compassionate christian

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip

2008-08-20T11:52:00.001-07:00

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip

2008-08-19T11:47:00.001-07:00

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip

2008-08-19T11:42:00.001-07:00

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

flyer by http://TheConcreteJungle.Book.com

2008-08-18T10:00:00.001-07:00

flyer by http://TheConcreteJungle.Book.com
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

the concrete jungle book flyer

2008-08-15T14:38:00.001-07:00

the concrete jungle book flyer
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

the concrete jungle book flyer

2008-08-12T18:33:00.001-07:00

the concrete jungle book flyer
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip

2008-08-11T06:27:00.001-07:00

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

from a new prose+comics scrapbook novel, TheConcreteJungleBook

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip

2008-08-11T06:25:00.001-07:00

The Concrete Jungle Book stencil by Srayla Tip
Originally uploaded by http://TheConcreteJungleBook.com

from a new prose+comics scrapbook novel, TheConcreteJungleBook

love one another, please

2005-05-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

Sign the Jacksonville Declaration

Help make justice and compassion the hallmarks of our country. Add your signature to this letter. Let the Political and Church Leaders of the Religious Right know they do not speak for you. Help them hear a different understanding of Christian values. Add your voice below.

To The Political and Church Leaders of the Religious Right:

As responsible and patriotic Americans, we can be silent no longer. In light of the deepening polarization in our country's social and political life, we feel compelled to speak out to you in a spirit of sincerity.

For many people, your words and actions have identified Christianity with radical, far right politics. We believe that your use of Christianity has sown the seeds of deep discord in our nation and throughout the world. Hear some of your own words:

"You owe liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ."
-- Church Leader Bob Jones, to George W. Bush after 2004 election

"I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution and see there's no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution."
-- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas)

"Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence…in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."
-- Dr. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries

"…the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated…"
-- Tony Perkins, Family Research Council

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians … the ACLU, People For the American Way … I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'."
-- Rev. Jerry Falwell, on Pat Robertson's 700 Club discussing the WTC attacks

We must tell you now that you do not speak for us, or for our politics. We say "No" to the ways you are using the name and language of Christianity to advance what we see as extremist political goals. We do not support your agenda to erode the separation of church and state, to blur the vital distinction between your interpretation of Christianity and our shared democratic institutions. Moreover, we do not accept what seems to be your understanding of Christian values. We reject a Christianity co-opted by any government and used as a tool to ostracize, to subjugate, or to condone bigotry, greed and injustice.

If your politics flow from your faith, then we do not know the Jesus you claim to follow. We cannot imagine a Jesus who would say:

"You are strong and powerful; your ideals are noble. Make war to spread those ideals."
"The end is near - So it doesn't matter what you do to my Father's creation."
"Heal the sick - Provided they can pay."
"All are welcome at the table - As long as they are the same as we are."
"Follow me - And help me form a government to force others to follow."

Do you believe such statements truly reflect Christian or American values? Do these views follow what Jesus taught? Do you think it is genuinely American to steer our country toward a Christian theocracy? Is it Christian to foster intolerance? Is this the path to which Jesus leads us?

We say "No". Instead, we say "Yes" to values Jesus plainly and passionately practiced. Listen to his words:

"I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
-- John 13:34-35

We hold up to all fellow Americans the heart of Jesus' teaching: his unwavering commitment to justice, compassion, responsibility, equality, and care "for the least of these". These are values Jesus taught, and they also serve among America's finest traditional values. Our political views flow from these values.

We also reaffirm a well-established American commitment to a clear separation of church and state. In your statements you often characterize America as a "Christian nation". We strongly disagree. As a nation of immigrants, America has been a land of freedom and diversity. Separation of church and state helps ensure liberty and justice for all Americans - not just those who are like-minded. Hear these words:

"The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Know that you do not speak for us. We oppose so many of your words and deeds. But though we may disagree with you, we offer this declaration in a spirit of openness. We hope you will respond in kind. We call on you to stop dividing our country with your words and actions, and we invite you to turn to compassion and justice, values that Jesus lived.

In Truth and Faith,
Christian Alliance for Progress

Sacred Heart Mural

2005-05-31T07:24:00.000-07:00

Sacred Heart Mural
Originally uploaded by byrdiegyrl.

