Eucatastrophe Reader

First Movie in a Month

With God on Our Side - George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America

I think today's movie is the first I have watched in a month. It feels somewhat weird therefor to announce the title of it. "With god on Our side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right. Though I have had it for a month, the method in the madness of my watching it this week was simply that I am teaching Islam in my world religions class and I have gotten interested in the whole issue of Church/Mosque and state issue in countries of Judeo-Christian backgrounds and of Islamic backgrounds.

 A reader at amazon writes:

"The problem with having God on your side is that you can't be wrong. Not only that but with God on your side it is easy to persuade yourself that the ends you believe in justify the means you will use to achieve them. If someone is against you, it is easy to see that they are against God. Since you can't be wrong, why should there be any discussion? Why should anyone be allowed to stand in your way?

This is why it is dangerous for the rest of us to allow the evangelics to take over the Republican Party on their way to taking over the country. You can be sure, given the power, they will usher in an Age of Ignorance and Superstition to rival that of the Middle Ages and (by the way) initiate an apocalyptic war with Islam and any other religion or creed that tries to oppose their Truth. After all, to them this life on earth is only a brief period of time before the Judgment. And those who do not follow their beliefs will be in eternal damnation anyway. So what does it matter what we do today or tomorrow or the next when the Rapture is coming and Christ again and the day of judgment?"

It is interesting to find oneself standing outside of a conflict that by all intents and purposes, they were raised to find themselves engaged in. The fact is that I do have some fear of epistimological certainties and the arrogance that arises with "knowing you are right". A movie like this reminds me of the dangers of having too many things that should be uncertain asserted as certainties but it also reminds me of why I can appreciate people who can see that there are moral distinctions that matter sometimes. Not everything is a matte rof relativity.

I know that I myself may well have made mistakes in life in precisely those places where I made assumptions about black and white distinctions that were not so. That said, I have also made mistakes in not drawing distinctions where they may in fact exist.

Ultimately, I confess that there is something that makes me queezy about the notion of God being on "someone's side". I suspect that God prefers not to be the sidecar attached to anyone's motorcycle.

Question for Comment: Do candidates supported by the "religious right" scare you more than those opposed by the religious right? How do you explain?  

Jeffrey Brace

The Blind African Slave: Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace (Wisconsin Studies in

Jeffrey Brace

Yesterday, I went to the "unveiling" a new Vermont Historical Marker in Poultney. It commemorated the life of Jeffrey Brace, an African boy who was taken as a slave in the mid 1700's and who eventually fought in the American Revolutionary War and wound up living in Vermont where he moved soon after Vermont declared itself as a slave-forbidding Republic.

Jeffrey Brace (his given name) lived in Poultney Vermont for many years and encountered a good deal of prejudice and persecution there. His children were forced into positions of domestic servitude (indentured servants were not forbidden in Vermont) and he eventually took flight from the area and moved up to Sheldon Vermont, ironically, at about the same time that a number of my own ancestors "people" from Middletown moved there. There are some interesting connections I would love to explore more.

Anyway, what was really neat about the commemoration service in the East Poultney Baptist church yesterday was seeing a whole church full of African Americans (Brace's decendents had all been invited) and white Vermonters celebrating this guy's incredible life. One young man got up and said "My name is Jeffrey Brace [the name has been used frequently down through the generations] and I have always been proud of my name. It was my fathers name and my grandfather's name but now that I have read this story about where I came from, my chest will really be popping out". "I feel bulletproof" he said, referring to the challenges that his great great ... grandfather had been forced to live through and had overcome.

It was one of those moments where you realize how important work as a historian is. It can connect people to their ancestors in ways that change the future of their decendent's lives.

If I did not have Comparative World Religion class to get ready for tonight, I think I would read the whole book today.

You can read some of the book HERE or Jeffrey Brace's journal HERE. 

Question for Comment: Do you have any ancestors that particularly inspire you? If you could pick one of your ancestors to be a mentor or friend to you today, who would it be?