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Elected head of Christian Coalition explains why he resigned

Jim — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:03:09 GMT

Duck, Hunter

Rev. Joel Hunter speaks out on broadening the evangelical agenda
By David Roberts
Grist
20 Dec 2006

In July, Rev. Joel Hunter was named president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America, the legendary political advocacy organization founded by Pat Robertson.

Rev. Joel Hunter.

Last month, just before he was to formally take office, he abruptly stepped down after a meeting with the coalition's board of directors. According to Hunter, it became clear that the organization was not ready to expand its focus beyond hot-button social issues like gay marriage and abortion. (Board director and acting president Roberta Combs says they simply wanted to move cautiously and poll their members first.)

Both sides insist the split was amicable, but Hunter's departure casts a stark light on a growing split inside the conservative evangelical Christian movement. Long seen as monolithic and ascendant, the evangelical bloc is increasingly being pulled in two directions: one that would retain and consolidate gains based on culture-war concerns like abortion and homosexuality, and one that would open the agenda up to broader issues like global warming, AIDS, and poverty.

The former faction has the advantage of decades of entrenched power and an enormous fundraising machine. The latter boasts the allegiance of a new generation of evangelicals weary of the divisiveness and naked political ambition of its forebears. Hunter -- spokesperson for the Evangelical Climate Initiative and author of a new book, Right Wing, Wrong Bird -- is squarely in the latter camp. I caught up with him by phone at the Orlando, Fla., church where he preaches, in the midst of what sounds like a media frenzy with no end in sight.

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There's been some suspicion, both inside and outside the evangelical movement, that the much-ballyhooed green evangelical turn has more to do with a few high-profile leaders than any substantive change of heart at the base. Your encounter with the Christian Coalition seems to lend this notion some credence, doesn't it?

There are two ways to look at it. One is, there's a very recent, alarming cache of information; the scientific evidence is pretty recent in our history. Like any new information or suddenly appearing issue, there's going to be a lot of skepticism at first. People don't want to change. And there's a lot of suspicion on the part of conservative Christianity about anything that the broad-based media touts. So there is going to be that kind of skepticism and pushback.

From that standpoint, I would say that on a grassroots level this is not very deep, yet, in the evangelical community.

Having said that, there are two factors that will take it fairly deep, fairly quickly. One is, like most good Christianity, this is simply a reprisal of a historic concern. Christianity was at the forefront of human rights, anti-slavery, civil rights, and so forth -- that's so deep in our history, a respect for human life and a respect for God's creation. So even though it hasn't been a front-burner issue recently, it goes way back into our roots and is easily recoverable.

The other thing that's happening right now is that a number of us who have different networks are forming conversations that will have ripple effects across the church. Even the attention right now -- the [Sen. James] Inhofe-type attention, the Michael Crichton this-is-all-conspiracy kind of stuff -- isn't going to last very long in the milieu of the growing body of evidence. Conservative Christians are fairly intelligent people, believe it or not, and so over a period of time they will read the articles, read the books. We will. I don't know why I'm saying they. We will come to an accurate conclusion on global warming, and especially on the broader issue of environmental care.

The elephant in the room is that social issues -- gay marriage, abortion, and so on -- are identified as Republican and environmental issues are identified as liberal or Democratic. So there are two things green evangelical leaders could hope for: Republicans adopt the climate-change issue, or the evangelical base shifts its voting behavior. Which of those do you think is more likely?

Evangelicals are not primarily concerned with growing a political strategy. I do think there is a growing constituency -- the maturing of evangelicalism -- to go beyond the reactionary issues that were morally centered into the compassion issues that are well-being centered. As we do that, both parties are now going to be interested in what evangelicals are interested in. So I think there will be a little of each -- there will be a broadening of the Republican agenda, and the Democrats will be more interested in not just writing off the evangelical vote. They will see that we are interested in a number of issues, and perhaps they will find some more conciliatory language in order to try to interest the evangelical vote.

I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen politically, but from a conservative Christian standpoint, you just want to do the right thing and vote the best way you can. Then let the chips fall where they may.

As you know, Barack Obama was invited to speak to Rick Warren's group and there was immense backlash. So ...

There will be a staunch, focused group of Christians that see the broadening of the agenda as a threatening dynamic for achieving the more traditional goals. There are those of us, though, who believe we will get more done on the traditional issues by becoming more Jesus-like -- concerned with other issues as well. So the real question here is, how big will this growing constituency be in comparison to the traditional group focused on narrow issues? That's the intriguing part of this.

Some people might say the reason there's such enthusiasm around social issues like gay marriage and abortion and pornography is that people in the evangelical church are primarily called on to condemn other people. Once you bring in issues like poverty and global warming -- and more broadly, compassion for the least among you -- obligations turn on them. There's a little guilt. Is that too cynical?

Not at all. Let's develop this conversation at a little deeper level. In Foreign Affairs, Walter Mead talked about the difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals. We make these differentiations in our own family of believers.

Fundamentalists are always mad. They don't play well with others, and they feel tainted by any view other than the one they have. That is a pretty narrow segment, but a pretty attention-getting segment of Christianity. In terms of stereotype, that's what most people focus on when they see conservative Christianity.

By the way, I don't say fundamentalists in the pejorative sense. I believe there is a legitimate reaction to what we would see as declining moral integrity in culture.

But another reason it has been so popular is that anger is the greatest and most immediate way, not only to invoke a response and build an audience, but to raise money. We'll both be cynical here for a minute: One of the things fundamentalist churches have learned, have practiced, and continue to practice, is the best way to grow in influence and fundraising is to make people mad. And the best way to do that is to create an enemy. So from that standpoint you're right.

But from another standpoint, a much larger portion of the church really does want to be more like Jesus. And that wasn't Jesus. Jesus didn't spend his time walking around yelling at people. His concern was for the vulnerable. As I often say, unless we start to care as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as we care for the vulnerable inside the womb, we won't have a picture of who Jesus was. There's a growing number of people who want to emphasize this. They're just not the people with a lot of money, or time to be self-righteous -- there are millions of us.

Do you think the dynamic you just described was a large part of why the current leadership of the Christian Coalition shied away from what you're trying to do?

Absolutely. Again: I like these people. They're doing what they believe is right. But it's very clear to everybody that if you don't come out aggressively against something, not only might you alienate your base, but you will certainly alienate your donors. And many of these hardened or narrow right organizations have been formed specifically to react against something. That's who brought them to the dance.

So the attempt to broaden the agenda just didn't work. I thought maybe it would. They said they wanted to go into some of these other issues, but when it came time to do it, they were afraid of alienating their base.

How did the concept of morality come to attach itself exclusively to issues of private, individual behavior?

That is almost uniquely American. Our society focuses on the individual. If you go to church in the rest of the world, it is not this way. I can tell you this as a matter of fact, because we have partners all over the world. They are much more community minded and their sense of morality is much, much broader than simply personal behavior.

You're absolutely right, from a biblical standpoint. It was never merely about how some individuals behave. It was always about community. It was always about what was good for the family, good for society -- what would best represent the God that loved the world.

But even in some of your writing, you make the distinction between "moral" issues and the issues of "compassion." Why are those distinct?

I simply do it for semantic advantage. When you talk about caring for the environment, that is a pro-life issue. When you talk about justice, that is certainly a moral issue. It's a continuing theme throughout the Bible. So when I use the word "moral," I use it in the sense of "moralistic." But these [broader] issues certainly are moral issues.

Tell me how you came to be active on the subject of global warming.

One of those other 86 [green evangelical leaders] called me and said, we've got this statement about Christians' responsibility to creation care, and we're looking for evangelical leaders who will sign it.

I started to read books like [Tim] Flannery's The Weather Makers. At a National [Association of] Evangelicals board meeting, we had Sir John Houghton come in and talk to us. I became fascinated. The more I looked into it, I thought, oh my goodness, I missed something pretty significant here. I'm a more recent student, but a very convinced student.

What could environmentalists do to better reach religious communities?

Put educational materials into the hands of pastors. Just as all politics is local, all spiritual growth is local. The grassroots Christian looks to his or her pastor to understand what is important, to ask, What does God want me to do to become more like Jesus?

I was in a convocation a couple of weeks ago with some of the secular humanists, E.O. Wilson and some of those guys from Harvard and Yale who are concerned about creation. What we agreed on was, the scientists had the facts evangelicals needed in order to be credible to their constituents on the subject, but they need us for the traction. As Wilson said, you can add up all the secular humanist organizations in the U.S. and you'll come up with around 5,000 people. You take one [National Association of Evangelicals] group and you've got 30 million.

We need each other. The reason it hasn't reached the grassroots is because most pastors simply don't have the facts. They do almost always have one or two people in the congregation that have read Michael Crichton's State of Fear, or some other provocative, territorial thing. Unless they have the facts to answer that, they're going to be pretty quiet on the subject.

Would you want the evangelical community to advocate for specific policies?

I think our approach would be to educate people and give them a theological basis for taking care of the environment as a biblical and moral mandate. I don't think the place of the evangelical community is to come up with political strategies or solutions or policies.

I do think that an educated evangelical constituency will respond positively to a growing number of solutions. Certainly many of us would be willing to vote for policies that involve the government as part of the solution. We don't think the government is all of the solution. A grassroots movement -- what we can do personally, what our churches can do, what businesses can do, market-based solutions -- is also important. But many of us do believe that government is part of the solution.

I doubt that the evangelical church as a body will ever recommend policy. But I do think we will respond to recommended policy, and will vote our consciences.

When do you predict the big organizations like the Christian Coalition and the National Association of Evangelicals are going to make the turn and come out vocally behind this broader agenda of yours?

I'm on the board of directors at the National Association of Evangelicals, and we have already stated that it is part of our advocacy. On the signing of that particular statement on global warming, the president and the leaders at that time decided to make it more of a states' rights issue than it was a federal issue, so to speak, with the constituent bodies signing on if they wanted to. But there is already an emphasis on creation care, and that will continue to grow. Rich Cizik is a great leader of ours in that area.

As for the other more narrow right organizations, I would say in a few years, everybody's going to see the light on this thing. Some of them may never come out to address anything environmentally, just because that's not why they were developed. But I will be surprised in a few years if most people are not convinced that we have some responsibility to do better by God's creation than we have.

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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist.

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California Episcopal Bishop arrested during San Francisco war protest

Jim — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:37:39 GMT

This is sort of old news, but many who are not Episcopalians or part of the Diocese of California might not know about it. I personally think our new bishop rocks!

California bishop arrested during San Francisco war protest

By Mary Frances Schjonberg
Friday, December 08, 2006

Bishop of California Marc Andrus protests the deaths caused by the Iraq war by blocking the entrance to the federal building in San Francisco December 7.

[Episcopal News Service] Bishop Marc Handley Andrus of the Episcopal Diocese of California was arrested December 7 for blocking the front door of the San Francisco federal building to protest the deaths caused by the Iraq war.

His participation in the protest and his arrest are "just one piece of a sustained effort" to work for peace, Andrus told ENS December 8.
Other parts of the effort include other liturgical events, diocesan participation in the upcoming release of a documentary about four soldiers who sought conscientious objector status, and the possibility of having Episcopalians participate in a Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) trip to Iran.

Andrus said that his protest sprang not just from his own convictions about the war but "from a base of considered opinion by the House of Bishops and the Episcopal Church about this war."

"It's not a capricious act, but it is my conviction that while there's widespread opposition to this war, that the elected leaders need to know that we continue to want concerted and active moves towards peace," he said.

Andrus, carrying his crosier and singing "Down by the Riverside,'' was among 250 protesters, including members of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and people of other faiths, who had marched from Grace Cathedral, on Nob Hill, to join the monthly "die-in" on Golden Gate Avenue near City Hall.

The protest was meant to "memorialize all who have died as a result of U.S. led hostilities in Iraq," according to a November 29 invitation to the protest posted on the diocese's website.

The bishop celebrated a requiem Holy Eucharist at the plaza in front of the building. After they received communion about two dozen participants went one by one to lie down in front of the federal building's two main doors. Andrus was the first protestor to do so. Federal Protective Service officers began arresting protesters for lying down and blocking the building's two main doors.

Officers placed Andrus in handcuffs–as one said, "How are you?'' and shook the bishop's hand—according to a December 7 article on the San Francisco Chronicle's website.

Protesters applauded, cheered and sang as Andrus was photographed by another officer and led inside the building.

He and 11 other protesters were detained in a room inside the federal building for about two hours, according to diocesan spokesman Sean McConnell. They were cited for unlawful assembly and told they could either pay the charge's $125 fine or appear in court at a later date. All 12 decided to appear in court, McConnell said.

Andrus said the decision was made as a way for the group to continue its protest by pleading not guilty "because of our sense that international law and the unjust nature of this war required civil disobedience."

In the November 29 invitation, Andrus wrote that "at the Eucharistic table we become aware of this divine reality, that while humans may forget the dead — and may indeed willfully forget them — God remembers them. In the Iraq war the numbers of those who have died mounts, and is staggering. While even the numbers of the dead are unknown to many of us, our faith teaches us that God does not forget them."

A small group of protesters led by Quakers have gathered once a week outside the federal building to hold a silent vigil. Once a month the vigil is followed by the "die-in." Andrus has attended a number of the weekly vigils, but this was the first "die-in" he has been able to attend, according to McConnell.

McConnell said "a handful of people were upset that the bishop was going to do this," after the invitation was issued for people to join the protest.

Andrus said one man, a veteran of the Vietnam War, told him that the protest summoned up for him all the feelings he had about fighting in Vietnam while hearing of angry war protests at home. The bishop said he told the man that he believes that protests of the Iraq war can be and have been "completely respectful of all the soldiers."

"The Bishop of California has been called to lead all the people in our diocese and beyond on the path of peace, and this was the first and visible step on that journey," McConnell said. "As we continue on this journey, we will invite all people of all faiths to join us."

Andrus became the eighth Bishop of California in July. The Diocese of California comprises about 30,580 Episcopalians worshipping in 80 congregations in the greater San Francisco area.

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Archbishop of Canterbury Shows ECUSA the Doorknob

Jim — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:28:07 GMT

The "Primates" of the Anglican Communion should find a real issue to work on -- like poverty, hunger, AIDS, global warming, or speaking out against torture and wars of aggression.

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Times Online June 27, 2006

Worldwide Anglican church facing split over gay bishop
By Ruth Gledhill

The Archbishop of Canterbury has outlined proposals that are expected to lead to the exclusion of The Episcopal Church of the United States from the Anglican Church as a consequence of consecrating a gay bishop.

The US branch of Anglicanism faces losing its status of full membership of the Anglican Church in the wake of its consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, an act which has propelled the worldwide church to the brink of schism.

Read the rest of this sad report here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2245849,00.html

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US evangelicals say beating the young is a Christian doctrine

Jim — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 16:04:54 GMT

More evidence of the sickness at the heart of evangelical fundamentalism in America . . .

Suffer little children
US evangelists are twisting the Bible to say that beating the young is a Christian doctrine

Giles Fraser
The Guardian
Thursday June 8, 2006

Pretty much all I remember from my prep school are the beatings: that lonely wait outside the headmaster's study; the cane, the slipper, the table tennis bat. I remember my underpants filled with blood. I remember seething with frustration when they beat my brother. My mother had asked me to look after him. But there was nothing I could do as he was led towards the study in his little tartan dressing gown.

That was 30 years ago, but in time measured out by the psyche it was yesterday. Thank God such things are now illegal. But there remain those determined to turn back the clock. "We are told that in England it is a crime to spank children," writes Debbi Pearl from No Greater Joy Ministries, following a row that has erupted over the distribution of their literature in the UK. "Therefore Christians are not able to openly obey God in regard to biblical chastisement. They are in danger of having the state steal their children."

The Pearls are evangelical Christians who believe corporal punishment is "doing it God's way". With a mailing list of tens of thousands of parents, the Pearls say that the justification for their approach is in scripture: "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes" (Proverbs 13:24).

Chastening begins early. "For the under-one-year-old, a little, 10- to 12-inch long, willowy branch (stripped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch diameter is sufficient," writes Michael Pearl. With older children he advises: "After a short explanation about bad attitudes and the need to love, patiently and calmly apply the rod to his backside. Somehow, after eight or 10 licks, the poison is transformed into gushing love and contentment. The world becomes a beautiful place. A brand-new child emerges. It makes an adult stare at the rod in wonder, trying to see what magic is contained therein."

It's incredible to me that books such as this are readily available on Amazon; it is little short of incitement to child abuse. What makes the whole thing doubly sick is that it's done in the name of God. Apparently, the "proper application of the rod is essential to the Christian world-view". Note "essential". Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise. For, as evangelicals, the Pearls believe that salvation only comes through punishment and pain. God punishes his Son with crucifixion so that humanity might not have to face the Father's anger. This image of God the father, for whom violence is an expression of tough love, is lodged deep in the evangelical imagination. And it twists a religion of forgiveness and compassion into something dark and cruel.

It's terrifying how deep this teaching penetrates into a philosophy of child rearing. Just as divine anger is deemed to be provoked by the original sin of human disobedience, the beating of children is seen as punishment for rebellion. According to Ted Tripp, in his monstrous bestseller Shepherding a Child's Heart, even babies who struggle while having their nappy changed are deemed to be rebellious and need punishment.

