Carrying on with the thoughts of the previous post, the participation by Christians in the “lexicon” of the patriotic piety, whether it be from the left or the right, is increasingly disturbing to me. I have been noticing more and more of that as I read Hauerwas and the RO writers (JKA Smith, William Cavanaugh, Daniel Bell, John Milbank, Graham Continue Reading
How the Christian right is reimagining U.S. history Posted on Wednesday, January 10, 2007. Originally from December 2006. By Jeff Sharlet. These are days of the sword, literally; affluent members of the movement gift one another with real blades crafted to medieval standards, a fad inspired by a bestselling book called Wild at Heart. I have no idea what that is. Continue Reading
Last Thursday all four of us went downtown to RocketTown and saw and heard Derek Webb (he did “A King and a Kingdom” (my favorite) , “A New Law”, and a couple of newer songs from a forthcoming album), and my almost 18-year old son was aghast and impressed that Reliant K did 3 or 4 songs, and they were Continue Reading
James K.A. Smith , in speaking about a Jeff Sharlet Harper’s article he read, found himself drawn to a Dylan song re-rendered by Buddy Miller, I’ve been ruminating on Buddy Miller’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “With God on our Side,†on Miller’s Universal United House of Prayer album so I went to iTunes to look it up , and downloaded Continue Reading
An excellent post from Jamie Smith that generates discussion that really gets at a long standing beef I’ve had with him, even while I express my deep indebtedness to and appreciation for his introducing me, through his Introduction to Radical Orthodoxy, to the world of Radical Orthodoxy and several excellent and valuable authors. My beef with him centers mainly on his 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
The texts are triggering a discussion about how much King’s rejection of a literal reading of the Bible shaped his social activism. Source: Writings show King as liberal Christian, rejecting literalism As I read over the article, the problem is NOT literalism. The problem is ignoring WHAT the Bible teaches. Jesus really did want things to be taken LITERALLY, Continue Reading
This is not a video, but a still photo that shows while an 22 minute audio plays, but a complete speech King gave that contains most of what he said at Riverside (I assume it is a different speech because of his references to “today” instead of “tonight”, and it doesn’t exactly match the transcript of Riverside—some things are out Continue Reading
More from the Riverside speech, and “head-on” with the policies and practices of the United States (which was in its “Overthrow” mode before then, during then, and since then….Stephen Kinzer’s book, Overthrow, which I read back in the summer gives historical detail, and James Carroll’s House Of War chronicles the history of the Pentagon and its constant hosting of the Continue Reading
From MLK’s Riverside address, April 4, 1967. (Note: Exactly one year to the day prior to his slaying). These points were directed to friend and foe, ally and opponent, making arguments for the case against war that culminate in his final allegiance to “the ministry of Jesus Christ” Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for 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
I realized something just a few days ago as I was continuing my reading in Taylor Branch’s Parting The Waters: America In The King Years 1954-63 (I had borrowed it from the public library last January and got through about 300 pages of it before it had to go back……I anticipated buying it, but then the hardback version disappeared from Continue Reading
This response to Kuo’s Tempting Faith sounds a theme that occurred to me as well as I read it and noticed the conspicuous absence of church life as an informer of what true politics is; or from what life it springs. He barely mentions church, and only then as a place to meet friends. The Ekklesia Project is dedicated to helping Continue Reading
I heard about this guy on an NPR segment this morning. The words above are from the first song I played from a free download of an album called Mockingbird. To get the download, you have to send the link to 5 friends emails (and he promises the emails are not saved to a list, but simply to send the 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