Of course they did. To challenge the idea that “praying” somehow “absolves” one from actual action is going to get push-back from those who wish to, in effect, live “religiously vicariously” rather than upset any patterns of living. It’s one of those social consequences of the “Gnostic” fallacy that our “religious life” is a private, “internal” matter; and that our Continue Reading
On “Capitalism has lifted people out of poverty”: “In 2018, the World Bank estimated that the current path of carbon emissions would sharply diminish the living conditions of 800 million living throughout South Asia. One hundred million, they say, will be dragged into extreme poverty by climate change just over the next decade. Perhaps “back into” is more appropriate: many Continue Reading
A bit more on my background passage that I invoked a couple days ago. (Here’s a direct link to that post : ) “Whom we have seen” vs “God, whom we have not seen” in I John 4:19-20 as we know, is not a critique of “belief in God”, but a recognition of the call to respond to actual, active Continue Reading
Perhaps, there may even come a day when some who favored or even voted for the Traditionalist Plan will look back on this past week and ask the question “What have we done?” They will be welcome to join the new way forward towards Beloved Community, and they won’t even have to sign anything. — Mark Davies
via The Way Backward
Indeed. Ironic that those most unconscious of this are those most strongly insisting that “this is what God says in His Word”. They insist that “they have no choice” but to obey “His Word”, all the while being unable to distinguish “reading one’s self interpreting the Bible” from “The Word”. Duke McCall’s words in his sermon in chapel at Southern Continue Reading
Perhaps this all has something to do with fossil fuel corporations and their executives being able to make trillions of dollars by keeping us from trusting what climate scientists are saying. Perhaps they think they can trust that these trillions of dollars will keep them safe when the climate is in chaos, but that is not trusting in God, that Continue Reading
via the blog of
This post, written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, observes how King’s years between that point and his “I’ve been the Mountaintop” speech delivered the night before his assassination, have not been explored much at all in the King “Holiday” messages. Those years do not “fit the narrative” desired for an “American hero”, so that his dream “that my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” begins to sound more like “Be all that you can be”, and ignore what King was to explore in the days ahead, as he continued his path to uncovering what it was in America that was KEEPING it’s people from discovering what they were meant to be, and that it went beyond “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” and into the evils of not only racism but militarism and materialism (economic justice)
So, it seems that MLK , as do many of us as we grow, added to that dream in his last 5 years. As he saw what was involved in getting there to that mountaintop, the dream took on some new elements. The dream envisioned a larger context of what would have to happen to see the “ending”. For my my last 5 years (just short of that), I have seen the relevance of the Ecological Crisis to MLK’s dream. Drew Dellinger did research on the hints of MLK himself understanding this linkage. “All life is INTER-related.” he often said. And also “We’re not going to have peace on Earth until we understand the interrelated structure of all reality”.
Davies has seen this as well, for probably longer than I have.
“as we look at the global ecological challenges of our day, if we do not address them systemically, we will likely not make the progress necessary to avoid a major global ecological crisis in the first half of this century. A national holiday for Martin Luther King and a monument in Washington or even another March on Washington, although all good things, will by themselves not bring about equal opportunity – only systemic changes will do that. The celebration of Earth Day, curbside recycling, more efficient light bulbs, and better fuel efficiency, although all good things, will by themselves not bring about ecological sustainability – only more thorough systemic changes will do that. ”
Mark Davies is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics and Director of the World House Institute for Social and Ecological Responsibility at Oklahoma City University. He is the Executive Director of the Leadership, Education, and Development (LEaD) Hub North America of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church and an Oklahoma Humanities State Scholar.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Forgotten Years, September 1963-1968.
via Why the Right and the Centrists Attack Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by Mark Davies
