In remembrance of Martin Luther King: Sacred Selma is no bridge to Sodom

[first published March 17, 2015]

{Jan 21, 2019 Addendum--Student statement on fabricated racism event at pro-life march by students from Catholic Boys School-a white teen guilty of looking an old fraud in the eye. Looking eye to eye is the Latin root of the word RESPECT}

by David Pence
                               
One of the themes preached at Brown Chapel Church in Selma, on the day before the 50-year commemoration of 'Bloody Sunday,' was how the liberated Israelites forgot their true destination and were soon worshiping false gods in the wilderness.
                           

In the spring of 1965, local Negro Christians led a procession across the Alabama River in response to the shooting of a black Baptist deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson, two weeks earlier. The purpose of the march was to link the shooting to the need for black voting rights in the state. The destination was Montgomery, the capital 50 miles away. When the marchers left the city limits and crossed the Pettus Bridge they came under the jurisdiction of the county sheriff and state patrol. The sheriff, Jim Clark, had called all white males over 21 to be deputized as a county posse. The state troopers were George Wallace’s men, and eager to strike a blow for a segregated "Heart of Dixie." Several national TV camera crews recorded the onslaught. A nation still capable of moral outrage was shocked.

It was several days later that Reverend Martin Luther King and ministers from across the land came for the second Selma march. They only went to the end of the bridge, obeying a federal injunction against completing the march to Montgomery. After kneeling in prayer where the violence had occurred, they then turned around. Some of the younger black activists criticized King and dubbed that day "Turnaround Tuesday." It wasn't a compliment.

The third march (Mar 21-25,1965) two weeks later was allowed and protected by federal military policemen, army troops, and a federalized Alabama national guard. They completed the march to the state capitol in Montgomery four days later. This time, preachers from all over the country and famous entertainers were in the crowd to hear Reverend King's "How Long, Not Long" speech. He praised "white Americans who cherish their democratic traditions over ugly customs and privileges of generations to come forth boldly to join hands with us." He gave a history lesson on Jesus and Jim Crow:

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)

He explained the many contorted forms of segregation that it took to divide a Christian nation by color:

 They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; (Yes, sir) they segregated southern churches from Christianity (Yes, sir); they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; (Yes, sir) and they segregated the Negro from everything. (Yes, sir).  

But for this Christian movement the cry of "no justice, no peace" was not a threat of violence but the continued soul-power of love restoring men to brotherhood:

"And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man."

Finally he reminded us that persistence in protest does not come from the defiant wills of clenched fists, but the open hearts of men who trust in God:

"How long will justice be crucified, (Speak) and truth bear it?" (Yes, sir)I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, (Yes, sir) however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, (No sir) because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." (Yes, sir)How long? Not long, (Yes, sir) because "no lie can live forever." (Yes, sir)How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because "you shall reap what you sow." (Yes, sir)How long? (How long?) Not long: (Not long)Truth forever on the scaffold, (Speak)Wrong forever on the throne, (Yes, sir)Yet that scaffold sways the future, (Yes, sir) And, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above his own.How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Yes, sir)How long? Not long, (Not long) because:Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; (Yes, sir)"

Reverend King called President Johnson's speech, given ten days earlier on the Voting Rights Act, "an address that will live in history as one of the most passionate pleas for human rights ever made by a president of our nation"; and he noted it was given by a "president born in the South."

After his speech to a joint session of Congress, LBJ ordered that protection be provided to the Selma marchers. He challenged an attentive, wary, sparsely applauding legislature:

"The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, 'What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' "

The Voting Act became law on August 8, 1965.

John Lewis, congressman from Georgia, was one of the few men who spoke at the 50-year commemoration who also marched on Bloody Sunday. In his short and stirring speech before President Obama’s address, Lewis quoted LBJ's opening words to Congress: "At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama."

Johnson said in the same Selma-inspired speech: "I want to be the president who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races, all regions, and all parties." John Lewis began his talk not addressing the dignitaries, not even the president. He said, "Beloved brothers and sisters." He said we are here to "renew the soul of America." The movement was about love -- and John Lewis still remembered. It was about love of God and love of neighbor. It was not about black men yelling 'racist' at white men, but calling them brothers and calling them to love as Christ had commanded us. It always began in churches; and there was a lot of spiritual healing and calling on Jesus to grant courage. It was about redeeming love; and we cannot properly remember this day without remembering that building the spiritual bond of civic charity was driven by the redeeming suffering love of the Gospel.  

Lewis remembered: "We walked down that sidewalk over there. With a kind of military discipline, we were so peaceful, so quiet." Listen to the voice of Lewis, listen to his plea, and the spiritual echo of that day will come clear. Only their prayer time in a church when they were not so quiet had armed them for what would come next. It was not "their will against the will of the policemen," as the president said. For when Israel fights its enemies depending only on itself -- on its own will -- it always loses. These men and women knew they were following the will of God, and that is why eventually as Lewis said, "they knew the truth would win out." It was not their will that triumphed that day. Someone else was writing in His own hand, turning the soul-force of unrequited suffering into Victory.

                             

Rev King flanked (at far L) by Rev Abernathy and (far R) by John Lewis

It was shortly after Selma that a lot of chosen people forgot, again, where they were marching and Who was directing their march. Five months later the first great urban burning and looting riot would occur in Watts, California. That looked a lot more like the revelry at the Golden Calf, than the redeeming march through the parted waters of the Red Sea. Younger men turned the movement for Christian brotherhood into something very different -- black power, color identity, hatred, and a glorification not of redemptive suffering but redemptive violence. The Christian themes of following God’s will and reuniting a beloved community in the brotherhood of men under the Fatherhood of God gave way to color consciousness, sexual licentiousness, envy, greed, and wrath. “Soul” which once meant that spiritual principle of human life, which was instantly recognizable by men of every color, was turned on its head and came to be shorthand for “Black.” The jutting of the chin, the militant posture on college campuses, and the celebration of the criminal inside the confines of black ghettos had replaced the open hearts and hands seeking love.

