This page lists all reports and commentary from April, 2007

The killings at Virginia Tech have raised the question of limiting access to firearms with new urgency – and poignancy.

Christians and gun control: An idea whose time has come?

Dr. Ben Witherington, professor of New Testament at conservative Asbury Theological Seminary, takes on the question. He writes:

Where is the moral outrage about the ability of even mentally whacked out people to buy guns in this country? You heard none of the potential Presidential candidates saying anything about the need for tighter gun control laws last week. ... It is interesting to me that even most American Christians, when they discuss these things, discuss them in terms of their Constitutional rights to bear firearms. They don’t ask whether the New Testament might have anything to say about Christian conduct in this regard. ... [Are there] ethical teachings in the New Testament that have a bearing as to whether Christians, as private citizens, should be bearing arms? Well yes, in fact there are texts to consider. ...

The rest of his blog, and many interesting responses >.

.... and from The Thoughtful Christian ...

The excellent PC(USA) adult study resource series, The Thoughtful Christian, includes on booklet entitled Gun Control: Is There a Christian Response? It’s a 1-session study and is available online >>

Presidential candidates Clinton, Edwards and Obama will join in Pentecost 2007: Taking the Vision to the Streets, June 3-6 in Washington, D.C.

Jim Wallis writes:

I have some very exciting news to share - presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama will be joining us at Pentecost 2007: Taking the Vision to the Streets, June 3-6 in Washington, D.C.!

Our nationally televised presidential candidates’ forum will be the first to focus exclusively on faith, values, and poverty. We'll be asking candidates the important questions - and you can be there in person.

from Eco-Justice Notes, by the Rev. Peter Sawtell, executive director of Eco-Justice Ministries

In 1987, the Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ (UCC) released a report titled Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. It was a detailed statistical analysis of census data, meticulously cross-matched with information on the location of toxic waste sites.

That report is widely recognized as a foundational document in the environmental justice movement in the United States, and in shaping similar efforts around the world. It made the well-documented assertion that the environmental risk from hazardous waste is more strongly correlated with race than with economics.

On this 20^th anniversary of Toxic Wastes and Race, an important new report has been issued by the UCC. Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007 revisits the statistical analysis with more sophisticated tools, and finds that "by better matching the locations of people and hazardous sites, racial and socioeconomic disparities around the nation's hazardous waste facilities are found to be far greater than what previous studies have shown."

This new report is available for free download from the United Church of Christ website. I highly recommend this new report for your reading and study. The 175 page document is 6.5 Mb, so plan on a lengthy download time.

Announcement from Office of Racial Justice and Advocacy

Peace,

We started a week ago to move this website to a new hosting service, and the past few days have been one of those ventures in technology for which your WebWeaver was not equipped by all his studies in theology. 

A recent article in The Guardian/UK advances a harsh word of warning to the people of the United States: that this nation (or at least the current administration) is taking many of the steps toward dictatorship that we have seen before under such rulers as Hitler and Pinochet.

These "ten easy steps" include invoking e a terrifying internal and external enemy; creating a "gulag," a prison system outside the rule of law; developing a "thug caste" of private paramilitary forces, that we now call security contractors; setting up an internal surveillance system; harassing citizens’ groups; engaging in arbitrary detention and release; pressuring key individuals such as academics and civil servants to go along; controlling the media; equating dissent with treason; and suspending the rule of law.

Sound familiar? Yet this is a serious charge, and you may want to read the article and offer your own response. 
Just send a note, to be shared here.

The author, Naomi Wolf, has recently written The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, which will be published by Chelsea Green in September. A political activist, she worked with the Clinton team on his successful 1996 re-election campaign, and for Al Gore’s 2000 election bid. Wolf has written several other books, and is a co-founder of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership.

Her closing paragraph:

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

In February, Santiago Rafael Cruz joined the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) office in Monterrey México. His job involved helping H2A "guest workers" going to work in the fields of North Carolina and other locations. He investigated and helped resolve grievances concerning abuses in the recruiting systems and employment conditions.

On Monday, April 9, Cruz was found tied up and beaten to death in the FLOC office. Testimony by witnesses who found the body, indicate that he was tortured by more than one individual in the early hours of the morning. There were no signs of robbery.

Since opening the office in Monterrey, there has been constant harassment. The office has been broken into several times when files and equipment were destroyed. FLOC staff has been threatened with deportation by Mexican authorities. Their operations have been attacked in the local media for "destabilizing" Mexican businesses (labor recruiters).

The United Farm Workers urges our supporters to respond to FLOC's plea to ensure a prompt and thorough investigation of the murder of Santiago Rafael Cruz, one of FLOC’s staff members in Monterrey, Mexico.

