tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29909911787495058242023-11-16T02:48:34.499-05:00If Not Empire, What? A Survey of the BibleBy Berry Friesen and John K. Stoner<hr>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.comBlogger272125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-73264915519484798322018-05-25T06:14:00.000-04:002018-05-25T06:16:26.810-04:00Barber speaks on Our War Economy: Militarism and Gun Violence<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (May 25, 2018)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I put it this way: Can any country embrace overwhelming violence as its national policy and not see individuals mimic that violence domestically? Or promote violence on the wholesale level and expect to contain it on the retail level?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I don’t think so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Rev. William Barber, Jr. preached a powerful sermon on Sunday evening May 6 at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington DC. He described and excoriated the war economy, militarism and gun violence of the United States of America. He did it fifty years after Martin Luther King’s courageous Riverside Church condemnation of America’s militarism and war on Vietnam. Barber leads the Poor People’s Campaign which he is bringing back to give this nation a second chance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I am here today to urge you to listen to this sermon from beginning to end. If you spend any time listening to voices or reading the words of people who claim to inform you on what is happening in this nation and world, take time to listen to this one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">The sermon is wonderfully long, courageous, prophetic, passionate, fact-filled and moving. Historic, in a word.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">The sermon is on YouTube here <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G4oJOQWFTA"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G4oJOQWFTA</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">There is exegesis (The Legion exorcism), history (genocide and slavery, pillars of American greatness), economics (53% of US discretionary budget military), psychology (moral injury—ubiquitous and debilitating), and invitation (higher ground).</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-80545065327917716352018-04-27T08:35:00.001-04:002018-04-27T08:35:26.759-04:00Why Are We Violent?<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (April 27, 2018)</span><div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> The educator Coleman McCarthy wrote, "I had a student at the University of Maryland a while back who wrote a 13-word paper that both for brevity and breadth--the rarest of combinations--has stayed with me: 'Question: Why are we violent but not illiterate? Answer: Because we are taught to read.'"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> What more needs to be said?</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-81446445422343923162018-04-20T07:58:00.000-04:002018-04-20T08:02:16.069-04:00Who Wants the Real M. L. King? <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (April 20, 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Continuing my series on alternative sources of news and voices which speak truth, I invite you to consider this today. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">On April 4, 2018 Cornel West wrote:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>We now come to the 50th anniversary of his assassination, and we once again are met with sterilized versions of his legacy. A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>These neoliberal revisionists thrive on the spectacle of their smartness and the visibility of their mainstream status – yet rarely, if ever, have they said a mumbling word about what would have concerned King, such as US drone strikes, house raids, and torture sites, or raised their voices about escalating inequality, poverty or Wall Street domination under neoliberal administrations – be the president white or black.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">America has moved on to other things. The 50th anniversary of King’s death is past and already mostly forgotten. But maybe, just maybe, our best hope lies in not forgetting. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">West’s essay includes this, with which I end this reflection:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>King’s last sermon was entitled Why America May Go to Hell. His personal loneliness and political isolation loomed large. J Edgar Hoover said he was “the most dangerous man in America”. President Johnson called him “a nigger preacher”. Fellow Christian ministers, white and black, closed their pulpits to him. Young revolutionaries dismissed and tried to humiliate him with walkouts, booing and heckling. Life magazine – echoing Time magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post (all bastions of the liberal establishment) – trashed King’s anti-war stance as “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi”.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>And the leading black journalist of the day, Carl Rowan, wrote in the Reader’s Digest that King’s “exaggerated appraisal of his own self-importance” and the communist influence on his thinking made King “persona non-grata to Lyndon Johnson” and “has alienated many of the Negro’s friends and armed the Negro’s foes”.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>One of the last and true friends of King, the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel prophetically said: “The whole future of America will depend upon the impact and influence of Dr King.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Read West's full essay <a href="https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/49337-martin-luther-king-jr-was-a-radical-we-must-not-sterilize-his-legacy">here</a>. