[Dialogue] Thanks for Peter Storey, Jon Spong

[Janice & Abe Ulangca]

>From Janice Ulangca

Thanks to you, "LAURELCG", and today to Dick Kroeger for sending Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong's thoughts on the election.  Both substantial food for thought. 

This a.m. I passed along Peter Storey's reflection to our council of churches Peace with Justice committee and other concerned folks, and in an hour received 3 notes of thanks, including one from staff at our public radio and TV station.  

I did a google search and found that Peter Storey taught the spring semester at Duke Divinity School.  Their web page had this info:

Peter Storey is a South African Methodist preacher, pastor and church leader. After ordination in the 1960s, he developed innovative down-town ministries in Cape Town and Johannesburg. While in Cape Town he was Nelson Mandela's prison chaplain on Robben Island. He is a former bishop of the Johannesburg/Soweto area and national leader of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. In these positions, and as president of the South African Council of Churches, working closely with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he helped give leadership to the church's anti-apartheid struggle. He has played key roles in peacemaking structures in South Africa and was appointed by President Mandela to help select the nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Storey edited the Methodist Church newspaper Dimension for nine years, has authored many publications, and was a weekly columnist for South Africa's Sunday Independent, a national newspaper.

So - good guidance from two bishops.  

Janice Ulangca
------------------------------
----- Original Message ----- 
From: LAURELCG at aol.com 
To: dialogue-owner at wedgeblade.net ; OE at wedgeblade.net 
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 7:55 PM
Subject: [Oe List ...] No Subject

 Peter Storey
THOUGHTS ON AN AMERICAN ELECTION
 
I don't know how many people woke up at 3.00am for each of the
Presidential debates. Americans of course did not need to, but
Elizabeth and I did, and there were many others here in South Africa
who would have done the same. Ours is more than an academic interest.
In the developing world this US election is as important as any in our
own country, because we live on the fringes of the American Empire and
decisions made in the White House have enormous impact on our lives -
not much  different really than long ago when a decree from Caesar
Augustus touched the lives of Mary and Joseph and thousands of others
in Palestine.

Perhaps that is why it is hard to believe that there are people at
Duke Divinity School who are speaking of not voting. If you're one of
them, I hope that you will change your mind. Even if you don't think
it important for the sake of the people living in the United States,
please remember the countless people in Africa, Asia, Europe, the
Middle East, Iraq and other places, who are holding their collective
breath as they wait for the decision Americans will make on November
2. In the days when only a powerful white elite had the vote in South
Africa, I used to tell white people that for each one of them that
went into the voting station, five poor, oppressed and marginalized
black South Africans went with them - and when they cast their vote I
hoped they would be conscious of those five voteless people leaning
over their shoulder to watch whether they voted for their own security
only, or to extend the hopes and rights of all. Americans, whose
President has such influence over the lives of millions of people they
have hardly heard of, bear a very deep global responsibility when they
vote.

If you're Christian, then I can't imagine any reason why you would
shirk that responsibility. Until very recently, where I live,
Christians joined others in being willing to die for the right to
vote, and when we cast our ballot these days, we do so with the memory
of friends who did die. It is sad to hear of people in the US taking
such an awesome responsibility so lightly.

While we know that in the ultimate sense no Caesar can usher in God's
reign of justice and peace, the Caesar's of this world can and do make
a massive difference to the lives of the people God loves, especially
the anawim - the little people of the earth. Caesars destroy life or
respect it, they rob or redistribute, they oppress or liberate, they
exploit prejudice or encourage respect. They have power to take our
best instincts - or our worst - and give them the weight of law.  When
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The law can't make you love me, but
it can stop you from lynching me," he had the measure of both the
limits and the potential of politics."  He knew that it would take
more than better law to bring the "Beloved Community" but if the law
could stop white bigots murdering black people in places like North
Carolina, or open up a segregated institution like Duke University to
people of color, how could Christians dare withdraw from that
responsibility to their neighbors? Even if no political candidate can
represent all that Christians regard as central, we must still take
seriously the prophetic duty to hold our current rulers accountable -
as Dr. King held President Lyndon Johnson accountable - for what they
have done with their power, and be prepared if necessary to use our
votes to remove them.

