AN HISTORIC MOMENT

On today, May 30, 2024, a former president of the United States was unanimously found guilty on all counts (34) of felonies against the people of the United States. At long last, this shows that no one is above the law. Even a man who was president is not above the law of the land.

There are many news reports of today's decision. As a longtime student of history, I see this as an enormous boost to the forces of democratic revolution that have been at work in this country for the last seventy or so years. I would like to think this is the beginning of the victory of these forces over the forces of fascism that are threatening to overthrow democracy and the Constitution. We will know when the national election occurs in November. If the people choose Trump over Biden, they will be choosing a convicted felon for president for the first time in history.

The rule of law won today. The Constitution won today. Human rights won today. Democracy won today. We cannot overestimate the importance of today's verdict in the bigger picture of American history.

 

THE TIME OF OUR LIFE

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about time. Now, at the age of eighty and in the autumn of my life, I imagine this is a normal and natural thing to do. I have been most fortunate to have had a long, full, and happy time in all these decades since I came into the world on a hot and humid day in the Pensacola Maternity Home. In fact, I have lived so long that some of my early books have become relics. Just a few days ago, an auction house in London auctioned off one of my books, long out of print, for twice the original price. While I got no money from this, I did get satisfaction that, in time, the six books I have published were still sought after. For an academic historian, this is reward enough.

For now, however, we must focus on the near future rather than on the past. There is a highly active calendar looming that will carry us to the end of the year. There will be one momentous event after another for the next six months. We cannot stop these events from happening but we can control our interface with them and our reactions individually and collectively. I suspect this will be the most challenging year for most of us in a very long time.

Here is my "refrigerator list" of the outstanding events ahead:

MAY 18 --- Ordination of the Rev. Ross Tortora to the priesthood, Grace Church Cathedral, Charleston. (my wife and I are big fans of his sermons that we catch on livestream from Grace)

UPDATE. May 18, noon. Glorious service of ordination, beautiful, inspiring, uplifting. This is a great way to begin our eventful journey in the next half-year. May the Holy Spirit remain with us all as we remain with each other in this perilous time.

MAY 19 --- Pentecost Sunday. I have a new red shirt to wear for "red Sunday."

JUNE 20 --- Anglican Church in North America House of Bishops meets to elect a new Archbishop of ACNA; St. Vincent's abbey, Latrobe PA.

JUNE 23-28 --- 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Louisville KY. This will include the election of a new presiding bishop.

JUNE 25-28 --- ACNA assembly; St. Vincent's College, Latrobe PA.

JUNE 27 --- First debate between former president, Donald Trump, and current president, Joe Biden.

JULY 4 --- Parliamentary election in the United Kingdom.

JULY 11 --- Sentencing of former president Donald Trump following his May 30 court conviction on 34 counts of felonies

JULY 15-18, the Republican national convention, Milwaukee.

JULY 26-AUGUST 11 --- The Olympic games, Paris. What could be better than the world coming together in the most beautiful and charming city in the world. This should be the great uplifting event in an otherwise heavy and anxious year.

AUGUST 19-22 --- The Democratic national convention, Chicago. 

SEPTEMBER 10 --- The second presidential debate (see June 27).

NOVEMBER 5 --- National election in the United States. Election of president, the House of Representatives, and a third of the Senate plus many local offices. Whatever happens, there is common expectation of civic unrest to follow.

NOVEMBER 21-23 --- 234th annual meeting of the Diocese of South Carolina, in Hilton Head.

Whew. What a packed half-year ahead! As I have said repeatedly on this blog, we should all be greatly concerned about the national election, in November. It will determine which of the two tectonic plates will override the other---revolution (continuing the evolution of democracy) or counter-revolution (fascist assault on democracy). What this boils down to is whether we continue to develop as a multi-racial democracy or revert to white power control. Right now the polls show the race a toss-up. I am hoping for the best and bracing myself for the worst (and I have studied enough history to know how bad the "worst" can be).