Last month Lynn Paddock of North Carolina was charged with the murder of her four-year-old son, Sean. She had apparently beaten him with a length of quarter-inch plumbing line - plastic tubing. Like many in her church, Paddock had turned to the Pearls' resources on Biblical parenting. The Pearls say chastisement with plumbing line is "a real attention getter". Sean Paddock's autopsy describes layers of bruises stretching from his bottom to his shoulder.

What Jesus said about those who would harm children comes inevitably to mind: "It would be better for them if a millstone was hanged about their neck, and that they were drowned in the depth of the sea."

Dr Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney. giles.fraser@btinternet.com

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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Ultra-violent "Christian" video games

Jim — Wed, 31 May 2006 00:13:07 GMT

Many Christian activists complain that the violence contained in video games have a direct impact on American Society. But apparently killing people who are for a "separation of Church and state" is fair game. Some sick games based on the "Left Behind" series are about to be unleashed on our youth. Maybe they will be handed out at the next "Justice Sunday" event.

The Purpose Driven Life Takers
Jonathan Hutson:

"Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians.

Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.....read on: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959

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Perpetrating economic injustice in an immoral budget

Carol — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:26:18 GMT

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/opinions/columnists/masterson/
Perpetrating economic injustice in an immoral budget

OK all you churchgoers, now's the time to get out of your Amen corner and in the face of national leaders who are failing to vote your values.

Were our congressmen sunning themselves somewhere exotic last August when us working stiffs heard the Census Bureau report that the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by 1.1 million to 37 million and that those without health insurance has spiraled to 46 million?

Wages are stagnant. Costs are rising. Need is up. So what does our House of Representatives do? They support $50 billion in cuts to programs like Medicaid, food stamps, child support enforcement, foster care and student loans.

If those cuts, approved by the House last month, aren't enough evidence of the Grinch-like ruling class in this country, consider that Congress is also pursuing a $70 billion package of tax breaks, most of which will benefit the top one percent of American wage earners.

On Wednesday night, concerned citizens, many of them Christians, braved the cold and snow and attended a "Vigil for a moral budget." The vigils were held at congressional offices around the country, including the new Northbrook office of Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Highland Park, who apparently believes it's OK to rob the poor to pay the rich.

"Though Rep. Kirk voted for the budget cuts previously, we hope to persuade him to oppose the cuts this time around," said Ryan Canney, organizing director for Citizen Action/Illinois. "If the federal budget is a moral document reflecting our nation's values, Rep. Kirk has a chance to ensure that Congress doesn't pass a budget that reflects the wrong priorities."

As people of faith, our priority should be those in need — including a growing number of our neighbors in Lake County.

Catholic Charities in Waukegan reports a 9 percent increase in services to the working poor over the past year. Individual requests for help with basic human necessities — food, shelter, utilities — increased from 9,285 in 2004 to 11,057 this year — a 19 percent hike. The agency also served 7,000 more meals — for a total of nearly 100,000 — an 8 percent increase over the previous year."

"These are very high numbers to try and maintain," said Teresa Denny, Catholic Charities regional representative. "People are working two and three jobs but they aren't making a living wage."

The people who will be hurt most by the proposed cuts and in both taxes and programs are those who are barely hanging on in the first place: The young mother who depends on a child-care subsidy, the disabled who depend on Medicaid for health care; those who, despite their Link cards, still don't have enough for their families to eat.

Some religious leaders have raised their voices in protest.

Ministers from the Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran and United Church of Christ lambasted President Bush's proposed budget early last spring. They reminded our political leaders that to continue to ignore the poor will mean becoming like the "rich man" who pretended not to know the beggar Lazarus lying outside his gates.

The story in the 16th chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, the preachers said, "contains a warning that should deeply trouble those of us who live in a wealthy nation."

After the rich man dies and is sent to Hades, he implores Abraham to raise Lazarus from the dead and send him to his brothers so that they may be spared his torment.

"They have Moses and the prophets," Abraham replies. "They should listen to them." The rich man says, "No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent." And Abraham answers: "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

The story, the religious leaders insist, makes clear that "perpetrating economic injustice is among the gravest of sins."

But Jesus recognizes our fatal flaw — a self-interest "so deeply ingrained in each one of us, that we will not renounce it, even should someone rise from the dead."

Bush's budget — the one supported by the majority Republican Congress — "takes Jesus' teaching on economic justice and stands it on its head," the pastors rail.

While agencies like Catholic Charities will continue to work in the trenches to meet the growing need among us, charitable efforts will continue to fall short in the face of incessant, grasping greed and the calculating callousness of the people we elect.

Even mercy — at least the human kind — can't make up for an immoral budget.
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Millions of people are depending on you to call -- and it only takes a minute:
Use the toll-free number to reach the Capitol switchboard. After you are connected with a staff person at the office of your Representative or Senator, tell them:

"My name is _______________ and I live in (your town/city). I would like Representative/Senator [name] to vote NO on the final version of the budget cuts (the deal between the House and Senate bills - H.R.4241 and S.1932 ) . Do not allow billions in cuts to vital services for vulnerable people, including Medicaid, SSI, foster care, Food Stamps, and child support. These cuts are the wrong priorities. I also would like the Representative/Senator to announce to constituents that he/she opposes this bill."

If you can't get through on that line, please call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

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Gropen-Fuhrer Denies Clemency to Williams

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 21:08:08 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051212/ap_on_re_us/williams_execution

No mercy. No consideration of redemption or rehabilitation. No taking into account the good things Williams could continue to do dismantling gangs.

Sickening.

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Is there not a moral and spiritual obligation

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:49:36 GMT

If you are interested I have posted an essay at http://christianurbanism.blogspot.com on the spiritual obligation of churches in regard to urban neighborhood revitalization. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts (via the blog site, Tribe, or private message).

Frank

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Bush Outrages: Let's Start A Compendium

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 22:43:29 GMT

I don't know about you, but I am starting to suffer from Bush fatigue. I'm Bushed. But I know that is just stinkin' thinkin', and I must resist such incipient sloth.

The main problem is the sheer volume of outrages and atrocities by this administration that we are confronted with every week. The number must be approaching one best expressed in scientific notation (which I never learned very well in school).

In days of yore, the public would be confronted with scant few outrages to bitch about during any given presidential administration. Only the occasional Teapot Dome (Harding), Checkers-speech-prompting fundraising scam (Nixon under Eisenhower), botched Bay of Pigs (Kennedy), trumped-up Tonkin Gulf (Johnson), Pentagon Papers (Nixon), Watergate (Nixon), botched Iran rescue (Carter), Iran-Contra (Reagan), Willie Horton ad (Bush pere), and Blue Dress Stain (Clinton) would divert our citizenry's sustained attention away from its normal producing, consuming, shitting, showering and shaving.

But W. OMG. The outrages started even before he took office. What he did to John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary (phoning voters with the story that McCain sired an illigitimate brown baby) set the motif for the endless theme and variations that has followed. To say that the electoral process that installed him in 2000 was an electoral process insults all presidential electoral processes that preceded it.

I would like to develop a list of the bad things this bad man has done. Just so I can keep it straight in my head, and so it all does not wash down the memory hole. I need your help with this. Let's confine the list to things that have been done or intentionally left undone during Bush's administrations (thereby omitting such matters as his hot-iron branding of frat-pledge buttocks at Yale and his AWOL National Guard status). So here goes. I will start, in no particular order of importance or chronology, and I will attribute to Bush the acts and omissions of his agents, capos, and legislative toadies (because the buck stops -- where?):

- Torture at Abu Ghraib

- Torture at Guantanamo

- Torture all over the planet in an archipelago of secret gulags

- Torture justified in ridiculous legal memorandum

- Elevation of signer of said memorandum to Attorney General

- Ignoring the pre-911 Daily Press Briefings

- Patriot Act

- Lying us into the Iraq War (no WMD, no al Qaida tie-in)

- Katrina response

- Fraudulent speech at New Orleans' Jackson Square, adding insulting hope to injury

- Outing Valerie Plame

- No-bid contracts for the likes of Halliburton

- Medal of Freedom for George Tenet

- Refusal to sign up for International Court of Justice (because he knew he would be committing war crimes)

- Use of chemical weapons at Fallujah

- Near-total destruction of Fallujah, dwarfing the My Lai incident in Vietnam

- Bombing of Al Jazeera offices in Iraq, killing reporters

- Telling Blair he wanted to bomb Al Jazeera central office in Qatar

- Letting Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora

- Assisting Bin Laden's family and friends escape the U.S. in the week after 911

- Carlyle Group (Bush and bin Laden families' golden goose for war profiteering)

- Arresting people at Bush rallies and Social Security "conversations" for their tee-shirts, bumper stickers or the cut of their jibs

- Attack on Social Security

- Diebold

- Voter purges in swing states Florida and Ohio

- Multifarious nefariousness in Ohio 2004, resulting in Kerry's ignominious, servile concession speech

- Repeal of forest protections ("Healthy Forests" initiative)

- Rollback of clear air standards ("Clean Skies" initiative)

- Effort to push through oil drilling in Arctic wildlife refuge

- Refusal to participate in international climate change discussions (or international discussions on much of anything else, preferring instead to lecture international authorities in butchered English)

- Refusal to acknowledge global warming

- The shrinking Coalition of the Willing

- "Shock and Awe"

- Over 100,000 Iraqis killed (how many more maimed?)

- Over 2100 American soldiers killed (how many more maimed?)

- Over 50,000 American troops who will come back mentally deranged from what they have seen and done (Rep. Murtha mentioned this the other day)

- Purging of CIA critics

- Firing of FBI whistleblower

- Refusal to participate in global conference on land mines

- EPA reversal of sewage standards, allowing massive dumping

- Permitting oil drilling in national parks

- Tax breaks for the wealthiest, even while marching off to war

- "Mission Accomplished" stunt

- Massive budget deficits that threaten economic collapse (even Greenspan hints at this)

- Did I mention massive budget deficits? After he was handed a huge budget surplus by Clinton. Bush has the Midas touch in reverse - everything he has ever touched has turned to caca. Every business (don't mention the Texas Rangers - he traded Sosa). Every political office (just ask Texans)

- What happened to Iraq's oil money?

- Speaking of which, what about that Wolfowitz guy (who said Iraq would pay for its own war)? Now he heads the World Bank!

- $9 billiion of Iraq money unaccounted for on Bremer's watch

- Refusal to allow meaningful stem-cell research

- Backing "Intelligent Design" fantasy

- Terry Schiavo

- Anti-gay-marriage proposed Constitutional amendment

- Numerous other instances of kow-towing to the religious right

- Enron (taking campaign contributions from "Kenny-boy" and his klepto-company)

- Indefinite detention of American citizens without counsel and without charge

- The Downing Street Memo (remember that?), showing Bush/Cheney "fixed" the intelligence around the policy

- Depleted uranium munitions

- Harriet Myers

- That Alito guy, who can be counted on to ban abortion and support torture and permanent imprisonment of non-citizens without trial

- Allowing coal companies to drop mercury on all of us

- Believing (really?) that God instructed him to kill in Iraq

- "I've got to get on with my life"

- Refusal to listen to any military brass who are unwilling to bring good news

- Refusal to talk to a grieving mother

- Refusal to attend soldiers' funerals

- Blocking photographs of coffins returning from Iraq

- Armstrong Williams

- Jeff Gannon

- Swift-boating

- Spending Dept of Education money on fascist rock and roll for high school students

- Karl Rove

I could go on, but I have run out of time just now. This list has barely scratched the surface. So help me out, won't you?

(Note to right-wing trollers: Please feel free to assemble competing lists of all the wonderful things you believe Bush has done for our country. I would really like to see that.)

posted in Social Redemption - 2 replies

Progressives and the culture of sex

joguldi — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 16:40:13 GMT

<img style = "float:left; margin:10px" src = "http://www.conservativeactivist.net/images/OneManOneWoman.JPG">Liberals want to know how to win elections. Recently, you've heard a lot more of a clever but dangerous proposition about how to form a coalition of moderate Christians free from the claws of the radical right fringe cult. The proposition runs thus: we want progressives to work with moderates to build a more powerful political coalition, so we must jettison gay marriage and abortion from the political agenda.

I should know, because I've argued for that position myself. In the autumn of last year, I was working with a gay seminarian friend, and we had reached the same conclusion: gay marriage was not going to be one of the items in our political lobby. Poverty, yes; prison reform, yes; fair trade and foreign relations, absolutely: but gay marriage was too divisive, too narrow, and too domestic an issue to touch. Marriage: one man, one woman. It's dividing churches, and the noise of churches breaking loses voters. Meanwhile, Jesus called us to serve the poor and disenfranchised; progressives have a nation to save.

Maybe we also felt, secretly, that the gay marriage debate was going to be won without us: that the courts were acting in a fashion amenable to civil rights, that the rest of American culture was committed to a practical level of civic pluralism even if our government was not; that in any case, popular culture was so far ahead of the church in accepting gay relationships, that the church could only follow once enough of its older members, wary of Ellen and Boy George, died off.

So while we separated our political crusade from our concern for gay marriage, we felt that this was no betrayal of gay rights. I come from a family of gay rights activists within the church, and my friend is seeking ordination in a church suspicious of his orientation. We both felt extremely committed towards lobbying for gay marriage -- not just blessing but marriage -- within our churches. We cited Melanchthon and Luther about the use of marriage not just to produce children but to care for the souls of the individuals; we both see marriage in a committed relationship before God and a community as serving that function, regardless of the gender of the individuals involved.

We shied away from gay marriage for practical reasons. We saw case after case where this issue, raised in the media, gave way to the most limp and meaningless discussion of marriage. Some say progressive theologians don't have their theology worked out yet. Some say that progressives in general aren't skilled enough in discussing their point of view in pithy terms without hemorrhaging emotionality. Some say the religious right's soundbites are too strong an ammunition for us. Some say that divisions within the churches cripple convicted clergy on the left from speaking their own mind. Some say that the tolerant are actually a minority in this country. Some say that tolerance is a majority virtue, but never has a chance in the world of soundbites.

My experience carrying forward the banner of "progressive values without discussion of sexuality" made me change my mind. I personally got a lot of flack -- often from moderates I hadn't expected it from, even more often from close friends and respected clergy who felt a duty to challenge me -- every time anyone asked us about our position. Those who have fought for gay rights have felt betrayed time and again by the Democratic Party and other liberal organizations that count on their vote (because liberals are better than the opposition), and then, once in power, turned Judas on their supporters. There's a great deal of righteous anger amongst gay rights supporters. There's a great deal of appropriate suspicion, to the extent that many committed activists, reading a "moderate" post such as this at CrossLeft, may simply roll their eyes and click on to the next site.

To me, there is no question about the appropriateness of gay marriage or gay relationships within the church. To me, the foes of gay marriage run dangerously close to advocating a kind of marriage in which I, as a woman, would play the role of subservient to my husband. If gender is *so* essential that commitment, love, Godliness, and community are insufficient to marriage without the appropriate gendering of one man and one woman, the only correct marriage must be one in which women act as traditional women. Traditional women are, as we know, deferent laboratories for producing infants, not permitted to be ordained.

Jesus and his apostles overturned that notion of gender long ago: there is neither man nor woman in Christ. Amongst the early Christians of the first centuries of the church, women acted as ministers and took more active roles than they had under Jewish law. When he told Christian women that they should not commit suicide just because their husband had died, Augustine advocated the independent salvation and purpose of the Christian woman in a fashion utterly radical to his pagan, Roman context.

As Christians, we have no metaphysical use for gender. Our salvation is between one individual and Christ: a Christian woman is a woman who has found out all her callings - domestic, professional, political, romantic, and social - and acts with full liberty, confidence, and discernment in each of them according to the products of her direct and ongoing conversation with God, not the pre-packaged marriage instructions of a local sewing circle.

When he went undercover amongst a cabal of billionaire right-wing Jesus freaks, journalist <a href = "http://www.harpers.org/JesusPlusNothing.html">Jeff Sharlet</a> gave a good picture of the way this minority has defaced the Christian understanding of gender by adulterating it with something more like the gospel of Liz Claiborne:

<blockquote>They wore red lipstick and long skirts (makeup and “feminine” attire were required) and had, after several months of cleaning and serving in The Cedars while the brothers worked outside, become quite unimpressed by the high-powered clientele. “Girls don't sit in on the breakfasts,” one of them told me, though she said that none of them minded because it was “just politics.”</blockquote>

As Progressives, we may understand that individuals in our world are gendered, and we may make use of institutions that help them to function spiritually and ethically within this world. We don't insist that women are only free if they stop shaving their legs or shave their hair; we understand that there are <a href = "http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~lit125/?redirect=no">a thousand different feminisms</a>, and that women as individuals pursue paths as diverse as men do. But gender and gendered living are necessary to neither our salvation nor to Christian living, and so they *cannot* be necessary to participating in marriage as a Christian sacrament (amongst Catholic churches) or Christian ceremony (amongst Protestant churches).

But when our brothers and sisters in Jesus kick the girls out of the politics meeting, they betray our heritage, our culture, and our God. Their actions take on all the more significance when considered in light of international events. <a href = "http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_051128nigeca.shtml">Gay Nigerian Christians</a> have had their first meeting ever; a sign of hope to some and naivete to others. But the British media reports that the Nigerians just sound "scared." They sound scared because they have dared to discuss their sexuality openly in a culture that deems the openly gay unfit to live. I don't need to remind our readers of other societies where <a href = "http://www.lifenews.com/nat1881.html">girl babies</a> and widows are similarly deemed unfit to live.

