The Darrell McClain show
Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one Planet; nobody's leaving so let’s reason together!! Darrell, McClain is a Military veteran with an abnormal interest in politics, economics, religion, philosophy, science, and literature. He was born and raised in Jacksonville FL, and went to Edward H white High School where he wrestled Under Coach Jermy Smith and The Late Brian Gilbert. He was a team wrestling captain, District champion, and an NHSCA All-American in freestyle Wrestling. He received a wrestling scholarship from Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. After a short period, he decided he no longer wanted to cut weight which effectively ended his college wrestling journey. Darrell Mcclain is an Ordained Pastor under The Universal Life Church and is still in good standing, he's a Believer in The Doctrines of Grace Also Known as Calvinism. He joined the United States Navy in 2008 and was A Master At Arms (military police officer) He was awarded several awards while on active duty including an expeditionary combat medal, a Global War on Terror medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korean defense medal, and multiple Navy achievement medals. While In the Navy he was also the assistant wrestling coach at Robert E Lee High School. He's a Brown Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under six six-degree black belt Gustavo Machado, Darrell Trains At Gustavo Machado Norfolk under the 3rd-degree black belt, and Former Marine Professor Mark Sausser. He went to school for psychology at American Military University and for criminal justice at ECPI University.
The Darrell McClain show
The Intersection of Theology and Civic Duty
What if the church could transform society by aligning itself with the struggles of the oppressed? Join us as we examine the life and legacy of Gustavo Gutierrez, who challenged traditional Christian teachings and advocated for liberation theology during the revolutionary 1960s. We explore how his groundbreaking ideas, rooted in Marxist principles, called for the church’s active role in social justice and the liberation of the poor. This discussion delves into the complex relationship between faith, politics, and societal change, highlighting the tensions between innovative theological concepts and established religious doctrines.
Obituaries serve as profound records of history and personal narratives. We navigate the world of obituaries by contrasting the detailed, balanced accounts often found in major publications with the intimate, heartfelt memorials that families create. By examining these narratives, we emphasize the importance of remembering individuals with moral and spiritual accountability, while also recognizing the value of obituaries for genealogical research. Additionally, we offer guidance for first-time voters on how to approach their civic duties during an election season, ensuring they can honor their personal and spiritual values amidst the political landscape.
In a world where voting is both a privilege and a responsibility, we explore the ethical considerations that voters, particularly Christians, face as they evaluate candidates. Abstaining from voting can inadvertently amplify the influence of others, thus carrying moral implications of its own. This episode underscores the importance of informed and conscientious voting, encouraging listeners to evaluate candidates through personal and biblical convictions. By focusing on harm reduction and choosing candidates who pose the least moral risk, we reflect on the broader implications for democracy and the necessity of participating in elections with a thoughtful and pragmatic approach.
Welcome to the Derrell McLean Show. I'm your host, derrell McLean. Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one planet. Nobody is leaving. Let us reason together.
Speaker 1:Marxism meets theology the death of liberation. Theologian Gustavo Gutierrez raises some big theological issues. So I am going to turn to some questions, but first I want to turn to something that I do often, which is obituaries. For very good reasons, obituaries turn out sometimes to be absolutely explosive of terms of opportunity for reflections. You look at an obituary of someone, say, very famous around the world. You read the obituary and you fall All of a sudden. You start to reflect upon the meaning of that life and of life in general. But I really enjoy finding obituaries of people who are not famous, but nonetheless they do help me understand some aspects of life. Well, somewhere between those two is the obituary I want to mention, and this has to do with a well-known prophet of the poor. He was known a Roman Catholic priest by the name of Gustavo Gutierrez. In Peru. This man lived and died. He died just a few days ago at the age of 96. Now, what makes the life and the thought of Gustavo Gutierrez so important for us is that he was, in so many ways, one of the founding fathers of a movement that was known as liberation theology.
Speaker 1:Okay, in order to understand that, we got to go back to at least 1960. So if you go back to the 1960s and a lot of things are taking place. One thing you had was the rise of what we now know as anti-colonialism around the world. You had the foment that came with the development of what's known as the third world, the non-aligned world, and you had certain meetings that were taking place. One way to describe this was the historian Paul Johnson calls this the Suriyato generation, referring to the prime minister of Indonesia and at that time very much a leader of this non-aligned world, the third world. But you also had the basic conflict of the economic and political systems between the West, both democratic and constitutional and committed to a free market economy, and committed to a free market economy, which is at least a form of capitalism. And in so much of the East you're talking about the Eastern Bloc, you're talking about the Soviet Union, you're talking about the Republic Communists of China, you're talking about communism period and communists. But by the time you get to the 1950s, you look at the and you start to recognize all right, you're going to be looking at a time of incredible revolution. That's why the 60s are so often referred to as the decade of revolution and the year 1968 as a crucial year in the entire history of what we call the 20th century.
