Politics & Society

The GOP and Keynes

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Last night’s GOP debate evoked a range of responses in me, from disbelief to revulsion. It was not only the content, but also the form and style of the lineup, the glowing white teeth and slick hair, the token woman and token black man, the cartoonish smiles, the obviously strained civility and the embarrassing pandering of each to distinguish him or herself from the others. I was particularly horrified by the advance applause of the audience when Perry was asked what he thought of the fact that during his tenure as Governor, Texas had executed more people than any other state. Before Perry had a chance to answer, the audience erupted into wild applause! Perry then went on with great pride to explain his commitment to capital punishment.

Politics & Society

Religious Responses to Budget Debate

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This post will say nothing that you don’t already know, though it will provide a couple of very interesting links for you.Though there’s nothing new here, I need to vent. It is as astonishing to me as to most of you who read Tikkun that there is ANY support coming from religious folks for the Republican budget proposal. It is a revoltingly immoral and unjust attempt to solve a deficit problem (largely created by Republican policies, wars, and tax cuts for the wealthy) on the backs of the poor and the vulnerable. In order to pay for an unjust war in Iraq, and a highly questionable, perhaps dead-end war in Afghanistan, and in order to sustain the lowest tax rates for the wealthy since President Hoover–the very same affluent demographic that had nearly everything to do with the rise of speculative markets and bubbles and thus the collapse and recession and increasing precariousness of our whole market economy–Paul Ryan’s “courageous” new plan is to cut the deficit by completely gutting and nearly destroying our nation’s already too modest social welfare programs. The moral logic in this is really insidiously wicked. Now, I completely agree that we’ve got a HUGE problem with our growing deficit.

Culture

Gratitude Rant, Scholarship, Attentive Repair

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The great French mystic scholar, Simone Weil, writes: “The poet produces the beautiful by fixing his attention on something real. It is the same with the act of love. To know that this man who is hungry and thirsty really exists as much as I do – that is enough, the rest follows of itself. The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act” (Gravity and Grace, 173).

Culture

The Politics of the Present Imperfect

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It is a time of year when many of us take special occasion to reflect on whether we’ve been living our lives the way we mean to, whether our communities and our society as a whole have become a little more sane-minded, more sustainable, more beautiful, a little more just in the past year. In my experience this exercise often leads to heartburn and nausea: the gap between the way things are and the way I hope for them to be is so vast as to seem impossible to bridge.Health care reform didn’t turn out nearly as well as many of us hoped. The DREAM act failed for unconscionable unreasons. Climate legislation isn’t even on the table. The Bush tax cuts for the super-wealthy were extended, at the expense of desperately needed social services.

Culture

An Ancient Take on a Modern Question: Morality in Our Changing World

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I mentioned in my last post that the question I was raising – how  to respond morally to change when even our moral sources are changing – is an ancient question. Consider the story of the ancient Greek philosopher Cratylus, who was influenced by the philosophical vision of Heraclitus. Though the name Heraclitus may be unfamiliar, his dictum that “you can’t step into the same river twice” is probably very familiar. Heraclitus was one of the original philosophers of process and flux – everything is dynamic, whatever is, is in motion. Cratylus was deeply influenced by this idea and followed it to what he deemed to be some of its logical consequences: he argued that not only can one not step into the same river twice, but one can’t step into the same river once.

General News

How do you live for the good and holy when the world and our moral traditions are changing so quickly?

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Dear Readers,
My purpose in beginning to blog for Tikkun is to interpret and comment on an experiment in progressive public theology that we’re running at Meadville Lombard Theological School (Unitarian Universalist; Chicago, IL) (www.meadville.edu). But in this first post, I just want to introduce myself and describe an experience from earlier in my life that led me to what I’m doing now. Though I’m a professor of theology and ethics, my most important work occurs outside the academy. I’m a father of two and one on the way, married to the best woman I know, a son to some pretty amazing parents and a brother to a brother who constantly inspires me. I try to fulfill my familial vocation as well as I can, but I make plenty of mistakes!