Friday, February 27, 2009
Budgeting for Hope
The former administration was concerned with hiding the costs of the war and disguising our deficits. First, they removed the war costs from the federal budget reports, and second, they banned photos of our soldiers who were killed in action. The result was a nation who didn't see and feel the cost of the Bush mistakes. I'm glad to know that president Obama is ending those tactics. Finally, there's no more cooking the books at the White House! By recognizing the real costs and owning up to the responsibility to pay our bills (i.e. tax increases), we may be on the road toward removing the red ink from Washington.
The 2010 budget accounts for all the war costs and makes the reduction of our huge deficit a priority. Here's a few highlights from the new president's budget discussions:
"We have already identified $2 trillion in deficit reductions that will help us cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term."read more at whitehouse.gov...
"We've targeted almost $50 billion in savings by cracking down on over payments of benefits and tax loopholes."
"[We've] inherited a trillion-dollar deficit that will take a long time for us to close"
"While we must add to our deficits in the short term to provide immediate relief to families and get our economy moving, it is only by restoring fiscal discipline over the long run that we can produce sustained growth and shared prosperity."
"In the end, a budget is more than simply numbers on a page. It is a measure of how well we are living up to our obligations to ourselves and one another. It is a test for our commitment to making America what it was always meant to be -- a place where all things are possible for all people."- President Obama
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Obama Shines, Republicans Falter
I'm still amazed at how well President Obama moved our nation forward last night. I'm also in shock at how the Republican response was so out of touch with reality. When he came on the scene a couple of years ago, my initial reaction to Bobby Jindal was positive. I thought he might help bring the Republican party back to respect. He struck out last night and embarrassed his party and our nation. I was once a Republican, but I'm embarrassed by their rhetoric. I'm embarrassed that he thought the value of Obama was simply his race. I'm disgusted that Republicans still push deregulation of markets and privatization of government services. I agree with the sentiment expressed by the MSNBC crew who responded with candor to Gov. Jindal's response.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Right America: Feeling Wronged
HBO debuted its new documentary tonight. If you missed it, do your best to see it in the coming days. Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi followed the McCain/Palin team during the campaign and interviewed their supporters. The result is an eye opening documentary capturing the real experience of living in a red state during the last election year.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Organized Righteousness
Organized righteousness is one of my favorite terms used by Walter Rauschenbusch in his classic book, “A Theology For The Social Gospel” written in 1917. In an era of desperate times that may not be so distinct from our current era of war, banker malpractice, and CEO compensation scandals, Rauschenbusch sought to rescue the term righteousness from the clutches of Calvinism and the its fixation on individualistic piety over social responsibility. Unfortunately, that fixation has been rekindled in 21st century America and once again, it neuters the ability of religion to speak prophetically into our current set of problems, allowing the most prominent religious figures of our day to side with the forces of greed. Theology matters. Our era will be known as a time when questionable theology allowed our religious leaders to side with the war machine, greedy bankers, and slogans like “drill baby, drill”. How can that happen? They've lost the meaning of righteousness as making things right, restoring justice. Theology matters.
Sin is essentially selfishness. That definition is more in harmony with the social gospel than with any individualistic type of religion. The sinful mind, then, is the unsocial and anti-social mind. To find the climax of sin we must not linger over a man who swears, or sneers at religion, or denies the mystery of the trinity, but put our hands on social groups who have turned the patrimony of a nation into the private property of a small class, or have left the peasant laborers cowed, degraded, demoralized, and without rights in the land. When we find such in history, or in present-day life, we shall know we have struck real rebellion against God on the higher levels of sin.
It follows that a clear realization of the nature of sin depends on a clear vision of the Kingdom of God. We can not properly feel and know the reign of organized wrong now prevailing unless we constantly see it over against the reign of organized righteousness. Where the religious conception of the Kingdom of God is wanting, men will be untrained and unfit to see or to estimate the social manifestations of sin.
