, it would have to be aggression that did not hesitate. It would have to be done on a large scale, and more than a few abortion clinics would have to be destroyed. To succeed, it would require the destruction of all hospitals or clinics that performed abortions. Heroes who would lay down their life for the cause would have to come forth. Armies would need to be organized. Companies producing abortifacients would have to be bombed and their employees terrorized. In short, we would have to be willing to plunge ourselves into civil war.

While at times it seems that we are headed for just such a scenario, the conditions are not right for that to happen. The pro-life forces don't have the aggressive, radical leadership necessary to accomplish that goal. There is not enough cohesion in the pro-life camp. We don't have the masses of people who are so enraged that they would sacrifice all to further this cause. No, the pro-life leadership is bound to work within the system. It will not take up this cause, even though it is much more urgent than the cause that started the Civil War, because the zeal is not there that was present then."

[Zitiert in: Diamond, Sara: Facing the wrath : confronting the Right in dangerous times. -- Monroe, Me. : Common Courage Press, ©1996.  -- 236 p. ; 20 cm. -- ISBN
1567510787. -- S. 101.]

Randall Terry, der Gründer der Oparation Rescue, "the largest civil disobedience movement in American history", schreibt 1988 in einem Pamphlet "Higher Laws":

"The birth of America, the end of slavery, women's voting rights, repeal of prohibition, the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, and the feminist movement all testify to one truth: whether for good or bad, political change comes after a group of Americans bring enough tension in the nation and pressure on politicians that the laws are changed. Politicians see the light after they feel the heat!

The truth is, we don't stand a chance of ending this holocaust without righteous social upheaval occurring across the country that "inspires" politicians to amend the Constitution. Right now they have no reason to. The status quo is peaceful. But even if one percent of the evangelical and Catholic community (about 800,000 people) would take their own rhetoric seriously ("Abortion is murder!") and start acting like children are being killed, things would change. By doing massive rescues, we could create the tension needed to turn the tide. When government officials have to choose between jailing tens of thousands of good, decent citizens, or making child killing illegal again, they will choose the latter, partly because there are no jails big enough to hold us if we move together in large numbers!"

[Zitiert in: Diamond, Sara: Not by politics alone : the enduring influence of the Christian Right. -- New York : Guilford Press, ©1998.  -- xiv, 280 S. ; 23 cm.  -- ISBN 1572303859. -- S. 138. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]


Abb.: Randall Terry, der Gandhi der USA?
[Bildquelle: http://www.randallterry.com/home/index.cfm?page=7. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07]

"Who is Randall Terry?

Christian activist Randall Terry [geboren 1959] has reappeared in the news in recent days as the spokesman for the parents of Terri Schiavo. Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and the Society for Truth and Justice, appeared on Fox News at least four times in the past four days -- on the March 18 edition of Hannity & Colmes, and during live coverage of the Schiavo case on March 20 and March 21. But Terry has a controversial past that was not fully disclosed in any of his Fox News appearances or on the March 19 edition of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, which aired a brief clip from Terry. In all but one of those instances, Terry was identified only as the Schindler family spokesman.

Only when Terry appeared on a March 21 "Fox News Alert" did another guest -- Fox News contributor and Democratic strategist Susan Estrich -- point out that Terry was "involved in the anti-abortion movement" and with Operation Rescue, which "operated outside the law."

On his own website, Terry noted that he "has been arrested over forty times for peaceful opposition to abortion," but he neglected to mention the details of his anti-abortion activities with Operation Rescue in the 1980s and 1990s. In an April 22, 2004, Washington Post article, staff writer Michael Powell summarized some of Terry's anti-abortion actions:

In 1988, Terry and his legions started standing in front of local abortion clinics, screaming and pleading with pregnant women to turn away. They tossed their bodies against car doors to keep abortion patients from getting out. They waved crucifixes and screamed "Mommy, Mommy" at the women. When Terry commanded, hundreds went jellyfish-limp and blockaded the "death clinics."

In 1989, a "Holy Week of Rescue" shut down a family planning clinic in Los Angeles. More than 40,000 people were arrested in these demonstrations over four years. Subtlety wasn't Terry's thing -- he described Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a "whore" and an "adulteress" and arranged to have a dead fetus presented to Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

Additional evidence suggests that actions by Terry and Operation Rescue may have provoked violence at abortion clinics. As the New York Times reported on July 20, 2001, "One of his [Terry's] most avid followers in Binghamton was James E. [sic: C.] Kopp, now charged in the 1998 murder of a doctor who performed abortions in Buffalo [New York]." Kopp was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. A November 6, 1998, Times report further detailed Terry's connection to Kopp:

In July 1988, when Randall Terry drove through the night from his home in Binghamton, N.Y., to Atlanta to start the series of anti-abortion protests that would finally put his new hard-line group, Operation Rescue, onto America's front pages, James Charles Kopp was in the van riding alongside him, said former leaders of Operation Rescue.

And when Mr. Terry was arrested on the first day of Operation Rescue's "Siege of Atlanta," Mr. Kopp followed him into jail, said the leaders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Along with more than 100 other Operation Rescue members, according to some people who were there, Mr. Kopp remained in jail for 40 days and adhered to Mr. Terry's orders not to give a real name to the police or courts.

After his release, Mr. Kopp returned to Operation Rescue's Binghamton headquarters, and was there working alongside Mr. Terry as the group's power and influence in the anti-abortion movement surged in late 1988 and 1989, according to the former leaders of Operation Rescue.

Further, the Miami Herald reported on March 20 that Operation Rescue's "sympathizers continue to make an impact, some serving for the Bush administration."

As CNN noted on March 4, 1998, Terry was named in a lawsuit -- seeking to "force anti-abortion leaders to pay for damages caused in clinic attacks" -- which was filed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, and Terry settled with NOW out of court. The New York Times reported on November 8, 1998, that Terry "filed for bankruptcy last week in an effort to avoid paying massive debts owed to women's groups and abortion clinics that have sued him." As the Los Angeles Times reported on February 28, Terry's use of bankruptcy law to avoid paying for the judgments against him helped prompt Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) to propose an amendment to the bankruptcy bill recently passed by Congress that "specifically would prevent abortion opponents from using the bankruptcy code to escape paying court fines," although it was not included in the final version of the bill. Versions of that amendment appeared in earlier versions of the bankruptcy bill, which stalled action on it in 2002 and 2003 when "a core of House Republicans balked" at the provision, the Los Angeles Times noted.

According to a June 14, 2003, report by the conservative World Magazine (no longer available online, but reprinted on the right-wing bulletin board Free Republic), Terry solicited donations by declaring on his website that "The purveyors of abortion on demand have stripped Randall Terry of everything he owned," but failed to disclose that the money would be used to pay for his new $432,000 house. The report noted Terry's defense: "Terry told World that he wanted a home where his family will be safe and where 'we could entertain people of stature, people of importance. I have a lot of important people that come through my home. And I will have more important people come through my home.' " World noted that the same month he paid the deposit on his new home, a court ruled that Terry, who divorced his first wife and has remarried, "was not paying a fair share of child support." In an article on his website, Terry denounced the World report as "journalistic trash, a 'hit piece' of malice and misinformation."

Terry's words and personal life have also stirred controversy. As the Fort Wayne (Indiana) News Sentinel reported on August 16, 1993, at an anti-abortion rally in Fort Wayne, Terry said "Our goal is a Christian nation. ... We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism. ... Theocracy means God rules. I've got a hot flash. God rules." In that same speech, Terry also stated that "If a Christian voted for [former President Bill] Clinton, he sinned against God. It's that simple." According to a March 18, 2004, press release, Terry declared on his radio program that "Islam dictates followers use killing and terror to convert Western infidels." As The Washington Post reported on February 12, 2000, in his 1995 book The Judgment of God Terry wrote that "homosexuals and lesbians are no longer content to secretly live in sin, but now want to glorify their perversions." In a May 25, 2004, interview about his gay son with The Advocate, Terry stated that homosexuality is a "sexual addiction" that shouldn't be rewarded with "special civil rights."

According to the February 12, 2000, Washington Post report, Terry was censured by his church, the Landmark Church of Binghamton, New York, for a "pattern of repeated and sinful relationships and conversations with both single and married women." Terry denies the accusation.

Posted to the web on Monday March 21, 2005 at 8:35 PM EST"

[Quelle: http://mediamatters.org/items/200503220001. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07]


Abb.: Christlicher Guerillero: Paul Hill
[Bildquelle: http://www.armyofgod.com/Paulhillindex.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-07]


Abb.: unWANTED: "Fahndungs"plakat gegen einen Abtreibungsarzt: Der abgebildete Arzt wurde 1994 von Paul Hill erschossen

[Bildquelle: Risen, James ; Thomas, Judy L. (Judy Lundstrom):  Wrath of angels : the American abortion war. -- New York, NY : Basic Books, ©1998.  -- x, 402 p. : Ill. ; 25 cm.  -- ISBN: 0465092721. -- Nach S. 212. --  {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

Gewalt als Verteidigung unschuldigen Lebens gegen Abtreibung verteidigte z.B. der presbyterianische geistliche Paul Hill 1993 (im Juli 1994 ließ Paul Hill der Theorie die Tat folgen und erschoss einen Abtreibungsarzt): 

"There is no question that deadly force should be used to protect innocent life. The question is, whose life is innocent—those who kill our children or the children who are being killed? The government believes those who kill our children should be protected. We believe the unborn should be protected. The question then for us is, should we protect innocent life from harm if the government forbids us to do so?

The Golden Rule clearly and irrefutably answers the question in this way: 'Therefore whatever you want others to do for you, do so for them; for this is the Law and the Prophets,' Matthew 7:12."

"In addition to defending the innocent from a brutal death, there are other reasons for using force in the abortion controversy. One of these reasons is found in Numbers 35:33. "So you shall not pollute the land in which you are; for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it." Numbers 25 makes a similar point through the example of Phinehas.

Phinehas violently took the lives of two immoral persons in order to turn God's wrath away from the people. Numbers 25 tells us that the Israelites were playing the harlot with Moabite women. God's wrath in the form of a plague, therefore, turned against the people. As a result of the sins committed, Moses and the judges were weeping before the Tabernacle. As Moses and the leaders looked on, Zimri, the son of Salu, brazenly brought a Moabite woman named Cozbi by the weeping leaders. He led her past them and into a tent for immoral purposes. When a priest named Phinehas realized what was happening, he was filled with zealous jealousy. He then followed them to the tent and checked the plague by driving a spear through them both.