Click here to send an email to the government of the State of Nuevo Leon >>

An announcement from More Light Presbyterians

This is the fourth year of the annual tradition of celebrating the presence, faith and gifts that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons, their parents and families bring to the life, ministry and witness of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Liberating Love

How does Love liberate us? What is liberating about God's love for us, and for all the world? What is liberating about being in love? What is liberating about our love for each other as part of the Body of Christ and the realm of God on earth?

What actions are required of us to liberate Love in our lives, churches, communities, nation and world? How is God calling us in this time and place to liberate Love? How might God be calling you, and all of us, to set God's Love free to do its life-giving, life-saving work? These are questions and meditations we offer for this More Light Sunday.

A message from Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch)

Did you know that the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) has graduated death squad leaders, human rights abusers and at least 11 high ranking military officials who went on to become dictators? Even though the school changed its name in 2001 to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" in order to distract critics, known human rights abusers have again appeared in its enrollment lists.

Please join me in taking the first step to close this school of death.

Click here to send a message to your Representative in Congress, urging her or him to support legislation that will cut funding, suspend operations at the school and investigate its connection to human rights abuses. Follow-up with a phone call if you can. You can contact the DC office of your Representative by calling the Capitol Hill Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Make a difference by adding your voice to the chorus of millions of people in the Western Hemisphere who strive for a life free from military repression.

At three minutes and four seconds after 2 AM on the 6th of May this year, the time and date will be 02:03:04 05/06/07.

Not long after the slaughter at Virginia Tech, John Shuck wrote this brief reflection. It says a lot about how we might respond not only to this awful event, but to all the other deeply painful things that keep happening to us and to the world around us.

As I sit here trying to think of something to say, the old hymn of my childhood runs through my mind:

O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear.
Just because we do not carry
Ev'rything to God in prayer.

How much pain do we bear alone? How much pain do our children carry? I know college students are adults, but as the father of two college students, they are, to me, grown children. How much peace do we all forfeit when we keep our pain inside ourselves?

I usually think of that hymn as a hymn of personal prayer. It is that. Yet, today, I think of it differently. What needless pain we bear when we go it alone. What needless pain the gunman must have been bearing. From needless pain to needless violence – and now to pain again. Let none of us bear this alone. We are to one another, the response to prayer.

Visit John’s blog to see this with a photo of students joining in a candlelight vigil in Blacksburg on Monday evening.

Faithful America reminds us that Cover the Uninsured Week 2007 is next week (April 23 –29) and faith communities across the country are getting involved to help get America’s kids covered!

This year, with reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) pending, Cover the Uninsured Week will focus on covering kids as an important first step toward covering all Americans.  By getting involved in Cover the Uninsured Week, people of faith can help spread the word that all children deserve access to affordable health care coverage.

The Save Darfur Coalition is urging support for the sates which have already enacted resolutions to withdraw investments from companies that support the genocide in Darfur by doing business with the government of Sudan, putting economic pressure on the Sudanese government to cooperate with international efforts to end the genocide.

Over the years, Norman Finkelstein has spoken out as a Jew, criticizing the State of Israel for its suppression of Palestinian freedom and dignity. He testified at the 2006 General Assembly as the issue of divestment and criticism of Israeli oppression of the Palestinian territories were hotly debated.

A friend writes that "Norman Finkelstein has long been the target of a sustained campaign from the Israel Lobby to discredit him as a person and a scholar, thereby undermining his critiques of the State of Israel and the occupation. The latest effort includes trying to prevent him from getting tenure at DePaul University, a Roman Catholic institution where he has taught for the past six years. He is down to the last phase of this process, having been approved by the faculty committee; the dean will be making a decision by May." Read the Chronicle of Higher Education account of this struggle >>

While leaders of the World Bank debate what to do with Paul Wolfowitz, their embattled president, the IMF and World Bank are facing a deeper challenge , which the think-tank Foreign Policy in Focus calls a "confidence crisis."  The essay begins:

As International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials engage in their joint semi-annual meetings in Washington, the Fund has a nettlesome new task: convincing its shareholders (most of the world’s governments, represented at the meeting by Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors) that the institution should continue to exist.

After some 30 years of making "bail-out" and "structural adjustment" loans to indebted and impoverished countries in return for their adherence to a long list of neo-liberal economic reforms–trade and investment deregulation, privatization, tightening access to credit, and rapid budget cuts and public-sector layoffs, to name a few–the IMF has been confronting a crisis of confidence for the past two years. Demand for its services has been shrinking. Its reputation has never recovered from its disastrous interventions in the East Asian and Argentinean financial crises (1997-1998 and 2001-2002 respectively).

The Witherspoon board has been meeting for the past 30 hours or so (with a little time out for sleep) in San Jose, CA, which will be the site of the 2008 General Assembly.  We started a few hours late on Thursday evening, since three of our members enjoyed an extra-long layover in Dallas/Ft. Worth while their plane underwent a few needed repairs.

