Not Just "Surrection"

Passover and Easter have brought forth a miracle: Uncle Jay explaining the news without once mentioning Sandra Bullock, 24, the iPad, or trained dragons playing hoops. The rest is the good stuff. Haha, April Fool!



[via UncleJayExplains]

Minority Report

How would you feel if I told you that a country was passing a law that would severely restrict the rights and freedoms of Christians? That the government of a country, which was entirely controlled by followers of another religion had decided to band together and do something about the “Christian threat”? What if they published the names of people they suspected to be Christians in the newspaper, and encouraged the public to harm them or refuse to associate with them? What if they passed a law so that if you were caught practicing your faith in your own home you could be thrown in jail for 7 years? What if they made it a law that if your neighbour found out you were a Christian they were forced to report it to the police or face 3 years in prison themselves? What if that law had a provision in it that if you were caught multiple times you could be put to death?

How would you feel? Angry? Sad? Would you be motivated to do something about it? Would you ask your member of parliament or senator to approve sanctions against the country treating your Christian brothers and sisters in such a way? What would you do?

Now stop. Because it IS really happening right now. In Uganda.

But there is one difference, which is why you probably haven’t heard about it.{continue...}

[via Bridging the Gap]

Inclusive or Inciting?

[via Orcinus in this post]



[Also, for a counterpoint: The Paranoid Center, via Reason Magazine]

Related:

Injustice and civility cannot coexist. Being civil is a function of being free. When our discourse abuses freedom by demeaning others, it is something that affects not only the freedom of those tho[sic] whom it is directed, it affects the freedom of those who make such utterances.

Justice is a holistic concept. When one person suffers injustice in a civil society, all suffer injustice because the system has been broken. Those within such a system are now captive to their own need to exert power over others....

It is no longer civil because our discourse does not serve the end of living together and working together so that we all may prosper. It is a discourse tearing this down as it incites division and hostility only for a small minority to serve their own selfish gain.

The key to what we wish to be is that to which we direct our attention and hence that which we consume. If we want to achieve truth, beauty, and goodness, then these are what we need to consume. Listening to the poison thereby consuming it gives it power. When we attend to something we feed it. Perhaps it's time to fast. {full post}

[via Notes From Off-Center]

Not Just Expanding Territory...

..."trespassed."

That's not Lou Dobbs' preferred word for illegal immigration, since we don't tend to think of trespassing as a particularly menacing form of crime and people like Dobbs -- the CNN anchor fearfully obsessed with illegal immigration from Mexico -- want to portray these aliens as more of a threat than the word "trespasser" seems to convey.

But there's another reason you won't hear that word from Dobbs or from his role models on Fox News or the other members of the frantically xenophobic anti-immigrant mob, like the birthers, deathers and tea-baggers or the demagogues who stoke their cowardly anger, like drop-out Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin or South Carolina's Rep. Addison Graves Hansen Huntington Wegener Ricketts Parkinson "Joe" Wilson* -- the congressman who said he was overwhelmed by his emotions when he heard the president excluding illegal immigrants with what he regarded as insufficient viciousness. ("You lie!" Wilson shouted, after Obama said illegal immigrants would not receive federally funded health insurance under his health care reform plan. Obama's statement was true, but Wilson fears such immigrants might not also be aggressively prohibited from purchasing private health insurance, and the idea of them doing so keeps him tossing and turning all night.)

The main reason that none of these Very Angry, Very Scared people wants to use the word "trespass" is that it reminds them of church.

There's this prayer we Christians say in church, at every service, whenever we get together....{full post}

[via slacktivist]

Does That Attract Undecided People?

"...and then suddenly your favorite hero's image would just go, 'bing'."



[via Uncle Jay Explains]

Critical Patriotism

As I write this, it is already 04 July 2009. It’s Independence Day, the anniversary of the day (04 July 1776) when American colonists declared their independence from the U.K. It’s the birthday of this republic, the United States of America, although our current form of government did not set until 1790. Throughout this land on Sunday, churches will be filled with pastors giving sermons on freedom or on “God and country,” etc. Most of them will be pretty bad. Some of them will be positively idolatrous–reducing the God of all creation to a tribal deity that somehow cares more for this nation than others–a truly blasphemous idea.

Some preachers will do better....