The startling truth is that this act was not done by a civil leader or after due legal process. Yet, this zealous act by an individual "made atonement for the sons of Israel." Though sin had fanned god's righteous anger to a searing blaze, the shedding of guilty blood had cooled the flame and saved the people from destruction. . . .

Are there any heinous sins being committed today that could again fan the flames of God's righteous anger to the scorching point? Is there any need in today's world for men of the stamp of Phinehas? If any similar zeal be found among us today, occasion to exercise it will not be lacking."

[Zitiert in: Diamond, Sara: Not by politics alone : the enduring influence of the Christian Right. -- New York : Guilford Press, ©1998.  -- xiv, 280 S. ; 23 cm.  -- ISBN 1572303859. -- S. 147f. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

Anmerkung: in einem Land, das Todesstrafe und "gerechte" Angriffskriege praktiziert, ist Paul Hills Haltung nur konsequent und gemessen an der offiziellen Moral auch nicht verwerflich (ein Staat, der sich zum Herrn über Leben aufspielt, gibt den Bürgern ein schlechtes Vorbild).


6. Oder kommt es durch den Fundamentalismus zu einer Versöhnung der Rassen?


"Eleven a.m. Sunday morning is America's most segregated hour." -- "Sonntag 11 Uhr vormittags, die Zeit der Gottesdienste, ist Amerikas Stunde mit der stärksten Rassentrennung."

[Zitiert in: Balmer, Randall Herbert <1954 - >: Mine eyes have seen the glory : a journey into the evangelical subculture in America. -- 3rd ed.  -- New York : Oxford University Press, ©2000.  -- xviii, 327 S. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0195131800. -- S. 186. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

Es wäre ein Zerrbild amerikanischer Fundamentalisten, würde man in ihnen nur rassistische Weiße, sozusagen Nachfolger des KuKuxKlan sehen. Geraden im letzten Jahrzehnt wurden sich viele Fundamentlisten bewusst, dass die größte kollektive Sünde Amerika Rassismus ist.

Wird der christliche Fundamentalismus zum Erben der Bürgerrechtsbewegung von dem Baptistengeistlichen Martin Luther King?

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

CHORUS:

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand some day

CHORUS

We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some day
CHORUS

We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid some day

CHORUS

We are not alone
We are not alone
We are not alone some day
CHORUS

The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around some day

CHORUS
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day
CHORUS
Lieblingsgesang des Civil Rights Movement

Klicken Sie hier, um "We shall ..." zu hören

Quelle der .midi-Datei: http://www.advancedbreastcancer.org/songs49.html. -- Zugriff am 200-04-11


6.1. The Memphis Miracle 1994


Klicken Sie hier, um das Video zu sehen

Video Highlights of the 'Miracle at Memphis'

October 17-19, 1994, Memphis, Tennessee

Quelle der rm-Datei: http://www.pccna.org/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-11

Achtung: das Video hat eine Dauer von 15 Minuten, die Dateigröße ist 50 MB, Sie können das Video in akzeptabler Zeit nur empfangen (ca. 3 Minuten Download), wenn Sie einen DSL-Internetzugang haben

Memphis 1994: Miracle and Mandate

Dr. Vinson Synan

It was a day never to be forgotten in the annals of American Pentecostalism–October 18, 1994–when the Spirit moved in Memphis to end decades of racial separation and open doors to a new era of cooperation and fellowship between African-American and white Pentecostals.  At the time, it was called the “Memphis Miracle” by those gathered in Memphis as well as in the national press which hailed the historic importance of the event. 

It was called a miracle because it ended decades of formal separation between the predominantly black and white Pentecostal churches in America.  In its beginnings, the Pentecostal movement inherited the interracial ethos of the Holiness Movement at the turn of the century.  One of the miracles of the Azusa Street revival was the testimony that “the color line was washed away in the Blood."  Here in the worldwide cradle of the movement a black man, William J. Seymour, served as pastor of a small black church in Los Angeles, where from 1906 to 1909, thousands of people of all races gathered to received the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the accompanying evidence of speaking in tongues.  Often black hands were laid upon white heads to pray down the power of Pentecost.  From Azusa Street the movement spread to the nations and continents of the world.

In the beginning, practically all the Pentecostal movements and churches in America were inter-racial with many having thriving black leaders and churches.  But from 1908 to 1924, one by one, most churches bowed to the American system of segregation by separating into racially-segregated fellowships.  In “Jim Crow” America, segregation in all areas of life ruled the day.  Gradually Seymour’s Azusa Street dream of openness and equality faded into historical memory.

THE PFNA

The separation of black and white Pentecostals was formalized in 1948 with the creation of the all-white Pentecostal Fellowship of North America (PFNA) in Des Moines, Iowa.  As incredible as it seems today, no black churches were invited.  The races continued to drift further and further apart.

But by the 1990s the climate had changed drastically in the United States.  The civil rights movements and legislation of the 1950s and 60s swept away the last vestiges of legal “Jim Crow” segregation in American life.  Schools were integrated.   Many doors were opened for all to enter into American public life.  Most churches, however, remained segregated and out of touch with these currents.  The year 1948 also saw the beginnings of the salvation-healing crusades of Oral Roberts and other Pentecostal evangelists.  Both blacks and whites flocked together to the big tent services.  Along with Billy Graham, Oral Roberts and other Pentecostal evangelists refused to seat the races in separate areas.  Although the churches remained separate, there was more interracial worship among blacks and whites who flocked together to the big tent services.

The advent of the charismatic movement in 1960 and the creation of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (SPS) in 1970 brought more contacts between black and white Pentecostals.  The congresses sponsored by the North American Renewal Service Committee (NARSC) in the 1980s and 1990s also brought many black and white Pentecostal leaders together for the first time while serving on the Steering Committee to plan the massive charismatic rallies in New Orleans, Indianapolis and Orlando.

THE ARCHITECTS OF UNITY

The leaders, who above all, brought the races together in Memphis in 1994 were Bishop Ithiel Clemmons of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and Bishop Bernard E. Underwood of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church.  These men had met while serving on the NARSC board planning the New Orleans Congress of 1987.  With great trust and mutual dedication, these two men were able to lay the groundwork for the 1994 meeting in Memphis.

The process began when Underwood was elected to head the PFNA in 1991.  At that time he purposed in his heart to use his term to end the racial divide between the Pentecostal churches.  On March 6, 1992, the Board of Administration voted unanimously to “pursue the possibility of reconciliation with our African-American brethren.”  After this, there were four important meetings on the road to Memphis.

The first meeting was on July 31, 1992, in Dallas, Texas, in the DFW Hyatt Regency Hotel where COGIC Bishop O. T. Jones captivated the PFNA leaders with his wit and wisdom.  The second meeting was held in Phoenix, Arizona, on January 4-5, 1993, where COGIC pastor Reuben Anderson from Compton, California (represented Bishop Charles Blake) played a key role in bringing understanding of the challenges of urban ministries in America.  The third session convened at the PFNA annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 25-27, 1993.  Here, Jack Hayford of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and Bishop Gilbert Patterson, of the Church of God in Christ, strongly affirmed the plans for reconciliation.  A fourth meeting in Memphis in January 1994 became known as the “20/20 Meeting” because 20 whites and 20 blacks joined to plan the climactic conference that was planned for October 1994 in Memphis.  There, it was hoped, the old PFNA could be laid to rest in order to birth a new fellowship without racial or ethnic boundaries.

THE MEMPHIS MIRACLE

When the delegates arrived in Memphis on October 17, 1994, there was an electric air of expectation that something wonderful was about to happen.  The conference theme was “Pentecostal Partners: A Reconciliation Strategy for 21st Century Ministry.”  Over 3,000 persons attended the evening sessions in the Dixon-Meyers Hall of the Cook Convention Center in downtown Memphis.  Everyone was aware of the racial strife in Memphis where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968.  Here, it was hoped, a great racial healing would take place.  The night services reflected the tremendous work done by the local committee in the months before the gathering.  Bishop Gilbert Patterson of the Temple of Deliverance Church of God in Christ, and Samuel Middlebrook, Pastor of the Raleigh Assembly of God in Memphis, co-chaired the committee.  Although both men had pastored in the same city for 29 years, they had never met.  The Memphis project brought them together.

The morning sessions were remarkable for the honesty and candor of the papers that were presented by a team of leading Pentecostal scholars.  These included Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. of Fuller Theological Seminary and the Assemblies of God, Dr. Leonard Lovett of the Church of God in Christ, Dr. William Turner of Duke University and the United Holy Church, and Dr. Vinson Synan of Regent University and the Pentecostal Holiness Church.  In these sessions, the sad history of separation, racism and neglect was laid bare before the 1,000 or more leaders assembled.  These sometimes chilling confessions brought a stark sense of past injustice and the absolute need of repentance and reconciliation.  The evening worship sessions were full of Pentecostal fire and fervor as Bishop Patterson, Billy Joe Daugherty and Jack Hayford preached rousing sermons to the receptive crowds.

The climactic moment, however, came in the scholar’s session on the afternoon of October 18, after Bishop Blake tearfully told the delegates, “Brothers and Sisters, I commit my love to you.  There are problems down the road, but a strong commitment to love will overcome them all.”  Suddenly there was a sweeping move of the Holy Spirit over the entire assembly.  A young black brother uttered a spirited message in tongues after which Jack Hayford hurried to the microphone to give the interpretation.  He began by saying, “For the Lord would speak to you this day, by the tongue, by the quickening of the Spirit, and he would say”:          

My sons and my daughters, look if you will from the heavenward side of things, and see where you have been – two, separate streams, that is, streams as at flood tide.  For I have poured out of my Spirit upon you and flooded you with grace in both your circles of gathering and fellowship.  But as streams at flood tide, nonetheless, the waters have been muddied to some degree.  Those of desperate thirst have come, nonetheless, for muddy water is better than none at all.

 My sons and my daughters, if you will look and see that there are some not come to drink because of what they have seen.  You have not been aware of it, for only heaven has seen those who would doubt what flowed in your midst, because of the waters muddied having been soiled by the clay of your humanness, not by your crudity, lucidity, or intentionality, but by the clay of your humanness the river has been made impure.

But look.  Look, for I, by my Spirit, am flowing the two streams into one.  And the two becoming one, if you can see from the heaven side of things, are being purified and not only is there a new purity coming in your midst, but there will be multitudes more who will gather at this one mighty river because they will see the purity of the reality of my love manifest in you.  And so, know that as heaven observes and tells us what is taking place, there is reason for you to rejoice and prepare yourself for here shall be multitudes more than ever before come to this joint surging of my grace among you, says the Lord.