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-7293091571083271702018-04-13T07:23:00.000-04:002018-04-13T07:23:06.054-04:00Paying for War<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Someone asked me, “If you are praying for peace, why do you go on paying for war?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Income tax time of year, when we’re all faced with making our contribution to the funding of America’s wars past, present and future, is a good time to think about this.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Use any door you want to enter this space in your mind and conscience.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Consider the irrationality of it. How did we get to this place of thinking that we can use an instrument of evil to produce an end of good? Show me a persons who does not think that war is evil and I’ll show you a person who had not seen it close up, nor considered it with reasonable attention.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Consider the injustice of it. It makes a few people filthy rich and millions more dirt poor. It’s the biggest protection racket in the world, hands down. Who profits from war? Greedy corporations and their stockholders. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Consider the immorality of it. Modern war kills far more innocent people than combatants. Look at the record. And if it is wrong to kill our human brothers and sisters ourselves, how can it be right to pay someone else to do it for us?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Consider the consequences of it. What governments are willing to do to peoples of other lands they are willing to do to their own people. Selectively, but very really, military empires have victims at home as well as abroad. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">None of us achieve fully consistent behavior. But we’re in really bad trouble when we give up trying to inch toward it, and quit asking ourselves to do better rather than worse on a whole lot of things in life. </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-29879618010596853912018-04-09T07:44:00.000-04:002018-04-09T08:00:02.816-04:00Resurrection...of this man?<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (April 9, 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: large;">Some religion(s) focus on telling us what to believe about God—this, that and the other thing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">And some religionists struggle with how to reconcile the beliefs of one religion about God with the beliefs of other religions about God.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">But it is possible to look at this a little differently, and say that the big thing is what we believe about people. I get, or at least think I do, this idea from Jesus. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Jesus taught that all people should be loved, and that to live in love is to live in God. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">But this is to believe something very different about people. It is to believe that something good can come of loving all people, instead of dividing people into those who can be loved and those who must be opposed and destroyed by all means necessary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">These two ways of looking at people are very different ways of looking at people, they reflect believing very different things about people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">And Jesus had this radical practice and idea of loving all people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Those who killed Jesus opposed this way of looking at people and the practice of loving all people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">But those who accepted and attempted to follow Jesus believed that in some fashion Jesus did not stay dead for believing what he believed about people—that he and what he believed about people was “resurrected.” It lived on, it constituted an enduring way of life, a whole new way of relating to people and trying to run the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">So, wow, the big miracle of the resurrection was not that Jesus came back just like he was before, a man alive on earth, but that it was the resurrection of a person who believed what Jesus believed about people and how to relate to them. The resurrection said that this particular dude and his way of walking through life were not dead ends, but a new and living thing to believe about people. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Most remarkable! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">And it is interesting to suppose that the big thing that major religions hold in common is this belief that people should be loved, not demonized or killed. </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-60667258058346843302018-04-04T09:36:00.003-04:002018-04-04T09:52:34.001-04:00Father Charlie McCarthy on Martin Luther King<div style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: large;">Fifty years ago today Martin Luther King was assassinated. Father Charlie McCarthy, another man whose voice I commend to you because he speaks the truth, spoke at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1993, the 25th anniversary of Dr. King's death. McCarthy makes a crucial point about Martin Luther King in the opening paragraphs of his speech which I quote below. Here's the key line: </span><br />
