Micah Bales recently blogged about “Why The Church is Not And Will Not Be Revolutionary.” He writes: If Jesus isn’t a rebel, but rather the Authority, where does that leave us? We’re not radicals or dissidents. We’re loyalists. In the midst of a darkened and confused rebellion, we remember who the king is. The kingdom […]
For the sake of simplicity, I will focus on two poles of a larger divide within our contemporary religious culture on the issue of a biblical economic ethic. On the one side we have the “pro-capitalist” discourse that roots itself on a individualist interpretation of the seventh (or eighth) commandment “thou shalt not steal,” and […]
The first “God” I encountered was a hellfire Judge who sounded a lot like my Pentecostal preacher father. Though I have done years of counseling, meditation, and theological reflection to heal my traumatic childhood, “God” is still a difficult Name. I say “Name” not being, person, or label. God with a capital G is a […]
Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me. John Lennon In my teen years there was a popular Christian song, “Jesus is the Answer / For the world today.” But, in my thirties Jesus became a Question for me. As a Pentecostal […]
(I apologize in advance at just how ?#(&!<$ crazy the following will read.) When holiday theology starts to irritate against my deconversion stasis, I turn to mysticism. I’m not kidding here. At least not obviously so. I aspire to become one with both the literalists and the atheists who are both right and both […]
There’s an old left-wing quip that runs “if you aren’t an anarchist in your twenties, you have no heart, and if you aren’t a socialist in your thirties you have no brain.” A more well-known variant puts the terms “liberal” and conservative” in the opposed positions corresponding to immaturity and maturity. Unitarian minister and social […]
Maybe I should know better, but I can’t help jumping in where angels fear to tread? In response to those Christians who say Muslims do not worship the same God as they do, I pointed out that there is more than one God worshipped by Christians as a Facebook status. I wrote: All Christians don’t […]
basilea ho theon It was a promise The poor would be given a revolutionary society The hungry would be given a satisfying provision The suffering would be joyful The persecuted vindicated – It was an execution The rich hated revolutionaries The bloated class hated well-fed peasants The entertained hated real happiness The persecutors lynched a […]
Agape as political love means that unconditional, egalitarian love for one’s neighbour can serve as the foundation for a new order. The form of appearance of this love is what we might also call the idea of communism: the urge to realise an egalitarian social order of solidarity. The only church that illuminates is a […]
(This posting is something of a footnote to my earlier posting, “What’s Wrong with the Religious Right?” on Matthew 25, a passage where Jesus describes the eternal destruction of the nations that ignore the needs of the poor, sick, homeless, and prisoner.) Many of my family members fear for my eternal soul. As an apostate Pentecostal advocating […]
Radical Righteous Love 