What Goes Around

Posted on by

As John McCain was nearing the end of his Senate career, he endured (not for the first time) outrageous outrage from the newly Trump-compliant GOP for voting against the use of a shady parliamentary maneuver to ram an otherwise desirable bill through Congress.

The Republicans found a way to pursue their shenanigans without McCain’s vote, and now they reap the predictable (and predicted) consequences. The Senate parliamentarian is currently ruling Democratic maneuvers in-bounds in part because Republicans used similar maneuvers.

Personally, I never liked McCain, but I wrote this when he cast his vote:

I can recall how angry we on the Right were when Obamacare was rammed through using procedural shenanigans. Did we object because making law by shenanigans is bad, or because it was the other side doing it?

The descent of the American constitutional order into chaos requires that at some point one side refuse to use the other side’s tactics. The GOP in general gets no points for this, because the GOP in general has proven itself willing to stoop as low as any Democrat. The GOP and Trump have earned each other.

McCain, however, gets to retire with honor. Well done.

I’ll admit that in the years since, I have sometimes thought about that post and wondered whether I overdid it. This was, after all, a procedural nicety.

But right now, I bet the GOP wishes it had shown more restraint, just as the Democrats wish they hadn’t eliminated the use of the filibuster for judicial nominations. What, after all, did Congress pass during the Trump years that was worth the current progressive legislative deluge?

Where does it end?

From My Day Job: Swords and Ploushares in a Divided Nation

Posted on by

Wish I could post here more frequently, folks. Combination of my writing a second dissertation (yes, I’m a glutton for punishment) and big transitions I have to manage in my day job – look for announcements about those later this spring. Big, exciting things are coming, if the Lord continues to grant our prayers!

In the meantime, I don’t usually post stuff from my day job here, but that’s mainly because I don’t usually write substantively in my day job. I’m trying to prevent the Oikonomia Network from becoming The Greg Forster Variety Show.

But I thought y’all would want to see this – my 2,000 words on the crisis of the American experiment at the present moment (particularly after Jan. 6) and the role of the church in determining the outcome:

What America needs most, humanly speaking, is credible leadership. We have plenty of leaders whose authority is accepted within their own particular social faction or subgroup. But we have virtually none who have credibility that is broader than mere loyalty to the tribe.

The incompetent management of the pandemic, our inability to enact criminal justice reform despite bipartisan desire for it, our burning cities and our broken capitol – all our crises point to the same need.

We need individuals and institutions able to stand up and say, “the public good requires us to do X,” and be widely believed.

Come for the riff on Conan the Barbarian’s unsuitableness as a model of civic virtue, stay for the inspiring summons to raise up a new generation of credible leaders for God’s people and world.

Keep your hand on the plow! And let me know what you think.

The OPC and George Floyd: For the Record

Posted on by

I love the OPC with all my heart, and was deeply disappointed when the denominational organ ran a profoundly unjust article this September on the murder of George Floyd – “unjust” not in some fancy, newfangled meaning of the term but “unjust” in the plain old-fashioned sense of failing to get basic facts right, to treat people fairly, or to manifest a fitting response (to “do justice to” the issues).

“There has been no actual evidence offered to prove that George Floyd’s death was racially motivated.”

For the love of all that’s holy.

In October, the organ ran a letter to the editor praising the article, and nothing else.

I didn’t see the article in time for my own letter to be printed in October, so I thought I’d wait. The November issue just came out, and they have finally printed some mild criticism – along with another letter, this one very intemperate and out of touch with reality, defending the original article.

I don’t exactly blame them for not running my own letter, but I thought I would post it here for the record. May the Lord speed the recovery of the OPC from this shameful failure of stewardship.

Dear Editor:

I take a back seat to no one in opposing riots and moral disorder. I live only five miles from the area of Kenosha, Wi. that was recently devastated by criminal violence, and I have seen the pain and destruction it caused – disproportionately to people of color. However, when an image-bearing human being and a brother in Christ has been killed – especially when the act is on video and we can all see just how cruel and unnecessary his death was, if we have the stomach to watch it – we fall far short of the appropriate Christian response if we cannot rouse ourselves to forthrightly condemn and passionately lament that act, alongside our condemnation of other evil agendas that have been opportunistically connected to it in the public eye. If the church cannot exhibit an appropriate and Christlike outrage and grief when speaking of the killing of our beloved brother in Christ George Floyd, then perhaps it would be better for the church to say nothing at all, rather than speak in a way that leaves an unmistakable impression that the church is effectively indifferent to the wonton killing of God’s image-bearers and children in Christ by agents of the state. This has nothing to do with the color of our Christian brother George Floyd’s skin, or any political ideology, or any transformative theological agenda to “change the world.” It is essential to the personal and corporate sanctification of God’s people as a church marked by God’s holiness and love. 

Separately, there is also the question of how the church should respond to the well-documented problem of continuing racism. In 2017, when torch-bearing bigots marched in Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” and, “Whose streets? Our streets!” my pastor played the video of that spectacle during Sunday services, and summoned us to live up to our identity in Christ and be people marked by love, who are prepared to take self-sacrificial stands against all forms of hatred wherever we encounter it. Certainly no one will deny that any pastor has the right to offer his thoughts on what are better and worse ways to deal with the problem of racism, if he has consistently demonstrated in the pulpit that kind of proactive and forthright commitment to keep opposition to bigotry at the heart of the Christian walk, where Jesus (Luke 10:30-37, John 8:39-59), Paul (Galatians 3:28-29, Ephesians 2:11-16) Peter (Acts 10:34-35) and John (I John 4:20) say it belongs.

Greg Forster

Pleasant Prairie, Wi.