Expressing concern for fractures in Honduran society between the poor and the powerful, a group of faith leaders in the U.S. condemned the coup that deposed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales and called for a return to constitutional law.

The President, still in his pajamas, was forced from his home and transported to Costa Rica by military officers in a move to prevent a non-binding referendum to repeal a constitutional term limit for the presidency. Honduran presidents are allowed only one four year term.

The faith leaders’ letter says U.S. law requires a suspension of military aid in the event of a coup and they call on the Obama Administration to halt such aid until constitutional rule has been restored.

A resolution passed today by the UN General Assembly called on world leaders to recognize only Zelaya. The World Bank paused lending to the country and said it is working with the Organization of American States as it seeks to restore Honduras’ "democratic charter."

The coup was a shock to modern governance in Central America because it hearkens back to an era when military takeovers were engineered by political elites, corporate executives in the U.S. and elements of the U.S. government. The phrase "banana republic," coined by the novelist O. Henry, came to describe governments such as Honduras and Guatemala, ruled by  a military junta under the influence of a small power elite dependent on agricultural exports such as bananas.

Despite gains under modern democratic government, Honduras remains a society of extreme wealth and grave poverty. President Zelaya has gained popular support by appealing to  activists and advocates for the poor.

The faith leaders say they are concerned about "the safety of social and political activists, including trade union leaders, heads of organizations of small farmers and the rural poor, indigenous leaders, opposition politicians, and others.  Many leaders, fearing arrest, are in hiding.  Many media outlets were shuttered yesterday.  We call on Honduran security forces to respect human rights and basic freedoms for all citizens."

While pentecostalism has been growing rapidly across the southern hemisphere, so too, has a United Methodist community. The United Methodists have addressed the need for housing, education and social development in addition to traditional expressions of a faith community such as worship and pastoral care.

As the street demonstrations turned ever more violent and deadly in Iran, I watched CNN in an airport lounge in Grand Junction, Colorado. I also read the news online on a laptop and kept Twitter on a cellphone.

I noticed CNN repeating Tweets shortly after they appeared on Twitter. It was startling, amazing and a real concern. As I read the Tweets I wondered if I was getting first-hand information, or fanciful concoctions. I had no way of assessing from my seat in the airport what was reliable and what was disinformation.

Nor did I have a clue about those posting, one way I assess reliability on this public forum.

Therein lies the problem with citizen journalism and it came to the fore in unmistakable fashion during the Iranian protests. Not only were those of us outside left to judge credibility for ourselves, the clamp down on journalists by the Iranian authorities meant we had decreasing ability to compare the online reports with journalists on the scene.

Left to our devices to accept or reject the Tweets, we were awash in information but I kept asking myself, is it reliable? This is the conundrum we face now with an empowered digital citizenry, the blessing and curse of instant media. First reports of major events are now as likely to come from a cellphone account as from a reporter for a news organization.

As the NY Times reports this morning, what happened in the Iranian protests revealed a new methodology for traditional journalism, a willingness by news organizations to pass along citizen information with limited verification, and in some instances with no verification.

As the article notes, it’s a new form of journalism in which we all become part of the gathering and distribution of the story. It raises several significant questions that will take time to sort out, I think. Which elements are truly significant and which are of only passing importance? How many perspectives can we absorb before we become overloaded and lose perspective altogether? What is not seen that contributes to the story but goes unreported because it’s not visible? What is the veracity of the various reports we receive and how do we sort out disinformation?

Journalism has attempted to deal with these questions among many others by developing a set of procedures and practices that strive to assure accuracy, reliability and context. Despite well-known criticism and some breaches in these procedures, journalists have reached for a level of dependability and trust that has given us quality story-telling and a sense that we could rely on the reporting. And even then we sometimes vociferously disagree with the way a given story is told.

With citizen journalism, we’ve entered a new day and my guess is that it will take us time and experience to decide upon how we will check veracity, dependability and context under these new circumstances. My experience on that day led me to multiple sources. I became engaged at a different level than my engagement with traditional print media. It required a different kind of media literacy and my unspoken but very significant cautionary suspension of belief. I took the information in but with held my belief in its accuracy until I could do more searching, watching and comparing.

That places more responsibility on me as I receive information from many sources. I need greater backgrounding in order to assess claims and make judgments, and I need to become my own fact checker as I suspend belief in all that comes to me from so many different perspectives.

