No matter what differences of opinion we might have on the question of whether homosexuality is permissible for Christians, it’s clear that the proposed bill in Uganda should be opposed by anyone who calls him- or herself a Christian. A bill prescribing the death penalty for gay men and lesbians is completely incompatible with any understanding of the love of Jesus Christ. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Uganda has spoken out against this bill, as have prominent American Christian leaders including Rick Warren. That the author of such a hateful and disgusting bill is being invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast should certainly raise questions about the true agenda of the group organizing the Breakfast – a Christian group called The Fellowship.

We need to stand together as one faith – conservatives, liberals, moderates – and condemn this bill. We need to stand together and demand that the prime mover of such an un-Christian bill not be honored with a prime position at the National Prayer Breakfast. Anyone who calls him- or herself Christian needs to make his or her voice heard – honoring David Bahati is incompatible with Christianity.

Unfortunately, The Fellowship, who organizes the prayer breakfast, isn’t all that interested in receiving input from concerned citizens. They don’t have a webpage, and the National Prayer Breakfast also doesn’t have a webpage. (One would think that any group that was truly acting out of the love of Christ wouldn’t have anything to hide, but that’s neither here nor there.) So we’re going to have to work this from the other end.

Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the White House from this page to call on the President to condemn Bahati and demand of The Fellowship that Bahati be uninvited. Also, members of Congress generally attend this breakfast; call your Representative and Senators and let them know that they need to demand that The Fellowship disinvite Bahati. Finally, call on your denominational leaders or other prominent figures in your Christian tradition to publicly denounce Bahati and demand that he not be invited to this Prayer Breakfast.

The name of Christ is being dragged through the mud by those who would make His banner one of hate and punishment instead of one of love and forgiveness. You have an opportunity to stop that. Will you take it?

I have listened to several suggestions, some more memorable than others, as to how to achieve my goal. There are those who have advocate Internet dating. Apart from my pride that tells me that I really don’t have a problem attracting men, my only real problem with Internet-dating is human nature. The average human is self-interested and as a result is prone to “airbrushing,” which is greatly facilitated by Internet. The potential suitor can be anything he or she believes you want until he or she achieves the desired end. Another more novel approach is that of a “mail-order mate’ but unfortunately for me these services are more suited to males seeking “traditional women” from developing countries.

I must confess that I like traditional things. I love my grandmother’s sweet potato pudding with the creamy custard on top. I prefer when my pudding is made from fresh ( not canned or frozen) coconut milk. In the old days the coconut milk was obtained by hand grating the coconut, but as soon my grandmother bought a blender she no longer grated the coconut by hand.  She did not believe that scraped fingers made the pudding more delicious. In essence I believe my grandmother was teaching us that tradition is great as long as it does no harm.  

Second only to low self-esteem, a traditional view of male-female relationship is one of the main features of relationships characterized by domestic violence, so like my grandmother I don’t grater things by hand that are safer to blend.

So we have come to my real problem. I am an unrepentant castrating single Christian egalitarian.  I know I am treading on dangerous waters when I mention castration, but my form of Christianity renders it necessary.  It is the kind of Christianity in which the possession of a phallus whether organically grown, bought or made is not the criterion for leadership; Christianity that views the Bible as divinely inspired yet gravely affected by human limitations as exemplified in instances such as Pauline theology.  In Pauline theology women are commanded to be both silent in church as well as cover their heads when prophesying— mildly contradictory. Another example is that of Bible translators who in Romans 16 changed the name of Paul’s relative Junia (female), who is described as a prominent apostle, to Junias (male). Mine is the kind of Christianity that confesses that “ as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3).” No, we are not all the same. We are still beautifully diverse but our worth, our purpose, our possibility are determined by Christ who loves all of us and not our genitalia. 

So I know I have been more naughty than nice this year (most years) but since I am asking a God of grace and not a Santa of merit I will keep hope alive. A merry everything to you and yours.

Renegade

Leading environmental scientists and evangelical Christians join forces to lobby senators in support of the climate bill

Read Article Here

The Earth is the Lord’s, and the Fullness Thereof,” (Ps. 24:1) and the tradition has always then wondered whether we received dominion of the earth (and this has a significant history of consequences, especially as political systems further defined “dominion”); another emphasis has been placed on stewardship rather than dominion.

Read about Matthew 25 Network’s approach to this issue here: http://matthew25.org/issues/ (scroll down to Environmental Stewardship).

There are of course many issues at play here:  the fatalism that has existed when some traditions have viewed their eschatology as a way to see the earth’s destruction as simply a sign of the ending age.  And yet, there is that ever-present issue of God’s sovereignty, or as one theologian puts it, the sovereignty of God’s grace.

