This is one of those posts in which I try to gather links to articles and blog postings that have impressed me in recent days. Several of these offer perspective on issues about which I have blogged here in the past few weeks.First, Jeremy Hooper at Good As You posted a link yesterday to new analysis of the Ugandan situation by Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. In the clip, Rachel speaks with Andrea Mitchell, focusing in particular on the role of the American religious right in creating the Ugandan situation, in which gay citizens of that nation may face the death sentence for being gay. Necessary viewing for those who continue to monitor what’s happening in Uganda.
Second, Karen Occamb reports at Huffington Post yesterday that American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group sponsoring the federal legal challenge to prop 8, has set up a new website. As she notes, it’s full of useful information for those interested in equal rights for gay citizens of the U.S.
Note that those seeking to keep prop 8 and its ban on same-sex marriage in California in place are now trying to ban televised coverage of the Olson-Boies case against prop 8. California law permits such coverage.
The trial begins 11 January, and until noon Friday (8 January), presiding Judge Vaughn Walker is accepting letters regarding televised coverage of the case. Please consider going to the Courage Campaign website and signing a petition on behalf of televised coverage.
It always strikes me as ironic (and telling) that many of those fighting tooth and nail to deny gay people our human rights claim that they are engaged in a preeminently moral struggle. And they so commonly want to hide their identity. As if their crusade is dirty work and not an ethically admirable crusade worthy of inspection by light of day.
Democracy works best when its deliberations take place in the light.
Third, I also highly recommend by a posting yesterday at Enlightened Catholicism by my colleague Colleen Kochivar-Baker about Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion. Colleen’s posting links to a website for the Charter for Compassion.
I’m struck, in particular, by the Charter’s call for people of faith and of good will
to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate.
I’ve written before on this blog about how, as I try to find my own spiritual path, I look for those shining threads running through my experience, my inmost self, and the world around me. This statement will become a shining thread for me in the new year.
It is a statement that desperately needs to be heard, as some religious groups (and powerful political and economic groups) misuse the scripture to make the lives of some brothers and sisters susceptible to violence, suffering, and even death. I’ve noted previously on this blog a statement that will remain with me throughout my life, a statement made by a student in an undergraduate introductory ethics class I was teaching back in the latter part of the 1980s.
I had asked the class what norms they could formulate to help us know when interpretations of scripture had departed significantly from what scripture is all about. A young woman in class raised her hand and said, “The bible is always misused when it’s misused to harm others.”
I can’t think of a clearer, more apt, and more on-target norm for reading the scriptures accurately.
Fourth, I want to make note of a valuable, insightful article by Frank Cocozzelli to which I intended to link when I wrote my piece on Niebuhr and President Obama several days ago. With the birth of the new Open Tabernacle blog, my attention has been divided between this blog and Open Tabernacle, and I haven’t yet commented on Frank’s article.
Frank’s article is entitled “Reclaiming Capitalism Through Principles of Distributive Justice,” and was published by the Institute for Progressive Christianity last year. It explores the confluence of three streams of thought in American Christianity, all of which converge in their critical analysis of unbridled capitalism and their call for people of faith to create a more equitable and compassionate economic system than the one now in place. The three streams are the social gospel (represented by Walter Rauschenbusch), Christian realism (Reinhold Niebuhr), and Catholic social teaching (represented by Father John Ryan). For those wanting more (and admirably nuanced) information about Niebuhr and his significance in American culture, and politics, I highly recommend this article.
Finally, I find Tony Adams’ wry (and slightly wicked, in the best sense of that word) take on the canonization of Pius XII and how those of us critical of this step might best get the Vatican to listen to us wonderful. For theological wisdom wrapped up in humor (something I don’t do well at all, and a gift I envy), read his story of the longstanding . . . connections . . . between Eugenio Pacelli aka Pius XII and Francine Spellman of New York.
