Luther’s Call to Resistance: “Not with Violence, but the Word”

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Some remember Martin Luther as an inspiring resistance theologian. Others see him in a negative light due to his indefensible stance against the peasants in their revolt in the 1520s, which he entitled, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants,” and particularly due to the anti-Semitic rantings he published in his declining years. While not seeking to apologize for these unconscionable writings, I am nevertheless interested in discussing some of his insights that may resonate for progressive people of faith.

2011

Are Americans Coming Out of the Fog?

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“Life in Just Peace,” the joint statement on liberation theology reprinted in full within Ulrich Duchrow’s article “A European Revival of Liberation Theology” (Tikkun, Winter 2011), is quite commendable but, like other declarations made by religious leaders, it runs the risk of remaining “on high” instead of fueling the struggles of ordinary people. In the interest of broadening this discussion in Tikkun I’d like to offer a response.

Christianity

The Culture Wars Continue: Catholic Church Blames the 1960s for Priests’ Pedophilia

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A report on the child abuse scandal in the U.S. Catholic Church — released in mid-May and reported in the Guardian — “concluded that the permissive society of the 1960s was to blame for the rise in sexual offences by priests.” Why are conservatives still so focused on the 1960s? Why are they so deeply interested in invalidating the experiences of that epoch? Why do they hold on so deeply to the cultural struggles that emerged in that period?

Articles

Conquering Veils: Gender and Islams

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My cause has always been twofold: women’s equality and Islam. For the world to make sense to me, women and men had to be of equal worth and dignity, just as Islam had to be the true religion. Before I encountered the extremist interpretation of Islam, my world seemed wonderfully whole. Afterwards, my world became fragmented. To glue it back together, I had to reconcile sex equality and Islamic piety.

Articles

The Stolen Blessing

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The Torah has little to say about transsexuality, but it has a lot to say about people who do hard-to-explain and sometimes terrible things in order to be true to themselves. My personal archetype was Jacob. I had never liked Jacob, but even as a child I recognized his life as an uncomfortably apt metaphor for mine.

Articles

Your Inheritance

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Rabbi Artson argues here that “The universe, if left to its own devices, will produce goodness, righteousness, decency, all by itself.” That this is true, despite everything we do to the contrary, is an encouragement to us to fight social evil, to give thanks to all who came before us and to feel at one with all people.

Articles

Tikkun’s Spiritual Response to the Assassination of Osama bin Laden

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The sort of raucous celebration of Osama bin Laden’s killing that took place outside the White House and in the media erodes our moral and spiritual center. Self-defense is sometimes necessary in this violent world, but let’s remember that a strategy relying on killing the “bad guys” is as futile as trying to end malaria by killing every mosquito on the planet. Drain the swamps of hatred! And violence isn’t the path for that! Now that Osama is dead, lets get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW!

Articles

The Great Awe-Wakening

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The fact that “awe” and its variants are flooding our vocabulary is a welcoming sign that a fuller and deeper sensibility of “awe” is reemerging in our culture.

Christianity

Rev. John Churcher: More thoughts on Easter, 2011

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Reposted from the Progressive Christian Alliance. American motivational speaker Denis Waitley said, “There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept responsibility for changing them.” I am convinced that Rabbi Jesus refused to accept the conditions of the corruption of Judaism by the Temple rulers. He also refused to accept the brutality of the Roman occupation. In these refusals he accepted the responsibility to try to change those conditions for the better and especially for the benefit of the poor and exploited. In this process Rabbi Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.

Articles

Ecstatic Origins of the Western Soul

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Matthew Fox reviews Peter Kingsley’s “A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tiber and the Destiny of the Western World.” He writes that in this book Kingsley tells “An earth-shattering, history-breaking story. One that raises whole new possibilities of humans understanding other humans whom we imagine to be so different from ourselves.”

Christianity

Christian Reflections on Easter

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Here are some reflections from Christian thinkers on Easter From Rev. Brian McLaren’s blog (Rev. McLaren is one of the most exciting contemporary Christian theologians):

Holy Week: Meditation 7 … Easter
Fr. Richard Rohr celebrates the holy resurrection of the Lord like this:
Christ Crucified is all of the hidden, private, tragic pain of history made public and given over to God. Christ Resurrected is all of that private, ungrieved, unnoted suffering received, loved, and transformed by an All-Caring God. How else could we believe in God at all?

Articles

Free Associations on the Four Sons

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Dusting off my Haggadah several months early, I was once again intrigued with the nuances of the parable. Far from being a simple description of four types of children, I now saw the parable as offering profound insight into the elements that impact the development of the child, and by extension, the formation and potential for transformation of the world.