Walter Brueggemann explains in The Prophetic Imagination some of the ways that King Solomon’s reign returned the Israelites to the oppressive culture they’d once experienced under the Egyptians. The top three tools are the “economics of affluence,” the “politics of oppression,” and the “establishment of a controlled, static religion.” According to Brueggemann, Solomon’s regime used these three cultural elements together to […]
The ability to choose
As well as giving us the ability to support international liberation movements and trade ideas and strategies with people all over the world in an instant via social media, interdependence also means arms- and knees-deep relationship with systems, ideologies, and people who use their power to cause others harm… There’s no way to live in […]
John Newton, Zacchaeus, and a Life Beyond Complicity
This year, I told Twitter, I want to stable Rudolph and his red nose. I don’t want to hear the angels talking about peace and goodwill. With a nation still unwilling to comprehensively address abusive policing and community distrust as youth have asked, angelic pronouncements about peace feel premature, if not presumptuous. Over the weekend, I read through the goodwill messages that […]
Inspired Possibility: Opening the Gift of the Queer Soul
Part of the 2013 Queer Theology Synchroblog | Thanks, @shannontlkearns, for the invite. The earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. – Genesis 1:2 Imagine with me the void before “Let there be light”—the empty […]
