Need Kindness and Community in Time of Darkness

 

Letter to the LNP Editor; text as submitted November 6, 2024

Wednesday morning I woke up to the news that a majority of voters in the U.S. had chosen lies over truth, fraud over honest dealings, revenge and abuse over compassion, hate over love. It is a dark and dangerous time for our nation. The inevitable suffering will be great. And according to the voters, this is what we want.

Decades ago I attended a weekend retreat led by renowned German theologian Dorothee Sölle. In one urgent message to us she warned about the drift toward fascism that, even then, she observed in our country. Alas, her alarm was never taken seriously enough by the majority, and now here we are.

It will be up to us who still cherish freedom and decency to find ways to share kindness amidst the oppression. The first groups to be targeted have already been identified by the incoming administration – the immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, Black persons and people of color. They will need sustenance and protection as we are able to give it. Beyond these, anyone who disagrees with and protests against abusive policies will be labeled “the enemy within,” subject to whatever horrors may be implemented. We must band together to care for each other and to find allies in resistance as best we can.

Above all else, we must not lose hope that someday the U.S. will once again be a nation that respects the rule of law and provides liberty and justice for all. Our young people deserve nothing less.

To Serve and Protect

Letter to the LNP Editor; text as submitted September 1, 2024

Early in my career, the senior officer who promoted me to a position in Loan Administration advised me that my tasks would be to “serve the customers and protect the bank.” Ideally, the goals of serving and protecting should guide everyone’s work with the public, from junior clerk to highest government official. The Republican nominee for President, however, falls dangerously short.

As we prepare to vote, we must not forget that when Trump left office in January 2021, he took with him thousands of official documents, including more than 300 bearing classified and highly sensitive U.S. defense information. It took government authorities more than two and a half years to reclaim and secure all the files Trump carelessly and unlawfully held in his possession. During that time, with thousands of visitors passing through Mar-a-Lago, the danger that national secrets could fall into the hands of our country’s adversaries and other malicious actors was immense.

We may never know the extent of the damage to our nation and to our allies that has resulted from this blatant mishandling of classified documents. The safety of our military personnel was certainly threatened. Lives of foreign nationals working with our troops may have been put at risk.

Returning to office the perpetrator of these security threats should be unthinkable. Yet here we are, with a significant portion of our population ready to do just that. When election time comes, may criminality be rejected and may honesty, service to, and protection for our nation prevail.

U.S. Not a Christian Nation

Letter to the LNP Editor; text as submitted August 2, 2024

It is said that everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. Entertaining diverse opinions encourages creative solutions to complex challenges. Dangers arise, however, when stated opinions are based on false data. In today’s political climate careful fact checking is essential in choosing the information on which one bases one’s opinions.

One false, and increasingly pernicious, claim made in far too many opinion pieces is that our country was founded as and intended to be a Christian nation. This is simply not true. The First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” but for some theocratic advocates this is not enough.

The simplest fact check of this claim is to cite Article 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, which was negotiated under President George Washington, ratified by the U.S. Senate, and signed by President John Adams. It begins “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion …”

To state otherwise endangers the civil liberties of any who do not share the particular kind of Christian belief being imposed. But the claim also threatens the Christian faith itself by depicting it to the public as bigoted, abusive, and authoritarian. More and more Americans, especially youth, are rejecting all Christianity because they see it as hateful and oppressive. For the sake of both our Constitutional Democracy and the Gospel of Jesus, the falsehoods about both must stop.

Trump Candidacy a Threat to the Nation

 

Letter to the LNP Editor; text as submitted July 2, 2024

“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.” So wrote American poet James Russell Lowell in the divisive years leading up to the Civil War. It took four years and more than 600 thousand lives to defeat the evil of slavery, but the truth that “all people are created equal” finally prevailed.

Our nation is again locked in such strife. The Republican candidate for the presidency spews torrents of disinformation, distortions, and lies. He fomented insurrection. He has promised retribution and revenge, even execution, against his opponents should he win the upcoming election. His falsehoods threaten the very existence of our republic.

On Monday the Supreme Court, stacked with his loyalists, for the first time in our history ruled that the president is above the law, immune from prosecution for most crimes committed while in office. Six members of SCOTUS have granted to the president the abusive powers of a monarch that were specifically rejected 248 years ago by the signers of our Declaration of Independence.

We who value freedom, justice, and equality have four months in which to organize. The contrast between truth and falsehood, between good and evil, is clear. The elections in November will determine the kind of nation we, and the generations coming after us, will live in. May we resolve to support the goals of our nation’s Founders with our voices, our actions, and our votes.

Warning about Project 2025

Letter to the LNP Editor; text as submitted April 24, 2024

In 2020 the Republican party declined to write a platform, resolving instead to reaffirm the 2016 platform and continue support for Trump’s America-first agenda. Though we do not yet know what the GOP convention will decide this year, we voters should make ourselves aware of the provisions included in Project 2025. This is a blueprint for radical restructuring of the Executive branch of U.S. government should a Republican win the presidency. Released in 2023, it is the product of The Heritage Foundation, supported by over 100 other right-wing organizations.

Project 2025 calls for decimating the civil service and replacing skilled, non-partisan personnel with Trump loyalists. The services and support on which many millions of Americans depend would deteriorate and disappear. The document also targets the independence of the Department of Justice and the FBI, planning to bring them under direct control of an authoritarian executive.

It privileges the ideology of Christian Nationalism, seeking to impose by law and regulation a social structure based on a limited, coercive reading of Christian scripture. Cruel denial of civil rights, including healthcare, marriage equality, and religious freedom, would become the nationwide rule.

Finally, it calls for the elimination of environmental protection regulations and termination of programs to counter the effects of climate change, guaranteeing suffering for generations to come.  This radical plan, ready to be implemented if a MAGA Republican is elected President, is a clear threat to our well-being, our safety, and our democracy. It must not be allowed to happen.

Lititz Moravian Souvenir Bell

 Bells had graced the steeple of Lititz Moravian church from its early days. Then in 1850 Samuel Grosh – shop keeper, church officer, and one-time member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature – left a bequest of $100.00 to the congregation for purchase of a new bell. Negotiations for the selection and purchase were entrusted to Jacob Tshudy, who wasted no time in contacting the Meneely Bell Foundry of West Troy (now Watervliet), New York. 

In a letter dated 7 August 1850 Andrew Meneely responds to Tshudy’s initial inquiry, providing a cost of $0.28/pound for a bell of any size, plus a charge of $32.00 for complete hangings of yoke and wheel for bells of 500 or 600 pounds and $35.00 for those of 700 or 800 pounds. Apparently Tshudy had provided dimensions of the steeple in his initial correspondence, for Meneely offers the opinion that “the interior of your steeple or bell room is sufficiently capacious for a bell of 800 or 900 pounds. The aperture however at the side through which the Bell must be introduced will not admit of a larger Bell than one of my 500 pound pattern.” The letter also offers a credit of $0.20/pound for the old bell, provided that it is shipped back to them after the new one is received. 

Statement To Warwick Area School Board re ILC, 21 May 2024

Good evening. My name is Marian Shatto, and my topic is the danger of engaging with the Independence Law Center, relating to Agenda item 8, Approval of Additional Legal Counsel.

The ILC calls itself a “religious liberty law firm,” but the “liberty” they support is the exact opposite of our nation’s declared “liberty and justice for all.” Instead, the liberty they advocate is reserved for a small minority who are determined to impose their rigid, corrosive reading of Christian scripture on all the rest of us.