Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your program
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featuring
religious liberty news,
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and evaluation from the
US and around the world.
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My name Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on this
program is Carmela...
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I hesitate on
your name all the time
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as I've said before
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because I knew you
before your marriage,
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but it's Carmela Monk Crawford.
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That's right. You got it.
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Carmela Monk for me always,
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but you've got a good
husband and a good name.
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Amen.
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Let's talk about
the world that she is.
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The US has gone
through an interesting period
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in the recent years.
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And by the way,
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I'm older than I ever
thought I would get to be,
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and I'm doing numbers lately.
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And proportionate
numbers like, I've been alive
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for half the time
of Liberty Magazine,
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not editor,
nearly 20 years editor.
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But you know,
that's a short term period.
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But when I look at
the history of the US,
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I can remember a
lot of the presidents.
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I think I've been alive
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about a quarter of
the history of the US.
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Wow.
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Since independence,
something like that.
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I better be careful
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'cause I haven't
done the sums lately.
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But, you know,
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so we think
it's ancient history,
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but any grown adult really
has a good compass of events
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in their own memory.
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And by my life memory,
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we're in a period
of rapid evolution,
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things are just
crazy at the moment.
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And I can't remember a period
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when religion has
been so politically aligned
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as it is at the moment.
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As a kid, I remember the fear.
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I was in Australia at the time
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but the fear
that John F. Kennedy
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might win the
presidential election
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and he's a Roman Catholic,
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back when this was an
overtly Protestant country,
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you know, might do something
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on towards on religious freedom,
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turned out not to be the case.
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Right.
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He understood the
separation of church and state.
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But what do you make today
of this incredible alliance
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between some of the leading
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evangelical figures and forces,
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and the present administration?
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Wow.
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What a loaded question!
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First of all, I
think it is unfortunate.
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I'd have to say.
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it is unfortunate that
a few of the more vocal
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and more
politically connected people
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have set the agenda from
a religious point of view.
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When we look at the
greed that underlies
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and underpins so much
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that we have
going on in the country,
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when we look at the militarism,
when we look at the nationalism
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or the national pride,
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we look at the
rise in civil rights
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and problems like
this and we see...
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You're calling it nationalism,
we used to call it jingoism.
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Yes, yes.
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Well, when we look at these...
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This is not true
nationalism, it's jingoism.
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It's jingoism.
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When we look at these
things that are happening
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and we see that
there is a certain group,
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many would say
that the evangelicals
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have been so
influential in leading the way
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in terms of determining
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what is important from
a religious standpoint.
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And they've done
some good things.
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They have done some good things.
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I mean, it got
qualified, it's not all bad.
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Yeah.
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And I don't mean to
paint with such a broad brush.
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I do it too.
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So I understand
where you're going.
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In a very real
sense, I'm an evangelical
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but I do believe that
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the religious
landscape in the places
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in which we can insert ourselves
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is so much broader,
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then the gun debate
or the abortion debate
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or anyone of the narrow
things, a prayer in schools.
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When we see that children
don't have water at home,
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then we have to realize,
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you know, it's more
than just a few small issues.
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And maybe not
even prayer at home.
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Well, maybe not prayer at home,
but I'm saying, you know...
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I guess my emphasis is
on the focus of a few issues
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and the focus on
individual responsibility
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in, "why can't you do this
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and why aren't you
where you need to be
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and let's get you
going by cutting you off
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or talking you off
of the public door,
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or getting you out
of public housing,"
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and all that sort of things.
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And I don't mean this to be
from a political standpoint,
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I'm saying from a
religious standpoint.
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They have
articulated what they believe
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are the important issues.
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I believe it's so much bigger,
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and that's how I
believe as a Christian,
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Jesus was so much
more comprehensive,
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you know, your
religion has to be way bigger.
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Well, certainly,
there's no evidence
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that Jesus was
politically oriented.
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I don't agree with that.
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But I do believe that...
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The main thing He
said at the end, He said,
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"My kingdom is not of
this world, if it were,
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My followers
would fight for me."
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How interesting those...
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He was political critique.
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He called Herod "that old fox."
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That old fox. That
was a pretty heavy thing.
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That's pretty good.
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Back in those days
and right up through
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very close to the time of the...
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Well, even after
the American Revolution,
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I don't know if you know
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the Alien and
Sedition Acts in the US.
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It was a capital offence
to criticize the president.
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Correct.
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I don't know they
actually executed anyone
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but they were ready to do it.
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So in that era,
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He could have been
crucified for that alone.
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And maybe political
in the narrow sense,
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but it's certainly the
things that Jesus cared about
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and talked about had
political implications.
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And certainly, the
vulnerable that people say,
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"Let's not talk about that
because that's political, "
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the vulnerable are
who Jesus talked about
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and who He cared about.
