NPR : Christian Coalition's New Leader Steps Down

I can't begin to tell you how much I think this sucks. I really liked this guy's podcast and thought he had a very Christ-centered view of social ethics. I just hope that his stepping down sends a message to the radical right.

Christian Coalition's New Leader Steps Down: "Rev. Joel Hunter, president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, is declining the job, saying the organization wouldn't let him expand its agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage. A statement issued by the group said Hunter left because of 'differences in philosophy and vision.'

Hunter said he was not asked to leave. But, he says, he had wanted to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.

But as the author of a book called Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians, even Hunter admits he wasn't the natural choice to head the group.

Nevertheless, when Hunter accepted the job as president of the Christian Coalition last summer, he says he was reassured that the organization would support his efforts to expand the Coalition's agenda beyond the so-called moral issues of abortion and gay marriage.

"At first it seemed like they were open to that," Hunter says. "But when it came down to it, they just couldn't quite go there. The phrase that was used was, 'Those are fine issues, but it's just not us, that's not our base.'"

Protect Tithing?

This is pretty interesting. Not too sure what to make of it. Part of me says that allowing people to give even after bankruptcy is the right thing to do. But then another part of me wonders if the state should be giving tax exemptions for charitable giving at all. Once they say it's OK to donate to the Methodist church down the street, we have to allow bankrupt people to give to other crazy churches that may or may not be legit.

Will the Democratic Congress protect tithing?:
If the Democrats really want to reach out to religious voters, a New York Times article suggests one place to start: fixing the 2005 bankruptcy bill provision that makes it illegal for many debtors to tithe. Noam Cohen notes that a bill to allow tithing passed unanimously in the Senate, but didn't make it to the House by the recess. Cohen writes:

[Republican Sen. Orrin] Hatch's plan was to get the legislation done during a lame-duck session, but with the election and change in leadership, the Democrats may want to revisit bankruptcy legislation comprehensively. Mr. Hatch and other Republican senators late last month wrote to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to instruct trustees to allow tithing and other charitable giving. But a senior official at the Justice Department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because litigation could continue, said last week that the department was not giving such instruction, noting that trustees had a fiduciary responsibility to 'look under every rock, even the church's rock.' But he added that the department wanted tithing protected, and that it had even helped Mr. Hatch draft the corrective legislation."

The Problem with the FDA

I've been writing technical documentation for GE Healthcare for a while now and a large part of my daily tasks involve making the FDA happy by filling out form after form.

As you can imagine, the FDA is very concerned about ensuring that people aren't pumped full of too much radiation or too many RF waves when they're put into GE's medical imaging machines. Consequently, they audit us and tell us exactly how to do many things.

The problem is, the FDA is not as good at determining what is the best way to protect patients as GE Healthcare is. As a corporation, GE is the target of many many lawsuits. If, during one of these lawsuits, it can be proven that GE could have done something to protect patients' safety, but chose not to, GE would loose millions and millions of dollars in settlement costs and lost business.

These lawsuits exist even though GE Healthcare already complies with FDA standards. GE Healthcare has found that the FDA's guidelines cannot be relied upon to protect the patient. Why would that be? Well, probably because the government regulators come up with regulations based on political pressure (e.g., OTC morning after pills), popular perception (e.g., child carseats), and pure science (e.g., trans fat). None of these, however, are grounded in the real issue: are people's lives actually improved by having these guidelines.

Companies, like GE, must be concerned about that reality, because telling a jury that "theoretically our precautions should have saved your son...the FDA told us so" just won't cut it. Companies, therefore, must make their own guidelines based on experience to ensure that consumers don't get hurt.

The assumption that corporate America doesn't care about its customers is, the most part, true. But in this post-tobacco settlement America we now live in, corporate America does actually care about its customers' safety and health, because the moment they stop caring, a lawyer will be on them like white on rice with a lawsuit that will devastate their financials and ultimately tick off their stockholders.

Therefore, the claim that "Consumers have no way of knowing without the government," is mistaken exactly because of this reality. Product labeling lists things like ingredients and gives us good advice like -Don't perform arc welding while bathing- exactly because companies want to tell us so we know so we can't say "Hey, I never knew" and sue them.

Obviously, this issue is larger and more complex than I've stated here, and we need government to act as a check to market capitalism otherwise materialist values will always win the day. But, that said, we must acknowledge that the self interests of the companies, i.e., making money, is innately tied up with the well being of their customers. So as long as the government keeps the legal system open to people so they can bring their grievances against negligent companies to court, companies' fear of lawsuits is actually the best protection we have.