Yet, life goes on and we must go with it. Fortunately, we have the Olympics in Paris this year. It will remind us of the best of humanity. However anxious, frightened, and disappointed we may be as events unfold this year, we must always remember the big picture of the order of God's universe and the small picture of humanity's quest of a better world of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

Le pont "Alexandre III" sur la Seine au coucher du soleil.

 SIX MONTHS TO GO

Greetings, friends, on May 5, 2024.

The national election for a president, the House of Representatives, and a third of the Senate is set for November 5, 2024, exactly six months from today. I must confess, dear reader, that I have high anxiety about what is to come. Nothing less than American history is at stake. This is not hyperbole. We are facing the most important election in the country since the Civil War. In short, it will decide whether the U.S.A. continues to develop its democratic revolution as a multi-racial society, or overthrows its democratic revolution and gives power to a white minority controlled fascist regime. Think about this. America is at the crosswords. 

Virtually every poll shows the outcome to be a tossup. On the face of it, this should not be. Biden should be way ahead and Trump way behind in the polls. Biden has done a good job as president. America is greater in nearly every measurable way now than it has ever been. The U.S. is the only super power in the world. The American economy is zooming along as never before. Trump, on the other hand was the worst president in American history. And, do not take my word for it. The American Political Science Association recently conducted a poll of hundreds of presidential scholars. Trump was their overwhelming choice for worst. 

He is certainly my choice for worst. He was the only president in American history to try to overthrow the government. He incited a mob that looked to invalidate a legitimate election and along the way kill his vice president and the Speaker of the House. They barley escaped. That alone should be enough to disqualify Trump for all federal jobs for life. But wait, there is more. He was the only president to be charged for crimes, felonies. He has been charged in four courts under 88 indictments of crimes against the people of the United States.

The people of the United States know these things. Then, why is Trump running neck-and-neck with Biden? Well, here is my theory:

Trump is a demagogue who brilliantly master mined a union of Wall Street and the angry-white-working-class-man. His two major reforms in his terms were 1-- to give Wall Street the greatest tax cut in history (and a pittance to everyone else) and 2-- to give the a-w-w-c-m a super majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. The 6-3 Supremes promptly overturned settled law and crushed Roe v. Wade. States are free now to ban all abortions and dozens of conservative states (south and west) have done so. Never mind that this was the first time in history that the Court had rolled back individual freedoms that it had once granted. True believers, as Christian nationalists have come to see Trump as God's agent. They form the hard core of Trump supporters. The Wall Street gang could could care less about cultural issues. They just want more tax cuts and regulation rollbacks. The cultural crowd wants to destroy the democratic revolution that came out of the 1960's and to preserve white Christian power. What does Trump get out of all of this? The enjoyment of extreme narcissism even at the destruction of all around him.

The Heritage Foundation has given us a detailed plan of how they will go about setting up a fascist state after Trump's election. Their 920-page manifesto is a chilling view of the end of the American democratic constitution. Find it HERE . Warning: do not read this late at night.

So, I would argue that Trump has a clear-cut agenda he is offering the American people. I would argue too he has done a very good job of selling this agenda.

Electing Biden will strengthen and promote the continuing evolution of democracy in America. He is on the right side of history. Where he has failed is to convey this agenda to the American people as well as Trump has communicated his. Biden is talking too much about economics, foreign policy, infrastructure, things like that. Snooze. Most people are not moved by such talk. What Biden should be saying all day every day is his resolution to keep America evolving as a multi-racial society for everyone's good. If white working class men are afraid of others not like them, he must assure them they have nothing to fear. It is to everyone's advantage to build a truly democratic society of equal rights, equal justice, and equal opportunity. In my opinion, Biden has to do a lot better job of conveying to the average American the advantages of continuing our democratic constitutional system. I do not mean to say he has done nothing at all. His recent campaign to promote women's reproductive health rights is the right thing---but he has to connect it to the bigger picture. Abortion is just the tip of the iceberg. The tip has struck the ship of state. There is far more below the water line that the fascists plan to do to scuttle the ship once the captain is replaced.