2005-05-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

something for everyone
Originally uploaded by deepwarren.

handwriting on the wall

2005-05-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

Jesus
Originally uploaded by kianee.

God is love

2005-05-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

DSC00150
Originally uploaded by ingerson.

environmentalist evangelicals

2005-03-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

EEN urges conservative Christians to embrace the Earth: Environmental movement finds way for evangelicals to tap into their green sides by Deborah Pardo-Kaplan, Science & Theology News, March 2005, excerpts:

Environmentalists and anti-abortion activists rarely rally together at the same event. But at a Washington, D.C., gathering this January, the two groups walked side by side.

Some participants at the 32nd annual March for Life held signs saying, “I regret my abortion,” while other anitabortion marchers swayed banners proclaiming, “Stop mercury poisoning of the unborn.” Many of the 100,000 marchers were evangelical Christians; that number included a small group of environmentalists. The National Association of Evangelicals, which has a membership of 45,000 churches and 52 denominations, led the mercury-awareness campaigners.

The Rev. Jim Ball, executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, first brought the mercury issue to the attention of evangelical Christians at a June conference on the environment in Sandy Cove, Md. Ball suggested that evangelical Christians could enter the environmental discussion through aiding the unborn — who may be absorbing low but harmful levels of toxicity by the mother’s consumption of fish, reported an NAE newsletter.

The meeting of 40 evangelical leaders at Sandy Cove reflected a growing trend of evangelical Christian interest in environmental stewardship. Among those attending were editors of Christianity Today, executives of World Vision, professors of Christian seminaries and heads of churches. By the end of the conference, 29 leaders had signed a covenant promising to follow up with a statement on climate change by the summer of 2005.

....Christians have been realizing that as a result of global warming, many in poor countries will suffer with the rise from flooding, droughts and risks to public health. Some are concerned about predictions that 300 million cases of malaria could develop from global warming, Ball said.

....Evangelicals have been concerned about the environment since the late 1960s, Ball said. “But what we are now experiencing is a growing interest within the center of the evangelical community,” he continued, “and a growing activism by such groups as the National Association of Evangelicals.” In the past, evangelical Christians have hesitated or largely ignored environmental issues, considering them to be the property of New Agers and left-wing liberals, and second in priority to salvation concerns. They have also questioned the science behind global warming.

....The environmental discussion among evangelicals is heading forward. The National Association of Evangelicals recently adopted a statement on civic engagement called “The Health of the Nation,” listing “care for creation” as one of its principles. It was the first time the association had articulated its political and social agenda, said Cizik.

The Evangelical Environmental Network, with its 23 partner organizations, has launched campaigns since its founding 10 years ago. Five hundred evangelical leaders endorsed the network’s initial guiding statement of faith on the care of creation. Among its programs over the years, the network has helped renew the Endangered Species Act, create environmental awareness for families and spark a large media blitz, with its “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign.

....Despite the campaigns, some say many Christians still have reservations to take part in environmental issues. Tony Campolo blames the impact of the Left Behind series, written by the Rev. Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. These books, he said, reflect a theology of the end of days that evangelicals may interpret as a lessening of Christian care for the Earth and a heightening of the relevance of eternity.

Those leading the evangelical groups for creation stewardship see that kind of theology as a distortion of biblical truth. They say that following Jesus means also caring for the physical world that he created. They hope to pass on their ideology and biblical interpretation to many evangelicals.

“It will be as a result of their seeing this as God’s call,” said Calvin DeWitt, president of Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies, “or their seeing this as a vital part of their responsibility, or a vital part of their dedication to the sanctity of life, or to the vibrancy of life, or their belief that might emerge here — that the creation story has as its core stewardship.”

see all of creation as God’s very large and continuous knitting project

2005-02-18T09:49:00.000-08:00

The very world we inhabit, and that inhabits us, in this very moment is the ongoing creation of God. I am impressed by the psalmist’s imagery of our being knitted by God in our mother’s wombs. It only makes sense to extend the imagery beyond the womb and to see all of creation as God’s very large and continuous knitting project!

... Michael Lodahl, theology professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, in Advocating the one in the theological many, Science & Theology News

"budgets are moral documents"

2005-02-17T09:05:00.000-08:00

Sojourners:

On February 7, President Bush released his proposed 2006 federal budget. In addition to projecting record deficits and increases in military spending, the budget proposes major cuts to domestic programs that benefit people living in poverty.

