Religion

The Heresy Of White Christianity

December 12, 2018 Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Racism, Religion

There are, as Cornel West has pointed out, only two African-Americans who rose from dirt-poor poverty to the highest levels of American intellectual life—the writer Richard Wright and the radical theologian James H. Cone. Cone, who died in April, grew up in segregated Bearden, Ark., the impoverished son of a woodcutter who had only a sixth-grade education. With an almost superhuman will, Cone clawed his way up from the Arkansas cotton fields to implode theological studies in the United States with his withering critique of the white supremacy and racism inherent within the white, liberal Christian church.

James Cone’s Gospel Of The Penniless, Jobless, Marginalized And Despised

April 30, 2018 By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! History, Racism, Religion

“The Cross and the Lynching Tree are separated by nearly two thousand years,” James Cone writes in his new book, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” “One is the universal symbol of the Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. Despite the obvious similarities between Jesus’ death on the cross and the death of thousands of black men and women strung up to die on a lamppost or tree, relatively few people, apart from the black poets, novelists, and other reality-seeing artists, have explored the symbolic connections. Yet, I believe this is the challenge we must face.

Trump’s ‘School Choice’: Religious Fundamentalism At Taxpayer Expense

March 5, 2017 Jeff Bryant, www.educationopportunitynetwork.org Educate! Education, Religion, Religious education

By Jeff Bryant for Educational Opportunity Network. Of course, parents can decide for themselves if this is the kind of “realistic view” they want their children to learn. But why should taxpayer money pay for it? According to a 2015 report in the Orlando Sentinel, Florida’s tax-credit school voucher programs, including the one Merriweather took advantage of, have become a cash cow for many of the state’s private schools – sending out about $544 million to families of nearly 100,000 students in the state. Of the roughly 2,300 private schools in Florida, more than 1,500 accept voucher money, and of these voucher-accepting schools, about 45 percent rely on them for at least half of their students. About 70 percent of these schools are religiously affiliated, “including some where religion is a central focus.” Now, Trump wants to roll that out nationwide.

College Students Support Professor On Leave For Views

January 13, 2016 Ehab Zahriyeh, www.america.aljazeera.com Resist! Christianity, College, Education, Muslims, Religion, Student Protests, Youth Activism

By Ehab Zahriyeh for Aljazeera - Dozens of students at Wheaton College in suburban Chicago protested on Monday against the school's move to terminate an associate professor who said Christians and Muslims worship the same God — a statement she made while wearing a hijab to show solidarity with women who face Islamophobia. Students filled the steps of the school's Edman Memorial Chapel chanting "Reinstate Doc Hawk," a nickname for Larycia Hawkins. The Protestant evangelical college said in a Jan. 5 statement on its website that its provost had begun a process for terminating her.

The Revolutionary Age

October 7, 2015 Chris Hodges and Sabah Alnasseri, www.therealnews.com Educate! Middle East, Religion

By Chris Hodges and Sabah Alnasseri for The Real News, In this episode of teleSUR's Days of Revolt, Chris Hedges and Sabah Alnasseri dissect the genesis of political revolutions in the Middle East, and discuss the role of religion and the reasons for the increased prevalence of fundamentalism. HEDGES: So I think what we want to focus on in this segment is the dynamics of revolutionary change in an age of globalism and neoliberalism, how it will look like revolutions in the past, and how it will look like something else. And I know this is something you have examined. ALNASSERI: Right. Right. I will start with the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of the Soviet Union, because this world historical context is very important in understanding any kind of politics, revolutionary or otherwise.

