Legacies of the Cross and the Lynching Tree

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The lynching tree is a metaphor for white America’s crucifixion of black people. It is the window that best reveals the religious meaning of the cross in our land. In this sense, black people are Christ-figures, not because they wanted to suffer but because they had no choice. Just as Jesus had no choice in his journey to Calvary, so black people had no choice about being lynched. The evil forces of the Roman State and white supremacy in America willed it. Yet, God took the evil of the cross and the lynching tree and transformed them both into the triumphant beauty of the divine. If America has the courage to confront the great sin and ongoing legacy of white supremacy with repentance and reparation there is hope “beyond tragedy.”

27.4 Fall

God Sucks as a Campaign Manager

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Like Robertson’s Coalition crusaders, we need to make it clear that when the election is over, no matter the outcome, we are not going away; that when we make a call to action, that the call is answered.

27.4 Fall

On The Obama Question: A Black Womanist Response

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Feminist and black womanist reflection have long held that one’s personal experience always has political and universal implications. In light of this claim, the womanist lens that guides my approach to The Obama Question is especially intrigued by Gary Dorrien’s attempt to debunk and redirect racially politicized assumptions that undergird some progressive and leftist perspectives.

27.4 Fall

Politics and the Limits of Religious Optimism

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The manner in which the current political discourse in the United States is marred by shortsighted discussions of the “good” and the nature of morality capable of pushing the nation toward its better self is glaring. While neither seems willing to acknowledge this, both the religious Right and the religious Left have fallen short with respect to these ideological challenges.

27.4 Fall

The Moral Priority of the Common Good

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If Obama can re-establish the fundamental moral priority for the nation of the public or common good to what the founders originally held dear and what the biblical tradition teaches, he might have a fulcrum by which to pry the American moral spirit free from the prison into which the Tea Party and severely conservative Republicans have confined it.

2012

The Stoker and the Plugger

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Stopping the tsunami requires every tool in our kit, even the choice of a timid and misguided plugger—whom we need to prod, push, and often militantly oppose—over the stoker. Plugging the leak opens up prospects that the people will mobilize rapidly from below and rebuild the levy while quieting the floodwaters.

2012

Supporting Obama from the Left

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As we confront the current election and the next four years, many progressives are reflecting upon how we reached this juncture and what role we should play moving forward. Given the partisan character of our country and the mixed results of the current administration, what are spiritual and religious progressives to do?

2012

Reclaiming the Radical Imagination: Reform Beyond Electoral Politics

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It is time for progressives and others to shift the critique of Obama away from an exclusive focus on the policies and practices of his administration and instead develop a new language for politics—one with a longer historical purview and a deeper understanding of the ominous forces that now threaten any credible notion of the United States as an aspiring democracy.

2012

Be a Progressive Democrat!

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Election year is different from all other years. The media will invite progressives into the fray. They’ll goad us, for ratings’ sake: Do you love Obama? Hate him? Are your politics pure?

2012

Obama in Question: A Progressive Critique and Defense

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Four years ago we seemed to take a shortcut to some kind of national redemption. The same nation that enslaved African Americans until 1865 and imposed a vicious century-long regime of segregation and everyday abuse upon them elected an African American to its presidency. The same nation that elected twelve slave masters to its presidency elected a president whose wife was a descendant of American slaves. The same nation that never would have elected a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement to national office fulfilled some of the movement’s most idealistic hymnody.

2012

Why America Needs a Left

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The United States today should be engaged in a great debate, not so much over who the next president will be, or over the role of government in economic life, but over the very identity and future orientation of the country itself. On the one hand, powerful right-wing voices argue that America is an essentially conservative country. On the other hand, other voices, led by the president, argue that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America!” implying that we are an essentially centrist country.

Activism

A Salvo Against War, Torture, and Racism: The Art of Mariano Gonzales

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Working in political isolation from most of his artistic colleagues in Alaska, Mariano Gonzales continues a noble tradition of critical visual consciousness that goes back many centuries and that thrives in the early decades of the twenty-first century. His politically and socially charged images challenge his audiences to think about the major issues of their times.

Editorials & Actions

Justice as Grand Strategy: The Missing Dimension in American Foreign Policy Toward the Muslim World

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Editor’s note: Robert Crane raises an important issue in the article below. I think the notion of a substantive concept of justice is very important, though I do not think that the way Crane fills this in  is satisfactory. Crane believes in other of his writings that justice requires a right to private property–I hold the Torah’s conception that the whole world belongs to God and that no one has “a right” to land or property, all of which is given to us only on condition that we use it to serve each other and God in a love-filled and generous way. But the issue Crane raises deserves our attention.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
 

Justice as Grand Strategy:  The Missing Dimension in American Foreign Policy Toward the Muslim World

by Dr. Robert Dickson Crane

The ancient Roman philosopher, Cicero, wisely advised that before one begins to discuss anything whatsoever one should first define terms. This would apply to perspectives and entire paradigms of thought. Perhaps the most illusive words in the world today are the terms “American” and “Muslim World”.  

Was there, is there, and can there be an essence of America that constitutes its identity? This issue of identity is developed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his recent book, The Garden of Truth: Vision and Promise. He begins by generalizing that humans, both as individuals and as communities, act according to the image they have of themselves.

Articles

Dark Days with the Dark Knight

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We are the beneficiaries of the most advanced audiovisual systems ever known, capable of moving our emotions, challenging our ideas, and opening our imaginations. Is it right that the most technologically sophisticated and financially expensive products of this system are entertainments like the Batman movies, designed to deliver their gratifications not to the mind but to the gut?