The Fairness Doctrine

           My verse of political exchange as a Christian: Titus 3:2, “Remind them…to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarrelling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone.”  How might we manage that?  Perhaps by the “Fairness Doctrine”.

So here is something interesting, at least to me.  We used to have efforts to keep the news correct and balanced in this country.  According to a USA Today “Fact Check” report, from Nov. 28, 2020,

“The Federal Communications Commission has long been charged with issuing broadcast licenses to radio and television stations that operate in the "public interest, convenience and necessity," per its website.

In 1949, the FCC issued a report that established the duty of broadcast licensees to cover controversial issues in a fair and balanced manner. That obligation was termed the Fairness Doctrine.”

What is the “Fairness Doctrine”?  As described in the article, it goes something like this:

“Its basic requirements were that broadcasters "devote a reasonable portion of broadcast time to the discussion and consideration of controversial issues of public importance" and "affirmatively endeavor to make ... facilities available for the expression of contrasting viewpoints held by responsible elements with respect to the controversial issues," per a report by the Congressional Research Service.

"In practice, it required broadcasters to identify issues of public importance, decide to cover those issues, and then to afford the best representatives of the opposing views on the issue the opportunity to present their case to the community," the report explains.”

But that is not where we are now.  I went looking at the FCC website to see what they said ‘officially’.  Did not find the Fairness Doctrine per se, but here are the limits of broadcast journalism when it comes to ‘the truth’:

News Distortion.  The Commission often receives complaints concerning broadcast journalism, such as allegations that stations have aired inaccurate or one-sided news reports or comments, covered stories inadequately, or overly dramatized the events that they cover.  For the reasons noted previously, the Commission generally will not intervene in these cases because it would be inconsistent with the First Amendment to replace the journalistic judgment of licensees with our own.  However, as public trustees, broadcast licensees may not intentionally distort the news.  The FCC has stated that “rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest.”  The Commission will investigate a station for news distortion if it receives documented evidence of rigging or slanting, such as testimony or other documentation, from individuals with direct personal knowledge that a licensee or its management engaged in the intentional falsification of the news.  Of particular concern would be evidence of the direction to employees from station management to falsify the news.  However, absent such a compelling showing, the Commission will not intervene.  (copied and pasted 1/25/22)

It seems that the Fairness Doctrine was taken down as basis of FCC work in 2011 and more particular applications of how the process can be abused, as with hoaxes or this, news distortion, took its place.

I got interested in this after reading a report that President Ronald Reagan did away with ‘the Fairness Doctrine’, the immediate result of which was the rise of partisan news outlets, in particular, Fox News.  But that is not the case.  The FCC has jurisdiction over licensees on the public airwaves.  Fox News and CNN and most present news comes on cable, unregulated.  Kind of like the newspapers in this country in the 19^th century. 

If you want to know more in that regard, my source is “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”, where Doris Kearns Goodwin traces the politics leading up to the election of President Lincoln.  A significant portion of that is how each side had its newspapers to get its partisan message out to the electorate-sounds a lot like online news and cable news today.

So, to return to the USA Today Article,

“The Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast licenses.

The report by the Congressional Research Service notes that broadcast is "distinct from cable, satellite, and the Internet, which are all services for which consumers must pay.

"It does not appear that the Fairness Doctrine may be applied constitutionally to cable or satellite service providers," it continues.”

My knee jerk reaction is to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine.  But who then would get to interpret what that means?  According to the article, the Democratic Congress attempted to codify this into federal law in 1987, but it was vetoed by President Reagan.  That may be a good thing, especially in this political climate.

          If I read this right, whichever side held the White House holds the strings to the FCC regulatory base because the FCC is in the Executive Branch.  And whichever side held the Congress could attempt to legislate how the Fairness Doctrine applies.  Or, far more easily, either party could simply ignore the Doctrine for their own benefit had they the political clout to do so.

