Amen to this! From Mark Davies: “By giving Christianity legitimacy and imperial protection and support, the empire was able to co-opt Christianity more effectively for its own purposes and create an image of Jesus and form an institutional church that would be empire friendly. Once the empire co-opted the Jesus movement, it focused on the otherworldly aspects of Christianity in Continue Reading
Normal And Patriotic People by Mark Davies- The Oklahoma Observer https://buff.ly/2SZJpft A similar cartoon could show some WCA** people pointing to GLBTQ people seeking full inclusion, saying “No way, they will destroy us”, while the Ecological Crisis continues to worsen. (*** Wesleyan Covenant Association within the UMC movement to encourage split over the GLBTQ Full-inclusion issue)
This UMNS News story ( “Delegation chairs look toward General Conference” https://buff.ly/2QDZNWA ) contained a comment “The issue is Scriptural Authority! ” Which, in this context means: “What **I** say the Bible says is what it means, and to “fail” to agree to that is to “question Scriptural Authority”. In other words, difference in interpretation is the issue, and the issue Continue Reading
My previous post reminds me again of one of my neighborhood neighbors, who puts out a yard sign every year that says “Jesus is the Reason for the Season”. The first year I noticed it there it was alongside a “Bush/Cheney” sign, and again in 2003 after the Iraq debacle where they bombed and killed thousands upon thousands of innnocent Continue Reading
Dale Lature 3 yrs ago December 15, 2015 “Stewardship is always on behalf of another. As stewards we are entrusted with responsibility for, not possession of, the Earth.” – BrianHenning in For Our Common Home: Process-Relational Responses to Laudato Si
“In popular religious practice there isn’t always a clean line between this “immanent” religion and the transcendent alternative offered by Christianity and Judaism. ” https://buff.ly/2C8e98H Douthat should then re-write and re-think what he wrote in the paragraphs before this. His attempts henceforth in this article to explain the difference are awkward and shallow and full of caricature. “Until then, those Continue Reading
“this paganism is …deliberately agnostic about final things, what awaits beyond the shores of this world, and it is skeptical of the idea that there exists some ascetic, world-denying moral standard to which we should aspire.” — Douthat buff.ly/2C8e98H You’d better believe that it is “skeptical “, because “some ascetic, world-denying moral standard” is a dualism that is not found Continue Reading
“return of a pagan religious conception, which was half-buried (though never fully so) by the rise of Christianity. What is that conception? Simply this: that divinity is fundamentally inside the world rather than outside it; that God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator, and that meaning and morality and metaphysical experience Continue Reading
One of those mornings when I get up to go to the bathroom (this time at 2am) and sleep does not come when I get back into bed. Tried for over an hour. Got up finally at 3:30. Finally Mr. Sandman seems to be in the neighborhood.
I love it! From chapter 2 of the online (on Facebook) novel of Dennis C Benson: “Dee steps out onto his outdoor perch pod. He is standing overlooking Lake Michigan. His breath catches as he surveys the awesome vista before him, and on each side of him. He can see forever. This high dune vista is one of the true gifts of Continue Reading
Wow. I am in one of those temporary funks, which happens to me a lot when I read something by an esteemed theological thinker who presents a “list” of “essential” things like a book list or “biggest issues” list, of 5 or 10 or 20, and not ONE of them has anything to do with the ecological emergency in which Continue Reading
“[Thomas] Merton wrote extensively of the Cosmic Christ such as the following: “The Blinding One….speaks to us gently in ten thousand things….He shines not on them but from within them.”
“[Thomas] Merton predicted that the marriage of religious fundamentalism and American nationalism would produce “the greatest orgy of idolatry the world has ever seen.”” [contentcards url=”https://buff.ly/2Gnv3ED” target=”_blank”]
“Everyone who knew warned us, but a well-funded campaign by fossil-fuel interests made sure that no one believed them. Actually, now we are in the sequel, Cassandra II, where everyone believes her, but no one will lift a finger to do anything to help.” https://buff.ly/2RNy4z9
Really good Wordcamp Presentations so far this morning…#WCUS #WCUS18 here in downtown Nashville… I am highly pumped