Commonweal Editorial Slams "Illiberalism" That Would Shut Down Free Speech of Trump Fans: Implications for Commonweal's Discussions of LGBTQ Lives?

As I noted yesterday, the leading "liberal" Catholic journal in the U.S., Commonweal, has just published an editorial statement which maintains that "illiberal" forces in American democracy are seeking to shut down the free speech of anyone who is not a member of a minority group. The editorial (which, unfortunately, came out only a day after a 15-year-old girl was pepper sprayed in the face by protesters at a rally in Paul Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, as Trump supporters screamed "Nigger lover!" and "Bitch!" at her) points to the actions of anti-Trump protesters to combat racism and misogyny as evidence that "illiberal" groups are now working to suppress the free speech of those with whom they disagree.

Twitter Bans Language Promoting Violence Against Targeted Minority Groups: Wake-Up Call to Online Catholic Forums Where LGBT Lives Are Discussed

Reuters reports (by way of Religion News Service) this morning: 

Twitter Inc has clarified its definition of abusive behavior that will prompt it to delete accounts, banning "hateful conduct" that promotes violence against specific groups.

Quote for Day: Should Our Highest Value Be Free Speech or Love, Kindness, Generosity, and Respect for Others?

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, on the way in which the media are treating free speech as an absolute value, and the highest in the canon of values, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders, while the structural violence that inflicts suffering on millions of people to enrich a few goes totally unnoticed by the media:

Quote for Day: "Political Cartoons Are Free Speech, But They Are Not Always Innocent and Inherently Democratic"

For Truthout, Christen A. Smith maintains that while we must grieve the Charlie Hebdo dead, we must beware of misconstruing racism as a democratic ideal:

Commentary on Charlie Hebdo Attack: Freedom of Speech, Economic and Social Oppression, Violence, and Religion

Here's a selection of commentary (running a wide gamut) that has caught my eye about the murder of the staff of Charlie Hebdo by terrorists in Paris this week:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Without Freedom of Expression, the World Is in Danger" (Memo to Miami)

Yesterday, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, released a statement with the leaders of France's Islamic community indicating that they stand with Pope Francis in denouncing cruelty and violence caused by ideological oppression of others. The statement says,

Colman McCarthy Publishes a Paean to NCR As Vehicle of Free Speech, and I Think of Jerry Slevin's Censorship: "The Upstart NCR Was Itself An Effort at Free Speech"

Today, National Catholic Reporter has published a powerful statement by Colman McCarthy noting that, in its very inception some 50 years ago, 

Suspension of Comments by National Catholic Reporter: An Update

My posting Monday noting that National Catholic Reporter had suspended comments due to a proliferation of "vile and demeaning" discourse at some threads at the NCR site has now had over 1,000 reads. Due to the fact that the posting was widely read, I think it's important that I now take note of an update that Dennis Coday posted yesterday at the NCR site.

Provocative Political/Religious Cartoons, First Week of New Year

And some equally smart political or religion-oriented cartoons that have caught my eye in the first week of the new year:

Religious Freedom in Light of Libyan Incidents: A Challenge to U.S. Catholic Bishops

I wrote several days ago about the limbo in which the criminal conviction of Bishop Robert Finn (and the refusal of Rome up to now to remove him from office) places American Catholics.  As I did so, I zeroed in on the total lack of moral credibility the U.S. Catholic bishops have managed to achieve for themselves in recent years:

Later in the Day: Mary Elizabeth Williams on "Worldwide Story" of Emmett Burns and Chris Kluwe

Later in the same day: Mary Elizabeth Williams comments at Salon on the "worldwide story" of the "crapstorm" Emmett Burns created when he sought to suppress Baltimore Ravens' Brendon Ayanbadejo’s right to free speech, and Minnesota Vikings' Chris Kluwe responded--about which I blogged earlier today.

Chris Kluwe's Takedown of Emmett Burns and the Moral Arc of History

I haven't yet made any mention of the recent masterful takedown of Maryland state delegate Emmett Burns by Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe.  As those who have followed the story will know, after Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo voiced support for marriage equality in Maryland, Burns sent a letter to Ayanbadejo's employer Steve Bisciotti, insisting that Bisciotti "inhibit such expressions from your employee."

Standing Freedom on Its Head: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on Supremes' Defense of Citizens United

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on the recent Supreme Court defense of "free speech" [by corporations, which are people, too] when the Supremes announced they won't reconsider Citizens United: 

It’s one big joke. Big enough to make you cry. Three things don’t go together: Money. Secrecy. Democracy. That’s the nub of the matter. This is all a sham for invalidating democracy in the name of democracy. It’s the trick authoritarians always use to hide their real intentions, which in this case is absolute power over our public life and institutions: the privatization of everything.

