THANK YOU, JANET ECHOLS AND JOY HUNTER

Let's give credit where it is due, and today that is to Janet Echols and Joy Hunter, at least according to the TESTIMONY of the Rev. Calvin Robinson (see @ 22).

First, a little background as we are learning more about the brouhaha of last weekend at the Mere Anglicanism conference in Charleston. On Friday, Robinson gave his talk. Find it HERE . Robinson said he was invited to the conference by Jeff Miller, the manager, in order to speak about "Critical Theory." Robinson is biracial and used to sport an outsized afro, which he has cut into a close crew cut. Given his over-the-top conservatism on virtually every subject, Robinson believed he was invited to serve as the "token" black who would be sure to bash civil rights. He said that what Miller really wanted was for him to bash "Critical Race Theory" a present-day talking point of counter-revolutionary forces in the culture war. Instead, in his talk, Robinson turned to attack "feminism" and lay the blame for all present-day ills on this supposedly evil movement. Miller was not amused. Some people walked out of the talk. However, Robinson said that right after the talk Miller was fine with it and made light of it all. 

Some of the women in the audience were not fine with it and did not make light of it all. They were appalled. Not only had Robinson denounced women's ordination, he also laid the blame for every social malady of the day on women, ("feminism"). Apparently some people were so disgusted and offended they went to Miller and Bishop Edgar and demanded that Robinson be removed from the rest of the program. This had never happened at a Mere Anglicanism conference.

The Rev. Janet Echols was one who was upset enough to do something. She is the head of the diocesan deacon training program. Robinson said that at 5:30 the next morning she started a barrage of demanding emails of "interrogation" followed by more questions. It was so much that Robinson cut off her emails. Then, when he went to the coffee shop, Joy Hunter, diocesan communications director, confronted him "clearly upset," and "very hostile." She called him "juvenile" to his face. Thus, Robinson said, "the feminists were out to get me."

That morning Miller and Edgar brought Robinson into a meeting, which Robinson recorded and has promised to release in due course. They told him he could stay but would not be allowed to participate in the program. 

Robinson said he was "cancelled" by the radical "feminists" who did not like his truthful remarks in his talk. 

And, finally came the race card. Robinson said that "class issues were at play here." Insert race for class. This was curious coming from a man who had very vocally decried racism as a liberal falsehood. (The ills of society were not caused by racism, but by feminism.)

Robinson is now getting his revenge against Miller, Edgar and the ADSC for cancelling him. He is all over the Internet telling his side of the story and gaining a lot of support and sympathy (check out YouTube) at the South Carolinians' expense. Indeed, this incident has greatly boosted his exposure in the "orthodox" "Anglican" world. Over the recent years he has developed a cottage industry of appearing on the Internet and giving talks in person. He spews out outrageous opinions guaranteed to provoke others and gain Trumpesque attention for himself.

Here are my thoughts about this incident, as of what I know now:

---Robinson is a flame-thrower, a provocateur. The manager knew that when he invited him. When one asks a flame-thrower into one's house, he or she can expect flames. 

---Apparently, Miller wanted Robinson to denounce civil rights. He refused and denounced women. This left both Miller and some women furious.

---Robinson's only expertise was in computer programming. He had no credentials to speak on the subjects he chose. 

---Thanks go to Janet Echols, Joy Hunter, and the other women who stood up to this chauvinist bully. But where were you in 2017 when the diocese voted unanimously to join the misogynist Anglican Church in North America? Not one woman spoke up against joining a group that refused equality in the church to women. If women are good enough to be priests in the church, they are good enough to be bishops. It is just simple common sense.

---Thanks too to Bishop Edgar for finally admitting that the church can hold more than one view on controversial issues. If this is true for women, it has to be true too for gays. At least we have a start.

---Better late than never. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done in the ADSC to reach true equality and inclusion in the church for all of God's children. It is not our place to stand in judgment. It is our place to love them as our neighbors. No one is beyond redemption and I find the events of last weekend encouraging. It's a good start. 

---I assume we will not see any Robinsons at next year's Mere Anglicanism. That's another good start.

 

 THE STRANGE BROUHAHA AT THE CHARLESTON MUSIC HALL

The annual conference called "Mere Anglicanism" met last weekend at the Charleston Music Hall, organized and led mostly by clergy of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina. It produced quite a little dust-up, strangely enough not by what speakers said but about what one was prevented from saying. Given the history of the schism and the ADSC, this is saying a lot.

