Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

Show me your friends and I will tell you who your are. – Old Adage

This is a sad imagery if we are talking about bullies and delinquents in the neighborhood; it is sadder still if we are talking about the religious leaders in the community.

Ouch! This is not the form of worship that is to be expected from Christianity. Face it, there is a sharp difference between Christianity and Christendom. The Bible gave the clear standard; consider these scriptures:

²² On the other hand, the fruitage+ of the spirit is love, joy,+ peace,+ patience, kindness, goodness,+ faith, ²³ mildness, self-control.+ Against such things there is no law. – Galatians 5:22,23 NWT

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²⁷  The form of worship* that is clean+ and undefiled+ from the standpoint of our God and Father is this: to look after orphans*+ and widows+ in their tribulation,+ and to keep oneself without spot+ from the world.+ – James 1:27 NWT

The actuality of life in the Caribbean is that our Christian-religious leaders do not have this track record. To the contrast, the religious orthodoxy is “sometimes good and acceptable”, then many times bad and unbecoming. Yes, we have to take the “bitter with the sweet”! Is this the way Christianity is supposed to be? Is this right and tolerable for our modern society?

No! Yet, this is not a theoretical discussion; this is observing-and-reporting on the happenstances of our Caribbean society. The actuality reflects the Long Train of Abuses we have had to endure here in the Caribbean, over the centuries, decades and years. Remember the bad religious orthodoxy and how these precepts were embedded in national Law-and-Order edicts:

• Conquest – The New World was explored and exploited with the expansion of Christianity in mind.
• Slavery – The initial approval for slavery was granted by the Roman Catholic Pope as an allowance for savages (from Africa) to be exposed to Christianity.
• Colonialism – Conquest of the New World to allow for the spread of Christianity and forge their flavor of God-fearing societies from the “cradle to the grave”. This was blatant hypocrisy.
• Patriarchy – Natural Law adherents, backed by twisted scriptural views, preached that only men mattered in society.
• White Supremacy – False teachings that the Black Race was cursed and that all Bible prophets only look Europeans.
• Buggery – LGBT Rights were frowned on because of Biblical prohibitions on Sodom & Gomorrah.
• Childhood Violence – Twisted application of “spare the rod, spoil the child” scriptural mandates.

This is the continuation of the monthly Teaching Series from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book presents issues that are germane to Caribbean life and culture and how to address them: problems and solutions. For this month of December 2020, we are looking at the Long Train of Abuses that could-would-should move our people to change, to reform and transform. This is entry 3-of-6; this one asserts that the embedded religiosity with Caribbean leaders-governance is a source of the toxicity and dysfunction in our society. Yes, their dysfunction is that bad.

The religious leaders are partly responsible for our Long Train of Abuses. This consideration is one of the assertions in this Teaching Series for this month of December 2020. See the full catalog of the series this month:

1. Long Train of Abuses: Enough Already – Colonialism Be Gone!
2. Long Train of Abuses: Overseas Masters – Cannot See Overseas
3. Long Train of Abuses: Religious Leadership in Government – Reconciling Trump
4. Long Train of Abuses: Religious Character in Society – Human Rights
5. Long Train of Abuses: Dutch Hypocrisy – Liberal Amsterdam vs Conservative Antilles
6. Long Train of Abuses: Puerto Rico – “Take the Heat” or “Get out of the Kitchen”

It is irrefutable, that the religiosity in the governance of the Caribbean has contributed to the Long Train of Abuses.

This is not just a Caribbean phenomenon. No, this commentary asserts that the Christian religious leaders in the US gave unconditional support for the 45th US President Donald Trump even though he provided a bad stewardship: for his country (USA), the Caribbean and the rest of the world. See the portrayal in the Appendix VIDEO below.

If Trump was so bad, why is it that the religious leaders continued to support him unconditionally?

Birds of a feather, flock together!  🙁

Now is the time to reconcile this actuality. Consider this excerpt from the news article – published during the build-up for the 2020 General Election of November, 2020 – in the Appendix below. This excerpt is prominent:

“… polls show Trump continues to hold a wide lead over Democrat Joe Biden among religious voters, a bad sign for the president is that some of his support is slipping, including among white evangelicals who, like the faculty at Christian colleges, have a college education.”