Newsletter: The Revolution Of Values

September 27, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Capitalism, climate crisis, Colonialism, Immigrant Rights, Indigenous Rights, Pope, Poverty, Religion, Wars and Militarism, Women's Rights

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. Pope Francis built his speech to Congress around three activists and President Lincoln. The three activists were the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. This shows the pope recognizes where change comes from. While the pope is imperfect in his call for justice, he has certainly moved conversations on a range of issues forward unlike previous popes. There is a moral imperative to our activism as we must act in the face of injustice. Values are not defined only by religious leaders but by each of us. José Mujica, the Former President Of Uruguay began his political life as a guerilla fighter against dictatorship. In an interview he describes what makes us human. He talks about understanding the suffering of others, responding to their injustice and living humbly so all can live decently.

A Reactionary Congress Applauds The Pope

September 27, 2015 Patrick Martin, www.wsws.org Educate! Democracy, Pope, Religion, Wars and Militarism

By Patrick Martin for World Socialist Web Site. United States - The address by Pope Francis to a joint session of Congress Thursday morning was another milestone in the decay of democratic principles in the United States. Never has the separation of church and state, laid down in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, been so flagrantly trampled upon. (See “The Pope in America”) The event was carried out with all the pomp and circumstance of a presidential State of the Union address, complete with Supreme Court justices in their robes and Pentagon brass in their uniforms, as well as the Obama cabinet, with House Speaker John Boehner and Vice President Joseph Biden seated on the platform behind the Pope side by side.

Indigenous Leaders To Pope: Rescind Doctrine Of Discovery

September 27, 2015 Julian Brave Noisecat, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Indigenous Rights, Land grabs, Pope, Religion

By Julian Brave Noisecat in Huffington Post. Ahead of Pope Francis’ arrival in Philadelphia, indigenous leaders from across the Americas -- from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in upstate New York to the Qom Nation in Argentina and many places in between -- have gathered in the city to urge the pontiff to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery, a series of papal bulls from the 15th century that justified European colonization of newly "discovered" lands. One particular papal bull, issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455, authorized Christian nations "to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all ... enemies of Christ," take their land and "reduce their persons to perpetual slavery." The doctrine played a central role in centuries of colonization the world over and resulted in immense loss of land and life by indigenous peoples across the Americas.

Week Of Righteous Resistance

July 13, 2015 Lena K. Gardner, www.standingonthesideoflove.org Resist! Black Lives Matter (BLM), police brutality, Religion, White Supremacy

By Lena K. Gardner in StandingOnTheSideOfLove.org. Minneapolis, MN - Last November, I lay down with just under a hundred other people on an interstate highway in Minneapolis. Along with thousands in cities across the country, we stopped the cars, we carried signs and we chanted and sang, saying Black Lives Matter in every way that we could. My brother called me from Texas, and said, “Hey, did you shut down I-35 today?” I responded, “Well, yes, me and a few others.” He said, “It made news down here. That’s dope. My freedom fighter sister.” That was just over six months ago, it was the start of what has been a nonstop whirlwind of actions, public witness, and personal challenge for me. It has been hard and I haven’t been alone. I have been fighting for freedom, for the freedom to be human in my Blackness, and the liberation of the most marginalized amongst us.

The Cost Of Advocating Freedom Of Speech In Saudi Arabia

January 18, 2015 Ian Black, www.theguardian.com Resist! Free Press, Freedom of Speech, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Secularism

Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for setting up a website that championed free speech in the autocratic kingdom. His blog, the Saudi Free Liberals Forum, was shut down after his arrest in 2012. This article writings that show a man who risked his freedom to question some of the basic tenets of life in Saudi Arabia - especially the central role of religion. Raif writes: "Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone ... Secularism ... is the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world." And, "Finally, we should not hide that fact that Muslims in Saudi Arabia not only disrespect the beliefs of others, but also charge them with infidelity to the extent that they consider anyone who is not Muslim an infidel, and, within their own narrow definitions, they consider non-Hanbali [the Saudi school of Islam] Muslims as apostates. How can we be such people and build ... normal relations with six billion humans, four and a half billion of whom do not believe in Islam."

Will France Repeat US Mistakes After 9/11?

