Trump and the Danger of Fascism (tags)
Peace is the imperative that should outweigh escalation and the unspeakable risk of global war! The constitutional state must not be confused with the security state or the emergency state as Rousseau and the social contract must not be confused with Thomas Hobbes and the punishing or fearsome state. People would fight endlessly without the state or Leviathan, he said.
There is broad agreement that freedom should not only be measured in terms of one's own well-being, but also in terms of others, especially the socially disadvantaged, and in solidarity with those who lack recognition. The strong welfare state is widely accepted, even by those who pay more than they receive.
There is no way to peace on the way to security. For peace must be ventured, is the one great venture, and can never, ever be secured. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand security is to have mistrust, and this mistrust in turn gives birth to war. Seeking security means wanting to protect oneself.
Jesus made fun of individualism and profit-oriented economic systems. Winning people to trust the infinite, invisible and transcendent God was surely his central goal. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?”“No sparrow falls to the ground without your Father’s consent..."
The Neoliberal Indoctrination (tags)
Homo oeconomicus fades away as an economic theory along with market fundamentalism and market radicalism. Market failure and state violence epitomized by Enron's expansive accounting method and the aggressive wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria should be lessons.
Poverty Returns with Misguided Policy (tags)
The state should represent the public interest and yet private or special interests are in the driver's seat. Trump's proposed 2018 budget is a sledgehammer with cuts to Meals-on-Wheels, school lunches, WIC food assistance, National Institute for Health, EPA, PBS and Legal Services
High crimes committed by fbi / cia in the name of Americans (tags)
Our government, their crimes: OUR CRIMES.
Billy Graham: Pro Christ or Anti Christ (tags)
Billy Graham was more a representative of the imperial American elite than a follower of the meek and humble Jesus. He comforted every president for 70 years in their shameful Korean War, Vietnam War and Iraq War. Fast cleaning and Graham soap marked "God's machine gun."
"Only the one who cries for the Jews may sing Gregorian" (tags)
Crying and singing, ethical engagement and praising God belong together. The great events of world history should be seen from below, from the perspective of the dismissed, suspicious, mistreated, powerless, oppressed and mocked. God's honor is the person who lives.
The Dangerous Doctrine of Justification (tags)
While religion can make people happier by giving connection to a larger whole, it can also make them blind and neurotic. Self-righteousness is the grand delusion distorting life in the church and outside the church (cf. Eberhard Juengel).
New Heart, New Spirit and New Person (tags)
Jesus calls us to a new language and a new mathematics. "The world will be changed when people speak as Jesus spoke, in a liberating not a religious way so people are shocked and drawn by its power" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
From Obsuristan to Absurdistan: Barbarism or Human Future (tags)
Individual security can be emphasized so global vision fades. Half-truths and fish stories carry the day. "Communism is oppression of many by man and capitalism is just the reverse." Our challenge is to reawaken wonder and interdependence, to consider the way of nonviolent resistance.
Ecological Justice Instead of Growth Economy for the Rich (tags)
"Now the market, the god of neoliberals, cannot help any more and speculators cry for the already instrumentalized state.. Studying pre-capitalist approaches is vital to develop a post-capitalist vision. The vision of the Bible is an economy of enough for all, an economy for life."
Stop the MASSACRE
The Nature of the Christian Faith and the New Atheism (tags)
New atheism fights against fundamentalism, human religion, sees all violence as the product of faith, doesn't recognize the positive good in the church and theology and conflates all faith with fundamentalist literalism and reductionism. That Jesus is the way means no mone is alone.
Faith and Bonhoeffer's distinction of faith and religion can keep us from despair. The human handshake can be a metaphor of God's strong hand. God keeps us from falling, not from stumbling. Parallel, plural worlds exist beyond fault-finding and fear-mongering.
"Sighs, Signs and Significance: A Theological Hermeneutics of Nature" (tags)
How exciting to hear Prof Moltmann describe nature as a language and partner!
Electing Canada as President (tags)
Ours is a brave new world where countries don't need dollars as in the past. Maybe we could accept our unparalleled life-and-death crisis from endless wars and melting dollar and affirm partnership and exchanging roles as we affirmed the total and absolute market
ICE Bodysntachers Resisted in Santa Barbara (tags)
"Santa Barbarians" resist ICE attacks on residences and workplaces here
Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries (tags)
The lists “show a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism,” he said, and lacked materials from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations.
