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Last Updated: Aug 28, 2009

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Reviews and Interviews By Scott Lewis
Lewis lives in Dallas, Texas, by way of Houston.

He writes Catching Up With . . . celebrity interviews for This Week in Texas as well as movie reviews .

Scott Lewis can be reached by e-mail HERE

Catching Up with . . . Reverend Michael Piazza By Scott Lewis Mar 5, 2007

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Reverend Michael S. Piazza, Dean of the Cathedral of Hope and President of Hope for Peace & Justice.

I have to admit that it was the cover of the new book ’ÄúThe Real Antichrist’Äù that caught my attention. George W. is the Antichrist? I was willing to listen. Unfortunately, that is not what you find when you read this enthralling new examination of America, and how its direction has changed under our current administration.

It has been several years that I have been looking for someone to point out how far away from our own founding fathers intentions we have been taken as a nation, and now finally I have found him. It is Reverend Michael S. Piazza the Dean of the Cathedral of Hope, the largest primarily Gay and Lesbian church in the world. In his new book, He brilliantly, yet simply points out how far off course this country has gotten, and how our current administration has equally as brilliantly used fear to achieve its goals.

I caught up with Reverend Piazza at the Cathedral to discuss his new book’Ķ

Scott Lewis: They say you can’Äôt judge a book by its cover. Your new book’Äôs cover features a photo of George W. Bush under its title ’ÄúThe Real Antichrist’Äù. The implication is obvious, but why this photo for the cover?

Michael Piazza: We actually went round and round about this cover. Ultimately covers are about selling books, but this one seemed to capture succinctly one of the core messages of the book which is that the real antichrist in my mind is sort of the conjunction of fundamentalism and politics. Those two things have come together in this country in his administration more powerfully and I think more threateningly than at any other time. Fundamentalism, not Christianity, is I think the greatest danger in the world right now. Whether its Christian fundamentalism, Muslim fundamentalism, or Hindu fundamentalism it has actually been used to govern this country I think, since September 11th, and probably before because it was probably what got him (President Bush) elected.

SL: The first line of your new book is as bold as its cover. You state ’ÄúI believe the Antichrist is alive on the earth today.’Äù Who is it?

MP: I think fundamentalism, ancient and modern have incarnated it to make it into an individual. Modern fundamentalism says that this individual who will rule on the earth and I don’Äôt think that is really biblical. I mean the last chapter sort of deals with that academically. The word antichrist is not actually in the bible. But the concept that there will be and there is a power on earth that creates systems and politics and ways that are the antithesis of what Jesus came to do and teach is what I think the real antichrist is. The antichrist in my mind is this conjunction of politics and fundamentalism and is incarnate or it is personified by people like Dick Cheney and George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. They aren’Äôt the antichrist they are just sort of personification of a spirit in the world that is the antithesis of Jesus and what he taught and did.

SL: You talk about how fear makes us gullible. Tell me how our government has used fear to obtain its objectives.

MP: They have really worked hard at keeping us afraid. All you have to do is go through the airport and everyone standing in those lines can see how intrinsically flawed that system is. Here they are making two year olds take their shoes off and not letting people take bottled water on the plane; yet the cargo that flies in the hold of all those planes is completely unchecked to this day. So its not really about security, its about manipulating us, the public to make us think that they are doing something to keep us safe and to keep us aware of the threat.

As a result of feeling threatened or besieged by terrorists what this administration has done is to strengthen the power of the executive branch to limit civil liberties, to justify torturing prisoners, just on and on and on. When you make people afraid they will let you get away with these things if you make them feel that they are safer. They have used this fear to redefine who this country is. In ways that a decade ago would not have been acceptable.

SL: You call the great support of the war within Churches very disturbing. They preach the message ’ÄúSupport our troops!’Äù You say the best way to support our troops is through peace.

MP: Obviously the best thing you can do for troops is to keep them from getting killed and peace does that much more effectively than war. I think the war in Iraq is the perfect example of those values gone utterly awry. In the name of pretending to make us feel safer we have bought this war and what has happened is we have created a country that is virtually manufacturing terrorists.

You know we couldn’Äôt have been Bin Laden’Äôs ally more effectively if we tried, I think that it is the perfect symbol that war and violence only created more war and violence. As a result I think that is the antichrist strategy for dealing with the attacks of 9/11. The Jesus strategy would have been, well he started in Mathew with turn the other cheek, forgive your enemies, do good to those that hurt you. As naive as that may sound, what would have happened if our foreign policy would have been to try and give food to the people of Afghanistan and the places that terrorism has taken root around the world rather than spending trillions of dollars on war.

What if we had taken some of our wealth to help people not be hungry, to provide medical care for their children or education, could we change the culture that gave birth to the terrorist rather than create a more violent region of the world. Terrorism and the hatred of the United States has only increased in the past six years instead of decreased. We have actually made our world a much less safe place.

SL: The loudest voice of opposition to the war in Iraq has to be Cindy Sheean. You have spoken with her and she told you that the hardest part of her struggle has been giving up the myth her son’Äôs death had any meaning. Knowing what we know now, why aren’Äôt there more Cindy Sheean’Äôs out there?

MP: That’Äôs a really good question. I think that is a very hard thing for a parent to do in terms of grieving. In order to deal with the loss of a child, you have to feel like there is some meaning in that. You know as a pastor I have to deal with that kind of theology that comes out when there is that sort of tragedy, that somebody says that God took their child, or God took their lover and it’Äôs wrong on lots of levels. What it is about is that person is trying to cope with a pain that seems almost impossible to deal with, then to make it meaningless it makes it even more difficult.

What you are seeing is a lot of veterans who have come back from Iraq are starting to speak out. There were several hundred of them at the Capital recently lobbying against the surge. They have come back and realized that it was all for nothing. They are suffering the death of their colleges which was for nothing.