          Without the Fairness Doctrine, the limits of ‘news reporting’ seems to run to the edges of what is acceptable under the First Amendment.  In a country where spending money has been deemed ‘free speech’, that is a little intimidating. 

          This is all patriotic me.  This is me worrying after the future of our democracy in the United States.  What about the Christian me?

          Are their ‘biblical boundaries’ to the First Amendment?  Boundaries that we, as Christians, would voluntarily hold ourselves to as people of faith?  Do the tenets of the “Fairness Doctrine” provide Christians as a way to bring together the First Amendment and Titus 3:2 (the Biblical basis for my argument on what political speech should look like)?

          Can I go any further without putting people completely to sleep?  More to come. 

Peter Hofstra

On Politics and the Church

Where do politics fit into the church?  Since hearing a story on NPR contrasting 2 churches, one essentially a church based on a brand of partisan patriotism that practically elevates Donald Trump to the status of the divine and the other a mainline Protestant denominational church pressing for acceptance of all gender stances, both admitting that there is very little for them to talk about, I have been haunted by this question.

I am not for a church that either theologically folds into a political point of view or one that declares everything political as somehow off limits.  The first possibility submerges the church to the political mudslinging of our nation.  The second practically cripples our ability to function.  As an analogy, Interpol, the international police force (yes, there is one of those actually, not just in the movies), has its hands tied against anything ‘political’.  It leaves a rather narrow slice of crime for their work.  To avoid any topic that might be construed as ‘politically motivated’, leaves us with a very narrow slice of the world to operate in.

I am also not one who believes that the sphere of the church is limited to the transcendent, esoteric, end of all mindset that we need to be ‘preparing’ for at the expense of the world around us.

So Sunday, our core verse was Titus 3:2 which is, with the lead in from verse one: “Remind them…to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarrelling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone.”  Around this is built a two-fold argument by Paul that 1. The Lord Jesus does not need our works of righteousness for our salvation and 2. The divisive individual effectively gets a ‘three strike’ rule to stop arguing for the sake of arguing before they are turned out of the church.

That was written in a time when the church was still effectively an organization with a single voice.  Nowadays, someone does not like our church's point of view on something, there is sure to be another congregation not too far off that will draw them in.   

What this draws down to is not so much a question of political belief but the expression thereof.  Jesus said love our enemies.  Paul is telling us to be nice to them.  So this is a matter of what is appropriate behavior for the Christian.  That brings us back to verse 2.  Be nice.  There is a line from a movie that goes “Be nice…until it is time not to be nice…”  The follow up was ‘when is that time?’  Jesus knows that one, not us.

To coopt a phrase that has practically become anathema to my own political thinking, “make America great again”, that is only going to happen from the side of Christianity when we lay down our anger and rhetoric, all the tools of negative political campaigning and mudslinging, and we come to the table using the rules Paul has laid out for us, in the name of Jesus. 

          The way I see that happening is for all Christians to confess their attitudes and their behaviors and their opinions of their opponents to the Lord, to lay them down at the cross, and to return to the behavior Jesus expects of us so we can really “do” in the manner of people saved in Jesus Christ.

Pastor Pete

Fantastical and Debilitating Electricity

          In the media I have been seeing conflicting messages about electricity.  On the one hand, there appears to be ‘fantastical’ electricity out there that is going to solve our climate problems.  This fantastical electricity is what is going to power all the electric cars which are replacing cars running on fossil fuels so that there will no longer be emissions from our beloved automobiles destroying the atmosphere. 

          On the other hand, just read an article on ‘bigthink.com’ about debilitating electrical use.  In our air conditioners.  It is a vicious cycle.  The world gets hotter, so we run our air conditioners to stay cool.  That does three bad things.  First, it cycles the hot air out into the atmosphere, adding more heat to the total equation.  Second, it has the potential to vent atmospheric-damaging chemicals that are used in the cooling cycle.  Third, they use debilitating electricity that is generated at power plants that use fossil fuels, just think of car exhausts but magnified exponentially.

