A curtain call

One of the true accomplishments of the Trump administration was its effort to ensure a free and fair election in 2020, led by Chris Krebs. In 2017, at age 40, he became Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection. In 2018, he became Under Secretary of Homeland Security for the National Protection and Programs Directorate and a few months later, the first Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Krebs helped state and local election officials protect election integrity by (among other things) securing paper ballots that could verify results in the event of recounts. No more hanging chads, a “nightmare that goes on haunting” after the 2000 Florida debacle. Like an ironic, dystopian novel, the Trump administration’s good work, led by Krebs, countered his narrative that the election was “stolen.” On November 17, 2020, Trump fired Krebs for telling the truth.

It’s sad that the Big Lie will be Trump’s enduring legacy. It’s sadder that obeisance to this false narrative is now a litmus test of loyalty to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The saddest part is that a significant percentage of our country accepts the lie and no longer supports democracy. In the midst of this mess, a Chris Krebs curtain call is appropriate. He is now Chief Intelligence and Public Policy Officer at SentinelOne, a fast-growing cybersecurity company.

From “SentinelOne to acquire cybersecurity consulting firm Krebs Stamos Group,” by Jonathan Greig, The Record, November 9, 2023.

Georgia on my mind

In Myers-Briggs language, I’m uber intuitive and de minimis sensing. As 2024 approached, my intuition was ramped-up with a consciousness that 2024 would be very consequential. For me, and for many friends and loved ones, two events loomed large. The first event was the United Methodist General Conference meeting in Charlotte on April 23-May 3. The second event would have a more global impact–the November 5 US elections. I anticipated 2024 with more hope than fear, but just barely.

Somewhere in my deepest self, I believed this General Conference would be different because many delegates who opposed greater inclusiveness had disaffiliated. That proved to be correct, but I was not prepared for the Conference’s swift, thorough and decisive votes to remove one’s sexual orientation as matter of scrutiny for ordination eligibility.

It took decades for Methodists to decide in 1956 (by a vote of 389-297) that women would have full ordination rights. That 56.7% majority came after many decades of effort, personified by Georgia Harkness (1891-1974) a Methodist professor of theology. Much has changed. My congregation’s senior pastor is female, as is my presiding bishop and my newly appointed district superintendent.

Georgia Harkness is on my mind. So is the State of Georgia, which on January 5, 2021 elected a Black senator and a Jewish senator, effecting a peaceful transfer of power in the US Senate. That should have been the big story of the news cycle on January 6, 2021. Six months away from the November elections, it helps me to have both Georgias on my mind.

The struggle between hope and fear takes many forms. Regressive, fearful actions abound. Heather Cox Richardson’s May 6 Substack blog post at Letters from an American provides the historical context for current anti-immigration, anti-Chinese sentiments among us.

Grace wins, eventually

Our journey has many obstacles, including destructive climate change, widespread injustice and the proliferation of violence. They’re ours. We own ’em. I once naively thought we had evolved beyond the dictatorship phase of history. I underestimate our forgetfulness and our capacity for wrong choices.

Still, I believe grace (love-based reconciliation) ultimately wins. I’m not singing Que Sera Sera and I don’t see divine control over the granular details of every life. But, I believe we have agency, or free will, and–imperfect as we are–we can be stewards of a gracious Providence.

Yesterday, after celebrating our denomination’s removal of some restrictive language that had been inserted in our Book of Discipline in 1972 and 1984 (described in Friday’s post), I read the article below about Pope Francis and his gracious, reconciling relationship with some of society’s outcasts.

It’s encouraging to see glimpses of healing reconciliation, reminding us that grace wins, eventually.

From “How Pope Francis opened the Vatican to transgender sex workers,” by Anthony Faiola and Stefano Pitrelli, The Washington Post, May 5, 2024

40 years in the wilderness

In the big scheme of things, given the 2000+ year history of Christianity and the 200+ year history of its Methodist variations, debate about homosexuality is a very recent phenomenon. However, it has been a major reality of my lifetime (which began in 1950) and my clergy years (which began in 1970). I was a college student finishing my second year of parish ministry when the 1972 General Conference approved restrictive language about homosexuality. The New York Times reported: After heated debate, the general conference of the United Methodist Church declared today that homosexual had “sacred worth” but that homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

I attended the 1984 General Conference as one of ten monitors representing the Commission on the Status and Role of Women, networking with other progressive groups. A New York Times article, “Methodists Bar Homosexuals from Ministry” began with: The General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed legislation today that rules out the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals. The article’s third paragraph focused on what some participants called the “seven last words”:

The homosexuality issue was addressed when the delegates added a phrase to the Book of Discipline, which governs the church, that calls for ”fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness” as a qualification for ordination to the ministry.

This week, in 2024, the General Conference removed these relatively recent restrictions to the Book of Discipline, ending my tribe’s 40 years in the “wilderness.” The Associated Press noted: This change doesn’t mandate or even explicity affirm LGBTQ clergy, but it means the church no longer forbids them.

From “United Methodists repeal longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy,” by Peter Smith, Associated Press, May 1, 2024

R-E-V-E-N-G-E

In 1940, a paper by Harvard senior John Kennedy was published as Why England Slept. I thought of JFK’s sobering title when our son Rob forwarded a Time article, “If He Wins,” by Eric Cortellessa, who interviewed the former and would-be president and some of his close collaborators.

Donald Trump’s Republican Party–win or lose–will inflict great damage on America in 2024. As I read Cortrellessa’s description of Trump’s intentions, I began humming a new version of Aretha Franklin’s RESPECT, substituting the main objective of a second Trump term: REVENGE.