The protests in Iran marked a turning point, not only for Iranian citizens who face repression and violence, but also for those on the outside trying to understand. And in both cases it’s too early to know the outcome. Internal conditions in Iran remain uncertain. The influence of citizen journalism cannot be assessed just yet.

But we do know this: the new journalism is launched.

It’s coming back to haunt me. Being named ‘”southern,” I was given two names, both of which are abbreviations of full names. I lived with the sing-song “Larry Don” until I was old enough to eliminate one name, and move far enough away so that no one knew me by my two nicknames.

I wasn’t the best of children. I learned early on that when an adult called out my two names in a high pitch emphasizing a hard “D,” it meant I was in trouble. Likely as not whatever I’d done they’d found out. On the other hand, if they slid past the “y” and into a soft, staccato “D,” it was almost melodic. I liked that best.

Part of my lack of enthusiasm about the two names was that I wasn’t alone. There were Larry Genes, Gary Dons and Jerry Dons galore in my neck of the woods. Seemed like a lack of creativity to me.

I had a friend in West Texas whose parents showed real imagination. Herman Caesar Augustus. Now that’s a name with destiny. It carries expectation.

I thought about Lawrence. But it seemed presumptuous. To be a Lawrence you need a yacht and boat shoes. We lived in the dusty high plains of West Texas. It didn’t work.

All of this reflecting was inspired by the TSA. The Transportation Safety Administration says our boarding passes must be identical to our photo IDs.. They want to know me by my full name. Well, actually they don’t care so long as it’s consistent. But my driver’s license is Larry Don and my passport says Larry D. Hate that.

Either way, I’m caught. And it’s beyond protest.

I wonder what Herman Caesar Augustus is doing these days?

Larry

We live in the age of Twitter transparency. Yesterday staff of United Methodist Communications and the United Methodist Publishing House met to discuss collaborating on the Rethink Church media and hospitality campaign. It was a good meeting. Lots of enthusiasm and good ideas.

When I returned to the office someone asked me about the meeting and I said it was a good discussion. Another person said, “Yes, so I heard.” As it takes only five minutes to drive from UMPH to UMCom, I asked if she had talked with someone there. “No,” she said, “someone was twittering from the meeting.”

Twitter is an instant megaphone. The moment the words are out of your mouth they can be repeated to the world. This is happening in millions of ways now. It’s disconcerting to some and liberating to others.

Twitter brings its own form of accountability. It’s a tool for transparency. When a speaker’s comments can be sent to the world instantly, accuracy and credibility are on line. Every phrase can be literally parsed and communicated to the world.

Anyone with a cellphone and a Twitter account is now a broadcaster and a content producer. Words of presenters have always been important. But now under the scrutiny of immediate communication, they can be sent around the world before the speaker can take a breath and begin a new sentence. There is power in this, and danger.

It seems to me that it places even greater responsibility on a speaker to be clear, coherent and careful. A mis-spoken ad lib can haunt me forever now. In the past, it may have taken on a life of its own within a small group of listeners. Now the world can mull it over.

And more serious implications can be drawn as well. In an age of great division and controversy, words can incite or motivate in a more immediate way, with good or harmful consequences.

The age of transparency is upon us and with transparency comes accountability.

Did President Obama or one of his speechwriters borrow a phrase from The United Methodist Church when he spoke on abortion at Notre Dame’s commencement? I don’t know, but I’m getting blog posts and emails from people who think he did.

I would have thought it old news, but reaction to the speech still seems to have some energy behind it. The church invites people by concluding its advertising saying, “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors. The people of The United Methodist Church.” President Obama used a phrase in his speech calling for “Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It’s a way of life that has always been the Notre Dame tradition.”

One blogger critical of Obama’s abortion position speculates that in the Internet age it’s possible an Obama speechwriter found the phrase and wrote it into the speech. (The church was advertising heavily at the same time and the phrase was on television and radio, the Internet, in national magazines, on billboards, taxis, busses and bus stops around the nation including a national launch event in Washington, D.C. In addition, several Internet and print publications wrote about the campaign before and concurrent with the President’s speech.)

The blogger questions the wisdom of using the words of one religious group to address another and attributing the concept to the second group’s tradition.

United Methodist clergyperson and blogger Lee Carey also thinks the President borrowed the United Methodist phrase. Rev. Carey believes United Methodist leaders are “overwhelmingly pro-abortion” and, presumably, the President knows this too and used it for this reason.

As I can’t recall having had a conversation about abortion with the leaders I know, I can’t confirm Rev. Carey’s observation.

But I did think it curious when I heard the President speak the words and immediately sent emails to a couple of staff people to call it to their attention.

If the phrase was borrowed it wouldn’t be the first time. We noted with appreciation that Laura Bush borrowed without attribution a phrase from the Nothing But Nets campaign to encourage people to donate to a campaign to end malaria.

In both cases it’s possible the speakers were not aware they were borrowing language from particular campaigns. There are copyright issues. But if we can end malaria through a global partnership that focuses on the bottom line of saving lives and doesn’t get mired in who gets credit, I’m all for it.

And if we can discuss contentious differences with open hearts, open minds and fair-minded words, I’m for that, too. But I’d like to make note that the phrase is very similar to, if not adapted from, a self-description of The United Methodist Church which is rooted in the Wesleyan tradition.

And on a selfish note, I get a little pleasure when we craft a phrase that people hear, remember and re-use, if that’s what happened.

As if fractured Somalia were not divided enough, a report this week says Islamic groups are realigning for renewed fighting. Somalia disintegrated 15 years ago when a corrupt government fell. Clan fighting plunged the country into anarchy and it’s remained there.

Jeffrey Gettleman writes in the New York Times that Sufi moderates are joining the fight against the Islamic Shabab insurgents. The Shabab teach an extreme form of Islam and have destroyed Sufi mosques. It’s a new and dangerous turn. Gettleman says Western nations hope the Sufis taking up arms will give moderates the upper hand.

More likely, however, it’s a sign of an intractable situation and a desperate hope for change. Trading clan for sectarian warfare is a dangerous exchange. In a society riven by division, it’s yet another deadly divide. The idea that changing the configuration of violence as a path to civic stability indicates the hopelessness of any other path and it takes more than a leap of faith to believe it will work.

It requires ignoring the potential for wider regional instability and rationalizing away the cultural and religious tensions that have long simmered in Ethiopia, disregarding the religious cleavage that is a major factor in the genocide in Darfur, minimizing destabilizing border tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea and long-standing rivalry between Somalis and Ethiopia.

If the Sufis resist the insurgents and establish a working government with support across Somalia, it will reverse a decade and a half of bloody fighting that has taken a horrible toll on the Somali people and has made the region a tinder box. But the long term solution is to address the poverty, disease, land disputes and the need for justice. In Somalia’s anarchic state these have not been at the top of the list of policymakers. But the risk of Somalia becoming a base of operations for terrorist training and international lawlessness is clear.

Somali pirates have reminded the world of the danger of this failed state, once considered so remote and insignificant it was virtually forgotten. We now understand that’s an inaccurate perception.

It’s a long shot that a moderate government can take control. If it does, however, it will need more than moral support. It will need development assistance, infrastructure reconstruction and technical assistance. The last thing the Somalis need is more bloodshed and the last thing the world needs is a prolonged religious war in the Horn of Africa.

Speaking of institutions, as I did in the previous post, I received a list of recommended websites from StumbleUpon and the British Museum’s site was listed. When I think of an institution, I think of the British Museum.

I’ve done research there and I find it a remarkably interesting place. And I realize even writing that last sentence can offend those who take offense at the very existence of institutions such as the British Museum.

I’m referring to the conversation about the role of museums, their authenticity, their value as archives, their social and cultural function as conservators or as exploiters. Museums are returning cultural objects and human remains to people from whom they extracted them years ago. It’s a conflicted context and a worthy illustration of the interplay between an institution’s mission and the social context in which it was formed. A museum reflects the values that informed the mission when it was organized in addition to the values it seeks to display through its offerings. A changing context calls those values into question and, in the case of museums, demands adaptation and deep change.

That said, this is one of the most intriguing institutional websites I’ve seen. On the face of it, it’s worth visiting for the experience it offers. It’s an example of an old-line institution breaking into the digital world.

Institutions. We don’t like them or trust them. Sometimes we want to bring them down a notch or two. They’re cumbersome, territorial, political and dysfunctional. They’re always behind the times. It’s easy to dislike them.

Writing in the 19th Century about governing institutions the sociologist Thorsten Veblen said, “Whatever is, is wrong.” He was observing the rise of institutions for a newly affluent “leisure class” in the Industrial Revolution.

Veblen said we form institutions out of our social experiences. But circumstances that cause us to create organizations have already passed by the time we get organized to deal with them. Therefore, institutions are always behind the times. It’s a social paradox.

I just sat through three weeks of non-stop meetings of an institutional church. Thinking about the institution is top of mind right now.

There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that this institution must change. It’s organized around human experiences of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. The need to change is urgent. Not merely for financial reasons. That focuses attention, but the change was needed long before the global economy fell off the cliff.

Bishop Gregory Palmer, President of the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church, told the Connectional Table and General Council on Finance and Administration this week that the church is not structured for life in the digital age. “Life happens,” he said, “off-cycle of the General Conferences of The United Methodist Church. And we’re not structured to make certain movements that might need to be made in a world, in a digital age that is changing everyday.” The General Conference is the legislative and governing body of the church.

Bishop Palmer repeated his call for a realignment of the church to allow for faster response to its mission.

I think he’s right on target. When the last general conference met barely one year ago Twitter wasn’t even known to the delegates. Most had probably heard of Facebook but weren’t using it. That’s changed. Today young adults and youth are moving from Facebook as older adults are flocking to it. Twitter is the current most popular tool for social media and many others are also out there. And we’re still learning how to use it.

These tools have affected how people relate to each other and form communities. They obviously affect how we communicate with each other. Community is a central part of the life of the church–worshiping, learning, supportive community. But community enhanced by digital tools is something the institution hasn’t known before. And we’re not organized to adapt to it quickly enough. Veblen was as right for our day as for his.

The institutional church isn’t obsolete, but it must change. I’m skeptical of anyone who claims to know precisely what the change should look like. But I’m also in agreement with Bishop Palmer that the need for change has arrived, if not passed, and we must get on with it. We’ll probably stumble and make a mistake or two along the way. But that’s OK with me because we are trying to find new ways of being the church and making its teachings relevant in a whole new social context, one unlike the human race has ever known. A bit of humility and a lot of forgiveness seem necessary prerequisites as we journey to find a new way. But we must make the journey and it’s already begun.

Can the U.S. move from a culture of instant gratification to deferred gratification? The question was inspired by a program on NPR this morning. From the car radio I went into a meeting where the same thing was being talked about.

There’s a lot of conversation and writing that says we’re re-considering our personal finances today. We’re saving more and we’re starting to live within our means. Some are asking, “How much is enough? What’s the difference between needs and necessities?”

I heard The Rev. Beverly Wilkes-Null in a meeting today speak about this and found her ideas thought-provoking. I asked her to do a brief Flip cam video interview and she graciously accepted. The video can be found here.

I’m interested in what readers of this blog think. Can we make the move from instant gratification to living with “just enough?”

Three reasons we need quality, informed health journalists: Frank Luntz, AHIP and PhRMA.

Luntz is the pollster, strategist for right wing politicians fighting against universal health care. AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) is the professional lobbying association that gave us the Harry and Louise advertising that capped off the disinformation campaign that scuttled the Clinton Health Care Initiative. And PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) is the drug industry lobbying group that prevented Medicare from bargaining for cheaper drug prices and lavished overpayment to private insurers in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.

As the nation moves into a more focused debate on health care reform it’s inevitable that the words used will be laced with emotion and, unfortunately, obfuscation. Pollster Frank Luntz offers “Ten rules for stopping the ‘Washington Takeover’ of healthcare.” That’s the opening sentence of his latest research project. Luntz advises Republicans about how to speak of key social issues.

Luntz pioneered the instant response dial. Focus groups respond immediately to the words of politicians by using a tool to dial up or down their reaction to those words. He engineers messages by determining favorable language. His research is being used to build opposition to Pres. Obama’s health care reform measures. There’s an interesting overview of Luntz’s recommendations to Senators and Congressional representatives about how to talk about health care reform on the Campaign for America’s Future blog.

Blogger Bernie Horn writes that Luntz is tailoring messages to fears he unearthed through research. For example, one fear is that a government-run health program will deny patients access to physicians and treatment they need. Unlike the current system in which health insurers control access and treatment based on their own profits, Luntz raises the specter that government bureaucrats will control our health destiny. Fear more than fact.

AHIP and PhRMA have pledged to cut costs and save two trillion dollars over the next decade. But, a moderately skeptical person has to ask, “Where have you been? And why now?” And most pertinent, “What’s in it for you?”

These are same groups that have given us the most expensive and arguably least effective health care system among developing nations. Given their track record on public policy, skepticism and a critical eye are justified.

What we need in the health care debate is accurate information, authentic debate and genuine problem-solving. We’ve had enough inaccurate and intentionally misleading rhetoric. We need health journalists who will cut through the rhetoric and interpret the issues free of the political agendas of well-heeled, self-interested lobbying groups. Health care reform must not be held hostage to politics once again.