This budget reflects a set of priorities that stand in clear opposition to biblical values. Spending more money on nuclear warheads and tax cuts that benefit the rich is not a strategy that would be affirmed by the biblical prophets-and the proposed cuts to low-income programs will not even realize the president's stated goal of reducing the deficit.

Please urge your members of Congress to consider the effect this budget will have on our nation's poor before taking a vote.

parenting in Jesus' footsteps

2005-02-06T09:23:00.000-08:00

To raise a child, one needs three invaluable allies: the Bible, the help of an extended family and "biblical-based resources" -- 9-inch-long spanking paddles of blue polyurethane, according to Steve Haymond from Bakersfield, who sells the paddles online for $6.50 apiece.

Twyla Bullock, in Eufaula, Okla., swears by the Rod -- a 22-inch, $5 white nylon whipping stick her husband designed and produced until recently. Named after the biblical "rod of correction," the Rod provides "a faith-based way to discipline children ... and train them as Christians," Bullock explains.

Susan Lawrence, a devout Lutheran from Arlington, Mass., is appalled.

"Christians are supposed to listen to Jesus," Lawrence said, bringing the Rod down with a thump on the seat of her living room futon and looking at the resulting dent with incredulity. "Can you imagine Jesus teaching to use the Rod?"

Corporal punishment has long been an accepted method of child discipline among evangelical and fundamentalist groups, but an increasing number of Christians are raising objections, arguing that advocates of spanking wrongly cite Scripture to justify a practice that should be banned. Lawrence, who peppers her conversation with quotes from the New Testament, says striking children defies the Golden Rule from the Gospel of Matthew: "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you."

Last year, Lawrence, 49, launched her Parenting in Jesus' Footsteps site on the Web (www.parentinginjesusfootsteps.org,), which is critical of corporal punishment being practiced by Christian parents.

...read it all: Christian crusaders go to battle over spanking: Tools of discipline horrify some of faithful by Anna Badkhen, San Francisco Chronicle, 6 February 2005

SpongeBob welcome at UCC

2005-01-24T17:08:00.000-08:00

Joining the animated fray, the United Church of Christ today (Jan. 24) said that Jesus' message of extravagant welcome extends to all, including SpongeBob Squarepants - the cartoon character that has come under fire for allegedly holding hands with a starfish.

"Absolutely, the UCC extends an unequivocal welcome to SpongeBob," the Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president, said, only partly in jest. "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we."

For that matter, Thomas explained, the 1.3-million-member church, if given the opportunity, would warmly receive Barney, Big Bird, Tinky-Winky, Clifford the Big Red Dog or, for that matter, any who have experienced the Christian message as a harsh word of judgment rather than Jesus' offering of grace.

The UCC's welcome comes in the wake of laughable accusations by James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, that the popular SpongeBob and other well-known cartoon characters are crossing "a moral line" by stressing tolerance in a national We Are Family Foundation-sponsored video that will be distributed to U.S. schools on March 11, 2005.

Later, an assistant to Dobson called SpongeBob's participation in the video "insidious."

Thomas said, on the contrary, it is Dobson who is crossing the moral line for sending the mistaken message that Christians do not value tolerance and diversity as important religious values.

"While Dobson's silly accusation makes headlines, it's also one more concrete example of how religion is misused over and over to promote intolerance over inclusion," Thomas said. "This is why we believe it is so important that the UCC speak the Gospel in an accent not often heard in our culture, because far too many experience the cross only as judgment, never as embrace."

Dobson, despite his often-outrageous viewpoints, is arguably one of the most oft-heard religious voices in popular culture today. Through his Focus on the Family media empire, Dobson produces daily commentaries that appear widely on television and radio stations across the United States, often times as "public service announcements."

Meanwhile, the UCC's recently released 30-second paid television commercial - produced to underscore the denomination's belief that Jesus didn't turn anyone away - has been rejected by two major television networks for being "too controversial."

"Resistance to our message is formidable," Thomas says, "because we're cutting against the prevailing grain of a society that is afraid of the stranger, suspicious of difference and easily seduced by narrowly defined theological boundaries."

The 1.3-million-member United Church of Christ, with national offices in Cleveland, has almost 6,000 local churches in the United States and Puerto Rico. It was formed by the 1957 union of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church.