First of all this is not an Anglican conference. Of the nine SPEAKERS identified, I could count only one or two who were members of the Anglican Communion. Second, this conference historically is a love-fest of counter-revolutionary, anti-Episcopal forces out to reinforce each other in their reactionary social and cultural views cloaked in religion. I must confess, I have never attended one of these conferences because I do not think I could sit through something so far afield from the classical Anglicanism I love.

So, the invited speakers are always a bit outspoken in their highly conservative views. That is to be expected. That is why what happened this year is so strange. As far as I can tell, here is what occurred:

One of the invited speakers was the Rev. CALVIN ROBINSON . A simple glance at his Wikipedia page should have raised red flags. He was a high school computer teacher who decided on Holy Orders but was rejected by the Church of England. He joined a small denomination called the Nordic Catholic Church. All the while he made a name for himself as a highly outspoken and opinionated social and cultural reactionary apparently decrying every aspect of what he considered "liberalism," which he seems to blanket identify as "Marxism." Among many other things, he is vehemently opposed to women's ordination. 

From what I gather, he gave his scheduled talk and was preparing for the panel discussion of speakers on the last day when he was suddenly "disinvited" to take part in it. What he was about to say about women's ordination did not pass muster with the conference managers. He went on to post a long accounting of the whole event. Find it HERE . Apparently everything he does not like is "Marxist." I stopped when he said there was no racism. It was all made up by liberals. Really? As a person who grew up in the Jim Crow South, I could him a thing or two about racism.

There was enough disturbance that Bishop Edgar felt compelled to issue a PASTORAL LETTER  about this strange incident. Why was one of the nine speakers of the conference censored? Edgar rushed to the defense of the women in the church in a letter dripping with hypocrisy. The Anglican Diocese of South Carolina has a well-known history of misogyny. No women has ever been rector of a large or medium parish. No woman has ever been chair of a major diocesan committee, e.g. the Standing Committee. Women have never held a majority of seats on any major diocesan committee. In 2017, the ADSC joined the Anglican Church in North America, a new denomination partially set up to keep women from being bishops (holding authority over men). There will never be a woman bishop of ADSC, at least as long as it is in the ACNA. Women are now and apparently always will be second-class citizens in the ADSC. 

What stood out the most about the hypocrisy of the letter was the assertion that the church could have "dual integrities." He meant on whether women should be allowed ordination. He said it was fine for church people to have diametrically opposed stands on women's ordination. If the church can hold two different views on this, why not on homosexuality? All the Episcopal Church asked was for everyone to respect the "integrities" of others whether they agreed with them or not. If a church can have "dual integrities" for women, could not it have the same for homosexuals? Of course. 

Unfortunately, the truth is the ADSC is identified in lower South Carolina as the bunch of disgruntled Episcopalians who refused to accept equality and inclusion of women and gays in the life of the church. No amount of cancelling, or issuing pastoral letters, can change what has already been established. Of course, the ADSC could grant women and gays equality and inclusion but it would have to leave ACNA and repudiate its own raison d'être, something that is not likely in the foreseeable future.

 

 

DETAILS OF ADSC MEMBERSHIP CHANGES IN THE DECADE AFTER THE SCHISM

As the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina prepares for its annual meeting in March, it is worthwhile to review membership trends in the decade since the schism of 2012. We know that the ADSC has seen a significant decline in membership overall, but what can we tell about the details of the decline provided by the ADSC in its parochial REPORT on its website? Quite a bit as it turns out.

How many people have left the (50-53) local churches of the diocese yearly and how many have arrived in the post-schism decade of 2013-2022?

For this, we will consider the "Baptized members" category as listed in the annual parochial reports. This is not the best metric of church membership since it includes every baptized person who had any relationship with the local church regardless of whether he or she ever attended a service. Nevertheless, we will give the benefit of the doubt to ADSC and use the quoted numbers of "Baptized members" for convenience. Here are the reported totals per year with percentage change.

2013 - 23,181     -274 (-1%)

2014 - 22,953     -228 (-1%)

2015 - 22,149     -804 (-4%)

2016 - 21,953     -196 (-1%)

2017 - 20,602     -1,351 (-6%)

2018 - 20,763     +161 (+1%)

2019 - 20,195     -568 (-3%)

2020 - 19,597     -598 (-3%)

2021 - 19,712     +115 (+1%)

2022 - 18,130     -1,582 (-8%)

The data show that overall, the ADSC declined by 5,051 baptized members in the decade after the schism. This was a fall of 22%.

