Christianity

From Many, One Nation: The Affirming Message of "All American Muslim"

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We are community leaders from the three Abrahamic faiths who don’t normally look to reality TV to teach lessons of faith and religious freedom. But TLC’s new show, All American Muslim, is doing just that. It’s also come under recent attack from Islamophobic extremists who seem to have forgotten the values on which this country was founded. Rather than tune out in protest, as Americans, it’s time to tune in. On an upcoming segment this Sunday, commemorating the 9/11 tragedy, the audience meets real-life first responder Mike, who speaks of the bond of loyalty he shares with his fellow first responders and his heartfelt sense of loss for those who heroically gave their lives on 9/11.

Christianity

A Meaningful Christmas

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Nothing could be less celebratory than having to celebrate. Imagine someone holding a gun to your head: “Sing Christmas carols! And sing like you mean it!” Where does celebration come from? What does it mean? I’m inclined to think that any word connected to “celebrity” has to be suspect. 
The dictionary, source of so much wisdom, tells me something unexpected: “to perform with appropriate rites and ceremonies; solemnize, observe, commemorate, sound the praises of, make known publicly.” No wonder we can feel it’s a heavy burden.

Christianity

Press Release: The Virgin of Guadalupe Speaks (a Musing by Jim Burklo)

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From my friend the Rev. Jim Burklo, of the Center for Progressive Christianity, a musing. Press Release: The Virgin of Guadalupe Speaks
For immediate release
At a press conference in Los Angeles, CA, La Virgen de Guadalupe, on the 480th anniversary of her apparition in Mexico, suddenly appeared, held up on a crescent by a little cherubic angel. With brilliant effulgence surrounding her, she declared her independence from the Catholic Church specifically and from the Christian religion as a whole. “I belong to all humanity,” she declared. “No exceptions!”

The Virgin of Guadalupe explained that she appeared to the Indian peasant Juan Diego on December 9, 1531, on a hill near Mexico City where the Aztec goddess Tonantzin once had been worshipped.

Christianity

Occupy Chanukah and Christmas

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Chanukah was the first recorded national liberation struggle against Greek imperialism, and Christmas celebrates the birth of a hoped-for messiah to free the Jewish people from Roman imperialism. Both Judaism born of slaves in Egypt and Christianity born of a movement of the poor and powerless were in their times the “Occupy” movement that confronted the powerful and those who served them.

Christianity

Weekly Sermon: Touching Taxes

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This sermon by Rev. Stephen Phelps, the interim Senior Minister at the Riverside Church in New York, is the first in an ongoing series of sermons by the Reverend. Romans 12: 1-13; Matthew 22: 16-22
Almost 180 years ago, the French citizen Alexis de Tocqueville traveled the new America and later described the character of our people in essays which still startle us Americans with features so recognizable. He saw, for example, our vaunted individualism. He defined it this way:
a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass
of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society
formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself . .

Christianity

The Occupy Movement and Sacred Space

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If the spirit of Occupy Wall Street and its home at “Liberty Square” is to survive and have impact, occupiers need a larger understanding of what sacred space is and what it isn’t. Sacred space can be anywhere, any time. It is by definition beyond time and place.

Christianity

Prophets Against Profits! What Occupy Wall Street Gets Right

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As the global economic downturn continues into its fifth year, growing dissatisfaction among the public with our malfunctioning economic system has changed the tone and agenda of American political discourse. A number of economists and commentators are asking questions about the future of that economic system and are considering rather unorthodox approaches to address its current failings. NYU economist Nouriel Roubini recently wrote a piece, “Is Capitalism Doomed?,” in which he claims that Karl Marx was “right in arguing that globalization, financial intermediation run amok, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct.” Roubini recommends investment in “human capital, skills and social safety nets” to prevent economic catastrophe, including “unending stagnation, depression … and massive social and political instability.”

art

Soup & Bread: The Church of The Hideout Cookbook

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Sometimes even an atheist needs a community soup kitchen. This winter, I will probably need one, and so will many many of my fellow Americans. This winter, when the thin veil of November leaves has finally come down in Chicago, the sand is banked on the beaches against the lake shore wind and the dark comes early, I will be happy for a bowl of soup and a place to eat it where I feel welcome. Like so many this year, for me the recession is grinding down hard, and the things that held me together are beginning to fray, just a little and at the edges, but still, the possibility of coming unraveled hangs over all endeavors while the nights get colder. Like the people occupying parks the whole country over, I am running out of faith in governments and institutions to provide a little grace and shelter while we all wait out the economic troubles we’ve got to endure.

Christianity

Online tools enriching the study of sacred text

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This article was co-authored by Matthew L. Skinner. Picture this: an Iraqi reporter becomes interested in the work of a Jewish student in Israel after reading an article about Jewish-Muslim relations in medieval Spain that the student published online. The reporter contacts the student and interviews him about future prospects for Jewish-Muslim coexistence. As the student in this story and co-author of this article, Joshua Stanton knows first-hand how technology is reshaping the way people of different religions interact. To start with, he and the Iraqi reporter would never have connected without the Internet, which enabled them to bypass regional politics and borders.