 

          A picture is worth a thousand words, so I will just use those words some place else.

          So here’s the thing.  The whole truth is not out there.  What are the real costs in fossil fuel burning to power our electric cars?  How do power plant emissions stack up against automobile emissions-fossil fuel for fossil fuel?  How much better can we make the system if we prioritize cars over air conditioners?  Or the other way around?

          Why do we care?  Unless we are Christians who have dismissed this world to go on the days of destruction as we await the return of Jesus, the Bible tells us its our job.

          In Genesis, the Creation, humanity was made the steward of God’s creation.  We were tossed out of the garden, but that mandate was never revoked.  However, in some translations, the mandate is very much in line with our exploitation of creation.  We are told ‘to subdue’ the earth.  Which we have, very effectively.

          But here’s the thing.  If the mandate to be God’s stewards on the earth has not been revoked.  And if the language of ‘subduing it’ was issued before we sinned and fell from grace so it has been corrupted by sin, just like everything else…that means our stewardship is one more piece of our humanity that comes under the redemption of Jesus’ death and resurrection on the cross.  That means 'subjugation' comes under the mandate of God's perfection and not human sin.  It is a very different picture.

          So we need to care about what happens to the earth.  We need to be able to evaluate the media when the development of electrical cars is spoken of almost joyfully.  We need to educate ourselves on what we are doing to the world.  Because that is our job. 

So here’s a bit of speculation.  When the end does come and the promise of a renewed heaven and a renewed earth are fulfilled, and we are called home to the promise of eternal life in the love and nurture of our God, what if stewardship continues to be our job?  Sure, God can maintain the creation, whether it is the Garden before the Fall, or nature that groans under the weight of sin in this present age, or the renewed nature in the life to come.  What if the joy of Heaven is tending to what God has created that is now redeemed, uncorrupted by sin?

So, God made us to tend to God’s creation.  I like what the Westminster Catechism teaches us about the purpose of humanity.  We are created to glorify God forever.  Makes me think that glorifying God is going to include something about tending to the creation.  Makes me believe that the expression of our glory to God in this life includes the care of this creation.  Makes me hope that heaven is more than the cartoons that portray people in togas and angel wings flying about playing harps.  But back to the present.

There is no fantastical electricity in competition or distinction to debilitating electricity.  It comes from the same source.  It is our responsibility as Christians to work toward making the production of electricity ‘planet friendly’ or, if we prefer, ‘creation friendly’.  It is our mandate as stewards of God’s world.  I believe that the work we do for the creation now is but a reflection of the work we will have the joy to perform in eternity.

Rev. Peter Hofstra

The Squid Game: Implications to Faith

           “The Squid Game” begins with a recollection from childhood, friends playing the Squid Game.  It’s a running around game, something integrating elements of ‘Tag’, of ‘British Bulldog’, something to be remembered fondly.  That opening sequence is probably the only part that I would suggest that kids watch.  Because this show is brutal.

          It is also compelling, original in its brutality, and very well done.  From one article I read, it is apparently even better in the Korean in which it was written and produced.

          Okay, SPOILERS AHEAD.  Four hundred and fifty six people, all in desperate need of money, are selected, screened for their acceptance of physical assault in pursuit of money, and then thrust into an arena to compete for a fortune.  It’s a variation on the gladiatorial games.  It hearkens back, for me, to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome-the final movie in the franchise BEFORE the reboot.  There was the arena-Thunderdome-and the chant.  “Two men enter, one man leave.”

          In this case, four hundred and fifty six enter, one leaves.  And it is not a combat arena.  Rather, the contestants are subjected to kid’s games, like “Red Light Green Light” (and a very disturbing doll) or playing with marbles and so on.  But to lose is to die.  If the game is not rigged to kill you, the anonymous guards will do it, shot and executed.