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So you can see
that time in time.
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And I agree with you.
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And this is a good time for
me to throw in the qualifier,
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I know that
people tend to forget.
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I hear all the
time, politicians,
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when there's some big
issue at hand, saying,
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"I'm not being
political on this."
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And of course,
they're being political
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because it's a political issue,
they are a political player.
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What they really mean
and what we should qualify
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is I'm not being partisan
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or a party oriented.
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Everything that
religious liberty
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has to deal with,
and the Liberty Magazine,
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and I think even
your magazine deals with
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has political ramifications,
you can't avoid that.
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You're dealing with
society, that's political.
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But we do need to avoid,
like the plague, partisan,
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party affiliation,
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but at the moment,
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we have the counter to that
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with a number of the
leading religious figures.
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They've joined
themselves at the hip
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to a political administration
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and the party that goes with it.
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To a fault.
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Now that's their
right of citizens,
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but as religious
leaders, I think it's improper.
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I think I tend
to agree with you.
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I think, sadly
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because there
are so much momentum
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in that direction,
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the counter balance looks
like you have to align yourself
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with the opposing party,
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which I wish
that was not the case.
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I wish there was a
happy medium where we can talk
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and dialogue with
Christians who say,
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"Look at these
issues and this is
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what I want to do about this.
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And I'm not going to
blindly follow anybody."
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But you ask me...
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We should be issue
oriented not party oriented.
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Yes, I agree with that.
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And we should be
working for justice
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and freedom for all people.
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Yes, you asked me...
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When dealing with the parties,
it starts to narrow down.
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It's party interest
not national interest.
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Right.
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And if nothing else,
they've lent their credibility
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or their church's credibility
to an effort to exclude people.
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These are quite broad exclusions
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for people from other countries.
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That's not really a
Christian view even though,
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you know, you
understand the paranoid
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that lies behind it,
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but it's not a
Christian way to deal with it.
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No, no.
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I agree that it's
not a Christian way.
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I think...
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And worse, it goes directly
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against the clearly
stated aims of the framers
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in the treaty of Tripoli,
you know, of the treaty.
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It says, "This
country is for all people,
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not Christian, it's
not a Christian republic,
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it's for the Muhammad and so on.
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Well, people of other faiths
start to wonder, you know.
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If you don't like my religion
and some elements of it,
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it might be
problematic but you keep me out
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because of that, a broad brush,
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that's not right.
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And here Christian leaders
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have lent their
support to something
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that's not charitable, nor legal
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in the truest understanding
of what America stands for.
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When you go so much
deeper, you have to wonder,
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"What is behind that?
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Why, when on the
face of this even,
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this, you know, we
are separating families,
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on the face of this,
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we are applying
our immigration laws
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in our deep history
of welcoming the stranger
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and the foreigner
and the immigrant?
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Why even on the face of
this, when this is inconsistent
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with who are as a country,
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why are we
willing to do this now?
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Well, narrow interest.
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It's not
concerned for the stranger
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that's within your
gates or wants to come
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within your gates.
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Or the marginalization
in the other reign,
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I know that you covered that...
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Yeah, you read Liberty.
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You have an
article on authoring.
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Yes.
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And other, in
fact, in some languages,
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the word for a stranger or
non member of your society,
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it's another, they're not human,
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evens often, it's just some...
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It's not to be
equated with real people.
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Right.
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And I believe human beings
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naturally want to
connect with other human beings
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so to act badly toward them
or inward to even harm them,
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you have to dehumanize them.
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And this, with a
broad brush, say,
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everyone from
there is dangerous there,
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they might bomb you or whatever,
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that turns them into
sort of terrorist ciphers
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rather than human beings.
00:10:51.31\00:10:52.65
Right.
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And not taking the time
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to create either a
structural or an inquiry
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that would allow you to
separate on actual threat
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from someone
who is not a threat,
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and you know,
avoiding the broad brush,
00:11:06.43\00:11:09.03
but I think it's interesting,
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I was reading an
article not too long ago,
00:11:10.70\00:11:13.07
and I think it's
some of the same sources
00:11:13.10\00:11:18.44
and information
that you covered.
00:11:18.47\00:11:20.58
The article it's talking
about, and this is a quote
00:11:20.61\00:11:22.91
from a man from a
place called Genocide Watch.
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I'm saying this with a smile,
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I don't know why
I'm saying with a smile,
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it's a very scary
information about the patterns
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and they go around the
world and they discover,
00:11:32.65\00:11:35.42
you know, what leads to this
horrific event where people...
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Dehumanization.
