art

The Art of Revolution: Spoken Word, Video, and Performance Art to Change The World — Juliane Okot Bitek

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Juliane Okot Bitek knows the power of narrative. An award winning writer living in Vancouver, Canada, Okot Bitek is also an Acholi woman who calls Gulu in Northern Uganda home. Considering the civil war (1986- 2006) that plagued northern Ugandans, it’s no wonder much of Okot Bitek’s passionate writing focuses on social and political issues. In the last decade, through her poetry, essays, fiction, nonfiction and opinion pieces, Okot Bitek has fought both to make sense of, and to expose the tragedies of her homeland.

Gender and Sexuality

Why the ACA is the Most Important Women's Civil Rights Bill Since the 19th Amendment

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In the last year, attempts have been made in the US House of Representatives and the state of Arizona to defund Planned Parenthood. “Personhood bills” have been introduced in the same time frame in Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Colorado seeking to ban both birth control and abortion. Bills were also recently introduced in Georgia and Tennessee to criminalize miscarriage, potentially making it a capital offense. And who can forget Virginia’s effort to force medically unnecessary vaginal ultrasounds on females with the temerity to seek medical care? The ACA may be the most important piece of civil rights legislation effecting women since we gained the right to vote in 1920.

Christianity

If You're Not in Trouble for the Gospel You Preach, Is It Really the Gospel?

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You can hear about the vengeful and rather unmerciful God talked about on hundreds of radio stations across America, according to Bishop Gene Robinson who spoke at this year’s More Light Presbyterian Dinner during the Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly last week. That’s the side of God that Rabbi Michael Lerner so vividly describes as “the Right Hand of God.” But if you try to talk about the all-loving, all-merciful, overly-expansive side of God, especially one that accepts GLBTQ people… the “Left Hand of God,” well then you’re going to be in big trouble! The openly-gay Episcopal Bishop Robinson, over whom the Anglican Church has been “in chaos” for the last number of years, quipped that we should not be surprised when preaching the gospel gets you into trouble since Jesus made it very clear in his words, actions, and in his death, that trouble would follow when you truly followed his example.

Christianity

Nuns In America: Voices From the Margins

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“Hope in a Prison Of Despair”, a Public Domain Image c/o Wikimedia
I have been watching the crisis between the nuns or “women religious” (as they are known) and the Catholic Church in Rome I am confounded–and I am not easily made to confound. It seems as though the people who have made Catholicism more appealing and friendly in the last couple of decades are the people being denigrated for those appealing characteristics of loving and caring for others. I kept wondering what I wanted to write my first Tikkun Daily post on, as the Huffington Post crowded my overstuffed mailbox day after day with of headlines containing the words “nuns” and “Vatican.” So with a smile and a shrug I said, “Ok, God, I get it. I’ll write this blog post.”

Culture

The Human Right to Love

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Lately, when women are underpaid, or uneducated in our seemingly progressive society, the world erupts in anger. Most state that women are entitled to same human rights as men. This sense of anger continues to elevate when we discover the statistics of homeless and malnourished children in the world. We automatically assume that these numbers are horrifying, for satisfying our stomachs is simply another human right that should not be forgotten in life. Just recently, a national issue appeared before our eyes in the state of North Carolina; our human rights were challenged, but somehow defeated in one day.

Christianity

When God Does a New Thing

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When the living God sends new mercies, when God is ready to do a new thing, it is important that we do not stand as an obstruction because to do so separates us not only from our sisters and brothers, but it separates us from God. In the current discussion about LGBTQIA rights in general and same-sex marriage in particular, the questions for believers are: what is God doing? What does God require of me? I am a Bible-believing Baptist. I say: God said it.