<span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: large;"> </span><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica";">A world mired in so-called “justified” homicide does </span><span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica";">not know what to do with the nonviolent Dr. Martin </span><span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica";">Luther King, Jr., any more than Christian churches, </span><span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica";">imprisoned within a historical spiral of “justifi</span><span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica";">ed” homicide of their own making, know what to </span><span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica";">do with the nonviolent Jesus Christ. The prevailing </span><span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica";">strategy in both cases is to be calculatingly inattentive </span><span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica";">to the rock-like belief both had in nonviolence.</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: large;">(For the full text of Fr. McCarthy's speech email me at jstoner42@windstream.net. Charlie's website is <a href="http://www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org/">here.</a> Meet a remarkable man, scroll down and watch a few of his dozen brief videos.) </span><br />
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Who Is Your King? Who Is Your God?</div>
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A Meditation on the Eternal Contribution and</div>
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Challenge to Christianity and to Humanity</div>
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Made by The Servant of God</div>
<span style="color: #2f2a2b; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 37.5px;">The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., commented, “While the question, ‘Who killed President Kennedy?’ is important, the question, ‘What killed him?’ is more important” Today on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, I think it is important to publicly ask the question, “Who killed </span><span style="font-size: large;">Martin Luther King?” because a correct answer to that question may tell something about the workings of this society that could be useful for correcting the evils of poverty, racism and militarism that bedevil it. But, I believe, here at the place where he was slain twenty-five years ago today, it is more important to ask, “What killed Martin Luther King, Jr.?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Humanity is a historical phenomenon. Every person and every generation are partly the result of the </span><span style="font-size: large;">persons and generations who preceded them. Whatever </span><span style="font-size: large;">killed Martin Luther King did not first make </span><span style="font-size: large;">its appearance on April 4, 1968. Whatever it is that </span><span style="font-size: large;">sent that bullet speeding toward this balcony twenty-</span><span style="font-size: large;">five years ago has a past that stretches back to the </span><span style="font-size: large;">infancy of time. Soon after the first rays of the first </span><span style="font-size: large;">sunrise appear over the horizon of history, there is </span><span style="font-size: large;">homicide. I</span><span style="font-size: large;">n Book One of the Bible Cain kills Abel. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Homicide is the first sin outside of Paradise. In the </span><span style="font-size: large;">beginning there is death by the hand of another.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whatever killed Abel, killed Martin Luther King, </span><span style="font-size: large;">Jr. Whatever killed Martin Luther King, Jr., killed </span><span style="font-size: large;">Jesus Christ. And, whatever killed Jesus Christ, is </span><span style="font-size: large;">what killed every person who has ever been shot, </span><span style="font-size: large;">stabbed, poisoned, gassed, or burnt to death by a fellow </span><span style="font-size: large;">human being. From what demented dimension </span><span style="font-size: large;">of the universe, from what polluted place in the soul </span><span style="font-size: large;">comes the willingness to destroy another?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The man who was murdered on this balcony twenty-</span><span style="font-size: large;">five years ago unreservedly committed his entire </span><span style="font-size: large;">adult life to the war against the loathsome spirit of </span><span style="font-size: large;">violence. Whatever that perverted reality is that deceived </span><span style="font-size: large;">Cain, against that debased spirit Martin Luther </span><span style="font-size: large;">King, Jr., was pitted in unrelenting combat. </span><span style="font-size: large;">There is no Martin Luther King, Jr., to be remembered, </span><span style="font-size: large;">there is no Martin Luther King, Jr., to be </span><span style="font-size: large;">studied, there is no Martin Luther King, Jr., to be </span><span style="font-size: large;">honored who is not irrevocably vowed to nonviolence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Dr. King taught that</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>We must pursue peaceful ends by peaceful</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>means…Many people cry, ‘Peace, Peace’ but they</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>refuse to do the things that make for peace…The</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>stage of history is replete with the chants and choruses</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>of the conquerors of old who came killing in</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>pursuit of peace.