Speaker 1:Which students, riots, rebellions of all kinds and unrest on both sides of the Atlantic, in both Europe and in North America. But Gustavo Gutierrez is down there in Peru and what he buys into is the idea that classical Christian structure, the classical Christian understanding of Christian faith, has missed the point good news of the liberation of the poor. That's the job of the church. Now, you can't have this movement in theology without a larger movement in society, and that movement really is what we call Marxism. And you don't understand that liberation theology and liberation theologians were talking in Marxist terms, and I would like to have to admit, to a greater and lesser degree. But when you have somebody like Gutierrez, you can't have liberation theology without Marxism, can't have liberation theology without Marxism and in many cases such people like Gustavo Gutierrez, it's a pretty classical Marxist paradigm. So they're talking about Marxism in a political and economic sphere and they're translating that into a theological method.
Speaker 1:That theological method became known around the world as liberation theology. It became associated with the concepts, not only including Marxism, but also what was referred to as the preferential option of the poor, or, I've heard it said in black liberation theological terms, the preferential treatment of the poor. And so the argument was behind the preferential option for the poor is that God's on the side of the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. Well, ok, there is a lot of scripture to say that. There is a lot of scripture to say that so. And when it comes to God being on the side of the oppressed, well, that's pretty clear in the Old Testament as well. It's also pretty clear in the New Testament. But it is not the gospel and it's not the oppressed who are God's covenant people In the Testaments that we would call the Old Testament Torah, it's actually the nation of Israel, and so we understand that God is deeply concerned with oppression in every form, and he will hold every oppressor to account. But when it comes to the Old Testament and the New Testament, neither one is a manifesto in and of itself for a communist revolution. It's just not there. And, frankly, marxism is based upon explicitly atheistic foundations and any theological appropriation of Marxism is going to be an eventually predictable disaster. But that's exactly what liberation theology was. And Gustavo Gutierrez was right at the center of this, writing from Peru. He died, as I said, in recent days, at the age of 96.
Speaker 1:The other big theological focus of liberation theologians was from, say I say, let's getting away from the preaching of the gospel to and teaching the scriptures to, war will be defined as praxis. That's P-R-A-X-I-X, just so you can look it up on your own. And that is a classical Marxist term for political action, for action in other words, they said. The Christian church says a lot of the right things about the poor, but it doesn't join in the revolution. And this was a pretty much bold-faced call for the Christian church to join in a Marxist revolutionary platform. So predictably, this ran right into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, the magistranium of the church and the succession of popes. Because this really does reach all the way back into the 1960s and, particularly with Gutierrez, all the way back in the 1970s. And it was in 1971 that he published in Spanish his book that became translated into the United States into 1973 as the Theology of Liberation.
Speaker 1:So you're looking at decades of controversies, but here's what's interesting, even as you had during the pontificate of John Paul II, a crackdown of all sorts on kinds of theological as we'll just say theological mischief. As the Pope saw it, he also assigned to a crucial office of an officer in the Vatican to commission a report conclusively dealing with liberation theology conclusively dealing with liberation theology. And Gustavo Gutierrez. The person was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who was the head of the Vatican Doctrine Office. And then, when John Paul II died, that person, who was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later became known because he was John Paul II's successor. So Ratzinger became the Pope and under two pontificates of John Paul II and especially Pope Benedict, as he became known, there was a great suppression on liberation theology. But then, after Ratzinger leaves the papacy, he is followed by Pope Francis, famously an Argentinian from the Augustinian, I'm sorry. So he was actually one of the Jesuits priest, so he was from the Jesuit order. So he was actually one of the Jesuit priests, so he was from the Jesuit order and, by the way, he had not supported in any activist way liberation theology, but certainly it is far more open to it and that was made very clear within the last decade within the Catholic Church, specifically within the Vatican, within the Catholic Church, specifically within the Vatican, in essence honoring Gustavo Gutierrez and saying that there was at least a good in his theological system to be incorporated into official Catholic teaching. So I just want to point this out.
Speaker 1:If you go back to the 1960s and into the 1970s, there were some really inherent theological trajectories that started to take root. And you know what, if you look at the American theological education system, certainly in what we would call liberal theological institutions, they became all sold out on what we call liberation theology, also to the praxis and a preferred preferential option for the poor. So some of them also went wholesale into the process theology and other basically very disastrous. What it turned out being in a lot of sectors disastrous. What it turned out being in a lot of sectors, theological proposals. But here's the thing that I noted when I was studying theology as a student and what I noted that when you come to liberation theology that was preached by so many of these institutions, it actually can never and was never actually matched by the actions.