SL: One of the great messages that I got out of your book was that the Antichrist isn’Äôt really a person so much as it is the behaviors and the policies of people who are doing things that Christ would not have done. That is Antichrist. I want to talk about a few examples of this that you talk about in your book. Tell me abut ’ÄúMinding the Gap’Äù.

MP: This goes back to the fundamentalism that has sort of taken over this country.
It’Äôs number one accomplishment, at least in the first part of this administration was to cut taxes for the very richest. This creates a great deficit so in the latest budget the things that are being cut are Medicare and Medicaid and the services for the very poor. We are creating and enhancing this huge disparity in wealth where we are becoming a country of two classes and there is no middle class.

What I think is blasphemous about that is that it is being supported by Christian fundamentalism in this country. It baffles me, I keep asking myself, why is it that the poor in this country and especially in the south support the Republicans, who clearly don’Äôt care about them. Who are there representing the values of the rich and of corporations. I am not a fear monger so I won’Äôt suggest there is going to be a revolution. But I do think there is going to be this increasing tension in terms of the differences in class.

Dallas is a city that perfectly epitomizes that. This morning I took my daughter to school and the program we were listening to on NPR was sponsored by Saab. She asked, ’ÄúWhat’Äôs a Saab?’Äù I said, ’ÄúYou don’Äôt see Saab’Äôs in this part of town.’Äù She is certainly not poor, but she has grown up in Oak Cliff where people don’Äôt tend to drive Saab’Äôs or Beemer’Äôs. This city is divided by class, much more than by race now. I think that is where the country is headed. We will be increasingly more divided by class than race.

SL: You say the fight for Lesbians and Gays to have the right to marry is not about marriage, it’Äôs about discrimination. Explain.

MP: A personal example is that my partner and I had gone to California last weekend, and last night at dinner one of our daughters said, ’ÄúWhy couldn’Äôt we go with you?’Äù ’ÄúWell because you don’Äôt get flight benefits.’Äù My partner works for the airlines and they said, ’ÄúWell as your children why shouldn’Äôt we?’Äù I said, ’ÄúBecause we are not legally married and this is one of the ways that this impacts you. If we had been legally married your right, you would have gotten to fly for free, but we are not. Just like if he dies, I don’Äôt get his pension benefits, or his Social Security.’Äù

My real point about this is, and I think that this is really important for GLBT folks to get, we have let the religious right frame this argument and they have kicked our butts. We have to take the argument back and reframe it. They cannot stop us from getting married. What they can do is discriminate against you and that’Äôs what it’Äôs all about it’Äôs about discrimination. It’Äôs not about marriage but we have let them make it about marriage, a sacrament will be a civil right every time. We have let them make it about a religious sacrament that we are trying to take away from them when what is really happening is that we already have the sacrament, what we want is the civil right. We have let them frame the argument and we have lost every time, except Arizona.

SL: An interesting fact that I learned from your book was that while Jesus never spoke about gay marriage, he spoke very clearly about divorce and remarrying (this is adultery). The scripture you reference is so clear, yet this doesn’Äôt seem to be an issue with the same people that are so opposed to gay marriage. Why?

MP: Well it’Äôs a selective reading of the bible which everybody does, conservative or liberal. The difference is that I think liberal people are more honest about their selective reading and conservatives pretend to be literalist when reading the bible. While clearly they don’Äôt read that part of the bible literally.

SL: There is a chapter that talks about retaliation as justice. Why is our prison system Antichrist?

MP: When was the last time we executed a multimillionaire in this country? It doesn’Äôt happen. Only the poor get killed in this country. Primarily, only the poor who have killed white people. That is who we execute. Even if you believed the death penalty was right, which I don’Äôt, in the end no one can argue that it has ever been equitably applied.

SL: Tell me about Hope for Peace & Justice.

MP: It is a very new organization that does two things primarily. One is we have a faith based conflict resolution program. We are trying to teach churches to help actually physically do peace. Our goal is to have every church, synagogue and masque in America to have a trained conflict mediator so that people will turn to their house of worship when they have a conflict rather than always to the courts. Everyone is in favor of peace, but nobody knows what to do about it so we tried to create a specific concrete way that we could go about making peace.

The other thing that we are trying to do is to train and equip progressive people of faith to talk about issues at the water cooler. The fundamentalist have heard the lie on Sunday Morning whether it’Äôs about gay marriage, abortion, the environment, or the war, so at the water cooler, the fundamentalist people start spouting off all this stuff and Gay and Lesbian folks or progressive people just sort of sit down and shut up and they avoid talking about it. That hasn’Äôt gotten us anywhere. It really has resulted in the fact that we are people without values or religion and that is simply not true. What we are trying to do is equip people to be able to articulate those issues. The book is a piece of that but we send out news letters every week trying to get people to articulate their values more passionately and more articulately. The bible belongs to us as well.

This past Friday night at a weekly dinner with friends I gave my review copy of ’ÄúThe Real Antichrist’Äù to my friend Charlie, who proceeded to glance at the first pages of the book. Before long I realized that he was completely enveloped, and that his partner Skip should look for no love this evening, because Charlie would probably finish the book before retiring for the evening. This book is that good. If you read the first pages, you will be hooked, and I think that is a good thing, because there is a whole lot of truth inside these pages, and it’Äôs a truth that needs to be heard.

Recently an anonymous donor underwrote the purchase and shipment of this book to all members of Congress, the Senate, all 50 Governors, Dick Cheney, and yes, George W. himself. Good for him! I encourage you to read this book, and then pass it along to a friend it is a message that needs to be spread.

To get more information on Hope for Peace and Justice and buy the book visit the website here: www.h4pj.org

© This Week In Texas


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