The devil loves to tear apart. He is a divider and a liar from the beginning. He loves to come disguised as an angel of light, fighting for liberation but still peddling his same old chains of slavery.
And just what the racists had predicted started to happen. All the moral capital of the innocent, beaten by lawmen, was set aside. The march for freedom was perverted into a license for revelry -- just like the pagan erotic cult at the foot of Mount Sinai that had so angered Moses. The higher morality of love over law became the immorality of disrespect for authority and the law. "The Man" became the enemy. Another kind of male became the Superfly. Then, the greatest metaphysical error in American political history insured that the movement among men for the equality of public brotherhood was hijacked by the protest of middle-class white women against the sexual order of marriage and familial duty. This was coupled with a wild sexual rut among the males, again masquerading as a freedom train. The women said they would not be mothers and clamored for abortion, while the men said they would not be soldiers and ran from their protective duties. So many times during this forty years of wandering, the devious cults of "self" came cloaked in the sacred cloth of Selma.
                                 

"The Adoration of the Golden Calf" by Nicolas Poussin (1634)

White feminists were quite content that black men were into separatism. Back then, black men did not treat the analysis of the white chick with the obeisance we see now. The feminists left the black man his urban streets and the prisons. She and her soft white male allies took the universities, churches, and public service unions. Later, a crass calculation of everybody against the white male (down with patriarchy!) would lead to the diversity racket of electoral majorities and cottage industries in big cities, universities, and the world of non-profits. As Eric Hoffer said, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

Black men who wanted to progress in public office drank the feminist Kool-Aid in public speeches and policy, if not in their personal lives. Religious institutions rejected the patriarchy of the Lord's Prayer for the gender obfuscation of inclusion. The widows begged for husbands and the orphans for fathers -- and in the name of civil rights we gave them sexual anarchy, making more spiritual widows and orphans than ever before in our history. Under the rubric of diversity, a coalition was struck of rights and reparation, the black power movement, the feminists, and finally the homosexuals. The party of city immigrants and working men turned into an umbrella for diversity. God was exiled, the beloved community abandoned, and idols erected by a coalition of the oppressed.

The faith-healing, Scripture reading, and Gospel singing that broke the back of racism were sent to the back of the bus. It could be resurrected when needed for nostalgia, but it could no longer be taken seriously as a spiritual organizing principle. It was not a worship of the mighty God, though He still could be evoked for the closing of speeches. It was a celebration of "us," of the humanistic pride that turned worship of God into a celebration of congregations. The people celebrate themselves, savoring the wounds of their parents while rejecting their wisdom. This communal celebration of self had happened long ago. The people set out to make a name for themselves and forgot God. They built a tower at Babel.

The ordered relationship of sexual fidelity in marriage, the purity in thought and speech toward the sacred goods of God’s name and the marriage act -- these ordered relationships became the enemy of the new freedom divorced from freedom’s Author. And that public form of Christian love -- fraternal brotherhood among adult men -- now became the love "that dare not speak its name." It became a mantra of militant black men that they did not seek to love or to be loved by the white man. Brotherhood was for wimps, and soon the wimps would rule in a way no American man of fifty years ago could ever imagine.

The integrated body politic, the black and white males in a posse for justice who would protect the widows and orphans of every color -- that dream became a joke. The marriage of a black man and white woman or a white man and black woman -- that sacred bond was now allowed. But in a bizarre twist that could only come from the twisted Father of Lies, this natural love has now become a rallying flag to honor the unnatural. Those who marched at Selma would wonder at a president who diluted their blood with such acts of sexual sacrilege. All of us who were in the movement, we exchanged our glorious God for a grass-eating bull. Elections indeed were won, a coalition with those serving other gods was struck…but what doth it profit?
                                     

Bloody Sunday in Selma

There are many more female black faces in high places, and yet so many more male black faces in jail. Every third pregnancy by a black female is aborted -- five times the rate of white women. There are black males in elected offices, but all must worship at the altar of feminism to be admitted to the club.

In his speech at Selma, President Obama broke open the moral capital of the Selma "bank account" and distributed blank checks to the sexual pretenders. It had been his honest claim as a black man to that social capital which helped him defeat an entitled feminist for the presidency in 2008. But any honest assessment of Mr. Obama reveals he has done much more for the sexual revolutionaries than for interracial brotherhood among men. He said he would be Joshua, but the feminist brain chip is the paradigm most deeply implanted in his heart. The sense of solidarity with the men of his country or the men of other cultures who rule by the traditional male forms of patriarchy and fraternity is not part of the moral grammar of this mother's son. He considers patriarchy an evil, and masculine fraternity as fun for the playground but oppressive in religion and politics.

The billy clubs and tear gas of Sheriff Clark could crack open a man's head and break up a marching crowd, but they could never touch the movement's soul. But now the blood of the martyrs has been polluted at an altar to a foreign god in the wilderness. Our souls no longer rest in the Lord. The shame of our president is that his speech at Selma was a sacrilege against a sacred space. The president, whom so many of us voted for as an act of racial reconciliation, once again used his pulpit to preach not the saving grace of brotherhood but the enslaving confusion of the sexual revolution.

The Christian movement brings us back to the original promise of the country and the truth of Scripture. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Real peace comes from deeper and broader bonds. The tenor of the Christian movement, even in its dreams, was a return to some order that lay at the heart of our nature as creatures of God with human souls. It was a check written long ago which we had come to cash. We were not looking for endless change, and more and more categories of the oppressed that might be released from social obligations and rules of decorum. We were seeking something old -- that men might live like brothers, that a man and woman might marry and raise their family in peace, that elders would be called Mister and Missus.

Selma was a place in history where the fate of a nation was hinged. It still is such a place.  As President Johnson said:

"There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans -- not as Democrats or Republicans -- we are met here as Americans to solve that problem."

                                                         

President Johnson

Every crucial speech from that era reminds us this was a Christian movement of brotherhood that was deeply resonant with the initial Christian movement that formed the colonies and towns of America’s Protestant seaboard.

We cannot leave the interpretation of this day to the mistaken notion that sexual disorder is Selma's fruit. The bridge from Selma led to Montgomery, not Sodom. Montgomery was the city where the Reverends King and Abernathy first joined as ministers to unite the Negro community as Christians, and renew the whole city as a "Beloved Community" of fellow citizens. Sodom was destroyed; Montgomery was to be renewed. Selma was a spiritual movement that galvanized white and black people across the country. That’s why, within two weeks of Bloody Sunday, armed American white men protected the marchers from their persecutors. That’s why five months later a Voting Rights Act could be passed. If we can unite ourselves again under God and sing His praises loudly, then we can renew a brotherhood of fathers to socialize all our young men -- black, white and Hispanic -- into the Christian form of masculine love that is citizenship.