In the great world of feudal corporate fiefdoms and third-world dictatorships, the woes of your individual lesbian couple in California might not matter much. But they do matter insofar as more powerful nations have, in realpolitik, the opportunity to influence the protection of human rights the world over.

Gay marriage in a small town in Idaho may not be our issue: getting mired by throwing Bible verses back and forth is not the way any of us should spend our precious time on the radio and tv waves. When we look at questions of liberty for political, social, religious, and economic action for people of every gender and sexuality, the United States and Britain make statements about freedoms appropriate for all people, whether they choose them or not.

Poor families in Pakistan and Nigeria and South Carolina can choose traditional relationships, courtship, and ceremony wherever they wish, but in every democracy where the light of Christianity (or indeed the secular Enlightenment, which took many of its values) has shown, the state as the will of the majority has prevented husbands, clerics, and churches from curtailing the property rights, legal rights, or life of the individual.

Protestant Christianity has always witnessed on behalf of the laws that protect individual freedom in this way. Its theology has, in the past, pushed the government to act in ways ever more protective of individual freedoms.

Thus it is profoundly embarrassing and sad for <a href = "bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/fivelive_aod.shtml?fivelive/rowan_williams">the church to claim that it can't take a position on gay rights because its theology will take a hundred years to develop, as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams did recently</a>; <a href = "http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/concord/web/conf-23.html">Luther</a> started us on the correct path five hundred years ago, and we have had a hundred years since <a href = "http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/HSC/fly/pre1973nonfiction.htm">Havelock Ellis and Freud</a> to understand how basic different forms of sexuality are to basic human identity.

How queer that once we have to talk about what particular acts of sex a committed couple takes part in, godfearing Christians turn pale and run away. In being asked to defend gay marriage, Christians are merely called to the same questions of individual freedom and conscience before God, to which they have dedicated themselves individuals, as married couples, and as churches.

Let me be clear: many things are not at stake here. At stake is not whether I, as a defender of my brother's freedoms, participate in them myself, am virginal or not, am married or not, wish to live in my brother's company or not, consider his choices well-advised or not, or wish to discuss his sexual life. At stake is not whether the individual priest is perfectly convinced that two people will forever adhere to the vow of chastity and commitment that they have made in due seriousness before him, although he may counsel and advise them according to his impression of the individuals in question.

At stake in whether a church marries too people is certainly not whether the individual priest judges that the individuals before him are actually going to heaven: what priest refuses marriage to the drunk or gluttonous or hate-filled man who stands before him with a future bride?

At stake is only a precept of freedom about whether the individual's rights will be curtailed on the basis of gender, a precept which has profound consequences for global freedoms in light of today's issues. We believe in a God that builds communities and sustains individuals, and an oath of marriage between two people -- any two people -- is, if nothing else, a vow to build a community as individuals who have made a free choice before God.

For in facing the question of how sexual relations are understood before God, the churches of United States and Britain have the opportunity with their theology to make a profound statement in favor of *human* rights -- including the fundamental right to life free from murder -- against regimes that devalue life merely because of an individual's gender.

For as dictatorships and corporate feudalism spread throughout Africa and South America, we stand on a precipice and look out at two futures. In one version, the discourse of women's rights and gay rights are jettisoned, as we argue instead about the necessity of traditional polygamy to maintaining the chiefs of African villages, of Sati to maintaining the wealth system of northern India, and of man-woman marriage to something vaguely called "traditional morality" in North America. In such a future, girl children will be exposed on hillsides as they were in ancient pagan empires; villages will throw screaming widows into the funeral pyres of their husbands; a tiny minority of the world's women will have legal rights over their property; the rest of the world's women will be legally subject to rape by their husbands and left penniless in case of divorce.

Remember that such was the legal condition of women in the West until about a hundred and twenty years ago -- until, that is, the age of Freud and Havelock Ellis and the modern understanding of human sexuality -- and you will understand how fragile is our concept of rights regardless of gender. You will understand how liable traditional local laws are to triumph in court and practice over the gospel of human rights.

You will understand how, in the spectrum of legal protections, gay marriage is a direct continuation of our understanding that men are free to serve God, and women are free to serve God, and traditions that restrict their freedoms because of their gender go flatly against Jesus's teachings. You will understand how discussion of gay marriage scares people away from realizing the peril in which their common values stand. You will see that, while Western Christians hesitate, the Christian-derived precept of human rights stands threatened the world over.

The other future before us is that path we were called to by Jesus, Paul, the early Christians, Augustine, Luther, and the progressives of nineteenth-century America. In this future, women the world over have the opportunity, if they desire it, to seek education, work, and political involvement. In this future, black and white marry -- even if a community deems it inadvisable, the church still supports them. In this future, a woman and a woman can marry, as can a man and a man, if their fascination with each other is romantic and sustained; if their mutual intention is towards God, and if they find a Christian community -- any Christian community -- willing to support them.

In this future, the churches of America and Britain are a safe house and a nurturing family to the African who happens to be gay or the Chinese who happens to be a woman. In this future, the Christian message of individual discernment runs so strong that it inspires freely-discerning individuals around the world to make their cause with God and face the fallen world with courage.

Rowan Williams has also spoken recently about what it means when a church says it needs leaders. Most people, he says, when they ask for leaders merely ask people to parrot back their own opinions for them. Leaders are instead individuals capable of holding together a sometimes fragile alliance for the purposes of some greater good that all have agreed upon.

Let's agree that the discussion of gay marriage in the American media has been fractious and confusing, especially to Christians and moderates. We can talk with them individually and in our communities. Church leaders will continue to huddle and argue about Bible verses.

But for political purposes, perhaps we can concede that the image of the altar, the procession, the wedding dress, the wedding ring, and the priest are so symbolically charged as to trouble people when the image is tweaked. Individuals of little experience find pictures of newlywed lesbians holding hands in San Francisco and Boston are visually jolting and confusing. Perhaps a good leader would spare them confusion, and direct them to a message that they can't be confused about: the rights of those gay Christians in Nigeria not to be lynched.

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Churches Closed on Christmas Sunday!

Carol — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 00:45:09 GMT

http://mymotherlode.com/News/article/id/D8EB20N01

Some Megachurches Closing for Christmas
Tuesday, December 06, 2005 - 11:35 PM

By RACHEL ZOLL
AP Religion Writer

This Christmas, no prayers will be said in several megachurches around the country. Even though the holiday falls this year on a Sunday, when churches normally host thousands for worship, pastors are canceling services, anticipating low attendance on what they call a family day.

Critics within the evangelical community, more accustomed to doing battle with department stores and public schools over keeping religion in Christmas, are stunned by the shutdown.

It is almost unheard of for a Christian church to cancel services on a Sunday, and opponents of the closures are accusing these congregations of bowing to secular culture.

"This is a consumer mentality at work: `Let´s not impose the church on people. Let´s not make church in any way inconvenient,´" said David Wells, professor of history and systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Hamilton, Mass. "I think what this does is feed into the individualism that is found throughout American culture, where everyone does their own thing."

The churches closing on Christmas plan multiple services in the days leading up to the holiday, including on Christmas Eve. Most normally do not hold Christmas Day services, preferring instead to mark the holiday in the days and night before. However, Sunday worship has been a Christian practice since ancient times.

Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said.

"If our target and our mission is to reach the unchurched, basically the people who don´t go to church, how likely is it that they´ll be going to church on Christmas morning?" she said.

Among the other megachurches closing on Christmas Day are Southland Christian Church in Nicholasville, Ky., near Lexington, and Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, outside of Dallas. North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga., outside of Atlanta, said on its Web site that no services will be held on Christmas Day or New Year´s Day, which also falls on a Sunday. A spokesman for North Point did not respond to requests for comment.

The closures stand in stark contrast to Roman Catholic parishes, which will see some of their largest crowds of the year on Christmas, and mainline Protestant congregations such as the Episcopal, Methodist and Lutheran churches, where Sunday services are rarely if ever canceled.

Cindy Willison, a spokeswoman for the evangelical Southland Christian Church, said at least 500 volunteers are needed, along with staff, to run Sunday services for the estimated 8,000 people who usually attend. She said many of the volunteers appreciate the chance to spend Christmas with their families instead of working, although she said a few church members complained.

"If we weren´t having services at all, I would probably tend to feel that we were too accommodating to the secular viewpoint, but we´re having multiple services on Saturday and an additional service Friday night," Willison said. "We believe that you worship every day of the week, not just on a weekend, and you don´t have to be in a church building to worship."

Troy Page, a spokesman for Fellowship Church, said the congregation was hardly shirking its religious obligations. Fellowship will hold 21 services in four locations in the days leading up to the holiday. Last year, more than 30,000 worshippers participated. "Doing them early allows you to reach people who may be leaving town Friday," Page said.

These megachurches are not alone in adjusting Sunday worship to accommodate families on Christmas. But most other congregations are scaling back services instead of closing their doors.

First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla., led by the Rev. Bobby Welch, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, will hold one service instead of the usual two. New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., led by the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, will hold one Sunday service instead of the typical three.

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

IRS selective crackdown on liberal churches

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 12:47:50 GMT

"West Wing" actor Bradley Whitford sounds of on the Huffington Post about the IRS's outrageous attack on All Saints, Pasadena:

Get The IRS Out of My Church
Bradley Whitford
Huffington Post
12.04.2005

I have been a member of the All Saints Church in Pasadena for over ten years. The recent revelations of an IRS investigation into its non-profit status as the result of a sermon given a week before the last presidential election by Rector Emeritus George Regas has outraged and galvanized our congregation.

The support we have received from across the spectrum of faith communities, including traditionally conservative evangelical leaders, has solidified our resolve—the United States government has no place in our houses of worship, and the selective targeting of churches who speak out on the issues of the day sets a dangerous precedent that threatens the religious freedom of every citizen.

The sermon in question explicitly refused to endorse a particular candidate. It did, however, hold George Bush and John Kerry up to the high standard of Christian values. Both were found wanting.

Values not put into action are meaningless, no matter how lofty they are. It is the obligation of our spiritual leaders to not just articulate those values, but to make them a reality.

We live in an age where describing oneself as a “person of faith” carries with it a tremendous political advantage. But too often in the public arena, being “religious” is defined only as a search for personal salvation and a willingness to adhere to dogma.

Declaring oneself a Christian is easy. Putting Christian values to work in a dangerous and violent world is not.

Perhaps the best response to the tragedy of 9/11 was a preemptive war against a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. Tens of thousands of deaths later, perhaps it is still the right decision.

But it is not Christian.

Perhaps it is good economics to give me, an actor on a television show, over a quarter of a million dollars in tax relief over the last five years as the poverty rate climbs, as we burden our children with structural budget deficits and cut services for our most vulnerable citizens.

But it is not Christian.

Perhaps the death penalty is an acceptable way to punish criminals.

But it is not Christian.

Jesus Christ was the Prince of Peace, not the Prince of Preemptive War. He was an advocate for the poor, not of supply-side economics. And let’s not forget that Jesus himself died in a bogus death-penalty rap. His was the original “bleeding heart,” yet I am afraid he would be described pejoratively by many today as a “do-gooder.”

President Bush proudly proclaims himself a Christian and tells us that his faith has changed his heart. Perhaps one day his faith will change his policies. Until then, I am proud to be a part of a congregation that seeks to hold all public officials to their easy— and too often empty—proclamations of faith.

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Left-wing evangelical calls budget bill a "moral disgrace"

Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:53:10 GMT

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, made the following statement today on the narrow passage of the House Budget Reconciliation Bill.

STATEMENT BY JIM WALLIS:

The prophet Isaiah said: "Woe to you legislators of infamous laws ... who refuse justice to the unfortunate, who cheat the poor among my people of their rights, who make widows their prey and rob the orphan." Today, I repeat those words. When our legislators put ideology over principle, it is time to sound the trumpets of justice and tell the truth.

It is a moral disgrace to take food from the mouths of hungry children to increase the luxuries of those feasting at a table overflowing with plenty. This is not what America is about, not what the season of Thanksgiving is about, not what loving our neighbor is about, and not what family values are about. There is no moral path our legislators can take to defend a reckless, mean-spirited budget reconciliation bill that diminishes our compassion, as Jesus said, "for the least of these." It is morally unconscionable to hide behind arguments for fiscal responsibility and government efficiency. It is dishonest to stake proud claims to deficit reduction when tax cuts for the wealthy that increase the deficit are the next order of business. It is one more example of an absence of morality in our current political leadership.

Budgets are moral documents that reflect what we care about. Budget and tax bills that increase the deficit put our children's futures in jeopardy - and they hurt the vulnerable right now. The choice to cut supports that help people make it day to day in order to pay for tax cuts for those with plenty goes against everything our religious and moral principles teach us. It says that leaders don't care about people in need. It is a blatant reversal of biblical values - and symbolizes the death of compassionate conservatism.

The faith community is outraged and is drawing a line in the sand against immoral national priorities. It is time to draw that line more forcefully and more visibly.

I applaud those House members who have stood up for better budget priorities and fought hard all year to keep issues of basic fairness at the forefront of this debate. And I thank those on both sides of the aisle who stood up and did the right thing in voting against this bill, despite pressure from the House leadership. These strong voices provide some hope for getting beyond an ideology that disregards the role of government for the common good.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Getting down to business

joguldi — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 01:11:33 GMT

It's a sad fact that progressives get together and mope, while the Religious Right gets together and gets their people in office. Time that changed.
The fact is that we tend to mope in little clumps. I've been whizzing around YahooGroups for the afternoon, and I've seen something like two dozen separate email lists of progressive Christians -- some of them 200 names long, some of them 20; all very active, commenting on the media. But think about all that wasted energy -- twenty something discreet groups, none of them speaking to each other? It's good to talk; it's good to vent; but it's much better to organize and do something.
The CrossLeft leadership team wants to do something about that. We're putting a big push forward the next few months to recruit attention to the website. We'll be sending out mailings (please forward them!), posting around other places on the web, and encouraging folks to carry our banner and newsstream as a way of helping to get progressives in touch with each other.
We welcome your ideas. Even more, we welcome your help. If this sounds like a good idea to you, don't just sit there, help us tell people about it.
And in the meantime, to give you a sense of our commitment to helping progressive Christians find each other and meet each other, check out the "LINKS" page: http://www.crossleft.org/?q=links .
I've put up links to most of the several hundred other discussion boards, blog-sites, church sites, and columnists that feed into our StreamingChristianity newsstream -- including the half dozen YahooGroups that had public RSS-streams.
We want people to meet each other, and we're hoping that, if nothing else, vanity will lead them here as people follow the addresses that list their own sites.
It's about more than that, though. This isn't just another blogrolling site or webring. We're offering a major service with the newsstreams -- you can read the headlines that interest you the most, already put together. For instance, say you've got a lonely pastor friend, the only blue preacher he knows in a red state. Send him to our daily-updated selection of headlines from blogs by progressive clergy.
Once folks come here, we hope they'll say hello, start joining us in talking about a PATH TO ACTION for political and social change, post local progressive Christian events in their area, and help us show how large the movement could be if only we all showed up at once.

posted in Social Redemption - 2 replies

Getting the word out : podcasting, blogging, and your church

joguldi — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 18:05:51 GMT

Pay attention folks -- GodBlogCon, the conservative church blogathon in California last week, got Fox News's attention. Conservative churches understand blogging, podcasting, sharing email lists, and sharing networks. Our churches don't. Methodists don't talk to Episcopalians, UCC doesn't talk to either. CrossLeft has been trying to get progressive Christians of all denominations to talk to each other, with the end of getting better able to insist loudly that the REPUBLICAN GOD IS NOT OUR GOD. Republican churches shouldn't be the only ones in the media's attention. We need your help to spread the word.

::
Here are my suggestions:

Learn from smart conservative propagandists/networkers like PimpMyChurch.com. Daily commentary on how to convince your pastor to get a website and a blog, how to get them to link to each other and to podcast.
Consider how easy it is to podcast. Say a 3-minute prayer for the victims of Katrina and the earthquake and mudslide and post it on CrossLeft. Say a 3-minute prayer for your favorite Democrat. Say a 3-minute prayer for George Bush, that he may come to his senses and be guided to the light, despite long career on the dark side. Get your church prayer group and Bible study involved. All you need is the microphone built into your computer -- turn it on whenever you're having a good conversation!! Share it with us, and let us broadcast it to the world.
Help spread StreamingChristianity. It has 100s of progressive Christians talking in the same place. Now we need to convince 100s of progressive Christians to read it. Email your friends about it. Get your church or organization website to tack it up in a corner somewhere. It's not offensive; it's not crazy radical; it's just hundreds of clergy and laity talking about the world on their blogs, with media commentary thrown in. It's the best reminder we've got that there are actually enough of us to form a *movement*.
If you believe what I'm saying, do me a favor! Cross-post propaganda like this -- go ahead. Cut and paste it into an email to your pastor or to another activist group you like. Cut and paste it into a discussion board on Livejournal or Tribe.net. Our major mission is to get progressive Christians to talk to each other, so that building networks and finding the smart people on our side and raising up strong progressive leaders won't be so hard.

posted in Social Redemption - 5 replies

Get streaming, live, progressive Christian links!!!

joguldi — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:49:41 GMT

Streaming Christianity -- at http://www.crossleft.org/?q=news -- aggregates over 200 progressive Christian independent bloggers, journalists, news media sources, and internet site searches, to bring you hour-by-hour the Christian progressive movement as it reacts to contemporary political issues.

