I knew this would be a great election year - lots of good stuff to look forward to. But even I underestimated this, in particular, I underestimated John McCain.

I think Palin is a phenomenal choice for VP. And that is true regardless of gender. Her record of being the outsider and confronting corruption is the perfect pairing for McCain's "maverick" image.

The other great thing is how foolishly the Obama campaign walked right into McCain's trap - and started scrutinizing Palin's experience.

On Hannity & Colmes last night, there was this little gem:

Alan Colmes: Do you believe that Sarah Palin is ready, Day One, if God forbid something happens to John McCain?

Mike Huckabee: I think she’s far more ready to be President if something happens to McCain than Barack Obama would be if something doesn’t happen to McCain.

I already liked Huckabee. But that retort just put him off the map.

Comparisons between Palin and Obama are just awesome. If you read nothing else about Palin, make it Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama by Jeff Emanuel at redstate.com. It's actually quite factually accurate. Which is what makes it all the more hilarious.

Labels: politics

The Obama campaign has no class. Their reaction to McCain's choice of Sarah Palin to be VP this morning:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies. That's not the change we need, it's just more of the same.

Wait, did you hear the birds chirping? No congratulations in that statement, at all.

Hmm, let's respond to each of these points:

1) "Former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency." Or how about a "community organizer," originally elected in one of the most corrupt districts in the country, who had barely been in the US Senate long enough to take a breath before being pushed on the public as presidential material? This is an argument Obama does not want to enter into.

That Palin comes from a small town means she is an outsider. That plays well, especially when all the other candidates are Senators. If Obama wants to stay away from being attacked as elitist, he better stay away from begrudging Palin's political background from a small town.

Further, she's a governor as well as a mayor, Senator Obama. That means she has executive experience. And she got there by taking on the corrupt politicians in her own party. Americans like that kind of experience, and she's been at it longer than Obama has (since Bill Ayers hosted Obama's first fundraiser). I've never heard of Obama ever taking on the corruption in Chicago - because he has specifically benefitted from it.

2) "...commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade..." Good. Because last time I checked, the "right to an abortion" isn't found anywhere in our Constitution, and if there is ONE Supreme Court decision that deserves to be overturned, it's the one that says people have a constitutional right to murder their unborn children.

3) "...the agenda of Big Oil..." This is the biggest stretch of the bunch, and reveals how desperate Obama's campaign is. Her husband is a blue collar worker in the oil industry, from what I understand. The corruption she took on was specifically linked to oil companies.

4) "...George Bush's failed economic policies..." Trying to describe McCain/Palin as a 3rd Bush/Cheney term simply isn't going to work. In any case, if you think cutting wasteful spending, attacking corruption, and lowering taxes is a "failed" economic policy, then that's one more reason for me to not vote for you.

Later in the afternoon, Obama made some comments of congratulations. He tried to excuse the earlier lack of class by saying:

I think that, you know, campaigns start getting these hair triggers.

Yeah, these are people picked by Obama that work for him. And he tries to pass the buck.

That his campaign immediately went into attack mode, and distorted her record and belittled her experience, reveals how little class Obama and his campaign has.

More of the same, I guess.

Labels: politics

Yes, I watched the speech last night. It was a good speech, and if you're a liberal, I can understand that you're more energized now than ever. For the first time in 16 years, the Democrats have a found someone who can give a stump speech without boring you to tears.

But the speech has issues. Mostly, the classic problem liberals have - that things are just awful and only the government can make them better.

There's a lot of good response to the speech today, but this response from Pejman Yousefzadeh over at redstate.com is one of the best.

I am not hard-hearted to those who suffer. I just am outraged that politicians feel they have to constantly and consistently appeal to our worst fears by making it seem as if suffering is everywhere and just around the corner from your home, barreling towards you to consign you to the depths of Hellish misery and that the only way to escape is to actually be reassured and grateful when Bureaucratic Man comes around and tells us "I am from the Government and I am here to help." We ought to know by now that governmental "help" is nothing of the kind. The same people that screw up your day while you are waiting in line at the Post Office, while you are waiting at the DMV or while you are dealing with the recalcitrant IRS gnome who is impervious to reason are the ones who will be put in charge of your health care, will administer tax policy and will usurp your right and the right of your community to raise and educate your children. All the pretty words in the world can't hide that ugly fact.

Just like global warming (of which there has been none for 7-8 years), I'm tired of hearing how awful the economy is. Even last night, Obama talked about the economy being in such bad shape, ignoring the report yesterday that the GDP grew at 3.3%. Just like how the Democrats are ignoring the progress in Iraq, Democratic victory this year is dependent upon voters believing everything is awful. Even when it isn't true.

