Welcome to the Universe

There are six principle components of reality that may be considered eternal. They are Dust, Gas, Ice, Fire, Light, and Darkness. Our entire reality is formed from these ingredients. The highest order  of these are Light and Darkness, which both religious and scientific authorities agree must have existed first, In The Beginning. These are followed by the three practical states of matter: Solids, Liquids, and Gases. In space, which is not darkness, but the area in the midst of both Darkness and Light, the most base form of solid is particulate, and Dust obscures vast portions of visible light in the universe, effectively producing darkness. Gases also abound, but in the case of liquids, without a land mass of some kind to contain it, and a moderate heat source that won't boil it away, the default state of liquid is Ice. Therefore, in universal terms, the three natural states of matter are dust, gas, and ice. The sixth component of reality is Fire. Fire is a force of life and destruction alike for humans, and for all life. The earliest forms of life emerged in warm water, around geothermal hot spots. The earth is warmed by fire from within and without. The star that carries us through space isn't even half as hot as stars get. Fire also destroys, burns, ignites, consumes, and erases.

The Arab Side of the Jewish Question

The best explanation for the persistent hostility between Arabs and Israelis, in painfully cynical terms, is the absence of a powerful Arab lobby in the history of the American political machine. The academic answer is far more complex, but it is this peculiar distinction that must be credited, not with the origin of the Arab/Israeli conflict, but certainly for the tragically resilient blood feud narrative into which the conflict grew, and the international conspiracy which not only sustains the crisis, but literally thrives upon it. The declaration of Israeli Independence on 14 May, 1948, condemned generations of Jews and Arabs to a life of violence and brutality. The powerful irony, however, is that the Zionist movement, upon which this new state was formed, began as an altruistic attempt to save a seemingly doomed race of mercilessly embattled European Jews from inhuman atrocities committed by and/or under the unconcerned eyes of their neighbors, police, soldiers and rulers, who mostly viewed the Jews as Christ-killers, and worth little more consideration than that.

Modernization and the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire is famous for its size, scope, and influence upon the histories of nearly every major European country. Why then, did the concurrent attempts at modernization seem to fail for Turks, where the Egyptians succeeded? In short, the Turks, who wielded so much power and authority, failed to solidify their gains. One argument, and a strong one, is that they bit off more than they can chew. Another argument, equally compelling, is that they were simply beaten into bankruptcy. And yet another argument contends that reforms failed for Ottomans because of an insurmountable surge of internal resistance, from basically every direction.

The Contemporary Crucible: A Stage Review

 Shreveport Little Theater and Heather Hooper teamed up to bring Arthur Miller's frustratingly resonant McCarthy Era masterpiece to life in a brilliant, on-stage production that only the deep south can truly deliver to form. Though at-times high-school-esque in cue and oration, local performers quickly descended from their traditionally contemporary sets and yoga-panted characters into an immersive frenzy of intrigue, confusion, and madness. Needing little artistic license to recreate the dialects and scenic commonalities of religious social influence, Hooper's cast takes conservative advantage of that stereotypical southern twang so often characterized as a bane to artistic and intellectual culture, and delivers a powerful (and disturbingly familiar) rendition of an age-old American theme: Persecution.

The Empire Fights Back

In the 19th century, the so-called “balance of power” which western nations sought after the atrocities of an unrestrained Napoleon finally began to shift, from Ottoman, to European favor. Having been stopped twice at the gates of Vienna centuries prior, the Islamic tide slowed to a trickle as the unification of Russia and Germany began to solidify resistance to Ottoman control. As the Ottomans struggled to respond to a rapidly changing set of enemies, Persians and Egyptians endured their own internal changes as well. Together, these three centuries-old Islamic players on the world-stage would suffer the intense stranglehold imposed by British, Russian, and French imperialism. The consequences would forever change the middle eastern perception of its own security forces, and would, in many cases, undermine internal diplomacy as sweeping attempts at reform drew the ire of tribal and religious conflict. The result for Egypt was a strong nationalist dynasty that would persist into the mid-twentieth century. For Persians in Iran, it was the beginning of a long history of proxy wars and shaky alliances forged more often out of necessity than opportunity. For the Turks, however, these Christian thrusts into the “Islamic Heartlands” posed an existential threat to the already-withering Ottoman Empire.