We're all about sharing information and strategies at http://www.crossleft.org. So an important way of joining up is to connect. Plug your organization or blog into our newsstream so that we'll automatically hear what your movement is up to, and plug our newsstream into your website so that others can keep in touch with what the rest of the progressive Christian movement is doing.

- Consider getting StreamingChristianity for the sidebar of your blog or the news page of your church/organization's website (directions at crossleft.org)

- If you have a blog, discussion board, email newsletter, news-site, or weekly sermon of your own, consider adding your content to our stream! (directions at crossleft.org)

RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/StreamingChristianity

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

A U.S. view: Who supports Bush's sinking ship? by Keith Gottschalk

cguldi — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 06:23:06 GMT

www.rabble.ca/politics.shtml
is an analysis of Bush's die-hard support in the US, an attempt to answer the question "Why is his approval rating, though an all-time low, still so high?"

posted in Social Redemption - 5 replies

Of a world coming apart at the seams.

joguldi — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 19:13:18 GMT

On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of New York City were attacked by two planes, toppling in flames. That date has haunted America for the last four years, outcries against war and an unjust government have been shunted in the name of God and country.

In the Fall of 2005, all that will change. Progressives begin to speak out with one voice.

On August, in the wake of Katrina, starving children, dismantled houses, the abandoned sick, and the unclaimed dead shocked the American viewing public. Could this be on American shores? Communities across America cried out in despair against the systematic dismantling of our welfare and health care system in this country that left so many of the neediest utterly vulnerable to disaster.

Hear the prophecy: Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

On September 24, 2005, hundreds of thousands of protesters in Washington, London, San Francisco, and New York voiced their sustained protest against an endless war and a government equally unconcerned for the lives of its own citizens, its armed forces, and human suffering abroad.

Hear the prophecy: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

On October 13 to 15, 2005, hundreds of Christians will turn out at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, where preachers, lay-people, soup-kitchen workers, peace-protesters, prison-visitors, visitors to New Orleans, progressive journalists, and politicians of both parties, will gather to call for a reformation of the country with one voice, shouting down the government that has abandoned its poor.

Hear the prophecy: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.

BASICS

A conference on Progressive Christian Values to be held October 13-15 at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC will gather Christians together to actively condemn the moral failures of the right-wing government and issue a comprehensive strategy for reform.

Panelists at the conference will present an array of ongoing faith-based media and policy responses towards Hurricane Katrina, poverty, the war in Iraq, health care, the environment, and racism.

Talks and meetings will take place at the National Cathedral, St. Alban's Church, and the Marriott Hotel. Registration is $265/head, including all receptions, meals, and a banquet with Jim Wallis. We've realized that the cost would be prohibitive for a lot of people we want to attract. The daily door fee is now at $20, or $10 for students, with a "pay what you can" clause attached.

<a href = "http://www.everyvoice.net/values">www.everyvoice.net/values</a>

BIG NAMES, BIG NETWORKS

Our confirmed participants include political and social justice figures Jim Wallis, former Senator John Danforth, Jonathan Schell, and Richard Parker; journalists E. J. Dionne, Amy Sullivan, and Steven Waldman; and intellectuals Michael Kazin and David Hollinger.

The conference will also host leaders from the major think tanks on religion and politics, including the Bliss Institute, the Henry Institute, The American Center for Progress, and the Center for Public Justice.

Leaders of the progressive Christian activist groups CrossLeft, The Christian Alliance for Progress, the Center for American Progress, The Center for Progressive Christianity, and CrossWalk America will be panelists for discussion groups on sharing local strategies for permanent, nation-wide social and political change.

<a href = "http://www.everyvoice.net/values">www.everyvoice.net/values</a>

BLOGGING AT THE CONFERENCE

One of our three major activism panels is about "New Strategies," and includes a major representation of net activists like Kaliya Hamlin, one of San Francisco's major thinkers about new kinds of community structure on the internet. She'll be giving a talk about the possibilities of linking net communities to real communities through new blog technologies like those from Civic Space Labs (which gives possibilities for sharing calendars, chatspace, etc etc to this kind of a format).

We've also wired the conference, and alerted every blogger whose email we could get that we'd like to have them there blogging.

Bloggers, famous or not, are encouraged to come, meet each other, speak out at the discussions of strategies for long-term change, and document the conference real-time. You're right that the press-release probably doesn't play up the blogosphere activity as much as it should; alas, our media effort is probably less well coordinated than it should be!

Anyone able to come is encouraged to let me know so that I can introduce myself at the event, and lend any assistance or introductions that would help! jo (at) social redemption (dot) com.

<a href = "http://www.everyvoice.net/values">www.everyvoice.net/values</a>

GRASSROOTS AND BIG CHANGE

Most of our panelists are grassroots leaders with a major presence on the internet -- the Pres and VP of the Christian Alliance for Progress, the entire leadership of CrossLeft, representatives from CrossWalk and the Center for Progressive Christianity. We've made a big deal to participants, panelists and speakers alike about the need for netroots, church, media, think-tank, and pundit to start talking to each other about a common stream of values, and a shared vision of how internet/media/politics can help us promote real social and political change.

The networking of a larger community is a problem progressive Christianity faces before it takes back the country from the radical right fringe. Conference organizers are adamant about helping the whole community start talking to each other, facilitating discussion over the internet, and enabling grass-roots groups with strategies for contacting larger media and political players.

The media panel, for instance, will offer activists information about what gets covered in the mainstream press and what doesn't. We're working from the position that most progressive Christians are sick of reading the headline "church splits over gay issues," with interviews of all the radical right-wing clergymen, every time the Episcopalian church issues a proclamation saying that they're trying to make peace between right and left without having anyone leave. How to get more even coverage? Seems like a good start.

We'd noticed, when talking to grassroots organizers around the country, that very few had access to media and politics on the one hand, or other groups of other denominations / other websites / other geographic locations on the other. Several of the activist participants are involved in longer-term initiatives to make effective the groundwork laid at the conference. CrossLeft's plan for the next year is to set up such a clearing house on the web -- with links to the different grassroots sites by geography and political initiative, with a craigslist-type information/people/needs sharing pool, and with an rss stream of progressive Christian news & blogs.

I welcome more ideas and help in spreading the word! Let's help our community to act with one initiative and reform the country.

<a href = "http://www.everyvoice.net/values">www.everyvoice.net/values</a>

-- Jo Guldi, jo (at) socialredemption (dot) com

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Free Gifts and Trojan Horses

joguldi — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 19:17:31 GMT

Reporting from my hometown of Dallas, Texas, the Washington Post reporter pondered how his colleagues were lavishing attention on the poor.
Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher of the Post give a visuals-intense description of what they see visiting the poor: free clothing, free cars, and free toys.
Athletes come to them, bestowing jerseys and autographs. Entertainers sing for them, and Bennigan's restaurants here and in Houston announced Katrina's kids could eat without paying for a while.
What emotions should this juxtaposition between great wealth and suffering create in us? Should we shift nervously, wondering whether the poor will become accustomed to taking advantage of free gifts? Should we feel nervous about the publicity, how political opportunities mask greater suffering? Should it make us feel warm and hopeful?
The American conscience is programmed to be suspicious of charity for two very different reasons, both of them religious, both of them anti-materialistic.
On the one hand is the evangelical suspicion of free gifts: both the success of the soul and the success of the body politic depend on hard work. Subverting the natural process of accruing material success through projects like welfare or government housing will, evangelicals fear, subvert the normal mechanisms of suffering, atonement, and hard work, which guide the Christian towards the heavenly kingdom.
On the other hand, the Left also has a history of suspicion towards free gifts. When the reading public of the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post look at post-Katrina church charity, they see an inadequate effort, a mere sop to great structural problems, the rafts of donated clothing and canned food hopelessly trying to repair the damage done by the dismantling of Social Security and welfare. For them, free gifts come not from the heart, but at the hands of disdainful, church-going doners who use charity to appease their own guilt for their part in the nation's political failures.
The Post adequately notes the kind of contention over fairness, worthiness, and the intentions of charity that post-Katrina America is now grappling with:
Jennifer Carter, who had been a data-entry technician for the New Orleans police department, didn't realize the fair was open to non-Katrina survivors until she noticed the nicely tailored Nora Gonzalez assert herself at the hiring table of a personnel services company. According to Carter, Gonzalez jumped in front of her, saying, "Well, I'm from Texas, this is my résumé." Fumed Carter: "They should give us an opportunity because we have nothing."
Told of Carter's perspective, Gonzalez seemed surprised. Her friend, Keyla Robinson, who was looking for clerical work, chimed in: "Why should you feel guilty? We're in need, too.
If Katrina does anything, it should make us face the reality about which the Bible preaches. We are all of us in peril: For we see that the rich, like the poor, die also, says the psalmist. To this message Christ reminded us that the poor, faced with starvation and murder, understand their vulnerability to suffering, evil, and hatred more than the rich.
Glossing Christ's parable of the eye of the needle, the early church father Saint Clement explained that the rich come closest to salvation when they participate in the suffering of the poor, not by blind charity alone, but by emotional co-participation in the vulnerability and suffering of the poor.
Nothing can minimize the suffering of disaster. Katrina ought to bring that message home to American viewers, who, like the writer herself, have found themselves turning a blind eye to disaster in Africa, India, or the Middle East when it seemed too terrible to bear recognition. So disaster offers an opportunity to recreate the world, one much grander and more important than the experiment in government-planning-free capitalism Bush envisions for post-Katrina New Orleans. Disaster offers an opportunity for everyone who views the destruction, rich and poor alike, to foreswear their worldly ambitions and take up community, fellowship, and responsibility for others in their place.
The post-disaster world is the world of nightly scandals, accidents, and warfare on CNN as well as the world post-Katrina. It has too conceivable meanings, only one of them Christian: the first is that net of vulnerability to unfair markets and corrupt individuals set forth by the Post reporters, a world that has informed American politics for the last two decades. In such a world every gift is a possible Trojan Horse in which swindles and heartbreak lie hidden.
The other message the universe may send us in disaster is a recognition of how universal opportunism, greed, corruption, and strife are in our world, a recognition that our brothers in sisters in New Orleans are the counterparts to the poor everywhere in America, to the denizens of the Twin Towers four years ago, to the AIDS orphans and starving genocide victims of Darfur, and to the war-throttled citizens of Iraq. After such a message we have no choice but to reach out, to create a better world, in small acts of charity as well as great acts of political vision. In this world, free gifts still hold a secret enwrapped deep in beneath their surfaces: a precious, forbidden conviction that each stranger we encounter really is our brother, that in every act of true charity we participate in the physical presence of Jesus Christ, that nothing else in the world can compare with the purpose and truth of God in such moments of uninhibited giving.

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Cathedral Dean Calls Sheehan A "Prophet"

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:42:56 GMT

Thankfully, not everyone who call themselves Christians are warmongers.

Cathedral's Dean Kowalski calls Cindy Sheehan a "prophet"

By Daphne Mack
ENS 092105-1
Wednesday, September 21, 2005

[Episcopal News Service] More than 1,000 people filled the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City on September 19, 2005, to hear anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and supporters on the "Bring Them Home Now Tour" rally support for a three-day march and anti-war protest in Washington, DC, September 24-26.

"We need to show Congress that we mean business when we say we want our troops [to come] home," Sheehan said.

Sheehan came to national attention this summer when she camped out near President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding that the vacationing president explain to her in person why her 24-year-old son Casey, an Army specialist assigned to 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, died in Iraq. The effort became known as Camp Casey.

In his welcoming address, the Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, dean of the cathedral, received applause when he likened Sheehan to a "prophet."

"In the Bible there are stories about seemingly unimportant, insignificant, seemingly powerless people who out of nowhere landed in the kingdom where the king was out of control and emerged as a prophet and said to the king you have lied to your people and led them astray and Cindy Sheehan is one of those prophets," he said.

"It's an honor to have you here," Kowalski told the crowd. “A lot of people told us not to do this, not as a church especially" which didn't "make any sense to us, especially this cathedral." However, he added, "a lot of things haven't been making any sense to us."

"We asked a lot of tough questions before we went to war, and I know a lot of people disagreed, but the truth is we weren't told the truth," Kowalski said.

He urged those present to not "let people ever persuade you that just because people disagree, that they are not patriots or [that] we're not patriots." He said the "name calling and the mean spirited deception going on in the name of government and in the name of patriotism has got to stop."

Kowalski asked "what greater conversation could there be than about stopping war, and returning to peace?"

Elliot Adams, of Veterans for Peace, spoke poignantly of "the pain" he kept "inside with alcohol" for 30 years over his part in the
Vietnam War. He compared a soldier to a "crystal glass, and if you break it, you can't fix it."

Asking the audience to repeat after him, Adams stated the three point message of Camp Casey that will be taken to Washington: first, “bring them home now”; second, “take care of them when they get here”; and third, “never send our love ones to war again on a lie.”

The Rev. Osagyefu Uhuru Sekou, of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq, said it was very appropriate to be assembled in this sacred place because there is no more sacred work than the work of peace and justice."

Sheehan told the crowd "we will not accept you not being in Washington, DC next weekend."

"We have to make the world safer and the only way we are going to do that is to get George Bush out of office," she said.

posted in Social Redemption - 2 replies

Press Release: Values Conference

joguldi — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:28:27 GMT

Press Release:
Conference on Progressive Christian Values to Condemn Government Abandonment of Duty Towards the Poor

A conference on Progressive Christian Values to be held October 13-15 at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC will gather Christians together to actively condemn the moral failures of the right-wing government and issue a comprehensive strategy for reform.

Panelists at the conference will present an array of ongoing faith-based media and policy responses towards Hurricane Katrina, poverty, the war in Iraq, health care, the environment, and racism. Work will center on effective strategies for faithful political organization, providing ways for participants to collaborate on the local, regional, and national level. "Focusing on values that transform the human race into the human family is essential as we live into the post-Katrina world" says the Rev. Ed Bacon, one of the key conference organizers.

The first day of the conference promises to be a major media event, demonstrating that moderate and progressive Christians have cohesive, public, strategic, unified aims for America. Expert panelists will show how the image of the church has been co-opted by a radical right and offer ways to respond.

“American political forces, in collaboration with this radical group, have corrupted Christ’s message of service towards one’s neighbor into a punitive politics of fringe interests wed to the idolatry of worldly security,” said the Rev. Rosa Lee Harden, Values Conference executive producer. “We invite journalists, clergy, laity, and the public to help us call America back from this dangerous politics, whose devastating effects we have seen so clearly in the abandonment of the poor after Hurricane Katrina.”

Further information on the conference is here:

http://www.everyvoice.net/values

- Please visit the conference PR website: http://www.everyvoice.net/values/pr
- Email the PR contacts: Elizabeth Krueger (elizabeth@everyvoice.net) or Jo Guldi (jo@socialredemption.com)

Practical Information
- The conference opens Thursday, October 13, 1pm, at St. Alban’s Church (at the National Cathedral campus) with an address by journalist E. J. Dionne.
- Six conference tracks address the politics of progressive Christianity (Thursday), economic justice, peacemaking, racism, and the environment (Friday), and family values (Saturday morning).
- The conference has places for five hundred participants. Seats are filling up rapidly, and we encourage attendees to register on our website. Registration for all sessions, banquets, and receptions being held at the National Cathedral and the Marriott is open for $255 a head ($85 for students). Registration for panels only (without banquet tickets) is $190 ($20 for students).
- Those in the DC/New York/Philadelphia area are encouraged to drop by the National Cathedral for whatever sessions most interest them. Day-attendance costs $20 ($10 for students).

Organizers and Participants
- The conference is the work of several grass-roots organized religious groups from California: Via Media, a new program of church education videos and materials based around Christ’s teachings and the concerns of progressive politics (http://www.everyvoice.net/viamedia/); the EveryVoice Network, a group of progressive Episcopalian clergy and laity (http://www.everyvoice.net); Claiming the Blessing an intentional collaborative ministry of leading Episcopal justice organizations focused on promoting wholeness in human relationships, abolishing prejudice and oppression, and healing the rift between sexuality and spirituality in the Church, (http://www.claimingtheblessing.org/); CrossLeft, a group of inter-denominational progressive Christian policy activists (http://www.crossleft.org/); All Saints’ Church, Pasadena (http://www.allsaints-pas.org/); and the Cathedral College, DC (http://www.cathedralcollege.org/).
- Our confirmed participants include political and social justice figures Jim Wallis, former Senator John Danforth, Jonathan Schell, and Richard Parker; journalists E. J. Dionne, Amy Sullivan, and Steven Waldman; and intellectuals Michael Kazin and David Hollinger.
- The conference will also host the directors of the major think tanks on religion, including the Bliss Institute, the Henry Institute, and the Center for Public Justice.
- Leaders of the progressive Christian activist groups CrossLeft, The Christian Alliance for Progress, the Center for American Progress, The Center for Progressive Christianity, and CrossWalk America will also be in attendance.
- Leaders from the Episcopal Church present will include: Robert Radtke, President of Episcopal Relief and Development; the Rt. Rev. Mark Andrus, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Alabama; the Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, the Rev. Ian Douglas; Valerie Batts; Mike Kinman; the Rev. Dr. Sabina Alkire and many others.