So the religious leaders hold sway over under-educated populations. Interesting?! The more education an individual gets, the less prone that individual is to the dark influences of the religious leaders.

What a statement!

This commentary is not a theological review nor is it chartered for spiritual guidance, but “if the shoe fits …”

… we simply must assert the Bible’s condemnation of the influences of false religious leaders in society. See these scriptures:

¹ But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come. ² For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good, ⁴ traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵ having a form of godliness but denying its power. Turn away from such as these! – 2 Timothy 3: 1-5 Berean Study Bible

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³ For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the wholesome* teaching,+ but according to their own desires, they will surround themselves with teachers to have their ears tickled.* ⁴ They will turn away from listening to the truth and give attention to false stories. – 2 Timothy 4: 3-4 NWT

Clearly, there is no refuting the clear difference between Christianity and Christendom.

Through out the Caribbean – except for the American territories – there is the practice of Seconding Government employees to religious organizations. (US Territories, despite a clear separation of Church and State, can provide some non-evangelical community development services-funding via Faith-based organizations). See this definition of seconding and secondment here:

A secondment is the opportunity to work temporarily in a different firm or department to the one you are already working in.

In an internal secondment, the employee moves to a different part of the same organisation.

In an external secondment, the employee temporarily works at a different organisation.

This was/is a frequent strategy in Caribbean administrations. Consider these 2 examples here, from Jamaica & the Bahamas:

Remembering Father Hugh Braham Sherlock OJ, OBE, DD (1905-1998)

Father Hugh Sherlock

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of Boys’ Town. It was in September 1940 that the Government of Jamaica and the YMCA collaborated on the need for a social intervention that would serve the needs of underprivileged youth in West Kingston and Trench Town.

The Methodist Church responded positively to the request for the secondment of 35-year-old minister, Hugh Sherlock, to spearhead this intervention. It was in these circumstances that the Kingston Boys’ Club was started in the hall of the Jones Town Baptist Church, which two years later moved to its own home in Trench Town and changed its name to Boys’ Town.

…

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Bahamas Feeding Network thanks Government for Assistance to Households struggling to put food on tables

Philip Smith

For 14 years, Philip Smith has been feeding the hungry, first with loaves of bread he baked in his small apartment. For the last seven years as executive director of Bahamas Feeding Network, he has headed an unprecedented volunteer effort that has provided more than one million hot meals to those who most desperately need help. But never has he seen the extent of hunger explode as it has in the last seven months since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and widespread unemployment.

“Hunger, especially in households with young children and among the elderly, was a major problem before, but in many ways, it was a quiet problem. Now with the coronavirus pandemic, the stark reality of hunger is staring us in the face and we are extremely grateful to the government of The Bahamas for their intervention which has made it possible to feed more than 55,000 households or 220,000 individuals,” he said. “For organizations like the Bahamas Feeding Network and all of us who are currently working within the framework of the National Food Security Task Force, we need to pause, take a deep breath and thank the administration for recognizing the depth and breadth of the extent of hunger, and funding its relief to the best of the government’s ability.”

…

The government is spending about $1 million a week to combat hunger and this week announced it would extend the work of the task force, originally scheduled to end this month, to December 31.

So it is quite common for Caribbean governments to deliver on their Social Contract by means of Faith-based organizations. So many times the roles and responsibilities of governance are delivered by means of religious stakeholders. So just how common is this practice?

A lot …

Too much …

Taking the “bitter with the sweet”, means that there will be some toxicity – the bad religious orthodoxy or Long Train of Abuses – embedded with the Faith-based deliveries. This is no longer acceptable. It is time now to end this Long Train of Abuses …

The Go Lean book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), an apolitical, religiously-neutral, economic-focused technocracy. The CU is not chartered to be a religious organization; there is no theocratic calling, but rather the motivation is solely for the Greater Good of civic society, defined as:

“It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong” – Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Enough already! It is time to think civic, and not religious. (Plus, there are many different religious faiths in our society).

We have addressed this theme – remediating the damage of the bad religious orthodoxy – in previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample here:

Do you remember the expression “the Fourth Estate”, referring to the Press or the different expressions of Journalism?