The parochial reports also give the numbers of persons being baptized, confirmed, and received by local churches. Adding all of these together in the decade, we arrive at 7,520. 

The number of baptized members leaving the local churches was much greater than the 7,520 number of baptized, confirmed, and received. This would account for the net loss of 5,051, or 22% in the decade. It is impossible to know the exact number of people leaving the local churches because some of the people listed in "confirmations" and "received" would already have been counted among the baptized members. 

If we were to count "baptisms," "confirmations," and "received" all as new members, that would mean 12,571 baptized members left the churches in the decade, a number no doubt unreliable. The real differential between members added and members deleted would still be much more than the net loss of 5,051 would show. I expect the actual number of people who left ADSC churches in the decade was in the 8,000-9,000 range. The additions of new members would bring the final loss down to the 5,000 range. 

Bottom line: there were far more people leaving ADSC churches than joining them in the decade after the schism. 

Conclusions:

---The ADSC is in precipitous and ongoing decline in membership. In the decade after the schism, there were only two years of (modest) membership gains. Overall, the ADSC lost one in five of its baptized members in the decade after formation of the ADSC in 2012.

---The ADSC has a serious problem of retention of membership. The number of people who left far exceeded the number of new members.

---In 2017 and again in 2022, the number of baptized members leaving ADSC churches exceeded 1,000. The reasons for the high departures in these two particular years, and only in these years, remain unknown. As for 2017, the major event that year was the decision of ADSC to join the Anglican Church in North America. The ACNA is an independent denomination not in the Anglican Communion. The lead event of 2022 was the consecration of a new bishop, "Chip" Edgar. He had not been a part of the ADSC. The connections between these events, if any, and the unusually high departures in these years would be worthwhile to pursue.

---The rate of decline accelerated after 2016. The problem is not getting better. It is getting worse.

---At 18,000+ baptized members the ADSC is still a viable religious institution although it has declined from the 23,181 members right after the schism. However, at this rate of decline, questions of institutional viability will soon arise and leadership may have to consider alternate paths for the future such as uniting with the ACNA Diocese of the Carolinas, Bishop Edgar's former home.

---Before the schism of 2012, the Diocese of South Carolina counted 29,236 baptized members. If we combine the two dioceses today we arrive at a total of 25,606 baptized members. This is a drop of 3,630, or 12%. The loss is not balanced between the two parts as the Episcopal diocese has grown by the same rate as the new diocese has declined.

In considering the Episcopal Church schism in South Carolina, we are now in the "results," or last, phase of its history (Causes/Events/Results). Almost all of the big issues have been settled (in the Events phase). 

To summarize, here is my snapshot view of the results of the schism as they appear today:

1. On the whole, the schism was a draw between the two sides. The secessionists got the bulk of the local churches while the Episcopal diocese got the historic diocese and its assets.

2. The new diocese has seen relentless decline in membership. The historic diocese has seen a near constant rise in membership.

3. Most of the assertions and projections the schismatic leaders made before the schism turned out to be wrong. The diocese did not leave the Episcopal Church. The courts ruled that the historic diocese did not secede from the Episcopal Church and that the breakaways in fact formed a new entity. All the local churches in the schism did not leave TEC property in hand. The courts ruled that eight of the 36 local churches in question did not leave the Episcopal Church. Moreover, the new diocese is not part of the Anglican Communion.

4. The ADSC has established a well-known identity for itself of homophobia and misogyny by forcing an anti-gay "Statement of Faith" on the whole diocese in 2015 and by joining the Anglican Church in North America in 2017, a denomination created to keep gays and women from equal rights and inclusion in the church. Homophobia and misogyny form the commonly held definition of the ADSC among the general population of lower South Carolina.

5. The schism was a local aspect of the culture war raging in America between the forces of democratic revolution (Episcopal) and the forces of counter-revolution (anti-Episcopal). The direct cause was the schismatics' opposition to equal rights and inclusion of homosexuals in the life of the church. The schismatics' claim that it was only about "theology" was a trumped-up diversion that fell flat.

6. The parochial reports only provide data. They do not tell us the reasons for the changes in numbers. If the leaders of the ADSC want their experiment to succeed, it behooves them to find out the reasons for the ominous decline. If the decade after the schism portends the future, the very existence of the ADSC is at stake.

