Update on Previous Stories: The Fast for Justice, the Koran Burning

Quick updates (and further commentary) re: two stories about which I've blogged recently:

First, at Religion Dispatches, Sarah Posner addresses the fast for economic justice about which I blogged several days ago.  Posner notes that the fast has some high-profile support, but she doubts that it will have much effect on the current Democratic leaders in D.C.

And I agree.  As Posner notes--and she's right--the power-brokers of the Democratic party as it's presently configured don't intend and have never intended to listen to the viewpoints of people of faith to the left of center in the American political arena.  Because, they imagine, they don't have to do so.  Our votes are sewn up, taken for granted, since we certainly don't intend to vote for leaders of a party that even more overtly and more unconscionably serves the interests of the tiny elite of rich citizens now controlling our political process.

That is, our votes will be taken for granted unless something new and unexpected comes along to offer an alternative to the deadlock both major political parties have created.  And it's for that that I will keep praying.  And fasting.  Since the God to whom we pray is the real owner of the future that our political leaders keep mortgaging on behalf of all of us.

Also at Religion Dispatches, and again Sarah Posner: commentary on Pastor Terry Jones's burning of the Koran, about which I posted this weekend.  Posner notes that strong indicators suggest Jones burned the Koran hoping that precisely what did happen would happen: that there would be a violent response in some Islamic parts of the world, which would prove the point he and his cronies want to make to the American public: that Islam is in and of itself violent.

Unlike Christianity.  Which would certainly never countenance someone doing an incendiary act that they knew would incite a violent reaction that might result in the deaths of innocent people.  

Would it?

And on the Islamophobia that is now sweeping through some parts of American culture like a mass delusion, and which is being cynically and deliberately promoted by the leaders of the Republican party, see Roger Cohen's good op-ed statement in today's New York Times.

Play with fire and you'll get burned.  And those who are going to get burned as this mass hysteria keeps playing out are going to be many of us in the U.S, I fear, who should be speaking out and pushing back against the hysteria right now, if we really want these fires to be put out.