Who or What is the First, Second and Third Estates?

The Fourth Estate (or fourth power)… most commonly refers to the news media, especially print journalism or “the press”. The term makes implicit reference to the earlier division of the three Estates of the Realm: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. – Wikipedia.

The First Estate is the clergy. (This is the focus of this commentary; the next submission in this blog series will address commoners or lay people).

The regionally accepted standard for leadership has simply been to just take the “bitter with the sweet”.

The religious stakeholders (leaders) have traditionally exerted their influence on society. Now comes the change; taking the “bitter with the sweet” is no longer acceptable. We must do better. We must pursue the Greater Good … always.

Taking the “bitter with the sweet” has led to a continuation of the Long Train of Abuses.

So this is now the urging to our Caribbean member-states:

Stop it … now! No longer accept the “bitter with the sweet”.

We hereby urge all leadership stakeholders – political and civic – to lean-in to this Way Forward – a formal separation of Church and State where religions organization are treated simply as civic NGO’s – for societal progress, this Go Lean roadmap. This is our plan to make our regional homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix A – Title: Christian College Faculty Aren’t Lining Up for Trump

Sub-title: Reflecting new polling that indicates college-educated white evangelicals are moving away from supporting Trump, many on Christian campuses are struggling to back him.

By: Kery Murakami

On Sunday evening, President Donald Trump took a break from tweeting to talk to a key segment of his supporters, people of faith, to tell them God will help the nation survive the coronavirus pandemic.

“We know that God hears our prayer,” Trump said in a broadcast on his campaign’s Facebook page. “We have no doubt about it. He’s always with us and he’ll help us overcome this challenge.”

He then switched to his re-election. “This is the most important election of our lives, and whether it’s evangelical, whether it’s Christian evangelical — call it whatever you want — people of religion — this is the most important election of our lives and we have to get out and we have to vote.”

As he spoke, another aspect of his pitch to religious voters, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, was poised to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Opponents of abortion are excited that she will lead the court toward striking down Roe v. Wade.

And Monday morning, Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, told reporters in a call that Barrett’s confirmation hearings couldn’t be coming at a better time to mobilize religious voters. “This happening is a well-timed grassroots opportunity,” he said.

But while recent polls show Trump continues to hold a wide lead over Democrat Joe Biden among religious voters, a bad sign for the president is that some of his support is slipping, including among white evangelicals who, like the faculty at Christian colleges, have a college education.

At the nation’s Christian colleges, a number of professors described in interviews this week their struggle to reconcile their support for a president moving toward ending abortion with their discomfort, and even spiritual revulsion, over him.

Among those noticing the struggle is Shirley Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.

“President Trump has taken actions on issues like abortion and religious freedom that are important to Christians,” she said in an interview. “But President Trump’s actions distress many who have deeper faith practices. I think the president’s behavior has made it a hard choice.”

At the same time, she said, some religious voters are troubled by actions by the Democratic candidates, including a bill introduced by vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris to weaken a prohibition on laws burdening the exercising of religion.

Wheaton College — a Christian college in Illinois, which is described as sort as the Harvard of evangelical colleges — appears to be a place where Barrett’s nomination should be causing many to embrace Trump.

The university requires students and faculty each year to reaffirm a statement of faith, based on a biblical doctrine consonant with evangelical Christianity. Students and faculty are also expected to affirm that they agree with a community covenant, which, among other things, condemns “the taking of innocent life.”

David Iglesias, an associate professor of politics and law at Wheaton and director of the college’s Center for Faith, Politics and Economics, was clearly struggling whether his faith would allow him to vote for Trump.

“In my faith, everything is subservient to Scripture,” he said and brought up the biblical account of David’s adultery with Queen Bathsheba.

“The prophet did not give him a pass,” he said. “The Scripture is pretty clear that when our leaders do the wrong thing, we shouldn’t excuse them. Character counts. What you do matters.”

And, he said, “we know our Scripture here.”

Just in the past few months, he said, Trump has “failed to criticize the Proud Boys. What did he say? ‘Stand by’?”