A Christian patriotism must be an “eyes wide open” critical patriotism that is always calling for repentence and reform. Because Christians can never forget that no nation, no government, is anywhere close to the standards of the Rule of God. Our first loyalty is to that other “kingdom” (forgive the patriarchal language, the political meaning comes through better) which is not from this world–but which will overthrow the Powers and Authorities of this world. We are loyal first to the “God Revolution,” and second to the global church (the scattered People of God) and third to the whole world, in and out of the church, as God’s beloved creation. Only after that, as a lesser loyalty, can we be lovers of our own nation and government.

Nationalists and jingoists, therefore, will always find Christians to be suspect. We will not appear patriotic enough for them. Too bad. {full post}

[via Levellers]

---

The American view has tended neither toward the death of God nor His reconfiguration as the foundation of some American civil religion. Writers often discuss the American civil religion, but generally describe it as some variant of Biblical religion with an active God.

From the beginning, Americans have not grappled in the same way with the contradiction between intense personal longings and impersonal science or theology. Consider our Declaration of Independence. The theoretical core of the Declaration—on self-evident truths, unalienable rights, and instituting government—speaks of “Nature’s God,” a Deist creator, the source of the impersonal laws of nature. Christian members of the Continental Congress insisted that two other references to God be added to the eminently modern Jefferson and Franklin’s draft, and so the rousing conclusion, ending with “sacred Honor,” speaks of a Creator-God as the “Supreme Judge” of us all and as the source of “divine Providence.” Thanks to this legislative compromise, the Declaration offers up a “Nature’s God” Who also knows and cares about each of us. Through most of our history, such compromises between modern and Christian Americans have considerably reduced the distance between Christian and modern views of the person’s natural and theological environment. {full post}

[via The New Atlantis]

Farrah, Michael, and the Day the 70's Died

[via Ponderings on a Faith Journey]

Mere Mortals

Our kings and queens have changed quite a bit over the years. We’ve shifted from having political rulers as our kings, to crowning our artists to be our kings and queens. Which seems to be the way people go, isn’t it? I mean a while ago I read a quote that said “Artists are the prophets to this generation.” Think U2 and Sir Paul, and even individuals like Madonna. They speak to these generations of the needs of life be it in me or in Africa. Perhaps the next step is that artists are the Kings and Queens to this generation. I mean it’s happened before right?

Prophets are never enough, besides they get noisy and rub the wrong way. What we want is a king, to tell us what to think, what to do, how to dress, how to behave. I think in more ways than we care to admit, Michael Jackson was a king.

It helps us to be reminded that these kings are mere mortals.
And so we recognize that indeed, the king is dead.

[via randallfriesen.com]

Conservatism, Augustine, and Intellectual Irresponsibility

[Theopolitical]

Star Trek: Science Fiction for Progressives

[via Levellers]

The Patriot’s Bible and Justified Torture

[via Christus Victor Ministries]

While there is still much to reconcile, it forces an important question: How do you appropriately address the genocide as an organization without passively assisting its abuse?

[via Mo'dernity, Mo'problems]

Who's Really Innocent? Who Deserves Salvation?

I was reminded of how conservative Christians seemed to find Mel Gibson's Passion film meaningful mostly because of the ill-treatment that Jesus suffered during and before the crucifixion. I found it very interesting that those who pointed to the Roman's mistreatment of Christ were the most silent or even approving of Bush's torture regime. Not a new observation, but in yesterday's conversation, this idea was articulated most clearly when some one noted that perhaps conservative Christians saw a difference between torturing the Son of God and torturing someone who openly wanted to kill innocent people. I think that statement reflects a lot of the belief in conservative America....

Thinking about these two thoughts--the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and the issue of how we respond to others (yes, even those who profess to do evil)--and I have to say that I think the conservative theology is missing a pretty key element. I am no theologian, but isn't the power of the Easter story that Jesus gave himself as a sacrificial lamb for all of humanity? Isn't it based on the idea that he didn't deserve to die, but we all do? That we do not deserve grace or salvation, but he extends it to us anyway?

To go from that story to suggesting that it might be ok to mistreat others based on what they "deserve" strikes me as missing the point. {full post}

[via Streak's Blog]

Our Own Kingdoms

We live in a world with political and economic systems that continue to crumble. We have religious and theological ideas and structures that are insufficient to make sense of it all. Jesus knew this over 2000 years ago. It is why he came to reveal and found a Kingdom that was not dependent on the Kingdoms of the World. Humanity rejected that message and rejected that Kingdom not because they first hated God, but because that Kingdom threatened the stability of their own Kingdoms and asked everyone to give up their own self-preservation in these Kingdoms in order to pursue a different one of God's creation. Clinging to their own Kingdoms, they killed Jesus - an act which is the ultimate expression of human sin and idolatry.