Rashad Robinson on Dr. Laura's Pity Party: Free Speech Is About Taking Responsibility

Rashad Robinson at Huffington Post on the claim of Dr. Laura Schlessinger that she is a victim of those trying to curb her free speech after she went on one final bias-fueled tirade on her radio show:

What Schlessinger, Palin, and so many others fail (or refuse) to comprehend is that "freedom of speech" is not "freedom from the consequences of speech." If a figure who has put him or herself in the public eye uses speech to harm others, he or she must held accountable. Critics have the responsibility to exercise THEIR freedom of speech in order to educate the public when false and hurtful information is being spread. We learned in the late 90s how "Dr. Laura" feels about LGBT people. We now know how "Dr Laura" feels about race. The public has a right to know whether her sponsors agree with her, and Schlessinger's advertisers have every right to drop their support.

Yes, Schlessinger, Palin and others of their ilk do refuse to understand that with their free speech goes responsibility for what they incite through through their words.  Their rule of thumb is clearly, Responsibility for others.  For libs and progressives.

A Reader Writes: Please Note Alteration of Text

A reader who follows Bilgrimage regularly has objected to the wording of a posting I made several days ago (here). Please note the following paragraph in that posting, which I have now altered in an attempt to deal with the concern of the faithful reader who appears to be following this blog carefully:

A reader of Bilgrimage left an astute observation about my posting yesterday (here) describing how a former employer finds it useful to continue attacking me (and my partner Steve) down the road from when we left her employment--because we are gay. And because she can get away with doing so. In a church-owned school that has no stated policies forbidding discrimination against people on grounds of sexual orientation. And in a cultural climate in which it is very easy to smear gay folks with all kinds of dirt, in order to deflect attention from one's own shortcomings and shore up one's faltering power.

I always appreciate feedback from good readers, and hope to continue providing honest, insightful, ethically-grounded reflections on matters like spirituality, justice, the churches, and higher education and its leaders.

Blog Disclaimers and Free Speech: More Legal ≠ Ethical

Wow. I open my stats counter this morning to find that nearly 400 people read my blog yesterday (correction: I have re-checked, and the figure was actually 513)—a frightening discovery, frankly. And then when I look at the comments section, I discover the reason for the spike in readership.

Andrew Sullivan* kindly linked to my posting yesterday on his Daily Dish blog, which has an immense readership compared with my much more modest daily readership (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/intimidating-th.html). I am certainly grateful to Andrew Sullivan for the publicity (and, yes, well, perhaps a bit flattered to discover a journalist of his stature has read my blog), but also abashed by the sudden discovery.

It makes knowing what to say today harder than usual. I feel I am writing more for an audience in today’s posting, and less for myself. And given the size of the audience, it's important that I say something important.

Perhaps the most important thing I can do in today’s posting is address the question of a respondent yesterday about why my blog contains a disclaimer, when I’m advocating free speech.

That’s a good question. The answer has everything to do with what I said in my second posting yesterday, about the distinction between legality and ethicality. As that posting notes, even churches and institutions they sponsor—or especially churches and church institutions?—are not above using the law to try to curb free speech, and to trample on the rights of those who have far less economic clout and capability to engage in spin control and image management than churches and their institutions have.

Unfortunately, in saying this, I am writing from grim personal experience. In fact, only yesterday, the day on which I blogged about free speech issues, I received a legal threat from an institution—a church-owned one—that has repeatedly sought to curb my free speech on this blog.

The letter demanded that I remove a posting from my blog (actually, it demands “the immediate removal of his above-referenced blog”), or legal action would be taken against me. The demand that I remove something I have posted on my blog is based on the claim that I have violated a legal covenant that forbids me to post anything that has even an indirect adverse effect on the organization with which I have entered this covenant.

I have received previous threats from this institution. In a previous letter from the institution’s legal counsel, I was informed, to my astonishment, “We paid for his silence”(!!). This letter demanded “the immediate removal of his above-referenced blog.”

I have not violated a legal covenant with the institution in question, and have no intention of doing so. Even so, I have bent over backwards to accommodate reasonable requests from the institution. I have gone so far as to delete material from my blog when the institution has demanded that I do so—even when that material in no shape, form, or fashion violates any stipulation of any legal covenant into which I have entered.