          It’s a tale of what money will drive people to.  One of the more horrifying moments comes when, after the first game, after the deaths of half their number, they have an option, by majority rule, to end the game.  Which they do-the contestants do, without retribution.  But after some time in the ‘real’ world of their former desperation, the vast majority, when given the opportunity, return.

          It is not just a tale of what money will drive people to do when they do not have it.  We meet the VIP’s, the rich and bored of the 1% who gather to bet on these games.  They have money to do anything they want and they derive pleasure from watching the poor fight one another.  It is the boredom of the rich that pays for this entire enterprise-but that is one twist I will not spoil here.  It got me.

          Okay Pastor, why do you watch stuff like this, Pastor?  Is it to see how the faith is portrayed?  Well, there are a few moments where Christianity (which is the dominant faith in South Korea) is focused upon, and it does not come off well. 

          The more I watched this, the more the beginning of Ecclesiastes echoed in my mind.  “Meaningless!  Meaningless!  Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless.  What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?” (New International Version)

          This book of ‘wisdom’ carries a theme that the pursuit of the pleasures of life are ultimately useless in and of itself.  And the author, according to the introduction to the book, is King Solomon, the richest and the ‘wisest’ king of Israel’s history.  (Yes, the book does not mention him by name but verse 1 beings “The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem…”

          Why is “The Squid Game” so popular?  It is the latest manifestation of that ultimate burden of life and wealth.  It is meaningless.  People will die to get it.  People who got it will watch them dying to gain distraction.  Audiences will watch ever more brutal and violent portrayals of what ‘could happen’, like a world in which “The Squid Game” occurs, for the same reason.

          As I said, while Christianity takes its lumps in this vision of who we might be, that was not the emotional gut punch for me.  No, that came with the married couple among the contestants.  And the game with marbles.  I will not spoil what happens, except to say that that this was the moment when the pursuit of money swept over even love and affection. 

          In a world of boredom and desperation…I can hear the narrator speaking those words in a deep bass tone.  This is where real faith is so necessary.  “The Squid Game” is well done, very well done.  It touches something deep in the culture of the world.  I have to admit that the only thing that truly let me down was their attempt at a hopeful conclusion.  It struck me as a rather forced hook for Season Two.

          So what do we do about this?  Wake up.  Realize how the ‘important’ things in life have been defined for us by the culture around us-the sinful culture around us.  There is an “AHA” moment in this for me.  Sunday’s service is based in the second half of John 14 as our Scripture lesson.  While not the focus of the sermon, there is one line in there, spoken by Jesus, “I cannot talk to you much more, because the ruler of this world is coming.  But he has no power over me.”  Obvious reference to the devil, I would think.

          Consider this.  “The Squid Game” portrays the world as it becomes under the present ruler of the world.  Consider the twisted, malevolent, evil guiding the culture of the world that gets audiences to be transfixed by this ‘what if’ possibility.  Consider how much we need to plumb the depths of our Christian faith, of the love and peace and forgiveness we are taught by Jesus to stand up to that ‘reality’.

The “Old Rich White Guy”: Considering a Four-Fold Path of Privilege.

          Have you heard of the pancake/waffle conundrum on social media?  I get on a social media platform and speak of how I like pancakes.  The first comment comes from someone asking why it is that I hate waffles.  The presumption of exclusion, one of the things that makes social media such an unstable platform for the exchange of meaningful information.

          I start there because I fear I am going to get a lot of the pancake/waffle conundrum going with this blog post.  In our nation right now, there is a powerful movement about deconstructing ‘white privilege’ in order to create a better tomorrow.  This is an incredibly important discussion to be having.  There is a huge corrective in the way things are in America that will come from its deconstruction.  But its only one piece of the puzzle.

          I was watching some Hollywood “high-lister” (I do not know who rates what in the alphabet of Hollywood lists), self-identifying with white privilege, a brave and personal decision to come out with, speaking with the conviction of solidarity with all who are white, that all have this privilege, that all must come to terms with it.  That kind of blanket conclusion, that all who are white must now surrender their privilege, it only works in some kind of social experiment where one of the presuppositions goes something like “all other things being equal.”

