Today, a voice of prophecy from within the upper rungs of the US Evangelical community announced that a principal monster in recent American history is on the decline.

I often muse on monsters, and on what people at the times of their decline must have felt and thought when at last they realized that the monsters were no longer there, no longer real – at what point did scholars accept that the scrawl on a map reading “Here There Be Dragons” was only figurative? When were the braids of garlic taken down from the doors, the salt used simply to flavor food rather than cast away demons? When did we finally, as a people, give up on the idea of finding a giant?

There must have been a comfort to it, but with it, a certain degree of willful disbelief – an instinct that demanded that the monster was real, their impotence just another sinister deceit, their dread violation imminent. There must be those who believed the only fact that mattered was keeping the door barred and the cross clenched tight.

I’m trying not to be one of those. I’m trying to believe that James Dobson is soon to fade from the political scene.

In his article, “Dr. Dobson Has Just Handed Obama Victory,” Frank Schaeffer, novelist, Evangelical and former religious right member, declared that Dobson was on his way out:

Dobson is one of the Evangelical religious right old guard. He’s to the right what Nader is to the left.

For those of you unaware, Dobson is the head of ‘Family Research Council,’ a media network and political action group that four cornerstones: The eradication of all forms of legal abortion, sex education and birth control; the blanket ban of gay marriage and gay rights; the mandate of Christian prayer and teaching in public schools and services; and severe punishments for criminals.

It is little surprise, then, that Dobson became to George W. Bush what Billy Graham was to Nixon. His power was more considerable, in fact, with his prayers welcoming Bush to office on the inaugural day and his pay-off coming hours later as Bush cut off funding to all human rights groups abroad that had the audacity to mention contraception, thus causing more abortions, AIDS babies and unwanted pregnancies.

Since then, Dobson has been a guiding light, helping Bush lead America back toward the dark ages. Principally, his role has been to deliver the Evangelical vote as a bloc, giving the administration and its cronies in the GOP that crucial dependable sliver of voters that kept them winning elections, much to peoples’ shock.

But the political winds have shifted, and with them, Dobson’s fortunes. His followers have been scattered like wheat, you might say, as the Evangelical community fragments into the dozens of diverse political positions it once was before the era of the Religous Right’s yoke.

This transformation, compellingly depicted in the CNN Special, “God’s Warriors,”
may surprise many accustomed to seeing “concerned Christians” as a tongue-clucking, gay-sex-obsessed voting bloc. We now have the bizarre offshoots of Pastor Hagee’s eschatalogy-made-policy ministry, Cizik’s “Green like Jesus” movement, and numerous other reassessments of what it means to be both old enough to vote and born-again. I eagerly await the release of “The Faith of Barack Obama” by Evangelical author Stephen Mansfield, who wrote a similar piece on George W. Bush, rallying readers to examine and endorse Obama as a “true Evangelical.”

Mansfield’s principal concern is not policy, but the sincere synergy with a person of sincere faith. That is a priority many Evangelicals share. It may, in turn, harken an era of shared political will between the future President Obama and the Evangelical community at large, as they come to embrace his vision of a more universal, tolerant and social Christianity.

Soon, we might find ourselves marveling at the very notion that such monsters as Dobson could have even existed in Evangelical America.

Recently I discovered that the fast food trend that all my friends back East were buzzing about had rolled into Southern California – Chick-fil-A was here at last.

In order to locate this alleged Mecca of perfectly prepared poultry, I consulted their website. As any web research I conduct tends to do, using their restaurant finder led to looking into the personal webpage of their founder and CEO, S. Truett Cathy.

I find Cathy to be as basic and inspiring as his restaurant. What initially intrigued me was that he closed his restaurant on Sundays. That he would be a devout Christian businessman from the South wasn’t the surprising part. It was that he was a devout Christian businessman who actually practiced what he preached. I had to read on about this seemingly rare specimen.

What I subsequently consumed with an inspired hunger was the story, the work and the beliefs of a person who cared foremost about caring. Truett presents himself as someone to who everyone and everything in his life deeply matters and should be tended as special. When he talks – as he does often and ardently – about “Biblical principles” guiding his actions and making good business sense, I can only imagine it is this love of caring, of meaning and of integrity he refers to (surely he does not mean the provisions on kosher food preparation or forms of loans).

I found myself to be moved and inspired. I took a moment to consider why that was, and the answer was obvious. I appreciate anyone with integrity, especially those who celebrate the essential things in life – people, love, miracles – we so often either take for granted or dismiss as a burden or complication. And this appreciation was only increased by the sad fact that Christian values so beautifully epitomize that celebration while Christian practices have so very often contravened and perverted them.

I am convinced that one of the foremost complications that people struggle with when applying Christianity to their lives is the hypocrisy of its history. Just as acceptance of atrocities such as genocide and pedophilia is difficult for any mind that believes in an all-powerful loving God, so is it difficult for those seeking to place a value on the Christian faith to reconcile the atrocities committed explicitly in its name.