I have done so solely because I am trying to avoid legal action that would be financially ruinous to Steve and me at this point in our lives. The church-owned institution in question knows that we do not have the economic wherewithal to fight a protracted legal battle. In fact, this church-owned institution helped create the precarious economic situation in which we find ourselves, by making promises to us on which we acted, indebting ourselves, and then violating those promises and leaving us with the debt we incurred because we were foolish enough to believe that good church folks are bound to be people of their word.

I have, however, adamantly refused the demand to suppress my entire blog, and I have rejected the claim of the institution that is harassing me that it can censor my blog on a routine basis. As I put the point in a letter to my attorney when the harassment began,

There is a significant issue of freedom of speech at stake here, and I am surprised that [Church-Owned Institution’s legal counsel] apparently does not seem to see that issue clearly. [Church-Owned Institution] has not bought my right to free speech. Nor has [Church-Owned Institution] bought the right to censor me or my writings, insofar as nothing I publish violates the discrete terms of my separation agreement.

And if something I publish does violate the discrete terms of the agreement, the burden of proof is on [Church-Owned Institution] and/or [its president] to show how what I have written or may write violates the terms of the agreement. Merely stating that I have violated the agreement does not constitute proof.

Bullying me will not influence me to stop doing what I have a legal right (and ethical obligation) to do: to continue writing, as a theologian, about issues that concern me. I am not impressed by and do not let the behavior of bullies sway decisions I make about my vocation.

I must say frankly that I am perturbed by the bullying in [Church-Owned Institution’s legal counsel’s] letter, and in how the letter characterizes the claims of [Church-Owned Institution] and [its president] vis-à-vis my human rights and my rights as a scholar-theologian.

In this attempt to shut down my blog, there is an implication that a [Church-Owned Institution] has a right to censor me as a theologian blogging about [name of church in question] issues or [name of church in question] events. This implication depends on a dangerous and entirely insupportable extension of discrete, simply limited terms of a separation agreement to my entire right to free speech.

I will not stand for further bullying of this sort. I do not intend to stop writing, thinking, or dialoguing as a scholar-theologian. If anything is unethical in this story, it is what [Church-Owned Institution’s president] and [Church-Owned Institution] have done to Steve Schafer and me.

Hence the disclaimer. An institution that has placed my life partner and me in a difficult economic situation by making promises to us and then violating them now claims a legal right to censor my blog on an ongoing basis, and threatens to file suit against me on the ground that, though I have never named this institution in any posting it is claiming to find offensive, even what I say that can be construed as indirectly affecting the church-owned institution in a negative way will be the basis for legal action.

To my way of thinking, this situation underscores the problem I tried to identify in yesterday’s posting about legality and ethicality. In areas in which gay citizens are not legally protected from firing simply because they are gay (and the church-owned institution in question is in such an area), churches and their institutions know full well that they can take full advantage of the law, as well as of homophobic prejudice, when they proceed against openly gay people who annoy them. They are willing to use homophobic prejudice to their advantage, to smear the reputations and destroy the careers of gay folks. Church people are willing to do this, members of churches that profess to deplore homophobia . . . .

And they often still get away with it. Those of us who fight back in these areas often pay a steep price—unless organizations dedicated to defending human rights offer us assistance, and unless our allies in the gay community help us to publicize our stories.

Otherwise—and churches and their institutions know this very well—in areas where homophobia still sways the decisions of juries (and where homophobia is legally enshrined), we who stand up and fight very often find ourselves fighting a losing battle, with ruinous consequences to us personally and little to show for the battle.

What we do have going for us, of course, is our story—when others are willing to listen to it carefully and sympathetically. I have refrained from telling the story because I want to avoid legal action. I am, however, prepared to tell it if the harassment continues. As my letter to my attorney when the harassment began notes,

This is a story in which I believe accrediting bodies for institutions of higher education,** churches, legal rights watchdog groups, and groups assisting gay and lesbian persons to fight against discrimination will all be interested.

I do not intend to make the story public, because doing so would violate the terms of my separation agreement. I must state, however, that if [Church-Owned Institution’s president] and/or [Church-Owned Institution] continue to harass me, make unfounded accusations against me that bear on my character, and seek to shut down my right to free speech, I will fight these actions in any legal arena in which I can fight.

And that will mean making the story public. At that point, I will be prepared to share the story and all its details as widely as possible, and will contact every agency I can think to contact, which might have an interest in the story.

So there it is: the reason for this blog's disclaimer. Even saying what I have said in the preceding posting may well result in legal action on the part of this church-owned institution—though nothing in what I have said identifies the institution in question.

