Why Churches need apologetics
Apologetics : Why your church needs it
J.M. Njoroge
The ambiguity of the word apologetics provides the apologist with a natural icebreaker in public or private conversations on the topic: the apologist does not exist to “apologize” for being a Christian, or indeed for anything else. The assumption behind the pun is that the listeners would have a fair understanding of what apologetics is even if they cannot attach a formal definition to the concept. Unfortunately, this assumption is not always accurate.
During a conversation at a major apologetics event recently held in a large church, an attendee asked me what “apologetics” meant. I explained to her that apologetics is the branch of Christian theology that seeks to address the intellectual obstacles that keep people from taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ seriously. I gave her some examples of questions that are important in the context of apologetics. For example, why does evil exist if the world was created by an all-good, all-powerful God? How do we know Christianity is true in light of the numerous religions that exist in the world?
I finished my answer to her by quoting 1 Peter 3:15, which instructs us to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks for the reason for the hope that is within us. Her reaction was surprising.
“Are you sure the Bible says that?” she asked.
I assured her that it does. I explained to her that the word translated “answer” in that verse is the Greek word apologia that means “defense” and from which we get the English word apologetics. She had been a faithful member of a prominent evangelical church for most of her life, and yet she did not understand the meaning or importance of apologetics in the life of the local church. Sadly, I have seen such scenarios repeat themselves so frequently that I have now come to expect them whenever I go to a new place to speak.
Even among those who do understand what apologetics is and why it is important, there are some who suspect that it is reserved for a select minority among the elect—perhaps just for those with a questioning mind, or for an intellectual elite. Tertullian’s famous question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” 1 echoes loudly in the hearts and minds of many a follower of Jesus in our time, with the resounding answer being “nothing.” The explosion of knowledge has made it possible for different people legitimately to focus on specific areas at the exclusion of others. This has complicated the process of cooperation among experts in different fields of study, the result being that often the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Thus, for example, it is possible for a local church to function without apologetics.
In what follows, I hope to demonstrate why I believe apologetics is absolutely crucial to both the health and the witness of the church and why it is a serious mistake for followers of Jesus to ignore it. My goal is not to cast blame, but to call upon those who are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ to take seriously the application of its truth to all areas of life. Unless the Gospel is understood at the worldview level, its impact upon those who accept it as well as its ability to change the structures of their societies will always fall short of God’s best for his people. But, as I will argue, the Gospel cannot be understood at the worldview level without apologetics.
Orders to Prepare
The first reason why believers cannot ignore the life of the mind is that the Bible itself is opposed to anti-intellectualism 2 . As already mentioned, the Scriptures instruct us to be prepared to give answers to those who raise questions about our faith (1 Peter 3:15). When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus declared that it is to love God with the entirety of our being, including our minds (see Matthew 22:36-38)—an injunction beautifully modeled for us by biblical characters themselves.
For example, within the context of apologetics, Paul’s practice of reasoning from the Scriptures when in discussion with Jews about the identity of Jesus is well known. But as we see in Acts 17, Paul was willing to depart from this practice when he debated the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens: he started from where they were in order to introduce the Gospel to them. He could not reason from the Scriptures with them since they, unlike the Jews, did not accept the authority of the Scriptures.
Similarly, Matthew 22 contains a fascinating account of Jesus’s interaction with a group of Pharisees and Sadducees, the Ivy League scholars of the day. Jesus navigates masterfully through their traps regarding the requirement to pay taxes to Caesar, the status of marriage in the afterlife, and the prioritization of the commandments given to us by God. In each case, he exposes the misconceptions that had led to erroneous interpretations of God’s Word. Jesus caps the chapter with his own question to the experts. How could King David, under the inspiration of the Spirit, refer to the Messiah as his (David’s) Lord if the Messiah was just David’s son (or descendant)? “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions” (Matthew 22:46).
Although apologetics is mostly associated with such penetrating thinkers as C.S. Lewis, the practice of serving God with the mind has been an integral part of the life of the church throughout its history. This is evident in the formulation of complex biblical doctrines, such as the Trinity. The precision of the words used in the creeds and the determination to avoid contradictions are impressive examples of the priority the church has always given to the life of the mind.
Indeed, biblical thinking played a foundational role in all that went into the formation of what is known as Western culture. Without the Bible, Western culture would not have the shape it has today. Notwithstanding loud protests to the contrary, it was biblical thinking that gave rise to modern science and technology. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.” 3 They believed the universe was crafted by a purposeful God who created humanity in his image, creatures who could (to borrow Johannes Kepler’s famous phrase) “think God’s thoughts after Him.” To Kepler, “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by God, and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics.” 4
It was also the Bible that gave the world a foundation for human rights. The Bible makes the astonishing claim that what separates human beings from other creatures is the fact that they were created in God’s image. Although others may claim that all human beings should be considered to be of equal worth, only the Christian worldview provides a philosophically solid and consistent basis for such a claim. After all, we don’t all come into the world “equal” in any objective sense. My boys were born in Los Angeles, California, around the same time that the children of a famous celebrity were born. Though there was a barrage of reporters and paparazzi hoping to catch a glimpse of the celebrity’s children, no one showed up with a camera at the hospital where my boys were born (though I can assure you, as objectively as a dad can, that my boys were much better looking!).
We don’t all star t life in this world on an equal footing, given the huge range of gifts and attributes people have—musical or athletic ability, good looks, and intelligence. The only basis we have for attaching any meaning to the claim that all human beings are “equal” is the biblical teaching that we are all made in God’s image. So pervasive was such thinking in Western culture that such phrases as “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with cer tain inalienable rights” were taken to be self-evident truths at the founding of the United States.
One can only wonder what the Declaration of Independence would look like if it were drafted today, when some of our leading intellectuals are telling us that we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and we therefore have no need for God. It is difficult to see how “inalienable rights,” rights that exist independently of any human authority, can be justified without a transcendent anchor.
With all its war ts, the church has, in the past, acknowledged a duty to think through issues so that it can anticipate and then answer the questions people have. In other words, it has taken its role as the light of the world much more seriously than is evident today. C.S. Lewis did not invent apologetics any more than Michael Jordan invented the game of basketball.
Spiritual Warfare
A second reason why the church cannot afford to ignore the life of the mind is that apologetics is a form of spiritual warfare. The more I study the Word of God and the nature of the spiritual problems that plague human beings, the more convinced I become that ideas are the most effective of all of our enemy’s tools. Slavery is a grievous evil, but never more so than when it is the mind rather than merely the body that is enslaved. At that point, the slave will do the enemy’s bidding without any physical restraints, for whatever controls your mind owns you.
In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, the Apostle Paul says,
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
There is a strong emphasis on the cognitive aspect of our being in this passage. The “strongholds” that we are to demolish as divinely inspired warriors are arguments and pretensions that set themselves up against our claim to know God. We are to take thoughts captive to make them obedient to Christ. The word Paul uses for arguments is the Greek word logismous, which refers to “the product of a cognitive process.” 5 If that is true, it is hard to imagine Paul ignoring the claims of those who would today argue that we cannot really “know” God in any meaningful sense. He did not shy away from engaging the Athenian philosophers in discussions on such matters.
But the power of ideas is most clearly demonstrated in the absolute effectiveness of the Tempter’s strategy in the Garden of Eden. How did Satan succeed in driving Adam and Eve away from God? Not through demonpossession or illness, and not by overpowering their will: he succeeded by planting an idea in their mind. Ever since the human race bought the lie that we can actually become gods ourselves in place of God, we have been willing—even resolved—to do our enemy’s bidding. The key arena for this spiritual battle has been our minds.
If the biblical account is right, then it is not surprising that some of those who finally succeed in defying God would experience a certain degree of liberation. God has given us the ability to make real decisions with eternal consequences. When we exercise our freedom to choose, we affirm our true humanity. But if we were created by God in order to have a personal relationship with Him, then to choose against Him is to dethrone the essence of our humanity. We function at our best when we are properly related to God. From cults to distorted biblical teaching, false ideas continue to exert their power on humanity with many casualties along the way. As ambassadors of Christ in a hurting world, we play a dangerous game when we ignore the life of the mind.
The fact that the mind is an intensely active spiritual battlefield is seen in the large number of young people whose faith is shaken when they encounter ideas that challenge the truth of God’s Word. This is a familiar story on many university campuses. Biblical thinking can only regain the respectability it once had by making its case in the marketplace of ideas. When reasoned discourse takes a backseat in any culture (and reasoned discourse in turn is only possible in the context of a shared assumption that truth exists and can be discerned), the only alternative is the exercise of raw power. This is clearly seen in the priority given to court cases in the so-called culture wars without an equal emphasis on shaping public opinion through a reasoned defense of biblically sound positions.
While court cases have their legitimate role, real victory will only come when Christianity is once again recognized to be a legitimate option in public discourse. Fighting culture wars through the courts alone is at best a temporary solution; it is just a matter of time before the weight of cultural opinion lends an unstoppable momentum to false and destructive ideas. It is not accidental that Paul refers to the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15). When biblical Christianity is understood at the worldview level, it has the power not only to change the hearts and minds of individual adherents but also to influence the ideas that shape the opinions of a culture.
Implicit in what has already been said is the third and final reason why I believe it is a serious mistake for the church to ignore apologetics: apologetics is indispensable in the proper application of the Gospel to all of life. To flesh out this point, we will examine briefly the role the Gospel played in transforming British culture in the nineteenth century in contrast to the limited impact it has had in Africa in recent decades despite its obvious popularity on the continent.
Borrowing a Page in English
Church historian Ian C. Bradley credits the Evangelicals of the nineteenth century with the revival of a high view of morality in Victorian era Britain. 6 He argues that it was the Evangelicals who led the campaign to abolish the slave trade and who tempered the excesses of imperialism in places such as Africa and India. On October 28, 1787, William Wilberforce wrote in his diary, “God almighty has set before me two great objects; the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.” 7
It was not surprising that the “reformation of manners” would be ranked together with the abolition of the slave trade in Wilberforce’s mind. As Bradley writes,
It did not take a Saint to feel that English society stood in need of reform at the end of the eighteenth century…. There can be little doubt that there was something depraved about a society whose favourite country pastimes included hurling stakes at chained cocks and setting dogs on cats thrown into ponds, where townspeople regularly complained of being kept awake by the screams of victims of assault and rape and the cries of prostitutes, and in which an eighth of the deaths in the capital were attributed to excessive drinking. The eighteenth century was probably no more vice-ridden than any other but no other age has ever paraded its weaknesses quite so openly or excessively. 8
Despite the enormity of the task, Wilberforce and others like him succeeded in impacting their nation. So profound was the transformation of British society that Bertrand Russell, one of the most prominent and influential atheists of the last century, could later write, "It is doubtful that the method of Mahatma Gandhi would have succeeded except that he was appealing to the conscience of a Christianized people." 9 The process of Christianization did not occur by accident but as the result of a careful understanding of the Scriptures and the application of God’s Word to all of life. The Christian leaders who had laid the foundation for the moral rebuilding of their nation understood what a community of committed believers should produce: people of deepseated character and integrity who can discern the times in which they live and who can influence others, including their leaders, not only to become believers but also to live their lives and conduct their Christian witness with biblical wisdom in spite of cultural pressure to the contrary.
That is what Wilberforce hoped would be passed along to the generation that succeeded his own. In his book Real Christianity, he exhorted parents to incorporate apologetics in the upbringing and training of their children. He wrote,
In an age in which infidelity abounds, do we observe them [parents] carefully instructing their children in the principles of faith which they profess? Or do they furnish their children with arguments for the defense of that faith? ... When religion is handed down among us by heredity succession, it is not surprising to find youth of sense and spirit beginning to question the truth of the system in which they were brought up. And it is not surprising to see them abandon a position which they are unable to defend. 10
Unfortunately, his warning increasingly went unheeded as the English Evangelicals began to abandon the life of the mind and to retreat instead into an agenda which prioritized personal piety over a scholarly engagement with ideas that opposed a biblical view of the world. As author Jonathan Rice observes, they claimed “God had called them to a purely practical faith: to send forth missionaries, to help the poor and downtrodden, to better peoples’ manners. These were the things pleasing to God; not intellectual debate or true apologetics.” 11
Sadly, the result was that many of their children and grandchildren abandoned the faith once they were confronted with arguments to which they had no answers. Rice continues,
They tried to salvage the strong sense of morality, duty, hard work and self-control, but without the God who had given it to them in the first place. One of them summed it up this way in 1873: ‘Let us dream no dreams and tell no lies, but go our way, wherever it may lead, with our eyes open and our heads raised’… There is bravery and integrity in this statement, together with a horrible sense of the tragic. It is the practical creed of a man who had once known and loved God, but had lost Him, and was facing his short life alone and abandoned in a now empty universe. 12
A few years ago, Lee Strobel interviewed Charles Templeton in the course of research for one of his books. Templeton, a onetime preaching partner of Billy Graham, lost his faith while still a young man. In a discussion about Jesus, Templeton’s eyes welled up with tears, and to Strobel’s astonishment, Templeton said, “I really miss him.” 13 After years of writing books defending his agnosticism, he was still unable to shake off the allure of Jesus. He had learned to love Jesus with his heart but not with his mind. What your mind rejects, your life will eventually reject also, however close it may be to your heart.
It is often said that ideas have consequences. Such a maxim can only benefit us as we determine not to allow it to degenerate into a meaningless cliché. If we lose the next generation to secularism, other religions, and paganism, it is not going to be because we fought and lost the battle, but because we never entered the battlefield in the first place. God has given us all we need in order to serve Him effectively in this world, and our minds are an integral part of the process.
Out of Africa
Perhaps the best way to appreciate the painful effects of anti-intellectualism in the church is to look at places where the rich legacy of Judeo-Christian scholarship has not taken root. 14 A clear example of this problem is the continent of Africa, my homeland. The continent is known for its exotic wildlife, sprawling jungles, beaches, deserts, and its many cultures. But it is difficult to think of Africa without also thinking of all its pervasive problems. Drought, famine, poverty, and disease continue to claim lives throughout large parts of Africa. As a result, physical needs receive the greatest attention from those who feel moved enough to act on behalf of the people of Africa.
But despite the seriousness of the physical needs, I am convinced that the biggest problem Africa faces is ideological. In Matthew 4, Satan tries to get Jesus to turn stones into bread in order to meet his physical need. In response, Jesus says, “It is written, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (verse 4). The need in Africa remains the same; bread (an allegory for humanity’s physical needs) and the Word (ideological needs). This two-pronged diagnosis of humanity’s deepest needs is the key to solving Africa’s seemingly insurmountable problems.
With respect to the bread (or physical needs), trillions of dollars and untold hours of human labor have been poured into the continent of Africa in recent decades. For the record, I am grateful for those who have devoted so much of their efforts and resources to assisting the people of Africa. RZIM’s Wellspring International has played a critical role in the process and we hope to do more in the future. It is impossible to see the need and not feel compelled to do something about it as followers of Jesus Christ. But we also know that offering assistance for physical needs in Africa, though necessary, is only a temporary solution. We are also determined to address the root cause of the problem, which is ideological. God’s Word properly applied is the only hope for the world.
