Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/christianity-religion-spirituality/page/30/)
Painter Janet McKenzie saw Christ, and all humankind, made in the image of God. She saw a black woman standing strong and proud as the child of God. Following this vision, she fashioned her Jesus of the People, and all of her paintings, as visual prayers for equality and gender equity. Visit our art gallery to see her works. For hundreds of years, most western artists have depicted the figure of Jesus Christ as a white man.
I’m praying today for the “Bonhoeffer Four,” a group of four Christians who are playing a game of “hide and seek” on a military base in Australia in order to disrupt war games. Read the story here.
In a well-named post, PRESSURE FROM THE LEFT CAN HAVE AN EFFECT, the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen reports that Senator Blanche Lincoln (Democrat, Arkansas), who “has been one of the least likely Democrats to support the public option endorsed by most Democratic lawmakers, the president, and the public” is coming round to supporting it after all. TPM and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (in an email, not on their site) ascribe this to the TV ads run by Blue America. And as TPM noted, Senate leader Harry Reid is hot for Democratic uniformity on this issue. But in a phone call with me this morning Jennifer Butler, the Executive Director of Faith in Public Life, wondered if a further influence had come into play: Rev. Joyce Hardy, archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas and deacon of Christ Church Episcopal Church in Little Rock, AK. Hardy was the voice of the religious coalition for universal, affordable health care on Christian radio in Arkansas during the July 4 Congressional recess.
Any sports fan would undoubtedly meet my closet with a perplexed, maybe even angry, expression. Within my belongings are an Oakland A’s hat, a New York Mets’ jersey, a Los Angeles Dodgers cap, and various items displaying the Los Angeles Angels’ famous red logo. Slave to fashion? Team hopper? Bandwagon junkie?
Perhaps it is a common struggle among spiritual progressive types to find themselves at odds with certain teachings of the faith tradition they call their own. When this happens, it can seem that the only tenable option is to leave the Church. But it is true that certain traditions get woven into the fabric of the soul in no small way, and simply leaving a Church is not always a viable option at all when it comes to holistically addressing one’s emotional and spiritual history, needs, and gifts for expression as they develop throughout one’s life. People’s relationships to churches and Churches are intensely creative, personal, and not always what they seem. With devotion to some honest searching it may be possible to stay within a tradition that speaks your language even if you disagree with some of the pronouncements it makes.
I participated in a fascinating press conference on Tuesday, organized by Faith in Public Life (FPL) to promote a campaign in which “local pastors are taking to the airwaves in five key states over the Independence Day Congressional recess, urging their Senators to support health care reform.” If you are Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, or North Carolina you may hear ads on Christian and mainstream radio featuring local pastors from each state asking their Senators to support reform. This is great. The progressive religious folks are stepping up to argue for affordable health care for all. But I wish they would read Michael Lerner’s editorial on health care in our current Tikkun: now that’s prophetic.
I’m delighted that some of the most interesting Christians in America today are joining Tikkun Daily as a group. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove just did the first post, on Interdependence Day. Welcome to all New Monastics! These are people who are exploring the experiential dimension of their faith in radical ways that frankly, we are not used to seeing. But I imagine that their movement founder, Jesus, would like what they are doing.
A nice coincidence that the Unitarian magazine UU World is featuring a church that has a series of portraits of liberal saints (such as Gandhi, at right), just at the same time that Tikkun is featuring a different one. Both sets of saints include people from other religious traditions. The Christian one in San Francisco by Mark Dukes is a much larger project and so includes a wider range. The difference is styles is striking. [brclear]
The Religious Left is alive and kicking! The latest evidence? A group of pastors and priests have launched a national radio ad campaign calling on the government to ensure affordable health care for all. The ads hit the airwaves today in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, and Nebraska, and they’re set to continue airing on Christian and mainstream radio stations throughout the Memorial Day congressional recess. The parties involved might not all self-identify as members of the Religious Left, but their rhetoric has distinct echoes of liberation theology’s call to attend to injustice and need in this world, rather than focus on the afterlife.
I’m doubly lucky this week that my friend Be Scofield, who interned a while back at Tikkun, is now at Starr King seminary and invited me to hear Rev. Wright on Tuesday and Chris Hedges today. I hadn’t realized that the former war correspondent and current hard-hitting opponent of both the Religious Right (or the heretical Christian Fascists as he would prefer that we think of them) and the New Atheists, one of the stars of the spiritual progressive world, had himself gone to seminary (Harvard Divinity School). His talk to the seminarians today was alarming, about:
the lack of literacy and critical thought in America
the primacy of the image (TV and advertising) that works its manipulative emotional way with us however critical we are of it
the nature of corporate “reverse totalitarianism” (in which ideology is subservient to profitmaking, unlike other totalitarian or theocratic states)
and the likelihood that this round of stimulus will create a financial bubble that will burst and leave us in much deeper trouble, prey to pseudo-Christian fascist demagogues who will have a field day due to the bankruptcy of liberalism. Much of this sounded convincing to me, and he had wise words about what to do about it. Our question should never be “How can we elect good people?”