At last, is the earth the Lord’s?  Is it subject to God’s Kingdom?  And what role has the Church in all of this?  Are we called to be observers of the world as it destroys itself, as fate would have it, or are we called to witness to God’s kingdom? To act in correspondence to God’s Grace?

I think as people of faith, we need to wrestle with all these issues, and take seriously whether or not we have “surrendered all” of the spheres of our existence just as we are called to follow God, a God who is For Us and decidedly Lord of all creation.

So, take these next days to wrestle with that.  And then give thanks, both at your dining table and with your actions.

If you’re interested in becoming active:

http://www.greenfaith.org/    Here’s an organization where their faith has empowered their action on behalf of creation.

http://climatebill.org/  Here’s a site that is tracking the 2009 Climate bill and also has ways you can be involved

If you’re interested in finding out more:

Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling America (1977)

Vigen Guroian, Inheriting Paradise (1999)

Michael Pollan, Second Nature (2003) and The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2007)

8 May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership. (NIV)

Okay, cute, right? They want someone else to be President. How amusing. Whatever.

Except that the Psalm doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say:

9 May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.

10 May his children be wandering beggars;
may they be driven from their ruined homes.

Aaaaaaaand now we’re getting into the territory where things turn decidedly un-Christian.

It’s pretty clear to me that this imprecatory psalm isn’t innocuous; at the very least, the person praying this psalm is praying for the death of the President. If one considers the link between violent language and violent deeds – a link we’ve talked about before – it becomes pretty clear that this could be seen as a clarion call to assassination.

Frank Schaeffer (son of Francis Schaeffer) makes this point succinctly in his interview with Rachel Maddow about this phenomenon:

“But now it turns out [in right-wing rhetoric] that he joins the ranks of the unjust kings of ancient Israel, unjust rulers to which all these Biblical allusions are directed, who should be slaughtered if not by God then by just men [. . .] Really, this is trawling for assassins, and this is serious business.”

I’d like to echo what Schaeffer said right there: This is serious business. Words do things; violent rhetoric breeds violent actions. When someone is praying for the President to be struck down by God, it’s only one step further for that person to decide that he or she is God’s instrument to carry out what he or she sees as God’s justice. This is scary stuff here – and it’s only being compounded (again, as Schaeffer points out) by the Manichaean, apocalyptic worldview many evangelical Christians are succumbing to.

But of course, we Christians know that many of the people who would pray this psalm don’t really want to see President Obama struck down – they just want him voted out of office in 2012. Fine. But that’s not what this psalm says, and if we’re nothing else in this world, we should be honest. Praying for God to strike down political leaders we disagree with is not Christian – and those who display bumper stickers, or T-shirts, or coffee mugs bearing a Bible reference that calls for Michelle Obama to be made a widow and Sasha and Malia to be “fatherless” and “wandering beggars” soil the name of Christ in this world. They give all Christians a bad name with their implication that such thinking is in any way in line with Christian morality or values.

In other words – all Christians should stand side-by-side against such thinking. There’s nothing “cute” or “amusing” about a bumper sticker or a T-shirt that calls for the President of the United States to be killed, whether that be by God’s hand or man’s. For the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of Christianity’s reputation in a skeptical world, we must stand against this phenomenon and be vocal about our stance. We must make it clear that such rhetoric is in no way Christian, and that those who would pray such a thing are not praying in the Holy Spirit.

The upshot of this is clear: If you’re a Christian, and someone you know has one of these bumper-stickers, you have a responsibility to say something to them – particularly if they’re part of your church. If responsible Christians don’t stand up against hateful and violent language among us, we shouldn’t be surprised when the world thinks we’re hateful and violent. We need to stand up to our fellow Christians and let them know that things like this bumper-sticker are not of Christ, and tell them in the name of Jesus that they need to stop using violent and hateful language.

And we need to pray for President Obama, whether or not we agree with his politics, as Paul says in 1 Timothy:

I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.

May we continue to hold up our President and all our leaders in prayer during these troubling times.

Seriously.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Among their conservative principles for Bible translation:

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Their full free-market meaning? Yeah, Jesus was totally thinking about laissez-faire and the invisible hand of Adam Smith’s free market when He told the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor. And the whole parable about the farmer casting his seed over the field? Clearly, Jesus is talking there about optimizing crop yields and exploiting laborers in order to maximize agricultural profits.

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

(For the record, here’s the story in question.)

Yeah, because we wouldn’t want sentiments like “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” to complicate our worldview. We wouldn’t want to contemplate whether or not we’re acting hypocritically before we condemn others.