This proposition gives a solemn and terrible importance to the fact that doctrinal theology has failed to cherish and conserve for humanity the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. Christ died for it. Theology has allowed it to lead a decrepit, bed-ridden and senile existence in that museum of antiquities which we call eschatology. Having lost its vision of organized righteousness, theology necessarily lost its comprehension of organized sin, and therewith its right and power to act as a teacher of mankind on that subject. It saw private sin, and it set men to wrestling with their private doubts or sexual emotions by ascetic methods. But if sin is selfishness, how did that meet the case?
It would be unfair to blame theology for the fact that our race is still submerged under despotic government, under war and militarism, under landlordism, and under predatory industry and finance. But we can justly blame it for the fact that the Christian church even now has hardly any realization that these things are large-scale sins. We can blame it in part for the fact that when a Christian minister in our country speaks of these sins he is charged with forgetting the simple gospel of sin and salvation, and is in danger of losing his position. This comes of shelving the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, or juggling feeble substitutes into its place. Theology has not been a faithful steward of the trust entrusted to it. The social gospel is its accusing conscience.
This is the chief significance of the social gospel for the doctrine of sin: it revives the vision of the Kingdom of God. When men see the actual world over against the religious ideal, they become conscious of its constitutional defects and wrongs. Those who do their thinking in the light of the Kingdom of God make less of heresy and private sins. They reserve their shudders for men who keep the liquor and vice trade alive against powerful lobbies to defeat tenement or factory legislation, or turn factory inspection into sham; for nations that are willing to set the world at war in order to win or protect colonial areas of trade or usurious profit from loans to weaker peoples; and for private interest which are willing to push a peaceful nation into war because the stock exchange has a panic at the rumor of peace. These seem the unforgivable sins, the great demonstrations of rebellious selfishness, wherever the social gospel has revived the faith of the Kingdom of God. (“A Theology For The Social Gospel”, p. 50)
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Everything In God
As part of the Transforming Theology project, I just received the book "In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God's Presence in a Scientific World" edited by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke. The book is a series of essays from a wide variety of theologians. I'm excited about this project, and I'm particularly excited about this book.
One of the main reasons for my enthusiasm is that I've not yet formed a strong opinion of the term Panentheistic. I've never really used the word to describe myself, although many of my favorite authors and theologians use this term freely. I'm not really sure about it. This should be a fun learning and growing experience. In addition to reviewing the material, I will also try to articulate my personal reactions. I hope I'll change and the changes will be apparent in my posts. There is a part of me that wants to use this label. To be honest, I actually just want to find any label that fits. I suspect that a large part of the attraction to religion is the sense of belonging. Having a label can be comforting, at least until it becomes too limiting. The fact that this term is already so flexible and appears to be evolving eases my initial concern that it would eventually become another ideological prison.
At its core, Panentheism (not pantheism) states that all things are in God, yet all things do not exhaust the definition of God. In other words, we are all in God, but there is still a "more". Reading the introduction and opening chapter of this book has given me a clue why I'm so unsure about this concept. There has not been a single definitive understanding of Panentheism. I had no idea it was such a broad range of possibilities and has such a large list of adherents. In fact, you could, and I think a couple of the essays do, make the argument that Panentheism upholds an orthodox trinitarian view of God. On the other end of the spectrum, it sounds much more naturalistic and supportive of modern science.
I'm not sure which part of that definition bothers me the most. I'm not happy about "everything in God" or the idea of a "more". It should be noted that the editors of this book make the case that Panentheism is a type of Theism. It is not less than Theism, but it is a more defined and nuanced description of Theism. I'm a long way from sold on the term, but I'm curious to hear these brilliant thinkers work through the subject.
How does this term strike you?
Monday, February 09, 2009
Transforming Theology
Tripp Fuller, one of the creative minds behind Homebrewed Christianity, has invited me to participate in the Transforming Theology Project originating out of Claremont School of Theology and making its way around the blogosphere. Tripp has already sent me a book to read and I'll be writing about my engagement with the books and other bloggers over the next couple of months.
Here are Tripp Fuller and Tony Jones talking about the project...
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Karen Armstrong on Scripture
Enjoy this wonderful interview with Karen Armstong. It's about 32 minutes long, but it's worth a listen.