Speaker 1:If you actually take a look at these institutions, it's one thing to say, be a professor at Harvard and be all in favor of liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor, but guess what Harvard isn't and has not given up any of its endowments, and so liberation theology was very disclosive to me. What is disclosed is, to me, the hypocrisy of those who adopt some form of theological liberalism and, frankly, don't even have the courage of their own convictions to fully live out the revolution that they just declared to have joined. So let me put it this way before I'm going to turn to some questions that I'm glad to have. If you are a former liberal professor in the liberal theologian institution and a liberal seminary or a divinity school, and you were a proponent of liberation theology and you right now are professor emeritus and you're living off of a 401k, your retirement plan guess what? You are not really that big into liberation theology. You just said you were. So how should Christians think about an obituary? And I just say we have to think about it in these ways, where, when we find these figures, who were important, who got to live long lives, I think it's interesting sometimes to look at the trajectory of where they started, where they finished, the impact that they had a long time ago, how I still know about these people in this current day and sometimes, when you hear certain themes, to know their roots. So we have to reach this day all the way back to 1960s and the 70s and this figure who was very pivotal in the writing and the teachings of what came to be known as liberation theology. So let me get to some questions. I'm going to start with this.
Speaker 1:I am a I am Listener from Massachusetts, it looks like it says. My husband and I are actually longtime listeners of the show, and my question for you is actually about obituaries. You often will comment on the depth of a public figure, famous or infamous, which I think can be helpful and informative. I've struggled with obituaries written for several members of my extended family, while she goes on to talk about what most of us know in the extended family and is this is what you got. All kinds of things no one wants to put in an obituary. You got a lot of things no one is going to want to have eulogized at a funeral, and particularly, perhaps, in a small church or small community, basically, where everyone knows everybody but nobody is saying this out loud.
Speaker 1:Sometimes these stories can point to the power of grace. Sometimes, quite honestly, they don't, and so I just want to point out that the obituaries that I deal with are those that are generally journalistic obituaries, and so that does on occasion give me a distinction. Journalistic obituaries are obituaries that are written journalistically, so that is to say that they at least intend to give both sides of a view of a person. And so I think it's interesting that a paper like, let's say, the New York Times or the Guardian in London, very liberal newspapers, and that was one of the obituaries that Gutierrez, gustavo Gutierrez, that I cited. But if you look at those you start to realize that they are saying at least that there were those who were critics and there were those who were admirers of Gustavo Gutierrez and here's something of an evaluation of the impact of his life.
Speaker 1:And if you look at major obituaries that are journalistic, at least in theory, they're writing for history what was the meaning of that particular person's life? Sometimes, what was the meaning of life period? So the second kind of obituary is a family or community obituary and that can be very different. So I'll admit I read the obituaries in the local newspapers sometimes and I find a surprise there. But you know what? You very seldom find criticisms there. You very seldom find any real, say, analysis of the impact of a person's life.
Speaker 1:Instead it's written number one as something of a death notice just to let people know that somebody is no longer with them. And secondly, it is something of an horrific. And so I just want to join the listeners to this and saying you don't take those obituaries at face value. Even something in the New York Times which is a journalistic obituary, or the Wall Street Journal or that matter, the Times of London and I actually have books of some collected obituaries in the Times of London and the New York Times and it's a way of learning history just by reading those obituaries. You would see obituaries on both sides of the Atlantic and, let's say, after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, they are astoundingly disclosive.
Speaker 1:But that's not what I expect from what I what's called the obituary or statement of death found in a local newsletter. It's very different and I want to say this to the person who gave me the question and the listeners you're onto something that death provides a moment of clarity, but only if we seize it, because that's also means that that clarity can be forgotten very quickly, and so that's one of the reasons why and here I'm going to leave it this issue of a pre-arbitrary and just say in terms of a family conversation and memory, there needs to be a honest assessment I would obviously say from my perspective, an honest Christian assessment on the part of families about the individuals and what the individual's life meant, and I do think that there can be a very healthy process for a family, and it's not necessarily something you do the week the individual has died, but it is something that you need to do while the memories are still raw and still very fresh. I want to give one note that this listener raised, and the other reason that even printed obituaries are important is because in many ways they are the only accessible record that even those interested in genealogy can find, and so sometimes even the rather imbalanced content found in those obituaries is essential to connecting the dots when it comes to not only that individual but others as well. But one final thought on this is that it is simply true and this writer and the listener helps to make this very clear the way we remember is a matter of moral accountability, and we have to understand this. We better understand this if no one else understands this. We are really morally accountable to remember things in moral terms and in spiritual terms and not just let those issues disappear in the haze of a memory.
Speaker 1:Next question, and a good one how should first time voters approach the upcoming election? Ok, I love this question. This one is coming from a couple and they say that they have two children who will be first-time voters this year. How exciting is that In one home, one family, two children, first-time voters, and the parents ask, as we are processing this upcoming presidential election, how would you advise a first-time voters wanting to vote but also honor God and their civic duties, and how should they think about the upcoming presidential election? There's more to the question, but you pretty much figure out the question because this is life for us right now and for at least the next I don't know 10 or so days, something like that. This is what we're going to hear.
