This morning I ran across this post , “Why I Support #OWS as a Reformed Theologian” , and early on in the post I was reminded of the “meme” to which occupy opposers have taken hold, that of the “unclear message”. I actgually heard two Tennessee legislators actually say they had never heard an articulation of who the 99% and the 1% Continue Reading
Monica Coleman posted back in November on the New Media Project blog, asking the question that I had begun to asking when I saw the Occupy movement start up, If we used the hashtag #occupychurch with the same revolutionary fervor as the Occupy movements, what would we doing? Here’s my first Tweet: Whatever you did for one of the least Continue Reading
This panel represents what , for me, ought be happening around the country. These clergy are in the NY area, and so it may well be even more obvious to them, as their parishioners may well be seeing the encampments every day, or often. For us in less urban settings, we are nonetheless citizensof this country, and even more Continue Reading
Yes, I’ve been harping on how the Occupy movement has , to put it somewhat hyperbolically, eaten the church’s lunch regarding getting out the message of the serious case of imbalance that’s been allowed to take place in this country. Now Fast Company has taken notice of the messaging strategy and success in terms of getting out a message. Even Continue Reading
Quote from Jim Winkler, General Secretary of UMC’s Global Board of Church and Society: “In our United Methodist Social Principles, we claim all economic systems are under the judgment of God. We believe corporations are responsible not only to their stockholders but to their other stakeholders.†Winkler believes that if alive, John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, would at Continue Reading
The “angel” here is, as Forbe’s reads Walter Wink’s exploration of “The Powers”: Walter Wink’s concept of “the powers” in which he describes that there is, in a sense, an angel of every nation. “The angel or spirit of America,” Wink writes, “stands, as it were, before God; it bears the knowledge of that to which it is called. The Continue Reading
Author Ched Myers (Binding the Strong Man, Who Will Roll Away the Stone, Ambassadors of Reconciliation) offers up some resources for reflection on Occupy: http://www.chedmyers.org/blog/2011/12/06/few-advent-resources-occupy-cpt-and-god-exodus-link-our-recent-sermon
It’s a bit frustrating to see that we’re talking about “sympathetic churches” (neccessary because of the Right wing church whose bullhorn is so loud that many other more moderate churches also absorb the “anti-protest”, status-quo defending posture of the America-loving Christian) rather than asking where the churches have been all along as this economic tipping of the scales has been Continue Reading
Denominational agency efforts and reports re: economic/budget issues affecting our economy are few on the front pages of the denominations’ websites. (This post was originally published on Sep. 29, and I am re-posting it today to check on who may or may not have made progress on this front, now that the OWS movment has garnered at least some popularity, Continue Reading
Jim Rice writes in Sojourners magazine about Occupy. Sojourners is one of those communities that have become a mashup of activist, publishers, movementOrganizers….and has been an example of the kind of theological discernment regarding our country and its churches that have been seeing the kinds of things Occupy has been good at bringing into movement form in the public square. Continue Reading
Still finding tasty theological results from my Googling of “Walter Wink powers occupy”. Here’s one on the sequence implied in Walter Wink’s “Powers” series of books: As the theologian Walter Wink shows, challenging a dominant system requires a three-part process: naming the powers, unmasking the powers, engaging the powers(11). Their white noise of distraction and obfuscation is the means by Continue Reading
The title of this post is from a blog post in Sierra Voices by Sharon Delgado. It was another result in a search I just did on Google using “Walter Wink Powers Occupy”, a search that has yielded some good “Occupy Theology”. I am going to stand in solidarity with those who are oppressed by the current corporate-dominated Empire, and Continue Reading
University of Massachusetts at Amherst emeritus economics professor Richard Wolff speaks about some of the roots of, and solutions to, the economic inequality that’s finally being acknowledged On OWS: It’s clearly a very, very popular movement right from the beginning, thereby giving the lie to those had felt, and thought and said that there’s no left wing base in the Continue Reading
Really good article here from David Henson (via Mike Morell) on encounter with other religious faiths. and how this can have a renewing effect on one’s own faith. I thought as I read the following line from a Hindu to a Christian who had begun a conversation with some thoujghts about “Hindu scripture”, that this reply would not be received Continue Reading
I thought when I heard the jobs report, that this might give many cause to slack off with the efforts to jump start jobs; to insititute a jobs program that will give more than nominal job growth; which we definitely need to have. After all, behind these “better” numbers is the sobering fact that we’d have to continue such “better” Continue Reading