Did Christian homophobia come from a mistranslation of the Bible?
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Curiosity
From “I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times” by Mónica Guzmán Curiosity is a serious thing, and it’s past time we get serious about it. What we learn relies first and foremost on how open we are to learning, what room we make in our …
Greed and exploitation always result in mutually assured destruction
From “Filled to Be Emptied: The Path to Liberation for Privileged People” by Brandan Robertson – Westminster John Knox Press Destruction is the result of any long-term exploitation of one’s privilege – greed and selfishness always backfire in the end. White privilege has created systems and structures that are unable to stand as justice and …
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Trust is hidden from view
From “The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything” by Stephen M. R. Covey One time I hired a guide to take my fly fishing in Montana. As I looked out over the river, he said, “Tell me what you see.” Basically I told him I saw a beautiful river with the sun …
National Parks
From “Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future” by Patty Krawec – Broadleaf Books The US National Park system has been displacing Indigenous people for more than one hundred years. Just like governments use the language of safety, conservationists use the language of environmentalism to push aside the original …
Texas activist David Barton wants to end separation of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speaker.
A dangerous guy… https://www.texastribune.org/2023/11/03/david-barton-mike-johnson-texas-church-state-christianity/
How a bucolic Tennessee suburb became a hotbed of ‘Christian Nashville-ism’
The mix of religion, power, money and influence around Nashville and its suburbs makes it fertile ground for a Southern evangelical take on Christian nationalism.
Rhythms of reparative intercession
From “Silencing White Noise: Six Practices to Overcome Our Inaction on Race” by Willie Dwayne Francois III – Brazos Press Replacing white noise with the rhythms of reparative intercession is part of dismantling White supremacy. Each succeeding chapter of this book identifies a feature of white noise and highlights one of the rhythms of reparative …
Kauai became a clean energy leader. Its secret? A publicly owned grid
“Hawaii constitutes an unusually crisp comparison between for-profit and nonprofit utilities: all the islands besides Kauai get power from investor-owned, for-profit Hawaiian Electric and its subsidiaries. Hawaiian Electric serves 95% of Hawaii’s population to KIUC’s 5%, but they operate in similar climates, across similar terrain and within the same state policy regime. Average retail electricity …
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We don’t keep the social and economic background of Jesus’ ministry in our minds
From “Scapegoats: The Gospel Through the Eyes of Victims” by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw – Fortress Press Roman-occupied Judea was a place of suffering for most of its inhabitants. The Roman imperial world operated as a coercive hierarchy, a militarized agrarian system in which the government owned and controlled all the land they conquered. The conquered …
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Persistent Pizza
By Patricia Raybon Ibrahim Songne, at age 12, immigrated to Italy from West Africa, not knowing Italian, fighting a stutter, and facing anti-immigrant putdowns. Determined to overcome, he later opened a pizza shop, winning over naysayers with a pizza cafe that, in 2022, was listed among the Top 50 pizzerias in the world! https://odb.org/2023/11/06/persistent-pizza
The unholy trinity of authoritarianism, religion and violence
By Jim Wallis https://open.substack.com/pub/jimwallis/p/the-unholy-trinity-of-authoritarianism?r=1ewbq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
As the rest of the world slowly rebuilt
From “The Seven Democratic Virtues: What You Can Do to Overcome Tribalism and Save Our Democracy” by Christopher Beem As the rest of the world slowly rebuilt, the US manufacturing advantage began to decline, as did its economic preeminence. Competition heated up, and many jobs went offshore as companies sought cheaper labor in developing nations. …
Democratic decline in the United States: Strategic manipulation of elections
Distinct from “voter fraud,” which is almost non-existent in the United States, election manipulation includes election procedures that make it harder to vote or that reduce the opposing party’s representation. These maneuvers have become more common and extreme in recent years—but only in some states. Vanessa Williamson outlines which states have experienced democratic erosion and …
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The Allotment Act
From “The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery” by Sarah Augustine From invasion to occupation The final chapter in the repossession of Yakama lands occurred in 1887, when the Allotment Act was established as federal law. Popularly known as the Dawes Act, this federal policy remanded ownership of tribal …
To tackle homelessness faster, LA has a kind of real estate agency for the unhoused
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/24/1207461308/homelessness-housing-losangeles-la-real-estate-unhoused
Old Quebec church gets new lease on life as greenhouse to combat food insecurity
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-church-new-life-as-greenhouse-1.6997710
Instilling self-hatred
From “US: The Resurrection of American Terror” by Rev. Kenneth W. Wheeler Segregation under the Jim Crow laws was not just about separating the races. It ultimately was about instilling self-hatred and trying to separate Black people from their own humanity. This was what those signs in public places were about. It was what riding …
We need green hydrogen to clean up heavy industry. Who’s making it?
There’s essentially no clean hydrogen produced in the U.S. today, but developers are hustling to build projects to supply low-carbon steel, cement and chemicals. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/hydrogen/we-need-green-hydrogen-to-clean-up-heavy-industry-whos-making-it