Immediately, a white pastor appeared in the wings of the backstage with a towel and basin of water.  His name was Donald Evans, an Assemblies of God pastor from Tampa, Florida.  When he explained that the Lord had called him to wash the feet of a black leader as a sign of repentance, he was given access to the platform.  In a moment of tearful contrition, he washed the feet of Bishop Clemmons while begging forgiveness for the sins of the whites against their black brothers and sisters.  A wave of weeping swept over the auditorium.  Then, Bishop Blake approached Thomas Trask, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God, and tearfully washed his feet as a sign of repentance for any animosity blacks had harbored against their white brothers and sisters.  This was the climactic moment of the conference.  Everyone sensed that this was the final seal of Holy Spirit approval from the heart of God over the proceedings.  In an emotional speech the next day, Dr. Paul Walker of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) called this event, “the Miracle in Memphis,” a name that struck and made headlines around the world.

That afternoon, the members of the old PFNA gathered for the final session of its history.  In a very short session, a motion was carried to dissolve the old, all-white organization in favor of a new entity that would be birthed the next day.  But more reconciliation was yet to come!

When the new constitution was read to the delegates on October 19, a new name was proposed for he group-Pentecostal Churches of North America (PCNA).  It was suggested that the governing board of the new group have equal numbers of blacks and whites and that denominational charter memberships would be welcomed that very day.  But before the constitution came before the assembly for a vote, Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty of Tulsa’s Victory Christian Center asked the delegates to include the word “Charismatic” in the new name.  Over a hastily-called luncheon meeting of the “Restructuring Committee,” it was agreed that those Christians who thought of themselves as “Charismatics” would also be invited to join.  When the vote was taken, the body unanimously voted to call the new organization the Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches of North America (PCCNA).  Thus the Memphis Miracle included the beginning of healing between Pentecostals and Charismatics as well as between blacks and whites.

Another milestone of the day was the unanimous adoption of a “Racial Reconciliation Manifesto” that was drafted by Bishop Ithiel Clemmons, Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., Dr. Leonard Lovett, and Dr. Harold D. Hunter.  In this historic document, the new PCCNA pledged to “oppose racism prophetically in all its various manifestations” and to be “vigilant in the struggle.”  They further agreed to “confess that racism is a sin and as a blight must be condemned…” while promising to “seek partnerships and exchange pulpits with persons of a different hue…in the spirit of our Blessed Lord who prayed that we might be one.”

After this, the election of officers took place with Bishop Clemmons chosen as Chairman and Bishop Underwood as Vice-Chairman.  Also elected to the Board was Bishop Barbara Amos, whose election demonstrated the resolve of the new organization to bridge the gender gap as well.  The other officers represented a balance of blacks and whites from the constituent membership.

THE MEMPHIS MANDATE

The subsequent meetings of the PCCNA in Memphis in 1996 and Washington, D.C., in 1997 have shown that the road to racial reconciliation in America will not be short or easy.  Everyone agrees that there is much more to be done and much to overcome.  The incredible “Memphis Miracle” has now become the “Memphis Mandate”.   All Spirit-filled believers must   join in a crusade of love and good will to show the world that when the Spirit moves, those who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit will move forward to bring the lost to Christ, and to full ministry and fellowship, in churches that have no racial, ethnic or gender barriers.

Dr. Vinson Synan, Dean of Regent University School of Divinity, has served as an advisor to the PCCNA Executive.  Author of the widely-read Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, Dr. Synan has served as chair of the North American Renewal Service Committee (NARSC) and is an ordained minister with the International Pentecostal Holiness Church."

[Quelle: http://www.pccna.org/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-11]

 


6.2. John Dawson: Healing America's Wounds


Dawson, John <1951 - >: Healing America's wounds. -- Ventura, Calif., U.S.A. : Regal Books, ©1994.  -- 280 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0830716920

"Reviewed by Allen Johnson

 One of the darker blots splattered on the annals of American history is the Sand Creek massacre of 1864.  Commanded by a former Protestant minister, a large contingent of U.S. soldiers swooped down upon an unsuspecting sleeping village of Arapahoe and Cheyenne to gruesomely butcher over a hundred mostly women, children, and elderly men.  In January, 1993, Christian leaders representing both European  and Native American stock met together on the bluffs overlooking the Colorado site to recount the story, grieve afresh the pain, confess the sin, and seek forgiveness, pardon, and reconciliation.

In his book, Healing America's Wounds, author John Dawson portrays America with an agenda of unfinished business of historical abuses, insults, and injustices that must be collectively reconciled before God and one another  in order that the nation can achieve its destiny.  So what is Dawson's version of  manifest destiny?  "This is the only nation consisting of people from every nation.  Herein lies the clue to our destiny.  I believe that Jesus intends to demonstrate a prototype of the culture of the world, reconciled to one another and released in their gifting, and He has chosen the American Church to become His example in a world without hope" (p. 263).

A native of New Zealand now living in an integrated LA neighborhood just down the block from where the Rodney King beating occurred, John Dawson does not avoid identification with the social sins of past generations.  He is white, male, protestant, educated—each of these categories represents hurt to other people groups, so Dawson avails his identities to confess sorrow and seek forgiveness.  Yet Dawson rightly refrains from blanket denunciation of ancestors.  "Real reconciliation involves taking upon ourselves both the guilt and grandeur of our history and facing the implications squarely" (p. 164).

John Dawson is international director of Urban Ministries for Youth With A Mission (YWAM), as well as a founding member of the International Reconciliation Coalition.  Dawson's very readable book interweaves numerous examples of estranged people groups experiencing healing  using the principles of confession, repentance, reconciliation, and restitution.  Certainly one of the brighter flames kindling within evangelical Christianity is a movement on several fronts toward racial reconciliation,  Promise Keepers being the most visible.  Healing America's Wounds dwells extensively on the cold historical realities of racial injustices to African-American and Native American peoples with the yet lingering bitter dregs.  The church too often has been tragically implicated in fomenting division between the races,  splintering even into denominational barriers.  It is truly a sign of The Spirit moving upon our land that denominations such as The Southern Baptist are repenting of their historical racism with confession and tears.

Wounds and schisms flow in many streams.  Dawson touches on the battle of the sexes, the cultural wars of right and left, even denominational arrogance.  The challenges to reconciliation are many, a road that can only be paved on prayer.  Yet Christ has committed to the Church the ministry of reconciliation  (2 Corinthians 5:18, 19), and breathed The Holy Spirit into us for our empowerment to discern and forgive sin (John 20: 21-23).  Each of us in our identifications has been a wounder and a wounded.  Each of us needs to representationally confess our sin, and each of us representationally needs to receive healing and give forgiveness.  John Dawson articulates a passionate belief that the glory of the church is yet ahead if the responsibility to identificational repentance is heartfelt heeded.

In towns and cities across the nation, reconciliation has begun, with tears of sorrow precipitating embraces of newfound unity.  New partnerships are covenanting, too, as suburban white churches and urban black churches discover meaningful shared life together.  Restitution, too, is on the hearts of many.  Following the Sand Creek gathering, a Denver oilman covenanted to volunteer royalties on his natural gas leases to the descendents of the indigenous peoples displaced by 19th century treaty violations (p. 163).  

On that bright January day at Sand Creek the massacre story was painfully retold, tears of sorrow were shed, forgiveness was begged and extended, and holy communion was celebrated.  Dawson writes,

One woman stretched herself out in the sand, touching the feet of an Indian pastor; deeply ashamed she wept for the lost generation that was cut off in this place.  The sense of loss was upon us all; the beauty of what might have been had these two peoples walked together in integrity; the generations of alcoholism, suicide and despair that could have been avoided if a culture with the gospel in its roots had exemplified rather than defamed Jesus to a spiritually hungry people.  Minutes turned to hours as the Spirit of God moved among us.  As the day came to a close we took communion together, and walking in twos we descended to the sandy streambed where the bodies once lay.  I knelt beside an ancient tree that must have witnessed these events and poured out the remainder of wine from my communion cup.  I felt sure that people had taken shelter here and died.  The red wine stained the snow where innocent blood was shed.  I thanked Jesus for His innocent blood that takes away the sin of the world.   (p. 148)

[Quelle: http://home.sunlitsurf.com/~ajohnson/allen/JOHN%20DAWSON.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-11]


Abb.: John Dawson (geb. 1951)
[Bildquelle: http://www.urban-ministries.net/Reports/profile.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-21]

Einige Zitate aus Dawson, John <1951 - >: Healing America's wounds. -- Ventura, Calif., U.S.A. : Regal Books, ©1994.  -- 280 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0830716920:

"Places of Conflict and Broken Relationship
  1. Race to Race (e.g., Native American vs. European American)


    Abb.: Die Gründungsväter der USA
    [Bildquelle: http://www.nativeamericans.com/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-21]

  2. Class to Class (e.g. Homeless Person vs. Holders of Home Equity)
  3. Culture to Culture (e.g., Immigrant vs. Native Born)
  4. Gender to Gender (e.g., Working Woman vs. Male Hierarchy)
  5. Vocation to Vocation (e.g., L.A. Police Department vs. Civil Rights Advocates)
  6. Institution to Institution (e.g., Auto Industry Management vs. Organized Labor)
  7. Region to Region (e.g., Westside vs. South Central L.A.)
  8. Governed to Government (e.g., College-Age Youth vs. Vietnam Era Government)
  9. Religion to Religion (e.g., Muslim vs. Christian)
  10. Denomination to Denomination (i.e. Protestant vs. Catholic)
  11. Enterprise to Enterprise (e.g., Monopoly vs. Small Business)
  12. Ideology to Ideology (e.g., Leftist vs. Rightist Political Parties)
  13. Nationality to Nationality (e.g., Americans vs. Cubans)
  14. Generation to Generation (e.g., '60s Youth vs. Parents)
  15. Family to Family (e.g., Neighbor vs. Neighbor)

This list could be endlessly refined. However, we need something this basic as a guide in order to begin our journey toward national healing."

[Quelle: Dawson, John <1951 - >: Healing America's wounds. -- Ventura, Calif., U.S.A. : Regal Books, ©1994.  -- 280 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0830716920. -- S. 117f.]

"I see Satan manipulating four issues to his advantage. His ultimate goal is intergenerational conflict in Christian homes: to alienate us from our own children. Every child who watches television or attends a public school is receiving an indoctrination, not against values, but into new values. A conflict is being set up:
  1. Family values versus protection for abused individuals;
  2. Environmentalism versus liberty and personal stewardship;
  3. America's foundational heritage versus multiculturalism;
  4. Patriotism versus globalism.

