Out of many, one. The 44th President of the United States used the Great Seal motto E pluribus unum in his pre-2009 speeches. He used it to encourage audiences to recognize their part in his “we.” When he said “we the people” and “yes we can,” he wanted people to imagine themselves in the number. […]
Being connected means… being connected.
One of my favorite concepts from Martin Luther King’s last few years is the concept of interdependence. King wrote and spoke about it in both his letter from Birmingham’s city jail (1963) and the Christmas sermon he delivered to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in 1967. In the Birmingham letter he responded to criticisms of his multi-state activism. “We are caught in […]
Mutuality meets self-interest
Obviously no single church can deal with the vast social problems that exist in the world… Even with the help of governments, this an impossible task. Adventists must move away from the idea that they should do good only if it helps to convert. They must also move away from helping only where it serves […]
Read: Mindsets of Respect
My chapter commentary on Miroslav Volf’s book, Flourishing, is out! It begins, as the chapter does, with hard facts and sobering memories: Friday, August 5 marked the 4th anniversary of the day Michael Page gunned down six Sikhs at the Oak Creek gurdwara in Wisconsin. Until Dylan Roof murdered 9 worshippers at Mother Emanuel AME […]
Interdependence Day
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’re dependent on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of […]