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A world mired in so-called “justified” homicide does </span><span style="font-size: large;">not know what to do with the nonviolent Dr. Martin </span><span style="font-size: large;">Luther King, Jr., no more than Christian churches, </span><span style="font-size: large;">imprisoned within a historical spiral of “justifi</span><span style="font-size: large;">ed” homicide of their own making, know what to </span><span style="font-size: large;">do with the nonviolent Jesus Christ. The prevailing</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">strategy in both cases is to be calculatingly inattentive </span><span style="font-size: large;">to the rock-like belief both had in nonviolence. </span><span style="font-size: large;">The hope of this strategy is to extoll the person </span><span style="font-size: large;">while dismissing his teaching. The problem with </span><span style="font-size: large;">this approach is that a violent Jesus or a violent Martin </span><span style="font-size: large;">Luther King, Jr., is as much of a spiritual optical</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">illusion as a nonviolent Hitler. Nonviolence is that </span><span style="font-size: large;">without which there is no Martin Luther King— </span><span style="font-size: large;">there is no Jesus Christ. What entered and took control </span><span style="font-size: large;">of Cain never entered and took control of Jesus </span><span style="font-size: large;">of Nazareth or of Martin Luther King, Jr." (see above for the rest of the speech). </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-81568781554597864802018-03-28T10:03:00.002-04:002018-04-09T07:47:58.711-04:00Why Did Jesus Die?<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="font-family: "lucida grande", "lucida sans unicode", arial, helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: #2f2a22; font-family: "verdana" , "geneva" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">by John K Stoner (March 28, 2018)</span></h3>
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<span style="color: #2f2a22; font-family: "verdana" , "geneva" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Why did Jesus die? Or, put differently, why was he killed? A question for Holy Week.</span><br />
<span style="color: #2f2a22; font-family: "verdana" , "geneva" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The second way of asking it is better, because it shows an intention to take the history seriously.</span><br />
<span style="color: #2f2a22; font-family: "verdana" , "geneva" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Good Friday has been a great Christian celebration across centuries and continents. The crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday is the focus of the celebration. Why celebrate the death of Jesus?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Let’s start with the hardest and the worst of it. Over the centuries a tradition developed by the church and believed by millions of Christians holds that Jesus died because God willed and/or needed Jesus’ death. Notice, however, that this tradition attributes not a bad motive, but a good one, to God. God did it in order to make possible the forgiveness of human sins.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Now let’s be honest—human failure, or sin, is common and big. Who can look at their own life and not know that? And we find it is not always easy to forgive ourselves, and consistently try to do better. So, our forbears looked for a big solution to a big problem. Let’s make it God-sized, and see how God solves our problem. They picked up on religious traditions of sacrifice to the gods, and lo and behold, we get a notion of sacrifice in which the very son of God is the sacrifice which pleases God and makes the forgiveness of sins possible. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> If that doesn’t work well for you, fine. Join tens of millions of other fellow humans who are appalled by such an image of God and way to deal with our problem of recidivism in sin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> There is a better way to understand Good Friday and the crucifixion. Start by asking who killed Jesus and why. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Start with the obvious. He was killed by people who thought that killing a person was acceptable human behavior, and—we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt—that they could improve the general human condition by performing an execution. Maybe we can give them a little more: they killed him thinking he was a bad person. They were wrong about that, so his death was collateral damage. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span>In short, Jesus was killed by bad people for being a good person.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Let’s parse that a little. Bad and good are relative terms, but that does not mean they are meaningless or useless. The bad here is the ancient and widespread human belief that some other individuals or groups are so bad that they must be killed in order to cleanse the land. They are scapegoated: those bad must be sacrificed for the sake of us good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Jesus taught a different thing, another way. He said that none of us are so good, nor so hopelessly bad, that we can indulge this practice of killing each other to make the world a better place. The world is not improved by pillaging and burning. Scorching part of the earth will not save the whole earth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> So Good Friday was a contest over the central teaching of Jesus. Who understands best the real human nature/condition (or the will of God, to put it the other way)? Is it Jesus, who says that the way to deal with human imperfection or sin, is to forgive one time after another, to help each other try again, or those who killed Jesus, believing that some bad people have to be killed so that us good people can inhabit the world peacefully? </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> The vignette of Peter’s denial is a microcosm of this contest. There is a double sadness in this story: that Peter denied, and that the church has so universally misunderstood Peter’s denial. It was not a denial rooted in human weakness as generally understood, but rather in what is generally thought to be human strength and greatness. By both his actions and words Peter stands out as a brave man, ready to fight and die for Jesus. What he was not ready for was the disclosure of Jesus’ nonviolent response to the attacking enemies. Peter was overcome by unbelief and embarrassment when he saw Jesus refusing to take up the sword and defend himself, and he denied that he was identified with this man.