And saying that leads me to issue a plea, something I find difficult to do, since I tend to be a self-reliant sort of person: if any readers of this blog know of organizations that might offer assistance to someone who finds herself or himself in the predicament in which Steve and I now find ourselves, we’d surely like to know of those organizations.

For those of us living in the heartland, it can be difficult to obtain support and publicity when we fight our battles against homophobia. The power centers of the media are elsewhere. Our voices, the voices of those of us in middle America, just don’t reach far.

We need allies. We need assistance. The battles we are fighting in the places in which we are seeking to live with dignity and respect because our roots are in these places are every bit as important as those fought in the big-city bicoastal venues of the nation. Perhaps even more important, since, unless homophobia is defeated in the heartland, it will continue to warp our entire political life, to the detriment of people everywhere in the country . . . .

*P.S. A personal note of thanks to you, Mr. Sullivan, in case you happen to read this posting. I appreciate the link very much.

**I am disclosing nothing damaging about the identity of Church-Owned Institution in noting that my career has been spent in the academy.

The Emperor's Stunning Clothes: Free Speech as Lifeblood of Democracy

Are my new clothes not stunning? Say yes, or say goodbye to your head.

What is it with the proliferation of claims these days that authority figures in democratic societies are somehow untouchable? That authority figures cannot be criticized? That we who seek to build a participatory democracy do not benefit from open, free discussion of the possible pitfalls of those who lead us?

In my posting last Friday, I noted that the McCain campaign is stating that its vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin must be treated with “respect and deference,” or she will not be accessible to the media” (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/09/god-told-me-extreme-danger-of-rule-by.html). After Tina Fey portrayed Sarah Palin in a “Saturday Night Live” skit this weekend, McCain spokesperson Carly Fiorina informed the media that Ms. Fey’s skit had been “disrespectful” to Sarah Palin.

Respect and deference? Disrespectful? A candidate for office? Someone who actually holds office? A leader? In a democracy?

Have we suddenly time-warped back to Franco’s Spain, and no one has told me about the time warping?

And, at the same time that I’m reading about how we must all treat our candidates with respect and deference, if we expect them to answer questions and deign to give interviews, I read that an Italian comic is being threatened with a lawsuit for joking about Pope Benedict XVI (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/09/joking-about-pope-is-wholly-appropriate.html). Sabina Guzzanti, whose comedic targets routinely include politicians and prelates, recently made the mistake of joking about the pope.

She has now been informed by Italian prosecutors that the Justice Ministry may charge her under a 1929 Lateran treaty which states that the person of the pope is “sacred and inviolable” and thus not susceptible to satire (www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/12/italy.catholicism?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews). Ms. Guzzanti could potentially end up in prison for five years.

The pope is a particular hot potato these days, it seems. Clerical Whispers blog reports today that a German Lutheran pastor, Clemens Bittlinger, has been placed under police protection after receiving threats of violence when he wrote and published a song expressing his desire to walk with Pope Benedict and discuss theological issues (http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2008/09/german-priest-gets-police-protection.html).

The Clerical Whispers report links to the song, which is, in my view, theologically and politically irreproachable. In the song, Bittlinger simply talks to the pope as if the pope had, indeed, permitted Bittlinger to approach his sacred person. He notes that Benedict is the shepherd of one of the churches Christendom, but some of what he does and states seems not to represent Christ—like his unwillingness to permit condom use in Africa, where it’s clear that condoms would prevent the spread of HIV and thus the deaths of African babies that the church does not hesitate to baptize.

Because of his theologically provocative (and yet totally justifiable) lyrics, Bittlinger has received letters informing him that he is a “dirty Protestant pig” on whom the writer s---s.

In my view, it’s no accident that these you-will-respect-me-or-else imperatives are being hurled around by embattled authority figures everywhere now. Though miles and culture gaps separate Sarah Palin and Pope Benedict XVI, the two do have something in common: they are authority figures whose allies want (illicitly, I would maintain) to tell us that they are beyond criticism, since they stand in place of God, somehow. They represent God to us. They speak for God.

In American culture, the claim that the president somehow represents God, is chosen by God, is placed in power by God—and is, therefore, beyond criticism—has been growing in recent years. This claim has everything to do with the rise of the religious right to power in the latter decades of the 20th century. The religious right has virtually deified the president (that is, any president elected with its support), and has sought in every way possible to thwart criticism of its presidents, on the grounds that such criticism is akin to sacrilege.

