From Daily KOS: Terrorism Increases Under Bush: will Armitage call a new press conference to announce that “you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are losing the fight” against global terrorism? Nope. They’ll just let that be. Lie, later admit it, but NEVER let the public that you just deliberately deceived know that you did so. He’ll Continue Reading
My thought exactly, but on the “may or may not be true” part, I myself am left wondering . The very prescence or fact of this, and the fact, as this writer puts it, that we didn’t know about this, raises suspicion.
On a subject so often raised by Jesus himself (the temptations of money; the warning that money corrupts; that money endangers one’s spiritual life; the Religious Right deletes these concerns from their “canon of ethics”. It simply doesn’t wash in a system allied with the interests, ultimately, of the most rich. Most of the adherents of the Religious Right aren’t Continue Reading
UMC article on Faith and Politics Cites several divergent viewpoints on the impact and role of faith in politics. This one , from a conservative Republican from Alabama, is puzzling: “If the Bible is used to try and tell someone they are wrong, that’s not what it’s intended to do,” says Rep. Spencer Bachus, a conservative Alabama Republican and Baptist. Continue Reading
In a sojo.net article today, Wallis describes a debate he had with Jerry Falwell, where Falwell told Wallis he was “about as evangelical as an oak tree” (whatever that’s supposed to mean). For one, Jerry, you CERTAINLY don’t have a corner on the “evangelical market”; and your smug know-it-all attitude certainly puts YOU in the category of “as evangelical as Continue Reading
Thanks to Mike James for this link THE QUOTE in this article, for me: It’s why we doubt the goodness of all superpowers and the righteousness of empires in any era, especially when their claims of inspiration and success invoke theology and the name of God. and amen to this one: In an election year, the particular religiosity of a Continue Reading
This article, Democracy in the Balance, at Sojourners, was excellent, by a guy for which I have tremendous respect.
The previous entry announcing my acquistion of Campolo’s new book is big for me becuase I’m having a great deal of difficulty lately finding the community of believers who believe in actually pursuing peace rather than takling the word of the rest of the world in believing that we truly achiev peace through exacting the same means as that we Continue Reading
I credit Tony Campolo for sensitizing me to many of the social and political implications of the gospel. I was indeed very open to his message, having been exposed to Clarence Jordan previously, and having started Seminary at what was at that time a very prestigious school for presenting a sound and balanced and even diverse theological education (Southern Baptist Continue Reading
Well, I went and saw it today after work. Boy am I depressed. If Bush is indeed complicit in the things that are implied, he deserves every “cheap shot” the movie takes at him. And oh, yeah, just for the Limbaugh ditto -heads out there, if the same kinds of connections were found between Clinton and the Saudis that Moore Continue Reading
An excellent post by Steven Berlin Johnson (author of Emergence) From The Body Count: Shouldn’t there be a national debate over how many innocent deaths we’re willing to tolerate for the hope of planting democracy’s seeds in the country? Is it appropriate, for starters, to kill more innocents than Bin Laden did on 9/11? We don’t know, because even raising Continue Reading
I’m back in my computer chair still thinking about this issue of war and peace and the Church. I was just thinking (and shuddering) at how so many on the right were so disgusted with “all this talk” and how “pansy” it was; that we should deal with iraq in a way that “shows them who’s boss”. And the “last Continue Reading
So, the jist of this is that I say to my fellow Church people and “followers of Jesus”: accuse me of being partisan against Republicans becuase I becry their methods and actions in this Iraq war. Fine. YOu apparently have to believe that, since that avoids the question of war in a Chriatian ethic. But this opposition has everything to Continue Reading
So I asked, later in the debate, so how do we “love our neighbor” in this context? The reply was that Jesus was talking about “personal matters”. At that point, I realized I was dealing with a philosophical separation that, for me , does not exist. I cannot separate “perosonal” and “social”. Nations cannot , and yet they claim they Continue Reading
I had a debate a couple of days ago with a couple of Bush supporters, and the extent to which they will go to see the present firestorm of criticism as nothing but partisanship is revealing to me. These supporters were bemoaning how Bush is criticized for “Everything”. When I queried whether or not the same was not done to Continue Reading