Significantly, Dr. King's most unpopular stand was when he went beyond
the domestic American civil rights struggle to embrace issues of world
justice and peace, challenging President Johnson on April 4, 1967,
from the pulpit of Riverside Church, New York, about the immorality,
cruelty and waste of the Vietnam War. Today the U.S. is embroiled in
another immoral conflict and it is no secret that the vast majority of
people outside the US are hopeful that Americans will use their votes
on November 2 to remove their current President.

Here are some of the reasons why so many in the wider world hope to
see a change in November:

We are troubled by the hubris, inconsistencies and lies that have
characterized this administration's international actions. After
promising a "humbler" foreign policy based on respect, Mr. Bush has
acted with ignorance and arrogance in his relations with the rest of
the world and its leaders. Those of us who have experienced the United
Nations as a force for good and a champion of the oppressed have been
saddened by his scornful undermining of the UN. In just four years one
US President has almost destroyed a complex fabric of international
treaties and understandings that took decades to build, and in his
haste to wage "pre-emptive" war, has simply proved how dangerous that
doctrine is. His war in Iraq has been exposed as being based on two
great lies. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and was not
implicated in September 11, 2001. Nothing can bring back the thousands
of Iraqis slaughtered and more than 1000 Americans who have died for
these lies, but American voters can end this reckless "High Noon"
behavior in international relations.

There is understanding across the world of the security concerns that
have been raised by the atrocities of 9/11, but the great flood of
sympathy that flowed toward the US at that time has dried up, as
American responses have been driven more by fear and vengeance than a 
desire to identify and address what lies behind the deep resentments
in the Arab world. In particular, this is the first US administration
to permit the terrible attritions in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict
to go on virtually unchecked. More than anything else, this festering
conflict, and US bias toward Israel, fuels Arab frustration, hatred of
the US, and acts of terror.

Christians in the developing world are concerned that this President's
very public claims to be a follower of Christ embarrass our witness to
the Gospel and exacerbate Muslim/Christian tensions. Because of Mr.
Bush's claims to be led by God, Muslims in Africa increasingly
identify America's foreign policy as a Christian "crusade" against
them. In countries where Christians and Muslims have lived peacefully
side by side for centuries, relationships are becoming more difficult.
Moderate Muslims ask what the difference is between Muslim extremism, 
which they oppose, and US policies driven by a President who is
captive to the views of a right-wing religious power bloc. They are
concerned that US policy is helping to create a stand-off between two
fundamentalisms, the American religious right and extremist Muslim
fundamentalists. When told that President Bush is in conflict with a
number of the key social principles of his own church, repeatedly
denying its bishops' any meeting to discuss his policies, they cannot
understand why he has not been denounced by his church.
 
In Africa, where we struggle to stamp out terrible abuses of the past
and where the church has played a significant role in building a
tenuous culture of dignity and human rights, one of the examples we
looked to for inspiration has become tarnished. It does not help our
case when the largest constitutional democracy of all permits
prisoners suspected of terrorism to be taken to places on our
continent, like Egypt, where torture is practiced. At the same time,
this administration has quite openly bribed a number of smaller
countries to change their votes to reject an International Court of
Justice, which would help guard the rights of the weak and vulnerable.
Understandably, people in developing countries conclude that we are
not all equal under the law, but that there are different laws for the
 strong and for the weak.

These are only a few of the reasons why most people in the wider world
hope for a change in November. In the developing world, ironically, we
are exposed to much more hard news - as well as real debate - about
the issues of US foreign action than most Americans ever see. We need
to be assured the US electorate will not be making up their minds
based on the sanitized coverage by networks afraid of being called
"unpatriotic," paid talking heads out-shouting each other nightly on
cable, and attack advertisements by political parties.

I have not referred to Mr. Bush's domestic policies, although many of 
them have strong implications for the developing world too. I am
concerned that good people in the US should know how important the outcome of 
the election is for their sisters and brothers in places
like Africa. I recall my sympathy to the view in 2000 that there was
little to choose between the two parties and their Presidential
candidates. At least in regard to foreign policy, this view was
desperately wrong: it is difficult to believe that another
administration could have permitted ideology to so trample good sense in 
international action. It is to be hoped that when you vote, you
will bear this in mind, knowing that you carry into the voting station
the hopes and fears of much more than America.

Respectfully, 
Peter Storey,
October, 2004.

_______________________________________________


**************************
Janice Ulangca
3413 Stratford Drive
Vestal, NY  13850
607-797-4595
aulangca at stny.rr.com
***************************