Reflecting on the impact of the Gospel in Africa over the last few decades, missiologist Ralph Winter laments the fact that it does not seem to have the impact one would expect it to have in places where a majority of the people claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. Says Winter, “We always used to think, ‘Even if things are not going too well in the USA, at least those millions of newly won believers overseas are flourishing in the faith.’” 15
But Winter points out that the news is not as good as we have thought. He gives some unsettling examples: Kenya, which is 80% Christian, with more than 400 denominations and “almost as many Evangelicals as in all of Europe” could not contain the outbreak of the postelection violence that claimed more than 1200 lives and left over 350,000 homeless in January of 2008. The Central African Republic is 70% Christian, and yet it also ranks among the most dangerous and corrupt nations of the world. Even Rwanda was considered to be one of the most Christianized nations in the world just before the genocide. Winter refers to this as “the nightmare of a thought that our vast global, hard-won expansion of Christianity is falling to pieces before our eyes.” His conclusion is worth pondering:
A Christianity that does not teach the Bible points the way nowhere but to New Age groping, ambiguity and relativism. However, a Christianity that only teaches the Bible is blind to all the other knowledge God wants us to discover and value. 16
A full examination of how we got where we are goes well beyond the scope of this short article. Suffice it to say that the church, for the most part, did not respond well to the assaults on the faith that gained prominence in the intellectual centers of the world in the nineteenth century. Philosopher J.P. Moreland identifies three principal areas in which the Gospel was poorly defended against intellectual attacks: philosophy, science, and German “higher criticism.” Philosophers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant insisted that God cannot be known to exist. Charles Darwin’s formulation of the theory of evolution seemed to render the role of a Creator of life superfluous, and the Bible itself came under severe attack with the rise of higher criticism in Germany that questioned its historicity. 17
Moreland argues that the church frequently responded by withdrawing from the centers of intellectual debate. Bible institutes were built to train lay believers to reach the lost for Christ, rather than to equip a generation of believers to defend their faith. As Evangelicals retreated from the broader society, an unhealthy escapism with an emphasis on End Times teaching became popular. The result was a severe marginalization of Christian ideas from the public arena. Needless to say, reaching souls for Christ is the central objective of our calling, and as Spirit-filled believers, we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons” (Romans 8:23). But in the meantime, we are to endure the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in the believers (Galatians 4:19).
If Moreland’s analysis is largely correct, then the real problem that plagues believers in places like Africa is not hard to identify. Simply stated, the version of Christianity that was planted in Africa was largely divorced from the intellectual legacy of Christendom that had produced first-rate Christian scientists, moral philosophers, political thinkers, artists, business entrepreneurs, etc. It was instead the product of a pietistic strain of evangelicalism which was already in intellectual retreat in the West by the time it was coming to maturity in Africa. In short, since the advent of the missionary movement in the latter eighteenth century, the Judeo- Christian tradition has never been rooted in Africa as it had once been in the West. The West may presently be busy hacking away at the root of its moral foundations, but Africa in one sense has yet even to break ground in order to lay down a strong biblical foundation within its many cultures.
If we do not learn to value the life of the mind, then we will be doing a great disservice to all the missionaries who have sacrificed their resources, time, health, and even lives to take the Gospel to places like Africa. In spite of the anti-intellectual flavor of the version of the faith that made it to Africa, the missionaries proved faithful with what was at their disposal. The result, according to the Pew Forum, is that there are now more than 400 million Christians in Africa, and that number is projected to rise to more than 633 million by the year 2025. 18 Far from destroying African cultures, missionaries contributed to their survival by providing them with written expressions of their languages. 19 There is much for which missionaries deserve our gratitude, and the best way to reward their efforts is for African believers to learn to serve God with their minds.
In a different context, Richard Mouw uses the metaphor of the hospital emergency room to make a similar point. 20 The emergency room is a place of much activity and haste. The moment the ambulance pulls in, life decisions have to be made, with no time to waste. But the only reason why the medical experts succeed in saving lives in the midst of the haste and urgency is because medical researchers have already spent countless hours in the labs, conferences, lecture halls, and the library.
Unfortunately, Africa is like an emergency room with a real need for hasty action and urgent care. But there is very little research at the ideological level to back up the ambulance drivers. Physical and medical needs cannot be denied, but until we recognize that the application of God’s Word to all areas of life is still the final answer to the human predicament this side of the grave, the solution to Africa’s problems will continue to elude us. The Word of God is still the answer, but it must be understood at the worldview level if we are to break down the structures of mental slavery that have oppressed so many for so long.
In December 2008, Matthew Parris wrote an article entitled, “As an Atheist I Truly Believe Africa Needs God.” In that article Parris argued that redemption, not just physical assistance, has to be a part of the process that will give rise to the kind of transformation Africa needs. He concluded his article with a powerful statement:
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted. And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete. 21
To this sobering statement from an atheist, I would add that apologetics must be a part of the equation, for millions of Africans have already responded positively to Christian evangelism. What remains now is for the believers in Africa to demonstrate what the Gospel can do to societal structures when it is properly applied. Learning to love God with their minds is the surest way to supplant oppressive belief systems with the life-changing Word of God. I should also note that I am not offering apologetics in place of the Gospel: the Gospel is what is needed. But in the process of applying it to all of life, apologetics is indispensable.
What It Will Take
The first thing it will take in order for the followers of Jesus to turn this ship around is a sacrificial commitment to the course of truth. 22 The church must produce gifted men and women who are not ashamed of the Gospel and who will serve God with their minds as historians, artists, moral philosophers, scientists, politicians, business entrepreneurs, university professors, media personalities, etc. In other words, we must strive to raise a generation of believers who are not just professionals who happen to be Christians but diligent Christians who understand that their professions are a means to glorify God.
Fortunately, this is already happening, especially in the US, as followers of Christ respond to the marginalization of biblical ideas in the culture by making the case for the truth and centrality of the Bible. The message of the Gospel is simple but it is by no means simplistic. Proper understanding and application of its truth requires careful study and contemplation. An impassioned “What-do-I-say-when-he-or-shesays- such-and-such” approach to apologetics alone will not do: we must be willing to roll up our sleeves for the sake of truth, for no one has a greater stake in it than those of us who claim to follow him who is the Truth.
Secondly, it will take the entire community of faith working together. No one person can do this alone. Given the multiplicity of tasks that many pastors bear, pointing out the value of apologetics to them can at times sound insensitive, if not insulting. Pastors tend to be very easy targets of criticism, but over the years I have worked closely enough with a number of them to appreciate the demands their calling places upon their lives on a daily basis. There are not many pastors who are in search of extra-curricular activities to fill up gaps in their schedules.
Consequently, believers must be more intentional about sharing the available resources as we all function together as one body. The biblical mandate for individuals and churches to use their gifts for the benefit of the entire body is clear. It is up to church leaders to create the opportunities for cooperation among believers. This means that no one person should feel left out; the gifts God has given each one of his followers are equally valuable in his eyes and we must embrace them with gratitude and use them to benefit others. Not all of us are called to be apologists, and not even the most gifted pastor can play all the roles God has assigned to any local congregation. Church leaders must be willing to open the door for the members of their congregations to exercise their God-given gifts, including serving God with their minds.
And finally, it will take dependence upon the power of the Spirit of God for authentic, transformed Christian lives. This is not only the ultimate goal of everything we do, it is also the only safeguard against letting our service to God with our minds degenerate into a mere academic exercise. Just as we can use other gifts of God, like material wealth, to oppose God, we can do the same with reason. In his book Beyond Opinion, Ravi Zacharias declares, “I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out.” 23 That is a warning worth heeding. The one Bible verse that comes close to giving us a definition of eternal life is John 17:3. It says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Eternal life is not just something that will happen some day after we die; it is knowing God through Christ, and it begins the moment we believe.
Thus apologetics is necessary for the health of the church because it helps the believer to overcome intellectual obstacles in the course of the believer’s spiritual growth. It is necessary for the witness of the church since it helps clear away the obstacles that can keep the non-believer from taking an honest look at his or her true spiritual condition. The life of the mind is an integral part of Christian discipleship, and it is indispensable in the process of applying God’s Word in our individual lives as well as in our role as the bearers of God’s light in a dark world. To ignore the life of the mind is to play right into the hands of the enemy of our souls. For the sake of our own lives in Christ, our young people, our nation, and indeed our world, we will do well to rediscover the primacy of loving God with our minds in the context of our local churches.
J.M. Njoroge
The ambiguity of the word apologetics provides the apologist with a natural icebreaker in public or private conversations on the topic: the apologist does not exist to “apologize” for being a Christian, or indeed for anything else. The assumption behind the pun is that the listeners would have a fair understanding of what apologetics is even if they cannot attach a formal definition to the concept. Unfortunately, this assumption is not always accurate.
During a conversation at a major apologetics event recently held in a large church, an attendee asked me what “apologetics” meant. I explained to her that apologetics is the branch of Christian theology that seeks to address the intellectual obstacles that keep people from taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ seriously. I gave her some examples of questions that are important in the context of apologetics. For example, why does evil exist if the world was created by an all-good, all-powerful God? How do we know Christianity is true in light of the numerous religions that exist in the world?
I finished my answer to her by quoting 1 Peter 3:15, which instructs us to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks for the reason for the hope that is within us. Her reaction was surprising.
“Are you sure the Bible says that?” she asked.
I assured her that it does. I explained to her that the word translated “answer” in that verse is the Greek word apologia that means “defense” and from which we get the English word apologetics. She had been a faithful member of a prominent evangelical church for most of her life, and yet she did not understand the meaning or importance of apologetics in the life of the local church. Sadly, I have seen such scenarios repeat themselves so frequently that I have now come to expect them whenever I go to a new place to speak.
Even among those who do understand what apologetics is and why it is important, there are some who suspect that it is reserved for a select minority among the elect—perhaps just for those with a questioning mind, or for an intellectual elite. Tertullian’s famous question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” 1 echoes loudly in the hearts and minds of many a follower of Jesus in our time, with the resounding answer being “nothing.” The explosion of knowledge has made it possible for different people legitimately to focus on specific areas at the exclusion of others. This has complicated the process of cooperation among experts in different fields of study, the result being that often the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Thus, for example, it is possible for a local church to function without apologetics.
In what follows, I hope to demonstrate why I believe apologetics is absolutely crucial to both the health and the witness of the church and why it is a serious mistake for followers of Jesus to ignore it. My goal is not to cast blame, but to call upon those who are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ to take seriously the application of its truth to all areas of life. Unless the Gospel is understood at the worldview level, its impact upon those who accept it as well as its ability to change the structures of their societies will always fall short of God’s best for his people. But, as I will argue, the Gospel cannot be understood at the worldview level without apologetics.
Orders to Prepare
The first reason why believers cannot ignore the life of the mind is that the Bible itself is opposed to anti-intellectualism 2 . As already mentioned, the Scriptures instruct us to be prepared to give answers to those who raise questions about our faith (1 Peter 3:15). When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus declared that it is to love God with the entirety of our being, including our minds (see Matthew 22:36-38)—an injunction beautifully modeled for us by biblical characters themselves.
For example, within the context of apologetics, Paul’s practice of reasoning from the Scriptures when in discussion with Jews about the identity of Jesus is well known. But as we see in Acts 17, Paul was willing to depart from this practice when he debated the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens: he started from where they were in order to introduce the Gospel to them. He could not reason from the Scriptures with them since they, unlike the Jews, did not accept the authority of the Scriptures.
Similarly, Matthew 22 contains a fascinating account of Jesus’s interaction with a group of Pharisees and Sadducees, the Ivy League scholars of the day. Jesus navigates masterfully through their traps regarding the requirement to pay taxes to Caesar, the status of marriage in the afterlife, and the prioritization of the commandments given to us by God. In each case, he exposes the misconceptions that had led to erroneous interpretations of God’s Word. Jesus caps the chapter with his own question to the experts. How could King David, under the inspiration of the Spirit, refer to the Messiah as his (David’s) Lord if the Messiah was just David’s son (or descendant)? “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions” (Matthew 22:46).
Although apologetics is mostly associated with such penetrating thinkers as C.S. Lewis, the practice of serving God with the mind has been an integral part of the life of the church throughout its history. This is evident in the formulation of complex biblical doctrines, such as the Trinity. The precision of the words used in the creeds and the determination to avoid contradictions are impressive examples of the priority the church has always given to the life of the mind.
Indeed, biblical thinking played a foundational role in all that went into the formation of what is known as Western culture. Without the Bible, Western culture would not have the shape it has today. Notwithstanding loud protests to the contrary, it was biblical thinking that gave rise to modern science and technology. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.” 3 They believed the universe was crafted by a purposeful God who created humanity in his image, creatures who could (to borrow Johannes Kepler’s famous phrase) “think God’s thoughts after Him.” To Kepler, “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by God, and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics.” 4
It was also the Bible that gave the world a foundation for human rights. The Bible makes the astonishing claim that what separates human beings from other creatures is the fact that they were created in God’s image. Although others may claim that all human beings should be considered to be of equal worth, only the Christian worldview provides a philosophically solid and consistent basis for such a claim. After all, we don’t all come into the world “equal” in any objective sense. My boys were born in Los Angeles, California, around the same time that the children of a famous celebrity were born. Though there was a barrage of reporters and paparazzi hoping to catch a glimpse of the celebrity’s children, no one showed up with a camera at the hospital where my boys were born (though I can assure you, as objectively as a dad can, that my boys were much better looking!).
We don’t all star t life in this world on an equal footing, given the huge range of gifts and attributes people have—musical or athletic ability, good looks, and intelligence. The only basis we have for attaching any meaning to the claim that all human beings are “equal” is the biblical teaching that we are all made in God’s image. So pervasive was such thinking in Western culture that such phrases as “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with cer tain inalienable rights” were taken to be self-evident truths at the founding of the United States.
One can only wonder what the Declaration of Independence would look like if it were drafted today, when some of our leading intellectuals are telling us that we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps and we therefore have no need for God. It is difficult to see how “inalienable rights,” rights that exist independently of any human authority, can be justified without a transcendent anchor.
With all its war ts, the church has, in the past, acknowledged a duty to think through issues so that it can anticipate and then answer the questions people have. In other words, it has taken its role as the light of the world much more seriously than is evident today. C.S. Lewis did not invent apologetics any more than Michael Jordan invented the game of basketball.
Spiritual Warfare
A second reason why the church cannot afford to ignore the life of the mind is that apologetics is a form of spiritual warfare. The more I study the Word of God and the nature of the spiritual problems that plague human beings, the more convinced I become that ideas are the most effective of all of our enemy’s tools. Slavery is a grievous evil, but never more so than when it is the mind rather than merely the body that is enslaved. At that point, the slave will do the enemy’s bidding without any physical restraints, for whatever controls your mind owns you.
In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, the Apostle Paul says,
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
There is a strong emphasis on the cognitive aspect of our being in this passage. The “strongholds” that we are to demolish as divinely inspired warriors are arguments and pretensions that set themselves up against our claim to know God. We are to take thoughts captive to make them obedient to Christ. The word Paul uses for arguments is the Greek word logismous, which refers to “the product of a cognitive process.” 5 If that is true, it is hard to imagine Paul ignoring the claims of those who would today argue that we cannot really “know” God in any meaningful sense. He did not shy away from engaging the Athenian philosophers in discussions on such matters.
But the power of ideas is most clearly demonstrated in the absolute effectiveness of the Tempter’s strategy in the Garden of Eden. How did Satan succeed in driving Adam and Eve away from God? Not through demonpossession or illness, and not by overpowering their will: he succeeded by planting an idea in their mind. Ever since the human race bought the lie that we can actually become gods ourselves in place of God, we have been willing—even resolved—to do our enemy’s bidding. The key arena for this spiritual battle has been our minds.