Saints, Martyrs, and Marxisms

Though Karl Marx's indictment of the Christian religion in Social Principles reflected the irreverent indignation of a seemingly oppressed dissident, both angry and tinged with callous cynicism, it is difficult to relegate his commentary to mockery. Marx writes with great passion about the unfavorable outcome of what he treats as kind of a grand, eighteen hundred year long experiment.

The great irony in the western religious and political rejection that walled off what became a semi-Marxist empire and a dominant global socioeconomic force is that beneath his rebellious tone, what Marx suggests about mainstream institutional religion only echos the cries of many so scholars, prophets, and reformers which precede him.

What links Marx with the most fervently radical religious fire-and-brimstone preacher, with the most prolific humanitarian saints, and with the most successful church reformers is the courage to hold what is arguably the world's most important governing authority to its own standard. From this vantage, Marx is greatly humanized by the retrospective concession that he himself was not completely to blame for the conclusions he drew from what he observed of history. To treat Marx fairly, therefore, is to grant the possibility that had the church evolved into a less contentious, more edifying presence in Marx's world, he might have embraced it for its many virtues. Instead, Marx lived in the long consistorial shadow of a much more invasive and authoritarian animal, whose ravishings were visibly inconsistent with the Christian message of peace, comfort, redemption, and faith.

In any setting which finds bureaucracy governing matters of morality and thought, as when there is no boundary between church and state, the two become indistinguishable. The “double-wings” which provide “in-exhaustible life” in Marx's metaphoric treatment of the Prussian eagle, did so on the strength and sweat of a severely disenfranchised population, and did so for the advancement of hostile, alienating forces. If the premise of Christianity is that God is in control, how else could a mind like Marx interpret the world he saw? When he writes “One third of the nation has no land for its subsistence...[with] another third in decline” his complaint would fall silent on the ears of God and Holy Roman Emperor alike. In his view, the failure of the one through centuries implies, if not guarantees, the failure of the temporal models of the other, which predicate themselves upon theology.

When Marx describes Prussian Consistorial Councilors as having “imaginary blanks checks, drawn on God, the Father, and the Company,” it is not difficult to see how he draws the line from “justification of slavery in antiquity,” through the “[glorification] of medieval serfdom” to the “defense of oppression of the proletariat” in his own time. While for many historians, the past is a long and intricate series of battles, intrigues, and expeditions, Marx took the furthest step back and painted the last few thousand years with the broad stroke of admonition, for both the takers who thrived on the broken backs of the poor, and for the sublimated minds of the chattel which whinnied on, generation after generation, toting the cannibal dwarves on their giant shoulders.

Marx observes what, in his view, represents the greatest human tragedy perpetuated by the cruelest of schizophrenic rationalizations: that this servitude of dehumanizing guilt and blatant exploitation is eternally imposed upon this race of men as either “just punishment or suffering for the redeemed.” Marx is often treated by critics as a proponent of violence, which is a distinction often used to mark the disparity between the messages of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the American rights movement era.

This characterization fails to objectively acknowledge the urgency and sincerity of Marx's perspective. His was not the world of idle philosophical musings in suburban comfort. That Prussian Eagle would ultimately become a casualty of ideological world war between well entrenched members of an inbred family of divine right rulers operating and expanding in tandem with their faith traditions. Soldiers were followed by missionaries or sects of dissident refugees, who, in turn, were followed by new governments, rapidly modernizing security forces, producing new soldiers, from which inevitably proceeded more refugees, dissidents, and always, new governments.