In all four of these conflicts, Christians should find themselves in what might be called the "radical middle." Take for instance patriotism versus globalism.

The long-running television series Star Trek is a humanistic fantasy. The peoples of the earth are united at last. Enlightened and tolerant, they have transcended the violent depravity of the human past as they participate in the conquest of space. These fictional characters, and myriad secular media, echo a yearning for one world in which reconciled peoples are served by a wise and just government.

A destructive paranoia often grips Christians at the very mention of the phrase "one world" because of its association with the coming Antichrist. But the far greater truth is that of the transcendent kingdom of God described in the book of Revelation. When every tribe, kindred and tongue is united around the throne of God, we will see the answer to all the yearnings of the human heart down through the ages. There will be one world, there will be a uniting of the nations. It's not the dream that is evil; it is the false means of achieving it.

Only Christians possess the ability to be loyal citizens of the United States and to strive valiantly for the establishment of a transcendent global Kingdom. Christians are already the most successful globalists in history. The followers of Christ are found in more cultures, language groups, nations and geographic locales than any other group. We are deeply committed to our home nations but compelled by Christ's missionary command to become servants to all the nations."

[Quelle: Dawson, John <1951 - >: Healing America's wounds. -- Ventura, Calif., U.S.A. : Regal Books, ©1994.  -- 280 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0830716920. -- S. 239f.]

"American Redemptive Purpose


Abb.: "Yes, there is a dream in the heart of Jesus for this nation"
[Bildquelle: http://moveonplease.org/jesus.asp. -- Zugrif am 2005-04-21]

Yes, there is a dream in the heart of Jesus for this nation. This is the only nation consisting of people from every nation. Herein lies the clue to our destiny. I believe that Jesus intends to demonstrate a prototype of the cultures of the world, reconciled to one another and released in their gifting, and He has chosen the American Church to become His example in a world without hope.

The Bible has long foretold the dilemma of this generation: "And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery' (Dan. 2:43). This passage speaks of Rome and its descendant civilization, the commercial culture of the west that dominates the world in the end times. Here we see predicted, attempts at unity, such as the United Nations, and the fact of increasing racial intermarriage. Yet, outside God's kingdom there is continuous turbulence and deepening despair. America exemplifies both the dangers and potentials of the world that has come to be. The world watches our struggle with modernity. To them, we are the future observed.

I believe that God would use this nation as a springboard for global outreach, a refuge for those seeking new beginnings, and an example of the values He longs to see all peoples embrace. To the degree that we fulfill, or do not fulfill, this destiny, we will be blessed or cursed.

A Nation of Example

We are already discipling the nations. The American culture has been enriched by so many streams that it now stands astride the earth as a lone colossus. Its high-wattage allure has captured the minds of millions beyond these shores. The fight for decency in our domestic media is a fight for the world's media. Our fight for ethical answers in economics, government and law is a quest for global solutions.

In the past, America has led the way in both darkness and light, greed and generosity, decadence and purity; a staggering giant—a schizophrenic in rags with a prophet's pure dreams and a glutton's base appetites.

This land of revivals could become again the crucible of divine restoration, or it could become Babylon the Great, fallen and judged, an example of terror in the midst of the nations (see Revelation 17 and 18).

Our forefathers blessed the world with their example of just government, but left to us a fly in the ointment that made the whole jar stink. This is the season for changing that. This is the season when reconciliation between peoples will be America's garland rather than America's shame.

A Nation of Refuge

Each generation of Americans makes its choice. Will we close the doors? Will we invite the skilled and the rich but exclude the shattered and disenfranchised? Will we forget that all those except Native Americans are descendants of "boat people"? God stands ready to pour out prosperity on this nation as long as its heart is as big as His own.

We need secure borders, we need our immigration laws respected, but above all else our law and practice must remain sympathetic to the genuine refugee.

A Nation of Outreach

America continues to stand at the center of global missionary enterprise. It's no wonder when we consider that most American families carry memories of distant places and ancestral languages.

Americans so often provide the strategic leadership when international believers work together. The American gift for bold planning and excellent management has given us the feeding programs of World Vision, the medical outreach of Youth With a Mission's mercy ships, the far-ranging cultural expertise of Wycliffe Bible Translators and the evangelistic techniques of Campus Crusade for Christ. And then there are the evangelists.

The ministry of Billy Graham involves numbers that the human brain struggles to comprehend. He has already preached, in person, to more than 100,000,000 people, more than any person who ever lived. As of this writing, 2,874,082 people had responded to his call to accept Christ as their personal Savior.

Outreach has not been limited to Christian organizations. One of the greatest outpourings of American generosity was the implementation of the Marshall Plan by the United States government following World War II. Officially known as the European Recovery Plan, this amazing act of charity has been viewed by some as primarily an American attempt to stave off communism in Europe. But it was sold to the American people, state by state, at a time when communism was not seen by many Americans as a global threat. In his speeches, George Marshall stressed generosity to a devastated Europe as a moral imperative, and the American people responded. From 1948 to 1952, approximately 13 billion dollars in food, machinery and other aid products were sent across the Atlantic.

The time for big-thinking, bighearted American leadership is not over. The national government may be confused about its foreign policy objectives but the American Church is not. We have been clearly commanded by our King to go into all the world, preach the gospel and disciple the nations. The American passport, the English language, our level of prosperity and the ease of travel and communications has made it so easy for missionary enterprise to function. Our children are literally "going out to have a look" at potential mission fields before they choose the path of their college education.

Today's Christian leaders have led us out of bondage just as Moses did. We are no longer enslaved by deathly legalism or religiosity for its own sake. But a new wave is coming. It's time to cross the Jordan and inherit.

Brace yourself for the Joshua generation in missions; the best is yet to come."

[Quelle: Dawson, John <1951 - >: Healing America's wounds. -- Ventura, Calif., U.S.A. : Regal Books, ©1994.  -- 280 S. : Ill. ; 21 cm.  -- ISBN: 0830716920. -- S. 263 - 267.]


6.3. Identificational Repentenance — die USA stehen zu ihren korporativen Sünden


C. Peter Wagner, Professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Los Angeles, schuf den Begriff  "identificational repentance", um die kollektiven Sünden der USA ins Blickfeld er Evangelikalen zu bringen:

"Identificational Repentance

For me at least this is very new. I have been a Christian for 45 years, and I never once recall hearing a sermon from the pulpit on identificational repentance. I have four graduate degrees in religion from respectable academic institutions, and I was never taught a class on the subject. You do not find the issue raised in the writings of Martin Luther or John Calvin or John Wesley.

Fortunately, we now have a textbook on the subject, namely John Dawson's remarkable book, Healing America's Wounds (Regal Books). In my opinion, this is one of the books of the decade for Christian leaders of all denominations. Only because we now have access to this book has the United Prayer Track or the AD2000 Movement been bold enough to declare 1996 as the year to 'Heal the Land,' featuring massive initiatives for repentance and reconciliation on every continent of the world. This is so important to me that I require my students at Fuller Theological Seminary to read Healing America's Wounds and I invite John Dawson himself to come in and help me teach my classes.

Some may wonder what international significance a book like Healing America's Wounds might have. Only this. We Americans are not ignorant of the fact that our nation has gained high international visibility for many things, some good, but some very bad. Now by God's grace many American Christian leaders want our nation also to be known for our deep remorse over the national sins and atrocities we have committed. We want to be among the first to corporately humble ourselves before God and before the people we have offended, to confess our sins, and to seek remission of those sins in order to heal our deep national wounds. With no desire to be arrogant, we hope that if we provide a good example which pleases God, some other nations may see fit to follow our lead.

What exactly is involved in identificational repentance?

Personal Repentance

In order to understand it, let's go from the known to the unknown. Most of us have been well trained to understand personal repentance. We know that sin can and does invade our personal lives. When it does, it has devastating effects not only on us, but on others around us. And we know what to do about it when it happens. This has been taught in every one of our seminaries and Bible schools. We do find it in the works of Luther and Calvin and Wesley. It is no secret that personal sins can and should be remitted.

A basic theological principle for this is found in Hebrews 9:22: 'Without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sins.'

In Old Testament times the blood was that of bulls and goats and other animals which were sacrificed. Then Jesus Christ shed His blood on the cross to pay the price for sin once and for all. So today when we deal with a sin in our personal life we know that we must:

  • Identify the sin specifically.
  • Sincerely confess the sin and ask God to forgive it.
  • Know that God is faithful and just to forgive our sins whenever we do confess them because of the blood which Jesus shed on our behalf.
  • Once forgiven, walk in obedience from that point onward, and do whatever is necessary to repair the damage that our sin has done to others.

It is important to recognise that having a sin forgiven does not automatically and by itself heal the wounds that the sin might have caused.

Corporate Sin

We must recognise that nations can and do sin corporately. God loves nations, and I join those who believe that God has a redemptive plan for each nation, or for that matter for each city or people group or neighbourhood or any visible network of human beings. But corporate national sin damages the relationship of the nation to God and prevents that nation from being all that God wants it to be.

Is this a hopeless situation? No. The Word of God has clearly outlined the remedy:

If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14).

God desires to bring corporate healing. He wants to heal the land. The way that He does this is parallel to the way He deals with individuals. If we desire to see the healing come to our national wounds, we must take the following steps:

  1. Identify the national sin. This is no place for vagueness. We must be specific, not evasive. For example, the principal sin of my nation, the United States, is clearly racism and our corporate sins which have established the spiritual strongholds are clear. The broadest and most pervasive sin that our nation ever committed was bringing Africans to our shores as slaves ­ human merchandise to be bought, sold and used for any conceivable purpose to satisfy the desires of their white masters. But beyond this, the deepest root of national iniquity, and also, as I see it, one of the primary causes of our subsequent lust for slaves, was the horrendous way we white Americans treated our hosts, the American Indians. What does the breaking of over 350 solemn treaties say about U.S. national integrity?
     
  2. Confess the sin corporately and ask God for forgiveness. We must not assume that one act of repentance and confession will suffice in all cases, although in some it may. Because the ministry of identificational repentance is so new to many of us, we do not as yet have a clear idea as to specific rules and guidelines on this matter. Meanwhile let's follow John Dawson's advice: we keep doing it until it's over; or Cindy Jacob's criterion: we forgive until there is no more pain.
     
  3. Apply Christ's blood. Since there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood, there will be no remission of national sin outside of the atonement of Christ. For this reason it is very important to recognise that only Christians can do the necessary confession and repentance because only they have the spiritual authority to apply the blood of Jesus. Granted, Christian leaders who have been endowed with a higher level of spiritual authority than others can often be the most effective participants in such spiritual initiatives. But political, judicial and legislative authorities who are not redeemed by Jesus Christ and who are not filled with the Holy Spirit cannot be designated as point people for significant acts of repentance, although they may often be present when the act occurs and participate in whatever gestures of forgiveness may be appropriate.
     