If we fuse and confuse our own Kingdoms with that which Jesus came to found, and if we cling to our own Kingdoms to maintain some kind of privilege status in the world, where we will go when they crumble either through human error, or by the very wrath of God that ripped open the Temple curtain on Good Friday? {full post}

[via Notes From Off-Center]

Legacy of Rwanda's genocide: more assertive international justice

[via The Christian Science Monitor, HT: Kruse Kronicle]

Palm Sunday: Anti-Imperial Street Theatre

[via Levellers]

To An Impossible Situation That Shouldn't Last Forever

I'll give the pope some credit here. He's certainly right that getting men to stop cheating on their wives en masse - as is the custom in many African ethno-linguistic groups, especially those in which having sex with a nursing mother is a cultural taboo - would certainly abate the spread of HIV. As would ending the practices of polygamy, marrying off twelve-year-old girls, and the use of rape as a weapon of war.

But the pope doesn't know what he's talking about. Only someone who's never set foot in an African hospital would claim that condom use doesn't help fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Because it does. It works. When a country increases access to information about and reduces the cost of condoms, its HIV rate goes down. This is not in dispute. It works especially well when you hand out condoms in conjunction with campaigns that encourage teenagers to abstain and husbands to be faithful to their wives. But access to condoms is a key part of the strategy.

...The reality of the situation pushes aside ideals and pontifications from on high. It forces an immediate, imperfect response to an impossible situation.

It would be great if the pope's vision of fidelity replaced the need for condom distribution in much of sub-Saharan Africa. The cost-prohibitive nature of all forms of contraception and disease-prevention mean that these programs are almost completely dependent on donor financing. That money won't last forever. There will have to be long-term, local solutions to these problems. But those kinds of cultural changes take a lifetime to implement. Given that there is no evidence that condom distribution increases promiscuity - or the HIV/AIDS seropositive rate - in sub-Saharan Africa, it's ridiculous to claim that these programs do more harm than good. And the at-risk people of Cameroon and Angola and Kenya and the Congo can't wait for norms to shift. I wonder if the pope thought of that. {full post}

[via Texas in Africa]

A Few Lessons from THE WATCHMEN

[via Levellers]

Enriching the Future...

The reception of Darwin’s ideas has been mixed. On the one hand, almost the entire scientific world accepts the neo-Darwinian synthesis of evolutionary theory. Almost no field of modern science would be able to function in quite the same way without evolutionary thought. On the other, Darwin’s popularity among non-scientists, especially people of faith, has been mixed from the beginning. He had his defenders among Christian theologians from the outset, but also his critics. In earlier generations, most of those theological critics concentrated on the challenge of Darwinian thought to teleological and cosmological arguments for God’s existence, for the goodness of Creation, the uniqueness of humanity and of purpose to human existence. In recent decades, however, these larger questions have been downplayed in favor of biblical literalism and of pseudo-scientific attempts to justify that literalism via such oxymoronic schemes as “creation science,” and “intelligent design theory.”....

Ironically, it was Abraham Lincoln who, even in the midst of our nation’s greatest struggle for survival (both physical and as a nation of freedom and equality for ALL), created our National Academy of Sciences. He sought not only to preserve the Union physically, but to enrich its future through promotion of scientific inquiry. Origin of Species was only published in 1859 and The Descent of Man was not published until 1871, so it is unclear if Lincoln had ever heard of any of Darwin’s researches or theories. (Lincoln was self-taught, but widely read. He won his law license and admission to the Illinois Bar completely through self-study.) Yet, I think Lincoln would be disappointed that the United States today, though in many ways far more advanced than in Lincoln’s day, would take knowledge and scientific inquiry so lightly that only 39% of the public is completely convinced of biological evolution via natural selection.

Many Americans are reading more about Lincoln this year in honor of his bicentennial. It’s a good idea. But take some time out to read Darwin, too. {full post}

[via Levellers]

Faith, not Just Good Works, Needed in Africa–according to an Atheist

[via Prof. John Stackhouse's Weblog]