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> The story of Jesus is so irrepressible and universal because he taught this way of compassionate forgiveness, and placed it in tension with the prevailing practices of dominating power over nature and justified killing of humanity. Every person and every culture/nation lives in the tension between these ways of running the world. It is the existential choice of humanity, standing on the verge of ecological collapse and death by war.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> But then, in the ironic words of W. Edwards Deming: “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-41036893827682972742018-03-26T09:01:00.000-04:002018-03-26T09:39:34.048-04:00Robert Koehler "Normalizing Violence"<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;">by John K. Stoner (March 6, 2018) </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On January 29 I introduced a voice for peace, that of Robert Koehler <a href="http://www.bible-and-empire.net/2018/01/bob-koehler-co-creating-culture-of-peace.html">click here</a> . I return to Bob today because he has written another wise reflection on this country’s problem with mass shootings. He is telling us that we can’t , as a nation, promote bullying violence on the wholesale level as the way to run the world, and hope to restrain it on the retail level for our own culture. This is a simple truth, but who is speaking it?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Raven Foundation, dedicated to helping us understand and challenge our culture of violence, carried Bob’s essay here <a href="https://www.ravenfoundation.org/normalizing-violence/">click</a> . Bob brings back, from 50 years ago, the voice of Martin Luther King. I quote the “normalizing violence” article today, the voices of King and Koehler. I cannot improve on what they said. I hope you will click on the article and read the full text. It will help you know how to help our teenagers to address this violence problem realistically.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <i>And if this is so, then what we have emerging here is not simply a movement for stricter gun laws but a new civil rights movement, with a voice as clarion and courageous as the voices of that earlier movement. And the scope of the movement is violence itself.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i> The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit,” </i><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-13.htm"><span style="color: #820e00; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>Martin Luther King</i></span></a><i> told the nation, and the world, at Riverside Church, a year before he himself was murdered.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">“…The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i> Here’s how educator </i><a href="https://socialistworker.org/2018/02/26/militarism-at-the-heart-of-a-violent-culture"><span style="color: #820e00; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>Gabriel Paez</i></span></a><i> put it recently in The Socialist Worker: “Ultimately, we need a completely different society that is freed from terror and mass murder, from mass incarceration and war. In the society we strive for, prosperity and freedom would not be measured by access to automatic weapons, but rather by access to health care, including mental health care, housing as a human right and global peace.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"> I have no doubt this is what America’s teenagers are demanding: a legal and social structure that values life rather than feeds on it. <a href="https://www.ravenfoundation.org/normalizing-violence/">click for full article</a></span></i></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-73777854139971206662018-03-09T08:31:00.000-05:002018-03-09T08:31:00.501-05:00Daniel Berrigan, Part III, Prophet in Our Times<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (March 9, 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In my December 29 blog I promised further blogs on "those who use the methods of peace to pursue the goal of peace." I've written two on Daniel Berrigan; this will be the third and last on him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was reading Jim Forest's recently published book that set me to drawing on Dan's voice from the past--my focus for this series is on voices in the present. But I want to commend his book to you--AT PLAY IN THE LIONS' DEN: A BIOGRAPHY AND MEMOIR OF DANIEL BERRIGAN (Orbis, 2017). Jim Wallis wrote this about it:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>As a young activist, who had been kicked out of my home church over the issues of race and war, Daniel Berrigan was the first Christian I heard of who was against the war in Vietnam. So I thank you Dan, for keeping my hope of faith in Christ alive. You were among the biblical prophets who showed us the way. And thank you, Jim Forest, for this superlative spiritual writing."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Wallis says he was kicked out of his church--it was a conservative evangelical church. Berrigan avoided being kicked out of his church, Roman Catholic, over his peace activism, but just barely. There is a lot in this book about how he painfully struggled with his church and the Jesuits, the Catholic order in which he had taken vows. It is instructive to read this history, including correspondence between Berrigan and Thomas Merton, on destruction of "property," and obedience to "superiors." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I suggest, lay aside <i>THE</i> <i>TIMES </i>and <i>THE POST </i>for a few days, and read a prophet from OUR TIMES. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-21176609165951257002018-03-05T10:26:00.002-05:002018-03-05T10:30:15.399-05:00Daniel Berrigan, Part 2-- Order and Disorder<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (March 5, 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In last Friday's blog I quoted Dan Berrigan and the Catonsville Nine apologizing "for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children." Perhaps you have reflected a moment on that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Americans have a strong distaste for civil disobedience, and my readers may be like Americans in this. (Principled civil disobedience, that is; I've noticed high tolerance for unprincipled civil disobedience such as disobeying speed limits.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm featuring Dan Berrigan for several days because we live in a time and place where civil disobedience may be a much higher civil, moral and spiritual duty than we have been trained to think. How do we prepare our minds and spirits to do the unfamiliar and difficult? One way is by paying attention to people who are experienced in what we need to learn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For burning draft files the Catonsville Nine were charged with disrupting public order. The defendants spoke to this:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>We say: killing is disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize. For the sake of that order we risk our liberty, our good name. The time is past when good men may be silent."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the future, perhaps not the very distant future, you will have opportunities, you will be invited, to participate in acts of civil disobedience which expose the evil of civil obedience, of going along to get along, of being silent in the face of blatant evil. When the time comes for you, will you be ready?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I know, we tend to think that such behavior is for a few specially called people, like the prophets of the Bible. Forgetting (rather conveniently, I guess) that Jesus blessed those who are persecuted for good behavior, and said that this was the experience "of the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5). I think he was saying, "My followers should expect to be like, and be treated like, the prophets who were before you." For us then, this could mean civil disobedience as it did for the prophets. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-57826792198756854302018-03-02T06:42:00.000-05:002018-03-02T06:42:13.226-05:00Daniel Berrigan -- Truth in Action<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (March 2, 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Dan Berrigan spoke truth and acted on it. I just finished reading AT PLAY IN THE LIONS' DEN -- A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan, by Jim Forest (Orbis, 2017), and want to resume this blog, after its month's siesta, with several reflections on Dan. Today, just a few pungent words from the press release Dan Berrigan and 8 friends wrote to explain their action of burning draft files.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On May 17, 1968, Berrigan and 8 others entered an office where draft records of men conscripted for the war on Vietnam were stored, carried out armfuls of them, and burned them in the parking lot. Why did they do this? Was this "destruction of property" justified? Let the following excerpt from their explanation inform your thinking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise."</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-77873773384224405642018-02-05T04:53:00.000-05:002018-02-05T04:53:38.344-05:00This Blog is taking a Rest<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (February 5, 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I will be traveling for the next month, so this blog will be silent until early March. Have a look at recent ones, be encouraged by voices which speak truth in our culture of deception and prevarication. </span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-44494738543258129962018-01-29T07:49:00.000-05:002018-01-29T07:53:23.132-05:00Bob Koehler--Co-creating a Culture of Peace<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"> In a column titled “The Illusion of Armed Salvation," Robert C. Koehler writes: <a href="http://commonwonders.com/the-illusion-of-armed-salvation/">(click here)</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>This time, the “the fire and the fury” of American mass murder erupted in church. Twenty-six people were killed, including children, one only 18 months old. [Sutherland Springs, Texas]</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>How do we stroke their memory? How do we move forward? This is bigger than gun control. We should begin, I think, by envisioning a world beyond mass murder: a world where rage and hatred are not armed and, indeed, where our most volatile emotions can find release long before they become lethal. …</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>Envisioning a world without mass murder — which means a world without war, waged either collectively or privately (with both types of war generating handsome profits for the weapons industry) — means envisioning a world where guns are not a precondition for empowerment and us vs. them isn’t society’s default setting.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>Guns are a symptom of society’s addiction to fear. And efforts to pass gun control legislation are continually on the political defensive, caught between the addicts and the profiteers.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>And thus, as the </i><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-1107-texas-killings-20171106-story.html"><span style="color: #5b634e; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>Baltimore Sun</i></span></a><i> noted: “If Kelley was eligible to buy a gun, it was only just barely. Yet even so he was able to buy not just any gun but a civilian version of a military assault rifle, designed not for hunting or self-defense but combat.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Where does Robert Koehler get the idea of “envisioning a world beyond mass murder—which means a world without war, waged either collectively or privately?” </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Or an idea like “The Wisdom of Mass Salvation,” which must surely be an alternative to the weapons of mass destruction? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Look at Bob here—a picture might be worth a thousand words. <a href="http://commonwonders.com/category/authors/">(click here)</a> What can I say—he looks like a man you can trust. And what is that worth?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Here’s the way he starts the essay introducing himself:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>Achievements and awards are the stuff of bios, but what seems more important to me is the fact that my great-nephew, Joey, then 5 years old, tore across the entire length of his parents’ kitchen with a look of wild glee in his eyes to say goodbye to me; I waited for him in a crouch, caught him full on, barely kept my balance. “Bye, Uncle Bob! I love you!” Wow, I think he meant it. All of which is to say, life itself is infinitely more precious than the masks we don or the monuments we build.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>I’m at a point in my life where the resumé I’ve spent a lifetime carving feels like such a damn mask I just don’t want to wear it anymore.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>What have I done that is equal to a child’s love? This question humbles me, and the only honest answer is that . . . I have tried to love beyond the edge of my own ego. I held my wife’s hand as she died. I hung in there with my teenage daughter after Barbara’s death, and — with the help of aunts, uncles, cousins, Grandma, countless friends — parented her toward her own luminous adulthood.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>In the midst of all that, I managed to scribble down a few million words, a small percentage of which found their way into public view and generated enough positive response to make me think they contributed something of worth to our collective struggle for understanding. I call myself a writer.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"> I like to think about what America would be like if our media were led, actually dominated, by people with that kind of attitude. I invite you to think about that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">For those who want a little more of Koehler now, read further from his bio:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>I’ve won awards for my writing: from the National Newspaper Association, Suburban Newspapers of America, the Chicago Headline Club and other organizations that bestow blessings on journalists. I’ve been called a hero of democracy and, oh yeah, been wished an inoperable brain tumor. I’ve trespassed, as a journo aiming at a mainstream audience, upon the sacred consensus that America is a dumbed down, spectator nation, yet somehow special, God’s Chosen Superpower, the greatest nation on Earth. Let’s get beyond our limited allegiances, I say, and celebrate our wholeness as a species and a planet.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>I’ve been called blatantly relevant.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>And I have proclaimed myself, ever since coming across the term at Transcend Media Service, a peace journalist.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>“Peace journalism is when editors and reporters make choices — about what to report, and how to report it — that create opportunities for society at large to consider and to value nonviolent responses to conflict.” — Jake Lynch</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>This idea is so deceptively simple, but unbelievably rare in the 24/7 mediastream that flushes through our lives, peddling horror and fear as though they were . . . sex. News and “entertainment” have lost much of their reflective component and become almost purely reactive. This is intensely troubling to me; the long-term social consequences can’t be good. For this reason, I embraced the concept of peace journalism kind of the way Joey slammed into his great uncle: breathlessly, with full-tilt enthusiasm. It became the lodestar of my maturity as a journalist, and so it remains.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>“Nonviolent response to conflict” is, simply put, the foundation of civilization, is it not? Conflict — between and among people, between species, with our planet and universe — is inevitable. Violent response belittles the conflict, shatters the complexity, perpetuates the problem, endangers the innocent and often blows up in our faces. But violence is an industry, shrouded in mythology and consensus. We’re stuck with it, apparently. To my mind, working to undo the mythology of violence is the most responsible act a writer can commit.</i></span><br />
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Robert C. Koehler, peace journalist. </span></div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-45989521555078643292018-01-26T12:39:00.000-05:002018-01-26T12:47:41.531-05:00Ajamu Baraka, The Black Alliance for Peace<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner -- January 26, 2018</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"> Ajamu Baraka is founder of “The Black Alliance for Peace.” Did you know there is such a thing? What do you think about the significance of such an alliance? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Here is Baraka writing under a title that would surprise all Americans and seriously shock most of them: “ Why We Must Protect the World From the United States.” But then I wonder, could you, or I, write a convincing refutation of what he says? What would our evidence be for such an argument? <a href="https://blackagendareport.com/why-we-must-protect-world-united-states">(Black Agenda Report)</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated the obvious: The United States was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. He also said the public allowing this violence would lead to a kind of national spiritual death that would continue to make the U.S. state a danger to the world.