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Rev. Curtis Webster is Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Encino, in Encino, CA. Curtis is a graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary's Southern California campus in Pasadena, CA. Prior to attending seminary, Curtis was an attorney and a journalist. Curtis' deep interest in the Khmer Rouge has been inspired mainly by the adoption of his daughter, Maly, from Cambodia in 1998. Curtis and his wife, Kay, have six other children, having recently adopted Trang, a 12 year-old girl from Vietnam.
Read Rev. Webster's sermon To End All Evil: Back in August of 1971, a Stanford University professor by the name of Philip Zimbardo wanted to do some research on the psychological effects of imprisonment and he needed to do some first-hand observations of prisoner behavior in a controlled environment. After some psychological screening to weed out obvious pathologies, Dr. Zimbardo randomly chose one group of volunteers to be “prisoners” and another group to be “guards...”
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"I accept the regret, the sorrow and the suffering of the million Cambodian people who
lost their husbands and wives. I would like the Cambodian people to condemn me to the harshest punishment."
?Kaing Guek Eav (?uch?, addressing the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh, August 12, 2009
?At times, I have imagined you shackled, starved, whipped and clubbed, viciously. I have imagined your scrotum electrified, being forced to eat your own feces, being nearly drowned and having your throat cut.?
?Rob Hamill, brother of New Zealander and Khmer Rouge victim Kerry Hamill, addressing Duch before the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, August 17, 2009.
It would be easy for me to condemn Rob Hamill.
After all, isn? my Christian theology all about forgiveness?
The technically correct Christian response to the confession of one who has wronged you or your family is to accept the confession and be forgiving as Christ forgives us.
Rob Hamill certainly failed to embody that ethic when given the opportunity to confront Kaing Guek Eav in open court. Confession had been given. Responsibility had been accepted. And yet no forgiveness came from the mouth of Rob Hamill.
My training tells me to tut-tut Rob Hamill and hold him up as a sorry example of humanity? sinful refusal to forgive.
That? what my training tells me . . .
But that is absolutely not what my heart tells me. You will hear no condemnation of Rob Hamill? words from this quarter. Putting myself as best I can in the shoes of Rob Hamill, I cannot honestly say that I would not feel exactly the same way and that I would not express a desire for the infliction of retributive justice at its harshest.
And therein lies the insidiously continuing damage of the evil perpetrated by the Khmer Rogue.
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First off, I want to be perfectly clear on something . . .
Bernie Madoff got exactly what he deserved. We haven? yet printed a book too big to throw at him.
The point of this post is not to argue that Madoff is somehow not to be blamed for the wanton destruction he caused on other peoples?finances.
The point of this post is to underscore, once again, a massive breakdown in systemic safeguards and a massive retreat from reality by a whole bunch of people who should have known a whole lot better.
Randall W. Forsyth has laid out the various red flags that were ignored over the years by funds managers, investment advisors and even Madoff? own family in an article posted June 30 on barrons.com entitled ?adoff Is ?vil,?But Hardly Unique?(http://online.barrons.com/article/SB124632749654371491.html).
Forsyth, a veteran reporter who has been observing the Wall Street scene for close to thirty years, argues that ?he very idea that he [Madoff] acted alone utterly beggars belief.? Forsyth is not suggesting a criminal conspiracy with Madoff as the ringleader. He is arguing a tacit conspiracy of ignorance by the ?rofessionals?who were charged with preventing these kinds of financial rape-and-pillage sessions.
Forsyth characterizes the managers of the various feeder funds who kept Madoff supplied with capital as ?seful idiots who chose not to delve too deeply into Madoff? practices lest true due diligence might disturb the flow of hundreds of millions of fees they collected.?
There were some fund managers, though, who smelled something rotting in the Madoff empire a long time ago and refused to play along. According to Forsyth, James Hedges of LJH Global Investments stands out as one hero who refused to pony up billions of dollars of investors?money to feed Madoff? voracious appetite. ? have said over the years to many people: Do not touch Madoff with a barge pole,?Forsyth quotes Hedges as saying.
Forsyth? insights illuminate a sad reality that the proactive evil perpetrated by the Madoffs of the world cannot succeed without the cooperation of the passive evil of financial gatekeepers who elevate ignorance to an art form when confronted with the choice between competently discharging their professional responsibilities or making a ton of money.
We saw the Lucifer Effect at work in the financial markets with the mushrooming of derivatives trading and we see it again now in the muck left in the wake of the Madoff scandal.
Sometimes mass psychological dysfunction leads to genocide, sometimes it leads to oppression, and sometimes it leads to financial catastrophe.
Bernie Madoff? success at convincing intelligent and well-informed people to buy his snake oil points up a spiritual deficit in our culture that continues to imperil our national well-being. Tarring and feathering Madoff is a good start, but if we think we?e solved the problem because we?e ridden the rascal out of town on a rail, then we are tragically naive.