History and Aims
- The Values Conference follows a series of conferences this year at which spiritual progressives have loudly protested the co-option of the values debate by religious conservatives. Religious Right agendas like “Justice Sunday” meant to stigmatize the Democratic Party have met with outrage on the part of America’s silent majority of moderate and progressive Christians. The Values Conference will build social networks and cohesive strategies where earlier conferences have already demonstrated a body of Christians united by outrage at the Religious Right. The conference tracks point to the strategies and efforts underway in politics that evidence true Christian values that actually reflect the social gospel of Jesus Christ.
- The conference will assemble a number of Christian intellectuals, journalists, policy-makers, and grass-roots activists who have generally pursued their work in isolation. We hope that these groups will now be able to collaborate in areas where their strategies overlap. Out of this conference we expect to see a more unified sense of goals, impediments, and strategies than the Christian progressive movement has hitherto demonstrated.
- A further statement of the conference agenda is available at http://www.everyvoice.net/values/pr. The conference schedule is at http://www.everyvoice.net/values.

Interviewing Participants
Journalists are encouraged to interview participants about progressive Christian reactions to Hurricane Katrina, government catastrophe, poverty, Christian values, the progressive movement, and the Values Conference agenda.

- Keynote speakers include several major political actors for political change based on progressive Christian principles. Journalists may contact them through their offices.
o Jim Wallis of Sojourners, author of God’s Politics, will deliver the banquet keynote on poverty. An interview may be arranged through Jack Pannell. tel (202) 328-8842 ext. 214, fax (202) 328-8757, jpannell@sojo.net.
o Jonathan Schell, correspondent for The Nation and author of The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People and The Fate of the Earth, will deliver the plenary address on peacemaking. He may be contacted through the Nation Institute: (212) 209-5400.
o E. J. Dionne of the Brookings Institute will deliver the opening address of the conference. He may be contacted through Katherine Moore, kmoore@brookings.edu. The front desk number of Brookings Institute may be reached by calling tel (202) 797-6000, fax (202) 797-6004.

- The conference will bring together several communities of grass-roots progressive Christians who are taking political action from their congregations.
o Jo Guldi of CrossLeft, a social historian and a Christian activist responsible for the Values Conference track on politics, is available to discuss the status and aims of progressive Christian grass-roots activism: jo@socialredemption.com.
o Dr. Ray Steiner, president of CrossWalk America in Phoenix, Arizona, can talk about building bridges between moderate and liberal churches, both equally disturbed at the religious right’s corruption of the Christian message: tel (766) 292-9255, rsteiner9@cox.net.
o Kathleen LeRoy, Vice President of the Christian Alliance for Progress in Jacksonville, Florida, can discuss the campaigns used by churches and congregations to fight for progressive values in politics: kleroy@christianalliance.org.
o Stephen Rockwell, one of the co-founders of CrossLeft, a group of activists dedicated towards political change in a progressive direction based on Jesus’s teachings, is available to discuss progressive Christian responses to contemporary politics: (215) 317-1865, steve@civicdirect.net.
o Kaliya Hamlin, an organizer of activist coalitions on the internet, is available to discuss how progressive activists are using the internet to forge networks of political action: kaliya@kaliyasblogs.com.

- The conference will bring together educators, journalists, and intellectuals who are speaking out about the co-option of the church by its radical right wing and how American progressives have traditionally defended the Christian message against its corruption.
o Ed Bacon, long-time justice activist and rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena, and Rosa Lee Harden, director of Via Media and rector of Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco, are available to discuss progressive Christian education and its approach to issues of sexuality, racism, economics, politics, and social justice: ebacon@allsaints-pas.org, rosalee@everyvoice.net.
o After October 1, journalists may contact historian David Hollinger of the University of California, Berkeley, about the progressive tradition in American Christianity, the apparent fragmentation of progressive politics after the 1970s, and how new progressives are harnessing the Christian tradition: (510) 642-3402, davidhol@berkeley.edu.
o Historian Michael Kazin can talk about the intellectual tradition of progressive Christianity, its nineteenth century legacy, and its transformative power in the social gospel and civil rights movements: at work, (202) 687-0007, cell (202) 246-4440, mk8@georgetown.edu.
o Journalist Amy Sullivan of the Washington Monthly, a Democrat and a Christian, is available to discuss the progressive Christian response to current events, the community of Christian journalists, and the representation of progressive Christianity in the media: (202) 393-5155, amysullivandc@gmail.com.

For More Information
- Please visit the conference PR website: http://www.everyvoice.net/values/pr
- Email the PR contacts: Elizabeth Krueger (elizabeth@everyvoice.net) or Jo Guldi (jo@socialredemption.com)

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Church of England Apologizes to Muslims for Iraq War

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:40:18 GMT

The U.S. Episcopal Church should get on this bandwagon (if it hasn't already:

LONDON (AFP) - The Church of England offered to take the lead in reconciling with Muslims by apologizing to their leaders for the US-led war inIraq if the British government fails to do so.

The proposal was contained in a report, entitled "Countering Terrorism: Power, Violence and Democracy Post-9/11" which written by a working group of the Church of England's House of Bishops.

"We do believe that the church has a visionary role for reconciliation, beyond that of any government," the Bishop of Oxford, Right Reverend Richard Harris, told BBC radio.

"The Christian church in particular has a mandate to work for reconciliation," he said Monday.

The report suggests that a "truth and reconciliation" meeting between Christian and Muslim leaders would be an opportunity to apologize for the way the West has contributed to the tragedy in Iraq, including the March 2003 invasion led by the United States and Britain.

The Church of England, which lies at the heart of the worldwide Anglican communion, has been openly critical of the war in Iraq, claiming the invasion failed to meet the criteria of a "just war".

The meeting is offered as a solution to the moral dilemma that members of the church who opposed the war find themselves in.

The bishops say to pull out of Iraq without a stable democracy being in place would be irresponsible and compound the misery of the Iraqi people. But to stay suggests collusion with a "gravely mistaken" war.

If collusion is a necessary evil, the report says, there needs to be a degree of public recognition of the West's responsibility for the predicament.

The report highlights a "long litany of errors" in the West's handling of Iraq which includes its support of Saddam Hussein over many years as a strategic ally against Iran, its willingness to sell him weapons and the suffering caused to the Iraqi people by sanctions.

It goes on to say that the recent invasion appeared to be "as much for reasons of American national interest as it was for the well-being of the Iraqi people".

As Prime Minister
Tony Blair's government is unlikely to offer an apology, a meeting of religious leaders would provide a "public act of institutional repentance," it said.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Will New Orleans go Republican?

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 16:34:00 GMT

I wonder if anyone has noticed what the removal of half a million black folks from the electoral base of New Orleans portends for its political future. I bet Karl Rove has. I would not be surprised to see a Republican mayor in the next election, and more Republicans sent to Congress.

And then you'll see the whole place turn into a Disneyesque ersatz plantationville, built by Halliburton and stocked with every chain store you can name.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

item donations

clara_nachtigall — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 16:13:10 GMT

I am doing a little scouting to see where we could send actual items (like apparel). I have some friends in Texas who are going to scout it out and let me know. My daughter and I put together several boxes of quality lightly-used clothing and rather than drop it at our local Salvation Army and hope that it all gets to the survivors in a timely fashion, we're hoping to find someplace to send it immediately. Anyone have any ideas?

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Avoid "Operation Blessing"

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 19:03:01 GMT

There are various lists of charities helping in the Katrina effort. These lists often include www.ob.org. That is the website for "Operation Blessing" which is Pat Robertson's so-called charity. FEMA was even running a link to ob on their website.

Stay away from Operation Blessing unless you endorse that hate-mongering, assassination-plotting, nut-job huckster Pat Robertson.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Best Katrina Charity?

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 17:34:56 GMT

Rather than just sitting around bitching about how Bush screwed the pooch on this one, I want to get out my checkbook. I have given some money already to the Red Cross, but I hear persistent negative rumors about administrative costs, bureacracy, and what not.

I'd like to know whether people have fact-based opinions about good disaster relief charities to give to that are assisting in the Katrina effort.

And don't tell me to give to Operation Blessing. That's Pat Robertson's "charity"!

posted in Social Redemption - 4 replies

this is what's wrong with america

clara_nachtigall — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 21:05:52 GMT

I got an email from a fundie republican pseudo-friend who has decided that the looters in Louisiana are not Americans. They're "the enemy implants". OK, mary, whatever helps ya sleep at night. sheesh
i told her i'd probably steal stuff too if my kids were hungry and thirsty. (of course i don't condone those who are shooting at rescue workers...)
Have you noticed that the people who you see in the news broadcasts are probably *not* the rich and famous??? So tell me, where was the money to do something about this when they KNEW that Katrina was coming.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Bush = Disaster

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 12:36:45 GMT

Bush deserves nothing but contempt from sane people in this country. He is a vile, reckless, self-indulgent sociopath, and the worst excuse for a "leader" that this country has ever seen. Bar none.

And his bloody, criminally negligent fingerprints are all over the New Orleans disaster. The facts are spelled out in a Spiegel article by a former Clinton advisor that I will reprint here in relevant part:

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"
By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.

In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.

In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

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Katrina: Call to Action

joguldi — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:56:32 GMT

"This is our tsunami," said Biloxi mayor A. J. Holloway.

In the New Orleans Superdome where the homeless were herded, the toilets overflow and the water rises to a meter outside; as food relief diminishes and the hospital electrical generators fail.

Remember the lesson of the tsunami. America showed its heartlessness to the world when Bush's contributions failed to match those of small countries in Europe. American volunteers flocked there in mass, only to be seen pounding their bibles and refusing food and shelter to anyone who didn't come to Bible Study.

Progressives can do better than this. Natural disasters demonstrate what we all know, progressive humanist and progressive Christian alike, that man doesn't live on his own but in the company of fellow human-beings for whom he has a responsibility. Tragedy strikes for obscure reasons, and tragedy, above all other incidents, ought to remind us of the constant peril in which each of us lives, of our need for one another to survive, of our duty to take up responsibility for the well-being of other human beings. Whatever our political philosophy, whether we think that overarching institutions or local fellowships ought to take responsibility, we all agree that responsibility ought to be taken.

Jesus said, "As you do unto the least of these you have done it unto me."

We all need to do a reexamination, facing this disaster, of how American cities rate in their responses. The New Orleans tragedy is demonstrating that we have utterly failed Jesus' commandment. Leaving the drowning city, we left behind the poor, the weak, the sick, and the incarcerated, to starve and drown among the toxic waters.

I put out a call for congregational action towards three groups that represent the least of our society. If we fail here, we demonstrate ourselves before the eyes of the world to truly have failed as a Christian nation, not even capable of caring for our own in their time of direst need:

- The poor and homeless who, left behind as their fellow-citizens have fled, have been starving in the Superdome while the structure was ripped apart. Think for a minute about those who try to plan ahead but can't, about the cramped shuttles leaving the city, about what it would be like not to have enough money for a bus ticket out when the warnings were sounded? You see doom coming, and you look around, and no one remains to help you. The city is evacuated and still you wait. Where were the churches that could have organized buses to transport the poor to safety?

- The prisoners evacuated today only after standing in rising water for hours. In advanced nations, we claim that our prisons are supposed to correct and not merely to torture. The man standing in rising water, thinking himself forgotten by his society for wrongs committed far in the past, abandoned, alone, and facing death in totally abysmal conditions -- how will he ever gain faith in society again? What could possibly reclaim him for society? Now, herding them into armored vans, transported to already crowded prisons in Texas, we sew the seeds of irredeemable anger and viciousness towards society. Church, activist, and state need to intervene to make reparations to the prisoners for the way they've been treated in this crisis.

- The sick and elderly who are in hospital, while the windows were blown out and the electric generators failed.

I am putting this out there as a wake-up call. The progressive churches of America aren't organized in a way that allows them to deal with disasters on a great scale. But we do have on our side the quick flow of information, the internet, the local networks of concerned activists, clergy, and lay people, and the growing realization in America that our government isn't able to care for the poor and disenfranchised.

Share this message, I ask you, to your congregations, your ministers, your charities, and let some response be heard. The responsibility for right action in this tragedy rests entirely with progressives, Christian and humanist alike: the radical right has disowned the crisis, claiming that Florida deserved to be hit by a hurricane. Don't let their reaction of armored poison prevail as the formatted response. Theirs is a message that kills mercy, wastes the soul, and annihilates civil society.

We have a better answer than that. Let Christ's message, of putting others' needs before our own, ring through the churches of America. Let's show that progressive Christians can do better than this. The survival of a Christian message true to Jesus' teaching is at stake, in America. The survival of a civil society capable of healing the wounds of economic division is at stake.

<a href = "http://www.crossleft.org">http://www.crossleft.org</a>

posted in Social Redemption - 6 replies

Katrina: Call to Action

joguldi — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:54:26 GMT

<a href="http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp8-31-05a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/homepage/hp8-31-05a.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>

"This is our tsunami," said Biloxi mayor A. J. Holloway.

In the New Orleans Superdome where the homeless were herded, the toilets overflow and the water rises to a meter outside; as food relief diminishes and the hospital electrical generators fail.

Remember the lesson of the tsunami. America showed its heartlessness to the world when Bush's contributions failed to match those of small countries in Europe. American volunteers flocked there in mass, only to be seen pounding their bibles and refusing food and shelter to anyone who didn't come to Bible Study.

Progressives can do better than this. Natural disasters demonstrate what we all know, progressive humanist and progressive Christian alike, that man doesn't live on his own but in the company of fellow human-beings for whom he has a responsibility. Tragedy strikes for obscure reasons, and tragedy, above all other incidents, ought to remind us of the constant peril in which each of us lives, of our need for one another to survive, of our duty to take up responsibility for the well-being of other human beings. Whatever our political philosophy, whether we think that overarching institutions or local fellowships ought to take responsibility, we all agree that responsibility ought to be taken.

Jesus said, "As you do unto the least of these you have done it unto me."

We all need to do a reexamination, facing this disaster, of how American cities rate in their responses. The New Orleans tragedy is demonstrating that we have utterly failed Jesus' commandment. Leaving the drowning city, we left behind the poor, the weak, the sick, and the incarcerated, to starve and drown among the toxic waters.

I put out a call for congregational action towards three groups that represent the least of our society. If we fail here, we demonstrate ourselves before the eyes of the world to truly have failed as a Christian nation, not even capable of caring for our own in their time of direst need:

- The poor and homeless who, left behind as their fellow-citizens have fled, have been starving in the Superdome while the structure was ripped apart. Think for a minute about those who try to plan ahead but can't, about the cramped shuttles leaving the city, about what it would be like not to have enough money for a bus ticket out when the warnings were sounded? You see doom coming, and you look around, and no one remains to help you. The city is evacuated and still you wait. Where were the churches that could have organized buses to transport the poor to safety?

- The prisoners evacuated today only after standing in rising water for hours. In advanced nations, we claim that our prisons are supposed to correct and not merely to torture. The man standing in rising water, thinking himself forgotten by his society for wrongs committed far in the past, abandoned, alone, and facing death in totally abysmal conditions -- how will he ever gain faith in society again? What could possibly reclaim him for society? Now, herding them into armored vans, transported to already crowded prisons in Texas, we sew the seeds of irredeemable anger and viciousness towards society. Church, activist, and state need to intervene to make reparations to the prisoners for the way they've been treated in this crisis.

- The sick and elderly who are in hospital, while the windows were blown out and the electric generators failed.

I am putting this out there as a wake-up call. The progressive churches of America aren't organized in a way that allows them to deal with disasters on a great scale. But we do have on our side the quick flow of information, the internet, the local networks of concerned activists, clergy, and lay people, and the growing realization in America that our government isn't able to care for the poor and disenfranchised.

Share this message, I ask you, to your congregations, your ministers, your charities, and let some response be heard. The responsibility for right action in this tragedy rests entirely with progressives, Christian and humanist alike: the radical right has disowned the crisis, claiming that Florida deserved to be hit by a hurricane. Don't let their reaction of armored poison prevail as the formatted response. Theirs is a message that kills mercy, wastes the soul, and annihilates civil society.

We have a better answer than that. Let Christ's message, of putting others' needs before our own, ring through the churches of America. Let's show that progressive Christians can do better than this. The survival of a Christian message true to Jesus' teaching is at stake, in America. The survival of civil society capable of healing the wounds of economic division is at stake.

<a href = "http://www.crossleft.org">http://www.crossleft.org</a>

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Focus on the Family: Is Your Child A Ho-Mo-Sex-U-Al?

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 05:14:12 GMT

Dr. James Dobson (a "doctor" of psychology), right-wing fundamentalist crackpot, and holder of Bush's evangelical purse-strings, exhorts parents to prevent homosexuality from taking root in their male offstpring. They must be on the lookout for signs of "effeminacy", and send their little proto-homos off for counseling and God knows what all. Here's the story: http://www.focusonyourchild.com/develop/art1/A0000684.html

Comments?

posted in Social Redemption - 6 replies

Buy Gas at CITGO in Solidarity With Hugo Chavez!