7. The greatest success of the schism has been for the secessionists to diminish the Episcopal Church in lower South Carolina, once an historic bastion of Episcopalianism in America (Charleston used to be the most Episcopalian city in the country). A diocese, one of the original nine of the Episcopal Church, that once counted 29,000+ members, now lists 7,000+. Considering that the first goal of the anti-Episcopal movement that began in the 1990's was to destroy, or greatly weaken, the Episcopal Church in order to reduce its "liberal" influence in American life, we would have to conclude that the secessionists in South Carolina met a certain amount of success. Their problem now is how to turn that success to their own benefit.

8. The challenge of the secessionists today is how to morph its negative origins and image into something positive. Given their history and identity, this is a daunting task. So far, they have not built a greater church in coastal South Carolina, one of the fastest growing parts of America. The data show that. Whether they can reverse the trend of decline is the question at hand.

 

WHY EVANGELICALS LOVE TRUMP

Evangelical Christians form the core of the Trump base this year as in past years. In the elections of 2016 and 2020, 80% of them voted for Trump. If anything, at least as many support him this go around. The question at hand is: Why are Evangelical Christians so fervently devoted to Donald Trump? Here is my take on it.

First, one has to define what we mean by the term "Evangelical Christian." They are the "born again" Protestants such as fundamentalists, pentecostals, conservative mainstream. I would put the Anglican Church in North America in this grouping.  However, it is important to note the racial element here. We are talking about white Evangelicals and not black ones. It is the white Evangelicals who are the devoted followers of Trump.

The most fervent of this group see Trump as God's agent in the world, a sort of new messiah sent to redeem the world of its present sin. With this view, they can forgive everything else about Trump which is saying a great deal considering his personal life and his policies and procedures as president. Trump was arguably the most unchristian president ever. 

To understand this strange, even bizarre, phenomenon of the attraction of opposites, we have to go back to the mindset and world view of the white Evangelicals. This is a subject of which I can speak with some knowledge having spent my first twenty-one years in a thoroughly fundamentalist church. If I know anything at all, I know these people.

The worldview of the Evangelicals is strictly vertical. God is the great ruling force of the universe, an object in outer space somewhere, like us humans only stronger. Human beings are born corrupt and sinful and are condemned to eternal punishment if they do not submit to this idol-like God. The universe is a Manichean battle ground between good and evil, that is, God and Satan. You are on one side or the other. There is no in between. You are "saved" or "unsaved." If you are saved, you go to the blissful realm of God. If you die unsaved, you go to hell.

God controls the Universe. So, changing social and cultural norms is not up to humans. That is the prerogative of God since he created everything and controls everything. Evangelicals believe the calling of man is to reconcile himself to God and to serve God in his life. So, white Evangelicals are drawn to Trump as God's way of restoring the social and cultural norms of the past that they believe God created and intended for mankind. Most visibly, this means returning women to the submission of men. That means a national ban on abortions and illegalization of all forms of birth control. It also means reversing and abolishing all rights of homosexual and transgendered people. Evangelicals see the recent democratic reforms in America as the work of evil forces. So, they tend to regard Trump as the messiah to defeat the evil forces that have "taken over" modern life. To them, he is not just another politician. He is God's special agent, even similar to the agent God sent to save the world two thousand years ago. "Christian Nationalism" is also popular among the Evangelicals.

It is not just what Evangelicals think. It is the way they think that is at issue here. Children are brought up in this environment to believe Evangelical cosmology as the only truth. Many of them get it not only in church but in private schools and home schooling. Believe, obey and follow are the code words of the day. Thus, children grow up without developing critical thinking skills. By the time they become adults, their brains are deficient in reasonable and rational problem solving. In short, they struggle to think for themselves. They were taught what to think and not how to think. The Evangelicals of today were the Evangelical children of yesterday.

Again, I know whereof I speak. I taught in college for decades in Florida and Alabama. Every year I taught Freshmen, a great many of them fresh out of the Evangelical cocoons of their growing up years. Most of them away from home for the first time. Very few of them had skills of reasonable and logical thinking. Typically, their approach to education was to memorize the information and repeat it on the tests without really understanding or internalizing what the material meant, the same way they had been taught to approach the Bible.

Every year I struggled to get my students to develop reasonable and logical thought in the context of the history courses. I told them I was there to tell how how to think and not what to think. I doubt that I ever reached the majority but I know I reached a good number. I started with the most simple and basic approach: 1-state a problem or question, 2-present the appropriate information, and 3-draw conclusion(s) based on the information presented. On every test I ever gave (50,000 in my whole career) I required an essay. It was gratifying to see those students who actually followed the simple pattern. I was getting through to them. That was enough to keep me going.