This spiritual renewal of the American soul is how the South will rise again. Let us be renewed in the public Biblical faith and Christian love of Selma. It is the road to the New Jerusalem which will shine with the glory of God when He comes to dwell amidst His people. Let us not ignore the living Lord or surely we shall be chastised; and the blood drawn at Selma will lose its sacred power "to renew the soul of America." 

In remembrance of Martin Luther King: Sacred Selma is no bridge to Sodom

[first published March 17, 2015]

{Jan 21, 2019 Addendum--Student statement on fabricated racism event at pro-life march by students from Catholic Boys School-a white teen guilty of looking an old fraud in the eye. Looking eye to eye is the Latin root of the word RESPECT}

by David Pence
                               
One of the themes preached at Brown Chapel Church in Selma, on the day before the 50-year commemoration of 'Bloody Sunday,' was how the liberated Israelites forgot their true destination and were soon worshiping false gods in the wilderness.
                           

In the spring of 1965, local Negro Christians led a procession across the Alabama River in response to the shooting of a black Baptist deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson, two weeks earlier. The purpose of the march was to link the shooting to the need for black voting rights in the state. The destination was Montgomery, the capital 50 miles away. When the marchers left the city limits and crossed the Pettus Bridge they came under the jurisdiction of the county sheriff and state patrol. The sheriff, Jim Clark, had called all white males over 21 to be deputized as a county posse. The state troopers were George Wallace’s men, and eager to strike a blow for a segregated "Heart of Dixie." Several national TV camera crews recorded the onslaught. A nation still capable of moral outrage was shocked.

It was several days later that Reverend Martin Luther King and ministers from across the land came for the second Selma march. They only went to the end of the bridge, obeying a federal injunction against completing the march to Montgomery. After kneeling in prayer where the violence had occurred, they then turned around. Some of the younger black activists criticized King and dubbed that day "Turnaround Tuesday." It wasn't a compliment.

The third march (Mar 21-25,1965) two weeks later was allowed and protected by federal military policemen, army troops, and a federalized Alabama national guard. They completed the march to the state capitol in Montgomery four days later. This time, preachers from all over the country and famous entertainers were in the crowd to hear Reverend King's "How Long, Not Long" speech. He praised "white Americans who cherish their democratic traditions over ugly customs and privileges of generations to come forth boldly to join hands with us." He gave a history lesson on Jesus and Jim Crow:

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)

He explained the many contorted forms of segregation that it took to divide a Christian nation by color:

 They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; (Yes, sir) they segregated southern churches from Christianity (Yes, sir); they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; (Yes, sir) and they segregated the Negro from everything. (Yes, sir).  

But for this Christian movement the cry of "no justice, no peace" was not a threat of violence but the continued soul-power of love restoring men to brotherhood:

"And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man."

Finally he reminded us that persistence in protest does not come from the defiant wills of clenched fists, but the open hearts of men who trust in God:

"How long will justice be crucified, (Speak) and truth bear it?" (Yes, sir)I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, (Yes, sir) however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, (No sir) because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." (Yes, sir)How long? Not long, (Yes, sir) because "no lie can live forever." (Yes, sir)How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because "you shall reap what you sow." (Yes, sir)How long? (How long?) Not long: (Not long)Truth forever on the scaffold, (Speak)Wrong forever on the throne, (Yes, sir)Yet that scaffold sways the future, (Yes, sir) And, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above his own.How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Yes, sir)How long? Not long, (Not long) because:Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; (Yes, sir)"

Reverend King called President Johnson's speech, given ten days earlier on the Voting Rights Act, "an address that will live in history as one of the most passionate pleas for human rights ever made by a president of our nation"; and he noted it was given by a "president born in the South."

After his speech to a joint session of Congress, LBJ ordered that protection be provided to the Selma marchers. He challenged an attentive, wary, sparsely applauding legislature:

"The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, 'What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' "

The Voting Act became law on August 8, 1965.

John Lewis, congressman from Georgia, was one of the few men who spoke at the 50-year commemoration who also marched on Bloody Sunday. In his short and stirring speech before President Obama’s address, Lewis quoted LBJ's opening words to Congress: "At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama."

Johnson said in the same Selma-inspired speech: "I want to be the president who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races, all regions, and all parties." John Lewis began his talk not addressing the dignitaries, not even the president. He said, "Beloved brothers and sisters." He said we are here to "renew the soul of America." The movement was about love -- and John Lewis still remembered. It was about love of God and love of neighbor. It was not about black men yelling 'racist' at white men, but calling them brothers and calling them to love as Christ had commanded us. It always began in churches; and there was a lot of spiritual healing and calling on Jesus to grant courage. It was about redeeming love; and we cannot properly remember this day without remembering that building the spiritual bond of civic charity was driven by the redeeming suffering love of the Gospel.  

Lewis remembered: "We walked down that sidewalk over there. With a kind of military discipline, we were so peaceful, so quiet." Listen to the voice of Lewis, listen to his plea, and the spiritual echo of that day will come clear. Only their prayer time in a church when they were not so quiet had armed them for what would come next. It was not "their will against the will of the policemen," as the president said. For when Israel fights its enemies depending only on itself -- on its own will -- it always loses. These men and women knew they were following the will of God, and that is why eventually as Lewis said, "they knew the truth would win out." It was not their will that triumphed that day. Someone else was writing in His own hand, turning the soul-force of unrequited suffering into Victory.

                             

Rev King flanked (at far L) by Rev Abernathy and (far R) by John Lewis

It was shortly after Selma that a lot of chosen people forgot, again, where they were marching and Who was directing their march. Five months later the first great urban burning and looting riot would occur in Watts, California. That looked a lot more like the revelry at the Golden Calf, than the redeeming march through the parted waters of the Red Sea. Younger men turned the movement for Christian brotherhood into something very different -- black power, color identity, hatred, and a glorification not of redemptive suffering but redemptive violence. The Christian themes of following God’s will and reuniting a beloved community in the brotherhood of men under the Fatherhood of God gave way to color consciousness, sexual licentiousness, envy, greed, and wrath. “Soul” which once meant that spiritual principle of human life, which was instantly recognizable by men of every color, was turned on its head and came to be shorthand for “Black.” The jutting of the chin, the militant posture on college campuses, and the celebration of the criminal inside the confines of black ghettos had replaced the open hearts and hands seeking love.