The Obama administration has rightfully proposed a series of new regulations in response to Madoff. They are but a start, however, in preventing future billion-dollar scams. It is only when we, as a culture, can summon up the moral fortitude displayed by James Hedges to resist the siren songs sung so convincingly by the billion-dollar scammers that we can begin to enjoy some measure of security from their predatory schemes.
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Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”
-- John 2:15-16 (NRSV)
On Sunday, March 15, 2009, the Third Sunday of Lent, the Reverend Janelle Tibbetts-Vaughan, the incredibly talented and creative Associate Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Encino, California, delivered the best sermon on the above passage (and several surrounding verses) I have ever heard.
Janelle thoroughly analyzed the passage and concluded that Jesus was not angry over the simple fact that business was being transacted on the grounds of the Jerusalem Temple. No, Jesus was angry because the Jewish peasants who came faithfully to the Temple and attempted to practice their faith were being fleeced mercilessly by predatory merchants taking advantage of certain mandatory Temple rules that left the poor of Judea no choice but to be gouged before they made their sacrifices.
As I was listening to my colleague deliver her powerful message, I could not help but relate it to some headline events from the preceding week.
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First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians.
– Martin Luther
“On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543)
Seventy years ago, on November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi stormtroopers, along with mobs of civilian thugs, went on a rampage against Jews throughout Germany.
Nominally sparked by the assassination of German diplomat Ernest vom Rath by a 17 year-old Jew in Paris, Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) marked what seemed at the time the culmination of a five year campaign by the Nazis to villify and persecute German Jews.
92 Jews were murdered. At least 200 synagogues were burned. Countless Jewish homes and businesses were ransacked. And, perhaps most ominously, something in the neighborhood of 30,000 Jews were rounded up and deported to concentration camps.
Jews who had prayed that Kristallnacht would mark the high tide of violent anti-Semitism in the Third Reich, though, were soon to be tragically disappointed. Kristallnacht was not an end to the violence, but merely a prelude to the full horror of the Holocaust. Kristallnacht was a turning point, but not an end point.
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The behavior of too many on Wall Street is a violation of biblical ethics. The teachings of Christianity, Judaism, and other faiths condemn the greed, selfishness, and cheating that have been revealed in corporate behavior over decades now, and denounce their callous mistreatment of employees. Read your Bible.
– Jim Wallis, www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics
September 18, 2008
Jim Wallis, the evangelical founder of Sojourners, has thusly summed up the theological implications of the recent capital market meltdown so eloquently that I hesitate to presume to add to the discussion.
With so many Americans believing that we live in a Christian nation, the disconnect between our economic practices and the Bible’s repetitive trumpeting of warnings against greed and economic injustice is truly astounding.
Beginning with the laws given to Moses by God right on up through the post-Resurrection preaching of Paul, Scripture consistently tells us that we must always be on the guard against greed and that we must always seek economic justice for all.
And yet, here we are again, suffering through another devastating economic catastrophe brought on by greed.
We can erect all of the regulatory schemes our imaginations can spawn and we can have politicians denouncing Wall Street from now until the next millenium, but until we learn to embrace the totality of Biblical teachings about economic morality as a part of our social fibre, we can expect to see this cycle repeated once every few decades.
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These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. They have caused great pains and have damaged the church’s witness. Victims should receive compassion and care and those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice.
-- Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Sydney, Australia, on sexual abuse by priests.
“Where is forgiveness in all of this?”
I hesitated, not being quite sure at all how to answer that question.
The woman standing in front of me was an independent and successful professional. She hardly seemed a likely person to excuse male sexual misbehavior. Yet, there she was, arguing that her pastor, convicted in ecclesiastical proceedings of sexual misconduct with several female congregants, should be “forgiven” and allowed to continue in his pulpit.
“Perhaps he should be forgiven,” I replied, trying to avoid an overtly confrontational tone of voice. “But he has abused his authority and, until he can demonstrate that he has learned how to control his urges, he should not be allowed back into professional ministry.”
That was not the answer this woman apparently was hoping to hear. The conversation ended rather quickly at that point.
That exchange took place several years ago. In the intervening time, I have observed the effects of sexual misconduct on a number of different congregations. The only change I might make in my answer today would be to drop the possibility that any proven sexual predator could ever be allowed to return to parish ministry.
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Nobody, it seems, can make documentaries quite like Ken Burns.
His recent series, “The War,” tells the story of America’s involvement in World War Two through the eyes of four American cities and towns, among them Mobile, Alabama.
When war broke out, Glenn Frazier, a 17 year-old infantryman from Mobile, was serving in the Philippines under General Douglas MacArthur. In “The War,” Mr. Frazier admits that he had enlisted several months earlier with no thought of ever seeing combat, and that he had gone to the Philippines under the assumption that it would be a nice, safe duty station in the event that war did break out.
And Mr. Frazier had a good reason to do his best to avoid combat.
“I was raised in a real Christian family,” Mr. Frazier explains, “ and, as a result, killing was not part of my training, and that was a big hurdle for me to get over because I’d been taught not to kill.”