If the biblical account is right, then it is not surprising that some of those who finally succeed in defying God would experience a certain degree of liberation. God has given us the ability to make real decisions with eternal consequences. When we exercise our freedom to choose, we affirm our true humanity. But if we were created by God in order to have a personal relationship with Him, then to choose against Him is to dethrone the essence of our humanity. We function at our best when we are properly related to God. From cults to distorted biblical teaching, false ideas continue to exert their power on humanity with many casualties along the way. As ambassadors of Christ in a hurting world, we play a dangerous game when we ignore the life of the mind.
The fact that the mind is an intensely active spiritual battlefield is seen in the large number of young people whose faith is shaken when they encounter ideas that challenge the truth of God’s Word. This is a familiar story on many university campuses. Biblical thinking can only regain the respectability it once had by making its case in the marketplace of ideas. When reasoned discourse takes a backseat in any culture (and reasoned discourse in turn is only possible in the context of a shared assumption that truth exists and can be discerned), the only alternative is the exercise of raw power. This is clearly seen in the priority given to court cases in the so-called culture wars without an equal emphasis on shaping public opinion through a reasoned defense of biblically sound positions.
While court cases have their legitimate role, real victory will only come when Christianity is once again recognized to be a legitimate option in public discourse. Fighting culture wars through the courts alone is at best a temporary solution; it is just a matter of time before the weight of cultural opinion lends an unstoppable momentum to false and destructive ideas. It is not accidental that Paul refers to the church as the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15). When biblical Christianity is understood at the worldview level, it has the power not only to change the hearts and minds of individual adherents but also to influence the ideas that shape the opinions of a culture.
Implicit in what has already been said is the third and final reason why I believe it is a serious mistake for the church to ignore apologetics: apologetics is indispensable in the proper application of the Gospel to all of life. To flesh out this point, we will examine briefly the role the Gospel played in transforming British culture in the nineteenth century in contrast to the limited impact it has had in Africa in recent decades despite its obvious popularity on the continent.
Borrowing a Page in English
Church historian Ian C. Bradley credits the Evangelicals of the nineteenth century with the revival of a high view of morality in Victorian era Britain. 6 He argues that it was the Evangelicals who led the campaign to abolish the slave trade and who tempered the excesses of imperialism in places such as Africa and India. On October 28, 1787, William Wilberforce wrote in his diary, “God almighty has set before me two great objects; the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.” 7
It was not surprising that the “reformation of manners” would be ranked together with the abolition of the slave trade in Wilberforce’s mind. As Bradley writes,
It did not take a Saint to feel that English society stood in need of reform at the end of the eighteenth century…. There can be little doubt that there was something depraved about a society whose favourite country pastimes included hurling stakes at chained cocks and setting dogs on cats thrown into ponds, where townspeople regularly complained of being kept awake by the screams of victims of assault and rape and the cries of prostitutes, and in which an eighth of the deaths in the capital were attributed to excessive drinking. The eighteenth century was probably no more vice-ridden than any other but no other age has ever paraded its weaknesses quite so openly or excessively. 8
Despite the enormity of the task, Wilberforce and others like him succeeded in impacting their nation. So profound was the transformation of British society that Bertrand Russell, one of the most prominent and influential atheists of the last century, could later write, "It is doubtful that the method of Mahatma Gandhi would have succeeded except that he was appealing to the conscience of a Christianized people." 9 The process of Christianization did not occur by accident but as the result of a careful understanding of the Scriptures and the application of God’s Word to all of life. The Christian leaders who had laid the foundation for the moral rebuilding of their nation understood what a community of committed believers should produce: people of deepseated character and integrity who can discern the times in which they live and who can influence others, including their leaders, not only to become believers but also to live their lives and conduct their Christian witness with biblical wisdom in spite of cultural pressure to the contrary.
That is what Wilberforce hoped would be passed along to the generation that succeeded his own. In his book Real Christianity, he exhorted parents to incorporate apologetics in the upbringing and training of their children. He wrote,
In an age in which infidelity abounds, do we observe them [parents] carefully instructing their children in the principles of faith which they profess? Or do they furnish their children with arguments for the defense of that faith? ... When religion is handed down among us by heredity succession, it is not surprising to find youth of sense and spirit beginning to question the truth of the system in which they were brought up. And it is not surprising to see them abandon a position which they are unable to defend. 10
Unfortunately, his warning increasingly went unheeded as the English Evangelicals began to abandon the life of the mind and to retreat instead into an agenda which prioritized personal piety over a scholarly engagement with ideas that opposed a biblical view of the world. As author Jonathan Rice observes, they claimed “God had called them to a purely practical faith: to send forth missionaries, to help the poor and downtrodden, to better peoples’ manners. These were the things pleasing to God; not intellectual debate or true apologetics.” 11
Sadly, the result was that many of their children and grandchildren abandoned the faith once they were confronted with arguments to which they had no answers. Rice continues,
They tried to salvage the strong sense of morality, duty, hard work and self-control, but without the God who had given it to them in the first place. One of them summed it up this way in 1873: ‘Let us dream no dreams and tell no lies, but go our way, wherever it may lead, with our eyes open and our heads raised’… There is bravery and integrity in this statement, together with a horrible sense of the tragic. It is the practical creed of a man who had once known and loved God, but had lost Him, and was facing his short life alone and abandoned in a now empty universe. 12
A few years ago, Lee Strobel interviewed Charles Templeton in the course of research for one of his books. Templeton, a onetime preaching partner of Billy Graham, lost his faith while still a young man. In a discussion about Jesus, Templeton’s eyes welled up with tears, and to Strobel’s astonishment, Templeton said, “I really miss him.” 13 After years of writing books defending his agnosticism, he was still unable to shake off the allure of Jesus. He had learned to love Jesus with his heart but not with his mind. What your mind rejects, your life will eventually reject also, however close it may be to your heart.
It is often said that ideas have consequences. Such a maxim can only benefit us as we determine not to allow it to degenerate into a meaningless cliché. If we lose the next generation to secularism, other religions, and paganism, it is not going to be because we fought and lost the battle, but because we never entered the battlefield in the first place. God has given us all we need in order to serve Him effectively in this world, and our minds are an integral part of the process.
Out of Africa
Perhaps the best way to appreciate the painful effects of anti-intellectualism in the church is to look at places where the rich legacy of Judeo-Christian scholarship has not taken root. 14 A clear example of this problem is the continent of Africa, my homeland. The continent is known for its exotic wildlife, sprawling jungles, beaches, deserts, and its many cultures. But it is difficult to think of Africa without also thinking of all its pervasive problems. Drought, famine, poverty, and disease continue to claim lives throughout large parts of Africa. As a result, physical needs receive the greatest attention from those who feel moved enough to act on behalf of the people of Africa.
But despite the seriousness of the physical needs, I am convinced that the biggest problem Africa faces is ideological. In Matthew 4, Satan tries to get Jesus to turn stones into bread in order to meet his physical need. In response, Jesus says, “It is written, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (verse 4). The need in Africa remains the same; bread (an allegory for humanity’s physical needs) and the Word (ideological needs). This two-pronged diagnosis of humanity’s deepest needs is the key to solving Africa’s seemingly insurmountable problems.
With respect to the bread (or physical needs), trillions of dollars and untold hours of human labor have been poured into the continent of Africa in recent decades. For the record, I am grateful for those who have devoted so much of their efforts and resources to assisting the people of Africa. RZIM’s Wellspring International has played a critical role in the process and we hope to do more in the future. It is impossible to see the need and not feel compelled to do something about it as followers of Jesus Christ. But we also know that offering assistance for physical needs in Africa, though necessary, is only a temporary solution. We are also determined to address the root cause of the problem, which is ideological. God’s Word properly applied is the only hope for the world.
Reflecting on the impact of the Gospel in Africa over the last few decades, missiologist Ralph Winter laments the fact that it does not seem to have the impact one would expect it to have in places where a majority of the people claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. Says Winter, “We always used to think, ‘Even if things are not going too well in the USA, at least those millions of newly won believers overseas are flourishing in the faith.’” 15
But Winter points out that the news is not as good as we have thought. He gives some unsettling examples: Kenya, which is 80% Christian, with more than 400 denominations and “almost as many Evangelicals as in all of Europe” could not contain the outbreak of the postelection violence that claimed more than 1200 lives and left over 350,000 homeless in January of 2008. The Central African Republic is 70% Christian, and yet it also ranks among the most dangerous and corrupt nations of the world. Even Rwanda was considered to be one of the most Christianized nations in the world just before the genocide. Winter refers to this as “the nightmare of a thought that our vast global, hard-won expansion of Christianity is falling to pieces before our eyes.” His conclusion is worth pondering:
A Christianity that does not teach the Bible points the way nowhere but to New Age groping, ambiguity and relativism. However, a Christianity that only teaches the Bible is blind to all the other knowledge God wants us to discover and value. 16
A full examination of how we got where we are goes well beyond the scope of this short article. Suffice it to say that the church, for the most part, did not respond well to the assaults on the faith that gained prominence in the intellectual centers of the world in the nineteenth century. Philosopher J.P. Moreland identifies three principal areas in which the Gospel was poorly defended against intellectual attacks: philosophy, science, and German “higher criticism.” Philosophers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant insisted that God cannot be known to exist. Charles Darwin’s formulation of the theory of evolution seemed to render the role of a Creator of life superfluous, and the Bible itself came under severe attack with the rise of higher criticism in Germany that questioned its historicity. 17
Moreland argues that the church frequently responded by withdrawing from the centers of intellectual debate. Bible institutes were built to train lay believers to reach the lost for Christ, rather than to equip a generation of believers to defend their faith. As Evangelicals retreated from the broader society, an unhealthy escapism with an emphasis on End Times teaching became popular. The result was a severe marginalization of Christian ideas from the public arena. Needless to say, reaching souls for Christ is the central objective of our calling, and as Spirit-filled believers, we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons” (Romans 8:23). But in the meantime, we are to endure the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in the believers (Galatians 4:19).
If Moreland’s analysis is largely correct, then the real problem that plagues believers in places like Africa is not hard to identify. Simply stated, the version of Christianity that was planted in Africa was largely divorced from the intellectual legacy of Christendom that had produced first-rate Christian scientists, moral philosophers, political thinkers, artists, business entrepreneurs, etc. It was instead the product of a pietistic strain of evangelicalism which was already in intellectual retreat in the West by the time it was coming to maturity in Africa. In short, since the advent of the missionary movement in the latter eighteenth century, the Judeo- Christian tradition has never been rooted in Africa as it had once been in the West. The West may presently be busy hacking away at the root of its moral foundations, but Africa in one sense has yet even to break ground in order to lay down a strong biblical foundation within its many cultures.
If we do not learn to value the life of the mind, then we will be doing a great disservice to all the missionaries who have sacrificed their resources, time, health, and even lives to take the Gospel to places like Africa. In spite of the anti-intellectual flavor of the version of the faith that made it to Africa, the missionaries proved faithful with what was at their disposal. The result, according to the Pew Forum, is that there are now more than 400 million Christians in Africa, and that number is projected to rise to more than 633 million by the year 2025. 18 Far from destroying African cultures, missionaries contributed to their survival by providing them with written expressions of their languages. 19 There is much for which missionaries deserve our gratitude, and the best way to reward their efforts is for African believers to learn to serve God with their minds.
In a different context, Richard Mouw uses the metaphor of the hospital emergency room to make a similar point. 20 The emergency room is a place of much activity and haste. The moment the ambulance pulls in, life decisions have to be made, with no time to waste. But the only reason why the medical experts succeed in saving lives in the midst of the haste and urgency is because medical researchers have already spent countless hours in the labs, conferences, lecture halls, and the library.
Unfortunately, Africa is like an emergency room with a real need for hasty action and urgent care. But there is very little research at the ideological level to back up the ambulance drivers. Physical and medical needs cannot be denied, but until we recognize that the application of God’s Word to all areas of life is still the final answer to the human predicament this side of the grave, the solution to Africa’s problems will continue to elude us. The Word of God is still the answer, but it must be understood at the worldview level if we are to break down the structures of mental slavery that have oppressed so many for so long.
In December 2008, Matthew Parris wrote an article entitled, “As an Atheist I Truly Believe Africa Needs God.” In that article Parris argued that redemption, not just physical assistance, has to be a part of the process that will give rise to the kind of transformation Africa needs. He concluded his article with a powerful statement:
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted. And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete. 21
To this sobering statement from an atheist, I would add that apologetics must be a part of the equation, for millions of Africans have already responded positively to Christian evangelism. What remains now is for the believers in Africa to demonstrate what the Gospel can do to societal structures when it is properly applied. Learning to love God with their minds is the surest way to supplant oppressive belief systems with the life-changing Word of God. I should also note that I am not offering apologetics in place of the Gospel: the Gospel is what is needed. But in the process of applying it to all of life, apologetics is indispensable.
What It Will Take
The first thing it will take in order for the followers of Jesus to turn this ship around is a sacrificial commitment to the course of truth. 22 The church must produce gifted men and women who are not ashamed of the Gospel and who will serve God with their minds as historians, artists, moral philosophers, scientists, politicians, business entrepreneurs, university professors, media personalities, etc. In other words, we must strive to raise a generation of believers who are not just professionals who happen to be Christians but diligent Christians who understand that their professions are a means to glorify God.
Fortunately, this is already happening, especially in the US, as followers of Christ respond to the marginalization of biblical ideas in the culture by making the case for the truth and centrality of the Bible. The message of the Gospel is simple but it is by no means simplistic. Proper understanding and application of its truth requires careful study and contemplation. An impassioned “What-do-I-say-when-he-or-shesays- such-and-such” approach to apologetics alone will not do: we must be willing to roll up our sleeves for the sake of truth, for no one has a greater stake in it than those of us who claim to follow him who is the Truth.
Secondly, it will take the entire community of faith working together. No one person can do this alone. Given the multiplicity of tasks that many pastors bear, pointing out the value of apologetics to them can at times sound insensitive, if not insulting. Pastors tend to be very easy targets of criticism, but over the years I have worked closely enough with a number of them to appreciate the demands their calling places upon their lives on a daily basis. There are not many pastors who are in search of extra-curricular activities to fill up gaps in their schedules.
Consequently, believers must be more intentional about sharing the available resources as we all function together as one body. The biblical mandate for individuals and churches to use their gifts for the benefit of the entire body is clear. It is up to church leaders to create the opportunities for cooperation among believers. This means that no one person should feel left out; the gifts God has given each one of his followers are equally valuable in his eyes and we must embrace them with gratitude and use them to benefit others. Not all of us are called to be apologists, and not even the most gifted pastor can play all the roles God has assigned to any local congregation. Church leaders must be willing to open the door for the members of their congregations to exercise their God-given gifts, including serving God with their minds.
And finally, it will take dependence upon the power of the Spirit of God for authentic, transformed Christian lives. This is not only the ultimate goal of everything we do, it is also the only safeguard against letting our service to God with our minds degenerate into a mere academic exercise. Just as we can use other gifts of God, like material wealth, to oppose God, we can do the same with reason. In his book Beyond Opinion, Ravi Zacharias declares, “I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out.” 23 That is a warning worth heeding. The one Bible verse that comes close to giving us a definition of eternal life is John 17:3. It says, “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Eternal life is not just something that will happen some day after we die; it is knowing God through Christ, and it begins the moment we believe.
