Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Another Day on the Campaign Trail...

So Wednesday is a national day of action for Obama volunteers to register as many voters as possible. My SFBO chapter has taken this challenge very seriously (we're pushing for 150 registrations on Wednesday, which is pretty lofty for a school of 2,500-ish students), and we got together tonight for an impromptu t-shirt making party! It was lots of fun.

On the fronts of the shirts, it says, "I'm voting for..." and whoever gets the shirt can fill in whatever issue they want. I have friends who's shirts say, "I'm voting for stem cells," or, "equal pay," etc, etc. I think mine is going to say, "I'm voting for systematic poverty," or something like that. I haven't quite decided. I could put, "I'm voting for religion," but I feel like that would be a bit too obvious coming from me. I'll try and branch out a bit.

I also cut out a cool stencil in the shape of Obama's campaign symbol and bought some red and blue spray paint, which we used to imprint cool logos on the back. It should make a pretty cool statement. So when someone registers to vote with us and tells us they support Obama, we'll give them a shirt for them to customize. It's gonna be awesome! Enjoy the pictures I took rather haphazardly with my new camera!





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On a more thoughtful note, I was reading an article in the USA Today about an interesting contradiction in the McCain campaign strategy which no one seems to have caught onto yet. Chew on this for a minute.

Palin was brought onto the team to appeal to the Super-Right, those people who don't think McCain is quite conservative enough. This typically (but by no means always) refers to the ultra-Christians. People like Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, and other interesting protestant legalists. This makes good sense at first glance, but when you think about the fact that these people are going to claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and that they cite the Bible to specifically prohibit women from having any authority over men in any hierarchical power structure, does Palin really seem like a good choice?

1 Timothy 2 verses 11-13 (I do believe that's the verse. I'm going off of memory, but there are plenty of others to support this thesis as well) talks about the fact that a woman should have no authority over a man. So why are all these evangelical literal interpreters rushing to Palin's side when she's just a heartbeat away from having authority over EVERY man in the country? It seems a bit odd to me, but it's an election year. What else is new.

I think it all comes down to the fact that at the end of the day people WILL pick and choose what they want to think and believe. Even the Biblical Literalists are going to pick and choose. Sure, they obey the verses that talk about not letting a woman have authority over a man, but then they eat shellfish and wear clothing made of more than one fabric. Then they support Palin. Obviously, they're playing a game of utilitarianism with themselves. "We like X, Y, and Z, but V rubs us a bit wrong. No problem, we can look past this one minor detail as long as we're getting 90% of what we want out of this deal." The ends justify the means.

Just some food for thought.

4 comments:

the fly said...

none of us really believe in a literal translation of the bible, or our heads would explode. maybe those in the christian tradition who love the bible as the word of God realize that whereas it is true, and all we need for our faith and practice, to take all parts literally would mean too many inconsistancies. and really, did God take all that time working with the people of israel and the followers of Jesus just so one party in america could be right? or maybe God just wanted us to live in harmony in a relationship with God and with one another. of course, this is just my opinion. it just happens to be true.

Anonymous said...

You can argue that the Bible can be read a million different ways, but I think it really collapses into two ways of seeing it:

A. The Bible is the Unequivocal Word of God, Truth in print and should be treated as such. You take all parts equally important and relevant (Being compassionate is just as important as stoning adulterers to death).
B. The Bible is a book, written by many different people with many different viewpoints, and should be treated as such. You take what works and discard what doesn't. (Maybe we should leave out death by stoning as acceptable moral activity).

I wholeheartedly think that shoving a pre-6th-century worldview into the 21st-century world is really problematic if you take the Bible as literal Truth. I think most Christians intuitively oppose such fundamentalist readings, but there are a LOT of Christians out there who do think A is right but we can still do what B would imply. This, I think, is dangerous. If you can pick and choose the Truth of God, aren't you, by definition, denying the Word of God?

lindsey said...

I hope you all reached your goal today!

And yes, I cringe every time I hear anyone refer to Sarah Palin as a feminist, but I do have to give it to the woman that she's courageous.

Have you seen this yet?-
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v295/goddesslynz/n149701917_30712920_2669.jpg

Thought you might get a kick out of it.

JustJess said...

Hey I have a good friend who is a big campaigner here at Mizzou. Here is an article she wrote that got published on CNN about how she drove in Joe Biden's motorcade

http://www.youthvoteblog.com/2008/09/15/driving_joe_biden/

I though you might enjoy it. Love you and your passion!