The group has dealt with issues such as planning for the September conference, set for Sept. 16-19, and focusing on the theme, "Becoming Neighbors: An Invitation to Global Discipleship."  For some details – with more to come.

We have also considered the nomination process for new officers, budgets for 2007 and 2008, and questions about what issues and concerns should be given more attention in our work and our publications.

Union-PSCE Press release

News release from Noel Damico, Campaign for Fair Food, PC(USA)

The PC(USA) commends the CIW and McDonald’s on this historic achievement. Special thanks goes to all Presbyterians who have written the company, hosted the workers on Truth Tours, or joined the CIW in protests. Together we have made a significant witness.   More >>

On the same page, you'll find more reports on this very important development:

The Witherspoon Society gives thanks to God for this great step forward, and congratulates the Immokalee Farmworkers and all those who have worked with them over the months and years, as well as McDonald's.  We especially appreciate the role the Carter Center has played in helping in the negotiation of this settlement. 

For years Jim Wallis of Sojourners has called for a new faith-based approach to politics in which liberals and evangelicals can unite.

Now others, from different perspectives, are saying the same thing.

Jon Basil Utley, associate publisher of The American Conservative, says that some conservatives are becoming more critical of the war. Even if their opposition is rooted in different thinking from that of the liberals who oppose the war (and he notes that many of them, including many Democratic Party leaders, are really not standing against the war), the two sides need each other if they are to have any impact on the growing trend toward Empire. And, he says, they can work together for some goals that both sides value, such as true national security, a return to use of negotiations to settle problems, and avoiding further spread of the war, which would among other things be "bad for business."
His essay is on the Foreign Policy in Focus website >>

And from the Left, John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation, writes of a group of conservatives which is advancing a so-called "American Freedom Agenda," which calls for such radical measures as ending the use of military commissions to prosecute crimes, prohibiting the use of secret evidence or evidence obtained by torture, and ending National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping. (And lots more!)

A Restorative Theology of Easter

The Rev. Peter Sawtell, Executive Director of Eco-Justice Ministries, first posted this essay in his Eco-Justice Notes in 2002, and has re-posted it just before Easter.

He contrasts the views of justice at work in our traditional system of "punitive justice" with those affirmed in the growing movement for "restorative justice."

He outlines this briefly:

Restorative justice is an idea that is beginning to catch on in communities across the US. Restorative justice takes a very different approach than the punitive justice system that is common throughout western civilization. (While this is a new concept in some parts of the world, in many cultures these principles are ancient wisdom.)

Punitive justice sees a problem with the criminal, the "offender". The solution to crime is to punish the person who broke the laws. There may be an attempt at rehabilitation, but punishment is the guiding principle.

Restorative justice recognizes that the criminal has caused a problem, and that something must be done. But it does not believe that the problem can be solved through punishment alone. Because the offender has not just broken a law. He or she has caused hurt to victims, and has injured the entire community. The goal of restorative justice is to bring healing to all involved -- the victim, the offender, and the community.

He then considers the different ways we understand Easter, and the life and resurrection of Christ: either a sacrifice to pay a penalty, or a movement of restoration and healing, both for offenders and for victims, both for the whole human community and for our relationships with the whole natural world.

"There is a new spirit sweeping across our churches ..."    

After recommending one blog of interest to progressive Presbyterians (and others!), we asked for other suggestions.  We’ve received some more very good suggestions:

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Abundancetrek.com

Please consider my blog -- http://www.abundancetrek.com/blog . I think it's unique. I promote progressive Christianity, progressive Politics, the Perennial Philosophy and the New Church for the New Age. Sometimes I write my own stuff but usually I'm more like the webweaver finding good stuff and offering links and excerpts. I'm a retired Presbyterian pastor with too much time on my hands -- actively involved at First Presbyterian Church, Utica and Presbytery of Utica Church & Society Committee chaired by John Preston -- but I do enjoy blogging and I would love a little more attention from the Progressive Presbyterian community. Thanks. I do link to WS items from time to time, most recently March 27.

John A Wilde

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Two blogs from San Francisco Theological Seminary students

The following pair of blogs are by myself and a good friend. We are both seminary students at SFTS who bring a unique perspective to the blogosphere.

Aric Clark: http://aricclark.blogspot.com/

Doug Hagler:  http://sftsexperience.blogspot.com/

We've been very active lately in commenting and debating on the conservative blogs of Jim Berkley, http://www.jimberkley.blogspot.com/ and Tom Gray, http://tomgrayofthekirk.blogspot.com/

In return we've drawn the attention of a variety of people who disagree with our progressive views, but we welcome the opportunity for meaningful dialogue.

