So here I ask myself: what spook outfit would want to harass the godfather? (First guess: all of them, because he’s sidelined & made fools of them from the jump.)
And how could they do that, with decent cover?
Now recall the convenient fact that apparently Junior lied like a rug (as did so many others) when he was at the Intel Committee before. So in some cubbyhole at Langley, or wherever, the light went on:
Burr -Voilà!
Theology as self- and group-defense was part of our 1999 response to the opening query about “Why theology”? It was current then; it was imminent when I visited that school; and it is immediate now.
But I also insisted there were positive reasons to write, read and talk about theology, which we defined as
“the ongoing work of self-examination and definition which any living faith community faces. This ever-unfinished work is at the center of Quaker Theology’s efforts; indeed, it provides us with our working definition of theology, which is: disciplined reflection and continuing conversation about individual and communal religious experience. It seems to us that such disciplined reflection is part of our religious duty. After all, in Matthew 22:37, Jesus includes in the first Great Commandment the imperative to love the Lord “with all your mind”; we think Friends today could do better at following this call.”
These positive reasons for theology are also still relevant, if seemingly sidelined by the rush of current events. It’s often been a struggle to make room for it, but we’ve worked at it.
So I was in Wal-Mart yesterday at the prescription counter. Had two renewals to pick up. One was Losartan, for blood pressure. W-M had sent me a text that it was ready. The other was — well, another blood thing. There was a line. It was moving slow. I was pressed for time. A harried-looking … Continue reading The Attack of the Generic Meds
“Fiddle” is a woefully insufficient word to describe much of what happened. “Cheating” is plainer, thus more accurate. Chicanery, duplicity and treachery are apt corollaries.
In some of these recent cases, particularly Indiana and Northwest yes, the fiddlers/cheaters got their way. In North Carolina, Western & Wilmington YMs, they faced pushback, and the “fiddles” didn’t work out as planned. In our culture today, it’s a pushback world.
So that’s another quibble with “Fiddle”. Cheating, if identified and faced, can be stopped, or at least blunted; but besides calling a treacherous spade a corrupt shovel, a meaningful response requires courage. Speaking truth to power, carrying the cross, and all that. Or, in pietist argot, “spiritual combat.”
Theology is about more than persons, though; it also deals with ideas. And while theological notions are often arcane and tedious, some can be startling, even shocking. At least several times in this effort they have shocked this editor. Many of these shocks came from reading and reviewing books. (It does help if a theologian is something of book nerd.)
For instance, the most acute critique of the reigning ideology of permanent war that has possessed America’s rulers since at least 2001came to my desk not from a liberal or left-winger, but from their polar opposite, a strict evangelical-fundamentalist and libertarian named Laurence M. Vance. His book, Christianity and War, and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, was miles ahead of most other antiwar screeds I have read (or written); it was reviewed and excerpted in QT #20.