I cannot leave without returning to the big picture which I have given repeatedly on this blog. I believe it now more than ever and I am frightened for my country. You see, I grew up in the post-Second World War era when Americans believed nothing could stop us from being the greatest country in the history of the world because our whole system was based on the ability of the common man and woman to achieve greatness. The decade of the 1960's saw both the landing on the moon and the greatest democratic revolution since the Civil War. We were on a roll. Now, nearly half the country is giving up on the American dream. They are turning to support a man who has very clearly promised, and prepared, to destroy our constitutional democracy and to shrivel American power in the world. Sometimes I just shake my head in disbelief.

I am bracing myself for the worst and at the same time thinking of experiences in the past when constitutional democracies failed and how societies coped with that. After all, the Constitution was written in 1787, for a world vastly different than our own. It may well be that it has outlived its usefulness, that it cannot go on and cannot reform itself from within. What bothers me is the thought of the chaos and anarchy that would occur while a new constitution was being drawn up. 

Two nation-states come instantly to mind. France established its first republic in 1792 (in fact, the first truly democratic republic in the western world). France is now on the Fifth Republic. In other words, France has already gone through five iterations of a democratic republic. I do not have space here to replay the chaos, violence, and destruction that this process caused.

The other is Germany. In 1919 it established its first democratic republic (the Weimar Republic). This was destroyed by the effects of the Great Depression when the Nazi Party gained total power (1933) and completely destroyed every shred of democracy in the country. Germany returned to a democratic republic after the Second World War. Germany is now the leading country in Europe, but my goodness look at the unimaginable death and destruction the Nazi regime visited on the world after it destroyed its country's democracy.

We must not take anything for granted. If we want a government that serves the best interests of society, all of society, we the people must resolve ourselves to defend and preserve that government. The Better Angels of Our Nature got us through the Civil War period. They can get us through this constitutional crisis if we choose.  

 

UNITED METHODISTS REMOVE BAN ON LGBTQ CLERGY

The United Methodist Church General Conference, meeting in Charlotte NC, today voted overwhelmingly to removal all bans on the ordinations and ministerial postings of open homosexual persons. The vote was 692 to 51. The delegates also voted to allow same-sex weddings in the local churches.

Read the AP article on this HERE .

The interface of homosexuality and the church has been an ongoing issue in the Methodist world in the past few years. Indeed, a quarter of all UMC churches in the United States have seceded from the denomination primarily over this issue..

There is an interesting contrast in the ways the Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church dealt with the issue of homosexuality in the past few decades. TEC removed barriers to the ordinations of homosexual persons by vote of General Convention thirty years ago. After this was put into practice, with the 2003 vote to approve of an open and partnered gay man as a bishop, the most conservative dioceses began voting to leave TEC. This initiated sixteen years (2008-2023) of bitter warfare in the courts between TEC and the rebellious parties over ownership of the dioceses and of the local church properties. Five dioceses voted to leave TEC. The outcome of all the litigation was roughly fifty-fifty. It was that way in South Carolina where after Byzantine legal maneuvering over a decade, TEC wound up with the historic diocese and a minority of contested local parishes while the secessionists won the bulk of the local churches.

Several years ago, the United Methodists set up a process whereby local churches could leave the denomination under advantageous terms of property ownership. Over 7,000 local churches in America voted to disaffiliate with UMC. Now, as of today, the majority remaining in the UMC codified the institutional equality and inclusion of homosexual persons. The Methodist approach was the reverse of what TEC had done (secession to rights v. rights to secession). One can only wonder what impact the experience of TEC had on the subsequent actions of the UMC concerning homosexuality.

Nevertheless, today's votes in the UMC convention mark another landmark in the forward progress of human rights in the context of the mainline churches in America.