In terms of trans fat and cheap food, I totally sympathize with people who want to get that crap out of our food, but I think legislating a change is merely changing the law without changing people's hearts and that's not really good for society. Companies want a system where people take responsibility for their actions.
Companies want a world where

* they make Funyuns,
* they put a label on Funyuns that says "100% transfat", and
* people who want die earlier buy Funyuns.

If the person does die at the age of 57--which, of course they will--that's sad, but, hey, they got to experience the joy of Funyun's yummy goodness in a way that most octogenarians who avoided them never did. That may sound harsh, but it at least in that world scenario people are taking responsibility for their actions and aren't living a life dictated by politicians. That's a world where people are free to choose between good and evil and in so doing, continually shape their will towards God's--or as is more often the case, see that their will is so bent on their own destruction, they need to turn to Christ and cling to the cross. Either way, God's will is done.

How commercials work

Thought this was a very interesting quote. It was written by Neil Postman in the early 80s.

"There is nothing in the form of TV commercials that requires that a distinction be made between adults and children. TV commercials do not use propositions to persuade; they use visual images, as for every other purpose. Such language as is employed is highly emotive and only rarely risks verifiable assertions. Therefore, commercials are not susceptible to logical analysis, are not refutable, and, of course, do not require sophisticated adult judgment to assess. Ever since the graphic revolution, Commercial Man has been taken to be essentially irrational, not to be approached with argument or reasoned discourse. But on television this supposition is carried to such extremes that we may charge the television commercial with having rejected capitalist ideology altogether. That is to say, the television commercial has abandoned one of the key assumptions of mercantilism, which is that both buyer and seller are capable of making a trade based on a rational consideration of self-interests. This assumption is so deeply ingrained in capitalism that our laws severely restrict the commercial transactions children are allowed to make. In capitalist ideology, itself heavily influenced by the rise of literacy, it is held that children do not have the analytical skills to evaluate the buyer's product, that children are not yet fully capable of rational transactions. But the TV commercial does not present products in a form that calls upon analytic skills or what we customarily think of as rational and mature judgment. It is not facts that are offered to the consumer but idols, to which both adults and children can attach themselves with equal devotion and without the burden of logic or verification. It is, therefore, misleading even to call this form of communication "commercials," since they distain the rhetoric of business and do their work largely with the symbols and rhetoric of religion. Indeed, I believe it is entirely fair to conclude that television commercials are a form of religious literature.

"I do not claim that every television commercial has religious content. Just as in church the pastor will sometimes call the congregation's attention to nonecclesiastical matters, so there are TV commercials that are entirely secular in nature. Someone has something to sell; you are told what it is, where it can be obtained, and what it costs. Though these may be shrill and offensive, no doctrine is advanced and no theology invoked.

"But the majority of important TV commercials take the form of religious parables organized around a coherent theology. Like all religious parables they put forward a concept of sin, intimations of the way to redemption, and a vision of Heaven. They also suggest what are the roots of evil and what are the obligations of the holy."

Oh Big Box Mart!

This pretty much captures my feelings about all big box retailers, not just Wal-Mart. For a clearer version click here.

The Inherent Problem with Big Box-style American Consumerism

God forgives his family for each $15 pair of new pants they buy. As Solomon says in Proverbs, paying workers for the hard work they do is important since hard work is supposed to lead to prosperity (Prov 14:23).

People are struggling in poverty even though they work very hard at their jobs. Why? Because as Americans we want to spend less on products (like pants) so we can have more money left over to spend on other things. This materialism leads us to take advantage of those anonymous manufacturers who work very hard but get paid very little. That is certainly not the way it's going to be in the Kingdom of God.

My Prayer:
"I thank the Lord that God is gracious enough to forgive me for my continuing sin, and I continue to pray that God will give me the fortitude to overcome my materialism in all its forms. May my actions help workers receive the wages that they have earned, and when they don't may God grant mercy on those who are continually hurt because of my selfish desires to consume more and more cheap crap."

11/16/06 19:37
ed- I originally composed this post after a conversation with my wife. At the time I was feeling pretty passionate and confident about my beliefs on this matter and unfortunately, my passion spilled over into a very arrogant tone. I'm deeply sorry if my original post offended anyone. It was very inconsiderate of me to write so forcefully.