I know I had some effect because for years afterwards, my former students would sometimes tell me so. One told me that after she took a teaching job, all the teachers in her school turned to her whenever there was a report to be written because she knew how to do it. She had learned the three step approach. She knew how to solve problems logically and put it on paper.

Of course, critical thinking can be a dangerous thing, as the Evangelical leaders know well. Over the years I had a number of students who came to me in my office questioning everything they had been taught growing up. They wanted to know what to do. My answer was always the same: I cannot tell you what to think but I can tell you how to think. You are an individual. God gave you a brain and the power of reason. You are in college. Keep an open mind. Learn all you can. Then, draw your own conclusions. I always gave an ear because I could see myself in them. There I was years ago.

In conclusion, Evangelicals support Trump because of what they see in the world and how they see it. Now do not get me wrong. Evangelicals are not bad people. Far from it. Some of the individuals I knew in church as a child were among the best people I have ever known. It was just that their religion was primitive, undeveloped, and immature. They could not get beyond the vertical experience when it should have been only the beginning of the best Christian life and not the ending.

A word to the Democrats. Do not disparage the white Evangelicals. Do not question their motives. Realize you are not going to change their minds. Do not try it even though you know, as I do, that what they are doing is destructive to Christianity and American democracy. If you want votes against Trump, reach out beyond the white Evangelicals to the millions of Americans who are open to reason and logic as well as morality for the common good.

The best book on the subject of the Evangelicals and contemporary politics is:

Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. 2023.

 

NOTES,     16 JANUARY 2024

Greetings, blog reader. It has been a while since I posted anything here, so I just wanted to touch bases with you today and let you know I am still here. I pray that all goes well with you.

I have not posted anything about the schism lately because there is nothing to post. Both dioceses are moving ahead in an after-schism mode which I suppose is the only thing to do at this point. The Anglican diocese is busy setting up a new diocesan camp since the courts unanimously agreed that the Episcopal diocese was the owner of the venerable Camp St. Christopher. They are also busy getting ready for their annual convention, in March. What they ought to focus on in their meeting is the precipitous and unrelenting decline of the diocese. In the decade after the schism of 2012, the ADSC went from 23,181 baptized members to 18,130, a drop of 22%. Even more ominous is the fall of communicants (active members) from 17,798 to 11,673, a decline of 34%. The Average Sunday Attendance went from 9,292 to 8,353, a reduction of 10%. By contrast, the Episcopal diocese grew from 5,781 members to 7,476. 

As far as I know, there remain two unsettled issues in the EDSC, the dispositions of the properties of Holy Trinity and Good Shepherd, both in Charleston. Last year, the EDSC said it would sell the highly valuable property of Holy Trinity, on Folly Road. Yet, I have not seen any announcement of a sale. Too, I have seen no announcement at all about what is to happen to the Good Shepherd property, in West Ashley. Apparently there is no Episcopal congregation prepared to return to the buildings.

As a lifelong student of history, I must admit I am on edge about the year ahead in America. I think we will see a lot of turmoil and even violence although I would not go as far as to predict a civil war, even though there are more guns in the U.S. than people and many people are walking around packing them. Yet, there are moments to welcome in the year, as the Olympics, in Paris, the most beautiful and wonderful city in the world. This is not the first time for The City of Light. It hosted the 1900 and 1924 games. In fact, the greatest Hollywood movie ever made about the Olympics, "Chariots of Fire," was about the 1924 games. If you have not seen that movie, I recommend it. I am so looking forward to watching the Olympics in Paris, a place I regard as one of my homes.

As of yesterday, we are officially in the political period of the Election of 2024. Here is what the Iowa caucuses, of yesterday, told us:  ---Donald Trump controls the Republican Party,   ---most Republicans (in Iowa) believe The Big Lie, that Trump won the 2020 Election,   ---most Republicans (in Iowa) dismiss Trump's legal issues as politics,   ---Trump is almost certainly going to be the Republican Party nominee for 2024.

To me, the saddest part of the Iowa events was the role of Nikki Haley. She never had a snowball's chance and she should have known that. 1-she is a woman, 2-she is a woman of color, and 3-she is a woman of color who is the daughter of immigrants from India. In terms of the counter-revolutionary electorate in Iowa, she checked all the wrong boxes. After all her hard work, she won just 19% of the vote. If you have a pulse, you have to feel a little bad for her. I do. Yet, it was her own fault because she profoundly misunderstood the people of her own party. She will never get the nomination of the Republican Party, at least in its present iteration. She is about to go down to a humiliating defeat in her own state. She never had a chance.