This way of thinking links very easily to the currents of fascism that, as I have maintained in other postings, are never really far from the surface in Catholicism. The attempt to curb the free speech of Pastor Bittlinger and comedian Guzzanti is nothing short of fascist, pure and simple. It is no accident that the 1929 Lateran accord declaring the person of the pope “sacred and inviolable” was made when Mussolini was prime minister in Italy. This was a Fascist agreement, one the Catholic church made with the Fascist government of Italy.

The attempt to declare authority figures off-limits, and to use draconian legal maneuvers to silence criticism and free speech that in any way questions the pretensions and foibles of authority figures, is rooted in fascism. The use of violence and threats (“You dirty Protestant pig, I s--t on you and your dirty songs”; you may be jailed for five years for laughing at the pope) is a fascist tactic, a time-honored one: when all else fails, when every other attempt to silence dissent within democratic strictures falls short, take off the gloves and use coercion.

I can only keep saying it like a siren blaring its annoying alarm over and over in the wilderness: elect those given to such fascist suppression of free speech, and we’re in trouble. Free speech is the lifeblood of healthy democracies. Take it away, and you have a democracy on life-support, one whose plug will inevitably have to be pulled.

Remove free speech—and, yes, impertinent questions and disrespectful comedic send-ups of authority figures—from our society and its institutions, and we permit those who rule us to do whatever they please, whenever they please. Behind the veil. Under cover of darkness.

And all the while, using God as their warrant for being untouchable, unapproachable, unquestionable.

Is this where we really want to go? It’s definitely where we’re headed. And you and I are the only ones who can do something about it. Those at the top—the untouchable, unapproachable, unquestionable, divinely sanctioned ones—they aren’t going to change things, except to make it harder for us to approach and question.

As an aside, please see a disclaimer I added to this blog on 4 June this year (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/06/dream-one-table-for-all-all-at-table.html). Please permit this notice to serve as a reminder that this disclaimer remains in effect for anything I publish on this blog.

Disclaimer: In writing in this blog about either white or black persons, males or females, black males or white males, black females or white females, churches and church institutions, it is not my intention to embarrass, harass, adversely affect, or work either directly or indirectly to the detriment of any unnamed person, whether black, white, male, or female, or unnamed institution. I write solely as a theologian and scholar seeking continued dialogue about issues of importance to church and society, as my blog profile states. This disclaimer remains in effect for any future postings I may write on this blog.

Continued Threats Against Citizen Journalist Bloggers

I can't let today pass without noting an interesting article in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor. This is Huma Yusuf's "Rise in Lawsuits Against Bloggers" (http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2008/07/16/rise-in-lawsuits-against-bloggers).

Yusuf reports that, according to data gathered by the Media Law Resource Center "[t]he blogging community increasingly is subject to lawsuits and threats of legal action running the gamut from subpoenas to cease-and-desist notices." Since blogging began to provide a powerful tool for citizen journalists to pursue stories the mainstream media refuses to touch--since 2004--there have been 159 civil and criminal court actions involving bloggers in the U.S.

Though, as Yusuf notes, many legal threats made against bloggers never see court action, the bullying tactics of individuals and institutions employing cease-and-desist notices and other legal threats have a chilling effect on citizen journalism. Yusuf observes, "The result? A stifling of free speech in a medium providing more comprehensive and diverse opportunities for commentary than ever before, digital-rights activists, media lawyers, and bloggers say."

Yusuf notes that even when citizen journalists keeping blogs know that they have not violated laws or legal covenants, the end result of many empty legal threats is that bloggers remove controversial material from blogs when threatened, rather than incur the expense of litigation.

As readers of this blog know, I am strongly interested in citizen journalism through blogging. In my view, this is a movement that deserves as much support as it can get from those of us who want to build a viable participatory democracy.

And as a theologian, I am also--it goes without saying--concerned to safeguard and enhance the right of citizens to speak freely and critically about religion and religious institutions. As I noted in a previous posting about this issue (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/06/faith-based-institutions-ceasing-and.html), it would be unthinkable to imagine that churches and the institutions they sponsor would try to intimidate bloggers through the use of empty threats, empty cease-and-desist tactics, and other bullying techniques designed to cow those trying to open space for free discussion of religious issues.

But of course I wrote that observation with my tongue in my cheek, knowing full well that churches and church-sponsored institutions do routinely count on their deep pockets and privileged access to legal systems to protect them, when they bully private citizens of modest means. I spent too much of my life working in church-sponsored colleges to be unaware that this kind of thing goes on.

One of the most significant lessons we Catholics have learned during the clerical abuse crisis of recent years is that the Catholic church, its leaders, and its institutions have long used financial clout and legal bullying tactics to silence victims of clerical sexual abuse and other whistle-blowers. And when they have done this, Catholic leaders and Catholic institutions have often counted on--and received--the support of the legal system, of law enforcement officials, and of the media.