00:11:38.89\00:11:40.23
Yeah, when they
turn on each other,
00:11:40.26\00:11:41.60
and it's like you said
dehumanizing somebody else
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or distancing their
wants, their basic human rights,
00:11:43.97\00:11:47.97
their basic human
needs from my rights
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and my human needs.
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And then separating
them and putting them aside,
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I guess, in the
discussion, in the dialogue,
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and then as you saw I
guess, with Hitler's Germany,
00:11:59.41\00:12:02.35
you saw in Rwanda,
00:12:02.38\00:12:03.92
it's a physical
distance put aside.
00:12:03.95\00:12:07.09
And then you have the
point where you actually get to,
00:12:07.12\00:12:10.03
where people are actually
wholesale wiping others out.
00:12:10.06\00:12:14.40
But it starts with that dialogue
00:12:14.43\00:12:16.26
in the beginning in
which we can distance ourselves
00:12:16.30\00:12:18.93
and make the other seem inhuman.
00:12:18.97\00:12:21.80
Yeah, absolutely.
It's a correct dynamic.
00:12:21.84\00:12:24.37
But to have
Christian leaders complicit,
00:12:24.41\00:12:28.74
and this is
troubling to me to the extreme.
00:12:28.78\00:12:31.71
I lived in the US long
enough, and you're right,
00:12:31.75\00:12:35.42
there's a tradition
of welcoming a stranger.
00:12:35.45\00:12:37.72
I mean, it's written in poetry.
00:12:37.75\00:12:39.49
Emma Lazarus words
are inscribed there
00:12:39.52\00:12:42.29
under the Statue of Liberty.
00:12:42.32\00:12:44.16
And you know, if
you know US history,
00:12:44.19\00:12:45.69
it's been fits and starts,
00:12:45.73\00:12:48.33
but I've seen something clearly
shifting relatively recently,
00:12:48.36\00:12:52.53
all during the cold war
00:12:52.57\00:12:54.67
which is most of
my formative period,
00:12:54.70\00:12:56.91
your too also.
00:12:56.94\00:12:59.04
Some of it, yeah.
00:12:59.07\00:13:00.41
Yeah, not as much.
00:13:00.44\00:13:01.81
I don't know your age,
you shouldn't know mine,
00:13:01.84\00:13:04.48
but still I'm a little old.
00:13:04.51\00:13:06.21
But you know, most of
my life, all of my life
00:13:06.25\00:13:08.38
was in the cold war.
00:13:08.42\00:13:09.75
I mean, I was
born after World War II
00:13:09.78\00:13:11.72
just to clarify that.
00:13:11.75\00:13:14.56
But the US
consciously set a self up
00:13:14.59\00:13:20.36
to be a Christian nation
versus godless communism.
00:13:20.40\00:13:23.60
So we had linked,
sometimes improperly,
00:13:23.63\00:13:28.77
our Christian identity
with our political stance
00:13:28.80\00:13:31.74
and we would welcome refugees
from communism on that level.
00:13:31.77\00:13:35.18
With the collapse
of the Berlin wall,
00:13:35.21\00:13:38.65
something changed.
00:13:38.68\00:13:40.02
I saw it, almost overnight.
00:13:40.05\00:13:42.62
We didn't need to keep up
00:13:42.65\00:13:44.65
what had become
more of a fiction
00:13:44.69\00:13:46.59
because we had
stresses economic and so on.
00:13:46.62\00:13:50.23
We didn't really so viscerally
welcome people anymore
00:13:50.26\00:13:54.10
and now we didn't
need to be a counterpoint
00:13:54.13\00:13:56.87
to godless
communism, it was gone.
00:13:56.90\00:13:58.87
So the door started closing.
00:13:58.90\00:14:01.30
And I think we've
come to an incredible pass
00:14:01.34\00:14:05.07
where I didn't
actually see the footage yet.
00:14:05.11\00:14:08.34
But at the border,
00:14:08.38\00:14:10.15
they shot across
the border at someone
00:14:10.18\00:14:11.75
trying to enter and kill them.
00:14:11.78\00:14:13.11
I mean, that is
shades of the cold war.
00:14:13.15\00:14:16.05
We become the polar opposite.
00:14:16.08\00:14:19.79
And Christians need to look
at ourselves, at our community,
00:14:19.82\00:14:24.53
and our nation
how are we presenting.
00:14:24.56\00:14:27.60
Let's take a short break.
00:14:27.63\00:14:29.10
We will be back to
continue this discussion,
00:14:29.13\00:14:31.73
and hopefully we'll get
into more trenchant details
00:14:31.77\00:14:35.44
on why Christianity
and Christian leaders
00:14:35.47\00:14:38.31
have thought to have
political alliances at a time
00:14:38.34\00:14:41.48
when there's a moral complexity
that they're buying into.
00:14:41.51\00:14:45.25