Several years ago, faced with a disastrous federal budget proposal, Sojourners started using the phrase “budgets are moral documents.” That phrase has now entered the com
Columns
Ed Spivey Jr. 5-01-2009
I hold in my hand a printout of the e-mail I just received from Barack Obama.
Ed Spivey Jr. 4-01-2009
With the nation facing fiscal uncertainty (actually, complete and absolute certainty—just like the inevitable wedgie I got every day in junior-high gym class), maybe it&rsq
Jim Wallis 4-01-2009
If we can learn new habits of the heart from this economic crisis, perhaps the suffering can be redemptive.
Ed Spivey Jr. 2-01-2009
The International Space Station is a cramped scientific laboratory orbiting in an environment where temperatures on a good day top out at minus 273 degrees Celsius.
Rose Marie Berger 2-01-2009
On Jan. 20, the United States of America inaugurates its first African-American president and first Catholic vice president.
Ed Spivey Jr. 1-01-2009
Made you look. Anyway, the world economy continues to spin downward despite my previous column on the subject, which was intended to bring needed comic relief to struggling world markets.
Jim Wallis 1-01-2009
The faith community can help bring people together on the biggest moral issues of our time, even across old political divisions.
Ed Spivey Jr. 12-01-2008
The following is an excerpt from economic philosopher Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations treatise, one of the driving intellectual forces behind contemporary market theory.
Rose Marie Berger 12-01-2008
The great wheel of the Christian liturgical year is turning once again.
Jim Wallis 11-01-2008
With perhaps the most consequential election of any of our lifetimes only a few weeks away, it’s time to take a step back and reflect on what is at stake. We’ve heard a lot about personalities, seen far too many negative ads, and been spun so many times our heads are swimming. But none of that should determine our vote.
As Christians, we know that we will not be able to vote for the kingdom of God. It is not on the ballot. Yet there are very important choices to make that will significantly impact the common good and the health of this nation—and of the world. So let us all exercise our crucial right to vote and to apply our Christian conscience to those decisions. And in the finite and imperfect political decisions of this and any election, let us each promise to respect the political conscience of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Here are 10 issues to consider in casting a ballot.
1. The economy is in grave danger. This fall, the financial systems of the nation and the world nearly collapsed. Three out of the nation’s top five investment banks were not able to weather the financial storms triggered by the subprime lending crisis, and the squalls shook the stock market as well. And now a massive government bailout of private debt is reshaping the system. Ordinary Americans are worried about their jobs, their homes, college and retirement funds, and, much worse, a downward economic spiral that affects all of us.
Ed Spivey Jr. 11-01-2008
Editor’s Note: Okay, Ed, the lawyer has finished looking through your column to make sure it’s totally nonpartisan and that it doesn’t favor or oppose either candidate. With a few minor deletions, he says it’s good to go.
As Election Day approaches, more Americans are anxious about the nnnn future. With the world economy in nnnn—for example, Afghanistan’s opium crop is down by almost 19 percent—America’s nnnnn has never been more needed. And yet, after a grueling nominating process, no nnn candidate has emerged that could reassure the world that Washington, D.C., can be anything more than a big nnn pile of scheming nnnn.
But enough about Dick Cheney’s small group.
On the nnnnnnnn side, the candidate is nnnn nnnn, except for the fact that he’s nnnn and was born in Indonesia, or possibly Illinois, and that he fathered two children with a woman in Chicago. His campaign is promising a quick, bipartisan nnnn to every nnnn problem facing this nation, except for the problem of creating false expectations for bipartisan nnnn.
And let’s be honest, he’s a little more nnnnnn than the rest of us.
Jim Wallis 9-01-2008
A solution to poverty will take both liberals and conservatives and those who are neither.