He goes on to describe the incident that pushed him over the edge and caused him to get past that particular doctrine.
After watching a Japanese plane bomb a hospital and then land a direct hit on a friend of his, Mr. Frazier had a turn of heart.
“When that Japanese Zero turned its wings right above the trees and started to fly away,” Mr. Frazier recalls, “I could see him with a smile on his face and at that point I had no trouble killing people. As a matter of fact I got to the point where I hunted them, and if I didn’t kill Japanese in a day I felt I didn’t do my job.”
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The acts of genocide, which have no statute of limitations, mean any acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
* killing members of the group;
* causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
* imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* forcibly transferring children from one group to another group.
-- From Chapter I, Article 4 of the Law on the Establishment of Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea.
The terms “Khmer Rouge” and “genocide” seem to fit together, hand in glove. For those not versed in the intricacies and subtleties of international law, the deaths of nearly two million people through governmentally sanctioned programs of extermination, abuse, overwork, and deliberate neglect obviously constitute genocide. If that isn’t genocide, one might understandably ask, then what is?
Well, as is so often true when dealing with the realities of the Khmer Rouge, the answer may not be quite that simple.
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“Revolution’s victory over imperialism is not about inviting guests
to a dinner party,
not about writing a text, not about embroidering flowers,
not about having the right education, not about being soft,
not about being well-mannered and polite,
not about fearing the enemy;
the revolution is about seething with anger against one class,
about striking and destroying that class”
“We, the Communist Party,
follow the correct and clear-sighted line.”
“For the Angkar, there is no god, no ghosts,
no beliefs, no supernatural.”
Throughout the reign of the Khmer Rouge, a propaganda machine in Phnom Penh spewed out a lengthy series of official slogans that were then distributed to the general population through radio broadcasts and political education meetings held in local villages and labor camps.
Short and simple, the Khmer Rouge slogans were masterworks of ideological indoctrination. Although many sound clumsy when translated into English, they conveyed clear and unambiguous messages easily absorbed by the largely illiterate rural population that had been the base of the Khmer Rouge’s support from its earliest days.
French Cambodia-watcher Henri Locard has done a huge service to all who seek to understand the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by translating a large collection of these slogans and publishing them in “Pol Pot’s Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar” (2004: Silkworm Books).
To study Locard’s translations is to step into a nightmarish world ruled by black-and-white, either-or thinking. Angkar, the Khmer Rouge regime’s self-label, knows all and is perfect in its ideology and governance. Anyone who questions Angkar is an enemy, and enemies are everywhere. Eternal vigilance against enemies and tirelessly self-sacrificing devotion to Angkar are small prices to pay for the privilege of living in Cambodia’s collectivist paradise.
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Samuel said to Saul: “The LORD sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
1 SAMUEL 15:1-3 (NRSV)
For Christians and Jews who stand in opposition to genocide and oppression, the verses quoted above from the First Book of Samuel in the Old Testament are something of an embarrassment. There’s just no way to interpret around it: God is commanding Saul, the first king of Israel, to commit genocide upon a people known as the Amalekites.
And this passage is not unique in the Old Testament. God repeatedly commands the Israelites to wipe out one indigenous people or another on the way to a complete conquest of Canaan, the Promised Land.
To lay such verses such as these alongside Jesus’ teachings on love and forgiveness is to engage in an exercise of theological dissonance. And, the Old Testament itself also contains passages that proclaim a more universal vision of humanity in which war has no place. At Isaiah 66:18-19a, for example, God declares: “For I know their works and their thoughts, and I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see my glory, and I will set a sign among them.”
How can God seemingly countenance genocide in one place and then command love, forgiveness, and forbearance in another?
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Thirty years ago, Nhem En worked as a cog in a machine of evil.
Assigned to the Khmer Rouge’s infamous Tuol Sleng interrogation and torture center in Phnom Penh, Nhem En stood at the center of the firestorm of torture, brutality, and murder that swept over Cambodia in the late Seventies.
What exactly did Nhem En do at Tuol Sleng? Was he an interrogator, inflicting unspeakable torture? Was he a guard, imposing severe punishment for minor infractions of arbitrary rules? Was he an executioner, bashing in the skulls of those condemned without trial or evidence?
Nhem En played none of these roles.
Nhem En was a photographer. He took pictures.
Nhem En’s photos are on display at the museum that now occupies the Tuol Sleng facility. Each is a black-and-white of a face, essentially a mug shot. In the case of mothers with children, there are multiple faces.
As each new truckload of recent detainees arrived, Nhem En and the photographers whom he supervised would set up their cameras at Tuol Sleng’s intake building. Before being delivered to holding cells that were little better than human kennels, each prisoner had his or her picture taken. By the time Phnom Penh fell to the Vietnamese in January 1979, thousands of these photos had been taken.
Today, these photos constitute powerful physical evidence of the horrors that the Khmer Rouge inflicted upon fellow Cambodians.
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