The devil loves to tear apart. He is a divider and a liar from the beginning. He loves to come disguised as an angel of light, fighting for liberation but still peddling his same old chains of slavery.
And just what the racists had predicted started to happen. All the moral capital of the innocent, beaten by lawmen, was set aside. The march for freedom was perverted into a license for revelry -- just like the pagan erotic cult at the foot of Mount Sinai that had so angered Moses. The higher morality of love over law became the immorality of disrespect for authority and the law. "The Man" became the enemy. Another kind of male became the Superfly. Then, the greatest metaphysical error in American political history insured that the movement among men for the equality of public brotherhood was hijacked by the protest of middle-class white women against the sexual order of marriage and familial duty. This was coupled with a wild sexual rut among the males, again masquerading as a freedom train. The women said they would not be mothers and clamored for abortion, while the men said they would not be soldiers and ran from their protective duties. So many times during this forty years of wandering, the devious cults of "self" came cloaked in the sacred cloth of Selma.
                                 

"The Adoration of the Golden Calf" by Nicolas Poussin (1634)

White feminists were quite content that black men were into separatism. Back then, black men did not treat the analysis of the white chick with the obeisance we see now. The feminists left the black man his urban streets and the prisons. She and her soft white male allies took the universities, churches, and public service unions. Later, a crass calculation of everybody against the white male (down with patriarchy!) would lead to the diversity racket of electoral majorities and cottage industries in big cities, universities, and the world of non-profits. As Eric Hoffer said, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

Black men who wanted to progress in public office drank the feminist Kool-Aid in public speeches and policy, if not in their personal lives. Religious institutions rejected the patriarchy of the Lord's Prayer for the gender obfuscation of inclusion. The widows begged for husbands and the orphans for fathers -- and in the name of civil rights we gave them sexual anarchy, making more spiritual widows and orphans than ever before in our history. Under the rubric of diversity, a coalition was struck of rights and reparation, the black power movement, the feminists, and finally the homosexuals. The party of city immigrants and working men turned into an umbrella for diversity. God was exiled, the beloved community abandoned, and idols erected by a coalition of the oppressed.

The faith-healing, Scripture reading, and Gospel singing that broke the back of racism were sent to the back of the bus. It could be resurrected when needed for nostalgia, but it could no longer be taken seriously as a spiritual organizing principle. It was not a worship of the mighty God, though He still could be evoked for the closing of speeches. It was a celebration of "us," of the humanistic pride that turned worship of God into a celebration of congregations. The people celebrate themselves, savoring the wounds of their parents while rejecting their wisdom. This communal celebration of self had happened long ago. The people set out to make a name for themselves and forgot God. They built a tower at Babel.

The ordered relationship of sexual fidelity in marriage, the purity in thought and speech toward the sacred goods of God’s name and the marriage act -- these ordered relationships became the enemy of the new freedom divorced from freedom’s Author. And that public form of Christian love -- fraternal brotherhood among adult men -- now became the love "that dare not speak its name." It became a mantra of militant black men that they did not seek to love or to be loved by the white man. Brotherhood was for wimps, and soon the wimps would rule in a way no American man of fifty years ago could ever imagine.

The integrated body politic, the black and white males in a posse for justice who would protect the widows and orphans of every color -- that dream became a joke. The marriage of a black man and white woman or a white man and black woman -- that sacred bond was now allowed. But in a bizarre twist that could only come from the twisted Father of Lies, this natural love has now become a rallying flag to honor the unnatural. Those who marched at Selma would wonder at a president who diluted their blood with such acts of sexual sacrilege. All of us who were in the movement, we exchanged our glorious God for a grass-eating bull. Elections indeed were won, a coalition with those serving other gods was struck…but what doth it profit?
                                     

Bloody Sunday in Selma

There are many more female black faces in high places, and yet so many more male black faces in jail. Every third pregnancy by a black female is aborted -- five times the rate of white women. There are black males in elected offices, but all must worship at the altar of feminism to be admitted to the club.

In his speech at Selma, President Obama broke open the moral capital of the Selma "bank account" and distributed blank checks to the sexual pretenders. It had been his honest claim as a black man to that social capital which helped him defeat an entitled feminist for the presidency in 2008. But any honest assessment of Mr. Obama reveals he has done much more for the sexual revolutionaries than for interracial brotherhood among men. He said he would be Joshua, but the feminist brain chip is the paradigm most deeply implanted in his heart. The sense of solidarity with the men of his country or the men of other cultures who rule by the traditional male forms of patriarchy and fraternity is not part of the moral grammar of this mother's son. He considers patriarchy an evil, and masculine fraternity as fun for the playground but oppressive in religion and politics.

The billy clubs and tear gas of Sheriff Clark could crack open a man's head and break up a marching crowd, but they could never touch the movement's soul. But now the blood of the martyrs has been polluted at an altar to a foreign god in the wilderness. Our souls no longer rest in the Lord. The shame of our president is that his speech at Selma was a sacrilege against a sacred space. The president, whom so many of us voted for as an act of racial reconciliation, once again used his pulpit to preach not the saving grace of brotherhood but the enslaving confusion of the sexual revolution.

The Christian movement brings us back to the original promise of the country and the truth of Scripture. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Real peace comes from deeper and broader bonds. The tenor of the Christian movement, even in its dreams, was a return to some order that lay at the heart of our nature as creatures of God with human souls. It was a check written long ago which we had come to cash. We were not looking for endless change, and more and more categories of the oppressed that might be released from social obligations and rules of decorum. We were seeking something old -- that men might live like brothers, that a man and woman might marry and raise their family in peace, that elders would be called Mister and Missus.

Selma was a place in history where the fate of a nation was hinged. It still is such a place.  As President Johnson said:

"There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans -- not as Democrats or Republicans -- we are met here as Americans to solve that problem."

                                                         

President Johnson

Every crucial speech from that era reminds us this was a Christian movement of brotherhood that was deeply resonant with the initial Christian movement that formed the colonies and towns of America’s Protestant seaboard.

We cannot leave the interpretation of this day to the mistaken notion that sexual disorder is Selma's fruit. The bridge from Selma led to Montgomery, not Sodom. Montgomery was the city where the Reverends King and Abernathy first joined as ministers to unite the Negro community as Christians, and renew the whole city as a "Beloved Community" of fellow citizens. Sodom was destroyed; Montgomery was to be renewed. Selma was a spiritual movement that galvanized white and black people across the country. That’s why, within two weeks of Bloody Sunday, armed American white men protected the marchers from their persecutors. That’s why five months later a Voting Rights Act could be passed. If we can unite ourselves again under God and sing His praises loudly, then we can renew a brotherhood of fathers to socialize all our young men -- black, white and Hispanic -- into the Christian form of masculine love that is citizenship.