“His behavior during the debate — he wouldn’t let Joe Biden speak. I’ve never seen a worse debate. It was pathetic. He’s said disparaging things about Muslim Americans,” Iglesias said.

“And there’s his recent treatment of veterans,” he said referring to a report in The Atlantic in September that Trump privately referred to service members killed in combat as “suckers” and “losers.” (Trump denied insulting veterans.)

Iglesias served in the U.S. Navy for 30 years.

On Christian campuses, “there’s going to be some soul searching in supporting someone you disagree with on 90 percent of the issues,” he said. “But who agrees with you on the one you that you hold dear, and that’s right to life.”

Supporting Trump shouldn’t be in doubt, either, at Union University, a Christian college in Tennessee, a state that Trump is expected to win easily.

“I really don’t know,” said Hunter Baker, the university’s dean of arts and sciences, when asked whom the college’s faculty is supporting. “People are keeping it close to their vest.”

But, he said, Trump will likely get less support on the campus than in the rest of western Tennessee.

He laughed when he was asked about Trump.

“What troubles me about Trump? Oh my gosh, how long do you have?” he said.

“He’s more polarizing than anyone I can remember,” he said. “Ideally we’d have someone who would reduce that polarizing. There’s no question he exacerbates it, and he almost seeks it out.”

Troubling Polling for Trump
In what could be a bad sign for Trump, polls are showing that recent controversies, from his failure to condemn white supremacists, even amid national protests over the killing of George Floyd, to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, could be turning off key religious voters.

A Pew Research Center poll, released Tuesday, found that support of Trump by white Roman Catholics, white Protestants who are not evangelical and white evangelical Protestants has slipped since Sept. 30.

Just a little more than a month ago, 59 percent of white Protestants backed Trump. But in the latest Pew poll, conducted between Sept. 30 and Oct. 5, only 52 percent backed him. Among white evangelical Protestants, support for Trump dropped during that time from 83 percent to 78 percent.

More telling is data assembled by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute at Inside Higher Ed’s request. Previous national polls have shown a political divide nationally based on education. Those without college degrees have been much more likely than those who graduated from college to support Trump.

Previously, polls had not shown that distinction among white evangelicals. But since this summer, “we do see a significant gap emerge,” said Natalie Jackson, PRRI’s director of research.

A PRRI poll in October 2016, for instance, showed that 61 percent of white evangelicals without a four-year degree had a favorable view of Trump, then a candidate for president — virtually the same as the 62 percent of white evangelicals with a college degree holding a favorable view of Trump.

Polls in 2017, 2018 and 2019 — in which 64 percent of white evangelicals without a college degree and 62 percent of those with a degree viewed Trump favorably — showed no difference.

A poll by the group between July and September, however, found that 65 percent of white evangelicals who hadn’t graduated from college continued to have a favorable view of Trump. But among white evangelicals with a degree, support for the president had dropped precipitously to 52 percent.

In addition, Federal Elections Commission data examined by Inside Higher Ed found 196 people who listed as their employer one of the 140 U.S. colleges that are members of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. Of those, 81 contributed to Trump and 115 to Biden.

The study was not definitive because of the potential for spelling errors in the FEC database, or contributors or donors not listing their employer. But even including the 14-to-1 advantage Trump holds among employees of conservative Liberty University, which is not part of the Christian colleges group, Trump doesn’t appear to be outraising Biden among the faculty as expected.

“Those trends are catastrophic for Trump,” said Micah Watson, director of the politics, philosophy and economics program at Calvin University, a Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“If that current data remains constant through Election Day (and people are actually voting now, too), then I don’t see a way he is competitive,” he said.

“It may well be that Trump is in as bad a shape as it appears,” said Baker, of Union University. But Baker, who is supporting Trump, said he is skeptical of polling, given that it was inaccurate in the 2016 elections.

To Dan Caldwell, distinguished professor of political science at Pepperdine University, a Christian college, that college-educated evangelicals might be turning away from Trump is not surprising.

“At long last, they’re opening their eyes to his behavior,” said Caldwell, who is supporting Biden. “I think people have become more skeptical that he believes in racial equality after his support of white nationalists.”

Caldwell, a Navy veteran, was also insulted by Trump’s comments about members of the military.