From the genocide of the conquistadors, to the butchery of the Crusades, to the madness of the Inquisition and of Puritan persecutions, to the systematic destruction of the ancient world’s literature and learning, to the oppression of native people by colonial missionaries, to countless pogroms against the Jews, to torture murders of scientists all the way until after the Renaissance, the litany of brutality committed in the name of Christianity, for the cause of Christianity, is immense. It is the single greatest catalogue of bloodshed, ignorance and darkness in the history of the world attributed to one cause. Those that so readily sneer with disbelief at the ‘evildoers’ of extreme Islam would do well to remember this. Christianity, if it did not inspire these monstrosities, at least compelled and justified them.

And the heartbreaking aspect of Christianity and of any objective observation of Christianity is that all of this was done in the name of a person who embodied the greatest form of non-violent resistance. The practices he not only advocated – in fact insisted on – but sacrificed all for were the basis of those that informed the noblest of resistance movements. And the forces he resisted were not, as so many would portray it today, the forces of deviance, of disrespect, of defiance against authority.

The powers Christ always preached against, never defended, and gave his all for were the powers of money without conscience, of condemnation of the wretched, of poverty for some while others had more than enough, of state oppression and of inequality – not the kind of inequality that calls for one victimized group to be protected, but the kind that continues to exploit the victims while claiming all are equal. He was a rabble rouser, an enemy of material wealth, and a champion of those who would challenge tradition and authority for the sake of the human spirit. He was generosity incarnate. Even his ultimate price manifests this message: give all you have, and receive the whole world in return.

Somewhere along the way this message got lost. Likely, as with most revolutionaries, it was as soon as his successors – the apostles – had to divide his authority. That spiritual authority was exploited and politicized. So began the saddest chapter in human history prior to the 20th century.

Still, the beauty of it is in the perpetuity of the spirit, if not the spiritual authority. That even now, after that grim, perverse legacy, the cause of Christianity keeps its essential message intact enough that the glory of it can shine from the lives of people like S. Truett Cathy. Whether one is a true believer, an atheist, agnostic or of another faith, one must recognize that the spirit of Christ lives in those that truly abide by that brave notion – generosity of spirit above all else.

And in that immortal spirit, people can find a spiritual diet that is basic, nourishing and inspiring – just as I hope Chick-fil-A will be.

There’s not much to look at this morning.

Much of it is irrelevant. Some of it is vile. And all of it is a continuation of the same.

Some cases in point:

The Dutch are confusedly liberal:

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A Dutch smoking ban will come into force in July next year for all restaurants and cafes — including coffee shops where cannabis is the top attraction, the government decided on Friday. “Coffee shops will be treated in the same manner as other catering businesses. They will be smoke-free,” Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told NOS television

Christian world leaders are polite to one another:

Bush said his meeting with the pope, in which the president stressed his record in fighting AIDS and supporting other humanitarian causes, was a “moving experience.”

And the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade is still as uncontrollable and senseless as ever:

Saturday’s daytime attack was carried out jointly by Islamic Jihad and a unit of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction.

This raid was huge, involving action-movie tactics with disguised trucks and mechanized assaults and artillery. It was done in the day time, presumably so that the Israeli troops wouldn’t have the advantage of their night-vision, or so that al-Aqsa could have the proper lighting to record videos for their website. It achieved exactly nothing.

And my favorite part:

“The attack comes as a natural reaction to the Zionist crimes and assassinations against fighters in Gaza and the West Bank,” Abu Ali said.

Those “Zionist crimes” of late being /what/, Abu? Attacking your enemies, HAMAS, so that they didn’t annihilate you in the civil war in Gaza?

Or HAMAS thinking of cutting a ceasefire? Is that what’s got you in high dudgeon? No worries, Abu! That ceasefire won’t hold! Israel will break it whenever it feels like it, or some militant lone-wolf like you will give them an excuse to!

As if to underscore this, more of the same happened in Baghdad as well.

But to be sure to note where these attacks are taking place. They hit the fringes of Baghdad, and into Diyala province. Militarily, the surge is doing what is expected in this first stage – pushing the enemy out of the suburbs and into the exurbs. That is not ‘more of the same’ in the grand scheme of the tactical debacle of Iraq.

Yet all of this means very little if the political debacle doesn’t show change as well. Giving Baghdad’s outlying areas more security will not save the nation if Baghdad’s core is rotten. And with Turkish troops pressuring the government, the Kurds pressuring the government, and the government unwilling or unable to do anything about accomodating the increasingly isolated and radical Sunni, that rot does not stand to regenerate with outside help.

What value is there in a new day for Iraq if every day starts off with its heart poisoned?

Tactical problems have been engaged. Iran has been engaged. Now the USA must engage the real object of our military adventure, the Iraqi government, and show it through direct action that whatever our expressed purpose, we came to Iraq for change, not just more of the same.