Bill Moyers articulates the base reaction I have to the death of Jerry Falwell. His “legacy” if you will, was the sowing of intolerance. It’s what Moyers describes as Falwell’s “theology of fear and loathing”. That about sums it up. Falwell fueled the fires of religious bigotry. The first two minutes of Moyer’s spot on Bruce Bawer, who has Continue Reading
From Dan, once again (really a great series on Christianity and Capitalism) Christians, following the “preferential option” exercised by God, and the life-trajectory established by Jesus, must learn to share life together with the poor. In order to grasp just how much this differs from the charity that is affirmed by capitalism, we must come to recognize the ways in Continue Reading
An absolutely charged up podcast from NPR features Christopher Hitchens , along with guests Stephan Munsey and Bill Leonard (my Church History II prof way back in 1979). I can see the qualities that James K.A. Smith finds attractive in listening to Hitchens. I may yet decide to get the audio book of God is Not Great (I can get Continue Reading
“This world can be messy and dangerous, but it’s a world made better by American power and American values,†—Dick Cheney, aboard a carrier this week I am so appalled and set on edge by the arrogant and dangerous swagger of this man. And as I ponder all the efforts to get Iran to stop enriching uranium, I always shake Continue Reading
I’ve been listening to the unabridged audiobook of Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution, and it is causing all sorts of resistance in me. It’s great, but it’s also troubling, because I feel totally aware of how my theology is SO NOT my life. And it isn’t Shane that communicates this. Shane is about as un-judgmental as it gets. It helps Continue Reading
Dan , in his “blog stream” of posts on Christianity and Capitalism, posted this early this morning, and I was particularly drawn to this observation : What really got me thinking about all this in more detail was something a friend of mine wrote recently. He and his wife are rooted in an innercity neighborhood and trying to find ways Continue Reading
I agree with Dave I want a checkbox that tells MSNBC that I don’t want any more Virginia Tech stories And every other outlet as well. This indeed has been a terrible thing, but there is an unjust war going on, and hundreds dying every day or couple of days, but hey, they aren’t American (only a few of them Continue Reading
Good post on formation and its importance, and how churches today , in encouraging the secular value of “think for yourself” , also outsource much of the formation of the person to secular values which derive their perspectives from OTHER than the Kingdom of God. I’m not attracted to Catholicism, but I am very much attracted to the tradition of self-conscious, disciplined Continue Reading
Jim Wallis’ posts on his blog, reminding us of Bonhoeffer on this day in 1945 Sixty-two years ago today, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at the Nazi concentration camp in Flossenberg, Germany Source: God’s Politics – Jim Wallis blog, faith blog, religion, christian, christianity, politics, values
This piece was pointed to by Jim Wallis on the God’s Politics blog. we need to be much more explicit on this point: from a Christian perspective, the hope of the world is in Jesus Christ, and he has chosen to center this hope in the church he established. Readers of our work should not have to figure out Continue Reading
In his Matthew commentary, Hauerwas articulates something I have been contemplating ever since seeing “Theologians Under Hitler” for the first time, and really since I started reading Bonhoeffer again after a long stretch of time since last reading several selections in Letters and Papers from Prison back in the early 80’s. Rightly reading the signs of the times requires a church Continue Reading
The article to which Eric points us has me quite studious this morning. The only proper sense of “theocracy†is the simple recognition that God rules the world. Of course, the matter is not “simple” when one considers the radical re-ordering of the very questions that get asked when one begins here. The wrestling with the powers like the state and “the city” (Cavanaugh Continue Reading
Gav called my attention to this post (I often check Steve’s blog….I have no idea why its not on my RSS list…maybe because I couldn’t find the RSS link, so I just used the usual blogspot /atom.xml after the URL and it worked, as I thought it might) It’s hard to follow Jesus and his way of radical obedience to Continue Reading
Another “morsel” from Eric’s post this morning: No wonder people are pissed that the news networks wouldn’t stop covering the death of Anna Nicole Smith — they wanted to (rightly) switch back to the “things that matter” which are, you know, all the presidential hopefuls announcing their candidacy.Not that any of these things aren’t important. Of course they are important. Continue Reading
These things (see quote below) have been brewing for months, and people keep writing articles about it, but I’d perhaps like to hear of a massive national human blockade or something; something to say to these lunatics “no way, you evil, arrogant, dangerous idiots”. How about our brave media getting this unbelievable nonsense onto the airwaves and spelling it out Continue Reading