  4. 4. Walk in obedience and repair the damage. Obviously this final step will frequently be the most difficult to implement, particularly in cases where the national iniquity has passed through many generations. Presumably, however, legislative acts and judicial decisions will much more readily accomplish their intended purposes once the strongholds of iniquity have been removed and the power of the Enemy has been weakened.
     

The Iniquity of the Fathers

Why should we be concerned about what our ancestors might have done? This is an important question raised by many who hear of identificational repentance for the first time. The answer derives from the spiritual principle that iniquity passes from generation to generation. One of many biblical texts on the matter comes from the Ten Commandments that Moses received on Sinai: 'I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations...' (Exodus 20:5).

Technically speaking, sin can be understood as the initial act while iniquity is the effect that the sin has exercised on subsequent generations.

I interpret the reference to the third or fourth generation as a figure of speech meaning that it can go on and on. Time alone does not heal national iniquities. In fact if the sin is not remitted, the iniquity more frequently than not can become worse in each succeeding generation. But the cycle can be stopped by corporate repentance. Quite obviously, the only ones who can confess the sin and put it under the blood of Jesus are those who are alive today. Even though they did not commit the sin themselves, they can choose to identify with it, thus the term 'identificational repentance.'

We have two clear biblical examples of how this is done, Daniel and Nehemiah: Daniel said, 'I was... confessing my sin and the sin of my people' (Daniel 9:20). Nehemiah said, 'Both my father's house and I have sinned' (Nehemiah 1:6).

Notice that each of these two confessions has two parts: the sin and the iniquity. Both Daniel and Nehemiah confessed sins that they did not commit, and both recognised that the iniquity had been passed to their own generation. Because of this they admitted that they were not personally exempt from the residue of that sin in their own daily lives. For many of us the second part is more difficult than the first because we have too often tended to fall into patterns of denial.

When we remit the corporate sins of a nation by the blood of Jesus Christ through identificational repentance, we effectively remove a foothold that Satan has used to attempt to hold populations in spiritual darkness and in social misery. It happens because we are recognizing that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, as Paul says, but 'mighty in God for pulling down strongholds' (2 Corinthians 10:4). When we do that, the glory of Christ can shine through and the Kingdom of God can come in power.

1996: 'Heal the Land'

The year 1996 has been designated as the time when Christians around the world agree to take aggressive action toward healing the wounds of their lands. Many initiatives begun in 1996 will continue in subsequent years. For example, a 'Reconciliation Walk' in which thousands of Christians will walk the known routes of the Crusades is being planned. Scheduled from November 1995 to June 1999, the top agenda item will be repentance for sins of Christians against Muslims and Jews. Other planned initiatives include:

  • American whites repenting on the sites of Indian massacres.
  • American whites repenting for the slave trade.
  • Christians from Japan repenting for the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
  • Europeans repenting of the sins of World War II.
  • Christians from the North and from the South repenting over sins of the American Civil War.

Similar events are being planned on every continent of the world.

As the Body of Christ agrees to pull down strongholds of corporate sin, the way will be opened for revival of churches and a harvest of souls greater than anything previously imagined. Identificational repentance gives us the power to heal the past."

[Quelle: http://www.pastornet.net.au/renewal/journal8/8d-wagnr.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-11]


7. Oder bewegen sich die Evangelikalen politisch nach Links?


Dass Evangelikale, wenn sie sich überhaupt politisch betätigen, die politische Rechte unterstützen, ist keine innere Notwendigkeit. So stand William Jennings Bryan (1860 - 1925), der durch den Scopes Trial gegen Darwin in den Schulen bekannt ist, politisch ausgesprochen fortschrittlich, indem er z.B. Pazifist und ein eifriger Befürworter des Frauenstimmrechts war.


Abb.: William Jennings Bryan
[Bildquelle: http://www.xtec.es/~aguiu1/socials/retrats.htm. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-16]

"Bryan, William Jennings (1860-1925) politician William Jennings Bryan fused religion and politics into a career of powerful rhetoric, social foresight, and unfailing vigor. Bryan was a member of Congress, secretary of state during a portion of the Wilson administration (1913-15), and a three-time Democratic Party nominee for the presidency. Bryan's political career was varied and influential, but later in his life he was a noted advocate of fundamentalist Christianity. He died less than a week after his participation in the famous scopes "monkey" trial, on July 26, 1925.

Born on March 19, 1860, in Salem, Illinois, Willy Bryan was precocious and active. His father, Silas Bryan, was a fence builder, turned one-room schoolhouse teacher, turned politician. Silas Bryan, a Democrat, wrestled an Illinois state senate seat from the Whigs by taking his campaign directly to the people—a style his son would later emulate. The Bryans were also fixtures in Salem s religious community. Silas was a Baptist deacon, while Mariah Tennings Brvan, Willv's mother, led the choir at Salem Methodist Church. By age eight, Willy was a devout Christian and remained one throughout his life.

William Jennings Bryan was the valedictorian when he graduated from Illinois College in 1881. He attended Union College of Law in Chicago, and in 1883 he passed the bar examination and graduated. Bryan married Mamie Baird in 1884. The couple eventually had three children.

The Bryans moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, still the frontier, in 1887 because of increased business and political opportunities there. Bryan was elected to Congress in 1890 and was reelected in 1892. He ran a failed bid for the U.S Senate in 1894. Bryan then edited the Omaha World-Herald and continued to speak at Chautauqua meetings and political rallies. Bryan reentered formal politics at the 1896 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The party was divided between hardened advocates of the existing gold standard and proponents of the expanded coinage of silver, which would make money more available for the poor, farmers, and others who relied on credit. Bryan was a dedicated "silverite," and his spirited delivery of the Cross of Gold speech garnered him the presidential nomination and made him a celebrity. In a memorable synthesis of religious imagery and political rhetoric, Bryan told the convention, "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." While the Republican nominee, William McKinley, made his campaign speeches from his front porch, Bryan's revolutionary campaign crisscrossed the nation several times on his whistle-stop train tour. Bryan lost the 1896 election, and though named the Democratic nominee again in 1900 and 1908, he lost those as well.

The Great Commoner remained active in politics, and in 1913 he became Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. Bryan promoted peace, so he resigned when he thought Wilson was steering the country into World War I. Bryan s later years were consumed with his dedication to conservative religious ideals. Bryan was at the front of the battle between theological liberals (who championed a scientific, or "higher critical," view of the Bible and Darwin's theories of evolution), and fundamentalists (who held to religious orthodoxy and social conservatism). Bryan spoke out against liberalism as it became a force in many Protestant denominations, and he was the impetus behind bills that prohibited public schools from teaching evolution. One such bill became law in Tennessee, from which the famed Scopes "Monkey" Trial, in Dayton, Tennessee, resulted. Bryan was one of the prosecution s attorneys at the trial, which became a clash between religious orthodoxy and modern science. Foolishly, Bryan allowed the shrewd defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, to place him on the stand as a defender of the Christian faith. Bryan, well past his rhetorical prime, performed poorly and became a target of derision for many Americans. Bryan died only a week later, on July 26, 1925.

Bryan's legacy still survives in three ways. First, he argued for many policies well before they became fashionable. Bryan stumped for the direct election of U.S. senators, female suffrage, a national highway system, the protection of bank deposits, a minimum wage, and secret ballot elections. Second, Bryan's political style, which emphasized charisma and personal contact with voters, is now the rule, not the exception, in American politics. Third, Bryan's legacy also includes a nondenominational Christian college named in his honor. William Jennings Bryan College is located in Dayton, Tennessee, the site of the famous Scopes trial.

[Quelle: Mark Caleb Smith. -- In: Encyclopedia of American religion and politics / Paul A. Djupe and Laura R. Olson [eds.].  -- New York : Facts On File, ©2003.  -- xi, 512 S. : Ill. ; 29 cm. -- ISBN 0-8160-4582-8. -- s.v. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

Unter den heutigen Evangelikalen ist eine progressive politische Einstellung selten. Eine Ausnahme machen die Sojourners:

Webpräsenz: http://www.sojo.net/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-16


Abb.: God's Politics: why the right gets it wrong and the left doesn't get it (Einbandtitel)
{Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}

"Sojoumers Community Sojourners is an ecumenical community, located in Washington, D.C., which represents something of an anomaly in evangelical circles: While fully grounded in Christian faith and theology, members of the community also work tirelessly for a generally "left-wing" political agenda of ending violence, racism, war, and poverty. The group sees itself as having deep historical connections to the "radical mission" of Christianity, a sense of action-based theology that makes it distinctive from both evangelical conservatives and secular liberals. The group has, for example, gained national attention as a voice against the arms race, apartheid in South Africa, and racism in the United States.

Sojourners began in the early 1970s with a group of students at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, who made a fledgling attempt to create a communitarian community. Their publication, the Post-American, which first appeared in 1971, was unique in its time for its position as both evangelical and firmly committed to peace and social justice. Although the Post-American continued, the community itself was short-lived. In 1975, however, in an effort to renew its early vision, the group moved to Washington, D.C., where both it and the magazine were renamed Sojourners. There, under the direction of founder Jim Waixis, who still leads the group, the new community re-created its lifestyle of communal economics. Also, in addition to publishing the magazine, Sojourners launched the unprecedented endeavor of branching out into action-oriented ministry in the inner-city neighborhoods of Washington. At first, members visited people in their homes, but in 1983 the community acquired a building in Southern Columbia Heights and opened the Sojourners Neighborhood Center.

Today, Sojourners continues in its original mission of  "radical discipleship ... evangelism, social justice, spirituality and politics, prayer and peacemaking" and works toward these goals at both the national and local levels. The neighborhood center currently operates in three main areas—children's services, feeding programs, and adult computer literacy—but has other projects such as adult job training and community organizing as well. Sojourners offers young adults the opportunity to volunteer at the site in a one-year internship program.

Nonetheless, in spite of the successful outreach of the center, the Sojourners Community is still best known for the publication that bears its name. Edited by Wallis, Sojourners is grounded in an action-oriented theology, and, contrary to the Religious Right, it has been willing to take unpopular positions on issues as diverse as the morality of capital punishment and China's repressive regime in Tibet. The magazine has printed the opinions of environmental activist Winona LaDuke and United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, supported the charges that the Central Intelligence Agency was aware of the Contras' role in the Latin American drug trade, and has even printed pieces in support of gay rights. These views make it tempting to align Sojourners with the political left, although its influences are highly eclectic, ranging from St. Francis of Assisi to the Anabaptists, from Clarence Jordan to Dorothy Day.