Thus apologetics is necessary for the health of the church because it helps the believer to overcome intellectual obstacles in the course of the believer’s spiritual growth. It is necessary for the witness of the church since it helps clear away the obstacles that can keep the non-believer from taking an honest look at his or her true spiritual condition. The life of the mind is an integral part of Christian discipleship, and it is indispensable in the process of applying God’s Word in our individual lives as well as in our role as the bearers of God’s light in a dark world. To ignore the life of the mind is to play right into the hands of the enemy of our souls. For the sake of our own lives in Christ, our young people, our nation, and indeed our world, we will do well to rediscover the primacy of loving God with our minds in the context of our local churches.
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Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, February 8, 2010
Subversives who think government is corrupt and should be controlled by the people face 10 years in prison and a $25,000 dollar fine if they fail to register with authorities in South Carolina, in another chilling example of how free speech and dissent is being criminalized in America.
The states Subversive Activities Registration Act is now officially on the books and mandates that Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States shall register with the Secretary of State.
Of course, the right to overthrow a government that has become corrupt, abusive and completely unrepresentative of its electorate is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence thats how America came to be a Republic in the first place advocating or teaching that the people should control the government via their elected representatives is a basic function of a democratic society, but this law effectively makes it a terrorist offense.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness, states the Declaration of Independence.
Under the sweeping terms of the law, members of tax protest organizations, the Tea Party movement and the States Rights movement based in South Carolina are all domestic terrorists if they fail to register their dissent with the authorities.
Click here for the link for the law below.
South Carolina Code of Laws
(Unannotated)
Current through the end of the 2009 Session
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Title 23 - Law Enforcement and Public Safety
CHAPTER 29.
SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES REGISTRATION ACT
SECTION 23-29-10. Short title.
This chapter may be cited as the "Subversive Activities Registration Act."
SECTION 23-29-20. Definitions.
For the purposes of this chapter the following words, phrases and terms are defined as follows:
(1) "Subversive organization" means every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means;
(2) "Organization subject to foreign control" means every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or other organization, composed of two or more persons, which comes within either of the following:
(a) it solicits or accepts financial contributions, loans or support of any kind directly or indirectly from, or is affiliated directly or indirectly with, a foreign government or a political subdivision thereof, an agent, agency or instrumentality of a foreign government or political subdivision thereof, a political party in a foreign country or an international political organization or
(b) its policies, or any of them, are determined by or at the suggestion of, or in collaboration with, a foreign government or political subdivision thereof, an agent, agency or instrumentality of a foreign government or a political subdivision thereof, a political party in a foreign country or an international political organization;
(3) "Foreign agent" means any person whose actions, or any of them, are determined by or at the suggestion of, or in collaboration with, a foreign government or political subdivision thereof, an instrumentality or agency of a foreign government or political subdivision thereof, a political party in a foreign country or an international political organization; and
(4) "Business" includes, but is not limited to, speaking engagements.
SECTION 23-29-30. Effect on freedom of press or speech.
Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to authorize, require or establish censorship or to limit in any way or infringe upon freedom of the press or of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and no regulation shall be promulgated hereunder having that effect.
SECTION 23-29-40. Organizations exempt from application of chapter.
The terms of this chapter do not apply to any labor union or religious, fraternal or patriotic organization, society or association, or their members, whose objectives and aims do not contemplate the overthrow of the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means.
SECTION 23-29-50. Registration by subversive and foreign-controlled organizations.
Every subversive organization and organization subject to foreign control shall register with the Secretary of State on forms prescribed by him within thirty days after coming into existence in this State.
SECTION 23-29-60. Registration of members of subversive and foreign-controlled organizations.
Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means, who resides, transacts any business or attempts to influence political action in this State, shall register with the Secretary of State on the forms and at the times prescribed by him.
SECTION 23-29-70. Forms and schedule for filing information.
Every organization or person coming within the provisions of this chapter shall file with the Secretary of State all information which he may request, on the forms and at the times he may prescribe.
SECTION 23-29-80. Promulgation of rules and regulations.
The Secretary of State may adopt and promulgate any rules and regulations, not inconsistent with the terms of this chapter, which may be necessary to carry out the provisions of this chapter and may alter or repeal such rules and regulations.
SECTION 23-29-90. Penalties.
Any organization or person who violates any of the provisions of this chapter shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished by a fine of not more than twenty-five thousand dollars or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or by both fine and imprisonment.
Prison Planet.com
Monday, February 8, 2010
Subversives who think government is corrupt and should be controlled by the people face 10 years in prison and a $25,000 dollar fine if they fail to register with authorities in South Carolina, in another chilling example of how free speech and dissent is being criminalized in America.
The states Subversive Activities Registration Act is now officially on the books and mandates that Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States shall register with the Secretary of State.
Of course, the right to overthrow a government that has become corrupt, abusive and completely unrepresentative of its electorate is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence thats how America came to be a Republic in the first place advocating or teaching that the people should control the government via their elected representatives is a basic function of a democratic society, but this law effectively makes it a terrorist offense.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness, states the Declaration of Independence.
Under the sweeping terms of the law, members of tax protest organizations, the Tea Party movement and the States Rights movement based in South Carolina are all domestic terrorists if they fail to register their dissent with the authorities.
Click here for the link for the law below.
South Carolina Code of Laws
(Unannotated)
Current through the end of the 2009 Session
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Title 23 - Law Enforcement and Public Safety
CHAPTER 29.
SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES REGISTRATION ACT
SECTION 23-29-10. Short title.
This chapter may be cited as the "Subversive Activities Registration Act."
SECTION 23-29-20. Definitions.
For the purposes of this chapter the following words, phrases and terms are defined as follows:
(1) "Subversive organization" means every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means;
(2) "Organization subject to foreign control" means every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or other organization, composed of two or more persons, which comes within either of the following:
(a) it solicits or accepts financial contributions, loans or support of any kind directly or indirectly from, or is affiliated directly or indirectly with, a foreign government or a political subdivision thereof, an agent, agency or instrumentality of a foreign government or political subdivision thereof, a political party in a foreign country or an international political organization or
(b) its policies, or any of them, are determined by or at the suggestion of, or in collaboration with, a foreign government or political subdivision thereof, an agent, agency or instrumentality of a foreign government or a political subdivision thereof, a political party in a foreign country or an international political organization;
(3) "Foreign agent" means any person whose actions, or any of them, are determined by or at the suggestion of, or in collaboration with, a foreign government or political subdivision thereof, an instrumentality or agency of a foreign government or political subdivision thereof, a political party in a foreign country or an international political organization; and
(4) "Business" includes, but is not limited to, speaking engagements.
SECTION 23-29-30. Effect on freedom of press or speech.
Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to authorize, require or establish censorship or to limit in any way or infringe upon freedom of the press or of speech as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and no regulation shall be promulgated hereunder having that effect.
SECTION 23-29-40. Organizations exempt from application of chapter.
The terms of this chapter do not apply to any labor union or religious, fraternal or patriotic organization, society or association, or their members, whose objectives and aims do not contemplate the overthrow of the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means.
SECTION 23-29-50. Registration by subversive and foreign-controlled organizations.
Every subversive organization and organization subject to foreign control shall register with the Secretary of State on forms prescribed by him within thirty days after coming into existence in this State.
SECTION 23-29-60. Registration of members of subversive and foreign-controlled organizations.
Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means, who resides, transacts any business or attempts to influence political action in this State, shall register with the Secretary of State on the forms and at the times prescribed by him.
SECTION 23-29-70. Forms and schedule for filing information.
Every organization or person coming within the provisions of this chapter shall file with the Secretary of State all information which he may request, on the forms and at the times he may prescribe.
SECTION 23-29-80. Promulgation of rules and regulations.
The Secretary of State may adopt and promulgate any rules and regulations, not inconsistent with the terms of this chapter, which may be necessary to carry out the provisions of this chapter and may alter or repeal such rules and regulations.
SECTION 23-29-90. Penalties.
Any organization or person who violates any of the provisions of this chapter shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished by a fine of not more than twenty-five thousand dollars or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or by both fine and imprisonment.
Google teams up with National Security Agency to tackle cyber attacks
Adam Gabbatt
Google's decision to enlist the help of the National Security Agency in tackling cyber attacks has caused alarm among internet groups and bloggers, who fear that users' personal information could be accessed by the US government.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the internet giant had turned to the NSA, which conducts surveillance and codebreaking for the federal government, in the wake of a cyber attack it believes came from China.
The agency is responsible for securing the US administration's computer networks against similar breaches, and is said to be helping Google to understand and analyse the attacks.
Sources say that the agreement will not allow the NSA to view users' searches or access email accounts, but the deal has angered some members of the online community.
The Electronic Privacy Information Centre, a public research centre based in Washington, has filed a freedom of information request seeking details of the agency's relationship with Google.
"Google and NSA are entering into a secret agreement that could impact the privacy of millions of users of Google's products and services around the world," the centre's executive director Marc Rotenberg told the New York Times.
Sam Diaz, blogger and senior editor at ZDNet, a technology website, said he felt "squeamish" about the possibility of information sharing between Google and the government, and was sceptical about the NSA's ability to help protect the company's infrastructure.
"I mean no disrespect to my country or my government but I have to ask: Is Washington really the best choice if you're looking for help with something as serious as cyber security?" he wrote.
"After all, I wouldn't exactly place any Washington agency at the cutting edge when it comes to fighting what was referred to as one of the most sophisticated cyber attacks experts had ever seen."
Andrew Beal, writing in Marketing Pilgrim, said: "Big brother just partnered with big brother.
"While it's unlikely that Google's going to hand over any user information, I still don't like how close – and how quickly – Google is snuggling up with perhaps the scariest of all government agencies," he blogged.
Referring to the NSA's monitoring of the email and telephone calls of thousands of Americans after the 2001 terror attacks, Beal wrote: "This is the same agency that tapped your phones and emails without a warrant after 9/11. We're supposed to feel confident it won't take a poke around Google's sensitive data?"
Noah Shachtman, writer of Wired magazine's national security blog Danger Room, described the NSA as a "particularly untrustworthy partner".
"We all know that Google automatically reads our Gmail and scans our Google calendars and dives into our Google searches, all in an attempt to put the most relevant ads in front of us," he wrote.
"But we've tolerated the automated intrusions, because Google's products are so good, and we believed that the company was sincere in its 'don't be evil' mantra."
Shachtman said Google's pledge that its agreement with the NSA would not compromise user data was "hard to believe, given the NSA's track record of getting private enterprises to co-operate, and Google's willingness to take this first step."
The company said it was subject to a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" in December 2009, which it said originated from China. In January, Google said that it was no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service.
Google's decision to enlist the help of the National Security Agency in tackling cyber attacks has caused alarm among internet groups and bloggers, who fear that users' personal information could be accessed by the US government.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the internet giant had turned to the NSA, which conducts surveillance and codebreaking for the federal government, in the wake of a cyber attack it believes came from China.
The agency is responsible for securing the US administration's computer networks against similar breaches, and is said to be helping Google to understand and analyse the attacks.
Sources say that the agreement will not allow the NSA to view users' searches or access email accounts, but the deal has angered some members of the online community.
The Electronic Privacy Information Centre, a public research centre based in Washington, has filed a freedom of information request seeking details of the agency's relationship with Google.
"Google and NSA are entering into a secret agreement that could impact the privacy of millions of users of Google's products and services around the world," the centre's executive director Marc Rotenberg told the New York Times.
Sam Diaz, blogger and senior editor at ZDNet, a technology website, said he felt "squeamish" about the possibility of information sharing between Google and the government, and was sceptical about the NSA's ability to help protect the company's infrastructure.
"I mean no disrespect to my country or my government but I have to ask: Is Washington really the best choice if you're looking for help with something as serious as cyber security?" he wrote.
"After all, I wouldn't exactly place any Washington agency at the cutting edge when it comes to fighting what was referred to as one of the most sophisticated cyber attacks experts had ever seen."
Andrew Beal, writing in Marketing Pilgrim, said: "Big brother just partnered with big brother.
"While it's unlikely that Google's going to hand over any user information, I still don't like how close – and how quickly – Google is snuggling up with perhaps the scariest of all government agencies," he blogged.
Referring to the NSA's monitoring of the email and telephone calls of thousands of Americans after the 2001 terror attacks, Beal wrote: "This is the same agency that tapped your phones and emails without a warrant after 9/11. We're supposed to feel confident it won't take a poke around Google's sensitive data?"
Noah Shachtman, writer of Wired magazine's national security blog Danger Room, described the NSA as a "particularly untrustworthy partner".
"We all know that Google automatically reads our Gmail and scans our Google calendars and dives into our Google searches, all in an attempt to put the most relevant ads in front of us," he wrote.
"But we've tolerated the automated intrusions, because Google's products are so good, and we believed that the company was sincere in its 'don't be evil' mantra."
Shachtman said Google's pledge that its agreement with the NSA would not compromise user data was "hard to believe, given the NSA's track record of getting private enterprises to co-operate, and Google's willingness to take this first step."
The company said it was subject to a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" in December 2009, which it said originated from China. In January, Google said that it was no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service.
Cancel the Super Bowl or America Dies
Alex Jones joins with fellow patriot Mark Dice in protesting America’s favorite sports ritual– the Super Bowl. Sure, the game is a good contest between two top rivals, but football isn’t what really matters. While America has fallen asleep in front of the television and allowed so many distractions and frivolous issues to take over its thoughts, our country has been looted financially, our military has been used to carry out ever-expanding wars, our President and Congress have ignored the Constitution and our people have stopped their participation in the process.
Until we wake up and fight back against the damage being wielded politically, we have no business getting caught up in gladiatorial distractions. The heat of the contest has become a substitute for our real manhood and our real humanity.
Kiwi! The fruit of STOP!
Clare Swinney
infonews.co.nz
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
Has Chinese-style internet censorship arrived in New Zealand this year? The question is posed because two major news websites, Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com, both of which are run by documentary maker and radio show host Alex Jones, who is renowned for exposing the truths the mainstream media attempts to conceal, were found to be have been selectively blocked on Friday evening and were still unavailable at the time of writing.
Thankfully, this draconian measure does not effect all internet users in New Zealand however. It appears to be confined to those whose internet server providers, (ISPs), use Asia Netcom for their international internet traffic. Telstraclear, Vodafone and Worldxchange Communications users are not effected, while Woosh, Orcon, Slingshot, Telecom and Ihug users are.
An avid fan of Infowars.com and a 9/11 truth activist, Jeff Mitchell, reported on Saturday that he contacted his ISP, Orcon, to establish what was causing the block, and was advised by a computer technician who did a traceroute, that the break in traffic to the two websites was found to be occurring at Asia Netcom’s router in Sydney. This technician also advised that as Telstraclear used a different route, their customers were still able to access the two sites.
There have been calls for the Internet to be censored and controlled – and for an Internet 2 by proponents of a one world government, or “New World Order.” This is because the internet as it is, is impeding the global elites’ ability to push their tyrannical, self-serving agendas through.