This spiritual renewal of the American soul is how the South will rise again. Let us be renewed in the public Biblical faith and Christian love of Selma. It is the road to the New Jerusalem which will shine with the glory of God when He comes to dwell amidst His people. Let us not ignore the living Lord or surely we shall be chastised; and the blood drawn at Selma will lose its sacred power "to renew the soul of America."

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday Feb 23

 by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

WEEKLY BRIEF

    Hoax Upon Hoax. From Selma to Sodom. From Jackie Robinson to  Jussie Smollet
In the discussion of religion sex and politics in America there is no greater hoax than the hijacking of the moral capital of the American Christian movement against racism by the media promotion of homosexuality as a positive good. The Fox TV drama Empire with homosexual director Lee Daniels and rising star Jussie Smollett were major propagandists trying to breakdown the "black community's homophobia". CNN commentator Van Jones astutely informed his white listeners that Smollett was "the Jackie Robinson" of integrating likable gay characters into African-American popular culture. This of course aims to eradicate traditional black masculinity and the black Christian Church in favor of the modern Democratic Party's bizarre alliance of older political white feminists, younger light skin gay male media stars, and rich male predators in the background.

Charles Barkley had some advice for the light skin fellow who didn't really know the neighborhood or certain basics in the life of crime. "America, first rule in crime: Don't write a check." "Don't hire two black guys" to pretend they are lynching you. If the theme is MAGA country violence, get out of Chicago and go "to   Liam Neeson's neighborhood."  Hilarious!  (Add: Another dissection of Smollett  by Victor Davis Hanson) Devastating!

 Christianity and nationalism are two great communal identities that draw black and white men together as matured brothers and fathers. It was the Christian nationalism of America that embraced Jews as free citizens from the beginning and black men as citizens after a horrible civil war. What a despicable hoax to blame the red hats who seek to share the brotherhood of an interracial multi religious TERRITORIAL NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP  for this self mutilation by a confused young male not fully black nor indelibly homosexual. Young Smollett should get his due but let's agree he was socialized by an inverted culture: upside down about God the Father, the interracial brotherhood of the American nation and the sanctity of married sexual love. Adults should discipline not scapegoat our latest confused young male emerging in full media glare from the twisted ruins of the Sexual Revolution we bequeathed him. The sexual revolution has been a disaster for black Americans lionizing sexual degeneracy for males and widespread abortion by black mothers. This ain't no freedom train and Jussie Smollett is nobody's Jackie Robinson.  

I. POPE FRANCIS & THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

THE FACE-TO-FACE PATRIARCHAL FRATERNITY OF SYNODAL CATHOLICISM. SODOMY IS A SACRILEGE AGAINST THE PRIESTLY SYNOD NOT MARRIAGE: The public truthful brotherhoods of an honest monastery, a presbytery under a real bishop, a Bishops' Conference where bishops stand up and speak truthfully about how many bishops should resign, a College of Cardinals cleaned of homosexuals, a synod of bishops under an honest Pope--these are the masculine fraternal forms the Pope is setting up for new leaders and shepherds to emerge. Listen to victims who come before you-Do not dismiss them!! That is the major institutional point of the gathering of 100 bishops in Rome Feb 21-24, 2019. Pray together, repent together, listen to the abused, let fathers emerge!  Instead of complaining about the Pope it would be helpful if some bishops would speak honestly about the massive infiltration of the priesthood by homosexuals, active and psychological, and a strategy for cleansing the priestly temple. Why did the bishops stop being protectors and fathers? Because they became desacralized and inbred by the narcissism of a homosexual dominated group-think. Father-faithful fraternity must replace this homosexual clericalism.    This has to happen diocese by diocese, monastery by monastery, bishops' conference by bishops' conference.  Before that we must emphasize the whole-the communion, the apostolic fraternity which will eventually turn out Judas. Before Lincoln turned on slavery, he had to secure the unity of the Union! Let us understand the paths of governance are different than the cries of protest and outrage. (21 procedural points)

The Pope has "notorious homosexuals" close to him--this is true. They must go--not him. Expose and exorcize. This is a demonic war amidst the sacral caste--there will be many misfirings before we get traction in the right direction. What is very clear is that Pope Francis and Cardinal Parolin were much more successful in ridding the priesthood of Mr McCarrick than Pope Benedict and Archbishop Vigano.  They are building the face to face brotherhoods which will expel the smiling faces with viper hearts.  It was Italian media criticism of the ineffectual role of Vigano as American papal nuncio in relation to McCarrick that drove Vigano to his publishing alliance with anti Francis Italian journalist Marco Tosatti. (Tosatti reveals Vigano's real motivations in an interview with Taylor Marshall-another good man gone mad with Francis frenzy).  Coupled with Vigano's exposition of the homosexual rot throughout the Vatican States of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI was his call for the resignation of Pope Francis for elevating the role of  McCarrick after Benedict era sanctions. While Vigano's Vatican expose was long overdue and very helpful, his assessment of McCarrick's new status and influence under Francis was wildly off base. Francis has a lot of very bad advisors especially related to North America.  Many are deeply embedded in the "lavender parish"  but McCarrick was not one of them. Cardinal Ouelette's letter to Vigano is a Pope Francis approved refutation of the Accuser. Pope Francis knew McCarrick was corrupt long before Vigano told him. That's why he asked Vigano "What do you think of McCarrick?"  Frederic Martel gets this wrong also in saying Francis was not too upset by McCarrick abusing adult male seminarians. That is preposterous for anyone who knows how Pope Francis dealt with the founder of the IVE Argentine religious order which had deep ties to McCarrick.
 Pope Francis acted too slowly for all the white media rich American Catholics who despise the Argentine and his southern ways. He acted much more definitively than any of his Western approved predecessors but such details are not part of the anti Francis narrative.  Let us quit shooting at the Father. Let us expose and exorcize the real enemies within that Archbishop Vigano and homosexual activist Frederic Martel have so helpfully exposed. Why isn't homosexuality being talked about at the Conference? Two disappointing duplicitous answers. Cupich  and Scicluna .  But let us remember. This week started with the irrevocable laicization of the American Episcopacy's homo in chief. It was a great way to begin a worldwide conference of Shepherds intermixed with wolves and hirelings. One big wolf down, now root out his pack and don't ask the Pope to do the investigation for you.