Because the Sojourners Community draws its strength from its interpretation of Christian service, however, in some instances its agenda can be at odds with that of most liberals. For example, the group seeks to restore spiritual priorities to the traditional categories of liberal and conservative. It also advocates a "comprehensive pro-life agenda," which opposes abortion even while it also rejects euthanasia, capital punishment, nuclear weapons, poverty, pollution, and racism.

Sojourners takes its role as an alternative to evangelical conservative politics quite seriously. Among the books and study guides the community has published is a title called Recovering the Evangel: A Guide to Faith, Politics, and Alternatives to the Religious Right. In 1995, under the leadership of Wallis, the Sojourners Community helped convene a new political organization, Call to Renewal [Webpräsenz: http://www.calltorenewal.com/. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-16] . This broad-based movement, which has a four-point agenda—rebuilding family and community, affirming life in every respect, ending poverty, and dismantling racism—includes representatives from the Children's Defense Fund, Bread for the World, and Maryknoll Justice and Peace. James Forbes, pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City, Tony Campolo of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, and Calvin Morris of the Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta all serve on the coordinating committee. Call to Renewal publishes a newsletter and hosts conferences across the country on topics such as welfare reform. Call to Renewal held a conference virtually across the street from the 1996 convention of the Christian Coalition."

[Quelle: Balmer, Randall Herbert <1954 - >: Encyclopedia of evangelicalism. -- Rev. and expanded ed.  -- Waco, TX : Baylor University Press, ©2004.  -- viii, 781 S. ; 23 cm.  -- ISBN: 193279204X. -- s.v. -- {Wenn Sie HIER klicken, können Sie dieses Buch bei amazon.de bestellen}]

"Sojourners ministries grew out of the Sojourners Community, located in Southern Columbia Heights, an inner-city neighborhood in Washington, D.C. The community began at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, in  the early 1970s when a handful of students began meeting to discuss the relationship between their faith and political issues, particularly the Vietnam War. In 1971, the group decided to create a publication that would express their convictions and test whether other people of faith had similar beliefs. What emerged was an evangelical publication committed to social justice and peace: The Post-American.

In the fall of 1975, the fledgling community moved to Washington, D.C., where both the community and the magazine took the name Sojourners. The biblical metaphor "sojourners" identifies God's people as pilgrims—fully present in the world but committed to a different order—and reflects their broadening vision. No longer defined solely by Sojourners magazine and its exploration of issues of faith, politics, and culture, the group branched out into ministry in its low-income neighborhood.

 The community lived together in common households, had a common purse, formed a worshipping community, got involved in neighborhood issues, organized national events on behalf of peace and justice and continued to publish the magazine.

The community also gave birth to a variety of ministries, including the Sojourners Neighborhood Center, which from the early '80s through 2001 ran after-school and summer programs for local children.

Over the years, however, Sojourners went through a variety of transitions. Slowly, the household communities gave way to an intentional community (with a common rule of life), the neighborhood center became a separate "not-for-profit" and people moved out of the community to care for their own families. Needless to say, Sojourners has suffered its own history of division, uncertainty, and glory.

Today, many people who work at Sojourners have never been a part of the community. Rather, we are a committed group of Christians who believe in the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice. We continue to publish the magazine, we have developed an award winning web site, we publish resources, we engage the wider Christian community through our preaching, teaching, public witness, and organizing, and we sponsor a year of volunteer service in ministry, discipleship and community.

Sojourners office building houses Sojourners magazine and Call to Renewal, a network of people, churches, and organizations working to overcome poverty. We have provided leadership and support over the years to various other activities including Witness for Peace, the Pledge of Resistance, the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, the Free South Africa movement.

 Rooted in the solid ground of prophetic biblical tradition, Sojourners is a progressive Christian voice that preaches not political correctness but compassion, community, and commitment. We refuse to separate personal faith from social justice, prayer from peacemaking, contemplation from action, or spirituality from politics.

Sojourners includes evangelicals, Catholics, Pentecostals and Protestants; liberals and conservatives; blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians; women and men; young and old. We are Christians who want to follow Jesus, but who also sojourn with others in different faith traditions and all those who are on a spiritual journey. We reach into traditional churches but also out to those who can't fit into them. Together we seek to discover the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. We invite you to join, to connect, and to act. Welcome to the community."

[Quelle: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=about_us.history. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-14]

"Members of Sojourners Community in Washington, D.C. wrote this 20th anniversary statement of faith in August 1991. At the time it was written Sojourners Community was an intentional Christian community. The statement represented the first time Sojourners attempted to write down, in such a formal manner, what it believed and lived from in a daily way. During that time, "Our Life at the Foot of the Mountain" served as a common rule for life together.

Today, the community context has shifted away from an intentional model; rather we are a committed group of Christians who work together to live a gospel life that integrates spiritual renewal and social justice. However, as we mark our 30th anniversary, the principles and values laid out in "Our Life at the Foot of the Mountain" still fuel our faith and our vision.

Our Life at the Foot of the Mountain
Sojourners Community Statement of Faith

Though the saint knows the mountain of God's love from having lived on its heights, the pilgrim in the valley can at least see the mountain and appreciate its grandeur from the distance. He or she can call out to the other pilgrims and tell them of life lived on the heights. - PETER KREEFT

We who live at the base of God's mountain often feel awed, and we always feel small. For 20 years Sojoumers Community has lived and prayed, loved and struggled, laughed and cried, despaired and rejoiced in the blessed shadow of the mountain of God's transforming vision for our world. In this jubilee year, we are called to work the experiences and stories of our life together into the language of our faith, to articulate into living statement the call the Spirit has breathed into us over these many years.

Roots

Sojoumers Community, which was first formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1971, is a contemporary expression of tradition deeply rooted in the history of the church. Since the time of the Roman emperor Constantine, when Christianity became an official religion of the state and lost the radical Pentecostal fire of the early church, there have been renewal movements within the church trying to recapture the spiritual, political, and cultural cutting edge of the gospel.

Sojoumers Community traces its lineage through the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Benedictines, Franciscans, and myriad monastic movements; through 16th-century Anabaptists and radical reformers, 18th-century Wesleyans, 19th-century evan- gelical revivalists, Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren; the historic black churches of the United States and the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany, base communities in Latin America and resisting churches in South Africa, Catholic Worker houses, rural communities, and inner-city ministries - all in the stream of Christian renewal movements, all given the vocation of calling the church back to its most authentic expression of the gospel.

These communities hold out a vision of what the church can and should be, both within itself and in the world. That early evangelical fire, that zeal for the good news of the gospel, has been passed down through the worn hands and faithful hearts of our Christian foremothers and forefathers to us today. For the last 20 years, Sojoumers Community, along with other sister communities, has humbly tried to carry that torch and keep that Light alive.

Footprints of the Spirit: An Alternative Community

Where the Spirit walks she leaves signs for us to follow. Christian renewal communities through time have been marked with some particular signs and beliefs that we continue to follow today. They offer alternative visions to the values of our world and the accommodated patterns of the institutional church.

We believe in Jesus as the Living Christ, God made flesh among us, whom we seek to follow with our whole lives; in his announcement and demonstration of the new order called the reign of God, and his proclamation of it in the Sermon on the Mount; in his saving power and grace, and in what he taught and showed us through his life, death, and resurrection.

We believe in the power of the Word of God and the authority of the scriptures in our lives; in the kind of biblical faith that is centered in and around God's Word so that it might be made incarnate and become real in the world.

We believe commitment to be centrally important - to God, to one another, to our sisters and brothers on this planet, and to the Earth itself.

We believe in binding up the divisions that the world often creates, especially those based on race, class, gender, or culture. We are called to combat racism in all its forms and to build a more just and pluralistic society where diversity is respected, freedom is secured, and power is shared. We refuse to accept structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class. We are committed to resisting sexism in all its forms and affirming the integrity and equality of women and men both in the church and in the world.

We believe that gospel faith transforms our economics, gives us the power to share our bread and resources, welcomes all to the table of God's provision, and provides a vision for social revolution.

We believe our destiny is tied to the poor and disenfranchised of the world, and that in their struggle we will find the hidden face of God.

We believe our lives to be an integral part of God's creation, to be lived responsibly and in harmony with the rest of God's creatures and with the Earth.

We believe that Jesus' way of nonviolent transformation and peacemaking is not a Utopian dream but a necessary path. Violence and war will not resolve the inevitable conflicts between people and nations. We believe that peace must begin with our own lives and our willingness to make sacrifices -and even suffer -for justice.

We believe that our obedience to the state or any other institution must be conditioned, tempered, and sometimes rendered impossible because of our higher loyalty to the reign of God.

We believe in the absolute necessity of spiritual formation and prayer to counter the assault of the world's dominant values on our hearts and minds and to center our lives and rest our souls in God.

We believe that living in peace with sisters and brothers in community is a continual challenge; that it is rooted in the direct and honest communication that Jesus instructed; and that it is made possible by the saving work of the cross, which breaks down all barriers, laying a foundation for justice, equality, reconciliation, and love.

We believe that authority in community grows out of shared life and faith, and that leadership comes from the free expression and affirmation of the rich variety of gifts and calls God has given to the body of Christ.

We believe that the Holy Spirit dwells in and empowers both the local integrity and international reality of the Christian community and that the Spirit binds us together across any national, cultural, or political boundaries.

Alternative communities bear the small, yet highly combustible, seeds of God's imagination. They must carry forward the ability to "speak truth to power," as Paul says. In so doing, they generate visions of God's reign in the world and challenge the structures and systems to measure up. That vision, rooted in profound hope, will transform some of those structures, reveal that others are woefully inadequate and suggest the need for new ones.

If people of faith are to stay true to this mission in the work we must be in constant dialogue with the Word of God. We must place the Word in the most intimate and tender center of our lives. We must always touch the face of God before we stretch out our hands to the work of the world, and we must reach back to God again and again. In this way is the passionate, consuming imagination of God borne forward.

Charismata: Gifts of the Spirit to Keep Changing Hands

Now to each one is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good... - I CORINTHIANS 12:7

Charismata…the gifts of the Spirit. These are distinctive gifts given to individuals and communities in order to be given to others. They are qualities or expressions of a local church that are for the building-up of the entire church. Charisms must constantly be renewed, reclaimed, and re-evaluated by the individual or community, being always open to new expressions of the Spirit and to the dynamism of mystery. The Spirit manifests itself in a multitude of ways in order to continually call God's people back to the primary Christian commitment, which is to love.