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 17:21:28 GMT

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered on Tuesday to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of gasoline. He wants to supply gasoline to Americans at half the price they now pay if intermediaries who "speculated ... and exploited consumers" were cut out. Read David Pace's CNN article here:
www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/a...../08/23/chavez.gasoline.reut/

Chavez might be able to actually pull this off through Venezuela's U.S. oil subsidiary, CITGO. In any event, we should probably all be buying our gas at CITGO to stick a middle digit in Pat Robertson's (and Bush's) eye!

Here's CITGO's website: www.citgo.com/Home.jsp Go to the "CITGO locator" button to find a station. I found the following 3 stations within 10 miles of downtown San Francisco:

U & I AUTO SAFETY CENTER
205 FRANKLIN ST.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102
Phone: (415) 255-7337 0.17 miles

7 ELEVEN 19235
2700 BAYSHORE
DALY CITY, CA 94014
Phone: (415) 467-6984 4.86 miles

7 ELEVEN 32181
4193 PIEDMONT AVE
OAKLAND, CA 94611
Phone: (510) 594-0269 9.84 miles

posted in Social Redemption - 3 replies

Who Would Jesus Assassinate?

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 16:29:29 GMT

By now everyone knows that Pat Robertson, evangelical blowhard par excellence, has called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Chavez. Although the Bush administration has tried to put some distance between itself and Robertson, it is well known that Chavez has been an irritant and represents to them the "evils of socialism."

What bothers me is that we have not heard anything from Christian leaders anywhere on this. It might be expected that James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and their ilk would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Brother Pat. But what about the leaders of mainline protestant denominations? Why don't they come out and denounce this clown for what he is -- a rabid, spittle-faced nut-case who is Christian in no sense of the word? Go to the major online news sources and you will find silence. Same at the Christian Science Monitor.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

What Would It Take? An Open Letter from a Seminary Professor to Christian Supporters of Bush

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:30:56 GMT

Chuck Gutenson teaches theology at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky. He wrote the following for the Huffington Post. It is a succinct catalogue of reasons why Christians cannot support the Bush administration and remain true to any semblance of Christ's teachings.

Chuck Gutenson
08.22.2005
What Would It Take?

In recent posts, I have been writing about the captivity of our imaginations, how the tyranny of current perceptions prevents us from imagining that things could be different. I say “current perceptions” rather than “current realities,” because those who would seek to keep our imaginations bound often do so by creating a false reality that serves their interests. Over time, we may come to embrace these perceptions of reality and are increasingly bound by them.
Too easily, they become “our reality,” and we become the supporters and defenders of things that we really know better than to support or defend. When this happens, the question becomes how bad things will have to get before we awaken.

This is the question I have for my fellow Christians who support the Bush administration: how long will the support for this administration continue in light of their increasing betrayal of the core commitments of Jesus? What will it take to demand either that they stop wrapping themselves in the mantle of Christian faith or that they begin to live up to the obligations that attend that mantle? Almost daily, I find myself speechless at the audacity of this administration and the deafening silence of so many Christian leaders.

Consider:

* We now know this president had contemplated the benefits of being a “war president” even prior to his election and that he and members of his administration were moving toward war with Iraq from even before 9/11.
* In spite of the evidence, they continue to claim there was a link between 9/11 and Iraq.
* We now know the intelligence regarding Iraqi WMDs was wrong and that this should have been known at the time.
* 15,000 plus American and coalition soldiers have been killed or maimed, and latest estimates put the loss of Iraqi non-combatants at over 100,000.
* With the recent agreement to an Iraqi Islamic state (think about that), the final pretense for the war (spreading democracy) has slipped away.
* They used the popularity gained by “wartime administrations” to push through massive tax cuts that have disproportionately benefitted the well-to-do.
* They have shredded the social safety net which has provided a minimal level of support for the most vulnerable members of our society.
* Military spending has eaten so many resources desperately needed for schools, highways, etc.
* They have overseen the rise of budget and trade deficits that are unsustainable.
* They have supported so-called “Clean Water” and “Clean Skies” legislation that increases pollutants,
* They have repeatedly misused scientific data for partisan benefit.
* They have operated with an unprecedented level of secrecy.
* Notwithstanding protestations to the contrary, it is now pretty clear that the Bush team (specifically, Karl Rove) outed Valerie Plame in attempt to discredit Joe Wilson though there has been no serious challenge to the substance of his report.
* The president has refused to honor his commitment to dismiss the leaker once found.
* The environment has been repeatedly sacrificed to corporate interests.
* The debate on global warming–both as to its reality and the basic underlying causes–is over... Well, for everyone but this administration and some of its supporters.
* This administration has led the push to open the Arctic reserve for oil drilling–frequently, with the very dishonest arguments...
* The president opted for unilateral withdrawal from the Kyoto protocols aimed at improving green house gas emissions.
* This administration has continually underplayed the extent to which it has empowered torture and detainee abuse.
* They have unilaterally withdrawn from treaties aimed at curtailing nuclear proliferation and have put the use of nuclear weapons back on the table.
* This president’s policy of “pre-emptive war,” surely unwise, simply does not meet just war criteria (the basis Christians use to determine whether a given war is just).
* Unilateralism has led to remarkable deterioration in international good will.
* The recently signed energy bill, as admitted by even its supporters, does nothing to provide solutions to our long term energy needs, though it does benefit already highly profitable oil companies.
* At the core of all these concerns are fundamental issues of character. For example, this president has exhibited nothing of that virtue we claim to prize so highly: humility.

At any point in this sad story, we should have arrived at the point where Christians would find themselves unable to support this administration. If this short list (it could be much, much longer) is not enough to make that point, what will be? My guess is that the answer is just this: as long as this administration talks up its opposition to abortion and homosexuality, they can do whatever else they please. An interesting passage in the letter to the church at Colossae indicates that the cross of Christ laid bare the powers that opposed him. How so? Well, the powers ordained by God (societal structures, for one) to order human life together were revealed for their perversity in that they killed the One who lived a life of perfect love. I wonder if the support of this administration has not shined a light deep into our being and revealed our own bankruptcy. Do we even have the will to see it and to repent?

I have tried to keep this post short, but you can find a longer, more detailed version here. We would be happy to hear your comments and insights.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Onward Christian Soldiers: Pat Robertson Calls for Special Forces to Assassinate Venezuelan Prez

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:21:30 GMT

Pat Robertson is a nut-job. This we all know. The unfortunate thing is that the Rev. Robertson and other members of the fundamentalist nut-job cabal exert enormous influence over the direction of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

On the foreign policy front, I pass along the following from MediaMatters.org:

Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Posted to the web on Monday August 22, 2005 at 4:40 PM EST

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Prayer Changes Everything

Carol — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:25:25 GMT

http://prayerchangesthings.tribe.net/?_click_path=Application%5Btribe%5D.Tribe%5Bd7e26d9b-4f22-426c-b5b2-f8ec7aed1626%5D&r=10513

Please, come and join us!

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

More Justice Sunday

Carol — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 18:20:49 GMT

http://www.christianalliance.org/site/c.bnKIIQNtEoG/b.970997/k.716A/Write_a_Letter_to_Your_Senator.htm?tr=y&auid=1044085

The Church and State Debate: Getting it Right

Write a letter to your senator now!

Increasingly, Americans are thinking and talking about the role of religion and politics—how they intersect, and to what extent religious values should inform public policy that affects us all.

This is a vital debate. The Christian Alliance for Progress believes that our faith values are integral to our perspective on politics—a necessary perspective to bring to the public debate. But today we see a dangerous trend in the exploitation of Christianity by the radical Christian right. They demand acceptance of their ideology as the sole expression of Christianity in political conversation.

They seek a simplistic discussion that frames issues in terms of pro-faith or anti-faith. This distortion shows their intolerance of any Christian perspective that is different. We believe that genuine Christian values are inconsistent with many of the political positions advocated by the radical Christian Right.

As Americans discuss these issues, the Christian Alliance for Progress is refusing to surrender any longer these questions. These are the challenges from the radical Christian right we’re seeking to answer:

The leaders of the Religious Right have misappropriated substantially all the language of Christianity. After 30 years of relentless effort by the Christian Right many Americans today equate “being Christian” with, for example:

• Making sure that gay and lesbian people do not have full rights as citizen
• Making distraught pregnant women into criminals
• Suppressing scientific information and medical research
• Blocking honest education about human reproduction and replacing it with enforced ignorance or actual fallacies
• Promoting war

They are using this influence to control and manipulate politics to advance their ideology. Despite rhetoric painting themselves as victims whose faith is under siege, the political and religious leaders of the Christian right have become increasingly bold. They loudly proclaim credit for gains at the ballot box for their preferred politicians, and they are increasingly vocal about their political strategies and triumphs to demonstrate their clout. Indeed, their Justice Sunday events have featured both the Senate majority leader and the House Majority Leader.

The Separation of Church and State is one of America’s oldest and most basic doctrines. In the current debate churches and worship are not yet threatened as they once were. Rather, it is now the state that is at risk of being controlled by the church. Given the rise in power of the Christian Right, the principle of separation is vital to protect the government from being dominated by one version of one faith. Why does the Christian Right want to tear down the wall? The Christian Right seeks to institutionalize and impose it’s beliefs on all Americans through the de facto control of the state. But as Christians we should find strength in Jesus’ admonition to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” The goal of the radical Christian Right is to be the government, they want to be Caesar.

Please join this effort by making your voice heard with the U.S. Senate as they question Judge John Roberts, President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Write a letter to your senator now!

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Help

Carol — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 22:20:36 GMT

tribes.tribe.net/cratfyangels
We need some helping hands, please check it out.

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Justice Sunday II

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 05:15:03 GMT

Here's a tongue-in-cheek take on how some of our Christian brethren are bringing faith into the public square: http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000233.htm

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Live! Streaming! Aggregated Christianity!

joguldi — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 15:41:14 GMT

http://landscape.blogspot.com/2005/08/join-progressive-christian-movement.html

The feed aggregates some 200 independent bloggers, Christian columnists, and news sources filtered for news of Christian politics, all with a progressive bias.

- Don't you think it would be nice to read this stuff every day?

- Wouldn't you like to share it with everyone you know?

- Don't you think you'd like your own writing to be part of it?

Good news! This is all possible. Progressive Christianity is an energetic, active movement transforming the world, and you *can* plug in! What you can do:

1) bookmark this address: http://app.feeddigest.com/digest3/8FFOR2LHJR.html

2) if you're technologically sophisticated, use this address for your own rss feed aggregator: http://app.feeddigest.com/digest3/8FFOR2LHJR.rss

3) if you want to add your blog to the roll, send me a note

4) We encourage you to syndicate the newsreel on your own blog, church, or organization site! Sophisticated php scripts to plug into your blog or html are available upon request.

In return, we ask you to post this banner linking your guests to http://www.CrossLeft.org

The design sophistication and powerful bandwidth necessary to provide this service is due entirely to the magnificent generosity of that most excellent, well-designed, and easy-to-use service FeedDigest. I highly recommend them.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

What did Jesus Christ teach?

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 21:11:49 GMT

Maybe we should make a list of the virtues he actually taught:

Forgiveness
Compassion
Inclusiveness
Following the spirit of the law and not just the letter
Respect
Sacrifice
Devotion
Surrender
Generosity
Befriending and caring for the poor, ill, outsiders, sinners, less powerful
Confidence
Clear penetrating insight and discernment
Passionate love of truth
Trust in possibility and the miraculous
Seeing beyond the surface of things
Non-materialism, non-consumerism
Meeting challenges by finding value and strength in the graces and virtues, as opposed to responding with easy answers, cop-outs and superficial gratification

Please add your own perceptions, clarify, expound, etc!

posted in Social Redemption - 3 replies

New Website: Meet the Christian Left

joguldi — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 14:38:00 GMT

In recent weeks, the much-awaited website http://crossleft.org has accumulated a gaggle of bloggers for daily political commentary on the church in America.

In the near future, this website will be making itself a hotspot for Progressive Christian political events, news, and theological debate. Check it out!

posted in Social Redemption - 3 replies

Gay marriage without sex? Blame Africa, again

joguldi — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 17:47:14 GMT

It should come as no surprise that yesterday's carefully-worded, Richelieuian edict, "<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/26/ngay26.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/07/26/ixportal.html">gay marriage is ok if without sex</a>," came as Rowan Williams headed to Africa.

America is confused about what marriage without sex would even mean. <a href="http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/43706.html">Scotland is outraged</a>. <a href="http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-07-20T224243Z_01_MOR081748_RTRUKOC_0_CANADA-MARRIAGE.xml">Canada is ignoring it and embracing loving, responsible, committed relationships </a>.

Rowan Williams, intellectual heavyweight and longtime champion of liberal body theology, has been caught in between two impulses: one, offering a smidgeon of hope to the largely progressive, gay-friendly congregations of North America and Europe; two, standing up for civil society in Africa.

Unsurprising, Williams wanted to act as a peacemaker in Africa. In his visit to Kenya last week, Williams avoided the topic of gay marriage altogether.

Alas, Williams' compromise isn't working for anyone -- not for communities in North America and Europe, and not for Africa.

Writes AllAfrica.com:

<blockquote><a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/200507210788.html">Since Robinson's infamous ordination, the 70-million strong Anglican Communion has been in a state of flux.

Several developing countries, mainly from Africa, have either cut links or are contemplating doing so with the US liberals. In fact, immediately the Episcopalian Church ordained Robinson, countries like Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda became the first African countries to declare themselves formally separated from the Episcopalians.

Already, a number of the communion's African provinces have declined funding from the American Episcopalian Church to express their disgust at its decision to elect a gay bishop and allow same-sex marriages.</a></blockquote>

The church *must* take a stance for reconciliation and aid to war-torn countries, this is clear. The church *must* stand for civil society. The church *must* try to reconcile countries and continents that have lost faith with each other.

But to argue for peace among African archbishops who spit at even such humiliating tokens of rapprochement from the larger Anglican church? To cast pearls before swine. Read on:

<blockquote>Since the Episcopalian Church went ahead and consecrated Gene Robinson, we are not going to be with in anything; they have gone against the scriptures and what we agreed all of us as a communion.
-- Archbishop <a href="http://www.anglicanjournal.com/128/08/world06.html">Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, interviewed yesterday by AllAfrica.com</a></blockquote>

Africa needs to get its act together. The African countries that react to Williams' peace offering with disdain are in need of internal healing, and no external healing is possible until intertribal genocide, AIDS orphans, and female circumcision have been rectified. The Western church can only react with kindness: but not, perhaps, with understanding.

But we in the West have dealt with the fallout of colonialism for too long not to have learned that trying to convert other cultures to our own beliefs is a losing battle.

Progressive Christians need to hold fast to their values, and reach out to the torn African churches however they can. But they can't do so at the risk of destroying the chances of a future for their own church.

Archbishop Williams: the <a href="http://www.everyvoice.net/">young, progressive church</a>, with its many sexually active (homosexual or heterosexual) youth of modern culture, needs *you*. Come back.

posted in Social Redemption - 31 replies

Not Your Daddy's Fundamentalist: New tactics from the Religious Right, and Why Body Theology is the Battlefield

joguldi — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:09:03 GMT

Times are changing. In a pattern visible about three years back and rapidly gaining force, fundamentalists began to realize that they can't convert sophisticated college Freshmen, concerned about their place in the world and the future of the planet, based on the Bible alone. As liberal theologians have long argued, any reading of the Bible -- no matter how naive -- comes with a set of prejudices attached; there is no "literal" reading of the Bible.

So fundamentalists set out to master the terms in which the war was being fought. That approach is now taking a highly philosophical, aesthetic, and political turn.

Check out these sumptuously crafted websites:

http://www.faithmaps.org/
http://www.christiancounterculture.com/
http://www.discerningreader.com/

These sites are extremely gentle, although a quick Google search brings up fragments of older online discussions now deleted where the same fundamentalist editors told their liberal discussants to "fuck off."

Read further, and you can find the gentle editors (who urge their readers to read widely and understand Derrida) slamming relativist theologians who have failed to condemn masturbation.

* * *

I probably react to that particular condemnation with too much suspicion. But the religion to which I was raised was a theology of individuals coaxed to love God and serve their neighbors above all things. It was equally a religion suspicious of all regimes of control.

If I learned one thing from my years of studying Derrida and Rorty, it was this: all institutions create controlled environments for discussion, but some try to quash the will by subliminal and disciplinary actions as well; among the most effective terms for subduing the spirit is disciplining the body.

Evangelicals who engage postmodernism only to discipline those who aren't like them? I have great suspicions about their Christianity.

* * *

Another and more benign view from Texas Baptists sees this body discipline as it is: the institutional attempt to regulate the individual conscience into a position of submission before the collective, as opposed to treating the entire person as an identity capable of great love, whose particular actions in any instance are less the point than their internal love of God and external acts towards their neighbors.

I am intrigued by those who deal with homosexuality with basically the only criterion or filter for seeing other people is that of sexuality. What does that say?

-- Bill Tillman, writing with Christians for Change

Rev. Tillman's position is well taken from the theological point of view. The individual has a body and soul, and the Christian is instructed to care for both.

Yet he glosses over the historical issue at hand. Around 1890 Americans and Europeans started thinking of their bodies in new ways. It was by then an irreversible process, the result of hundreds of years of innovation in medicine, gender relations, and political relations, and it produced, in a great flurry of self-awareness, the new disciplines of psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Each of these disciplines was interested in the relationship between the individual and his/her body as the product of social forces.