The development of citizen journalism via blogging is an extremely promising development, for those who care about the integrity of churches and church-sponsored institutions. This development allows those calling churches and their institutions to accountability a forum in which to do so, when the mainstream media will often not permit such a forum.

But it would be naive to imagine that churches and church institutions will suddenly stop resorting to legal bullying tactics to try to silence critics, as long as they are able to get away with such shoddy behavior. The report in today's Christian Science Monitor provides those of us interested in citizen journalism via blogging yet another reason to keep defending free speech and supporting all venues in which free speech is protected--even when some women and men of God do all they can to try to shut down such venues and to shut critics up.

Synchronicity Strikes

Wow. Talk about synchronicity.

I just uploaded a comment to Colleen Baker (of the Enlightened Catholicism blog referenced in my links list), who had responded to my posting earlier today about FISA and unwarranted surveillance of private citizens’ online comments (as well as of their email and phone conversations).

After I sent my comment to Colleen, I clicked on the blog of the Arkansas Times, and discovered a thread discussing precisely the topic Colleen and I had been talking about in the comments section under the previous posting. As our comments note, both of us are concerned with the way in which churches and academic institutions can misuse information gathered in internet searches (and possibly through unwarranted surveillance of private communications) to disempower critical thinkers.

As my comment to Colleen states, “Unscrupulous faculty trying to do a colleague in can easily get the ear of top-level administrators and/or boards, who may decide to end the targeted person's employment just because the person has been made controversial.

All of this discourages what academic life is all about—free exchange of information and free speech.”

This is precisely the topic of the thread I’ve just discovered at Arkansas Times (www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog). The Times is lamenting the decision of a political science professor, Mark Elrod, at Harding University, a Church of Christ university in Searcy, Arkansas, to take his blog private. Dr. Elrod has been maintaining a blog similar to mine, in that anyone can access the blog without registering.

He now intends to require registration in order for readers to access the blog. In a posting today (www.markaelrod.net), he provides the following reason for his decision:

I know this creates an inconvenience for many of you and I apologize but I’ve come to the realization that I have over-estimated the capacity of both my academic (Harding University) and my religious (Church of Christ) community to deal with critical thinking or dissent in a public forum. In the last few weeks, I’ve grown tired with dealing with members of both communities who seem to view the world in black and white terms and think of all discussions as zero-sum games.

In short, I’d rather have a quiet, private discussion with friends than public arguments with anonymous critics who would rather run to my employer with complaints about something I said than trying to discuss it with me in a reasonable and rational manner (my emphasis).

That’s precisely my point in my comment to Colleen. When college administrators and board members allow themselves to be persuaded by bullies—including colleagues and representatives of special-interest groups—who want to shut down the free discourse of faculty members, it become altogether too easy in the age of internet communication for free speech to be suppressed in academic life. And this is particularly the case in church-affiliated colleges and universities, which often have opaque policies governing termination, and which frequently allow the academic institution to fire at will, without providing a reason for terminations of faculty.

In a subsequent post, Dr. Elrod suggests that his political viewpoints—freely and publicly expressed on his blog—are at the heart of the attempt to shut him up, an attempt emanating from “anonymous critics” who run to his employer to complain about what he has written on his blog: “I made this decision on my own as the result of the general frustration I have with members of our fellowship who want to make a spiritual judgment about me based on my political views. One of those views is my public support for Barack Obama for president.”

Dr. Elrod is, after all, a professor of political science, is he not?

On what sane basis should he be attacked for expressing his considered political views on a blog—political views grounded in his scholarship? Aren’t universities today talking constantly about the need to tear down town-gown walls, to bring the classroom to the public, to serve the public interest by educating all citizens interested in lifelong learning? And aren’t churches constantly talking about the need to bring their values into the public forum?

There really does need to be a test case regarding such suppression of free speech by bloggers who have academic positions. And I’d be even more delighted if this test case occurs in a church-affiliated institution like Harding, alma mater of the infamous Kenneth Starr. In my experience, far too many church-sponsored colleges/universities get away with murder, when it comes to suppressing the academic freedom of faculty—and they often do so in the sneaky, underhanded ways suggested by Dr. Elrod’s posting, in which secret reports are circulated to key administrators, in attempts to undermine the credibility or character of someone an institution wishes to shut up.