Everywhere in 19^th century Europe, the erased identity was a common theme. Entire cultures were weighed against bullets and gravestones. And all the while, soft voices whispered, “relax, everything is under control, there is a plan, His plan.” What even Marx struggled to articulate was that ALL humans are bound by their own imperative, either to resist or be subdued. Slavery is a condition of the mind, and not of the shackle or whip. To turn the other cheek enough times, as Ghandi famously did, in Marx's view was to effectively teach the abuser that one condones the abuse.

While Absolutists may defer to Gandhi's example, Marx addresses the much more typical result, with which he equates the outcome of the whole Christian experiment: a world in which humanity is defined by “cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, and submission.” Where the faithful are content to ask only for their daily bread, Marx places greater value on “self-respect, pride, and a sense of independence.” With this principle, even the staunchest of cold-war hawks and apocalyptic evangelists might have found common ground in the age of democratization and Manifest Destiny.

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Stood Up by Jesus

To understand Ellen White's Great Controversy concerning the Sabbath, it is necessary to first discuss the Day-Age Theory which inspired the Millerite movement, in which followers of William Miller assembled a series of scriptural passages which they maintained, when decoded, revealed what they believed would be the year of the rapture. White elaborates extensively on a careful examination of passages from Daniel, Ezra, and Mark with the assumption that the references to day, or days, should be translated as years instead, as extrapolated from associative references in Numbers and Ezekial, and set against a timeline of known biblical events. Drawing on Miller's equation of the word sanctuary with the earth and the word cleanse with the second coming of Christ, White demonstrates how the passage from Daniel could be interpreted to support Miller's famous claim that the world would end (or change profoundly) in 1844.

Falwell Rising

In short, the ubiquitous evil corrupting the Great American consciousness, in the words of '70s fundamentalist evangelical radio star Jerry Falwell, is a product of a society in which “missing is the mighty man...who will call sin by its right name.” As Adam's first divine mandate was to name things, Falwell graces his audience with a neatly ordered laundry list of social iniquity, authoritatively assuming the character role of his own absent protagonist. Among those perpetrating such damnable social degradations Falwell enumerates homosexuals, welfare recipients, women who speak out of turn, and, apparently, “humanists” in general. He issues a call to the “silent majority” on behalf of God, with strong nationalist overtones, to seek renewal of God's law and scriptural morality. From the inauguration of Ronald Reagan to the time of this writing, those who listened and heeded his call have been an inextricable force in American politics, and have arguably influenced the entire course of human history by virtue of that leverage.

On Religious Pluralism

In Problems with Religious Pluralism, John Hick presents the problem of absolutism in plural societies as one stemming from “tribal loyalties” which inhibit the universal path and weaken the connection to what he refers to as the “ultimate” or the common experience of God through different cultural identities. Hick borrows a term he attributes to Rosemary Reuthers: “Eclesiatal-Ethnicity,” which he defines as unique “religious traditions passed down from generation to generation” as opposed to acquisition via “deliberate comparative judgment and choice.” Among a diverse history of contributors to Christian thought, Hick stands out for his novel approach. In an organization fractured by endless forays into logical debate by rigidly uncompromising proponents of wildly divergent interpretations, Hick promotes a kind of universal concilliarism, underwritten by an arguably well reasoned set of premises, and supported by lucid observations of modern trends away from absolutism.

1001 Nights of Revelation

The most central component of Islam, and subsequently, the most critical historical component, is Allah. The Penguin Selection of famous tales, composed during the Abbasid dynasty of ambitious Arab Khalifas, in the eighth and ninth century C.E., begins, as all great works do, with a dedication. This one reads “Praise be to Allah Lord of the Creation, and blessing and peace eternal upon the Prince of Apostles, our master Mohammed.” This meandering anthology, Tales from a Thousand and One Nights, chronicles the adventures and misfortunes of a most fascinating race of men, strong and willful, yet compassionate and compromising. These curious tales reveal a depth of imagination, culture, and wisdom arguably unrivaled by western literature, presumably until Dante himself set out to embark on the greatest adventure of all: the quest to meet God.