A clear indicator that the internet is regarded as a serious threat to global elite was evident when on March the 18th, 2009 Senator Jay Rockefeller of the Rockefeller dynasty, a family pivotal in the push for a one world government, [1,2] went so far as to suggest that it might have been better if the internet had never been invented and we went back to using pencils and paper, [3]. While it may have seemed like a ridiculous statement to make at the time, it was an indicator of what the global elite are aiming for and a warning. They want to make it increasingly difficult to get to the truth and they want to regain control of all media.
Consequently, it is of no surprise that Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com appear to have been selectively targeted, as these two sites present a huge threat to the global elites’ operation. They provide access to credible information, from a wide range of contributors, which has been crippling the elites’ agendas. They have been providing updates on what has been happening around the world, including access to the Alex Jones radio show, which is now the most popular radio show on the internet worldwide. They expose that 9/11, the bombings of 7/7 and Oklahoma City, and the underwear bomber, were inside jobs and that, in fact, many terror-related events are government-sponsored. Plus, they have been pivotal in exposing that man-made global warming and the H1N1 pandemic were hoaxes, and that the Federal Reserve bank is taking money from the taxpayers and putting it in the pockets of bankers, and that it should be shut down.
Hopefully, this block is merely a temporary problem. If not, action may be necessary. In the meantime, you can still pick the radio show up at GCNLive.com by proxy, and read some of the Infowars.com/Prisonplanet.com articles on Alex Jones’ other sites which are still available, including Infowars.net, Propaganda Matrix and JonesReport.com. Also, you can use www.ninjaproxy.com to read Infowars and Prisonplanet.com articles. Plus, Prisonplanet.tv is still accessible and you can still access the shop which sells his documentaries via the link here: http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/faofreprofba.html.
infonews.co.nz
Sunday, February 7th, 2010
Has Chinese-style internet censorship arrived in New Zealand this year? The question is posed because two major news websites, Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com, both of which are run by documentary maker and radio show host Alex Jones, who is renowned for exposing the truths the mainstream media attempts to conceal, were found to be have been selectively blocked on Friday evening and were still unavailable at the time of writing.
Thankfully, this draconian measure does not effect all internet users in New Zealand however. It appears to be confined to those whose internet server providers, (ISPs), use Asia Netcom for their international internet traffic. Telstraclear, Vodafone and Worldxchange Communications users are not effected, while Woosh, Orcon, Slingshot, Telecom and Ihug users are.
An avid fan of Infowars.com and a 9/11 truth activist, Jeff Mitchell, reported on Saturday that he contacted his ISP, Orcon, to establish what was causing the block, and was advised by a computer technician who did a traceroute, that the break in traffic to the two websites was found to be occurring at Asia Netcom’s router in Sydney. This technician also advised that as Telstraclear used a different route, their customers were still able to access the two sites.
There have been calls for the Internet to be censored and controlled – and for an Internet 2 by proponents of a one world government, or “New World Order.” This is because the internet as it is, is impeding the global elites’ ability to push their tyrannical, self-serving agendas through.
A clear indicator that the internet is regarded as a serious threat to global elite was evident when on March the 18th, 2009 Senator Jay Rockefeller of the Rockefeller dynasty, a family pivotal in the push for a one world government, [1,2] went so far as to suggest that it might have been better if the internet had never been invented and we went back to using pencils and paper, [3]. While it may have seemed like a ridiculous statement to make at the time, it was an indicator of what the global elite are aiming for and a warning. They want to make it increasingly difficult to get to the truth and they want to regain control of all media.
Consequently, it is of no surprise that Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com appear to have been selectively targeted, as these two sites present a huge threat to the global elites’ operation. They provide access to credible information, from a wide range of contributors, which has been crippling the elites’ agendas. They have been providing updates on what has been happening around the world, including access to the Alex Jones radio show, which is now the most popular radio show on the internet worldwide. They expose that 9/11, the bombings of 7/7 and Oklahoma City, and the underwear bomber, were inside jobs and that, in fact, many terror-related events are government-sponsored. Plus, they have been pivotal in exposing that man-made global warming and the H1N1 pandemic were hoaxes, and that the Federal Reserve bank is taking money from the taxpayers and putting it in the pockets of bankers, and that it should be shut down.
Hopefully, this block is merely a temporary problem. If not, action may be necessary. In the meantime, you can still pick the radio show up at GCNLive.com by proxy, and read some of the Infowars.com/Prisonplanet.com articles on Alex Jones’ other sites which are still available, including Infowars.net, Propaganda Matrix and JonesReport.com. Also, you can use www.ninjaproxy.com to read Infowars and Prisonplanet.com articles. Plus, Prisonplanet.tv is still accessible and you can still access the shop which sells his documentaries via the link here: http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net/faofreprofba.html.
Should I Opt Out of Social Security?
by Richard R. Hammar, J.D., LL.M., CPA
Executive Summary
The coverage of ministers under Social Security has caused much confusion because of two special rules. First, ministers always are self-employed for Social Security with respect to their ministerial services. This means they pay the self-employment tax, not "Social Security" and "Medicare" taxes. Second, under very limited circumstances, ministers can exempt themselves from self-employment taxes with respect to services they perform in the exercise of ministry by filing a timely Form 4361 with the IRS. The treatment of ministers under Social Security is the subject of this lesson. We will give special attention to this of opting out of Social Security
Lesson
Overview
Ministers are treated very differently than other workers for Social Security purposes. First, they always are self-employed with respect to their ministerial services. This means they pay the self-employment tax, not "Social Security" and "Medicare" taxes. This special rule is explained fully in another lesson in this series. Second, under very limited circumstances, ministers can exempt themselves from self-employment taxes with respect to services they perform in the exercise of ministry by filing a timely Form 4361 with the IRS.
Exemption
Ministers are automatically covered under the Social Security system, but they are permitted to exempt themselves from coverage if they meet the following conditions:
(1) minister
Only ministers who are ordained, commissioned, or licensed by a tax-exempt church or religious organization qualify for exemption.
(2) file Form 4361
The exemption application (Form 4361) must be filed on time with the IRS. The deadline is the due date of the federal tax return for the second year in which a minister has net earnings from self-employment of $400 or more, any part of which derives from the performance of services in the exercise of ministry. In most cases, this means the form is due by April 15 of the third year of ministry.
(3) religious opposition to accepting public insurance benefits
A minister certifies on Form 4361 that "I am conscientiously opposed to, or because of my religious principles I am opposed to, the acceptance (for services I performed as a minister . . .) of any public insurance that makes payments in the event of death, disability, old age, or retirement, or that makes payments toward the cost of, or provides services for, medical care." The form states that "public insurance includes insurance systems established by the Social Security Act." There are three important factors to note that new ministers often do not fully understand: (1) The tax regulations make it clear that "conscientious opposition" refers solely to religious opposition. Non-religious conscientious opposition to receiving public insurance benefits (including Social Security) does not qualify. (2) The exemption is available only if a minister is opposed on the basis of religious considerations to the acceptance of Social Security benefits rather than to payment of the tax. A minister may have religious opposition to payment of the tax, but this alone will not suffice. The individual must have religious opposition to accepting Social Security benefits upon his or her retirement or disability. (3) Participation in private insurance programs is permitted, since these are not "public insurance." As a result, a minister who files the exemption application may still purchase life insurance or participate in retirement programs administered by non-governmental institutions (such as a life insurance company or pension board).
(4) notification of ordaining, commissioning, or licensing church or denomination
Applicants for exemption must inform their "ordaining, commissioning, or licensing body" that they are opposed to Social Security coverage for services they perform in the exercise of ministry. By signing Form 4361, applicants verify that they have satisfied this requirement. Ministers who plan to apply for exemption from Social Security coverage must be sure to notify the church or denomination that ordained, commissioned, or licensed them regarding their opposition to Social Security coverage and presumably of their intention to file an exemption application. This notification must occur prior to the time the exemption application is filed.
(5) IRS verification
No application for exemption will be approved unless the IRS "has verified that the individual applying for the exemption is aware of the grounds on which the individual may receive an exemption . . . and that the individual seeks an exemption on such grounds." This "verification" requirement was adopted to prevent the widespread practice of ministers exempting themselves from Social Security coverage solely on the basis of financial considerations. To satisfy this requirement, ministers must sign and return a statement the IRS mails to them to certify that they are requesting an exemption based on the grounds listed on the statement.
Common questions
Some common questions pertaining to the exemption from self-employment taxes are addressed below.
(1) When is an exemption effective?
Filing a timely exemption application does not necessarily qualify a minister for exemption. An exemption is effective only when an applicant receives back one of the three 4361 forms (it is filed in triplicate) from the IRS marked "approved." Ministers should be careful not to lose an approved Form 4361.
(2) Will I receive a refund of self-employment taxes I paid before filing Form 4361?
Yes. To illustrate, ministers who wait until close to the deadline for filing an exemption application will have paid self-employment taxes on their ministerial income for two years. IRS Publication 517 contains the following instructions for claiming a refund of these taxes:
If, after receiving an approved Form 4361, you find that you overpaid SE tax, you can file a claim for refund on Form 1040X before the period of limitations ends. This is generally within 3 years from the date you filed the return or within 2 years from the date you paid the tax, whichever is later. A return you filed, or tax you paid, before the due date is considered to have been filed or paid on the due date. If you file a claim after the 3-year period but within 2 years from the time you paid the tax, the credit or refund will not be more than the tax you paid within the 2 years immediately before you file the claim.
(3) Can the period for filing an exemption application be extended or renewed?
No. The fact that you did not acquire an opposition to Social Security until years after you became a minister will not "restart" or delay the filing deadline. One court did allow a minister to requalify for an exemption who met the following conditions: (1) change of church affiliation; (2) reordained by his new church; (3) developed an opposition, based on his new religious convictions, to the acceptance of Social Security benefits; and (4) submitted an exemption application (Form 4361) by the due date of the federal tax return for the second year in which he had net self-employment earnings of $400 or more, any part of which comes from the performance of ministerial services in his new faith.
(4) Is an exemption from Social Security coverage irrevocable?
Yes. However, Congress has provided a few limited opportunities over the past several years for exempt ministers to revoke an exemption.
(5) Can ministers who have opted out of Social Security receive retirement and Medicare benefits based on the fully insured status of their spouse?
Yes, according to the Social Security Administration. To the extent that a minister's spouse is fully insured under Social Security as a result of nonministerial services, Social Security benefits the minister receives as a result of his or her spouse's Social Security coverage are not based on services performed in the exercise of ministry and so are not precluded by the minister's exemption. However, the minister's benefits will be reduced by the so-called "windfall elimination provision." Under this provision, the Social Security Administration can reduce the benefits of persons who did not pay Social Security taxes, such as exempt ministers seeking benefits on the basis of their spouse's coverage. For more information on this important limitation, contact your nearest Social Security Administration office.
(6) Can ministers who have opted out of Social Security purchase Medicare insurance after they reach age 65?
Yes.
(7) What benefits are provided under the Social Security program?
The basic benefits are retirement benefits, disability benefits, survivor benefits, and Medicare. Note that retirement benefits, disability benefits, and survivor benefits are inflation adjusted each year, and are tax-free for most taxpayers. These benefits are available to persons who have at least 40 quarters of covered work.
(8) Social Security benefits based on secular employment
Many ministers have paid Social Security taxes as a result of secular employment. If they exempt themselves from Social Security by filing a timely Form 4361, will they lose all benefits that would have been paid as a result of their secular employment? The answer is no. An exemption from Social Security only applies to services performed in the exercise of ministry, and so exempt ministers will receive benefits based on their secular employment (assuming that they otherwise qualify). In most cases, eligibility for benefits requires at least forty quarters of coverage.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. "From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations."
Executive Summary
The coverage of ministers under Social Security has caused much confusion because of two special rules. First, ministers always are self-employed for Social Security with respect to their ministerial services. This means they pay the self-employment tax, not "Social Security" and "Medicare" taxes. Second, under very limited circumstances, ministers can exempt themselves from self-employment taxes with respect to services they perform in the exercise of ministry by filing a timely Form 4361 with the IRS. The treatment of ministers under Social Security is the subject of this lesson. We will give special attention to this of opting out of Social Security
Lesson
Overview
Ministers are treated very differently than other workers for Social Security purposes. First, they always are self-employed with respect to their ministerial services. This means they pay the self-employment tax, not "Social Security" and "Medicare" taxes. This special rule is explained fully in another lesson in this series. Second, under very limited circumstances, ministers can exempt themselves from self-employment taxes with respect to services they perform in the exercise of ministry by filing a timely Form 4361 with the IRS.
Exemption
Ministers are automatically covered under the Social Security system, but they are permitted to exempt themselves from coverage if they meet the following conditions:
(1) minister
Only ministers who are ordained, commissioned, or licensed by a tax-exempt church or religious organization qualify for exemption.
(2) file Form 4361
The exemption application (Form 4361) must be filed on time with the IRS. The deadline is the due date of the federal tax return for the second year in which a minister has net earnings from self-employment of $400 or more, any part of which derives from the performance of services in the exercise of ministry. In most cases, this means the form is due by April 15 of the third year of ministry.
(3) religious opposition to accepting public insurance benefits
A minister certifies on Form 4361 that "I am conscientiously opposed to, or because of my religious principles I am opposed to, the acceptance (for services I performed as a minister . . .) of any public insurance that makes payments in the event of death, disability, old age, or retirement, or that makes payments toward the cost of, or provides services for, medical care." The form states that "public insurance includes insurance systems established by the Social Security Act." There are three important factors to note that new ministers often do not fully understand: (1) The tax regulations make it clear that "conscientious opposition" refers solely to religious opposition. Non-religious conscientious opposition to receiving public insurance benefits (including Social Security) does not qualify. (2) The exemption is available only if a minister is opposed on the basis of religious considerations to the acceptance of Social Security benefits rather than to payment of the tax. A minister may have religious opposition to payment of the tax, but this alone will not suffice. The individual must have religious opposition to accepting Social Security benefits upon his or her retirement or disability. (3) Participation in private insurance programs is permitted, since these are not "public insurance." As a result, a minister who files the exemption application may still purchase life insurance or participate in retirement programs administered by non-governmental institutions (such as a life insurance company or pension board).
(4) notification of ordaining, commissioning, or licensing church or denomination
Applicants for exemption must inform their "ordaining, commissioning, or licensing body" that they are opposed to Social Security coverage for services they perform in the exercise of ministry. By signing Form 4361, applicants verify that they have satisfied this requirement. Ministers who plan to apply for exemption from Social Security coverage must be sure to notify the church or denomination that ordained, commissioned, or licensed them regarding their opposition to Social Security coverage and presumably of their intention to file an exemption application. This notification must occur prior to the time the exemption application is filed.
(5) IRS verification
No application for exemption will be approved unless the IRS "has verified that the individual applying for the exemption is aware of the grounds on which the individual may receive an exemption . . . and that the individual seeks an exemption on such grounds." This "verification" requirement was adopted to prevent the widespread practice of ministers exempting themselves from Social Security coverage solely on the basis of financial considerations. To satisfy this requirement, ministers must sign and return a statement the IRS mails to them to certify that they are requesting an exemption based on the grounds listed on the statement.
Common questions
Some common questions pertaining to the exemption from self-employment taxes are addressed below.
(1) When is an exemption effective?
Filing a timely exemption application does not necessarily qualify a minister for exemption. An exemption is effective only when an applicant receives back one of the three 4361 forms (it is filed in triplicate) from the IRS marked "approved." Ministers should be careful not to lose an approved Form 4361.