Radical Honesty as Spiritual Path: The Contribution of Bloggers

Dear Pilgrim Companions,

The reflections I'm posting here today link to a posting I just made on my other blog, Neverinparadise. As that blog posting suggests, it feels risky to speak from the heart, from the "real" places in our lives. And all the more so when one is blogging one's inmost thoughts to anyone in the world who happens to log in . . . . Blogging can even involve us in legal battles where we who are small folks in a world in which others have big financial resources and social-political clout can easily find ourselves squashed (more on this below).

So why risk? Life--my own life--would surely be easier if I simply turned my attention to the many frazzling and engrossing tasks of daily existence. The dog hair doesn't magically vaccum itself from the carpets.

As I ask myself lately why I keep on keeping on, the best answer I can come up with is this: simply put, I believe in radical honesty. There's far too little of that virtue in our lives, in my life. If I don't struggle for it in my own pilgrimage, then I surely can't expect it in others.

And without honesty and transparency, what social institutions really work, in a democratic society? When we cannot trust the word of a leader, everything falls apart. All social relationships that promise to build and not tear down humane society are built on the trust that people are seeking to be fundamentally responsible and honest in their interchanges with us.

By the time the aspirin reaches me in its sealed bottle, it has gone through multiple hands: from factory worker to quality-control inspector to bottler to shipper to pharmacist. If I cannot trust that, at each step in the transmission of the aspirin to me, someone did not substitute a noxious substance for the aspirin in the bottle, everything breaks down. Our whole social existence is built on a tenous, yet steel-strong web of relationships that demand trust.

And trust is built on honesty. When dishonesty becomes endemic, when it runs along every strand in the web of our social (or ecclesial) institutions, it becomes well-nigh impossible to live together and work together, since we cannot confidently perform even the most basic tasks of everyday existence: from taking the aspirin that we assume has not been tainted in its long journey to us, to turning on the light switch and expecting electricity to flow to the bulb rather than to set the house on fire.

I am not naively suggesting that things actually do work this way all the time--that we inhabit social structures that do adhere to codes of honesty. I am suggesting, though, that when dishonesty becomes systemic rather than occasional, when it becomes part of how we do business as a society, social institutions have no option except to fray. They are founded on assumptions about the fundamental honesty of each of us in our dealings with the other.

My spiritual path has come to center on radical honesty for a variety of reasons. The first and most obvious is that one does not accept herself or himself as gay, in a world in which millions of voices seek to drown out one's inner voice of self-truth, without a hard struggle for radical honesty.

It is simply easier to go along, to collude. It would be far easier for those of us who are gay and who continue to try to hold onto spirituality to follow the path the churches set before us: deny yourself, pretend, fit in, continue to let us define you as flawed and as the very epitome of sin.

This is the path many gay believers choose to follow. It is the path that those of us who try to be "cured" of our sexual orientation often follow.

It is a spiritually and psychically destructive path. I have learned that truth in my bones. I have learned that honesty--radical honesty--is, no matter how painful, vastly to be preferred to the lying to oneself (and, consequently, to others, even when one does not intend to do so) that is at the basis of the churches' "outreach" to gay believers.

I am inclined to the path of radical honesty, as well, because I believe someplace deep in my soul that there can be no authentic relationship with the divine and with another unless we seek truth in that relationship. Spirituality involves a pilgrimage of constant unmasking--of our lies to ourselves, of the half-truths we find it all too easy to live with.

Spirituality is a pilgrimage in which we try to meet God face to face every day, in the expectation of doing so definitively at the end of our lives. And that encounter burns away all dross of untruth, all self-deception. We struggle for honesty because we want to see God. Our hearts are made for this, we who are believers tell ourselves.

I believe in radical honesty, as well, because I have come to conclude, on the basis of too much life experience, that far too many of our social and ecclesial institutions live with astonishing levels of dishonesty. Of sham. Of self-deception and deception of others.

And we cannot move forward in the project of social transformation or transformation of the churches until we speak the truth in love to one another. Because I believe with all the fibers of my being that social and ecclesial institutions always stand in need of transformation, to make them more humane, to provide a place at the table for everyone, I have no option except to challenge the systemic dishonesty in our social and ecclesial institutions.

My own Catholic church is caught in lies so ugly and so deep that they are now threatening to tear the church apart. The lies go straight to the top, to the Vatican. They have everything to do with clerical power and privilege, and the misuse of these. The crisis regarding sexual abuse of minors is the tip of the iceberg: what that horrible crisis points to is the deeper truth of clerical abuse of power and privilege, and clerical abuse of the truth. Systemic abuse. Abuse that will sometimes stop at nothing to silence truth-tellers and to get its lying messages out to the public.