Sojoumers Community celebrates several charisms that have been consistently alive in us over the years. While there have been a variety of gifts given to individual members through the years, we recognize that our community as a whole has been given charisms to offer back to the church.

We celebrate the gift of prophetic witness and ministry and the call to be a visionary community.

We celebrate the gift of a vocation for social and spiritual transformation and the call to unite the two together.

We celebrate the gift of ecumenism and the call to integrate streams, traditions, and communities that have long been divided in order to become a community that is evangelical, catholic, and ecumenical.

We celebrate the gift of community and the call both to proclaim and create an alternative vision.

We celebrate the gift of life with the poor and the call to a ministry of hospitality and justice amid the pain and poverty of the world.

We celebrate the gift of peacemaking and the call to be instruments for resolving conflict in our relationships, in our neighborhood, and around the world.

We celebrate the gift of reconciliation and the call to break down the barriers that divide people by race, class, gender, and culture.

We celebrate the gift of conversion and radical discipleship and the call to link belief and obedience, word and deed, theology and practice, contemplation and action, spirituality and humanity, being and doing.

Our Life Together

Sojourners Community is dedicated to living out the vision of life and love given to us through Jesus. Our mission is to share the joy of the resurrected Christ with each other and our world through inward reflection and outward sign.

We order our lives together so that we may walk with those whom Jesus walked with - the poor, the weary, the outcast, the stranger - even as we acknowledge the poverty, weariness, alienation, and loneliness that is in each of us. We seek to order our lives not according to the values of the world, but by the values of love, compassion, justice, honor, and peace.

We believe in the vision of a resurrected world, a new order for living, brought about by the radical example of Jesus, in which all people are equal and each life is sacred.

We believe in loving God with our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole body, and our whole soul. We pledge to encourage and struggle with each other in this belief.

We believe in loving our neighbors and our enemies, no matter how they are defined by the world. We pledge to sustain and challenge each other in this love.

We believe in loving ourselves, for each of us is made in the image and likeness of God and each of us is a face of God in the world to be tenderly treasured. We pledge to encourage, respect, and affirm each other in caring for ourselves.

We believe in respecting all that is blessed by God - the Earth and all its wonders, the land and all its creatures, the human family and all its diversity - and we acknowledge the interdependent relationship that binds them all together.

We recognize that as individuals and as a community we often falter in our beliefs and promises. We often hurt each other through our misunderstandings, disagreements, selfishness, and weakness. In such times, we ask for forgiveness, we trust in God's mercy, and we rededicate ourselves to the vision of redemption upon which our faith is founded.

We freely choose to be in community together as a reflection of our faith and as a context for loving one another as Christ loves us. As individuals we must continually reaffirm our personal call to life in community and discern with one another as that call grows and changes. We dedicate ourselves to building a community where there is room to grow and the ability to let go.

We celebrate the mystery that, in their simplicity, these commitments are lived out in diversity. We establish this covenant with each other and before God to uphold these beliefs and pledges to the best of our ability.

May God bless us in these endeavors and give us courage for our journey.

---

WE WHO LIVE in the shadow of God's mountain - who live in the valley and gaze at its grandeur from a distance, or who hear of its transforming wonders - know that though this life is sometimes difficult, we would choose no other challenge.

We will continue in the next 20 years to turn to the deep well of the Bible and the path of Jesus to ground our lives, center our work, inform our social vision, chart our course, and sustain us over the long haul. We will be more dedicated to nurturing and tending to the joys and jubilees, celebrations and festivities in our lives; to fostering the simple pleasures of good company, invigorating work, shared meals, laughter, deep and renewing rest, and knowing the joys and hopes of God's presence among us.

For us, the word "radical" has always meant "rooted." The explosive mix of biblical faith and radical social renewal that ignited Sojoumers in the beginning will continue to fuel our pilgrimage and light our way in the years to come."

[Quelle: http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=about_us.community. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-16] 


Abb.: Inserat der Sojourners


8. Was vermag Informationsmanagement gegen christlichen Fundamentalismus?



Abb.: Sara Diamond
[Bildquelle: http://www.spiritlawpolitics.org/people.html. -- Zugriff am 2005-04-08]

"If we are to face the challenges posed by the Religious Right, information is of the utmost importance. It does no good to either ignore or ridicule the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells while they quietly go about the business of "taking dominion" over society. Rather, a sober recognition of the Christian Right's strengths and weaknesses can generate appropriate activism. Here are just a few suggestions:

  • Organize counter-demonstrations.

    Operation Rescue has been met with effective pro-choice demonstrations from New York to San Francisco. Feminists have organized escort services to help women past the angry mobs outside abortion clinics and have successfully exposed anti-abortionists' deceptive "crisis pregnancy counselling" centers. The anti-abortion protestors have the free-speech right to protest, but they do not have the right to destroy property or assault clinic patients. In Santa Rosa, California, a women's health clinic obtained a restraining order to prevent anti-abortionist "sheep" under Dennis Peacocke from pressing their faces against clinic windows and shouting insults at patients inside.

    In 1984, Dennis Peacocke's "Alive and Free" organized a Bay Area conference on Central America, featuring Guatemala's genocidal former dictator Efrain Rios Montt. The local solidarity movement planned a demonstration of such size that the shepherds were forced to relocate to an undisclosed location an hour's drive away.

    In 1988, northern California representatives of the Nicaraguan contras, in tandem with local Christian Right leaders and a state Senator, planned fundraising receptions for FDN leader Adolfo Calero. The mere knowledge that anti-intervention demonstrators would flood the hotel parking lots caused the contra boosters not to advertise the events on Christian TV and radio. At a reception in Sacramento, demonstrators outside far outnumbered the several dozen gathered inside to hear the contras' pathetic pleas, and the contra donors spent much of the evening grumbling about the U.S. public's unwillingness to support the "freedom fighters."
     
  • Pay attention to local school board campaigns.

    Unable to ban the nebulous "secular humanist" philosophy, the Christian Right hopes to gain influence over local decision-making bodies. Input from parents in favor of sex education, multi-cultural curricula and effective, innovative teaching methods can make a difference when fundamentalists try to impose their narrow world view on public education.
     
  • Monitor politically-oriented programming on local Christian TV and radio stations.

    A broadcast license is a public trust. With about 10 percent of the country's broadcast stations controlled by National Religious Broadcasters affiliates, the public deserves fairness and responsiblity from license holders. Under the Reagan administration, the "fairness doctrine" was overturned. However, local stations operating under "non-profit" status are prohibited from partisan "attempts to influence legislation." Station managers can be notified that, in the interests of fairness, they should provide a minimum amount of air time for "opposing" views from "non-Christian" candidates and elected officials and from the primary targets of Religious Right broadcasting, e.g. the gay community. Many of the Christian Right's radio stations are financially dependent on commercial advertisers and many of the TV stations \ are at the mercy of commercial cable systems.

    The public has a moral obligation to pressure station sponsors when the Christian Right broadcasts racist, anti-Semitic, hate-mongering programs. Licensed broadcast stations are obliged by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations not to maintain discriminatory hiring policies and to provide citizen access to an on-site information file, including public response to station programming and policies.
     
  • Pressure elected officials to investigate and prosecute violations of law.

    The Neutrality Act prohibits private citizens from making war (or aiding mercenary armies) against countries with which the United States is formally at peace. The Act has not been enforced in the case of the Christian Right's "private" contra aid network.

    Legislative lobbyists must conduct their activities within proper boundaries and cannot use tax-exempt, non-profit organizations for partisan goals.

    Organizations receiving any amount of federal assistance are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, creed or sexual orientation.
     
  • We need more public education on the counterinsurgency role of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID).

    As emphasized repeatedly in this book, Christian Right missionary projects are disproportionately represented in AID grant programs. The public has right to know how its tax dollars are used for "humanitarian aid" and ideological indoctrination in the Third World.
     
  • We need to generate awareness of U.S. destabilization efforts abroad via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

    The NED pumps millions of dollars into foreign propaganda outlets, pro-U.S. labor unions and partisan "human rights" organizations. Though "privately" managed (with a board of directors including numerous members of Congress), NED is funded with U.S. tax dollars.

    At the same time, we must address the fact that millions of our fellow citizens support interventionism, direct or indirect. We cannot hope to turn the tide on U.S. foreign policy without addressing how "good Germans" all around us have been lulled into apathy or, worse, false pride over a system we know to be unjust. Religious progressives have a particular obligation to reject and organize against the Right's use of religious rhetoric to legitimize militarism.

    Again, for the progressive movement as a whole, knowledge is the most important tool in the struggle to stay at least one step ahead of the war-makers. The Bible admonishes: "know thy enemy.""

[Quelle: Diamond, Sara: Spiritual warfare : the politics of the Christian right. -- Boston, MA : South End Press, ©1989. -- 292 S. -- ISBN 0896083616. -- S. 232 - 234]


Abb.: Einbandtitel

Ausführlicher beantwortet Sara Diamond die Frage "Why study the Right?" 1996:

"Why Study the Right

Among its many effects, the Oklahoma City bombing drove public interest in right-wing movements to an all-time high. Timothy McVeigh was the first suspect arrested, and before the ink was dry on his arrest warrant, reporters started trying to put their spin on the story.

I spoke with a reporter from the Associated Press who was trying to figure out where paramilitary violence came from. She was responsible for putting the rise of right-wing militia groups into context for readers nationwide. Yet she had no knowledge of the recent history of paramilitary organizations in the United States. She was incredulous when I told her that in the mid-1980s, white supremacist groups had waged a short reign of terror in the northwest and the Rockies, including the assassination of a Denver radio talk show host. After I told her of a series of armed robberies conducted by members of the Aryan Nations, her editor insisted that she call me back to demand proof. I suggested that they ought to look in the AP data base to retrieve their own wire service reports of just a decade ago.

A network television producer called, eager to frame the Oklahoma City bombing in the context of a "history of political violence." She wanted to know what I thought of the idea, and I suggested that she could examine the recent history of paramilitary groups and also the wave of abortion clinic bombings over the past decade. But that was not what she had in mind. She wanted to link the arrest of Timothy McVeigh to the leftist Weather Underground of the 1970s. Her thesis was that political violence from the Left was as rampant as that coming from the Right, and that all terrorists were driven by the same psychological disturbances. I suggested that if she was intent on looking at psychological rather than political motives for murder and mayhem, perhaps she could do a psychological profile of former President George Bush. She didn't get it. I had to explain that Bush had presided over the killing of tens of thousands of people in Iraq just a few years ago. I added that she might include a look at former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, who had aided in the killing of civilians in Central America in the 1980s. She said: "yeah, he's probably crazy."

