"Whore to the world"?

Last week at a news briefing for the 2008 General Conference, I heard a panel of United Methodist conference and agency spokespersons discuss a proposed call for divestment against the manufacturing firm Caterpillar, which makes bulldozers used by the Israeli military to build separation walls and also demolish homes of Palestinians in refugee camps.

It's a specific call, for a specific company, for a specific reason. But for many people, when it comes to talking about Israel, the word "divestment" is an incredibly loaded term.

There's no easy solution to the Middle East tension. But as word of this proposal leaked to the press, it was blown off course by amazingly outlandish speculation.

Among the worst of the alarm-ringing pieces was this commentary posted on World Net Daily (a far-right, conservative, online news site) by its founder Joseph Farah, describing the proposed UMC action as "morally blind apostacy."

Mr. Farah's Jan. 25 piece falsely claims United Methodist leaders are considering "divesting from all companies that do business with Israel."

Well, not exactly. These were conference and agency spokespersons at a news briefing, not delegates at General Conference. They had no power to decide this proposal that day. And they were not proposing divesting from all companies that do business with Israel.

Nevertheless, Mr. Farah continued his rant:

"To say that even considering such an action is hateful, unbiblical, anti-Christian and evil would be an understatement.

"The problem with these people is not that they don't understand the Middle East. It is simply that they are no longer able to tell right from wrong. They are no longer able to distinguish between good and evil. They are no longer able to see the difference between freedom and tyranny. They are no longer able to judge between criminal and victim.

"They have, in short, completely lost their moral bearings.

"This is no longer a church; it is an organization of misguided political activism. This is no longer a house of God; it is a mad house. This is no longer part of the bride of Christ; it is a whore to the world."

Whoa. Strong words, indeed.

He concludes:

"I would urge anyone still associated with the Methodists to divest yourself and your family from this institution. Divest it of your tithes and offerings. Divest it from your last will and testament. Divest it from your time and volunteer work. Divest your children from its Sunday school classes."

I would suggest intelligent readers divest themselves of rubbish like this.

The Reporter will have a story on the divestment proposal in the Feb. 8 edition. Stay tuned.

Comments

[gmw]

Thanks, Robin. This seems a good representative sample of the "Rush-ification" (Limbaugh, that is) of public discourse. On the blatant use of fact-challenged inflammatory accusations, I've found that Harry Frankfurt's short book "On Bullsh**" from a couple of years ago to be dead on regarding statements of just this sort. Following Frankfurt's definition of "bs", this person apparently isn't really all that concerned with whether his story in all parts is true or false, it's more important that his agenda is advanced rhetorically.

[Spencer]

I took away pretty much what Robin took away from the "whore to the world" posting, but if I could make one request -

If you can force yourself to NOT label World Net Daily as "a far-right, conservative, online news site", that would be helpful to me, because the problem with Farah's rant wasn't where it was posted, the problem is that Farah was misstating the facts and then wildly over-reacting to the situation.

(Much as it pains me to say this,) not all conservatives, even those of the far-right genre, are wrong every time they type a word on a keyboard.

This posting isn't a right-versus-left issue. Anyone who cares about God would be offended, and if we don't label the source as "far-right, conservative", we distinguish between people who love God but don't see the world as we see it, and people who love something else more than they love God.

We do our best work as Christians when we listen to people we don't agree with, and try to understand what we really disagree with each other about.

We are learning that tagging a point of view as "far-right, conservative" encourages people who identify themselves as conservative (and maybe even "far-right") to defend that point of view uncritically.

This is a time when critical thinking is, well, critical.

Christ lives in you,

Spencer ("liberal", and often "far-left", but I brake for conservatives in the parking lot)