(2) Will I receive a refund of self-employment taxes I paid before filing Form 4361?
Yes. To illustrate, ministers who wait until close to the deadline for filing an exemption application will have paid self-employment taxes on their ministerial income for two years. IRS Publication 517 contains the following instructions for claiming a refund of these taxes:
If, after receiving an approved Form 4361, you find that you overpaid SE tax, you can file a claim for refund on Form 1040X before the period of limitations ends. This is generally within 3 years from the date you filed the return or within 2 years from the date you paid the tax, whichever is later. A return you filed, or tax you paid, before the due date is considered to have been filed or paid on the due date. If you file a claim after the 3-year period but within 2 years from the time you paid the tax, the credit or refund will not be more than the tax you paid within the 2 years immediately before you file the claim.
(3) Can the period for filing an exemption application be extended or renewed?
No. The fact that you did not acquire an opposition to Social Security until years after you became a minister will not "restart" or delay the filing deadline. One court did allow a minister to requalify for an exemption who met the following conditions: (1) change of church affiliation; (2) reordained by his new church; (3) developed an opposition, based on his new religious convictions, to the acceptance of Social Security benefits; and (4) submitted an exemption application (Form 4361) by the due date of the federal tax return for the second year in which he had net self-employment earnings of $400 or more, any part of which comes from the performance of ministerial services in his new faith.
(4) Is an exemption from Social Security coverage irrevocable?
Yes. However, Congress has provided a few limited opportunities over the past several years for exempt ministers to revoke an exemption.
(5) Can ministers who have opted out of Social Security receive retirement and Medicare benefits based on the fully insured status of their spouse?
Yes, according to the Social Security Administration. To the extent that a minister's spouse is fully insured under Social Security as a result of nonministerial services, Social Security benefits the minister receives as a result of his or her spouse's Social Security coverage are not based on services performed in the exercise of ministry and so are not precluded by the minister's exemption. However, the minister's benefits will be reduced by the so-called "windfall elimination provision." Under this provision, the Social Security Administration can reduce the benefits of persons who did not pay Social Security taxes, such as exempt ministers seeking benefits on the basis of their spouse's coverage. For more information on this important limitation, contact your nearest Social Security Administration office.
(6) Can ministers who have opted out of Social Security purchase Medicare insurance after they reach age 65?
Yes.
(7) What benefits are provided under the Social Security program?
The basic benefits are retirement benefits, disability benefits, survivor benefits, and Medicare. Note that retirement benefits, disability benefits, and survivor benefits are inflation adjusted each year, and are tax-free for most taxpayers. These benefits are available to persons who have at least 40 quarters of covered work.
(8) Social Security benefits based on secular employment
Many ministers have paid Social Security taxes as a result of secular employment. If they exempt themselves from Social Security by filing a timely Form 4361, will they lose all benefits that would have been paid as a result of their secular employment? The answer is no. An exemption from Social Security only applies to services performed in the exercise of ministry, and so exempt ministers will receive benefits based on their secular employment (assuming that they otherwise qualify). In most cases, eligibility for benefits requires at least forty quarters of coverage.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. "From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations."
The Catcher in the Rye Quotes ~ J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye (Quotes)
J. D. Salinger
RIP my good man
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place.
Anyway it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxxon Hall. The game with Saxxon hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if Old Pencey didn't win.
Old Selma Thurmer - she was the headmaster's daughter - showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.
I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for this fencing meet with McBurney School. Only we didn't have the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway. It wasn't my fault. I had to keep getting up to look at this map, so we'd know where to get off. So we got back to Pencey around two-thirty instead of around dinnertime. The whole team ostracized me the whole way back on the train. It was pretty funny, in a way.
Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has - I'm not kidding.
What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.
"What'd he say to you?"
"Oh... well, about Life being a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean, he didn't hit the ceiling or anything. He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know."
"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.
People never notice anything.
"We studied the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about them for the optional essay question. Would you care to hear what you had to say?"
"No, sir, not very much," I said.
He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter as we all know is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere.
I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.
The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern sciences would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
He stopped reading and put my paper down. I was beginning to sort of hate him. "Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. You wouldn't think such an old guy would be so sarcastic and all. "However, you dropped me a little note, at the bottom of the page," he said.
"I know I did," I said. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. But you couldn't stop him. He was hot as a firecracker.
DEAR MR. SPENCER [he read out loud]. That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is alright with me if you flunk me though as I'm flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, HOLDEN CAULFIELD.
He put me goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something.
I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.
After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I'd never yell "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.
... he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down on his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God - talk to Him and all - whenever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving in his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.
What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
"I've read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in."
Anybody else except Ackley would've taken the goddam hint. Not him though...
"What the hellya reading?"
"Goddamn book."
He shove my book back with his hand so that he could see the name on it. "Any good?" he said.
"This sentence I'm reading is terrific."
"Stop calling me 'Ackley kid,' God damn it. I'm old enough to be your lousy father."
"No, you're not." Boy, he could be really aggravating sometimes. He never missed a chance to let you know you were sixteen and he was eighteen. "In the first place, I wouldn't let you in my goddam family," I said.
"I got about a hundred pages to read for history on Monday," he said. "How 'bout writing a composition for me, for English? I'll be up the creek if I don't get the goddam thing in by Monday, the reason I ask. How 'bout it?"
It was very ironical. It really was.
"I'm the one flunking out of this goddam place, and you're asking me to write you a goddam composition," I said.
...
"What on?"
"Anything. Anything descriptive. A room. Or a house. Or something you once lived in or something - you know. Just as long as it's descriptive as hell... Just don't do it too good, is all," he said. "That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks you're a hot-shot in English, and he knows you're my roommate. So I mean don't stick all the commas and stuff in the right places.
That's something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place.
"Listen, where ya going on your date with her?" I asked him. "Ya know yet?"
"I don't know. New York, if we have the time. She only signed out for nine-thirty, for Chrissake."
I didn't like the way he said it, so I said, "The reason she did that, she probably didn't know what a handsome, charming bastard you are. If she'd known, she probably would've signed out for nine-thirty in the morning."
"Goddam right," Stradlater said.
... I yelled over and asked old Ackley if he wanted to go to the movies. He could hear me all right through the shower curtains, but he didn't answer me right away. He was the kind of guy who hates to answer you right away. Finally he came over, through the goddam curtains, and stood on the shower ledge and asked who was going besides me. He always had to know who was going. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you rescued him in a goddam boat, he'd want to know who the guy was that was rowing it before he'd even get in. I told him Mal Brossard was going, He said, "That bastard..." All right. Wait a second." You'd think he was doing you a big favor.
People never believe you.
You could also hear old Ackley snoring. Right through the goddam shower curtains you could hear him. he has sinus trouble and he couldn't breathe too hot when he was asleep. That guy had just about everything. Sinus trouble, pimples, lousy teeth, halitosis, crumby fingernails. You had to feel a little sorry for that crazy sonuvabitch.
"Hey Ackley," I said, in sort of a whisper so Stradlater couldn't hear me through the shower curtains.
Ackley didn't hear me, though.
"Hey, Ackley!"
He still didn't hear me. He slept like a rock.
"Hey, Ackley!"
He heard that, all right.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he said. "I was asleep, for Chrissake."
"Listen. What's the routine of joining a monastery?" I asked him. I was sort of toying with the idea of joining one. "Do you have to be a Catholic and all?"
"Certainly you have to be a Catholic. You bastard, did you wake me up just to ask me a dumb ques-"
"Aah, go back to sleep. I'm not going to join one anyway. The kind of luck I have, I'd probably join one with all the wrong kind of monks in it. All stupid bastards. Or just bastards."
When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down that goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.
Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a toilet seat.
"Would you care for a cigarette?" I asked her
She looked all around. "I don't believe this is a smoker, Rudolf," she said. Rudolf. That killed me.
I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.
Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are... Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God.
I'm a goddam minor.
I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.
... she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hands all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we won't quite till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
Ernie's a big fat colored guy that plays the piano. He's a terrific snob and he won't hardly even talk to you unless you're a big shot or a celebrity or something, but he can really play the piano. He's so good, he's almost corny, in fact. I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. I certainly like to hear him play, but sometimes you feel like turning the goddam piano over. I think it's because sometimes when he plays, he sounds like the kind of guy that won't talk to you unless you're a big shot.
"The fish don't go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddamn lake."
"The fish - that's different. The fish is different. I'm talking about the ducks," I said.
"What's different about it? Nothing's different about it," Horwitz said. "It's tougher for the fish, the winter and all than it is for the ducks, for Chrissake. use your head, for Chrissake."
I didn't say anything for about a minute. Then I said, "All right. What do they do, the fish and all, when that whole little lake's a solid block of ice, people skating on it and all?"
Old Horwitz turned around again. "What the hellaya mean what do they do?" He yelled at me. "They stay right where they are, for Chrissake."
"They can't just ignore the ice. They can't just ignore it."
"Nobody's ignoring it. Nobody's ignoring it. They live right in the goddam ice. It's their nature, for Chrissake. They get frozen right in one position for the whole winter."
"Yeah? What do they eat then? I mean, if they're frozen solid, they can't even swim around looking for food and all."
"Their bodies, for Chrissake - what'sa matter with ya? Their bodies take in nutrition and all, right through the goddam seaweed and crap. They got their pores open the whole time. That's their nature, for Chrissake."
People always clap for the wrong things.
Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.
The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl, she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never really know whether they want you to stop or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame'll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them... They tell me to stop, so I stop. I always wished I hadn't, after I take them home, but I keep doing it anyway.
I wouldn't mind being pretty good at that stuff. Half the time, if you really want to know the truth, when I'm horsing around with a girl, I have a helluva lot of trouble just finding what I'm looking for, for God's sake, if you know what I mean. Take this girl that I just missed having sexual intercourse with, that I told you about. It took me about an hour to just get her goddam brassière off. By the time I did get it off, she was about ready to spit in my eye.
I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoyed the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard.
He kept saying they were too new and bourgeois. That was his favorite goddam word. He read it somewhere or heard it somewhere, Everything I had was bourgeois as hell. Even my fountain pen was bourgeois. He borrowed it off me all the time, but it was bourgeois anyway.
The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs - if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater. At least his suitcases were as good as mine.
Catholics are always trying to find out if you're Catholic.
Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." He had a pretty little voice too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars zoomed by, the brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the kerb and singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed anymore.
"Promise me you'll let your hair grow. Crew cuts are getting corny. And your hair's so lovely."
Lovely my ass.
The waiter came up, and I ordered a Coke for her - she didn't drink - and a Scotch and soda for myself, but the sonuvabitch wouldn't bring you one, so I had a Coke too.
"You ought to go to a boy's school sometimes. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together."
Girls. You never know what they're going to think.
All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them - thousands of them - singing "Come All Ye Faithful" like mad. Big deal. It's supposed to be religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can't see anything religious or pretty, for God's sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they all finished and started going out the boxes again, you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette of something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she kept saying how beautiful it was, the costumes and all. I said old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it...
I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me. Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.
One of them played the piano - strictly lousy - and the other one sang, and most of the songs were either pretty dirty or in French. The one that sang, old Janine, was always whispering into the goddam microphone before she sang. She'd say, "And now we would like to geeve you our impressions of Vooly Voo Fransay. Eet ees the story of a leetle Fransh girl who comes to a beeg ceety, just like New York, and falls een love wees a leetle boy from Brookleen. We hope you like eet."
People never give your message to anybody.
Boy, when you're dead they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice - twice - we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there.
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like -"
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."...
Anyway, I keep picturing these little kids playing some game in this big field or rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean, except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
I walked all the way downstairs, instead of taking the elevator. I went down the back stairs. I nearly broke my neck on about ten million garbage pails, but I got out alright.
While I was walking, I passed these two guys that were unloading this big Christmas tree off a truck. One guy kept saying to the other guy, "Hold the sonuvabitch up. Hold it up for Chrissake!" It certainly was a gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas tree.
But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them - all cockeyed, naturally, what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it.
That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive.
About all I know is, I sorta miss everybody I told about. Even Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
J. D. Salinger
RIP my good man
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place.
Anyway it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxxon Hall. The game with Saxxon hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if Old Pencey didn't win.
Old Selma Thurmer - she was the headmaster's daughter - showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.
I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for this fencing meet with McBurney School. Only we didn't have the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway. It wasn't my fault. I had to keep getting up to look at this map, so we'd know where to get off. So we got back to Pencey around two-thirty instead of around dinnertime. The whole team ostracized me the whole way back on the train. It was pretty funny, in a way.
Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has - I'm not kidding.
What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.
"What'd he say to you?"
"Oh... well, about Life being a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean, he didn't hit the ceiling or anything. He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know."
"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.
People never notice anything.
"We studied the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about them for the optional essay question. Would you care to hear what you had to say?"
"No, sir, not very much," I said.
He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter as we all know is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere.
I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.
The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern sciences would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
He stopped reading and put my paper down. I was beginning to sort of hate him. "Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. You wouldn't think such an old guy would be so sarcastic and all. "However, you dropped me a little note, at the bottom of the page," he said.
"I know I did," I said. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. But you couldn't stop him. He was hot as a firecracker.
DEAR MR. SPENCER [he read out loud]. That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is alright with me if you flunk me though as I'm flunking everything else except English anyway. Respectfully yours, HOLDEN CAULFIELD.
He put me goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something.
I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.
After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I'd never yell "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.
... he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down on his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God - talk to Him and all - whenever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving in his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs.
What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
"I've read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in."
Anybody else except Ackley would've taken the goddam hint. Not him though...
"What the hellya reading?"
"Goddamn book."
He shove my book back with his hand so that he could see the name on it. "Any good?" he said.
"This sentence I'm reading is terrific."
"Stop calling me 'Ackley kid,' God damn it. I'm old enough to be your lousy father."
"No, you're not." Boy, he could be really aggravating sometimes. He never missed a chance to let you know you were sixteen and he was eighteen. "In the first place, I wouldn't let you in my goddam family," I said.
"I got about a hundred pages to read for history on Monday," he said. "How 'bout writing a composition for me, for English? I'll be up the creek if I don't get the goddam thing in by Monday, the reason I ask. How 'bout it?"
It was very ironical. It really was.
"I'm the one flunking out of this goddam place, and you're asking me to write you a goddam composition," I said.
...
"What on?"
"Anything. Anything descriptive. A room. Or a house. Or something you once lived in or something - you know. Just as long as it's descriptive as hell... Just don't do it too good, is all," he said. "That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks you're a hot-shot in English, and he knows you're my roommate. So I mean don't stick all the commas and stuff in the right places.
That's something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place.
"Listen, where ya going on your date with her?" I asked him. "Ya know yet?"
"I don't know. New York, if we have the time. She only signed out for nine-thirty, for Chrissake."
I didn't like the way he said it, so I said, "The reason she did that, she probably didn't know what a handsome, charming bastard you are. If she'd known, she probably would've signed out for nine-thirty in the morning."
"Goddam right," Stradlater said.
... I yelled over and asked old Ackley if he wanted to go to the movies. He could hear me all right through the shower curtains, but he didn't answer me right away. He was the kind of guy who hates to answer you right away. Finally he came over, through the goddam curtains, and stood on the shower ledge and asked who was going besides me. He always had to know who was going. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you rescued him in a goddam boat, he'd want to know who the guy was that was rowing it before he'd even get in. I told him Mal Brossard was going, He said, "That bastard..." All right. Wait a second." You'd think he was doing you a big favor.
