Post related to theology of Occupy
I was just in a mini-stream on Twitter with @james_ka_smith , where I tried to re-open the topic re: the church and the Occupy movement. I had tweeted a while back to JKA on this, but it didn’t seem to spark much interest on his part. He and I had done a bit of back and forth back in 2005-06 Continue Reading
The CNN blog post destined to draw tons of comments: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/21/to-some-obama-is-the-wrong-kind-of-christian/ I just did a Google Search on that title and the number two result is frlom godlikeproductions where the author simply reacts aloud: “Is CNN Serious?” obviously addressing the choir of folks who consider Obama to be , like the author his/herself says, an “AntiChrist”. The Christian Right is all over this, Continue Reading
I asked Lisa Sharon Harper of Sojourners about her thoughts on the Occupy Movement, and she said something we don’t hear much amidst all the uproar about the “middle class” being under assault. While the economic figures about the shrinkage and stagnation of wages in the middle class make for a wider audience from which to garner movement support, what Continue Reading
Brian McLaren, another participant/speaker at Wild Goose later this week on Occupy: public spaces—from economic markets to political processes—have been colonized by powerful corporate elites (the 1 percent, or maybe the 10 percent), elites driven not by an ethical vision but by the relentless demand to maximize shareholder return. The 99 percent are realizing how destructive this colonization of public Continue Reading
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgf4ozKHmA4&feature=player_embedded
I believe that the most loving thing we can do for the richest and most powerful is to tell them the truth: call them to the truth and challenge them to live truthfully. After all, one of the spiritual works of mercy is to admonish sinners. If this is so, we must love the 1% enough to speak the truth Continue Reading
from the article: Occupy is appealing to Trinity, a very wealthy church, to share its resources (prime Manhattan real estate, currently empty but presently leased on a short-term basis to a tenant) with the Occupy movement whose social goals are ostensibly the same as Trinity’s – a more just world for more people – and many of whose participants explicitly Continue Reading
Jesuit priest and war resister Daniel Berrigan, soft-spoken but still eloquent at 91, and journalist Chris Hedges joined members of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Faith at Zuccotti Park on Thursday morning. They gathered to sing, pray and denounce the continued determination of Trinity Church, an Episcopal parish, to cooperate with the prosecution of OWS protesters. http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/06/ows-presents-a-fracture-of-good-order-for-trinity-church/ To understand why Continue Reading
Belonging, Behaving, Believing Awesome. Great post on the key role of belonging. The FORMATIVE role that keeps us grounded, energized, and comissioned to be attuned to the opportunities to participate in God’s activity. http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2012/05/belonging-behaving-believing.html I think this is key to how the Occupy movement has become the force that it has. The relationships forged in face to face meetings. If you 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
This from an article on Bill Moyers’ website expresses for me the anger and the disgust I feel toward the clueless, selfish, out of touch arrogance that is the attitude of the frontrunner candidates. So no, Mitt Romney, when we say that Americans are waking up to the reality that inequality matters, we’re not guilty of “envy†or “class warfare,†as Continue Reading
“we are the first Episcopal seminary to take part in the Occupy Movement http://www.ecww.org/olympia-seminarian-creates-interfaith-chaplaincy-ministry-occupy-austin Thanks for the link , Larry!