For more information on the "We Are Family" children's video, visit www.wearefamilyfoundation.org.

...from: SpongeBob receives 'unequivocal welcome' from United Church of Christ

the invisible kingdom of Satan

2005-01-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

It seems to me that if the Democrats are going to be able to work up a new set of attitudes and values for their future candidates, it might not be a bad idea to do a little more creative thinking about the question for which they have had, up to now, naught but puny suggestions - which is how do you pick up a little of the fundamentalists' vote.

If by 2008, the Democrats hope to come near to a meaningful fraction of such voters, they will have to find candidates and field workers who can spread the word down South - that is, find the equivalent of Democratic missionaries to work on all those good people who may be in awe of Jehovah's wrath, but love Jesus, love Jesus so much more. Worked upon with enough zeal, some of the latter might come to recognize that these much-derided liberals live much more closely than the Republicans in the real spirit of Jesus. Whether they believe every word of Scripture or not, it is still these liberals rather than the Republicans who worry about the fate of the poor, the afflicted, the needy, and the disturbed. These liberals even care about the well-being of criminals in our prisons. They are more ready to save the forests, refresh the air of the cities and clean up the rivers. It might be agonizing for a good fundamentalist to vote for a candidate who did not read the Scriptures every day, yet some of them might yet be ready to say: I no longer know where to place my vote. I have joined the ranks of the undecided.

....read it all: America and Its War with the Invisible Kingdom of Satan, by Norman Mailer, Sunday Times essay re-published at Common Dreams, 23 January 2005.

"connecting religion with a progressive agenda"

2005-01-21T11:24:00.000-08:00

Politicized religion has played a transformative, progressive role in the history of the United States. The American Revolution was prepared by the first 'Great Awakening' in the United States, in which populist preachers crisscrossed the country, bringing Christians of different nations, classes, colonies, and even races into concert, based not on reading well but on an ecstatic, visceral, common faith. The struggle for the abolition of slavery was made possible by the religiously inspired daring of Unitarians, who not only agitated against slavery but sometimes risked their lives to escort African Americans to freedom. The Civil Rights movement grew out of devout black Baptist churches in which the Hebrews' flight from Pharaoh was a prophetic tale.

Can the Democrats re-take America's religious heartland? That hinges on connecting religion with a progressive agenda. And that will require a transformation of American Christianity, a reaching out to those religious men and women who understand justice, tolerance, and anti-colonialism as central to Jesus' public mission. American Christians have a history, one that is not over. If they did not feel reviled and dismissed as obscurantist no-nothings, they might respond to a spiritual politics from the progressive side. They know their Bibles.

The elements for a reversal are there. Bush has put together a coalition of religious conservatives and the monied elite. Yet, if one looks at the texts that animate American Christians, one sees a deep distrust, and indeed, hostility to international capitalism. The Left Behind series is the single most popular book series in America, probably in American history. It details the Rapture, the moment that Christ brings up the saved to Heaven, leaving behind those who are likely damned. It celebrates love, true love, the kind of love between a man and a woman, they argue, that can only be had through religious faith. But it also warns of the powers of international finance, of monies out of control, powers that provide the wordly vehicle for the anti-Christ. That second moment contains a rich populist vein that, while vulnerable to anti-Semitism, is also a potential source to critique a country whose sovereignty is being compromised by the international economic forces to which the Republicans would deliver us. The South Dakotan populism that defeated the Jaguar-driving Daschle distrusts big money.

And finally there is the issue of family values. We can tie their agenda to ours. There is, after all, accumulating evidence that abortion has been rising under President Bush because low wages and the absence of affordable health care make it too economically painful to bring a baby to term.

....read it all: When Jesus Votes by Roger Friedland, Tikkun, Jan/Feb 2005 issue

I have a dream

2005-01-17T11:35:00.000-08:00

As published in Counterpunch, 17 January 2005:

Where Lip Service is Not an Option
Martin Luther King and the Christian Left

by Greg Moses

All religions, said Simone de Beauvoir, have "embarrassing flexibility on a basis of rigid concepts." Practitioners and believers who swear to core principles find themselves fighting each other from opposite extremes of the political spectrum.