POPE FRANCIS AS LINCOLN:UNDERSTANDING THE CHAIR OF PETER: A Feb 22 Reflection.


A LETTER TO AN ASPIRING PRIEST: Really beautiful by Thomas White O.P. whom we have reviewed before. A comparative review of his book on Catholicism and deLubac's. His essay on Lumen Gentium and a reflection on the "People of God" as humanity, the Jews and the Church.

CANON LAWYER ED PETERS: Excellent distinction of sexual sins by consecrated persons especially the acts against nature - in terms of SACRILEGE.

HOMOSEXUAL PRIESTS, NOT PEDOPHILIA, IS THE PROBLEM: The role of McCarrick in reframing the issue.

GAY PRIESTS WHINING: Not pretty, not new.

THE PAPACY, DIPLOMACY, AND VENEZUELA: Good analysis.

THE VATICAN AS SODOM: An Excerpt from new blockbuster book on homosexuality in Vatican. The best reporters on the deep seated homosexuality in the clergy will be homosexual priests or accomplices who are part of the "parish".  We must let them talk. Let them tell their stories of "suffering in the closet" and encourage them to tell names.  This is no time to silence the likes of James Martin.  The duplicity is killing us - the homosexuals will agree on that so lets end the duplicity. They think there are so many of them that the Church cannot live without them. Encourage that thought as they come out to show their numbers.

After we have plenty of names and tearful narcissist confessions and exposes, the apostolic fishermen can announce that "By the Act" any priest who has committed sodomy shall be defrocked. The McCarrick example is an excellent start. That is the right punishment. Now we have to agree how severe a crime is sodomy by a Catholic priest. ...or is it only a defrocking crime if it is with a "minor"?

REVIEW IN AMERICA: Good summary of author's take on JPII,  Benedict, and Francis.  It rings true to me(dp). Also the most manipulative of all the actors was Cardinal Angelo Sodano. That also seems true from many converging stories. Sodano was always an enemy of Pope Francis. Archbishop Vigano covered for conservative homosexual Nienstedt. We know his story well from Minneapolis.  Burke covered for Apuron in Guam. Apuron was truly despicable and the fact that he and Nienstedt are still saying Mass should be credited with those heroes of correct doctrine-Vigano and Burke.    These findings  go with Martel narrative as well. The fact that the mob who wants Pope Francis to resign are still loyal followers of Archbishop Vigano and Cardinal Burke is evidence against their "in the know" reputations. The author of this book is absolutely right that  many of these revelations could only be written from "inside the parish". He is very wrong about his assumption that Pope Francis did not care about McCarick's homosexual acts with seminarians. That is part of the author's wish list not the pope's agenda. The very few pages I have read so far have a deep ring of truth (like most of Archbishop Vigano's statements about Vatican culture under JPII and Benedict). Turn on the lights--the party's not over yet but a huge change is brewing.

II PRESIDENT TRUMP & AMERICA

JD VANCE AND TUCKER CARLSON: On the working class people who don't go to college, serve in the military, want single earner families. Absolutely terrific.

REVIEW OF JOHN JUDIS BOOK ON NATIONALISM: Judas is a left liberal but he sees the nation as the only communal force that can protect workers from the predation and inequality of global capitalism. Very interesting argument. His book is called The Nationalist Revival: Trade Immigration and the Revolt against Globalization 

EUROPEAN/BRITISH ALLIES AND US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA: Two of the most disastrous regime change interventions by the US in the last 15 years were in  Libya and Syria. Iraq has a functioning government that represents its Shiite citizens much better than Saddam Hussein who waged the bloodiest war of the last three decades in his assault on Iran. Libya is a failed state and the US backed rebellion in Syria has left Assad in power, thousands dead and millions refugees. The Libyan intervention was orchestrated by European allies who frankly were much stronger personalities than the Obama "women to the front" foreign policy establishment. How would Hillary ever be president if she didn't make war and peace decisions in foreign policy? So there she was way over her head. The diplomat grownups swamped her. The linked article reminds us it is our allies who get us in trouble--especially those most fluent in English. Meanwhile the intervention that established a standing national government in Iraq  may now have to acknowledge the sovereignty of that government and recognize its desire to be an ally to Iran not a base for attacks.

FREEDOM FOR HOMOSEXUALS AS AN INTERNATIONAL CAUSE: A Trump initiative.  Coupled with our alliance with the salafist Saudis, we can only pray these incoherent contradictory impulses may collide. One reason for this initiative was that an earlier vote in the UN against the death penalty was opposed by the US and then construed as a call to execute homosexuals. 

THE MUELLER CASE : Roger Stone, Wikileaks and Paul Manafort--there will be enough here for the anti-Trump forces. Here we see the the outline of the Mueller argument. A very believable interview with FBI Andrew McCabe. He could not fathom a US President developing a relationship with Vladimir Putin. He felt Trump must be compromised so he worked to get an investigation set up that would survive his own firing. There were many career diplomats who felt similar feelings about President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meetings. They didn't think Reagan was compromised but too senile and gullible in the interaction. McCabe could not believe what he was seeing and for a moment (after the Comey firing) he was in charge. He thought he was saving the country by establishing a mechanism to bring down President Trump who he thought was giving aid to our enemy. He opened a counterintelligence investigation against Trump and he told the "gang of eight" the bipartisan representatives of both parties that this was happening. No-one objected. The counter intelligence investigation was not primarily asking if Russia interfered with the election but if Trump was somehow compromised or in league with the Russians. The Steele Dossier which was a major source multiple times of information was not so much about Russian attempts to influence voters (interfere with the election). It was an attempt to paint Trump as a seriously compromised candidate who would have to do the Russians' bidding if he became President.

