Every week, our users put together the news, interviews, articles, videos and media that they have found important, interesting and informative. We post it every Friday. Here are the links for this week:
Believe Me, It’s Torture - Writer Christopher Hitchens undergoes waterboarding.
Rights commission dismisses complaint against Maclean’s
GAFCON Final Statement. In their own words This is what it is. The Wikipedia article on it is useful and is HERE.
Evangelical movement touts ‘Jesus for president‘
Thank You For Sharing: For women, blogs are becoming as essential as lipstick
I can’t say I support this “Jesus for president” movement. Of course it calls into question the role of government for persons of faith, etc. But I have to say it seems inevitable. Things seem to be coming full circle back to the Social Gospel of the sixties. Well, it beats Christian Zionist militarism even if it is a little Socialist.
A pastor friend said to me the other day of the potential war with Iran, “Israel’s got to defend themselves.” I didn’t say anything, but I’m thinking, “Defend themselves against what? The prospect of being attacked by a nuclear weapon that likely does not exist by a government that has not expressed any immediate desire to attack them?” And all the people that have heard Ahmadinejad misquoted about wiping Israel “off the map” (a non-Farsi expression) will say but Ahmadinejad wants to destroy Israel. First of all, even if he did he doesn’t speak for the entire government and does not have the authority to launch an attack by himself. Secondly, his remarks were made about the Israeli regime, not the nation of Israel. Thirdly, even if Iran was going to commit suicide by attacking Israel with a nuclear weapon (and mind you there is absolutely no evidence to suggest this) should we really be involved in preemptive attack on their behalf? I’ll ask you if it was worth it when we are paying $8.00 per gallon for gas. Really, where is the voice of reason in this country? You won’t find it with the Democrats or the Republicans.
**Morning rant concludes**
I liked the article about women blogging (since I’m a woman who’s been blogging since 2004, I fit right in). I agree that blogging can be a pretty good place to rant (whereas sometimes a rant doesn’t work on a forum
) and what a blog lacks in privacy it makes up in convenience–a blog is always ready to receive one’s complaints, as long as one’s internet provider is cooperating.
I think blogging works best if the author has a particular audience in mind (that works for all writing, actually) and that is why I have more than one blog–so I can focus on different audiences.
Some people in my family have thought I was crazy to say that I had made friends with someone through my blog–*insert joke about ax murders*–but sometimes a blog comment can reveal a kindred spirit.
I just finished reading Jesus for President this weekend… while Claiborne has some good, even great, things to say about Christianity and our real allegiances and the de facto prosperity gospel alive and well in Americans’ lives, he also replaces the “Gospel once delivered” with a social justice/save the earth gospel where personal and individual sin isn’t the ultimate evil, but capitalism and corporations. According to Claiborne, Jesus didn’t come to set us free spiritually, but economically. You libertarians would love and hate Claiborne… you will love that he sees everything in economic terms, but hate that he is a flaming socialist and communist.
For example… Claiborne repeatedly says that Christians should throw away their TVs. A noble idea and one worth considering in all of our lives. However, his reason is not because it is full of trashy shows with little or no redeeming value. No, the reason he gives is that TVs help support the cog of capitalism and corporate greed.
The book is also VEHEMENTLY pacifist (both personally and politically), yet inconsistent on that point. One place the authors tell us that Christ didn’t expect us to let people sadistically walk all over us, yet in the next breath it was wrong for Bonhoeffer (one of their heroes) to attempt to kill Hitler. Claiborne/Haw tells the reader that it is wrong to either fight or flee an attacker, yet Paul did exactly the latter on frequent occasions.
Darius, I want to sing this song for you:
Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they’re turned around.
Who’d have thought they’d lead ya (Who’d have thought they’d lead ya)
Here where we need ya (Here where we need ya)
Yeah we tease him a lot cause we’ve hot him on the spot, welcome back,
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.
***************************************************************************
In case you didn’t know, that’s from Welcome Back Kotter.
Aw shucks.