People never believe you.
You could also hear old Ackley snoring. Right through the goddam shower curtains you could hear him. he has sinus trouble and he couldn't breathe too hot when he was asleep. That guy had just about everything. Sinus trouble, pimples, lousy teeth, halitosis, crumby fingernails. You had to feel a little sorry for that crazy sonuvabitch.
"Hey Ackley," I said, in sort of a whisper so Stradlater couldn't hear me through the shower curtains.
Ackley didn't hear me, though.
"Hey, Ackley!"
He still didn't hear me. He slept like a rock.
"Hey, Ackley!"
He heard that, all right.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he said. "I was asleep, for Chrissake."
"Listen. What's the routine of joining a monastery?" I asked him. I was sort of toying with the idea of joining one. "Do you have to be a Catholic and all?"
"Certainly you have to be a Catholic. You bastard, did you wake me up just to ask me a dumb ques-"
"Aah, go back to sleep. I'm not going to join one anyway. The kind of luck I have, I'd probably join one with all the wrong kind of monks in it. All stupid bastards. Or just bastards."
When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down that goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.
Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a toilet seat.
"Would you care for a cigarette?" I asked her
She looked all around. "I don't believe this is a smoker, Rudolf," she said. Rudolf. That killed me.
I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.
Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are... Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God.
I'm a goddam minor.
I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.
... she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hands all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we won't quite till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
Ernie's a big fat colored guy that plays the piano. He's a terrific snob and he won't hardly even talk to you unless you're a big shot or a celebrity or something, but he can really play the piano. He's so good, he's almost corny, in fact. I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. I certainly like to hear him play, but sometimes you feel like turning the goddam piano over. I think it's because sometimes when he plays, he sounds like the kind of guy that won't talk to you unless you're a big shot.
"The fish don't go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddamn lake."
"The fish - that's different. The fish is different. I'm talking about the ducks," I said.
"What's different about it? Nothing's different about it," Horwitz said. "It's tougher for the fish, the winter and all than it is for the ducks, for Chrissake. use your head, for Chrissake."
I didn't say anything for about a minute. Then I said, "All right. What do they do, the fish and all, when that whole little lake's a solid block of ice, people skating on it and all?"
Old Horwitz turned around again. "What the hellaya mean what do they do?" He yelled at me. "They stay right where they are, for Chrissake."
"They can't just ignore the ice. They can't just ignore it."
"Nobody's ignoring it. Nobody's ignoring it. They live right in the goddam ice. It's their nature, for Chrissake. They get frozen right in one position for the whole winter."
"Yeah? What do they eat then? I mean, if they're frozen solid, they can't even swim around looking for food and all."
"Their bodies, for Chrissake - what'sa matter with ya? Their bodies take in nutrition and all, right through the goddam seaweed and crap. They got their pores open the whole time. That's their nature, for Chrissake."
People always clap for the wrong things.
Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.
The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl, she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never really know whether they want you to stop or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame'll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them... They tell me to stop, so I stop. I always wished I hadn't, after I take them home, but I keep doing it anyway.
I wouldn't mind being pretty good at that stuff. Half the time, if you really want to know the truth, when I'm horsing around with a girl, I have a helluva lot of trouble just finding what I'm looking for, for God's sake, if you know what I mean. Take this girl that I just missed having sexual intercourse with, that I told you about. It took me about an hour to just get her goddam brassière off. By the time I did get it off, she was about ready to spit in my eye.
I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoyed the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard.
He kept saying they were too new and bourgeois. That was his favorite goddam word. He read it somewhere or heard it somewhere, Everything I had was bourgeois as hell. Even my fountain pen was bourgeois. He borrowed it off me all the time, but it was bourgeois anyway.
The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs - if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater. At least his suitcases were as good as mine.
Catholics are always trying to find out if you're Catholic.
Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." He had a pretty little voice too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars zoomed by, the brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the kerb and singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed anymore.
"Promise me you'll let your hair grow. Crew cuts are getting corny. And your hair's so lovely."
Lovely my ass.
The waiter came up, and I ordered a Coke for her - she didn't drink - and a Scotch and soda for myself, but the sonuvabitch wouldn't bring you one, so I had a Coke too.
"You ought to go to a boy's school sometimes. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together."
Girls. You never know what they're going to think.
All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them - thousands of them - singing "Come All Ye Faithful" like mad. Big deal. It's supposed to be religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can't see anything religious or pretty, for God's sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they all finished and started going out the boxes again, you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette of something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she kept saying how beautiful it was, the costumes and all. I said old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it...
I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me. Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.
One of them played the piano - strictly lousy - and the other one sang, and most of the songs were either pretty dirty or in French. The one that sang, old Janine, was always whispering into the goddam microphone before she sang. She'd say, "And now we would like to geeve you our impressions of Vooly Voo Fransay. Eet ees the story of a leetle Fransh girl who comes to a beeg ceety, just like New York, and falls een love wees a leetle boy from Brookleen. We hope you like eet."
People never give your message to anybody.
Boy, when you're dead they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice - twice - we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there.
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like -"
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."...
Anyway, I keep picturing these little kids playing some game in this big field or rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean, except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
I walked all the way downstairs, instead of taking the elevator. I went down the back stairs. I nearly broke my neck on about ten million garbage pails, but I got out alright.
While I was walking, I passed these two guys that were unloading this big Christmas tree off a truck. One guy kept saying to the other guy, "Hold the sonuvabitch up. Hold it up for Chrissake!" It certainly was a gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas tree.
But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them - all cockeyed, naturally, what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it.
That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive.
About all I know is, I sorta miss everybody I told about. Even Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
orwell rolls in his grave
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COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS
JUNE 2, 2003
I dissent to this decision. I dissent on grounds of substance. I dissent on grounds of process. I dissent because today the Federal Communications Commission empowers America’s new Media Elite with unacceptable levels of influence over the ideas and information upon which our society and our democracy so heavily depend.
This morning we are at a crossroads – for television, radio and newspapers and for the American people. The decision we five make today will recast our entire media landscape for years to come. At issue is whether a few corporations will be ceded enhanced gatekeeper control over the civil dialogue of our country; more content control over our music, entertainment and information; and veto power over the majority of what our families watch, hear and read.
Two very divergent paths beckon us.
Down one road is a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to local control of our media, diversity in news and editorial viewpoint, and the importance of competition. This path implores us not to abandon core values going to the heart of what the media mean in our country. On this path we reaffirm that FCC licensees have been given very special privileges and that they have very special responsibilities to serve the public interest.
Down the other road is more media control by ever fewer corporate giants. This path surrenders to a handful of corporations awesome powers over our news, information and entertainment. On this path we endanger time-honored safeguards and time-proven values that have strengthened the country as well as the media.
So the stakes are high – higher than they have been for any decision the five people sitting here today have ever made at this Commission. How do we decide which path to choose?
We should begin by examining the law. What does the law tell us? The Communications Act tells us to use our rules to promote localism, diversity and competition. It reminds us that the airwaves belong to the American people, and that no broadcast station, no company, no single individual owns an airwave in America. The airwaves belong to all the people. And the Supreme Court has upheld media protections, stating that “it is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee.”
We should then look at the world of experience. What practical, real world experience do we have to guide us? Radio deregulation gives us powerful and relevant lessons. When Congress and the Commission removed radio concentration protections, we experienced massive, and largely unforeseen, consolidation. We saw a 34 percent reduction in the number of radio station owners. Diversity of programming suffered. Homogenized music and standardized programming crowded out local and regional talent. Creative local artists found it evermore difficult to obtain play time. Editorial opinion polarized. Competition in many towns became non-existent as a few companies bought up virtually every station in the market. This experience should terrify us as we consider visiting upon television and newspapers what we have inflicted upon radio. “Clear Channelization” of the rest of the American media will harm our country.
We should, finally, seek out the counsel and wisdom of the American people. Commissioner Adelstein and I have attended public hearings across the country with conservatives and liberals, broadcasters and creative artists, concerned parents and civil rights activists, church leaders and educators. Our Commission has seen close to three quarters of a million people register their views – more than for any proceeding in Commission history. And in a nation that can be deeply divided on important issues, these citizens are uniquely unanimous on the question of whether this Commission should allow further media concentration. They are screaming that we should protect local broadcasting, diversity of programming and opinion, and the ability to compete with the huge companies. We should heed their conservatism – their urgent call to refrain from abandoning time-honored protections when so much is at stake and so much is unknown about the consequences of what we are doing here today.
The majority instead chooses radical deregulation – perhaps not quite so radical as originally intended a year ago before Americans found out what was going on and began to speak out – but radical nevertheless. This decision allows a corporation to control three television stations in a single city. Why does any company need to control three television stations anywhere? The decision allows the giant media companies to buy up the remaining local newspaper and exert massive influence over a community by wielding three TV stations, eight radio stations, the cable operator, plus the already monopolistic newspaper. The decision further allows the already massive television networks to buy up even more local TV stations, so that they could control up to an unbelievable 90 percent of the national television audience. Where are the blessings of localism, diversity and competition here? I see centralization, not localism; I see uniformity, not diversity; I see monopoly and oligopoly, not competition.
Will the vaunted 500-channel universe of cable TV save us? Well, 90 percent of the top cable channels are owned by the same giants that own the TV networks and the cable systems. More channels are great. But when they’re all owned by the same people, cable doesn’t advance localism, editorial diversity or competition. And those who believe the Internet alone will save us from this fate should realize that the dominating Internet news sources are controlled by the same media giants who control radio, TV, newspapers and cable.
Don’t tell me that those of us who feel strongly about this are being too emotional. Some would have us believe that this is merely an ordinary examination of our rules that we conduct every two years. Let’s not kid ourselves. This is the granddaddy of all reviews. It sets the direction for how the next review will get done and for how the media will look for many years to come. As for the emotion, I have seen the concern, the deep feeling and outright alarm on the faces of people who have come out to talk to Commissioner Adelstein and me all across this country. Are they emotional? You bet. And I think they are going to stay that way until we get this right.
Why did the Commission get this so wrong? Good, sustainable rules are the result of an open administrative process and a serious attempt to gather all the relevant facts. Bad rules and legal vulnerability result from an opaque regulatory process and inadequate data. Unfortunately, today’s rules fall into the latter camp. This proceeding has been run as a classic inside-the-Beltway process with too little outreach from the Commission and too little attention paid to the public. This is the way the Commission usually does business, we are told. Well, I submit this is too important to be treated on a business-as-usual basis. So Commissioner Adelstein and I traveled across the country to attend as many hearings and forums as we could.
I am also troubled that the Commission has refused to publicly disclose the rules we are voting on today. What possible harm can come from transparency? How can telling Congress and the public what we plan to do possibly be bad? Isn’t the animating spirit of our “notice and comment” procedure to make sure our people know as much as possible about the specifics of what is being proposed?
And so, we arrive at today. Citizens across this country will hear for the first time the proposals that we are adopting. Some of the details of the rule changes have leaked to the press. Even with this incomplete information, the public reaction against the proposed changes has been unlike anything the FCC has ever experienced. Of the nearly three quarters of a million comments we have received, nearly all oppose increased media consolidation – over 99.9 percent.
We’ve heard bipartisan concern from more than 150 Members of Congress, including the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, asking us to slow down and put these proposals out for public comment before we vote. Some of those Members of Congress are here today and I thank them for coming.
Dozens of organizations – from the National Rifle Association to the National Organization for Women have weighed in with their concerns about media concentration and the process by which we are dealing with it. City councils across this country in such places as Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Buffalo, as well as a whole state – Vermont – have gone on record against media concentration.
As Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council so aptly put it, “When all of us are united on an issue, then one of two things has happened. Either the Earth has spun off its axis and we have all lost our minds or there is universal support for a concept.” Well, it’s the concept – a transcending, nationwide concept.
The FCC is not, of course, a public opinion survey agency. Nor should we make our decisions by weighing the letters, cards and e-mails “for” and the letters, cards and e-mails “against” and awarding the victory to the side that tips the scale. But even this independent agency is part of our democratic system of government. And when there is such an overwhelming response on the part of the American people and their representatives in Congress assembled, we ought to take notice. Here the right call is to take these proposals, put them out for comment and then -- only then -- call the vote. The spirit underlying the “notice and comment” procedure of independent agencies is that important proposed changes need to be seen and vetted before they are voted. We haven’t been true to that spirit. Today we vote before we vet.
And what are we voting on? The majority decides to allow TV networks to control up to 45 percent of the national audience – up to 90 percent once the strange decision to keep the UHF discount is considered. Merrill Lynch predicts this decision will result in a “Gold Rush” where the national networks buy up the remaining local broadcasters. This decision is made without an adequate explanation for why 45 percent is not just an arbitrary number pulled out of a hat, and despite exhaustive and largely uncontested evidence supporting the existing cap by local broadcasters. I frankly doubt the courts will be impressed.
Some have argued that free over-the-air television is doomed unless we allow more concentration. The facts tell a different story. The networks not only reach consumers over the air through their own highly profitable stations and through affiliates, but they are also guaranteed carriage to cable subscribers. Indeed, they own much of cable. The networks command an enormous advertising premium, recently receiving a record $9.4 billion in up-front prime-time advertising for the next season. They have ownership in most of their profitable programs, and these are subsequently put into syndication or “repurposed” – the fancy new term for a re-run. This argument that the only way for the poor among us to continue receiving free, over-the-air television is to allow already powerful networks to grow more powerful would have been better left unsaid.
The majority inexplicably, maintains the UHF Discount. Under the UHF Discount, UHF TV stations are considered to reach only 50 percent of the households that VHF TV stations reach for purposes of determining whether a company has exceeded the national cap. Once upon a time, that was warranted. The Commission found that over-the-air UHF stations reached fewer viewers than VHF stations because their signals were different. But UHF and VHF stations reach an identical number of viewers when delivered over cable TV facilities. Today, over 85 percent of consumers receive their signal from cable and DBS. Program carriage requirements ensure that cable consumers receive the UHF signal, and DBS operators are required to carry all UHF stations in any market where they carry any local channel.
With 85 percent of Americans experiencing no difference between UHF and VHF stations, the discount no longer makes sense. Eliminating the entire discount may be warranted, but at a minimum it requires replacement with a number that reflects the reality of today’s technology and marketplace.
The more you dig into this Order, the worse things get. The Order finds:
That further concentration in already highly-concentrated markets is acceptable.
That in a town with only four TV stations, it is acceptable for the top-rated
television station to buy the only daily newspaper.
That consolidation going forward will enhance news programming, despite considerable record evidence showing that increased concentration more often than not reduces quality news.
There are other things this order could have done. Commenters addressed the need to require more independent programming on our airwaves so that a few conglomerates do not act anti-competitively to control all of the creative entertainment that we see. These proposals should have received the serious attention they deserve in this decision. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a substantial increase in the amount of programming owned by the networks. In addition to the obvious loss of diversity, this has also entailed the loss of thousands of jobs, including creative artists, technicians and many, many others. Years ago, we had protections against this kind of program ownership. Now that the majority is loosening outlet ownership rules, we ought to be looking at the consequences of having no limits on who owns the programming.