A TIMELINE

July 5, 2016  James Comey exonerates Hillary Clinton
June 2016 Christopher Steele ex M16 British agent(worked the Russia desk) with deep fear of implications of Trump presidency for US- Russia- British relations is hired by GPS to do opposition research on Donald Trump.   June 20 first detailed report by Steele to GPS. Within a month says Carter Page meeting with Russians.
July and October 2016  Steele meets with different FBI in London and Rome to tell about Trump findings. He speaks as a fellow defender of the West against that old and clever foe now compromising  rump. Passes "Russian dossier" to old FBI colleague
Oct 2016 US Intelligence agencies say Russians interfering and sowing discord in US elections in favor of Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.  This confirmed by DNI (Clapper head) in Jan 2017
Oct 21, 2016   FBI gets FISA approval to wiretap Cater Page in Trump campaign as "foreign agent"
                        Trump not warned that "foreigners" had infiltrated his campaign.
Nov-Dec 2016 (after election)  John McCain receives the "Russian dossier" from ex British
                                                  ambassador and gives to FBI head.
Jan 20,2017 Trump inaugurated
Feb 8 Sessions confirmed Atty General
Mar 3, 2017 Session recuses himself from Russia investigation
Mar 20, 2017 FBI director Comey tells House Intelligent Committee there is a continued investigation of Trump-Russian connections
April 25, 2017 Rosenstein approved 94-6 in Senate as Deputy Atty General with power over Russian investigation because he saw "no reason to recuse himself". He had assured Senator Schumer he would appoint special prosecutor if necessary.

May 9, 2017 Comey fired

May 10-17 2017  McCabe--Trump meeting about Comey. It didn't go well. "Next day" McCabe meets with FBI investigators of Russia-Flynn-etc.  (ADDENDUM ADDED--more evidence in this May period McCabe led FBI reaches out again to Christopher Steele) Two investigations opened by McCabe: a)was firing of Comey an obstruction of Justice  and b)counterintelligence investigation opened to ask if there is an inappropriate relation of President with Russia. (From Feb 2019 Scott Pelley interview. Pelley: " Are you saying the President is in league with Russia?" McCabe: I am saying the FBI had reason to investigate that." The counter intelligence investigation was not limited to election meddling as much as the intention of the President to forge a new relation with "our most fearsome enemy"(Russia).)  Multiple Discussions with McCabe and Rosenstein and FBI General Counsel James Baker. Rod Rosenstein was troubled by Trump request for mention of Russia probe in firing Comey. He didn't want that in the firing explanation because he thought it would implicate himself(Rosenstein) in trying to stop the Russian investigation.  Trump was clear that Russian witch hunt was a ruse and had asked those investigations be wrapped up. Trump had no problem saying he wanted his FBI man to stop following the planted documents of British intelligence and Democratic Party opposition research. This seemed like obstruction of justice to McCabe hiding Trump's purported special relationship with the Russians. 

May 17 2017 Rosenstein as acting Attorney General appoints Mueller as special counsel to investigate "any links and/or  coordination between  Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign." This was to insure "a full investigation of the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 Presidential election."  The letter about election interference could cover proving Trump in league with the Russians without specifically saying it.

March 16, 2018 McCabe fired one day before retirement
Feb 2019 Interview with McCabe described by interviewer Scott Pelley as "a Republican" though McCabe wife received millions from DNC  running for office as Democrat. Note McCabe animus to Trump for calling his wife a "loser"(Trump denies this) .    Compelling interview.

Steele was hired in June 2016  by GPS. By June 20, the first explosive memo was in and within 50 days 7 more would be produced.
                                 

McCabe Timeline Clinton Email Investigation

March 2015 Clinton private server becomes publicly known
May 2015 McCabe wife announces for state senate of Virginia
                  She receives $500-700, 000 from Gov McCauliffe PAC. He is a close Clinton ally.
Nov 2015  She loses close race
July 2015 formal FBI investigation of Clinton emails ensues--McCabe not involved.
Feb 2016 McCabe appointed by Comey as Deputy Director of FBI and thus is in charge of Clinton email investigation. He does not consider recusal for Clinton investigations.
June 2016 Bill Clinton meets with Loretta Lynch-Atty General compromising her. She says she will accept whatever FBI says in Clinton case.
July 5 2016 Comey statement to press--"careless but no charges" against Clinton
Sept 28 2016 McCabe gets news of more emails found on Anthony Weiner computer
Oct 28            McCabe tells Comey about Weiner emails. Comey immediately reopens investigation.
Nov 1 McCabe recuses himself from any more Clinton investigations
Nov 6 2016 Comey says no new classified emails found on Weiner laptop. Peter Strzok helps sift through them.
Nov 8 2016 Trump wins election

III. THE NATIONS

IN AFRICA THE CHINESE MEET THE CHRISTIANS: A peculiar aspect of the China Africa story. They came to build infrastructure . They leave with social capital.

FIVE SPANISH MEN FOR GOD, SPAIN AND TRADITION: A report from Spain by Rod Dreher. The kindling is there for a fire. It would be very helpful if Mr Dreher would see that one of the elements missing in his Benedict Option is what was central to Saint Benedict. The patron saint of Europe was about men forming fraternity in a local place devoted to a cosmic religious reality. Dreher's excellent report shows us once again it is not the "West"  we are trying to save. It is Christendom that is being revived and the many swords of Christendom are going to be carried by NATIONALISTS. That is true in Catholic Spain, Orthodox Russia, and Protestant America.

SUNNI JIHAD GOES LOCAL: An important trend by Hassan Hassan.

EURASIAN ALLIANCE OF RUSSIA AND CHINA: Revisiting the geopolitical thesis of Halford  MacKinder and applying it to the post Cold War mistakes of baby boomer Presidents. Russia is the Eurasian land nation. We need them as our allies. Candidate Trump understood this instinctually. President Trump has never been allowed to reformulate our alliances in terms of the the two great nations of Eurasia-Russia and China. He was stopped by the FBI's Andrew McCabe who saw Russia as our greatest enemy  and by Britain's Christopher Steele who saw how a Russian US alliance would set the sun on British influence in a world dominated by the Anglo West.  {AOA on Mahon, MacKinder and Spykman as Geostrategic Thinkers}

Mackinder's Map

MEN WHO ACT: The rise of autocrats.

IV CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

ADAM AND EVE: Mitochondrial Eve and one Y - interesting review.

