Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics At The Intersection of Politics And Religion by Steven Gimbel. Review by Donald Goldsmith
2013
The Criminal Caste
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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, Review by Ben Bloch
2013
A Visual Critique of Racism: African American Art from Southern California
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One of the most valuable functions of socially conscious art is its power to personalize and humanize what can easily become an abstraction. This power was evident again and again at BAILA con Duende, a recent Los Angeles exhibition featuring the works of seventy-four black artists.
2013
We Are All Victims of War: Veteran Liberation Theology
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To form a powerful anti-war movement, we need to bridge the gap between U.S. veterans and pacifists. Collaborating on a veteran liberation theology is one place to start.
2013
What’s Next in Faith-Based Community Organizing: A Rolling Jubilee
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Does life in our debt-driven political economy make your faith feel fraudulent? Debt cancellation is the biblical norm. We need a jubilee to release us from our shame.
2013
Reimagining Judaism: The Great Teshuvah
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It’s time to usher in a new paradigm–one of the turning and returning to the earth, to each other, and to integrity.
2013
How Ancient Religions Can Help Us Transcend the Civilization of Greedy Money
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We are facing a global crisis created by capitalism. The world’s religions–having emerged in response to the growing power of money in the Axial Age–can help us face it.
2013
The Mondragón Cooperatives: An Inspiring Economic Hybrid
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Sixty years ago, the Basque region was the poorest area of Spain. Today, thanks to local cooperatives, it is the richest–and the wealth is shared.
2013
A Spiritual Way of Seeing
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Most of the theories we use to understand social reality overlook the power of humanity’s desire for community and connection. We need a new narrative behind our efforts to heal the world.
2013
Her Books: Moving My Mother’s Library to Al-Quds
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What do you do with your parents’ possessions? What do you do with their cherished collections of a lifetime?
2013
Envisioning a Thoughtful and Caring Child Welfare System
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Let’s build a foster care system that nurtures each child’s creativity, capacity for joy, and emotional wellness. Here’s how.
Articles
Red Flags Round Pope Francis
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Like everyone else on earth, I wish the new pope well and I hope he truly emulates some of Francis of Assisi’s priorities of defending Mother Earth who is in so much peril, living simply (how one does that in a palace like the Vatican surrounded by an obsequious court is another question), speaking out on behalf of the poor, impoverished, sick, and neglected, and speaking out on those social and economic structures that institutionalize injustice. I also hope he cleans up the rat’s nest of corruption, pedophile cover-up, ego mania, and power-addicted prelates who run the curia that in turn runs the Vatican. Good luck and God’s Blessing!
Articles
For your Passover Seders or Easter Gatherings
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Both Passover and Easter have a message of liberation and hope for the downtrodden of the earth. Yet too often we fail to see the continuities between the original liberatory messages of these holidays and the contemporary need for liberation and resurrection of the dead parts of our consciousness. This is our first attempt to craft a Seder addressing the needs of the 99 percent.
Articles
The Religious Roots of the Minimum Wage
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Will raising the minimum wage put more money in the pockets of America’s working poor? Or will it have the opposite effect, throwing more poor people out of work? That’s the question we ask whenever anyone proposes a hike in the minimum wage, as President Obama did in his State of the Union Address. But it’s also the wrong question, diverting us from the biggest one of all: what are the rights that we share as human beings?
Articles
How the Papal Conclave Could Renew Religion: My Two Votes for Pope
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Because the Vatican is so sick and infested with evil spirits, it is time to admit that in its present configuration history has passed it by, the Holy Spirit has exited, and its usefulness has run out. But electing a person of genuine spiritual and ethical stature such as the Dalai Lama who also stands for global intelligence and peace and who calls compassion “my religion” would be a genuine act of humility and vision by the voting cardinals. It would also draw us nearer to the real teaching of Jesus and the person who Jesus was. Electing a non-westerner and a non-Christian who recognizes the spiritual genius of Jesus and the truth of the “Buddha Nature” or “Cosmic Christ” in all beings would refresh the move for interspirituality and interfaith that our planet needs so badly. (A bishop of Rome could be elected, hopefully by the people, who would live in that bishop’s place—the Lateran—and preside over the Roman flock meanwhile.) This creative and visionary act by the conclave would help turn the tide of history at this time when our species is in mortal danger of destroying itself by weaponry and wars and/or by continued ecological imperialism, destroying the very nest that feeds and nourishes us.