Oh sure, the superficial issue is gay versus some canon of hetero-decency because the church always was “that way”.

As far as anyone knows the original community had gay and straight as does the population in general and Abba is in all. But such utterances have no power to change minds in a debate which is fundamentally emotional (revulsion against images of gayness) but which also involves political and economic compensations for the righteous defenders of hetero-decency. A basis for double-bind hypocrisies.

The idea that this has much to do with culture is specious. It has more to do with a happy marriage between revulsion and political convenience. Political meaning the disposition of power. We are talking about who inherits the church — the ecclesiastical properties, endowments, perks and such.

And there is a deeper level still. Culture wars is a convenient misnomer for what is fundamentally an underlying theological battle.

The battle is between religion, which can be defined as synonymous with superstition aka Dostoevsly’s mystery, miracle and authority aka what I have rightfully identified as creedal messianism, and the spiritual understanding inherent in Abba’s Way — where values of non-idolatry, helpfulness, tolerance and democracy hold sway.

No one even seems to know that this is the actual battle that is taking place, but it is.

Photos may lie but Canterbury’s in the NYTimes was subtle supercilious to the max. Pulled a good one, he did. Religion would seem to be as strong and as irrelevant as ever. But it is on its last legs, as is the immaturity of media and immaturity in general. Bonhoeffer saw the world coming of age and that is what is happening and all that does not come of age will be left in the dust bin of history, including the religion that infests the structures of churches.

And when the current stage of property-grabbing aka rectitude is over the victory will go not to the residual owners but, as ever, to the marginalized who claim no home made by hands.

A true culture war would be between a culture of violence (the culture that is dominant and almost pervasive globally) and one that embraces a negotiational stance closer to the value system propounded by Jesus of Nazareth — who remains the object of worship among the revolted.

But we are not at the point of this true culture war yet. The option of a genuine revaluation of values has not yet become conscious. And so nothing that is said here will have much effect.

The split, which could have been anticipated for at least five decades, will occur churchwide, and what will be left is a set of institutions with hands tied when it comes to authentic representation of what Jesus haid and did, who he was and is and what his message and meaning is today.

Hopefully the diaspora will understand that diaspora — a church beyond institution — is exactly where we should have been all along.

Violence in media is so pervasive that this note could have a thousand entries a day. I will merely keep it alive to record particularly damning examples of cultural complicity in the glorification and implicit justification of violence.

Actors can choose their roles, so as far as I am concerned when a film has no redeeming qualities and is filled with gratuitous violence, the actors are as culpable as all others. All others includes me who watches it. We are all tarred with the onus of participation in the syndromes of violence.

First entry.

The Jackal

Sample scene. A killing which commences with a high tech arm severing and ends with shooting mayhem inflicted on a defenseless person.

From the man who, more than anyone, gave us the Bush Administration in 2000, comes a ruling based on “scholarship” that has been repudiated by the source.

Years ago when she first came to the NYTimes I started a little section of my then-site called Maureen Dowd Watch. It was a bemused acknowledgement that the Times was hiring and venerating a columnist whose writing might work on a precocious college paper but which was virtually incomprehensible to an intelligent and probing readership.

I merely want to reiterate that if she is regarded by her peers as a current voice to be listened to, we need some serious reality checks.

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Nick Kristof and Bob Herbert are about the only Times op-ed columnists who can be considered responsible — if responsibility is understood to be doing the max you can do in the position the good Lord has put you in. Kristof’s recent messages from China championing Internet freedom there are redemptive and inspiring.

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The Democrats need literally to bite the bullet. The issue of war and peace has been allowed to be expressed as an either or, thanks to the Democrats’ unwillingness to consider alternatives to war and stand for a policy which avoids war in preference to means which are not lethal to thousands, even millions. The Republicans can be the party of the Natural Born Killers if they wish. Democrats need to become the party of the Grow Up and Move Beyond. This requires a revaluation of values and courage is lacking to take it on. Which is why blogs like this do not get into the sphere of recognition accorded “liberal blogs” which tend to be concerned with the issue du jour. When Democrats can convey the message Lethal War is Dumb or There Are Other Ways to Win, they will be on the way to creating the next fifty years of reconstruction in the wake of the last fifty. Ying Yang.

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“The role of the self evident in history” is the title of a forgotten essay by Anders Nygren. The thesis is that some things are so taken for granted that we do not notice them when we try to analyze what is going on. This is most evident in the studious ignoring of the effect of the subordination of everything to the oil economy and its principal product — the automobile. Until we grapple with this dominant and invasive reality we allow it to pull every string and delude ourselves about solutions.