Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/christianity-religion-spirituality/page/3/)
Rev. Pinckney of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church led a church founded by men who gave their lives for this principle: better to risk death than abandon your people. Like those men, Rev. Pinckney took his fire pan and stood between all of us and the terrible plague that threatens to engulf us still.
What are the possible reasons why this young man drove approximately 2 hours from his home in Columbia, South Carolina to this particular house of worship carrying with him the pistol he purchased? All indications present in stark and glaring terms that his “mission” was not to kill Christians, per se. Rather, he was bent on killing black people, period!
We have Pope Francis to thank for moving the climate conversation forward, and our tradition of Hinduism, in concert with the universal Earth-honoring wisdom embedded in every community of faith, has much to say about climate change and environmental justice.
The best way to support the Pope is to build an interfaith movement based on these values articulated in the New Bottom Line. It is only when people begin to see a spiritual progressive movement in the public sphere with a strategy for how to save the planet that is willing to challenge the fundamentals of global capitalism that they will be able to imagine overcoming their own passivity, emotional depression, and mistaken certainty that “nothing will ever make possible a new economic system.”
Why, why, why in 2015 canonize someone who represents such bad theology and bad intercultural values, utterly lacking the respect and humility that lie at the foundation of interfaith work and beliefs and values? No one who has passed Psychology 101 can believe in a masochistic treatment of one’s body in the name of a Creator God any longer, and no one who believes in a God of Justice can possibly subscribe to sadistic treatment of people of other faith traditions or no faith tradition. Sadism is not a virtue.
In reaction to a New York Times article, Blumenfeld struggles with whether or not he can forgive the oppressive institutions (particularly Christian) that are starting to open up discussions about alternative genders and sexual identities. Trying to balance an acknowledgment of the societal progress in LGBT rights with the fact that there is still rampant and unacceptable systematic oppression of the LGBT community leaves him on a bittersweet, yet extremely honest note.
Blumenfeld argues that the Catholic church’s reaction to Caitlyn Jenner and other trans individuals follows their pattern of using means of attempted body control (whether that’s reproductive, sex, or otherwise) to control minds. “when patriarchal social and family structures converge with patriarchal religious systems, which reinforce strictly defined gender hierarchies of male domination, women and girl’s oppression and oppression of those who transgress sexual-, sexuality-, and gender binaries and boundaries became inevitable.”
Popes Francis’ upcoming encyclical (an authoritative form of papal discourse) is an opportunity for the Catholic Church to further develop a relationship between humanity and the environment in a way that gives both parties agency. William Bole uses the moments before the encyclical’s posting on June 18th to look at how this relationship has already begun to develop within the tradition and questions how Pope Francis can add something of substance to this development.
What moments might we miss that seem obvious to our future historian? Will she write about some unpredicted future Great Awakening of global, evangelical fervor? Need this Great Awakening be reactionary, or could it be progressive?
Imagine a protest rally where organizers wore “F— Christianity shirts” and were encouraged to bring weapons to the rally in support of Second Amendment rights. Now, replace “Christianity” with “Islam,” and you have the Draw Muhammad contest in Phoenix, at the same Islamic community center that so-called lone shooters Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi once attended.