Occupy Wall Street and the Church

This week in Chicago, masses of people gathered for Occupy Wall Street marches, the largest such action that has occurred here so far.  With what has already been happening in New York, and with the movement growing across the country (if not in bodies, at least in minds), it would seem we have a reached a point where the protests can no longer be written of as an inconsequential hippie party.

As I have tried to wrap my head around all of this for the past few weeks, admittedly with equal parts skepticism and hope, I have begun to view these current events from a different perspective.  At the forefront of my turning was Ezra Klein's blog post on wearethe99percent.tumblr.com, which unfortunately has been taken down for some reason.  If you have seen it and find it, let me know.  But more recently, I read an amazing piece by Matt Stoller, entitled, "#OccupyWallStreet is a Church of Dissent, and Not a Protest."

What these people are doing is building, for lack of a better word, a church of dissent. It’s not a march, though marches are spinning off of the campground. It’s not even a protest, really. It is a group of people, gathered together, to create a public space seeking meaning in their culture. They are asserting, together, to each other and to themselves, “we matter”.

You can tell this is a somewhat different animal than other politicized gatherings. No one knows what to expect. There are no explicit demands. It’s not very large. And yet, celebrities are heading to Zuccotti Park. Wall Street traders are sneering and angry. The people there are getting press, but aren’t dominated by it. People are there just to be there, because it feels meaningful. The camp is clean and well-organized, and it feels relevant and topical rather than a therapy space for frustrated radicals. Just a block away is the New York Fed, a large, scary, and imposing building with heavy iron doors, video cameras, and a police presence that scream “go away”.

For as much criticism as I have read (this is nothing but AdBusters' efforts to create meaningless chaos, these young people didn't vote and the Tea Party took the House creating a bigger mess, what the hell is the point of this, etc.), the analogy that Stoller is arguing for makes all of that something of a moot point.  As a Christian, such criticism is the exact kind of stuff that I have lobbed personally at the Church, and somehow it (the Church) still makes sense.  Could we be looking at something of a religious movement?

More on the religious nature of Occupy Wall Street tomorrow.

-Tim

Yankee Doodle Dandy Jesus

David Campbell/NY Times: 

Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

Abe Sauer/The Awl: 

The Tea Party is no longer about economics, not that it ever solely was. At the larger rallies and for the cameras (CNN or laptop), they hold forth about founding fathers, liberty, spending, deficits, TARP, kicking cans down roads, taxes, living within means and fiscal responsibility. But when the lights are off, it's all about Jesus, with "God" thrown in, on occasion for Israel.

Is this big news?  I don't think that anyone who actually paid attention to the Tea Party since its inception would be shocked to realize that the line between them and the Christian Right is all but non-existent.  The Tea Party is the Christian Right in Yankee Doodle garb using libertarian political language to legitimize itself.

My question is whether or not this admittedly brilliant move was some sort of perfect storm of disenchanted conservative Christians organizing into something truly representative of the people, or if the deft hand of power pulled the strings we all have on our backs at times.  The answer to that question has implications for how dismantling the Tea Party, and its pox on the face of Jesus in America, might work.  

Jeffrey Stout/Religion Dispatches: 

Anyone who follows the money trail can see that the fat cats who fund the Tea Party are essentially running the show. The Tea Party wouldn’t exist without that money supply or without constant stoking from right-wing radio and television. That’s what makes it an elite affair. The Tea Party was able to scoop up a lot of free-floating resentment and direct it against taxation and the social safety net. It’s true, however, that some of this resentment appears to be truly populist in spirit. If so, it is unlikely to sit well with the funding structure of the organization.

Both?  If so, that means we're in for a fun show.  Maybe we just need to stand back and watch?

-Tim

The Tea Party: Playa Hater's Ball

The fact that I am still thinking about the Tea Party bothers me quite a bit.  It seemed inevitable that they would be a short lived fad.  Granted in the overall scheme of things, it hasn't been very long, and other grassroots, American, "third" (not really third at all I know) parties have survived with some semblance of relevance longer.  But we stand amongst serious things such as budget time bombs and presidential primaries, and somehow the Tea Party is showing itself to continually be a major player.

What is the most disturbing to me about this whole matter is that the Tea Party seems more to be about hatred of an abstract evil liberalism than actually being for something.  Fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets are their main tenants, and while I do not doubt there are true libertarian ideologues amongst them, for the most part what I see is a group of people who hang their hats on political theories for the sake of public and private justification whilst actually being about blaming the ills of their lives on a lie the Republican party fed them about the way in which degrading family values are sending America into a spiral of satanic, founding father *******, Jesus murdering, socialism.   

There is the typical great irony of Tea Party rallies full of medicare loving seniors on tax payer funded wheelchairs, or touting the constitution while telling Muslims where they can and cannot build mosques, or supporting a party whose establishment benefited the most from government bailouts, or championing states rights where federal powers are not explicit and then trying to put in a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage because states are doing something they don't like, but to me the more perverse irony is the thought of Christian Tea Party members professing to be working for the kingdom to come while standing on a platform of demonizing hate.

-Tim