Of course, given the spotty record of right-wing religious figures who demagogue about family values, maybe they are better off excising that passage…

And finally, the coup de grace…

10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

Why not go the whole way and replace “Lord” with an inarticulate guttural grunt, a thumbs-up, or a “guy nod”? God doesn’t want those boring liberal words mucking up His pristine Bible. Conservative God doesn’t use words, He uses action… so next time you’re in church and they ask you to read a passage aloud, instead of all that boring text with its “high word-to-substance ratio” you should just punch the guy next to you in the jaw. That’s what Conservative Action God wants.

Millions of our fellow citizens are suffering right now because they don’t have health insurance. If they’re fortunate enough to be healthy right now, they worry about what would happen to them if they all of a sudden became sick, or were injured, and had to pay the exorbitant prices charged by doctors and hospitals to the uninsured.

Those who are fortunate enough to have insurance are also worried – because our system rewards cost-cutting measures for insurance companies like finding any imaginable excuse to not cover people when they get sick. It’s our nation’s dirty little secret that many of those who went bankrupt due to medical costs had insurance when they got sick – and their insurance company did whatever they could to get out of paying for treatment. Those who have insurance are worried because they could lose their jobs and have no insurance at all.

Given the millions of people suffering in this country from our nation’s completely broken health-care system – a system that rewards greed and venality instead of good care and compassion – why are we Christians not using the tools we have at our disposal to change the system?

In other words – why aren’t we praying for health care reform?

As Christians, we hold as one of our beliefs the idea that prayer does something. Whether or not we theologically believe in a God who changes God’s mind due to the prayers of the people, we can’t escape that Scripture calls us to bring our petitions and concerns before God – including (in 1 Timothy 2:2) for those in positions of authority. We are supposed to bring the concerns of our nation – not just our own private fears and thoughts – before God.

And it’s quite clear, given the tenor of the debate in Washington over the issue, that some hearts need to be changed. We need God to quicken some of the hearts of our Representatives and Senators so that they care more about the people they’ve been elected to serve than they do about the profits of the health insurance industry. We need God to call those who do favor strong reform to speak out with a prophetic voice in calling their fellow members to the cause. We need God to energize the hearts of more of the people to call, and write, and advocate for real, serious health care reform. In short – like every other great struggle for progress in our nation’s history – we need God’s help to make it happen.

Perhaps, in addition to calling and writing letters to our representatives in Congress, in addition to writing letters to the editor of our local papers, in addition to talking to our neighbors about the necessity for health care reform, we should be organizing to petition God for health care reform. We should be asking for the microphone when it’s passed around during the “Prayers of the People” and calling our brothers and sisters to beseech God to change hearts as necessary. We should be making health care reform part of our own prayers, part of the prayers of our small groups, part of the prayers of our Sunday schools.

Prayer is no substitute for action, but we as Christians believe that prayer and action are a much more potent force when brought together.

Won’t you join me in praying for health care reform?

In this season of debate about US health care reform, Broadstreet Ministry in Center City Philadelphia recently hosted a health care town hall with Congressman Joe Sestak.  Rev. Bill Golderer, convening minister, began the event by directing the attention of community members and media gathered to the bright origami swallows hanging in the rafters of the sanctuary.  Each piece of paper contained a prayer or lament from someone in the community. We were asked to hold the weight of the prayers hanging above us in our awareness during the dialogue.

This invitation is an important one for communities of faith to hold forth as the health care debate resumes following the August recess.  Now is the time we must ask: whose voices are given priority in our dialogue?  What are the prayers of the community that have seemed to be ignored or unheard?  There are nine million uninsured children in the United States who are not filling our headlines with their shouts at town halls, though their lack of access to quality health care deserves such indignance.

Further, now is the time for communities of faith to critically confront the structures that lead to significant disparities in access to quality health care based upon a child’s racial-ethnic identity.  As Children’s Defense founder Marian Wright Edelman has spelled out, “minority children are uninsured and underinsured at far greater rates than White children. One in 13 White children is uninsured, compared to one in five Latino children, one in five American Indian children, one in eight Black children, and one in nine Asian/Pacific Islander children.” (find column attached below)

Now is the time for communities of faith to pass the mic to those too often ignored or unheard by our legislators.

In your community, who is holding the microphone, and who is going unheard?

Laura Markle Downton
Princeton Theological Seminary

http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/marian-wright-edelman-child-watch-column/unfair-childrens-health-disparities.html

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More to the point…There is necessary animosity and unnecessary discord. If in the interest of loving truth telling and self-love you offend someone that is all in the game of love. I love a story by Flannery OConnor in which the “pimpled faced white girl” tells the racist classist self- proclaimed Christian Euro-American female protagonist that the latter is a warthog who needs to go back to hell her place of origin. The protagonist was greatly disturbed by the comment, but accepted it as a revelation from a truth-telling God (a Pauline moment of being knocked off her high horse). I am telling people about racism, sexism not to show that I am better than, but that we all deserve to be treated better. To open the door to mutual improvement, as you previously stated both the oppressor and oppressed are in need of liberation.