          If we can control for age and economic status and gender and what other factors that I am not cognizant of, then we can justify someone making this kind of blanket pronouncement, under ‘laboratory conditions’.  This is commentary on the old rich WHITE guy.  But this isn’t the lab.  Privilege is not one dimensional.  And a rich person telling people who are poor that they have to give up their privilege-no matter how they couch that word-smacks of hypocrisy to me.

          There is a privilege to being rich that we rarely talk about in this country.  Because that’s the American dream, isn’t it?  Build enough wealth and we are free to do ‘whatever we want’.  But how small a minority of the people hold how much a majority of the wealth?  And isn’t there an inherent conflict within communities, however they self-identify, between the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have-not’s’? 

          With the Old Rich White Guy, that is two of the four folds of privilege.  Now if you think I have spoken inadequately about white privilege and the evils of racism, addressing the privileges of age in a culture with an ever-heightening awareness of age discrimination is really going to start some fires.  Being old certainly does not mean being wealthy.  But wealth itself is often older than the current generation.  What was the line, “I made my money the old-fashioned way, I inherited it?”  Being old is a double-edged sword in this country.  On the one edge, you may be part of that group of wealth holders.  On the other edge, you may be forgotten and warehoused in a care facility.

          We also live in the age of the Internet zillionaires, ‘young ones’ with buckets full of money, money not made over generations.  But for every ‘young’ zillionaire who makes the news, how many…chronologically advanced individuals are there who hold disproportionate amounts of power and influence?

          And let us not forget the privilege of gender.  Being male has all kinds of privilege wrapped up in it.  But this privilege is also influenced by skin color.  I have read feminist essays speaking of white male privilege and womanist essays speaking of black male privilege.  And I am wholly unqualified to speak out on such a topic, except in the broadest summary.

          Privilege of life experience, privilege of economic status, privilege of race, and privilege of gender, that is simply my ‘four-fold’ path of privilege.  I have privilege in all four categories.  What I am saying is that privilege is more than a two-sided argument, that we need more clarity of the nuances of privilege and inequality if we are going to meaningfully implement change.

 

“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”

                 The meme said that this is a quote from Thomas Paine.  It calls him an “English-American political activist, writer, and revolutionary.”  But did he really say this?  Some memes put some great quotes out there.  Some of them are actually accurate.  According to Google, this one is rightly attributed to Mr. Paine.

                So I had this whole, long, rather clever blog post playing with this quote, considering how it goes back to the founding of the nation, but how true it is today.  It was a rather oversized political consideration of the nation and we who live in her.

                But there were two problems.  I knew it needed to end with a consideration of the faith, but how to make that jump while maintaining the integrity of the blog post to that moment?  The other problem was one that guides me when sermons go wandering, the question of ‘staying in my lane’ as a Christian and a pastor.

                And Mr. Paine’s quote could apply as powerfully to matters of faith as it could to political matters.  That opens up a whole new can of worms on the connection between faith and reason.  But I think it is not that theological or philosophical or even presuppositional for the Christian. 

                Consider the colonial foundations of this nation.  Religious groups who found themselves persecuted, imprisoned, even killed by trial or in open warfare, many found a new start over here.  It was a good use of reason to get out of the ‘firing line’ of the ‘old world’.  On the other hand, for me, a sure sign that the use of reason has been renounced in the Christian faith is when a person or persons of faith slip away from the plain meaning of the text where Jesus says the law is to love God and love neighbor.

                Consider the Puritans in colonial Massachusetts.  They reasoned that a new world meant new freedom for their interpretive structure of the Christian faith.  And it worked.  But how far was the use of reason renounced when it came to the cruel and vicious ways in which they killed their own during the witch trials?  Paine’s expression, renouncing reason being like giving medicine to the dead, it resonates.  Where was the love of God and the love of neighbor there?