Speaker 1:So my advice to first-time voters is the same to my advice to other voters and it's the same to my advice to older Christian voters, and that is, if we have to take every election on the terms that they are handed to us, we have to understand that an election is a matter of conscience. It's also a matter of stewardship, that if you don't vote as some people don't do, you are in a sense, you are overwhelmingly and no matter how we like it or not, you are overvaluing the other votes. So, even if you don't vote, in the system in which you have a vote, you are not actually morally neutral. There is no moral neutrality. As Howard Zinn used to say, you can't be neutral on a moving train. You may have not, even in a presidential election, say I don't think I can vote for either A or B and I can't vote for R or D. Well, I understand that and I sit there as well sometimes. But there will be someone who, in Canada and honestly, are going to reach that point.
Speaker 1:But you also have to acknowledge that not voting is again a way of overweighting even other votes. You can't escape some kind of responsibility and when you take every election on its own terms, that means that, and when you take every election on its own terms, that means that, and I've been trying to talk about this for months now. But you have to get over and ourselves and get ready to know it's actually a contest of ideas, it's a battle of ideologies, it's a conflict of world views, and we understand that. When you look at two political parties in the United States, neither one of them is a Christian party and I think there are some conservatives who are tempted to see Republicans as the Christian party, and that's not entirely wrong in the terms of where you're going to find a lot of people who outwardly identify as Christians in the vote as far as their voting identity, but it's clear that Christians are not in the driver's seat of the Republican Party. Now the Republican Party knows it has Christians votes for the most part of people that identify as evangelicals.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, taking elections in the terms it's given to us, you have to understand that sometimes you vote to elect and sometimes you try to vote to avoid someone else from being elected. You vote positively for someone about whom you're very excited. You also have people who are not very excited but they vote against someone you see as particularly beyond the pale, are ominous, and this is where I want to tell people who have to struggle with this, especially if they're struggling from a Christian worldview and their conscience, that this is really important to look at the actual policies and the positions of the people involved. Just do an analysis based on what you find in your own heart and your biblical convictions as how you need to vote. I unapologetically will point out that every voter has a certain set of priorities, and so for some voters it may be something like abortion, and I don't think you should have to apologize for that position and for trying to make yourself a voter who votes for the protection of unborn life being at the very top of your priorities, given you if you find that to be the given issue of the day. But that is also tied to other issues, and it happens that so, increasingly, the vast majority of Americans already know whether they belong to R, d and D is going to be seen as overwhelmingly more liberal, are well-educated, more people with means, and so that will naturally mean more secularized.
Speaker 1:And when it comes to R, well, christians can say you often are going to vote for the R, but it's just. You have to recognize that you are going to be for the most part. There's going to be very significant times where you are going to be taken for granted. So you're looking at a very significant difference between Republican and the Democratic parties. And when it comes to issues from abortion et cetera, I would say you have to go down the list. You have to see which positions you actually believe, not what somebody says that the person believes. Decide where you stand and, as they say, I could do no other. This is where I stand. God help me. Now, from a personal standpoint, I can just say this Welcome to your first election. You just got handed a really tough one election. You just got handed a really tough one.
Speaker 1:However, I do want to say that I don't think the major media are contextualizing this. Honestly, I do not see a threat to democracy and a defender of democracy I see, when I speak of, by the way, of democracy being our democratic constitutional system I see two people who are, each in his and her own way, enemies of that system or endangerments to that system. So I'm not saying, in any event, you can vote without risk. I don't think it's ever been true, by the way, even elections that felt a lot easier. I don't think your vote comes without inherent risk, and I often say this to people when they ask me, especially when it comes to a Christian ethical view of these types of matters.
Speaker 1:In the terms of that and the moral calculus, if you cannot take an option that is without risk, moral risk you better take the option that brings the lower moral risk.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to come back to this at some point, as we get closer and closer to this election, and by this point it's pretty much, I think, we it's clear to where everybody, at this point, I think it's pretty clear where we all are. And that's why you're looking at probably one to three percent of the population that actually vote in any honest sense, are not already knowing exactly how they're going to vote. And when it comes to that, say, very small percentile, they're the percentile who probably all so aren't exactly certain on how they will vote or if they will eventually vote. And that is one thing that I think we have to be very serious, very serious, when we make these calculus. And I'll just say it in this way, as somebody who has always struggled with this issue, that sometimes you have to see it as a matter of harm reduction. You have to see it as a matter of harm reduction. Who is going to cause the less amount of harm is probably the one that's going to get my vote. Thank you for the questions.