Let us summarize, once again, the state of affairs in contemporary America. How did we get to the mess we are in?

We are witnessing a clash between two great historic tectonic plates, revolution and counter-revolution (this kind of clash recurs often in history). The revolution began in earnest in the 1960's with sweeping and profound reforms to bring rights, equality, and inclusion to social elements historically marginalized and/or neglected from the mainstream of American life, namely African Americans, women, hispanics, Asians, gays, and the transgendered. This was a great expansion of democracy which had moved by fits and starts from the colonial period. The 1960's brought in the greatest boost of democracy in America since the Civil War.

The counter-revolution is the reaction against the democratic revolution of the 1960's. It is led by the social elements who feel most threatened by the changes, namely men, particularly lower middle class and working class white men. This group is now the backbone of Trump's Make America Great Again movement. Their goal is to keep white men in power at all cost and they see Trump as their messiah. He can do no wrong.

In Iowa we saw that the white Evangelical Christians (fundamentalists, Born Again, Pentecostal) overwhelmingly and strongly supported Trump, many calling him God's agent. This is a disturbing perversion of the classical Christianity of the Gospels. Trump's personal life and his policies are anathema to biblical Christianity. What the Evangelicals are doing is to extrapolate their social and cultural values onto religion and declare it as God's Will. In the long run, this will discredit and diminish Christianity in the broader society, a society that is already rapidly turning away from institutional religion.

So, all signs show that the Republican Party has gone all in on Trump because they are all in on the counter-revolution. They see Trump as the vehicle to destroy democracy which requires the destruction of the Constitution. They do not have to win the popular vote. They have to win the Electoral College which is made up of the same number of seats as in Congress (535). Each state gets the same number of votes it has in Congress. Twice recently (2000, 2016) the Electoral College elected a candidate that had lost the popular vote. It could happen again, this year. All signs indicate that the Republicans are very well organized in their plans for the counter-revolution.

Recently, the Heritage Foundation published a nearly 1,000 page blueprint, "Project 2025," giving in minute detail how the constitutional democracy will be destroyed after Trump takes office. They plan to set up a dictatorship under the President. This will bring the end of American democracy to be replaced with a fascist dictatorship. The reforms of the great democratic revolution will be crushed.

This is not hyperbole. If you think it is, I refer you to the Project 2025 that is readily available on the Internet.

If Trump wins, we know that is going to happen. He has told us. Right wing groups all over the place have told us. We have been forewarned. They are out to destroy the Constitution in order to destroy democracy.

But what if he loses the election? I suspect what happened in the aftermath of the 2020 Election will seem like a picnic. I think there will probably be widespread and bloody violence. Trump will cry stolen. His followers will cry stolen. As in 2020, Trump could very well incite his followers to try again to overthrow the government. And this time they are likely to be better organized and more armed.

Either way, if Trump wins, or if he loses, we are in for a rough year. I keep asking  myself, how did we come to this? Well, I have given you my theory of that. 

The challenge we face now is whether we, collectively as a people want to go on with an evolving democracy even as we move into a pluralistic society, or we want to keep the white male minority in power. Is this a country for all people, or is this a country for the white people? This is the crux of the issue.

The United States of America is the greatest nation-state in the history of the world. It was founded nearly 250 years ago on the simple idea that the ordinary people could govern themselves. They did not need kings, hereditary aristocracy, or bishops to tell them what to do. But, to do this, the people would have to have equal rights, equal opportunities, and equal power (and this was in a country that had millions of human beings in slavery). American history has been the evolution of that simple idea of so long ago. 

If Americans elect Donald Trump we will be repudiating our own history. And, shame on us. It would be easy to overthrow the Constitution. But, what then? What would take its place? The people had better be thinking about these things in the next ten months as we move to the moment of decision. 

I, for one little voice, will do what I can to save American democracy. I can only hope and pray that there are enough other people out there who want to save it too. This has to be done before the fascists take power. Afterwards, it will be all but impossible. Read Twentieth Century history.

Let us summon up the Better Angles of Our Nature. Let us channel Lincoln. As he did, let us persevere in the face of danger with the faith and grace God has given us. Peace.