We are the product of our collective history. The individual in 2005 can no more will him/herself out of a definitively sexual, bodily identity than he can will himself out of a capitalist economy. Many Christians write as if the choice to opt out of one's sexual identity were as simple as switching off MTV: what we must acknowledge is that one can only indeed drown the sexual and bodily in oneself if one can erase the last hundred years of history, the influence of psychology, the subject-matter of a hundred novels, and all the self-understanding that has gone with it.

In that working-out of a hundred years is the germ of a new understanding of sexual ethics. It's discussed ad nauseum in R-rated movies, R&B lyrics, women's magazines, and psychologist's sitting-rooms. It comes down to this great question: if one has a lover, if one has an "alternative" (read minority) sexuality -- if for whatever reason, Christian or not, one finds oneself or one's friends in such a position -- what is the kindest way to act? The answers handled are complicated. They rarely have to do with dropping communication entirely. More often, the ethical solutions that emerge sound familiar to traditional values: good gay relationships depend on openness and trust. Good premarital lovers don't cheat on each other. Good adulterers eventually seek honesty with their wives and husbands, and try to look after their children.

These are deep matters of theology. They are the public theology of our age. In their best form, these reflections are imbued with an ethic of humility, service, and compassion. In less coherent forms, they devolve into paeons to rebellion and self-pitying lyrics of indulgence. But even such counterculture is but the symptom of our age.

At the point that one acknowledges that one is living in an age where most people think about sex a lot, one has two choices. One can set sail for some small island without inhabitants, with some dozen other believers in one's fictitious world, there to rewrite history and forget the past together.

Or one can acknowledge that history is a disease that we all suffer from together, and the one symptom of our disease now is an awkward failure to understand our own sexualities or those of our neighbors, and that the response Christ taught to all those awkwardnesses was the same: to serve one's neighbor, with love and gentleness; to give them one's cloak, to listen, to teach, to learn. Not to discipline. Not to throw stones.

posted in Social Redemption - 5 replies

Anti-war protest

cguldi — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 18:11:29 GMT

Curious Jim announced a rumor about an anti-war protest September 24 in DC. Here is the source: http://www.answercoalition.org/. It appears the plans include protests in London, San Francisco and LA as well. Anyone know who this group is?

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

'Peasants on the March to King George'

Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:41:15 GMT

Amy Branham reports her first-hand experiences marching with Cindy Sheehan to Crawford to ask the President why he sent their kids to be killed: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/branham.php?articleid=6908

Meanwhile, Bush cowers in his ersatz "ranch."

Shouldn't we all hit the road for the "Texas White House"? What if a million of us peasants showed up there banging pots and pans? (Not carrying pitchforks and pikes, mind you. The Secret Service would no doubt confiscate those dangerous weapons from us.)

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

The Midland Alliance: Liberation Theology goes Bush

joguldi — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:24:54 GMT

Arguably, the greatest achievement of progressive theology in the twentieth century is the doctrine and history of Liberation Theology. Christians have acted in the name of human rights as challengers to fascist regimes in Nazi Germany and dictatorial South America.

But in this latest twist, Liberation Theology has learned to use American politics to its own ends. Donning the title "Midland Alliance", the coalition of human rights workers emphasizes its connections to oil money, Bush politics, and the status quo -- any cover necessary -- in order to effect a radical counter to human rights abuses abroad.

MIDLAND, Tex., Aug. 8 - Tens of thousands of fans of all ages gathered over the weekend for the annual three-day Rock the Desert Christian music festival screamed for hit bands like Mercy Me and Pillar and kicked Hacky Sacks by a creek renamed the Jordan River and a small pond called the Dead Sea.

Between the Prayer Tent and an abstinence-promotion booth, however, worshipful revelers also stumbled into a more sobering pavilion, the North Korea Genocide Exhibit.

Christian Groups Press Bush About North Korea - New York Times
posted by J at 8:14 AM 0 comments

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Wobbly bleeding-heart liberals strike again

joguldi — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:27:28 GMT

The New Zealand Herald reports that major mainline church leaders in New Zealand are banding together against what they call the 'politics of fear.'

The New Zealand Herald yawns, and quotes to prove why it's yawning. Church leaders drawl on in the most banal and abstract of prose, spending most of the 1500 words trying to prove that human beings are individuals, putting even this rabid radical Christian to sleep:

"Underpinning each person's vision for society will be a number of assumptions about what it means to be human ... that can be characterised by two broad emphases. The first tends to regard each person primarily as an autonomous individual, each with his or her own needs, aspirations and interests...."

OK, I AGEE. And I'm snoring. How are progressive Christians to change the world if they can't even wake up their future progressives??

When I spoke several months ago to Mother Jones founder, activist, and Harvard professor Richard Parker, he warned me against just this sort of banality.

This is what the Right expects of us, he said: loose ideas, vague generalities, good-hearted exalting of human potential.

We have so much more to offer. The war on terror shows government corruption to be rife. Guantanamo Bay proves that there are regimes that have distorted patriotism, religion, and human rights to an unrecognizable degree.

Progressives need to fight for real issues, and stand on real grounds. Progressive Christians all the more so: we stand not only on reason, truth, and human rights, but also on the text of the Gospels, the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the movement of the Holy Spirit.
posted by J at 2:59 PM 0 comments

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Inspiration from the UK: youth + politics + Christ

joguldi — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 16:04:13 GMT

The Christian Left in the United States may just be gaining momentum, but in the UK they're far ahead of us already. Greenbelt UK, a long-running progressive Christian political festival, should give American progressive Christians something to aspire to.

"This annual Christian shindig evolved out of the non-conformist fringes of the church in the early 1970s and, since then, has evolved into a progressive, liberal arts festival, where workshops on protest politics and issues of social justice are just as important as acts of worship.

"No longer exclusively Christian, the bill mixes believers with those who, simply, share Greenbelt's values: Lambchop, UK soul star Jamelia, the Handsome Family."

-- Tony Naylor, The Guardian, Saturday August 21, 2004</blockquote>

Consider readomg something like at a Christian youth rally in the United States:

"115,000 people across the world will die prematurely because of poverty during the Greenbelt weekend. This July, don’t believe the hype. Monday at Greenbelt 2005 sees a special MAKE POVERTY HISTORY campaign day."

I'm often surprised that no one in the United States, neither 20-year-old atheists nor 40-year-old Christians, takes much notice of the fact that young people who aren't fundamentalists don't go to church. The liberal church under 40 almost doesn't exist. People tend to shrug it off, say, "they'll come back when they have children."

But a visit to the young Christian progressives in England means, for me at least, feeling a little awestruck as to what can be accomplished when young, spiritual, progressive activists come together.

http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/

posted in Social Redemption - 2 replies

Falwell Attacks Christian Liberals

Carol — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 20:35:33 GMT

www.christianalliance.org

On July 8th, the Reverend Jerry Falwell sent out an email to the Moral Majority Coalition and the Liberty Alliance attacking the Christian Alliance for Progress. He claims that we are "hardly Christian" in part because of our political views.

On the Sunday following his email, the Christian Alliance received an onslaught of comments that were clearly fueled by Reverend Falwell's words of anger. Many of these messages repeated his bitter tone, but almost none say anything about the values Jesus taught.

Please go to the web site and give Falwell a responce.

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

New Church

Carol — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 17:11:37 GMT

I live too far away but I was given notice of a new Church starting this weekend.

"Colton,CA (Safe Haven Community Church) is having its opening service this sunday at Rich Dauer park.
Our church is aiming at being an inclusive, multicultural fellowship
which welcomes people of all racial, ethnic backgrounds, people of all
levels of physical and mental ability/disability, and people of sexual
orientations and gender identities around the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
check out our website (it is very bare-bones right now) at: www.safehavencommunitychurch.com.

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Jeffrey Gardner column; where's left's rage?

cguldi — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 11:36:02 GMT

The Albuquerque Tribune

To print this page, select File then Print from your browser
URL: http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/op_columnists/article/0,2565,ALBQ_19865_3839789,00.html
Jeffry Gardner: Meat market - Why doesn't the left rage against images offensive to families?

By Jeffry Gardner
June 8, 2005

pictureSo a friend e-mails me the infamous Carl's Jr. commercial and says: "This will sell a lot of burgers."

Now, this friend has carved out a pretty good life making spots for radio and television, albeit political ads, so I'm guessing he's right. But I'd already seen it. So, too, I'm afraid, had my 10- and 7-year-olds.

The ad amounts to Paris Hilton rubbing herself down with a soapy sponge on the hood of a car. If that doesn't scream cheeseburger, what on earth does? A redheaded clown?

Did I mention Hilton's wearing almost nothing? She gets all wet and smutty, and at six points in the commercial - for about five seconds total; I tried to time it - she clutches a cheeseburger.

I'd almost bet that Carl's demanded that its ad team toss in those few frames of her with the burger - you know, just to be on the safe side, should Rep. Heather Wilson and family be watching. Don't you hate it when this type of gratuitous product placement is jammed in the middle of a pretty good piece of soft-core porn?

When I was young and sans children, I would have loved this. I was jaded before most of us were initiated, so a wet, near-naked blonde pushing cheeseburgers wouldn't have fazed me a bit.

But I'm not a child today. Nor am I blind drunk, staggering around Ned's (I do miss Ned's) each evening trying to mesmerize young nubiles into lusting for me.

In all honesty, my childhood was abridged for various reasons, and I believe that accelerated the havoc I created years later. So today I'm big on this whole "letting my kids be kids" idea.

And when, as a dad, I tune in to the NBA playoffs with my sons and find Hilton - a delightful role model for young girls, as well - starring in a tableau of auto-eroticism, I see it as a threat to their youth.

My aggravation with this probably comes as no surprise to regular readers of this column. Letters to the Tribune routinely stereotype me as a right-wing Christian zealot. But it's troubling, again, to find the only alarms raised about this coming from the right.

Does this mean all parents who are fed up with Madison Avenue's never-ending attempts to push the envelope of decency are right-wing Christian zealots? Of course not.

But the left's silence further fuels its image as a functionary of human secularism: Nothing's wrong or right, tra-la-la, it just is.

No, it isn't. There is right, and there is wrong. And, as progressive Barbara Defoe Whitehead pointed out recently, someone on the left had better figure that out. Soon.

George Bush won 62 percent of the vote of parents, because parents put their children's moral well-being ahead of party loyalty and political ideology. Those zealots!

Gardner is an Albuquerque writer and telecommunications consultant.

MORE GARDNER COLUMNS »

Copyright 2005, The Albuquerque Tribune. All Rights Reserved.

posted in Social Redemption - 6 replies

Science & Thology, Metanexus Institute

cguldi — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:42:31 GMT

There are more people out there than I realized who embrace what is in my view a grateful appreciation of God's gift of reason. Here is a two-in-one example, an article about scientists attempting to facilitate Christian-Muslim communication and a magazine devoted to bridging science and religion:
http://www.stnews.org/articles.php?article_id=976&category=commentary

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

not all christians support bush

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 18:01:27 GMT

From Christianity General forum,
forums.about.com/ab-christ...ty/messages

I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian. We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what are we talking about? Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does. Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side:

a. When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral.

b. When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.

c. When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we must never return violence for violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral.

d. When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral.

e.. When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.

f. When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral.

g. When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules of the Geneva convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow, you are doing something immoral.

h. When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with you, or with the terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.

i. When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral.

j. When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done something immoral.

k. When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral.

l. When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.

m. When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.

n. When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

o.. When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a "compassionate conservative," using the word which is the essence of all religious faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something immoral.

p. When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are doing something immoral.

q. When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.

I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the war. I heard that when I was your age--when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong--the only question is how many people are going to die before these make-believe Christians are removed from power? This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn things around are people like you--young people who are just beginning to wake up to what is happening to them.

It's your country to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take back..

Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut. Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real Buddhists - so do all the faith traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith. And war -- war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and thus the greatest failure of faith.

There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: War, what is it good for? absolutely nothing.

And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does it take to know that too many people have died? What if they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.

posted in Social Redemption - 7 replies

Christian Alliance for Progress; more Christian progressives make their existence known

cguldi — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 13:42:00 GMT

Christian Alliance for Progress has a web site at http://www.christianalliance.org/

Its launch is described in the following article:
CHRISTIAN Left alliance launched in the USA
Ekklesia - UK
... And there are millions of Christian Americans who share progressive views, or, at a minimum, are increasingly turned off by the [harsh] rhetoric and political ... <http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_050625usleft.shtml>

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Education of Shelby Knox

cguldi — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 13:25:07 GMT

Am I the last person in the world to hear about this film? I look forward to seeing it; it will be shown one last time on my PBS station at 2:00am. I'm really excited about the scenario: a devout, conservative South Baptist teen in Lubbock simply looked around and in effect said "this is not working the way God would want it to..." and is now a liberal Democrat and still devout Christian.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2005/shelbyknox/

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Secularist sees fundalmentalists ignoring Jesus

cguldi — Mon, 30 May 2005 12:09:25 GMT

Dr. Ernest Partridge makes the same observation Christian progressives have been making: "right-wing fundamentalism is not 'Christianity.'" He writes that one might simply confront the religious right with the distinctly non-Gospel character of their approval for warfare and material wealth. http://www.opednews.com/partridge_053005_friend_in_jesus.htm

posted in Social Redemption - 4 replies

Beyond Blue vs. Red (statistics from Pew)

cguldi — Mon, 30 May 2005 13:24:55 GMT

At last, a look at the complexity of American political coalition-building.
http://typology.people-press.org/

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Spiritual Activism Conference

Fri, 27 May 2005 06:02:57 GMT

They'll be having one in Berkeley this summer, followed by DC in Feb

http://www.tikkun.org/community/spiritual_activism_conference

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Pathway

Fri, 27 May 2005 06:01:59 GMT

I'm curious to hear people's personal view of how a progressive Christian path of social redemption works in synchronicity with the individual's own sacred journey

How are the inner and outer linked for you?

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Campaign for America's Future conference in DC next week - Dean, Huffington, Edwards et al.

joguldi — Tue, 24 May 2005 23:35:22 GMT

check it out! http://www.ourfuture.org/

Can anyone post links to bloggers who might be covering the conference?

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Jim Wallis

Tue, 24 May 2005 05:59:22 GMT

I came across Jim Wallis today and read up on him
For those who don't know, he's a founder of Sojourner with a new book out called God's Politics

I didn't read the book, but based on reviews, it make a few points
- The Bible has thousands of references to the issue of poverty (vs a handful related to homosexuality for example); so for those who want to follow the Bible, dealing with poverty should be a big priority

- He is pro-life, but considers the focus on life as something that applies to all of the life cycle, so must include child care, education, health care, jobs, etc

- 'American Exceptionalism' is not Biblically supported, and most Christians around the world don't agree with it, nor with Bush's justification of decision based on his communication with God ... so finds it off that many Evangelicals promote these views

- Feels that morality in foreign policy and war-making is key; that fighting terror is necessary, but how it's fought matters

- Says the Bible does not specify the preferred Republican economic model; Christians can choose to support it, but should not mix it up with Bible-based moral positions

Basically, he's trying to extend Bible-based and Christian moral thinking to political spheres beyond gay marriage and abortion, and bring some consistency of application

Here's a good debate video online, where he holds his own against a right-wing presenter at the Heritage Institute
http://www.townhall.com/audio/content/Lehrman-051705.ram

Also interesting is a back-and-forth he had with Charles Colson, a conservative Christian voice
Colson:
http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=15397
Wallis:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=050224#3
Colson:
http://www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=15474

Colson's point is that since abortion is about the existence of life, it has a fundamentally more important place in Christian politics than any policies about life once it is born and ongoing

He further states that any policies concerning life after birth are open to debate and honest disagreement, so you can't really pass a Bible-based moral judgement about them in the way he suggests his followers should about abortion. (This seems to effectively preclude the kind of Social Redemption model, so it's a good position to try to tackle)

Wallis disagrees with this, saying that outcomes matter (actually getting people out of poverty, for example), and can be measured and that the Bible clearly indicates desired outcomes (Micah), and that all aspects of life must be addressed by Christians

I guess Wallis is very popular now among progressives and advises a number of politicians on values-oriented language

I found all this inspiring
There's clearly a lot of work and discussion to be done
But I think the door is open right now for those who can make clear Bible-based and Christian arguments

Here's an interview with him
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/03/gods_politics_jim_wallis.html

Here's a review of a review of Wallis, that talks about the over use of a prophetic stance in political argument
http://www.newdonkey.com/2005/05/false-prophets.html

posted in Social Redemption - 2 replies

a progressive Christian blog

cguldi — Wed, 25 May 2005 02:50:30 GMT

http://progressive-christian.blogspot.com/

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

The Christian Alliance for Progress launches its website

joguldi — Tue, 24 May 2005 23:33:36 GMT

Another of our partners has launched their webiste this week. It's gorgeous, and has lots of resources for political discussion. Check it out:

The Christian Alliance <http://www.christianalliance.org/> is a Jacksonville, FL group of progressives organized around gender/sexuality equality and social justice.

