Christianity

Bonhoeffer’s Theological Drive to Protect Jews from Nazis

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This article was written with John Shellito, who served as its primary author. Johnis a student at Union Theological Seminary, interested in how faith communities can resist oppression in economic, ecological, and social spheres. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 2008 and is currently pursuing ordination in the Episcopal Church. “He was never what one might today term a culture warrior, nor could he easily be labeled conservative or liberal,” claims Eric Metaxas in one of many pungent lines from his groundbreaking new biography of Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Yet Bonhoeffer has often been pigeonholed as a courageous radical, working secretly for the assassination of Adolf Hitler during World War II.

art

Collaborative Art Fractures Prison Walls

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The image of a hand pressed against thick glass, fingers outstretched, made its way onto Evan Bissell’s canvas because it still haunts one of his collaborators, a young woman named Chey who saw it as a child visiting a jail. “My dad used to do that when I’d visit him,” she wrote in a note to viewers of the “What Cannot Be Taken Away: Families and Prisons Project” at San Francisco’s SOMArts space. “The glass was so thick that you couldn’t feel any warmth.” The collaborative art exhibition, which seeks to open our imaginations to new ideas about why harm happens and how harm can be repaired, is itself a hand pressed to the glass of the prison system, a warm-hearted attempt to create new flows of communication and empathy between people shut inside and people shut out. The project grew out of months of written dialogue between four fathers at San Francisco County Jail #5 and four teenagers whose own fathers are or were previously incarcerated.

Education

Ecosocialism: Not Your Father's (or Grandfather's) Socialism

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A Rip Van Winkle Experience
When you have lived more than six decades, it is possible to have a Rip Van Winkle experience. Life may have assigned an aspect of the social universe you once followed closely to the bare horizon of your awareness, where it may have lurked for decades, and then events occur that make you again pay attention to it. When you do, it may seem that, like the fabled Van Winkle, you have been asleep and things, though not entirely different from what you once knew well, have substantially changed. The “Death” of Socialism? Not long ago socialism, especially in its Marxist varieties, was widely declared dead.

Education

The Challenge of a One Nation Ideal–to the Left as much as the Right

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I hope this is one humongously large rally in Washington today. Nonetheless, and I know this will sound bizarre, I am personally more excited for the future of social change by a small conference call taking place tomorrow morning, to which you are invited, than I am by the One Nation March. Curiously, the left online doesn’t seem very excited about the march either. There’s no mention of it on HuffPost’s front page as I write this morning. It’s not the top story on Alternet, and the headline isn’t “Huge Left Rally in DC” but “Anti-Tea Partiers Descend on Washington to Fight for a Stronger Economy,” which isn’t as anxious as Politico’s “Liberals hope rally rivals Beck’s” but similarly concedes that the Right has the initiative.

Empathy

Personal Growth and Social Change (7th and Final Post) and Invitation to a Phone Discussion

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Part 1 of this topic was posted on Aug 8, and links are provided below to all the other parts of this mini-series. This is the last segment. If you would like to participate in a real-time conversation with me about these topics (this Sunday, 9:30 – 11:00am Pacific Time), see below for more details, or go here to register. I started this mini-series with noting that none of us ultimately knows what would (will? could?) bring about significant change, beyond our experiments with alternatives, beyond a vision absent material resources, beyond the smallness of our efforts.

Culture

Personal Growth and Social Change (Part 6): A Gift Economy

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This mini-series started on Aug 8, and this is the seventh post so far. The previous post was on Sep 24. Each of the posts can be read separately. Example: Gift Economy
Because I have such a deep longing for a gift economy, so deep that truly every day hurts in seeing how far we are from such a system, I continually look for examples of gift economies already operating so I can sustain and expand the solidity of my faith in this possibility. I am less interested in hunter gatherer societies that still have gift economies than in examples within the existing modern capitalist economy.

Culture

What We Lose Without Deep Neighbor Love and Delight in the Holy

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“Justice is co-created through the joining of deep neighbor-love with delight in the holy.” I love that sentence from Mike Hogue’s recent post. If that’s what it takes to create justice, no wonder we have so little of it. I mean, isn’t it a given that you lose deep neighbor-love when you move into the middle class? Isn’t losing deep neighbor-love the way that you make it yourself?

Culture

Personal Growth and Social Change (Part 5)

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This mini-series started on Aug 8, and this is the seventh post so far. The previous post was on Sep 10. Each of the posts can be read separately. Working towards and creating change (as distinct from change happening, which is a constant in life) involves conscious choice and action. On the personal level, this means becoming more the person we would like to be, and creating new options for ourselves.

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.

Culture

Guest Post: “The artist formerly known as Molly Norris,” By Christopher Stedman

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Last week the atheist blogosphere lit up with reports that Molly Norris, the Seattle cartoonist who inadvertently inspired “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” (EDMD), had been forced to change her identity and go into hiding due to death threats she received from extremists. How did these same bloggers who promoted EDMD respond to this news? They expressed sadness and frustration. And who wouldn’t? Poor Norris – imagine having to give up everything you knew because your life was in danger.