January 10, 2015 Ray McGovern, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! France, Religion, Xenophobia

The point here is that some media favorites are extremely well briefed partly because they are willing to promote what the powerful want to do and because they are careful not to bite the hands that feed them by criticizing the CIA or other national security agencies. Still fewer are inclined to point out basic structural faults — not to mention the crimes of recent years. So it is up to those of us who know something of intelligence and how structural faults, above-the-law mentality and flexible consciences can spell disaster — how reckless reactions to terrorist provocations can make matters worse by accelerating a truly vicious cycle and doing nothing to address the underlying causes that prompted the violence in the first place.

After Charlie Hebdo Attack, Resist Clash-of-Civilisations Narrative

January 9, 2015 Homa Khaleeli, www.theguardian.com Educate! Religion, Wars and Militarism

It grew as I read through the responses online. The straightforward reaction from far-right extremists was the hashtag #killallmuslims, which would have been easy to ignore as empty words if it hadn’t reminded me of the firebombing of mosques after the Lee Rigby murder. Less violent but still divisive was the way the attack was depicted as a battle between Islam and freedom of speech, or between Muslims and satire – a clash-of-civilisations argument that splits the world neatly into “them” and “us”, by ignoring the staggering death toll of terrorist attacks abroad (most recently the massacre of schoolchildren in Pakistan).

Nyle Fort, The 24-year-old Minister At The Heart Of Ferguson

November 15, 2014 FUSION, www.fusion.net Organize! Ferguson, police brutality, Racial Justice, Religion, Social Change

Nyle Fort says he was drawn to activism by the color of his skin. “We live in a country where black people are systematically and disproportionately stopped, frisked, harassed and killed based on the color of our skin,” said the 24-year-old grassroots organizer and minister. “It scares people, and it shouldn’t,” Fort said about being black. His activism, he says, is motivated by a desire to rise above that ignorance, hate and suppression. Fort recently focused his activism in Ferguson, where officer Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, on Aug. 9. Fort was one of thousands of community leaders to descend on the small St. Louis suburb and lend his voice to the protest known as #FergusonOctober. It was an opportunity to deliver a very simple message to the world: “Black Lives Matter.”

90-Year-Old And Ministers Arrested For Feeding The Hungry

November 5, 2014 Mike Clary, www.sun-sentinel.com Resist! Food and Agriculture, Homeless, Law, Police the Police, Religion

Uniformed police shut down an effort to provide lunch to scores of homeless in Stranahan Park on Sunday, enforcing a law passed recently that puts new limits on outdoor feeding sites. At least three people were cited for violating the new ordinance, including two members of the clergy and a 90-year-old advocate who has handed out food to the homeless for more than 20 years. Arnold Abbott, who heads the group Love Thy Neighbor, said he had served only three or four of about 300 meals he had prepared when police ordered him to stop. Abbott, the Rev. Mark Sims, of St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church in Coral Springs, and the Rev. Dwayne Black, pastor of The Sanctuary Church in Fort Lauderdale, were each cited for willfully violating a city ordinance. Police issued them notices to appear in court, where they could be asked to explain their actions.

Stop The Killing

October 21, 2014 Kathy Kelly, www.vcnv.org Organize! Iraq, ISIS, Latin America, Religion, Syria, usa, Wars and Militarism

On August 9, 1983, three people dressed as U.S. soldiers saluted their way onto a U.S. military base and climbed a pine tree. The base contained a school training elite Salvadoran and other foreign troops to serve dictatorships back home, with a record of nightmarish brutality following graduation. That night, once the base’s lights went out, the students of this school heard, coming down from on high, the voice of Archbishop Oscar Romero. “I want to make a special appeal to soldiers, national guardsmen, and policemen: each of you is one of us. The peasants you kill are your own brothers and sisters. When you hear a man telling you to kill, remember God’s words, ‘thou shalt not kill.’ No soldier is obliged to obey a law contrary to the law of God. In the name of God, in the name of our tormented people, I beseech you, I implore you; in the name of God I command you to stop the repression.”

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