American Memory and Identity: Keeping Our Civic Days Sacred

1  Martin Luther King, Jr: Sacred Selma is No Bridge to Sodom
2  Memorial Day: Masculine Publics and Family Weekends      

          2b The Prayers of D-Day June 6, 1944 
          2c  Father's Day
          3  July 4: Patriotism of a Patriarch: John Ireland

4  July 4 American Covenant: Brotherhood under God
5  September 11 - Fighting a religious war as a religious nation 
6  September 17 - America's Bloodiest Day

          6b October 12 Columbus, Mary and Catholic Americans 

7  November 2 Assassination of President Diem: Losing the Mandate of Heaven
8  November 19 Gettysburg: Give Rest O Savior
9  November 22 John Kennedy and the Maturation of Christian Manhood
10  Thanksgiving: Don’t Call it “Turkey Day”

          11Presidents Day and George Washington-All Praise the Patriarch

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, April 11

by David Pence 



A NUCLEAR AGREEMENT REINTEGRATES NATIONS OF THE NORTH FROM FRANCE TO CHINA WITH IRAN

Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, and China were the other countries (besides US and Iran) who agreed to a regulatory plan for Iran's nuclear program on Holy Thursday April 2, 2015. If the US Senate blocks the agreement, those other countries will not continue economic sanctions against Iran. Those countries share a security interest with Iran as well. All of them are fighting their own variants of the Salafist Sunni jihadist movement, in the same way as the Shia state of Iran does in fighting ISIS. A resumption of arms sales from Russia to Iran is one beginning of many new relations which will reintegrate Iran in the intercourse of nations.   
  
Significant elements of Israeli security veterans have not agreed with the Netanyahu "nihilist" approach to negotiations with Iran.

Iran is a Shiite country in a sea of Sunnis. The purification movement that is leading to a renewal of Shia/Sunni war is coming from one faction of Sunnis, not all Sunnis and not the Shia. This agreement on a framework has already removed the pariah status of Iran. We are going to start hearing "their side of the story" from the nations they reconciled with over the last months. Israel has been Iran's  sworn enemy since a religious people overthrew the Shah and organized their society around that religion. Israel has nuclear weapons, as does Pakistan, which is working closely with Iran's other avowed enemy -- the Sunni monarchy and the Wahhabi clerics of Saudi Arabia. Which of us, if we were the rulers of Iran, would not consider a nuclear weapon a needed defense in such a neighborhood?  



IN NIGERIA, THE MUSLIM BEATS THE CHRISTIAN; AND THAT WILL HELP STOP BOKO HARAM AND GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION

In an April 2015 election Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from the North, defeated Goodluck Jonathan by several million votes  in Nigeria's Presidential  election. Nigeria is the largest of the African nations (175 million), and divided into oil-rich Christian southern states and northern Muslim states where Boko Haram has thrived in the last years. The election of an austere Muslim may be very good news for the country as it clearly needed new leadership to provide basic security as well as clean up rampant corruption. The former military leader is no fan of Boko Haram and civil disorder.

Here is a good short review of communal loyalties and Nigeria. Many Chrisian-majority districts voted for the new president as many Nigerians believe their country can be a model for how Muslims and Christians can live together in an orderly civic society.

It is great failure of today's emasculated Catholic culture that huge populations of the Christian world which need a much more robust protective and fraternal understanding of the nation are not creating personalities who can rule.  Muslims, leftists, and economic secularists all seem to better prepare men to exercise the authority needed to rule a state. We must remember the real meaning of that beatitude about the development of civic order: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.



SAUDI ARABIA UNLEASHES THEIR AIR FORCE -- THEY PASS OVER AL QAEDA AND TARGET SHIA HOUTHIS FIGHTING AQAP IN YEMEN

The multi-monarch coalition which the Sauds have assembled to bomb the Houthis of Yemen is a formidable force against an ancient tribe which has a long history of autonomy fights in Yemen. It is a major escalation by the Sauds in actually organizing a strike force which they have not done against the two worst Salafist opponents of the US: the Islamic State in Iraq/Syria and AQAP in Yemen. It is cartoon history to label this Saudi intervention as an innocent play to keep the bad wolf of Iran out of the Arabian Pennisula. This Saudi intervention marks another front in the war that will oppose any armed Shia, Jewish, or Christian state in the House of Islam as defined by the Wahhabi-Salafist school of Sunni Muslims. Here is the Saudi argument.

A good recap of Saudi Arabia/Yemen conflict in maps.

The US has joined this attack against Yemen's Kurds, while the enemies of the Houthis know where to find them to maximize damage: ISIS in Yemen.

Should the US really ally with the Saudis crossing a national border to suppress a form of Islamic worship they despise?

Just to remind us how "our ally Saudi Arabia" treats freedom of religion for Christians: Grand Mufti on Christian churches.

The Saudi-Sunni tie to nuclear weapons is through their alliance with Pakistan.



ANOTHER FAILURE TO PROTECT IN AFRICA -- MUSLIM SOMALIA CROSSES INTO CHRISTIAN KENYA

On Holy Thursday of 2015 members of al Shabab (the Youth-a Salafist Sunni extremist movement) crossed 120 miles outside their Somalian border to kill 150 Christian college students at Gerissa University in eastern Kenya.

Early in the history of Al Qaeda there was criticism by Muslim scholars that too many Muslims were being killed in terrorist attacks. This diminshed their religious legitimacy. The radical Sunni variant in Somalia (al Shabab) has corrected that indiscriminate killing by separating, then killing, Christians in Holy Week. Somalia is a country of 10 million, with 99% Sunni and 83% of Somalian ethnic origin. Kenya (44 million population: 83% Christian 11% Muslim with 3/4 Sunni) and Ethiopia (94 million population: 63% Christian and 34% Muslim) are their western neighbors.



IN INDIANA, MIKE PENCE PLAYS PILATE AS THE MOB SEEKS BLOOD

Elijah told the Israelites they could no longer limp along serving two masters: the Living God or Baal. The reason the Indiana Legislature passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was to protect Christians from undue involvement in three new civil-rights areas that Catholics consider a desacralization of nature: sodomy, contraception, and abortion. When asked if this act might involve discrimination against gays, a very level-headed and good man (Governor Michael Pence) became the stuttering Pilate. The only honest answer to that query is to say "yes" -- it would give Christians a chance to raise a religious defense if they were being asked to cooperate in some significant manner with an immoral act. This act would not have been enacted if there was not some deep disagreement about what is holy and what is an abomination in America. The capitulation of the political leadership to the corporations and gay activists is understandable. Until religious leaders begin to talk in a very different language about these sexual taboos, we cannot expect civic leaders to recover the language that reminds us sacred Selma was never intended to be a bridge to Sodom.