Paulo Freire: liberation theology and Marx (subtitled) (by suicidadealuguel)
Subtitles aren’t perfect, but it’s an excellent video.
camp czigàny
Frank Griswold: Maybe this is the desert time | Faith & Leadership →
The Episcopal Church and the Protestant mainline in America today may be going through a normal “paschal pattern” — a dying and a rising — that all churches go through, said Bishop Frank T. Griswold. And that is not necessarily a bad thing.
“There’s an arrogance and a self-confidence that is shattered by things falling apart,” said Griswold, former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. But beneath the church’s many challenges is an invitation to deeper wisdom, a hidden grace that leads to new insight, wisdom and resurrection.
The Poverty Industry and the Early Assemblies of Jesus-Followers: Seven Provocative Contrasts « On Journeying with those in Exile →
I believe that all of our actions can and should be filtered through these questions: is this action life-giving or is it death-dealing? Is it both or neither? In what ways? How do I know this? Because, after all, we often think something is life-giving when, in fact, it is death-dealing. We all have blind-spots and we all inherit ideologies and cultural or religious paradigms that make it difficult for us to evaluate our own actions. This, I think, is especially true when it comes to the ways in which we understand charity today, and so I wish to highlight some of the ways in which charity falls into the realm of that which is death-dealing, in contrast to the life-giving actions of the community that assembled around Jesus. This will be done with a series of seven contrasts.
St. Francis, Pray for Us - Shane Claiborne →
Francis did something simple and wonderful. He read the gospel where Jesus says, “Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor,” “consider the lilies and the sparrows and do not worry about tomorrow,” “Love your enemies” — and he decided to live as if Jesus meant the stuff he said.
Francis turned his back on the materialism and militarism of his world, and said yes to Jesus.
One of the quotes attributed to Francis is a simple and poignant critique of our world, just as it was to his: “The more stuff we have the more clubs we need to protect it.” It does make you wonder if he’d be on Wall Street protesting today.
Jerry Falwell and the Cure for Sectarianism - Jared Hillary Ruark →
Even the most bumbling passages of scripture have something to teach us about the human condition. One of the lessons here is that some things never change. Paul’s letter demonstrates for us that no task is ever so great that it cannot be derailed by some completely inconsequential concern. “So you’re trying to change the course of human history with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, huh? Well, before you do that, remind us all who you’ve baptized and why it doesn’t matter.” So if you were shocked that the Leader of the Free World could be pestered into producing a long-form birth certificate by a reality TV star with bad hair and a penchant for conspiracy theories, you shouldn’t have been—some things never change.
More importantly, this scripture points to a truth about human nature and church life. Church people absolutely love to talk about unity and the church as The Body of Christ. And yet, there are over 40,000 denominations of Christianity last I heard. (Yes, 40,000. That wasn’t a typo nor did I misspeak.) The urge for unity, however strong, pales in comparison to the allure of sectarianism. Wendell Berry perceived our situation well when he wrote that, for some people, “the highest Christian bliss would be to get to heaven and find that you were the only one there—that you were right and all the others wrong.” The sectarian impulse is comfortably situated next to self-righteousness in our religious imagination, and self-righteousness is alive and well much more than we care to acknowledge.
This guy. Jared Hillary Ruark is one of my role models (there, I said it). I’m proud to call him friend.
Perhaps you were expecting a purely historical account as one might give of the battle of Waterloo, whereas I was trying to treat it as a religious event which eternally recurs every time it is accepted. Thus the historical fact that the shepherds were shepherds is religiously accidental — the religious fact is that they were the poor and humble of this world for whom at this moment the historical expression is the city-proletariat, and so on with all the other figures. What we know of Herod, for instance, is that he was a Hellenised-Jew and a political ruler. Accordingly I have made him express the intellectual’s eternal objection to Christianity — that it replaces objectivity with subjectivity — and the politician’s eternal objection that it regards the state as having only a negative role. (See Marcus Aurelius.) …
I am not the first to treat the Christian data in this way, until the 18th Cent. it was always done, in the Mystery Plays for instance or any Italian paintings. It is only in the last two centuries that religion has been “humanized,” and therefore treated historically as something that happened a long time ago, hence the nursery prayer of Jesus in a nightgown and a Parsifal beard.
If a return to the older method now seems startling it is partly because of the acceleration in the rate of historical change due to industrialization — there is a far greater difference between the accidents of life in 1600 AD and in 1942 than between those of 30 AD and 1600.
—
from a letter W. H. Auden wrote to his father in October of 1942, explaining his decision to use a largely contemporary setting for his long poem For the Time Being: a Christmas Oratorio. I’m working on a critical edition of that poem for Princeton University Press, and goodness, it’s fun. (via ayjay)
My priest once said that the image of the cross is important because it brings together the eternal divine (the vertical) with the mortal human (horizontal).
View Larger Tree Of Agony, Gethsemane, Jerusalem, Palestine, C. 1934-1939
Listen! The choicest of visions I wish to tell,
which came as a dream in middle-night,
after voice-bearers lay at rest.
It seemed that I saw a most wondrous tree
born aloft, wound round by light,
brightest of beams. All was that beacon
sprinkled with gold. Gems stood
fair at earth’s corners; there likewise five
shone on the shoulder-span. All there beheld the Angel of God,
fair through predestiny. Indeed, that was no wicked one’s gallows,10
but holy souls beheld it there,
men over earth, and all this great creation.
-from the Dream of the Rood (read the rest here.)
Top 5 Questions (with Answers) to LGBT Acceptance | Believe Out Loud →
Rev. Dr. Janet Edwards provides answers to the typical questions religious opponents pose regarding LGBT acceptance. What would your answers be?
Question 1: “How can you ignore the clear meaning of Scripture and all of Christian tradition that says same-sex love is a sin?”
Question 2: “How can you be sure that you aren’t just making stuff up to justify something that is culturally trendy?”
Question 3: “Don’t all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people violate the Biblical requirement of monogamous marriage between a man and a woman?”
Question 4: “How can any Christian, in good conscience, engage in or condone sexual practices that are both unnatural and dangerous?”
Question 5: “How can you dismiss the way Jesus can heal people who suffer from an affliction like alcoholism or same sex attraction?”
All good answers, especially to get the conversation going. Granted, this conversation has been going for over 30 years in most mainline churches. One of my priests even went so far as to say that he thought it was a non-issue. LGBT+ people were welcome. Period. I found that encouraging, but a little too dismissive of the very real battles still going on for the “heart of Christianity”.
And now the learner, has he no lot or part in this story of suffering, even though his lot cannot be that of the Teacher? Aye, it cannot be otherwise. And the cause of all this suffering is love, precisely because the God is not jealous for himself, but desires in love to be the equal of the humblest. When the seed of the oak is planted in earthen vessels, they break asunder; when new wine is poured in old leathern bottles, they burst; what must happen when the God implants himself in human weakness, unless man becomes a new vessel and a new creature! But this becoming, what labors will attend the change, how convulsed with birth-pangs! And the understanding — how precarious, and how close each moment to misunderstanding, when the anguish of guilt seeks to disturb the peace of love! And how rapt in fear; for it is indeed less terrible to fall to the ground when the mountains tremble at the voice of the God, than to sit at table with him as an equal; and yet it is the God’s concern precisely to have it so.
— Kierkegaard, from the Philosophical Fragments (via ayjay)
