I found the article to which my previous post on Cavanaugh’s article refers, and this guy is some theological tool. For instance: Just-war thinking, as Johnson reminded us, is not only about the justification of the resort to armed force or the ways in which that force is deployed. Just-war thinking also includes a serious moral analysis of the goal Continue Reading
This post by Shane Claiborne of The Simple Way on the God’s Politics blog highlights the moral bankruptcy of what all-t00-many Christians accept as “sad but true” about the “way things are”, supposedly absolving them of the call to take Jesus seriously when he tells us to love our enemies, and not return evil for evil. The Church has “given Continue Reading
A scene in Munich, where the “team” assembled to exact vengeance on the planners of the Munich massacre, this romantic, serious music is playing as the men talk about “being assassins”; the whole scene is shot with an air of “these are ordinary men about to do bad things”, but these are “necessary” things; things they have to “live with” Continue Reading
[B]oth Jesus and Paul are not so much trapped in a negation of global imperialism as engaged in establishing its positive alternative here below upon this earth.—John Dominic Crossan, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom, 409. “This is about fixing the world’s attention”, the Israeli leadership says in a meeting portrayed in the Continue Reading
From a tribute by Stanley Hauerwas to John Howard Yoder in FirstThings, 1998: This beautiful and exacting passage, beautiful because of its exactness, comes close to the end of The Politics of Jesus. I believe that what John said in it is not only the heart of his work, but also the heart of what it means to live as Continue Reading
I have been derelict in my agreement I made in joining the Christian Peace Bloggers blogring (lower right, near the bottom of the sidebar). It’s been difficult for me to know how to blog this. (It’s been more difficult lately, to blog in general, but this subject seems to promise a challenge that I am hesitant of late to undertake. Continue Reading
Here is a segment of a very good review and reaction to the movie 300 from Charlie Pardue. The overtones of what Walter Wink calls “redemptive violence” are nowhere more pronounced than in 300. The Spartan culture while shown as a somewhat barbaric solider society is nonetheless glorified in perhaps every barbaric trait other than their systematic killing of “less Continue Reading
This guy needs to be excommunicated from the United Methodist Church. There are such things as “AntiChrist” behavior, and this ranks up on a scale with the worst war-mongers in history. And insanity as well. This is truly the only “language they understand”. This belittles the Bushism “Jesus Christ is my favorite philosopher”. Jesus is to be for Christians the Saviour, Continue Reading
It’s like a ritual. On Saturday I often blog politics. Then on Sunday, I ask “How long, O Lord?” Oh for the day when I can find the embodied community where I can ask the latter question with others who are asking this but can’t seem to find a community who is asking this as a corporate expression of this Continue Reading
This is a great post on the Daily posts at inward/outward: [Clarence Jordan recounts a conversation with a church deacon in which the man said he would do business with Jordan if he made a public statement in the local Americus, Georgia, paper that they no longer believed in integration]: I said, “Now, my dear friend, we didn’t come in Continue Reading
A really good, inspiring post from Anthony on MLK Day So the primary site of my reflection on King is ecclesial…from the site of the church. The church in its liturgy, sacraments, and in its various practices of what I call neighbor-love. The Dream, as I have come to understand it, is an eschatological hope but a liturgical practice whereby the Continue Reading
Juan Cole on MLK and Vietnam/Iraq points out what our “liberal media” won’t; that MLK staunchly opposed Kennedy-Johnson on Vietnam. He hurt himself immensely in a political sense by not “sticking to civil rights”, linking the war to issues of justice. You don’t hear much about THAT Martin Luther King when the holiday is on the news. Neither do you Continue Reading
Thanks to Jonathan for this quote: “Being Christian” is to be incorporated into a community constituted by the stories of God, which, as a consequence, necessarily puts one in tension with the world that does not share those stories.” – Stanley Hauerwas Source: The Phaith of St. Phransus: ON BEING A CHRISTIAN PACIFIST…
From an interview with Hauerwas: The problem with the religious right is, again, that they identify Christianity with America. Think, for example, about the use of the American flag in the church. The American flag shouldn’t be in the church. That’s idolatry. The American flag represents the significant sacrifice that people made have made for this country. I respect that Continue Reading
Joseph LaConte of the Heritage Foundation represents the nationalist theology , here taking on Stanley Hauerwas with some of his “real world” thinking; he’s so thoroughly convinced that “logic” is on his side that he doesn’t even bother to think (even if he did, it seems that his system of thinking would be incapable of questioning the “reality” that “Defense” is the Continue Reading