I guess Democratic senator Barack Obama has been getting a scolding lately from Christian leaders, this time basically for appearing at a church to give a speech about fighting AIDS. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in California (and author of “The Purpose Driven Life”, you’re bound to know), hosted a two-day Global Summit on AIDS and the Church and Obama was one, among many, to be invited to speak. Other presenters – doctors, ambassadors, Christian leaders, another senator – collectively represented organizations ranging from World Vision to UNAIDS to the Rwandan Ministry of Health. The whole Summit was designed to address and emphasize the advantages – and I’d imagine, moral imperatives – of the catholic and local churches in serving those afflicted by HIV/AIDS and fighting against the pandemic, and altogether the summit was something of an unprecedented effort in getting the church to address the problem.

Now surely, you’d think that we can all get on board with people coming together to tackle the problem of the 40 million people infected by AIDS, right?

Well, no. Apparently many conservative leaders are saying that a politician who supports abortion rights (to provide a wonderfully vague and imprecise generalization of a man’s politics) should not have been allowed to speak at such a prominent church. At a summit with the theme of working together, it’s Christians and pro-life groups – not Democrats – who don’t want to work together and have protested Obama’s participation.
As Obama said to Jay Leno, “Everybody was reporting on me going to this church. It was like, a Democrat in church!”

Gee, a Democrat in church. I certainly hope they cleaned the upholstery afterward.

Really, I’m too frustrated to say much. If you’re not noticing the sheer stupidity of this, of essentially protesting people who may not be exactly alike one another but are coming together in open dialogue with the intent of serious action against a horrible killer, then you’re probably not going to understand my frustration. Obama is a man who has earnest convictions and an honest dedication to the true purpose of politics - making life better for the sake of all.

I disagree with him on how to respond politically to the issue of abortion. And yet I respect him. He’s a man renowned for tossing political entrenchment and fostering bipartisan discussion about real political problems. He’s a man of real faith who earnestly wants to reconcile his faith and his role as a politician in a democracy. Isn’t this what we want of politics? Or do we still want one America waging a war against another America?

This might be where the “God Gap”-closing Democrats – Obama probably the most evident example – possibly have it right. “Because God said so,” is not a good enough reason in our constiitution-based, pluralistic nation reason for making something into a law. A politician can’t make a law banning a practice like abortion just because “God says so.” Certainly, I – and from everything I’ve seen from him, Obama as well – believe that God did indeed “say so”, and believe that we must do everything in our power to obey His edicts. But we’re going to have to come up with justification in addition to that for legislation, if we’re to maintain our government as a pluralistic democracy and not a theocracy. (Remember, please, that the founders of this nation were fleeing from a government that bore an awfully close resemblence to a theocracy, one that dictated what they should believe and how they should worship.) We’re going to have to find reasons beyond our faith to govern in a particular way, if we are indeed wanting to preserve government.

So what good does it do us, as Christians, to boycott and incite anger against people who disagree with us? How can we preach so passionately about the humanity of unborn children and yet simultaneously dehumanize our brothers in Christ who happen to vote Democratic and take an alternative stance on abortion? (I also have to wonder: we’ll readily talk about how poverty can only be eradicated by local efforts, not by government… but when it comes to abortion we do so very little locally and yet look toward government action – a reversal of Roe v. Wade – as the answer. Huh?) Young Christians across America – kids, like me, coming from typically conservative and faith-based evangelical homes – are experiencing a political crisis of intense proportion and are now facing a choice:

Can we, in good conscience, side with people who we might agree with ideologically, but whose primary course of action in actual effort is to stick their head in the dirt and refuse to move? I certainly don’t know if there is an answer. I will say that showing up at an conference about engaging the church in waging war against a great and silent killer of God’s cherished children, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, probably means you that when you leave the conference you should actually talk about HIV/AIDS, and not preach patronizing rhetoric about “hypocritical liberals who want to save all lives except those of the unborn” as Franklin Graham apparently did afterward.

Now I’m a fiery believer in Christ and a strong proponent of evangelism, but I must say this to conservatives and the Republican party: if you want my vote, stop this confusion and the political games. Stop it now, and start once again letting your politics emerge from your faith and the reading of your Bible.

And the next time you show up at a global summit on AIDS and the Church, start talking about AIDS and the Church – and the 25 million people who have already died of AIDS. Otherwise you’re a modern-day Pharisee.

“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

- St. Francis of Assisi

If you’re feeling bold this year, why not forsake present-buying for Christmas and instead make a donation to World Vision, which will go to provide clothing, food, educational supplies, medicine, and other life necessities to children across the world? It just might be worth it, you know.

Hey, Thanksgiving wouldn’t be the same without the Great Annual Turkey Massacre. Fortunately Troy and Eric were both given a presidential pardon – How could you not expect me to watch the “Shibboleth” episode of The West Wing today? – but poor Mr. Butterball was religiously devoured here on the home front.

Relatives of Indeterminable Relation braved the cold earlier to come over, as did Friendly Neighbor Who Gives Me Cookies, so I really can’t argue with that. The kids ate too much pie, apparently really like corn, and hadn’t watched “Cars” yet, so that is what we did. It started snowing about halfway through the movie – Nick exclaimed “Wow! The angels must be throwing down some of God’s dandruff!” (well, he said all of that up until the “dandruff” part and I made up the rest) – and it really is doing something to me now. The white stuff always makes me musive, especially during the first snowfall of the season.
Today, since a long while ago, I felt content. My mind wasn’t wandering, and I didn’t feel bogged or befuddled. I really have hated being twenty-one this past month-and-a-half and felt incredibly lost and aimless. It’s like being a crusty old sea captain named Jim and having your barnacle-encrusted compass  snatched away and eaten by rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth mermaids – just like that! Except, you know, without the crustiness, oldness, barnacle-encrusted compass and rabid-foaming-at-the-mouth mermaids. I’m writing a new short film called “Herman’s Heroes,” not realizing when I started it earlier this fall just how cathartic it would prove to be. In it the main character, Sam, is a junior high kid who, through a remarkable series of unfortunate events, basically manages to banish his unfair history teacher to the school basement – and now he’s being called to be just the one thing he’s stopped believing in – a superhero.  It’s a story, at its core, about reconciling the things of childhood with growing up. It’s a bit about realizing that not only are there some things worth holding on to as we grow up, but life is better, fuller, and more vibrant when we do. That’s a journey, I now strongly believe, that old wandering me really needs to go on.

So as I’m writing Sam, and his friends Linus and Ellen, and Mr. Herman (the toothless and ancient math teacher who’s been trapped in the basement as well for over fifty years), I’m really writing myself and the road I never consciously took but am now realizing I’ve wandered over to. It’s a bit scary (since I don’t usually write so personally) and a bit preposterous (since I can’t ever imagine writing well enough to capture everything) but also tranquilizing in every way of the word. It’s helping me to realize just how I can still be a little kid in a grown-up world, especially how I can realize the joy God has lined up for his kids.
Of course living all of that out is much easier said than done… I suppose that’s what I liked about today – it had that nostalgia that the holidays when I was a kid had. For today at least, adulthood didn’t win. That’s certainly a big victory for junior high, underpants-clad superheroes everywhere in my book.

So as one feathery fiend is eaten, another one takes flight. Today might be Oppressed Turkey Day – and will bear a mass genocide of turkeys the likes of which we’ve never seen – but it’s a good day to me. There just might be a light down in the basement.