At the time she said it, in the second chapter of The Second Sex, Beauvoir had three great religions in mind: Christianity, Marxism, and Psychoanalysis. In each case there were right wingers and left wingers then, and in each case there are right and left wingers still.

Today, as we blow out 76 candles to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., I am thinking that in a nation where 79 percent of the people believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, there is no good reason not to imagine the possibility of a revived and renewed Christian left.

My thoughts today are drawn to fresh reflections on the New Year's day activism of Chicago trainees for Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), who challenged a toy store on the question of marketing violent video games. The activists are training to go to places like Hebron, Colombia, Iraq, and Grassy Narrows, Ontario, where epidemics of violence rip through bodies and forests alike.

But the CPT action is less than half of what's on my mind this morning. I'm more concerned about what happens in a country that is 80 percent Christian when left activists refuse to pay attention to the Christian left, simply because it is Christian. In terms of hardball shrewdness, if nothing else, a leftist rejection of the Christian left in America is a certified guarantee of defeat.

As King once warned bourgeois America that we must not be afraid to say that Du Bois was a Communist, so we might warn the American left: we must not be afraid to remember that King was a Christian.

Paco Michelson, a CPT trainee from Huntington, Indiana, tells me by telephone that he has played "all the games" that he was protesting against on New Year's Day. He was the one who pretended to play video games upon a coffin, as activists read the names of Americans and Iraqis killed in war.

"I still think the games are fun," says Michelson. But as a matter of social conscience, he also thinks it would be better if these killing games, rated M for Mature and singled out for violent content, were not sold as toys.

Michelson understands how the image of Christian inspectors is bound to make folks wary. What CPT did in Chicago, taking things off shelves, looks a lot like censorship. But on this birthday of King, our great national icon of nonviolence, we have to demand an answer to the question: so what are we doing about our cultural addictions to violence? especially as the consequences of that sickness are so clearly played out in the body counts of Iraq?

"It's a conflicting issue for Americans, our addiction to violence," says Michelson. "I don't think it's a very popular thing to think about." He wrote the CPT press release that claimed a "direct connection between ongoing violence in the Middle East and the impact of violent toys on children."

Amy Knickrehm served as emcee for the street theater, orchestrating readers who called off the names of people killed: three Iraqis for every American. Knickrehm explains that the ratio of Iraqi to American casualties of war is actually closer to a hundred to one, but the group wanted to cover the names of Illinois natives killed, and if they had read 100 Iraqi names each time, it would have been a very long day.

Although Knickrehm has many friends who play the video games, and although she sees no effects that the games have on her friends, she thinks that keeping the more violent games away from kids is something that her friends would support.

Seven years ago, Knickrehm joined one of the peace churches, the Church of the Brethren, partly because she kept seeing the red baseball caps on the heads of Brethren activists at Chicago street actions. For peace churches such as The Brethren, Anabaptists, Mennonites, or Quakers, a commitment to pacifism goes back to the time of Menno Simons (1536-1561) for whom the Mennonites are named. But that is another story.

What's crucial for today, King's birthday, is a reminder to the American left that there are some Christians who have been persistently organized against war for more than 400 years, and they have often been as isolated as they were two weeks ago when they asked a toy store to stop selling war games to children.

When the living King talks about nonviolence, he has a radical and comprehensive vision about a global way of life. For King, the education of our children is seamlessly connected to the violence of our war zones. Toy stores are socially and morally intertwined with Falluja and Hebron. And King often expresses that vision in the language of his Christian faith.

Today, on his birthday, as we survey the eighty percent of Americans who subscribe to Christian concepts, the left cannot afford to ignore those who have never just paid lip service to King.

Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in Dime's Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx@prodigy.net

who would Jesus bomb?

2005-01-16T21:45:00.000-08:00

This is being forwarded around by email and is in the blogosphere:

Dr. Robin Meyers
Oklahoma University Peace Rally
November 14, 2004

As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University.

But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.

Tonight, 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:

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

-- 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.

2005-01-15T10:40:00.000-08:00

The Tent of Abraham, Hagar, & Sarah: A Call for Peacemaking

We are members of the families of Abraham — Muslims, Christians, Jews.

Our traditions teach us to have compassion, seek justice, and pursue peace for all peoples. We bear especially deep concern for the region where Abraham grew and learned, taught and flourished. Today that region stretches from Iraq, where Abraham grew up, to Israel and Palestine, where he sojourned, and to Mecca and Egypt, where he visited.
Today our hearts are broken by the violence poured out upon the peoples of that broad region.