“I’m doing everything I can to keep him from getting elected,” said Caldwell, who is part of a group of more than 700 retired generals and admirals, former cabinet officials, and foreign policy experts called National Security Leaders for Biden, which has placed op-eds in local newspapers like the Pensacola Times.

That academics even at Christian colleges are troubled by Trump also isn’t surprising to Baker. “The more education you have, the more you value a certain type of discourse. And Trump violates that. He’s rude, and he doesn’t care how anybody feels.

“Christian college professors are still college professors,” he said.

Abortion a Key
But despite the polling, a positive sign for Trump is that even some of those like Baker, who struggle with supporting the president, are ultimately deciding to back him.

Like many faith leaders, Baker was troubled when Trump politicized the National Prayer Breakfast in February, where, according to the Associated Press, he held up two newspaper headlines about his acquittal by the Senate after impeachment then attacked Republican senator Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic.

“You haven’t experienced a conversion that brings with it a drive toward continuing repentance and personal holiness,” Baker wrote in an open letter to Trump.

Baker continued, “Please don’t shame us by attending events like the National Prayer Breakfast and turning a meeting based on faith into another avenue for political combat and vindication of your grievances.

“Here’s a Bible verse that might appeal to you and help with that. It’s Romans 12:20, which reads, ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Maybe you should try that,” he wrote.

But despite all that, he is supporting Trump, he said, because of the issue of abortion.

“I view that cause as fundamentally about justice. In the way some people view the civil rights movement, I prioritize that more than every other issue,” he said.

A Call to Repent
Another sign of the soul searching among evangelicals came last week, when the National Association of Evangelicals released a statement, which in part calls on evangelicals to repent in ways that seem to run counter to Trump’s positions. The Christian college association endorsed the statement.

“Despite the example of Jesus and the teaching of Scripture, many of us have not adequately opposed the unjust systems that fail people of color, women, children and the unborn. We have not always fulfilled God’s commands to protect the immigrant, refugee and poor. We have not always treated those who hold different opinions — both inside and outside of our faith — with dignity,” the statement said.

Despite the conservative image of Christian colleges, Hoogstra said there are different viewpoints, noting many colleges have student groups focused on climate change and immigration.

In preparation for Hoogstra’s interview with Inside Higher Ed, the Christian college association surveyed the chief student development officers at their member campuses.

Those at the 54 campuses that responded estimated that 54 percent of their students are Republican and 41 percent are Democrats. Forty-one percent of the campuses have a Republican student club, while 32 percent have a Democratic student group. And 81 percent of the campuses said that they invite speakers from both political parties.

Richard Mouw, who served as president of Fuller Seminary before retiring in 2013, also sees a generational change among evangelical students. He recalled Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern being booed by students at the seminary during a speech in 1972.

Two years ago, he said, Wheaton College held a series of sermons against racism, where civil rights activists spoke. “All the students got up and gave them a standing ovation,” he recalled.

As some evangelicals struggle with reconciling their faith with politics, Mouw is helping organize a group called Pro-Life Evangelists for Biden, which is urging opponents of abortion to take a broader view.

Many women get abortions because they do not have enough money to care for another child, he said in an interview. Biden’s policies to raise the minimum wage, provide affordable health care and free childcare work to minimize abortions, he said.

Among those who agree is Daniel Lee, academic dean for the seminary’s Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry. “It’s about life. It’s not just about abortion. A lot of people don’t just think about the one issue, but the broader issue of social justice. About Muslims, refugees and how you treat the marginalized,” he said.

“If you don’t vote against Trump, you’re missing what the Gospel is all about, what our faith is all about,” said Lee, who was among 1,600 faith leaders who endorsed Biden through Vote Common Good, a Christian political group supporting the Democratic candidate.

“Love your neighbor,” he said. “It’s so basic.”

Source: Posted October 16, 2020; Retrieved December 8, 2020 from:  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/16/christian-professors-try-reconcile-abortion-views-disdain-trump

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Appendix B VIDEO – Why Evangelicals Are Still Voting For Donald Trump – https://youtu.be/-YAbuONPfVc

VICE News
Posted Aug 26, 2020 – Not as many Evangelical Christians are turning against Trump as you might think.

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