We can blame the mainstream media for its poor handling of events and trends involving right-wing groups and individuals deemed beyond the pale. Or we can view these two reporters as broadly representative of the kind of ill-informed, shortsighted thinking applied to countless topics in the news, including the nature and implications of right-wing movement activity. These two professionals in the media industry are not much different than many other people trying to figure out what the Right is all about.

***

It was New Year's Day, 1995, two days after an apparently deranged young man named John Salvi allegedly shot up two Boston area abortion clinics and killed two women who worked there. I got a phone message from a veteran pro-choice and progressive movement activist. His group wanted some ideas for planning demonstrations, and he wanted to ask me about "connections" between the anti-abortion movement, corporations and hate groups.

It was an honest question but one with no simple answers. It was a question framed by some persistent assumptions about the nature of the U.S. right wing. It is true that some anti-abortion groups have received corporate donations, and there have been some cases of overlap between anti-abortion and white supremacist groups. But by looking for whatever evidence might cast the "pro-lifers" superficially in the worst possible light, my acquaintance, I thought, missed the point. In the days following the shootings in Massachusetts, most anti-abortion organizations condemned John Salvi's vile deed. But others in the movement came out of the woodwork to publicly advocate "justifiable homicide" against abortion clinic workers.

Mostly anti-abortion groups have been funded through small donations from members. Most have steered clear of linking abortion to themes of racial bigotry. Mostly the anti-abortion movement has spent two decades issuing propaganda about "baby killers," "abortuaries" and "holocausts." That constant drumbeat, and the relentless grassroots activism of thousands of people, inevitably led to rising frustrations and a drive toward vigilante violence by a minority of the movement. During twelve years of symbiotic ties between the Christian Right and the Reagan-Bush administrations, the federal government had been loathe to adequately investigate—let alone prosecute— more than a handful of those responsible for clinic violence. Why look for ties to marginal hate groups when the real strength underlying the anti-abortion movement has been its political influence within the Republican Party? Why zero in on corporate donations—as much if not more of such money goes to pro-choice groups—when the anti-abortion movement has relied largely on volunteer labor and a support base of thousands of activists?

To challenge the entrenched clout of right-wing movements and organizations, critics must know how the opposition really operates. For progressive people, I am convinced, that means abandoning some pre-conceived stereotypes about right-wing adversaries. It means knowing the gory details, like connections to hate groups. But it also means coming to terms with the Right's popular, grassroots base of support. It means seeing right-wing movements not as mere puppets for big business. It means looking beyond the psychotics who make headlines with their bloody deeds to see that most activists on the Right work quietly and diligently, using accepted tactics of political influence. It means facing the wrath that comes not just from big, anonymous government agencies and corporate power, but also from some of our own fellow citizens—ordinary people working overtime to effect a thoroughly reactionary policy agenda.

We cannot understand even shocking, criminal actions unless we examine the milieu that fosters the Timothy McVeighs and John Salvis of our society. We need to become familiar with the names, faces, methods of operation and, perhaps most importantly, the underlying philosophies of right-wing movements. Progressives avoid such knowledge at the risk of making unwise choices about what to do and with whom to ally.

Here is a case in point. During the Persian Gulf war and its aftermath, a number of progressives fell hook-line-and-sinker for the rhetorical pitches of demagogues and conspiracy theorists from the far right end of the political spectrum. Pacifica radio stations, long known as reliable sources of alternative public affairs broadcasts, promoted Bo Gritz, Craig Hulet and other luminaries of the far Right as if they were reputable analysts for the Left. Out of ignorance, Pacifica programmers misread the far Right's opposition to the Gulf War as a green light for a putative alliance. Those who fell to overtures from right-wing conspiracy theorists could not—or, in a few cases, would not—hear that anti-government rhetoric in itself did not imply laudable policy goals. For many years, clever operatives from the far Right made efforts to promote themselves as sources of information and analysis for the Left.

At the same time, it was not until the 1990s that the Left began to take seriously the political threat posed by the massive Christian Right. Because the movement's millions of foot soldiers were misunderstood as just a bunch of religious zealots, the Left forfeited its chance to counter-organize while the Christian Right rose to prominence in the 1980s, largely by working hand-in-glove with Republican policymakers.

Ineffectiveness in confronting the growth of right-wing movements has been due largely, in my view, to the Left's failure to see the full scope of our opposition. (By "the Left," I refer neither to liberal lobbying groups nor to the elitist clique that calls itself the Democratic Party. I refer to the small but grassroots movements for true egalitarianism in all spheres of life.) Elected officials and agencies of the state, by and large, represent and respond to corporate power. We on the Left have a hard enough time trying to figure out how to break the corporate stranglehold on what might otherwise be democratic forms of policymaking. But what sustains the prevailing system goes beyond the most powerful and visible agents of the state and the almighty dollar. Countless thousands of our own fellow citizens, organized effectively into right-wing social movements over many decades, play a key role in sustaining the existing political-economic system and all its attendant outrages. The Left will never win the kind of policies that would ensure the basic needs and rights of all without taking on the myriad forces working to maintain inequality— along class, race, and gender lines. The corporate class and the political elites who feed at its trough could not do their dirty work, in a procedural democracy, without the active and passive consent of the governed. Right-wing movements, often at odds with this or that particular policy or piece of legislation, nevertheless are what I call "system-supportive" of the status quo. They are part of the glue that holds the whole system together, and they do so in some consistent and predictable ways.

Critics of the Right are often confused by the nature of the Right's seemingly contradictory stance toward the uses of government power. People on the Right, for example, tend to favor the death penalty but oppose legal abortion. (Here the distinction revolves around the line between criminal guilt versus innocent "pre-born" life.) They tend to favor tough law enforcement but they also want the government to look the other way when businesses make profit while endangering or defrauding the public.

The Right's seemingly selective pro- and anti-government positions are a conundrum for the Left—until one sees that there are consistent patterns in the Right's orientation toward the state. We can see the patterns if we think about the Right's activities and positions historically and generally—there are exceptions to every rule. In the post-World War II era, the Right backed a deadly nuclear arms race and U.S. military intervention all over the world. The Right also backed government repression of dissident groups at home, from the McCarthy and civil rights eras, through the disruption of peace groups in the 1980s.

In the realm of social policy, the Right wants the government to outlaw abortion, and restrict access to contraception and pornography. They oppose gender pay equity, and they have opposed federal funding of childcare, which would ease the burden of working mothers. They support initiatives that would permanently condemn gays and lesbians to second-class citizenship. In essence, the Right wants the government to enforce behavioral conformity to Biblical morality and to maintain traditionally unequal relationships between men and women.

At the same time, the Right invokes an apparently anti-government stance when it comes to regulating businesses: on environmental standards, workplace and product safety, adherence to labor laws. In the 1990s, the Right stakes its claim on opposing the affirmative action policies that, however flawed in practice, were designed to better distribute career opportunities to subordinate groups.

The same right-wing groups that want big government to police disorder and immorality cry foul against those parts of the government involved in protecting the many from the few. To be characteristically "right-wing," then, is to endorse some government functions and policies and to oppose others. In other words, the Right holds a coherent and consistent set of positions regarding the proper role of the state. Some theorists view the state as merely the organizational embodiment of a society's wealthiest members, hence the term "ruling class." I draw my view of the state from the work of the renowned Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who theorized the state as the entire set of agencies, officeholders and even extra-governmental institutions responsible for preserving the structure of power and wealth in a society. The state involves coercive bureaucracies such as police and military agencies. But it also involves consent-winning institutions, such as schools, churches and the mass media. The latter set of players are not necessarily tied directly to the top economic class, though they typically act on its behalf.

In any event, we can see from the pattern of movement activities and philosophical positions that the Right favors a strong role for the state when it comes to enforcing order at home or abroad, be that through the means of the military, police or religiously inspired codes of conduct. At the same time, the Right wants the state to refrain from distributing wealth, power and legal rights more equitably throughout society. In the policy realm, the Right opposes the government when it taxes the rich, provides for the poor, regulates business, or intervenes against racially or gender-based discrimination.

What appears to be a contradictory stance toward the role of state power is, in fact, a quite consistent one. The Right has consistently rallied around three general tendencies: support for militarism (including domestic police power), traditional morality, and laissez-faire capitalist economics. In my book Roads to Dominion, I document and analyze the centrality of militarism, traditional moralism and support for unrestrained capitalism in a fifty-year history of right-wing movements in the United States.

There are exceptions from time to time and they, too, underscore the broader patterns. In the 1990s, some on the Right opposed the United States' entry into multilateral economic treaties such as NAFTA and GATT. Presidential candidates Patrick Buchanan and Ross Perot, in 1992, drew support for their opposition to these treaties. But right-wing opposition to NAFTA and GATT, unlike the stance of the Left, had nothing to do with wanting to prevent big business from tightening its grip on labor at home and south of the border. The rightists who opposed NAFTA and GATT invoked the traditionally nationalist current in right-wing thinking. They worried that the United States would lose its "sovereignty," i.e., its ability to dictate to other countries by forming the kind of "entangling alliances" George Washington cautioned against.

Nationalism also drove a minority on the Right to oppose the Persian Gulf war—not because lives were at stake but because Desert Storm set a precedent for United Nations-led military interventions. The trouble with the United Nations is that it cannot be relied upon to act one hundred percent in the interests of U.S. elites.

Similarly, the Right's reaction to abuses by domestic law enforcement agencies has been selective and hypocritical. Since President George Bush declared his War on Drugs, countless people have had their homes broken into and property seized illegally because police agents said they were looking for drugs. The prisons are filled with young people, especially African American men, serving long sentences for mere possession of illegal drugs. Yet few on the Right have a problem with this form of law enforcement, let alone with routine police violence, a la the Rodney King incident. Only following a pair of law enforcement fiascos—the fatal 1992 shooting of the wife and son of Idaho white supremacist Randy Weaver and the massacre of eighty-plus Branch Davidians in 1993—has the Right become preoccupied with police abuses. The Second Amendment rightfully protects gun ownership but it does not authorize weapons enthusiasts to resist any and all arrest warrants. Nor does right-wing demagoguery over Waco and violence in the movies address the roots of the violent crime we all fear."

[Quelle: Diamond, Sara: Facing the wrath : confronting the Right in dangerous times. -- Monroe, Me. : Common Courage Press, ©1996.  -- 236 S. ; 20 cm. -- ISBN 1567510787. -- S. 6 - 13.]

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