The Order could have addressed having a legitimate license renewal process to partially protect against the risks of further consolidation. The system has degenerated into one of basically post-card license renewal. Unless there is a major complaint pending against a station, its license is almost automatically renewed. A real, honest-to-goodness license renewal process, predicated on advancing the public interest, might do more for broadcasting than all these our other rules put together.
The Order could have analyzed the impact of media concentration on indecent and excessively violent programming. Some have suggested that there may be a link between increasing consolidation and increasing indecency on our airwaves. The Commission fails to address this issue in its analysis. It seems plausible that there is such a connection. I don’t know the answer to this question. I do know this: we have no business voting until we take a serious look at the matter and amass at least a credible body of evidence.
The Order could have addressed the impact of media concentration on women and minority groups. We know that there are substantially fewer radio station owners today than there were before the rules were changed in 1996. People of color now make up less than four percent of radio and television owners. The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters tells us that the number of minority owners of broadcast facilities has dropped by 14 percent since 1997.
We have not even attempted to understand what further consolidation means in terms of providing Hispanic Americans and African Americans and Asian-Pacific Americans and Native Americans and women and other groups the kinds of programs and access and viewpoint diversity and career opportunities and even advertising information about products and services that they need. America’s strength is, after all, its diversity. And our media need to reflect this diversity and to nourish it.
Today’s Order puts most such questions off into the future, with the exception of a curious plan to allow a small business, perhaps a minority firm, to buy a consolidated block of outlets from an incumbent who exceeds the limits. That would require deeper pockets than most such firms could afford. I would prefer to look for real opportunities for small entrepreneurs instead of encouraging them to buy large consolidated properties.
All this means that I am deeply saddened by the Commission’s actions today. Some have characterized the fight against this seemingly pre-ordained decision as Quixotic and destined to defeat. But I think, instead, that we’ll look back at this 3-2 vote as a Pyrrhic victory.
This Commission’s drive to loosen the rules and its reluctance to share its proposals with the people before we voted awoke a sleeping giant. American citizens are standing up in never-before-seen numbers to reclaim their airwaves and to call on those who are entrusted to use them to serve the public interest. In these times when many issues divide us, groups from right to left, Republicans and Democrats, concerned parents and creative artists, religious leaders, civil rights activists, and labor organizations have united to fight together on this issue. Senators and Congressmen from both parties and from all parts of the Country have called on the Commission to reconsider. The media concentration debate will never be the same. The obscurity of this issue that many have relied upon in the past, where only a few dozen inside-the-Beltway lobbyists understood the issue, is gone forever.
I believe, after traveling almost the length and breadth of this land, that our citizens want, deserve, and are demanding a renewed discussion of how their airwaves are being used and how to ensure they are serving the public interest. I urge my colleagues to heed the call. I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of people who have attended hearings, filed comments, written letters to the editor, and contacted the Commission. You have made a difference. And if you stay the course now, the chances have improved that we can yet settle this issue of who will control our media and for what purposes and to resolve it in favor of airwaves of, by and for the people of this great country.
Thank you.
In Parts
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COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS
JUNE 2, 2003
I dissent to this decision. I dissent on grounds of substance. I dissent on grounds of process. I dissent because today the Federal Communications Commission empowers America’s new Media Elite with unacceptable levels of influence over the ideas and information upon which our society and our democracy so heavily depend.
This morning we are at a crossroads – for television, radio and newspapers and for the American people. The decision we five make today will recast our entire media landscape for years to come. At issue is whether a few corporations will be ceded enhanced gatekeeper control over the civil dialogue of our country; more content control over our music, entertainment and information; and veto power over the majority of what our families watch, hear and read.
Two very divergent paths beckon us.
Down one road is a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to local control of our media, diversity in news and editorial viewpoint, and the importance of competition. This path implores us not to abandon core values going to the heart of what the media mean in our country. On this path we reaffirm that FCC licensees have been given very special privileges and that they have very special responsibilities to serve the public interest.
Down the other road is more media control by ever fewer corporate giants. This path surrenders to a handful of corporations awesome powers over our news, information and entertainment. On this path we endanger time-honored safeguards and time-proven values that have strengthened the country as well as the media.
So the stakes are high – higher than they have been for any decision the five people sitting here today have ever made at this Commission. How do we decide which path to choose?
We should begin by examining the law. What does the law tell us? The Communications Act tells us to use our rules to promote localism, diversity and competition. It reminds us that the airwaves belong to the American people, and that no broadcast station, no company, no single individual owns an airwave in America. The airwaves belong to all the people. And the Supreme Court has upheld media protections, stating that “it is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee.”
We should then look at the world of experience. What practical, real world experience do we have to guide us? Radio deregulation gives us powerful and relevant lessons. When Congress and the Commission removed radio concentration protections, we experienced massive, and largely unforeseen, consolidation. We saw a 34 percent reduction in the number of radio station owners. Diversity of programming suffered. Homogenized music and standardized programming crowded out local and regional talent. Creative local artists found it evermore difficult to obtain play time. Editorial opinion polarized. Competition in many towns became non-existent as a few companies bought up virtually every station in the market. This experience should terrify us as we consider visiting upon television and newspapers what we have inflicted upon radio. “Clear Channelization” of the rest of the American media will harm our country.
We should, finally, seek out the counsel and wisdom of the American people. Commissioner Adelstein and I have attended public hearings across the country with conservatives and liberals, broadcasters and creative artists, concerned parents and civil rights activists, church leaders and educators. Our Commission has seen close to three quarters of a million people register their views – more than for any proceeding in Commission history. And in a nation that can be deeply divided on important issues, these citizens are uniquely unanimous on the question of whether this Commission should allow further media concentration. They are screaming that we should protect local broadcasting, diversity of programming and opinion, and the ability to compete with the huge companies. We should heed their conservatism – their urgent call to refrain from abandoning time-honored protections when so much is at stake and so much is unknown about the consequences of what we are doing here today.
The majority instead chooses radical deregulation – perhaps not quite so radical as originally intended a year ago before Americans found out what was going on and began to speak out – but radical nevertheless. This decision allows a corporation to control three television stations in a single city. Why does any company need to control three television stations anywhere? The decision allows the giant media companies to buy up the remaining local newspaper and exert massive influence over a community by wielding three TV stations, eight radio stations, the cable operator, plus the already monopolistic newspaper. The decision further allows the already massive television networks to buy up even more local TV stations, so that they could control up to an unbelievable 90 percent of the national television audience. Where are the blessings of localism, diversity and competition here? I see centralization, not localism; I see uniformity, not diversity; I see monopoly and oligopoly, not competition.
Will the vaunted 500-channel universe of cable TV save us? Well, 90 percent of the top cable channels are owned by the same giants that own the TV networks and the cable systems. More channels are great. But when they’re all owned by the same people, cable doesn’t advance localism, editorial diversity or competition. And those who believe the Internet alone will save us from this fate should realize that the dominating Internet news sources are controlled by the same media giants who control radio, TV, newspapers and cable.
Don’t tell me that those of us who feel strongly about this are being too emotional. Some would have us believe that this is merely an ordinary examination of our rules that we conduct every two years. Let’s not kid ourselves. This is the granddaddy of all reviews. It sets the direction for how the next review will get done and for how the media will look for many years to come. As for the emotion, I have seen the concern, the deep feeling and outright alarm on the faces of people who have come out to talk to Commissioner Adelstein and me all across this country. Are they emotional? You bet. And I think they are going to stay that way until we get this right.
Why did the Commission get this so wrong? Good, sustainable rules are the result of an open administrative process and a serious attempt to gather all the relevant facts. Bad rules and legal vulnerability result from an opaque regulatory process and inadequate data. Unfortunately, today’s rules fall into the latter camp. This proceeding has been run as a classic inside-the-Beltway process with too little outreach from the Commission and too little attention paid to the public. This is the way the Commission usually does business, we are told. Well, I submit this is too important to be treated on a business-as-usual basis. So Commissioner Adelstein and I traveled across the country to attend as many hearings and forums as we could.
I am also troubled that the Commission has refused to publicly disclose the rules we are voting on today. What possible harm can come from transparency? How can telling Congress and the public what we plan to do possibly be bad? Isn’t the animating spirit of our “notice and comment” procedure to make sure our people know as much as possible about the specifics of what is being proposed?
And so, we arrive at today. Citizens across this country will hear for the first time the proposals that we are adopting. Some of the details of the rule changes have leaked to the press. Even with this incomplete information, the public reaction against the proposed changes has been unlike anything the FCC has ever experienced. Of the nearly three quarters of a million comments we have received, nearly all oppose increased media consolidation – over 99.9 percent.
We’ve heard bipartisan concern from more than 150 Members of Congress, including the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, asking us to slow down and put these proposals out for public comment before we vote. Some of those Members of Congress are here today and I thank them for coming.
Dozens of organizations – from the National Rifle Association to the National Organization for Women have weighed in with their concerns about media concentration and the process by which we are dealing with it. City councils across this country in such places as Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Buffalo, as well as a whole state – Vermont – have gone on record against media concentration.
As Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council so aptly put it, “When all of us are united on an issue, then one of two things has happened. Either the Earth has spun off its axis and we have all lost our minds or there is universal support for a concept.” Well, it’s the concept – a transcending, nationwide concept.
The FCC is not, of course, a public opinion survey agency. Nor should we make our decisions by weighing the letters, cards and e-mails “for” and the letters, cards and e-mails “against” and awarding the victory to the side that tips the scale. But even this independent agency is part of our democratic system of government. And when there is such an overwhelming response on the part of the American people and their representatives in Congress assembled, we ought to take notice. Here the right call is to take these proposals, put them out for comment and then -- only then -- call the vote. The spirit underlying the “notice and comment” procedure of independent agencies is that important proposed changes need to be seen and vetted before they are voted. We haven’t been true to that spirit. Today we vote before we vet.
And what are we voting on? The majority decides to allow TV networks to control up to 45 percent of the national audience – up to 90 percent once the strange decision to keep the UHF discount is considered. Merrill Lynch predicts this decision will result in a “Gold Rush” where the national networks buy up the remaining local broadcasters. This decision is made without an adequate explanation for why 45 percent is not just an arbitrary number pulled out of a hat, and despite exhaustive and largely uncontested evidence supporting the existing cap by local broadcasters. I frankly doubt the courts will be impressed.
Some have argued that free over-the-air television is doomed unless we allow more concentration. The facts tell a different story. The networks not only reach consumers over the air through their own highly profitable stations and through affiliates, but they are also guaranteed carriage to cable subscribers. Indeed, they own much of cable. The networks command an enormous advertising premium, recently receiving a record $9.4 billion in up-front prime-time advertising for the next season. They have ownership in most of their profitable programs, and these are subsequently put into syndication or “repurposed” – the fancy new term for a re-run. This argument that the only way for the poor among us to continue receiving free, over-the-air television is to allow already powerful networks to grow more powerful would have been better left unsaid.
The majority inexplicably, maintains the UHF Discount. Under the UHF Discount, UHF TV stations are considered to reach only 50 percent of the households that VHF TV stations reach for purposes of determining whether a company has exceeded the national cap. Once upon a time, that was warranted. The Commission found that over-the-air UHF stations reached fewer viewers than VHF stations because their signals were different. But UHF and VHF stations reach an identical number of viewers when delivered over cable TV facilities. Today, over 85 percent of consumers receive their signal from cable and DBS. Program carriage requirements ensure that cable consumers receive the UHF signal, and DBS operators are required to carry all UHF stations in any market where they carry any local channel.
With 85 percent of Americans experiencing no difference between UHF and VHF stations, the discount no longer makes sense. Eliminating the entire discount may be warranted, but at a minimum it requires replacement with a number that reflects the reality of today’s technology and marketplace.
The more you dig into this Order, the worse things get. The Order finds:
That further concentration in already highly-concentrated markets is acceptable.
That in a town with only four TV stations, it is acceptable for the top-rated
television station to buy the only daily newspaper.
That consolidation going forward will enhance news programming, despite considerable record evidence showing that increased concentration more often than not reduces quality news.
There are other things this order could have done. Commenters addressed the need to require more independent programming on our airwaves so that a few conglomerates do not act anti-competitively to control all of the creative entertainment that we see. These proposals should have received the serious attention they deserve in this decision. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a substantial increase in the amount of programming owned by the networks. In addition to the obvious loss of diversity, this has also entailed the loss of thousands of jobs, including creative artists, technicians and many, many others. Years ago, we had protections against this kind of program ownership. Now that the majority is loosening outlet ownership rules, we ought to be looking at the consequences of having no limits on who owns the programming.
The Order could have addressed having a legitimate license renewal process to partially protect against the risks of further consolidation. The system has degenerated into one of basically post-card license renewal. Unless there is a major complaint pending against a station, its license is almost automatically renewed. A real, honest-to-goodness license renewal process, predicated on advancing the public interest, might do more for broadcasting than all these our other rules put together.
The Order could have analyzed the impact of media concentration on indecent and excessively violent programming. Some have suggested that there may be a link between increasing consolidation and increasing indecency on our airwaves. The Commission fails to address this issue in its analysis. It seems plausible that there is such a connection. I don’t know the answer to this question. I do know this: we have no business voting until we take a serious look at the matter and amass at least a credible body of evidence.
The Order could have addressed the impact of media concentration on women and minority groups. We know that there are substantially fewer radio station owners today than there were before the rules were changed in 1996. People of color now make up less than four percent of radio and television owners. The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters tells us that the number of minority owners of broadcast facilities has dropped by 14 percent since 1997.
We have not even attempted to understand what further consolidation means in terms of providing Hispanic Americans and African Americans and Asian-Pacific Americans and Native Americans and women and other groups the kinds of programs and access and viewpoint diversity and career opportunities and even advertising information about products and services that they need. America’s strength is, after all, its diversity. And our media need to reflect this diversity and to nourish it.
Today’s Order puts most such questions off into the future, with the exception of a curious plan to allow a small business, perhaps a minority firm, to buy a consolidated block of outlets from an incumbent who exceeds the limits. That would require deeper pockets than most such firms could afford. I would prefer to look for real opportunities for small entrepreneurs instead of encouraging them to buy large consolidated properties.
All this means that I am deeply saddened by the Commission’s actions today. Some have characterized the fight against this seemingly pre-ordained decision as Quixotic and destined to defeat. But I think, instead, that we’ll look back at this 3-2 vote as a Pyrrhic victory.
This Commission’s drive to loosen the rules and its reluctance to share its proposals with the people before we voted awoke a sleeping giant. American citizens are standing up in never-before-seen numbers to reclaim their airwaves and to call on those who are entrusted to use them to serve the public interest. In these times when many issues divide us, groups from right to left, Republicans and Democrats, concerned parents and creative artists, religious leaders, civil rights activists, and labor organizations have united to fight together on this issue. Senators and Congressmen from both parties and from all parts of the Country have called on the Commission to reconsider. The media concentration debate will never be the same. The obscurity of this issue that many have relied upon in the past, where only a few dozen inside-the-Beltway lobbyists understood the issue, is gone forever.
I believe, after traveling almost the length and breadth of this land, that our citizens want, deserve, and are demanding a renewed discussion of how their airwaves are being used and how to ensure they are serving the public interest. I urge my colleagues to heed the call. I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of people who have attended hearings, filed comments, written letters to the editor, and contacted the Commission. You have made a difference. And if you stay the course now, the chances have improved that we can yet settle this issue of who will control our media and for what purposes and to resolve it in favor of airwaves of, by and for the people of this great country.
Thank you.
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