Christianity

Salvation at the Animal Shelter

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Seventy percent of cats at the shelter have to be euthanized. Who shall be saved and who shall be damned? We didn’t want to think of it that way. Who deserves to escape the burning fiery furnace? What do you bring as currency to buy salvation? Your suffering? That seems right, but suffering can create an abyss. That big surly cat growling from a cage might have suffered more than most, but we didn’t want her bites and scratches, her hissing and fleeing under the bed. Your good deeds? But how can we know the past from what we see in the present? Your love?

Christianity

What Pope Francis Might Mean for Christian-Muslim Relations

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The truth is that the last couple of months were full of anticipation not just for Catholics but many Muslims as well, especially those in the political and interfaith arenas. From Pakistan to Turkey and across the United States, Muslims in all walks of life had been talking, writing and tweeting as they waited of news about the change of leadership at the Vatican. It’s no secret that Benedict’s resignation was viewed by the Muslim world as a sign of positive change, due to his often antagonistic attitude towards the world’s second largest religion.

Christianity

When Liberals Feared Equality (And Conservatives Merely Hated It)

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That struggle for racial justice is often held up as an example of how change is possible. And its stories have helped teach many movements of nonviolent resistance, in countries ranging from the Philippines to Poland to South Africa. But how was change possible at that time? These days the lack of progress in our politics is a given, and it is usually chalked up to fierce polarization, chiefly between Democrats and Republicans. As today, the national politics of 1963 (certainly on the domestic front) was deeply fractured along ideological lines between liberals and conservatives if not strictly between Democrats and Republicans. Still, change happened – and on the most flammable question, race.

Christianity

Weekly Sermon: When You Turn Again

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The single great question of human being is this, How may I become who I am to be? How may we become who we are to be? All other questions are either that question dressed differently, or less important questions. Why is our becoming the only great question? Because awareness of the possibility that we may become greater than now we are is the only way we show that we know we have been created in the image of Creator. Apart from human awareness in all the known universe, there is no becoming.

Christianity

Are Passover and Easter Just Celebrations of Violence?

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Surrounded by the usual code words for these holidays – “freedom from slavery” for the first, “resurrection and new life” for the second – this question may seem at the least silly and at worst an exercise of blasphemous anti-religiosity.
Yet it is actually a serious question. Consider that while freeing the Jews all, yes all, the Egyptians’ first born – from that of the Pharaoh to the Pharaoh’s servants to the Pharaoh’s pet cat – had to die. And consider that Christianity seems to require the suffering and death of an innocent.

Christianity

Jesus, at Least, Opposed the Death Penalty

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Jesus himself cited the Old Testament law which had been given to teach the sanctity of human life: “You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.” What is more, Jesus intensified this teaching, saying that anyone who calls his neighbor a fool is subject to the same judgment. But Jesus knew that humans are inevitably flawed in our execution of judgment. “Judge not lest you be judged,” he taught his followers. Instead, he said, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

Christianity

Speaking Peace on Palm/Passion Sunday

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We live at a time of global empire, held together by an interconnected global economy, dominated by huge corporations, supported by an ideology of unrestrained free market capitalism, dependent upon a permanent war economy, and enforced by militarized police forces and home and the most powerful military industrial complex in history.
The world desperately needs people who are passionate and willing to take action for peace.

Christianity

Remembering Baghdad, 2003

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When God’s people hold onto the hope of reconciliation through the peculiar way of the cross, we interrupt the assumptions of a culture of violence. But the truth is that all of us—not just soldiers and police officers—are well practiced in the use of worldly power. Those of us who come from positions of privilege in society lean on the silent power of money and social norms, trusting in systems of control that have favored people who speak our language or share our skin color. At the same time, people who live with their backs against the wall resort to subversive acts of violence, carving out a space for survival by manipulating the fears those who seem to be “in control.”

Christianity

Thoughts on St. Patrick

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So, Love freed Patrick the slave, provided food for Patrick the runaway slave and his shipmates. Love brought him back to his family in England, and then inspired him to go back to the land of his captivity to preach the good news that a relationship with transcendent Divine Love is possible for human beings and that this love requires a radical love and commitment from us toward humanity and all of creation.