                Consider the modern era.  The KKK was a declared ‘Christian’ institution.  The Christian love of God and neighbor is finding expression in branding the ‘others’ of our present day and age.  Immigrants and people outside tightly bound “biblical” definitions of gender come to mind.  OMG, does that make me a “big L” liberal?  It takes the renunciation of reason to suspend the law of love and condemn our neighbor with the arrogance of doing so ‘in Jesus’ name’.  Explain to me how the suspension of “big L” love leads to “big L” liberal and I will take on that question.

                Shall we explore the underpinnings of the “Black Lives Matter” movement?  As a privileged white male moving into the upper reaches of the mid-point region of my life, I know few people more ill-equipped to speak on behalf of someone else on this matter.  Does not mean I am not dumb enough to try, but not today.

                In my original post, I was appalled and relieved to read this quote from Thomas Paine.  That much has not changed as I have moved away from a political point of view to a Christian one.  I am relieved that the renunciation of reason is not just the product of the current age, with the Christian justifications for unloving activities woven into the polar opposites of the political spectrum.  But I am also appalled that in the centuries of Christian expression in the “New World”, we seem to have learned so little in how the Love of God and of our neighbor is the universal law of the Lord.

Peter Hofstra

"Flunking Sainthood" by Jana Riess, I found it meaningful and here, in brief, is why.

     Flunking Sainthood, or, as on the cover “fLunking sainthooed”-except the “e” in sainthood is “x’ed” out, not doubly struck through, which was the closest I could find in Word-by Jana Reiss is a memoir in the style of a couple other books I have read about doing “biblical” or “Christian” things for a fixed period, for a year. 

One of them is The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Simpson, taking the Scriptural law and applying it to how a man should live today.   The other, which I read with the mindset of being ‘a female response’, is A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans.  The call and response between these two volumes was a delight.  The Bible is a sexist book, written in a time when there was not even the conception of something called sexism.  In each one I found new insights into studying the Bible, or “Christianity: The Sinner’s Manual”.  Jana Reiss offered something different.

According to the rear blurb, “…Jana Reiss shares a year-long quest to become more saintly by tackling twelve spiritual practices…” and then going on to list them, one per month.  The result of this year-long experiment is evident in the bio, also on the back cover.  “Jana Riess is the author or editor…so on and so forth… Although she is a spiritual failure…she has a doctorate…”  This is highly selective, but measures the success of the experiment.

Another measure of the success comes on the front cover, in considering the extended title of this volume: Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor. 

So monthly for a year, she pursued a different ‘spiritual discipline’.  Each chapter relates the events of each month.  She provides us with the resources that she curated for each discipline, describes her methodology, and her results.  As I read it, it reminded me of applying ‘the scientific method’ I learned long, long ago to each of these disciplines, essentially seeking its effectiveness in an attempt, I presume, to reproduce the effectiveness among its original adherents.  Except that it never quite worked out that way.  Which was the delight of science.  Even a failure added to the sum increase of our knowledge and wisdom.

I was frankly relieved, having tried and failed at a few of these practices myself.  If there is one thing that pastors are good at, it is not necessarily spiritual disciplines.  It is the sure and certain knowledge that we humans are highly fallible and in need of God’s grace.  This book is an honest expression of the human being, humorous and touching and redeeming in turn. 

I came away with three things.  One is an instant reference to where to start learning about any of the disciplines from her year.  She’s picked winners in these areas of life.  The second is that spiritual disciplines do not and are not meant to ‘fix us’.  This is NOT a self-help regimen, these disciplines have been developed to bring Providence more meaningfully into our existence.  And finally, while Jana Riess had her racked up a perfect record of failures in keeping the disciplines, it is evident that they did what they were supposed to, bringing one searcher a little deeper into the joy that is our relationship with God.

 

The Book: “Flunking Sainthood”, by Jana Riess.  Brewster, Massachusetts, Paraclete Press, 2011.  I finished it mid-September of 2021.