Sneak peek of their video: www.christianalliance.org/becountedflash <http://www.christianalliance.org/becountedflash>

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Christian Donation: Cars

squirsh — Mon, 23 May 2005 23:37:43 GMT

I've had experience with some non-profits and have heard of some of the others that have problems getting the money where it needs to be going. I have a car that I am considering donating and would like some opinions, preferably with direct experience, on the different christian charities available for me and my car. I would like my donation to be something that actually does someone some good as opposed to lining a lawyer or administrator's pockets. Opinions are great, but firsthand or even secondhand knowledge is much more appreciated.
Thanks,
Jesse

posted in Social Redemption - 1 reply

Speaking in tongues addition: Pirate

squirsh — Thu, 12 May 2005 19:33:40 GMT

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - Sam Brobst took a "Learning Your Spiritual Gift"
course at Full Life Center, a charismatic church, and felt the Lord leading
him to prophesy during meetings. But when Brobst opened his mouth the first
time, he and others were surprised by what came out: pirate speak.
"We were in the middle of worship, when this voice rings out, 'Yar! Hear
the word of the Lord - the Lord of the mighty seas!'" says one witness. "It
was straight out of a Disneyland ride."
Brobst says he can't help it: when the Spirit moves upon him, he clamps
one eye shut and his voice becomes gravelly and menacing. On a recent
Sunday, he prophesied, "Avast ye, mateys! Hear the word from our Cap'n: No
fear have ye of storms and scallywags, says ye? Argh! But I be seein' your
true hearts. For I see below quarterdecks, says I. Ye be tremblin' in the
face of scurvy dogs. But pay them no heed. For I be preparin' to pour down
plenty o' booty upon ye. So be of cheer, me hearties! Ye be loved of the
Cap'n."
The people of the church by now are accustomed to it, though first-time
visitors often giggle.
"It doesn't even sound like pirate to me anymore," says one regular
attendee. "My mind translates it."
Others say it's preferable to past prophetic styles they have witnessed.
"One woman would wail her prophesies," says longtime member Darlene
Bright. "Another man would thunder in a deep voice like he was trying to
impress us. All in all, I prefer pirate."

posted in Social Redemption - 2 replies

Retiree's Prophecy

cguldi — Fri, 13 May 2005 19:39:51 GMT

http://www.ntcumc.org/ArcUMR/2005/050513mr.html#story5 is a personal essay from a retired UMC pastor hankering for social justice over materialism. The usual retirees' lament over vanished morality is here replaced by a broader prophecy: "Statesmanship is replaced with the influence of lobbyists peddling the myopic interests of their masters. The people’s needs for representative government is replaced by moneyed lords buying the government. Biblical justice is stifled with a shallow, selfish sentimentalism." The bit about his having paid his dues may I think make him more audible to people who are biased against "liberals" or against folks they view as youngsters.

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Theses for a church of social redemption

joguldi — Wed, 11 May 2005 05:34:05 GMT

No Longer Silent, http://nolongersilent.org, is a Phoenix-based coalition of clergy who work closely with Social Redemption.

While Social Redemption is a political movement separate from No Longer Silent, we feel that the theology of NLS is a natural extension of what it means for a church to recognize a risen Redeemer at work in the modern world.

I give below No Longer Silent's statement of belief, the Phoenix Affirmations. Martin Luther, stand back.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --

The Phoenix Affirmations
Longer Version 3.2
(DRAFT)

Because much of the public face of Christianity in America these days bears little relation to the historic faith of our ancestors, and represents even less our own faith as Christians, we find ourselves in a time and place where we can be silent no longer. We hereby mark an end to our silence by making the following affirmations:

As people who are joyfully and unapologetically Christian, we pledge ourselves completely to the way of Love. We work to express our love, as Jesus taught us, in three ways: by loving God, neighbor, and self.

[Jesus said], "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matthew 22:37- 40 (Cf. Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10:25-28; Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18)

As Christians, we joyfully and humbly nurture and practice the love of God, neighbor, and self in and outside our communities of faith.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and love their neighbor as themselves. Where the love of God, neighbor, and self come together, the fullness of God’s love is manifested in the world.

We confess that we have stepped away from this Path whenever we have claimed that the two great commandments may be supplanted with any other, or that love of God may be separated from love of neighbor or self.

LOVING GOD INCLUDES:

Affirmation 1: Walking fully in the path of Jesus, even as we acknowledge there are other legitimate paths to God.

I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. John 10:16

Whoever is not against us is for us. Mark 9:40

As Christians, we recognize as spiritual kindred any person or tradition that seeks to fulfill the two great commandments with reverence and humility, without making claims regarding the relative worth of these paths. Where possible, we seek lively dialog with those of other faiths for mutual benefit and fellowship.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers find spiritual awakening, challenge, growth, and fulfillment in Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, without denying the legitimacy of other paths to God.

We confess that we have stepped away from Christ’s Path whenever we have claimed that Christianity is the only Path, even as we humbly and joyfully claim Jesus to be our Path.

Affirmation 2: Listening for God’s Word which comes through daily prayer and meditation, through studying the ancient records which we call Scripture, and through attending to God’s present activity in the world;

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

As Christians, we seek a living dialogue and confrontation which God wishes to have with us in prayer, and also through the events, persons, and proclamations in the Bible. We readily acknowledge the contingent social, historical and cultural contexts from which the Scriptures come. Most of all we seek the meaning of salvation, of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as it is presented in the Scriptures and discerned in daily life.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers engage in daily prayer and reflection, as well as personal and community interpretation of Scripture, as central ways God’s voice is discerned in everyday life. This path reflects the understanding that the Scriptures, including Old and New Testaments, are inspired by God, and recorded by human hands for the purpose of enlivening the faith, purpose, and the lifestyle of the Church.

We confess that we have moved away from Christ’s Path when we have claimed that either the recording of God’s Word in Scripture, or our interpretation of it, are infallible. Further, we have moved away from the Path when we have allowed the mere fact of Scripture’s fallibility, or our own, to dissuade us from seeking God’s Word in Scripture, prayer, and reflection on daily life.

Affirmation 3: Celebrating the God whose Spirit pervades and whose glory is reflected in all of God’s Creation, including the earth and its ecosystems, the sacred and secular, the Christian and non-Christian, the human and non-human;

God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good. Genesis 1:31a

O sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy … Psalm 96:1,11-12

[What] you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. Acts 17:23

As Christians, we seek to act as righteous stewards of the earth and its ecosystems, and we celebrate the reflections of the Creator’s glory in both the sacred and secular, human and non-human, Christian and non-Christian.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers act as caring stewards of the earth, and where the presence of the living Christ is celebrated in both the sacred and secular, the Christian and non-Christian, the human and non-human;

We confess that we have stepped away from this Path when we have ignored our role as stewards of the earth, or have interpreted Scripture in a way that fails to account for the sacredness of the earth or the integrity of its ecosystems. We have further moved away whenever we have claimed that that the glorification and praise of God is limited only to that which is consciously and overtly Christian

Affirmation 4: Expressing our love in worship that is scriptural, artful, sincere, and vibrant.

Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7

I have filled [certain people] with divine spirit, with ability, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft. Exodus 31:2-5

[Uttering a curse:] … and the sound of harpists and minstrels and of flutists and trumpeters will be heard in you no more; and an artisan of any trade will be found in you no more … Revelation 18:22

As Christians, we strive to respond to God’s artistry in Creation by integrating the arts in worship, education and proclamation. We encourage the reclaiming of artistry and artistic expression in all Christian endeavors, both personal and in community with others.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers make worship that is artful, sincere and vibrant central in their life as a community. We further affirm artistic expression in and outside worship as a way of reflecting God’s creativity, joy, and prophetic voice in what may be seen, heard, felt, tasted, sung and spoken.

We confess that we have moved away from this Path when we have failed to make worship the product of our best efforts to express our love for God and to experience God’s living presence in community with others. We have moved further from this path when we have considered the arts as trivial or merely tangential to the life of a mature Christian community.

LOVING OUR NEIGHBOR INCLUDES:

Affirmation 5: Treating all people, as Jesus teaches us, as created in God’s image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class;

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. Psalm 8:3-5

Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 1 Corinthians 12:3-7

As Christians, we welcome those of every race, gender, age, physical and mental ability, ethnicity, nationality, and sexual orientation into the full life of our community.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers uplift and celebrate the worth and integrity of all people as created in God’s image and likeness.

We confess that we have stepped away from this Path whenever we have failed to recognize the essential goodness of God’s Creation by treating some classes of human beings as more godly than others.

Affirmation 6: Standing with Jesus for justice and righteousness, kindness and humility, with or without the support of others.

[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. Luke 12:48

As Christians, we advocate and care for those who experience oppression and poverty, either physically or spiritually, within our faith communities, our country, and the world. We recognize the local congregation as the primary context for offering such care, even as we seek to extend it beyond our faith communities into the wider world.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers honor the essential unity of spirit and matter by connecting worship and theology with concrete acts of justice and righteousness, kindness and humility, with or without the support of others.

We confess that we have moved away from this Path when we have suggested that Christianity is concerned with only the spiritual in contrast to the material, or vice-versa. We have moved further away when we have celebrated blessings given by God without also acknowledging responsibilities that come with blessing.

Affirmation 7: Preserving religious freedom by resisting the commingling of Church and State;

“Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." Luke 20:25

Fear God. Honor the emperor. 1 Peter 2:17

As Christians, we strive to live as responsible citizens of our country, just as we seek to live as Christ’s disciples. We celebrate the separation of Church and State as much for the protection of the Church, and other faith communities, as the State.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers honor the role of the State in maintaining justice and peace, so far as human discernment and ability make possible. We affirm the separation of Church and State, even as we endeavor to support the state in as far as Christian conscience allows.
We confess that we have moved away from this Path when we have confused the role of the State with that of the Church. We have moved further from the Path when we have suggested that the Church should and could take on the nature, tasks and dignity which belong to the State and thus become itself an organ of the State.
Affirmation 8: Walking humbly with God, acknowledging our own shortcomings while honestly seeking to understand and call forth the best in others, including those who consider us their enemies;

[Jesus told] this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." Luke 18;9-14

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Luke 6:27-29

…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. Galatians 5:22-23

“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you. John 15:18-19

As Christians, we recognize that we are misfits both with respect to God’s Realm and the world. We are misfits with respect to God’s Realm in that we rarely live up to the principles and ideals we espouse. We are misfits with respect to the world in that the ideals for which we strive do not always conform to the ways of the world.

We affirm that the path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers love their enemies as themselves, striving humbly to embody the “fruits of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

We confess that we have moved away from this Path when we have promoted a notion that people of faith are morally or ethically superior to those without faith. Further, we have moved away when we have supported any cause, no matter how just or righteous, without reflecting the “fruits of the Spirit” toward all.

LOVING OURSELVES INCLUDES:

Affirmation 9: Basing our lives on Christ’s teaching that we, and all people, are not alone, and are loved beyond our wildest imagination – for eternity;

For God so loved the world that [God] gave [God’s] only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. John 3:16-17

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night," even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. Psalm 139:7-12

As Christians, we bear witness to, and nurture faith in, all persons who are hungry for, or open to the revelation, love, and salvation of God in Christ. We do not seek to evangelize those who have no desire to explore the Christian Path. We trust, rather, that God’s love, grace and invitation, has been, and will be, revealed in other paths, witnesses and times.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers are continually discovering, and rediscovering that they – and all people – are loved beyond their wildest imagination, and they determine to live their lives according to this discovery. We find in this discovery and surrender the very essence of salvation, which is a process, not an end-point, within an eternal journey.

We confess that we have moved away from this Path whenever we have denied God’s love for all people, or have denied the effectiveness of God’s eternal will that all be saved. We have moved further from Christ’s path when we have not actively born witness to God’s love and grace with those who seek it.

Affirmation 10: Claiming the sacredness of both our minds and our hearts, recognizing that faith and science, doubt and the pursuit of truth serve one another;

Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: "How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Proverbs 1:20-22

Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. 1 Corinthians 3:18-19

As Christians, we seek to develop intellectually as sincerely as we seek emotional development. We further seek to clarify that the truths contained in Scripture are not conveyed primarily through scientific revelations, but through wisdom which may be gleaned frequently in story and song, symbol and parable.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers value the pursuit of wisdom, which is found at the intersection of head and heart, where God seeks relationship with the human soul.

We confess that we have moved away from this Path when we have denied either the role of the mind, or that of the heart, in the seeking of wisdom. Further, we have moved off the Path when we have denigrated the role of doubt or pursuit of scientific knowledge as if they were enemies rather than an allies of faith.

Affirmation 11 Caring for our bodies, and insisting on taking time to enjoy the benefits of prayer, reflection, worship and recreation in addition to work;

The king of Egypt said to them, "Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their work? Get to your labors!" Pharaoh continued, "Now they are more numerous than the people of the land and yet you want them to stop working!" That same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, as well as their supervisors, "You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not diminish it, for they are lazy; that is why they cry, 'Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.' Exodus 5:4-8

"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19

As Christians, we strive to embrace and embody ways of living that promote the joy of living and the benefits attained when work is combined with rest and recreation, reflection and prayer. We do this for our sake and that of others, for the sake of the earth and that of Christ.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers take time to pray and play, to worship, and to reflect, as essential parts of their vocation.

We confess that we have moved away from this Path when we have supported the ethics of Pharaoh over the ethics of God by promoting systems of production and consumption without attending to the disciplines of rest and recreation, reflection and prayer.

Affirmation 12 Acting on the faith that we are born with a meaning and purpose; a ministry that serves to strengthen and extend God’s realm of love;

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5

But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray. Luke 5:15-16

As Christians, we practice prayer as a daily discipline, seeking in prayer both to enjoy God’s presence and to discern God’s will for our lives and our faith communities. We accept it as one of our highest responsibilities and privileges to help those in our communities of faith discern God’s direction for their lives, and to celebrate and value their discernment in the worship and missional life of the church. In every available way, we seek to help people develop and use their diverse callings as an expression of their faith.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found where all of Christ’s followers are understood to be called into a ministry as sacred and important as any pastor’s, priest’s, or prophet’s. God’s intention for us can be found and followed, however haltingly and imperfectly, in obedience to the guidance and insights, which come in prayer. We hold this conviction to be true of the Church as well as of each of its members.

We confess that we have moved away from this Path when we have claimed that pastoral ministry is any higher or more sacred than a call to any other vocation in or outside a church Further, we have moved from the Path when we have failed to concretely value meaningful input and participation by laypeople in the worship and mission of our communities.

posted in Social Redemption - 3 replies

Who we are, What we do, Where we come from, Where we're going

joguldi — Wed, 11 May 2005 05:28:25 GMT

- who we are

In recent decades, mainline Christians, though in the majority, have found their voices overwhelmed by extremists, who use the rhetoric of Christianity to further their own worldly ends. This has resulted in the polarization of the nation into so called ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states, each of which feels that the other has entirely lost its moral compass. Two and half days of panel talks this October will attempt to articulate middle opinion - the voice of mainstream Christianity, as opposed to the voice of the radical right-wing. Our goal is to bring together like minded, moderate ministers and lay people, and empower them to reorient the focus of Christianity away from non-essential, non-biblical issues, and towards the Word of God as revealed in the person Jesus Christ. We hope to foster networks that will enable Christians from all denominations to come together as Christ’s one body to work in the world, feeding the hungry and protecting the defenseless.

- where we come from

Christianity has historically been a movement with one essential goal: relationship with God, achieved through prayer and following the commandments. From Saul’s persecution of the early Christians, through the Spanish Inquisition, those devoted to God have at times found themselves breaking God’s Holy Law, in the very name of God. In this age, too, there are those who believe that to love the Lord with all their minds, souls and hearts and to love their neighbors as themselves, has to be set aside to accomplish more important worldly goals. Rising to national prominence in the 1970’s and subtly taking over the greater identity of Christianity in the media, these radicals justify the most ruthless political and social agendas in the name of Christ. They bomb abortion clinics under a banner of ‘Thou Shalt not Kill,’ they proclaim a rhetoric of hatred while quoting John 3:16, and blithely support cuts in social service programs which immediately result in children going hungry. Depending upon the relative lack of Christian political organization in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, these extremists focused on controversial issues like abortion and gay marriage to rip apart the body of Christ, splitting families and congregations.

- where we’re going

Our aim is to educate moderate Christians in the practical tools of having a public voice, to foster alliances between Christians and secular activists for moral causes, and to renew dialogue between leading public intellectual and those working in the name of Jesus Christ. We will encourage moderate Christian to take a stand in the public forum through correcting journalists and public figures who have been seduced by the radical right, the mongers of hate, who portray our faith as a despotic ideology of conquest rather than the divine message of God’s overwhelming love for the World. This October will bring about a reconciliation of the divide that has spread between those working for justice in the Church and secular people interested in living in a compassionate society, a dramatic change in the negative ways that Christianity is perceived by the media, and an end to the power of political figures to manipulate the People of God with empty rhetoric. We will talk about how real Christianity can take back a presence in the public sphere.

posted in Social Redemption - 0 replies

Will this work?

joguldi — Wed, 11 May 2005 03:58:10 GMT

Here in techie San Francisco, we're in correspondence with a lot of Christians around the United States who want to organize a public face for the gospel as Christ preached it against its distortions by the conservative fringe. Christ preached a message of service and humility towards one's neighbor and love of God, and we want to bring that message back to the public sphere.

This is an experiment. We want to try out a lot of different kinds of technology to find the one that will be most useful in coordinating grass-roots groups around the country. A lot of different internet tools exist, and this is just one. Will people find this? Will it serve our needs? First let's see if anyone's out there.

posted in Social Redemption - 3 replies