Will they still say we are sowing discord if we tell the truth in love? Hell yes. It is the age old tact of blaming the victim, where the abuser wishing to maintain power over refuses to accept how he or she is perceived by the abused. Those people were not going to form coalitional alliances with us anyway when “they” say “they” want to end oppression they mean just that. They want to be the heroes who are remembered for their acts of justice and not for their complicity in a legacy of oppression.

There are a few ideas of Karl Barth that I like and I think I would be a Barthian if I was around more people who practiced Barthian theology, instead of enshrining the man. Barth a “contextual theologian” wrote  about the krisis, which he defines as a constant state of accepting that we are at the same time condemned and accepted by God. Condemned for the non-life-giving things in us, and accepted by a God who nonetheless loves and wants to rectify us. This is a hard pill to swallow in a culture where people constantly say “don’t judge me” understood as be a false prophet and call evil ( non-life-giving things) good.

renegade-grateful for stimulating discussion in a desert land :-)

I read and greatly appreciated your piece on Sotomayor as well as your response to my piece. I think the highest compliment to an author of anything is thoughtful dialogue- so thanks. I think you captured the intent of my blurb in your comment “challenge” … “without vilifying race and gender.” I wholeheartedly concur that there has been and continues to be a pervasive Euro-American male hegemony. The absence of other voices have greatly limited but not negated the value of some of their achievements. For example, we have a fabulous constitution mainly written by European (Anglos) males. However, had they included the Native Americans and the Africans we would have less to be a shamed of and to repair as a Nation. As a black Caribbean American who loves America, I want an America enriched by diversity and divested of systems of domination. My dream can only be achieved by coalitional alliances that are difficult to grow in soils of animosity ( vilifying race and gender). Did I think Sotomayor meant to be racist or sexist ? No! Most people who live in New York City know the value of diversity ( all voices),so I just wanted to provoke those who don’t. Those who want to be able to dismiss those who struggle for egalitarian structures as being just as dominating as those they are standing up against.

PS: Blind-spots – Prior to writing I was reading an article entitled “Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency.” The theorists came to their conclusions mainly from a sample of “underprivileged” youth (ethnicity was not specified). I appreciated the “objective” take of the outsiders as many of the traits that were described such as being rebellious against the system in my opinion as a minority was very laudable. My next desire was to see studies done on juvenile delinquency of the privileged. As I as an “objective” outsider could more clearly identify delinquency in behaviours that those within the group find normal because they are not caught: drugs, promiscuity, addictions (cigarettes, alcohol). Then the next step would be the insiders and outsiders making policy together for all juvenile delinquents.

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Sonia Sotomayor

One critique of Sotomayor’s statement was that it was racist, and I concur that it has the potential to be racist. It would be both racist and sexist to assume that being a wise Latina with rich experiences make you a better candidate for the job than any white male. As some logical questions would be: can a Euro-American male be wise? Don’t his experiences count? The duty of Supreme Court judges is to determine the constitutionality of the cases and state laws that come to them. In light of the task set out before the justices, one can readily concur that wisdom would be essential. The New Pocket Oxford Dictionary defines wisdom as “showing experience, knowledge, and good judgment.” There are those who would argue that the only pertinent wisdom (experience, knowledge, and good judgment) is that which pertains to the law but Sotomayor hints at more. Sotomayor tackles the myth of objectivity and contends that personal experiences, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic background matters. I believe that most people in USA still believe that the personal touch matters otherwise the justices would have been replaced with computers that can be programmed to produce more objective decisions than humans.

But my mind is still working on the issue of giving a “better conclusion than a white male that hasn’t lived that life.” Does the wise Euro-American experience matter ? I support Sotomayor’s candidacy as well as diversity in Supreme Court. I support it because I believe that a diverse group of wise individuals with various experiences will arrive at more balanced humane interpretations of the Constitution, which will make more citizens feel that they are Americans. However, I do not believe that specific minorities make better decisions than qualified Euro-Americans. Rather I believe that the Supreme Court will make better decisions because it is more representative of the American public. I think it something like ( excuse me if I sound like a heretic), the God of the flood and the God at Jesus’ crucifixion. The God at the flood as an objective outsider saw that we humans were just damn wicked and needed to be washed off the face of the earth. But when that God lived with us as one of us, at the crucifixion that God said “forgive them because they really do not know what they are doing.”