Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/tag/christianity/page/3/)
“Environmentalism is just another religion” say some seeking to rebut people who link climate change to human activity. What about organizations such as Jesus People Against Pollution, which cite Scripture? Are their views grounded in the Bible?
An iconography of sorrow disrupts and reconfigures our practices of recognition. It is not our gaze in the form of Western media attention that determines who should appear as the subject of care. Rather it is proximity to Christ on the cross that determines who and what we should see.
But beyond the hegemonic display, serving a patriarchal culture, a different presentation of events dwells in the text of salvation, one that gives divinity a female body, and characterizes the forces of salvation as female corporeal-spiritual ones.
Check out the many divestment actions that are taking place around the world today–Global Divestment Day. The movement to divest from fossil fuels undermines the system that is causing climate change. The worldwide system of unrestrained free-market capitalism, dominated by global corporations and fueled by money, is based on the view that market forces will sort everything out. Those of us who are working to get our churches, synagogues, colleges, and other institutions to divest from fossil fuels are challenging this system by saying, “Money is not the highest value.” There are good financial reasons to divest from fossil fuels, but even if there weren’t, “If it’s wrong to wreck the planet, then it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage.”
Throughout history, Jews and Muslims have killed each other, Christians and Muslims have killed each other, Christians and Jews have killed each other, Hindus and Muslims have killed each other, Catholics and Protestants have killed each other, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims have killed each other, many faith communities have killed Atheists and Agnostics, and on it goes. We continually kill others and are killed by others over concepts we can never prove.
After finding out that the deceased was a lesbian, a pastor at New Hope Ministries in Colorado stopped Vanessa Collier’s funeral in the middle of the service. If Pastor Chavez considers his actions as representing some sort of hope, new or otherwise, I prefer no hope at all.
In times like these, when marginalized communities sense the threat of violence for their own livelihood and well-being, words fail.But, as Audre Lorde so importantly reminds us, our silence will not protect us.
Jesus was not a Christian and Buddha was not a Buddhist but their religion was love. Can it really be this simple?
There’s a new threat on the climate change front, and it’s a big one. The recent midterm elections not only put Republicans in charge of the Congress, but the party of science deniers made dramatic gains at the state and local levels. This impressive victory was made possible by huge infusions of cash from oil, coal, and natural gas interests.
Much of the retreat was spent in silence. One of the things that silence can do is wake us up to the noise inside our own mind. On this particular retreat, the silence made me realize that it took two days for the Christmas carols to stop playing in my head.