Faith and Politics
During the South Carolina Republican debate, Mike Huckabee garnered greatest applause when defending his views of wifely submission as part of his evangelical faith. The questioner quizzed Huckabee about being one of 131 signers of a 1998 USA Today ad by the Southern Baptist Convention that asserted, "a wife is to graciously submit herself to the servant leadership of her husband." Huckabee responded by saying "I am not the least bit ashamed of my faith." He joked that his own wife [...]
The upcoming primary in South Carolina will be critical for both the Democrats and the Republicans, say the media pundits. And South Carolina is full of evangelicals, they also say. But they have absolutely no clue about what that means.
For example, the exit polls in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary have asked departing Republican voters if they are "evangelicals," but they don't ask the same question of exiting Democrats-therefore assuming there aren't any evangelicals [...]
Yesterday I had the chance to attend a compelling panel hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Penn Press titled "Human Rights and the 2008 Presidential Campaign." The panel discussed a report released by [...]
In two weeks, you will have your first chance to read Jim Wallis' latest book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. You'll soon hear about the upcoming book tour, a new website featuring the book and a slate of other activities planned around the launch.
I had the chance to read the manuscript a few months ago, and I feel real excitement about what this book can mean to our personal lives as sojourners, to our faith [...]
[Continued from parts one and two. Click here to read the full response as one post.] On Jan. 3, Focus on the Family's CitizenLink criticized those of us who responded to an invitation to dialogue with 138 Muslim scholars.
The newest issue of Sojourners, hitting mailboxes and newsstands soon, has a photo of Andrew Natsios, President Bush's special envoy for Sudan at press time. Natsios stepped down [...]
The new political buzzword is change. Every candidate claims to be the change candidate-and every pundit is contrasting "change" with "establishment." In the midst of the change-din, I would like to suggest that there is an important question to ask the candidates: "How will you lead change?"
Harvard leadership professor Ronald Heifetz has identified two major approaches to change: technical fixes and adaptive change. In her fine book, Leadership Can Be Taught, Sharon Daloz [...]
This past Friday Bill Maher crossed the WGA picket line to offer this witticism on Late Night with Conan O'Brien:
You can't be a rational person six days a week
Last year, my wife Jeanette and I returned to Honduras with a group from our congregation. What alarmed me was that a decade ago the MS (La Mara Salvatrucha) had a considerable presence in many of the poorest neighborhoods. Now they have a stronghold. One of my pastor friends told me, "Gabriel, people are afraid to come to church. The MS killed a woman in front of the church just the other day." The MS is going global. Recently Law & Order had an episode that featured the MS [...]
[Continued from yesterday's part one] On January 3, 2008, Focus on the Family's CitizenLink criticized those of us who responded to an invitation to dialogue with 138 Muslim scholars.
With the pivotal event of the Iowa Caucuses, news analyses have said that Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are now the defining candidates of this campaign-even if they don't win their respective nominations. It appears Obama has a better chance to do that than Huckabee does, but there is no telling how far he can go and, win or not, he could help redefine the Republican Party. In Sunday's New York Times, Frank [...]
I'm volunteering for a presidential candidate, mostly making phone calls to people in various states at volunteer headquarters. It is encouraging to work with people of all ages, walks of life, and races - people who, like me, were sideliners who are now enthusiastically involved with a sense of possibilities, believing that our efforts make a difference and things can change. My afternoon phone calls primarily reach elderly or others who are homebound. What a slice of the U.S.: "Organ" [...]
Before joining Sojourners, my wife, Amy, and I spent the last five years doing urban ministry in Boston. We were invited to start a church in an abandoned chop shop by the matriarch and saint of the neighborhood, Ma Siss. The Boston Globe and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael [...]
On January 3, Focus on the Family's CitizenLink sent an email by associate editor Stephen Adams called, "Evangelical Leaders Pledge Common Cause with Islam." Their target once again was the National Association of Evangelicals, echoing an attempt last year to oust Richard Cizik for having common cause with the birds of [...]
Now that the people of Iowa have chosen Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama as their nominees for president, pundits will spend much of the next few days (until New Hampshire at least) analyzing the results. Many will note religion as an important factor-especially as evangelicals turned out largely for Huckabee.
But evangelicals are not the only religion story from Iowa. Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama represent something much more profound in American politics [...]
This evening, the presidential election of 2008 officially begins with the Iowa caucuses-intense political contests taking place in every county of that Midwestern state. The national campaign, of course, has already been going on for many months (with the earliest start in the history of presidential politics), but now the endless polling will be replaced by actual election results in state caucuses and primaries. Iowa is the starting gun in the political battle that leads to the party [...]
A lot of us are people without a label these days.
Media folks want to call us the "Religious Left," since they can tell we're not the Religious Right. But that bipolar terminology brings a lot of baggage we neither want nor believe in. There's "Progressive Christians"
Bob Dylan mural in downtown Minneapolis. Image via popturf.com/Flickr.com
I've had an old 1989 tune by Bob Dylan running through my head for the last couple weeks. Unlike some other things that get stuck in my mind
The vicious assassination of Benazir Bhutto means many things for our world. Already pundits are rushing to consider what it means for our presidential elections here in the U.S. Who will it help most - Giuliani? Clinton? Biden? Obama? Of course there's a place for this kind of analysis, but I believe at least four other kinds of reflection should not be rushed over in the process.
First, we should pause to consider what this means for Pakistanis. There's something about hearing people express [...]