That violence has included terrorist attacks on and kidnappings of Americans, Israelis, Iraqis, Europeans, and others by various Palestinian and Iraqi groups and by Al Qaeda; the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel and of Iraq by the United States; and the torture of prisoners by several different police forces, military forces, and governments in the region.

From our heartbreak at these destructive actions, we intend to open our hearts more fully to each other and to the suffering of all peoples.

In the name of the One God Whom we all serve and celebrate, we condemn all these forms of violence. To end the present wars and to take serious steps toward the peace that all our traditions demand of us, we call on governments and on the leaders of all religious and cultural communities to act.

We urge the US government to set a firm and speedy date for completing the safe return home from Iraq of all American soldiers and civilians under military contract. We urge the UN to work directly with Iraqi political groupings to transfer power in Iraq to an elected government.

We urge the UN, the US, the European Union, and Russia to convene a comprehensive peace conference through which the governments of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Iran, and all Arab states conclude a full diplomatic, economic, and cultural peace with Israel and Palestine, defined approximately on the 1967 boundaries, with small mutual adjustments.

We urge the international community to work out lawful and effective means to deal with the dangers of international terrorism, the spread of nuclear and similar weapons, and conflicts over the control of oil and water.

We ourselves will act to create transnational and interfaith networks of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who will covenant together -

_ to insist that governments take these steps,

_ to undertake whatever nonviolent actions are necessary to prevent more violence and achieve a just peace throughout the region,

_ and to grow grass-roots relationships that bind together those who have been enemies into a Compassionate Coalition.

According to tradition, Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah kept their tent open in all four directions, the more easily to share their food and water with travelers from anywhere. In that spirit, we welcome all those who thirst and hunger for justice, peace, and dignity, to join in affirming this statement.

- Sister Joan Chittister, OSB; Rev. Bob Edgar, National Council of Churches; Dr. Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, Islamic Society of North America; Imam Abdul Faisal Rauf, Imam Talib Abdur Rashid, Imam Mahdi Bray, Saadi Shakur/Neil Douglas-Klotz; Rabbis Elliot Dorff, Gerry Serotta, David Teutsch, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Waskow, and Sheila Weinberg; --- and YOU?

. . . .text of an advertisement published in the New York Times, 14 January 2005, by The Shalom Center.

Biblical support for conscientious objection

2005-01-14T09:35:00.000-08:00

Conscientious objection rests on the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian heritage, argues Laura Duhan Kaplan in a Tikkun article, Rabbinic Concepts and Contemporary Conscientious Objection:

The building blocks of the discussion on conscientious objection are found in Deuteronomy 20, which presents rules for the ethical conduct of war, including draft exemptions, peace negotiations, treatment of noncombatants, and environmental preservation. The narrative that frames the Book of Deuteronomy recounts Moses the Lawgiver instructing the assembled Israelites on the laws of warfare shortly before their invading army enters the land of Canaan, an invasion dated approximately 1200 bce by archeologists. Some critical Biblical scholars date Deuteronomy to the seventh century bce during the reign of King Josiah of Judah. They read II Kings 22-23 as suggesting that King Josiah hired a scribe to describe his program of religious reform as if it were the original law of Moses, and then staged an important archeological "discovery" of a pseudo-ancient scroll. Whether we read Deuteronomy as Moses' words or as Josiah's, it is likely that these laws are not meant to be theoretical or metaphorical, but are to govern the actual conduct of national military campaigns.

Deuteronomy 20:5-8 focuses on exemptions from military service. Discussions by traditionally oriented Jewish scholars attempt first to determine which principles guide the exemptions and then when the exemptions apply.

Kaplan's article is worth reading in full, a welcome correctio to the notion promulgated by some fundamentalist Christians that God backs the US war in Iraq, although Kaplan's article more directly addresses Israel's refuseniks.

the compassion center

2005-01-12T10:07:00.000-08:00

We have a story today about helping the homeless -- not in South Asia, but here at home. It's about a church in Bloomington, Illinois that decided to build a center for the homeless before it built a new sanctuary for itself. An energetic pastor led the way, which required an unusual church, union, business, and government coalition.

....read it all: The Compassion Center, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly