Tag Archives: opus the penguin

Bloom County Copyright Berkeley Breathed 1988 found at www.gocomics.com

Over the past year or so I have had a number of encounters with various people, most of whom that I don’t know but then some that I have known for years and a troubling word keeps arising.  The “L word” no not “Lesbian” like in the Showtime drama but “Liberal” like in Bill Clinton or even better John Kerry or Jimmy Carter since they were in the Navy for a time.

It bothered me at first as I could not fathom that I might even be considered a liberal. I was a Reagan Republican and even worked for Gerald Ford as a campaign volunteer against Jimmy Carter when I was in high school. Now I did moderate over the years even though until I went to Iraq I listened to conservative talk radio almost every day.  However the charge has been made enough for me to actually have fun with it and not take those who call me a liberal too seriously or for that matter to take myself too seriously.

Bloom County Copyright Berkeley Breathed 1988 found at www.gocomics.com

It has actually become funny to me how often that this pops up. I suppose it is because I am not easy to pin down and as my Church history professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary said “Liberal to most people is ‘anyone to the left of me.’” He was right. Back in those days the Southern Baptists had something called “moderates” which in most other denominations would have been considered conservatives or even fundamentalists. However in the SBC since they were to the left of men like Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler and W.A. Criswell they were not “moderates” but “liberals.” At Southwestern though I wasn’t a Southern Baptist I certainly fit in with the dying breed called moderates.  I used a NRSV Bible, the kind with inclusive language and by my senior year was a closet Catholic or Anglo-Catholic, which meant that to the Fundamentalists I was a liberal. Of course doing my taped sermons in preaching lab in a tweed sports jacket and black or white long sleeve turtleneck shirt and khaki pants didn’t help matters in how I was perceived. This was of course before I wore a clerical collar which I’m sure would have gone over even worse than my tweed, turtleneck and khaki look.  Since most of my fellow students were wearing black or navy blue suits and power ties as they were using the tape as an audition tape for call committees at churches that they were applying pastor at I was the odd bird out.  In fact kind of like a certain flightless fowl in the Bloom County comic strip named Opus the Penguin.

I am pretty much a moderate.  This means that basically I find little in common with any kind of extremist be they from the right or left in politics, religion or even those that crusade for or against the designated hitter rule in the American League.  I find myself in the middle on most issues which often means to attempt not to offend my friends on the far right or far left I have to be somewhat nuanced in how I say things. Of course to the right now days, especially after the 2004 election when John Kerry was “nuanced” that the word is associated with being a liberal. I find this somewhat amusing.  Basically I will lean slightly to the right on some things and slightly to the left on others occasionally siding with conservatives and sometimes with liberals. In today’s charged political climate of cultural, political and religious wars in American churches and the body politic I am considered by conservatives that don’t really know me as a liberal. Those that really know me for the most part consider me a moderate that maybe is leaning more to the left than I used to.

So in all unserious seriousness I have found comfort and consolation and a certain kinship with Opus the Penguin.  What popped into my phonographic mind which spins around at 45 RPM when I was last called a liberal was the comic at the top of this article.  So anyway since I have recently discovered an online archive of the Bloom County strips at www.gocomics.com I can finally occasionally post one on this site.

Here’s to moderation! Cheers!

So anyway until tomorrow when I post my MLB League Championship Series predictions I will say “goodnight.”

Peace

Padre Steve+