ORDERED DIALECTIC MAINTAINED

Religious Award Maintains Delicately Ordered Balance

By Fabian Colbachi for CPW News Service

"I'll risk that this is not going to be redacted like your previous post, Winsip.  And if it is?  I'll just post it elsewhere."  -Fabian Colbachi

     It is not often that the carefully balanced relationship between the church and state under capitalistic and communistic cultures is so obviously revealed, but that is what happened in February, 2011 when a Texas Presbyterian seminary broke with tradition and awarded not one, but two of its alumni with recognition for their fine representation of the Christian Gospel.

     Carlos Emilio Ham, had been the moderator of the largest Protestant denomination in Cuba during the Castro regime that changed the island nation from a capitalistic economy where, as we have seen in popular films like The Godfather, life was riddled with the excesses of unrestrained free market engorgement that led to the Castro overthrow, not unlike the sale of opium in China that led to its Cultural Revolution.  The Castro regime change promised a new future for the small island nation, but as we now know it led to the “Missiles of October”, the “Muriel Boat Lift” and strained relations between Cubans, the U.S.,  and expatriated Cuban nationals clustered primarily in Florida and enjoying a standard of living that seemed justified in spite of the excesses inherent in the free market.  Socialism with freedom and Capitalism with justice remains an illusive dream.

     When a Corpus Christi, Texas church awarded Rev. Ham a scholarship to the seminary, some were surprised that such a kind and apparently open gesture would be made public. Religion and politics can seemingly make strange bedfellows unless they are seen within an ordered dialectic that seeks to maintain civility and decorum.

     Of course, the question of “whose civility and decorum” remains a carefully hidden secret while organized churches tap dance around the gold coins upon which is the image of Caesar.   The Caesar of the left and Caesar of the right are  always juxtaposed on the same coin.  It would seem to many that true religion would pay homage to those who have best reminded the world that all Caesars owe homage to God alone who has created ex nihilo….out of nothing….all that is.

     With his Doctor of Ministry degree in hand, Rev. Ham rose to the highest ranks of the World Council of Churches as a specialist in evangelism.  Presumably, from that position he would have first-hand knowledge of how world governments use and abuse evangelism for the sake of purely political objectives.  He would understand Capitalism’s tendency to varnish the most self-aggrandizing behavior with the hypocritical spiritual pronouncement by its religious leaders while understanding Communism’s resistance to any authority higher than the state…..in a word…..God.

     Standing, as he did to receive the seminary award with Lt. Col. Gilley Richardson, U.S. Army retired, one seminary alumni who wished not be identified said of Ham….“I wonder if the former General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, God rest his soul, is feeling the pain that Rev. Ham is surely feeling?” 

     When asked to clarify he said simply, “the shoes of the fisherman are crusted with bovine defication.”   Whatever that meant.  It was later learned that one of the seminary’s professors had been the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches and that he had also been instrumental in a U.S.  Senatorial race in Connecticut that put the more liberal, William Benton, over  the top in a bitterly fought contest between Benton and Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of two U.S. presidents.   Prescott was implicated in the historic fascist-leaning “business plot” of the 1930’s that was made public by two time Congressional Medal of Honor winning Marine, General Smedley Darlington Butler.  That Connecticut senate race employed the brutal smear tactics of “Red Scare” progenitor, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who viciously attacked Benton's civil rights record which McCarthy saw as subversive.

    The anonymous alumni referred to a type of imposed tension and dialectic in the giving of the double-award.   The ceremony came at a time when the seminary, a Presbyterian seminary, was under fire from Methodists for  a poor record of minority inclusion.  He said that he believed that the  dual-award was carefully crafted for its apparent public relations message and redemption value.  "Madison Avenue’s best spin-meisters could not have done a better job of it," he said.  The outspoken, yet veiled, alumni said that it was his impression that this seemingly local event provided a bird’s eye view of a fascinating puppet parade being  meticulously orchestrated. 

     “You remember that America’s leading nuclear scientists, Einstein and Oppenheimer, were stripped of their effectiveness as peacemakers…. 'Oppy' literally divested of his national security clearance by the efforts of Senator Joseph McCarthy, Rice University’s Kenneth Pitzer and Yale's  William Liscum Borden?  Oppy refused to make bigger bombs. That was while Pitzer was developing high octain fuels for the petro-chemical industry.  Oppy argued for the peaceful use of nuclear energy for powering the world. The petro-boys said it was far too risky.   So what do they do?  They powered the U.S. Navy’s most explosive weapons, gigantic aircraft carries and submarines with small nuclear reactors while the U.S. lead paint and varnish companies employed former U.S. military officers to sell the lobotomized American public on the survivability of structures during a nuclear holocaust... if only they’ll follow the Civil Defense plan and paint their homes with lead based paint.  Meanwhile, telling everyone that we live in  a Cold-War age of mutually assured destruction, they at the same time were lacing gasoline with lead, too.  That was a boon to the lead mining companies whose mainstay has long been musket balls and bullets.  Lead miners Moses and Stephen Austin would be proud. George Luther Stearns, a Civil War backer of abolitionist John Brown, attempted to  corner the lead market during the Civil War. He would likewise have marveled at the resources gone up in gray smoke into the upper ozone layer....for a nifty profit.”

     “Yes,” said the anonymous alumni who added definition to the ceremony...  “It wasn’t exactly like they're giving the award to St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Theresa, or even to a some creative contemplative cross between Thomas Merton, Frederick Buechner or Eugene Peterson  and John Muir, is it?” he asked.

     “There they are, the religious representatives of two historically warring governments who had missiles aimed at each other, now being led at the same time as the seminary’s need for a redeeming photo-op to shake hands while seeming to elevate the very group that recognizes them following a recent public embarrassment.  The dialectic is maintained.  Whatever rises does converge…but I’m not really sure what that has to do with the Gospel.  Sometimes these things have more to do with the physics of a septic tank.  It might be different if we weren't at the same time waging unjust wars, exporting attack helicopters to undergirt unjust regimes while denying it and pronouncing blessings on war from America’s pulpits,” he concluded.  “Good grief.  It is my understanding that the Muslim Brotherhood who is poised to reclaim power in Egypt was actually doing our CIA’s bidding in years past if not created by us for the purpose, else why did they not rebel against Mubarak long ago?  And the former Soviets continue to support the Syrian bully? You see what I mean when I talk about the bull shit on the shoes?  It appears to me to be an RCA, a random copulative assembly.”

     “A what?” I asked.

     “A random copulative assembly.  You know," he said.  "A cluster fuck....religiously speaking."
     "But you say this isn't a random at all, but planned," I retorted.

     "Okay, then, a planned copulative assembly.....a PCA where the real winners are the musket ball makers.  Will we never grow up?" he asked.