[Vision2020] Clergy put on notice

[J Ford]

Well, let's see if anyone responds to this - my hope is that the silence 
does not become deafening:

Clergy remains silent

It’s been a week, but Ed Iverson’s mean-spirited op-ed regarding immigrants 
still galls me (Opinion, 6 & 7). Not because I disagree that sooner or 
later, every country, including ours, has to have an end to immigration. 
Iverson’s assertion that immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are lazy is about 
as specious a claim as anyone could make. I can’t imagine a fat, old 
librarian cutting asparagus in the fields of southern Washington with a 
knife, a job done by illegal immigrants that is the extreme of physical 
hardship. But Iverson already has shown that he’s the village idiot in any 
number of columns. As an editorial writer, I’ve already accepted the fact 
that between him and Michael O’Neal, they’ve set new grounds for 
mean-spiritedness in any small-town paper’s op-ed section.

What’s upsetting is the silence of the rest of the clergy in the rest of the 
Pullman/Moscow community. Iverson regularly distinguishes between himself 
and his critics as him being one with the Lord. The rest of us who are not 
copacetic with his worldview are contemptible heathens.

How does any of the malarkey written by Iverson square with anyone raised 
with Christ as their personal savior? Christ lived in poverty. He gave his 
cloak away. He healed the sick. He lived a life, until he was crucified, 
that was a model of compassion, poverty and mercy that all, Christian or 
non-Christian, could look at and aspire to emulate.

The silence of the clergy in this community to the continual affronts posed 
by Iverson and his claque are deafening. I have two questions for them. 
First, does he represent the Christian viewpoint in our community? And 
secondly, if his insistent mean-spiritedness does not represent you, why do 
you not speak out? If you believe in the Lord’s judgment, how will your 
silence be judged?

Chuck Pezeshki, Pullman

J  :]

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