It’s scary how easily it seems to be assumed that what the state syas it is doing, it is actually achieving. The “larger purpose”; the long-range, “real-world” matters are being taken care of by the magistrate, and it has become in our political climate Only with the emergence of nation states, according to Giddens, are states circumscribed by borders, known Continue Reading

William Cavanaugh, in Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism(TI): Clearly Christians have to an alarming degree adopted the salvatio mythos of the state as their own, and submitted to the state’s practices of binding. We submit to these practices, even give our bodies up for war, in the hope that the Continue Reading

Sojo mail today contained this link and quoted this portion: [Bishopslist] A Prayer from Bishop Will Willimon George had an Alabama boyhood, an Alabama youth, and Alabama dreams. I pray for his mother, for his family and friends, his church, and all those for whom his death means not only the ending of his dreams, but the beginning of their Continue Reading

Carlos quoted from the Nov.1 issue of Ron Sider’s ePistle What is most troubling is that the people who talk about Jesus the most are the ones who seem most willing to abandon his teachings and opt for a politics of pragmatism.

When I read stuff like this (Bush’s statement, not the viewpoints of the author of this source, although I would have some arguments with his typical separation of church and state argument), I just marvel at how people on the right miss the irony and hyporcisy of it The Democratic Daily Blog � Blog Archive � Our Holy-Roller-in-Chief Last week Continue Reading

It is a day when so many in our churches will feel compelled to address somehow the topic of the attack four years ago. I did not go anywhere today. I was up super late, got up late, had some physical difficulties that took even more time this morning, and also, hidden away in all of those “external reasons” for Continue Reading

This post from James KA Smith on the distorrted priorities of “police” protection. Fors Clavigera: Above All, Save the Merchandise In the face of al-Quaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, the White House’s admonition was clear: “Shop.” The one thing the enemy won’t destroy is our freedom to go the mall. And now, in the wake of a Continue Reading

This post, The Gutless Pacifist: Hiroshima and Nagasaki has a comment by Cory that has this phrase in it: the price is never too high for other people to pay I think of this often when I hear people use that phrase “paying the price”; when I hear Bush say it , and realizing that not only does he not Continue Reading

To borrow from Ronald Reagan’s famous quip: “There you go again” James KA Smith has some kind of bone to pick with Sojourners. I hate to see it, since everything else Jamie says I seem to be in total agreement, and even become convinced of a few things. But in the following quote from an absolutely outstanding article, I wonder Continue Reading

The editor of Zion’s Herald, whose blog I just found via Untied Methodist (no, not a typo), describes some of the hate email he got after he sent an article to an email list of Zion’s Herald FaithWriter a quote from one: “You people make me sick, you do not represent God, you only represent yourself. I wonder how many Continue Reading

Interruptions: Acceptable losses? how many people would be satisfied with a justice system where 9 out of 10 people excecuted were not guilty? And yet in modern warfare 90% of casualties are civilian. I’m with Charlie on this one (among other things), and this thought I just read on his blog is a good question to put to the majority Continue Reading

Charlie points to an article that Eric found by Brent Laytham, author of God Is Not: Religious, Nice, One of Us, an American, a Capitalist , which Charlie has just read. Interruptions: Loyalty Oath I thought of Patrick Miller’s recent pamphlet on the first commandment. In The God You Have he differentiates between loyalty to others and obedience to God. Continue Reading

Bears repeating….over and over and over again until enough people get it: The Gutless Pacifist: How Much is Too Much… For Other People? If we are naieve enough to believe that war is actually about saving people, how many murders of the people we are obstenibly trying to save are acceptable in order to save them? And of course, this Continue Reading

Jamie Smith’s thoughts on the reaction of London (the killing of the uninvolved guy on the train), and he asks the quesiton that seems to be an assumed “Yes”, or not asked at all, but just accepted as “the way it is” and “what has to be done to live in the world”. Fors Clavigera: America Supports UK War Against Continue Reading