Incidentally, I'm writing a series of rebuttals to the work of Robert Gagnon of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, that your readers might be interested in.

Aric

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Preaching Peace

This suggestion comes from John Mann, formerly a PC(USA) pastor, now serving in the Church of Scotland. He has contributed a number of reports and essays here.  For one example >>

I would recommend the blog at Preaching Peace, www.preachingpeace.org; I must add though that I'm partial to it because I am one of the regular contributors.

Take Care - John Mann

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Who’s next?

McDonald’s Truth Tour heads for Chicago

Momentum for the McDonald’s Truth Tour builds as the workers prepare to leave Immokalee on April 7th. Presbyterians across the country are hosting workers and many are coming to Chicago. All the latest info on the tour stops, buses to Chicago and events in Chicago is available at http://www.ciw-online.org/2007truthtour/index.html

The Peacemaking Update for April 4, 2007  

April 15 - 17 Celebrations, Community and a Call for Justice & Equality in Washington, DC

Your WebWeaver must confess he is a bit baffled by the current flood of blogs, but he’s slowly recognizing that there are good things worth a visit now and then.

Let me introduce just one of them today, and I’ll try to be back with more suggestions in the weeks to come.

And if you have suggestions, please send a note! We don’t want this website to become just a advertising list of blogs, and we won’t automatically recommend just anything that is mentioned. But if you can suggest a blog page that offers helpful news and commentary about church and/or society – and especially the interactions between them – we’ll be happy to consider mentioning it. (Even if it’s your own!)

Just send a note!

Enough introduction. Here’s our first venture into the wild world of blogs:

Shuck and Jive is the creation of the Rev. John Shuck, who describes his blog thus: "A Presbyterian minister blogs about spirituality, culture, religion (both organized and disorganized), life, evolution, literature, Jesus and lightening up. John Shuck is the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, Tennessee (a liberal church on the buckle of the Bible belt)."

A couple recent samples:

On March 29, as part of a series of blogs on readings for Holy Week, he gave very brief introductions to books such as Marcus Borg's latest, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary; Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus' Final Week in Jerusalem; and James Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty – among others!

Shuck reads a lot, but he doesn’t limit himself to the library. He offers his own theological and ethical reflections on a wide range of issues, including the environment, politics, the church, the American Empire, and more. Much more.

For a slightly different tone, check out his thoughts for Saturday, March 31, on the topic "Sometimes I wish I was a RevGal," which begins: "Do you notice the difference between clergy boy bloggers and clergy girl bloggers? There really is a difference."

As with many bloggers, he invites visitors to subscribe to e-mail updates sent whenever he adds to his blog.

The Rev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, Assistant Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary, and a member of the Sojourners/Call to Renewal Board, has written a thoughtful response to the widely noted comments by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as he equated bilingual education with learning "the language of living in a ghetto."

Noting that Gingrich is not alone in holding this attitude of "jingoism," he adds that the real issue today is "Who gets to define what America looks like in the 21st century? Should every effort be made to maintain a white majority that reflects the current Western European culture and ethos of American society?"

He closes:

As an evangelical Christian, I look towards scripture for my guidance. In my study of scripture, I have yet to find a single passage which supports the right to bear arms. ... I have, however, found numerous references (50+ and still counting) calling believers to care for the alien among them. Why is it then that I am more likely to find members of the NRA in a typical American evangelical church than I will find those who advocate for an immigration policy that shows compassion for the immigrant among us? How much of our view on immigration is driven by a political and social agenda rather than a biblical one?

On April 21st the Presbytery of New York City is hosting a conference titled Immigration, Justice and Christian Hospitality. The conference will be held at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan: 7 West 55th Street. A flyer is attached (we will have versions available in Spanish and Korean in a few days).

Please note that the plenary presentations are being offered with simultaneous translation into Spanish and Korean.

We invite all of our Presbyterian sisters and brothers to join us. We have organized this conference with the hope that it will prove useful to churches and Presbyteries in the greater metro NYC region - including on both sides of the Hudson River! The goal of the conference is to educate, equip and inspire both clergy and "people in the pews" so that they can ACT relative to immigration: through providing links to resources, through activism, and through other forms of solidarity.

We are delighted that Julia Thorne is joining us as the featured speaker of the conference!

For more information, contact:

Annie Rawlings, M.Div.
Interim Associate Executive Presbyter for Social Witness
Presbytery of New York City
475 Riverside Drive, Suite 240
New York, NY 10115
212/870-2221, ext. 4249
socialwitness@presbynyc.org

How much of every dollar of federal income taxes you pay in 2006 goes to war? To health care? To humanitarian aid? The Friends Committee on National Legislation offers a nice, clear tax day flyer with the answers.

This page lists all reports and commentary from April, 2007