Patheos
Patheos Press Items
10/24/2011
Yet, in the larger scheme of things, I’m not the 99%, I’m the “1.” What I have is a product of a consumerism that too often captures my imagination and continues a system of injustice for the true 99% – the impoverished throughout the globe. In many ways, I’m the 1% and need the caring Shepherd to reconcile me back to the global flock. Jim Wallis reflects this tension brilliantly:
Tomorrow, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be more than $1.259 trillion.
Tomorrow, almost 14 million Americans will still be unemployed.
Tomorrow, the homes of more than 2,500 new U.S. families will enter foreclosure.
Tomorrow, one in seven U.S. households still won’t know where their next meal is coming from.
Tomorrow, one in four American children under the age of six will still be living below the poverty line.
Tomorrow, three billion people around the globe will still be living on less than $2.50 a day.
Tomorrow, 400 million children will still lack access to clean water.
Tomorrow, 300 children under the age of five will die in the Horn of Africa because of famine.
10/24/2011
In moving from inclusive table fellowship to action against the Temple, Jesus shifted from the controversial (but more acceptable) practice of eating with others across diverse socioeconomic boundaries to confronting the institutional system that create and entrench unequal and unjust socioeconomic boundaries in the first place. Christian social justice advocate Jim Wallis similarly likes to say, “You can’t just keep pulling people’s bodies out of the river without sending somebody upstream to see what or who is throwing them in.”
03/11/2011
As the 237 millionaires in the United States Congress argue about the nation's economic, political, and moral priorities (see last week's "What Would Jesus Cut?"), one over-arching truth sits largely unexamined, unmentioned except for firebrands like Michael Moore.
03/10/2011
If Jesus were in Washington, D.C. just now—or in any of our state legislatures—I imagine that the needs of children, the poor, and the outsider would engage his interest. And despite the quotation I've ripped from context and pasted above, I have to assume that given the budget cuts proposed by Republicans, Speaker Boehner, and others in his train would vehemently disagree with me.
08/09/2010
Before looking forward to the future of evangelical engagement in the political realm, I want to look back at the trajectory of your career, and how it reflects the fact that there has already been significant change in the way Christians approach politics. When you left Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and founded The Post-American in 1971, the discourse on faith and politics was quite different from today. What did you set out to accomplish?
05/05/2009
Whether you want to read, study, pray or meditate, there are multiple websites to visit. A library of essays for reflection and ideas for prayer are on www.explorefaith.org, a site featuring contributors such as Marcus Borg and Phyllis Tickle. For an exploration of twelve important Christian spiritual practices and ways to keep them, there is www.practicingourfaith.org. The Upper Room provides daily devotions from a mainline perspective, and if you enjoy studying the daily lectionary from your computer or Blackberry, you can find the day’s passage on most denominational sites (try www.pcusa.org/lectionary). For the latest in religion commentary, magazines such as Christian Century and Sojourners put a lot of their print content online. It’s easy now to find Christian classics in the public domain—things like Jonathan Edward’s Treatise on Grace or John Wesley’s journals—at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (www.ccel.org) which has a long list of downloadable documents for reflection and study.
We’d also do well to heed the words of wisdom from veterans of those movements such as Jim Wallis – especially his reminder of how essential nonviolence is to effective protest.
With the Occupy Wall Street protest entering its fifth week, there is no shortage of commentary reflecting Christian perspectives. Some, like Jim Wallis of Sojourners, are generally sympathetic to the protests. Bruce Wydick at Christianity Today takes the opportunity to point out that the conditions being protested have been brought on by a crisis in American values; they cannot be blamed neatly on one sociopolitical faction or another.
- « first
- ‹ previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
