Tag: politics
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Perspective
the abortion debate presumes that pregnancy itself contributes nothing essential to the creation of a rights-bearing person
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Modern Day Prophecy
Pew Research Center has published their detailed report Beyond Red and Blue: The Political Typology. The way I read it, it’s discouraging. It’s not obvious to me that the people this survey is about – us, that is – have the tools we need and the skills we need to do the things we would […]
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Hospitality and Hostility and Wondering About That
Most of us – people, I’m thinking, human beings – are not good at welcoming and condemning at the same time. That sounds obvious, but it was a hard sentence to come up with. Most of us – people, I’m thinking, human beings – don’t think of ourselves as “condemning.” We more often think of […]
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Cue the Spooky Music
[Tucker] Carlson talked up Hungary’s anti-immigration policies and what he described as the country’s support of families, but in a speech he gave—and later promoted on social media—he also addressed what we might call the politics of aesthetics. He emphasized the need for “order and cleanliness,” which he called “essential to human happiness.” He railed […]
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Polity
Yesterday reminded me why I love the Presbyterians. We held our mandatory annual congregational meeting for 2021 yesterday. ASIDE: “Mandatory” says who? The Book of Order, the polity, “the way we do things around here,” the rules. When people talk about “organized religion,” this is exactly what they’re talking about, whether they know it or […]
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Truth or Consequences
I am old. Old enough to know that there are a lot of things I don’t know. But I have learned one thing by now: nothing good ever comes from lying. Nothing good comes in churches from lying about sexual misconduct. The people who think “the reputation of the church” – that is, the approval […]
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Francis Bacon comments on today’s “Republicans”
… surely, the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that, when “Christ cometh,” he shall not “find faith upon the earth.” (Luke 18:8) Francis Bacon, […]
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Cultivating that Same Mind
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Philippians 2:1-2 We get hung up, our pastor pointed out, when we think […]
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Some Thoughts on Christians and Politics
… Christians embrace their political responsibilities – not primarily as citizens, or as representatives of political parties, or as a lobby group shouting to be heard, but as ambassadors of the Prince of Peace who came as a servant, welcomed children and foreigners into his circle, and taught us to love our enemies. John D. […]
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What Makes a Book Political? Thoughts on *The Hate U Give*
Our church book group finished working its way through The Hate U Give last week. It’s a novel. This was a feature that some of the members really liked, and some others went along with, because of trying to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace and all that. The ones […]
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Making History
St. Matthew’s [Episcopal Church] priest showed a small group of us the balcony, which was added to the church mid-nineteenth century to segregate its enslaved members from the landed gentry below. Those southern gentlemen imagined themselves as great fathers, writing often in their personal letters about “our family, black and white.” But they also understood […]
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“Fool”
I received a wonderful gift a few days ago, a volume in the Wisdom Commentary series, on Proverbs, by Alice Ogden Bellis, with sidebars by a collection of other authors. Just in time for our last week of reading Proverbs in class, with portions of chapter 9. It’s beautiful, and clearly erudite, and also accessible, […]
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Everything Old is New Again
Here’s an old joke I thought of today. You can tell it lots of ways, but this is how I heard it: It’s some Soviet bloc country, and a military shoot-on-sight curfew has been imposed for some reason, so these two soldiers are patrolling the street. It’s 25 minutes to curfew. They see a guy […]
Matters of Interpretation 