[Oe List ...] Saipan Tribune GOD and the GOP, Jan. 7

Fri Jan 6 11:38:22 EST 2012

Thanks, Jaime.
Ellie

-----Original Message-----
From: Jaime R Vergara <svesjaime at aol.com>
To: oe <oe at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Fri, Jan 6, 2012 6:01 am
Subject: [Oe List ...] Saipan Tribune GOD and the GOP, Jan. 7

Got a bully pulpit for two weeks.  John Cock said, I had too much fun.  I did.

Here's a Saipan Tribune OpEd for the 7th.  This will be the last awhile on this listserv.

The usual caveat: if curious, you are welcome; NOT, see you around the bend.

j'aime la vie

GOD and the GOP

US Republicans have long ago identified GOD on their side against the godless socialist Democrats. That was not always the case. The Young Republicans were irreverent reformers at my University. They did make it clear that my preference of Elvis Presley over Pat Boone, the Beatles over The Who, was a bit too much.  

Southern Democrats of the 60s welcomed me to their homes if I identified myself as a pagan saved by the blood of Christ. Hosts brought out souvenir chopsticks from the Pacific war when we ate, assuming that all Asians knew how to use them. I was introduced like a trophy earned in a safari to friends. When a relation showed romantic interest and we responded in kind, I was not invited back.

Nixon allowed southern Democrats to take over the GOP, and Abramoff later exploited their hubris. GOD in the GOP reportedly found a home!

Urbane Michigan’s Mitt Romney went south in the Iowa Primary just so he can say he is mainstream at the core of the Republican dream. Minnesota’s Michelle Bachmann withdrew from the presidential campaign, but is determined to derail Obama’s second term because ‘he has got us on the slippery slope of godless socialism.’  

A colleague visiting relations over the holiday was at an Inn where Rick Santorum was in Ioway poli-nit-picking. Santorum and the rest of the GOP lineup mouthed things against the Obama's watch; even libertarian Ron Paul said things that an OCCUPY person may appreciate, but when Santorum got sanctimoniously homophobic to a receptive audience, my friend hollered: “Now I understand what a Negro felt listening to George Wallace of Alabama.”

Comes Pat Robertson, former GOP contender v. VP George H. W. Bush, in touch with GOD over breakfast. To young’uns unfamiliar with Pat, he is a former US Senator’s son who passed out collection plates more successfully than passing the State bar. Three medals in Korea were allegedly earned for assuring that the officers’ clubs were sufficiently liquored! Pat is, however, not the news; GOD is, and s/he has a following to show for it. GOD is not in favor of Obama’s policies and would not mind having Barack move out of the White House. Another term will doom the nation, so the GOP say! 

Not to trivialize God, but we follow the Levantine method of designating the ‘mystery of mysteries in life’ as G-O-D, or the Islamic G*d. For evangelical usage, one peruses the paper Pope, preferably the King James version, or any of its pedigrees. Roman Catholics listen to ex-cathedra pronouncements of learned men, from the Patristics to Augustine and Aquinas through Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, better known for his God and the World, but now enthroned Pope Benedict XVI in Peter’s Vatican chair. 

GOD of the Christian Right joined the Republicans! They resent Obama’s diminishing the Supreme Being’s power at the White House annual Prayer Breakfast. His holiday card does not include Christmas greetings but is suspected of saying Salaam Malaikum under his breath, or uttering it in his dreams. Why, he has not even invited Billy or Franklin Graham to Amen his breakfast table!

Mormon Mitt barely topped Iowa, indicative of voters’ uncertainty of the Joseph Smith & Brigham Young progeny in the God-department. He might even mitigate the Muslim label leveled on Obama. Santorum on the other hand, to pare the budget, will not pay for birth-control pills!  Obama's just articulated defense strategy and leaner budget is one step forward, even as we cringe at the two steps backward that usually follows.  But hey, it is an election year!

Of course, there has been some radical paradigm shifting in the God-department after World War II. Fr. Pedro Arrupe, a physiology-trained Padre tempered in the days of Franco’s fascism, miraculously surviving Hiroshima of ‘45 August in the blast zone, led Loyola’s disciplined Order into practices of mercy and missions of justice, resulting in Liberation Theology that rent the Roman tradition, with Catholics in the Americas opting on a preferential treatment of the poor as the mission of the Christian faith, and the Opus Dei insuring that the Alpine Swiss properly guard the opulent Basilica.

The German theologian and Christian disciple Dietrich Bonhoeffer chose not only to resist the Nazis but helped plan the Fuhrer’s assassination. For the failed attempt, he paid dearly with his life. But the martyred Lutheran found favor in the ethically sensitive children of the Reformation, promoting a religionless Christianity in the world of spirit, and a contentless Christ in the reality of life’s grace.

The death-of-GOD occurred, along with the old-man-in-the-sky image of the Father, banishing the Clark Kent-Superman Jesus idolatry as Son, and celebrating the liberation of existence and freedom’s essence as the embodiment of the Holy Spirit. The triune perspectives of transcendence, immanence and transparency converged in a refreshing wind of emancipation that now sweeps the colonial and corporate corpse of globalization. Humanity stands at the threshold of a radical choice, between the caloried consumerism of the commercialized psyche, and the reality of lean body and soul in full authenticity.

"Your GOD has become too small," J. P. Phillips the NT translator once quipped.  My daughter reports that George O’Donnell is not registered to vote in her precinct, nor has Godofredo Ortega Damaso been seen in mine.  From a very reliable source, GOD is not known to be a fingerprinted voter!  My G*D, not surprisingly, still loves the GOP.

 Jaime R Vergara 

All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!

 Jaime R Vergara 

All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!

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