A Theological Balance by Dorothee Soelle (tags)
Believing in love is more than worshipping the heavenly button-pusher.. Our way of life and politics separate us from Jesus' life, not what happens in the bedroom.. Learning to share is a feminist project annulling the oldest injustice.
Globalization - Christian Life in the One World (tags)
In the Bible, justice is always measured in the well-being of the weakest. Freedom could be understood as bond to community, not egomania. People are not commodities or a mass. There are no superfluous persons or superfluous continents. Ms Kassmann is a Lutheran bishop.
Governing against the People (tags)
The dream of 1989 that democracy and capitalism can be reconciled fades.. Elected governments orient their decisions in trans-national groups and global finance markets.
Christmas Sermon - Understanding Faith (tags)
No one is excluded from the Christmas prophet in the prophet Isaiah: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Biblical faith in its core is trust in God, not in ourselves.
Christmas Sermon by Margot Kassmann (tags)
God's grace changes us. If God gives us orientationk, this means overcoming hatred and violence, making the vision of justice into reality. The birth of God's child is like a star in the sky. The misery, hunger and poverty in the world may not be swept from the agenda.
Against the Despisers of the Body: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Today (tags)
We need Bonhoeffer's earth piety today. A new ecological theology must oppose religious and practical world denial. We humans came from the earth and belong to this earth. There is no salvation for humans without the salvation of the earth.
Defending Human Dignity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (tags)
The chapter of German resistance remains rather narrow compared with the wide support that Hitler could count on up to the end that enabled him to act mercilessly against all opposition.
Resistant Chrisianity by Dorothee Soelle (tags)
Resistance is part of our nature as antibodies are part of our bodies. If Christianity is conformist and not revolutionary, it is only a caricature. Dorothee saw Christianity as ecumencial, feminist and mystical and as passion for justice.
Mysticism and Resistance (tags)
Mystical experience cannot be separated from social relations.. The land that was once home became a place of homeless-ness, a land of culprits that saw itself as a victim and only rarely accepted responsibility for what happened.
Political and Spiritual Corruption (tags)
Hope is what sets us apart from the rest of creation. We can go beyond everything past and present in the power of the coming, the power of the promise. This was Jurgen Molt-mann's discovery in a British prisoner of war camp in World War II.
Theological Reflections on Econmic Values (tags)
"The quality of a society is measured in its relations with the weakest..The economy exists for the sake of people..God's economy aims at the survival capacity of planet earth and its people..Our life is connected with all life.."
60 Years Ago Dietrich Bonhoeffer was Murdered (tags)
"Translated in nearly all the languages of the world, Bonhoeffer's texts encourage liberating the Bible from the godless bonds of fundamentalist interpretations and protesting increasingly perfect weapons.."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer,t he highest name in Germany, was put to death in the Flossen-berg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. In extreme situations, the question how a future generation can live is primary, not how one can come out the affair blamelessly.
Jews, Christians and Messianic Consciousness (tags)
God will be all in all! This article encourages the Jewish-Christian dialogue by criticizing the church's anti-Jewish disinheriting. Dog-matism and intolerance threaten to turn living water into a frozen waterfall. Without the origin, the present and future dry up.
Of God and Man, in the Oval Office (tags)
"In the nuclear age, American triumphalism is not only spiritually bereft. It is apocalyptic in its implications." Rev. Fritz Ritsch is pastor of the Bethesda Presbyterian Church.
Of God and Man in the Oval Office (tags)
In a nuclear age, American triumphalism may not only be spiritually bereft, it is apocalyptic in its implications.
Of God and Man in the Oval Office (tags)
"In a nuclear age, American triumphalism is not only spiritually bereft, it is, quite possibly, apocalyptic in its implications." Rev. fritz Ritsch is pastor of the Bethesda Presbyterian Church.
WASHINGTON CLERIC SLAMS BUSH CHRISTIANITY (tags)
Washington Cleric Slams Bush “Christianity” as “Triumphalism” singling out for attack the code hymn/references, phrases, and End/time constructs used by the President, for example in his State of the Union speech.