The Catholic church is an easy target for a variety of reasons, but I have discovered a similar fracturing of the truth in many other church communions. As E.J. Dionne's book Souled Out notes (and I have pointed out in previous postings), Christians today are making common cause across confessional lines, when it comes to making certain political decisions.

And among these decisions is the decision either to give one's trust to the churches when they profess to be leading the way in truth-telling (and therefore in dominating the political process), or to critique the churches for their failure to tell the truth. I stand with the latter option. If the churches are permitted to engage in fundamental dishonesty--about their use of money, about their intra-institutional human rights practices (how do they actually treat gay employees, for instance, even when they profess to oppose discrimination?), about the privilege they accord to white males above all other human beings, and so on--then they will end up having nothing of any significance to say to the public sector.

Because I want the churches to matter, because I believe that, checked in their game-playing and called to transparency and accountability, the churches can contribute to rather than impede the project to transform participatory democracy, I intend to keep challenging the churches to engage in truth-seeking and truth-telling.

I am blogging about the spiritual path of radical honesty in light of several occurrences in my blog life lately. Several weeks ago, I received a cease-and-desist letter from a church-related institution that I am not permitted to name.

It instructed me to take down my blog. I refused to do so. I stand on my right as an American citizen to speak freely. Unless I slander anyone or any institution in this blog, and unless I break any legal covenants that restrict my free speech, I have the right to speak freely on this blog, and it is wildly inappropriate for any group, and a church-affiliated institution in particular, to demand that I take down this blog.

Since I refused to take down my blog, I have begun to experience mystifying technical problems with the blog. I am trying to get to the bottom of those problems. One of the issues I'm confronting is that the counter that tells me if anyone is reading has suddenly begun to malfunction.

Up until the last several weeks, I have consistently had anywhere from 30 to 60 readers on this blog each day, from around the world. The figures vary, of course, but have normally stayed in that range.

Suddenly, the counter has been reporting no readers, even when friends tell me by email or phone that they have been reading the blog, or when I myself log in (the counter counts my own log-ins).

I am by no means saying that the several challenges I am now encountering with this blog have anything at all to do with the cease-and-desist letter I mention above, or with the institution that commissioned that letter. What I do want to suggest, however, is that the letter indicates to me a problem anyone blogging at the intersection of church and political life will encounter: bloggers who probe for the truth in the lives of churches and the place in which the ecclesial and political spheres intersect can expect to encounter attempts to shut down the conversation, by fair means or foul. I know of at least one other instance in which a blog similar to mine is facing some of these same challenges right now.

I choose to regard the unfortunate attempts to have me delete this blog, or to tamper with how the blog functions, as a curious tribute to the blog's ability to hit at the truth, at least sometimes. As the banner heading the blog says, one of my goals in this blog is to journey towards truth that needs to be spoken, but doesn't get told.

I appreciate those of you who are sharing this journey with me, even though I have no way of ascertaining whether anyone is walking with me each day, until some of the problems with the blog are fixed. I also appreciate those companions (literally, you who share bread/Bread with me) who help keep me focused on finding the truth in my own life. If one does not seek the truth for oneself and one's own life, one has no right to ask that others do so.

And I appreciate those of you who have encouraged me to keep telling the truth I find, even when I pay a price for doing so. My career as a theologian and an educator has been interrupted several times because I have not learned how to dissimulate--how to do so easily.

This is why, when first asked to assume a leadership role in academic administration, I repeatedly refused. I know myself too well. When asked by supervisors what I think of decisions they have made, I have been all too apt to tell the truth--assuming, naively, that leaders choose team members on the basis of their character and ability, and not because they are parrots who say yes, bow, and scrape, when told to bow, scrape, and say yes.

So, this blog will be me keeping on keeping on, continuing to search for transformative truth in my own life, and for the ability to speak the truths I find. Please know, fellow pilgrims, that if my voice suddenly goes silent, it is not because I have chosen to renege on my commitment to seek and tell the truth. It will be because someone or some group has had the ability to suppress my voice--though that will never happen without a fight.

P.S. At least part of the problem I am having with the counter that tells me how many visitors read this blog daily seems to have been introduced when I tried to resolve the problems with the blog as I first encountered them last week. Even so, the problem with the counter (and several other problems that impede my blog postings) predate my attempt to address the problem. They all began suddenly last week, and were absent from my Neverinparadise blog until I reported the Bilgrimage problems in a posting this week to Google's help group, noting that I was not encountering the problems on the Neverinparadise blog, though I continued the same process on each blog that I had always used. After I made that posting, problems began on the Neverinparadise blog . . . .