Trump’s litmus test for appointees will be whether they affirm Trump’s lie that he won in 2020:

Policy groups are creating a government-in-waiting full of true believers. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has drawn up plans for legislation and Executive Orders as it trains prospective personnel for a second Trump term. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state, the collection of bureaucrats with the power to control everything from drug-safety determinations to the contents of school lunches. The America First Policy Institute is a research haven of pro-Trump right-wing populists. America First Legal, led by Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller, is mounting court battles against the Biden Administration. 

Beyond ideology

After several months at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and a swing for some hiking through Tazmania, our son Cully stopped to visit on his way home to Maine. Tazmania helped him re-orient to the sights and scents of Fall. An occasional re-orientation helps us move beyond ideology.

William Barr isn’t there yet. When Kaitlan Collins asked why he will vote for Donald Trump, Barr said, “I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration.”

Justice Samuel Alito seems enamored with making sweeping ideological policy rather than focusing on the specific case before the court, opining that the immunity case can be “one for the ages.”

Our son Rob sent this YouTube link to a poignant 30-second political ad reflecting the impact of recent ideologically-driven state legislation regarding reproduction.

Dartmouth College’s approach to the conflict between Hamas and Israel was the “Last Minute” segment on last night’s Sixty Minutes. Bill Whitaker concluded the segment with, “American education might benefit from a few more Dartmouths.”

From “College campus chaos continues amid anti-war protests,” CBS Sixty Minutes, April 28, 2024

History

Professor Ron Robel (1934-2007) asked why I was a prospective History major. I said, “American history.” He replied, “Oh, how tragic!” Robel’s passion was Asian history. Later, I switched to Political Science, but if I had known someone like Heather Cox Richardson, I would have stayed the course.

As a white kid in Alabama, I was “protected” from much of American history. Ron DeSantis isn’t the first politician seeking to sanitize history. Richardson reveals that I have much to learn. Good historians can help us avoid a collective amnesia that is harmful, and can be fatal, to a society.

Richardson’s April 12, 2024 installment of “Letters from an American” describes the context of South Carolina’s April 12, 1861 attack on the US installation at Fort Sumter. Leaders of both South and North underestimated their opponents’ determination, which led to 620,000 deaths. One excerpt:

Southern white elites celebrated the idea of a new nation, one they dominated, convinced that the despised Yankees would never fight. “So far as civil war is concerned,” one Atlanta newspaper wrote in January 1861, “we have no fears of that in Atlanta.” White southerners boasted that “a lady’s thimble will hold all the blood that will be shed” in establishing a new nation.

From “A Bible Salesman: Trump Is Not the First Political Con Man to Compare Himself to Jesus Christ,” by Heather Cox Richardson, Milwaukee Independent, April 7, 2024.

In case you missed them

It’s easy to be numbed by data overload in our 24/7 news flow. Two articles stand out:

A letter from Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn, “Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts,” includes this:

The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch wrote, “A ship crashed into a Baltimore bridge and demolished the lies about immigration,” which includes this:

(Maynor) Suazo and seven men with stories very much like his — migrants from the neighboring countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico — were filling potholes on the region’s major span on a raw March night…. (a job) many other Americans simply can’t or won’t do ….

These six workers who perished were not “poisoning the blood of our country,” they were replenishing it. This is a moment of clarity when we need to reject the national disease of xenophobia and restore our faith in the United States as a beacon for the best people like Suazo. … they died as Americans.

Thanks to Robert Hubbell for sourcing the Chris Quinn editorial. Thanks to Lawrence O’Donnell for sourcing the Will Bunch column. Meanwhile … a Joe Scarborough conversation with Jim Wallis:

From Morning Joe, April 2, 2024

My brother Charlie

Charlie Kirk, 30, of Turning Point USA, appeared with John Randall on March 18, and said: If you vote Democrat as a Christian, I think you can no longer call yourself a Christian. You have to call yourself something else. I do not think you can be a Christian and vote Democrat.

Just out of high school, Kirk was an activist at the 2012 Republican Convention and later started Turning Point, which now promotes Christian nationalism. Kirk has prospered. While we disagree about virtually everything related to faith and politics, I try to see each person as a brother or sister.

Discernment around issues is crucial and I see 1933 Germany in 2024 America. I see my brother Donald Trump as an existential threat. So, I will not vote for Trump or a Trump endorser, but I would never say one cannot vote Republican and call oneself a Christian. We need lively, respectful debate.

From “Charlie Kirk Claims Christians Can’t Vote Democrat, Twitter Reacts,” by J.D. Wolf, MeidasTouch Network, March 20, 2024

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Alabama’s party names have changed, but it’s a familiar plot. I saw this movie in the 1950s. Alabama democrats ruled with a rooster logo over the banner “White Supremacy for the Right“. A republican judge from Winston County, Frank Johnson, provided a lifeline for the people to the US Constitution.

Johnson was an Eisenhower appointee and a true conservative, dedicated to conserving democratic institutions. He ruled against democrats who violated the Constitution. Today, Johnson might uphold a legal challenge to republican legislation that seeks to shield students from D.E.I.

Alabama’s republican legislators abandoned a conservative commitment to constitutional democracy and human rights that James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Frank Johnson knew in their bones–American principles that point to diversity, equity and inclusion.

From “Alabama Republicans Pass Expansive Legislation Targeting D.E.I.,” by Emily Cochrane, The New York Times, March 19, 2024