Labels: politics

The Obama link with Bill Ayers has been heating up lately in the press, and for good reason. That Obama has been a close friend of Ayers, and that Ayers is a huge political supporter of Obama (including helping him get his start in politics), is an important piece of information that the public should be made aware of.

Or, if you're Obama, you surely believe that the public should not be made aware of it. Reading how Obama's campaign has been trying to handle this issue reminds me heavily of the Clinton years. That is, when your opposition is trying to push out information that can destroy your political power, you do everything you can to shut them up.

Last week, the group American Issues Project released a commercial clearly outlining the links between Obama and Ayers.



Obama's initial response was to blame the whole thing on McCain - whose campaign wasn't a part of this commercial at all. But Obama's response only highlighted the issue further, and the media picked it up that much more. So Obama's campaign filed a complaint with the Justice Department against the American Issues Project, claiming that they violated FEC rules by running the ad.

Recently, Stanley Kurtz wrote an article for the National Review outlining the Obama-Ayers links, and his efforts to get access to archives at the Univsirty of Illinois at Chicago (where Ayers is a professor) that would further provide evidence of their close association while Obama served on a board of a group that Ayers founded at the university.

These records were only recently released a couple of days ago - after a lot of suspicious runarounds with the University (detailed in Kurtz' article, which was written before the University finally agreed to release the documents). Thus, Kurtz has a lot of light to shed on this issue as he has been pouring over this material over the last couple of days.

Kurtz was to be on WGN radio in Chicago last night to discuss this, but Obama sought to have all discussion of the topic removed from the station:

"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."

The Obama campaign also urged supporters to flood the radio station with complaint calls. The Milt Rosenburg show asked the Obama campaign to send someone to appear on the show to respond, but that didn't happen. Obama has steadfastly refused pretty much any talk radio appearance requests.

This is Obama's playbook - any time serious criticism is leveled against him, you do what you can to shut them up. Tell them your wife is off-limits (though she's campaigning heavily for you). Characterize them as as "right-wing hatchet man," a "smear-merchant," pushing "fear-mongering terrorist smears." Oh, and of course, you have to accuse them of "lowering the standards of political discourse." Then for good measure, file a complaint against them with the Justice Department, and hope that an investigation will either cost them a lot of money, or hopefully shut them down altogether.

This is the kind of tactic any typical politician would take - when you can't argue against a position, demonize the opposition and if possible, shut them down. If you seriously think that Obama, who was been handed multiple elections by a corrupt Chicago poltical machine, represents any "new kind of politics," you're going to be very, very disappointed.

This is the kind of tactic Obama uses while a candidate. Imagine what would happen if he becomes the president. Given that Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats want to re-enact the Fairness Doctrine, it would be easy for Democrats to squelch this kind of opposition using new FCC rules once they have full control of the government.

More of the same.

UPDATE: more links on this story: Michelle Malkin includes some comments from people who listened to the show and how some of Obama's supporters were trying to disrupt it.

Labels: politics

If you've been following my blog for any time at all, you already know that I've become a fan of Frank Viola's books. Not that I've read that many of them, actually - the first one I read was Rethinking the Wineskin, a book that really shakes you down to your foundation in terms of the way you approach the New Testament. Earlier this year, Viola released Pagan Christianity with George Barna, his first in a series of re-releasing some of his older books, updated a little bit and with more serious publisher backing. Before Pagan, Frank Viola's books were a little more obscure.

Pagan Christianity garnered a lot of attention, partially because it came on the heels of Barna's Revolution. But the response was more intense, because it revealed the aspects of the modern institutional church that have no Biblical basis, and went further to discuss how they undermine Biblical principles. You can't publicly criticize nearly all aspects of the modern institutional church - church buildings, order of worship, sermons, the clergy system, dressing up for church, music ministers, tithing and salaries, modern baptism and communion practices, and modern Christian education - without getting a lot of backlash. I participated in many a blog discussion about that book, responding to a lot of criticisms from people who had actually never read the book.

In any case, the Christian community's reaction to Pagan (as well as to Revolution) all kind of missed the point. I think it's important to scrutinize all of the things we find in the institutional church, and to step outside of it - but if it just stops there, you're left with nothing. Or in some cases, just a smaller copy of the institutional church that happens to meet in a house. The question really is, if we shake off all of the institutional baggage, what do we do instead? The answer to that, thankfully, is found in the New Testament. And dealing with that is what Reimagining Church is all about. It's not about creating some new church, really - it's about reimagining in light of a true apostolic tradition - the apostolic tradition that has been passed down to us as scripture.

If Pagan shed light on all of the aspects of the modern institutional church that are not Biblical, Reimagining is about shedding light on Biblical practices that the modern institutional church chooses to ignore.

While Pagan Christianity was an update of a previous Viola book with the same title, Reimagining Church is actually an update of Rethinking the Wineskin. So I don't really have to go into too much detail about it - if you really want to know more about Reimagining, read my comments about Wineskin, which were very detailed and broken down essentially by chapter. (My comments on that one were possibly too detailed - I always fear that authors will get offended if I quote and summarize so much!)

I covered the following areas of the original book:

• Gatherings
  
• Common Meal
  
• The House
  
• Family/Community
  
• Leadership - Oversight
  
• Leadership - Visionary
  
• Purpose
  
• Membership
  
• Boundary
  
• Tradition

All of these elements are in the updated book, though organized a little differently, and expanded in some cases. So I'll just give you my impression of the difference.

Overall, I'd say that this book is quite a bit better. While every bit as challenging and disturbing (in the appropriate sense), I think some of the reorganization helped the book to come across a little more clearly. Early on in the book, Viola included some specific testimonies of people who have been exposed to organic church - this was a great idea, and helped to bring the book down to a relational level early on.

One of the aspects that people struggle with the most when discussing issues of organic Christianity is the lack of official leadership. Viola includes an entirely new chapter to address specific questions people have, based on specific scriptures, as well as dealing in a general sense with the word choices used in the original Greek compared to how we translate and use those words today to justify hierarchical, authoritative church structures (any church with a "pastor"). This chapter alone is worth the new version of the book, and I'd encourage someone (perhaps even Viola) to go further and deal with this type of topic in a book all its own.

I did find it interesting that the metaphor of the "wineskin" was almost totally absent from this book. It is described once or twice, and alluded to a couple of times, but this is far different from how prominently the metaphor was featured in the original. What was really good, though, and totally new to this book, was the emphasis of the trinity as the organizing metaphor. Specifically, that the church is really supposed to reflect the image of the trinity - no hierarchical structure, mutual submission, unity, etc. This was a fundamental shift that I think had a great impact on the book. The metaphor of the trinity better reflects the nature of the church, and is a better returning point than the wineskin was.

There is one quote I wanted to share from this book. I shared a similar quote from the original, but it is important enough that it bears repeating.

Seeking to repair a house that has cracks in its foundation will never prove productive. I believe it's time that we honestly examined the structural integrity of the modern church system. I strongly believe that the clergy system, which includes the modern pastoral office, is what needs to be abandoned. It's the system that's one of the main culprits, not the people, the motives, or the intentions. Experience has taught me that an institutional church will never fully embody the dream of God until it recognizes that the framework within which it operates is inadequate and self-defeating. Despite the good intentions of the persons who populate it, the interior design of the organized church sets us up for defeat.

True renewal, therefore, must be radical. That means it must go to the root.

The concept of clergy, and more important, the idea of a "pastor," is central to the experience of Christians who have been raised up in a modern institutional church. And to those of us who have had this experience, it is the idea of stripping this away the "pastor" that is the most disturbing aspect. The pastor represents some sense of safety, in that even if I don't know what to believe or what to do, at least the "pastor," who is "ordained," and is professionally committed to the church, will provide me with good leadership. Yet an honest examination of the New Testament reveals that there is nothing there that justifies the modern concept of "pastor." And it is this single concept that most plagues the church and keeps her members silent and passive in the Christian life. The pastor stands, almost literally, between us and Christ - as long as we look to that official leadership we will never fully understand the functional headship of Christ and the mutual edification between members of Christ's body.

In some ways, I think that Revolution, Pagan Christianity, and Reimagining Church are like a trilogy. Like any great trilogy, the first part, Revolution, introduces the players, the problems, and the concepts. While it can stand alone, it alone it does not tell the whole story. Pagan Christianity plays the role of the middle part of a trilogy - things turn dark, problems continue to rise, until you're not sure how things can possibly get better. Then finally, like in the last part of the great trilogies, Reimagining Church reveals the way out, the way back to how things were better back back in the beginning, and redefines the way you see the entire story.

It takes radical thought to challenge the existing institutional church tradition. But it is exactly this tradition that must be scrutinized. If you've ever asked the question why - as in why in the world do churches do things the way they do - you owe it to yourself to read this great trilogy - but if you only read one of them, read Reimagining Church. But be warned: it just might make you question everything about the modern institutional church.

Labels: books, church, house church, reviews