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>That spiritual death has not quite happened completely. Yet accepting the “inevitability” of violence and the necessity for waging war is now more deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness of individuals in the United States than it was 50 years ago when King warned of the deep malady of U.S. society. For most of the 21st century, the United States has been at war. Culturally, mass shootings, the wars on drugs and terror, violence and war as entertainment, livestreamed videos of horrendous police-executed murders as well as of a head of state being sodomized with a knife have resulted in what Henry Giroux refers to as a “culture of cruelty.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>But the very fact that the authorities need to lie to the people with fairy tales of the “responsibility to protect” in order to give moral coverage for the waging of war is an acknowledgement that they understand that there is enough humanity left with the public that it would reject U.S. warmongering if it was only seen as advancing narrow national interests.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>It is this remaining moral core—and the objective interests of the clear majority of the people to be in opposition to war—that provides the foundation for reviving the modern anti-war movement. …(more)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And here, Baraka on the U.S. role in one current horrendous war, in Yemen: <a href="https://www.ajamubaraka.com/blog/2017/11/21/the-ongoing-agony-of-the-obama-trump-war-on-the-people-of-yemen">(Ajamu Baraka blog)</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Ajamu Baraka, a Black voice for truth and peace in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-59672596852889010442018-01-23T08:41:00.000-05:002018-01-23T08:47:56.876-05:00William Barber and the Poor People's Campaign<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">“The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is uniting tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality. We need you to step up and join our efforts.” <a href="https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">https://poorpeoplescampaign.org</span></a> Click on this page, scroll down a little and watch the 3 minute video and read the “principles” of this campaign. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">This is the voice of the Rev. William Barber II and associates. His is a voice crying in the wilderness which we must hear. His call to “step up and join our efforts” goes out to all who ask “But what can I do?” I would say that all who fail to respond here should, for the sake of honesty, admit their defeat by the empire and prepare for disaster—if they know how to do that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Rev. Barber made his mark by leading the “Moral Mondays” movement in North Carolina. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">His Poor People’s Campaign takes up, 50 years later!, Martin Luther King’s campaign, which many people believe cost him his life at the hands of the Empire. Like King, Barber is naming “the war economy/militarism” as one of the great evils. Think about it, in your search for a viable political party, which one is naming war as a central part of the problem? </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">The Poor People’s Campaign quotes ML King: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y7ggwhon">(click here)</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution; that is a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a revolution of weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapon of warfare. Then there is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world. Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place and there is still the voice crying the vista of time saying, “Behold, I make all things new, former things are passed away”… Now whenever anything new comes into history it brings with it new challenges … and new opportunities … We are coming to Washington in a poor people’s campaign. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses … We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. We read one day: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists … We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that is signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic non-violent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>The triple revolution that Rev. Dr. King highlighted in this sermon emphasized: 1. a technological revolution, 2. a revolution of weaponry, and 3. a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion taking place all over the world. He argued that social transformation was not inevitable, arising solely out of the historic conditions, but rather needed the commitment, consciousness, capacity and connectedness of the “new and unsettling force” to build a credible and powerful campaign.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>The first gathering of over fifty multiracial organizations that came together with SCLC to join the Poor People’s Campaign, took place in Atlanta, Georgia in March 1968. Key leaders and organizations at this session included: Tom Hayden of the Newark Community Union, Reis Tijerina of the Federal Alliance of New Mexico, John Lewis of the Southern Regional Council, Myles Horton of the Highlander Center, Appalachian volunteers from Kentucky, welfare rights activists, California farm workers, and organized tenants. Rev. Dr. King addressed the session saying that it was the first meeting of that kind he had ever participated in. Indeed, meetings where leaders of different sections of the poor and dispossessed come together on the basis of their common needs and demands remain rare and politically taboo.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">Today we introduce the honest voice of Rev. William Barber and The Poor People’s Campaign.”</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-78327412211940392872018-01-19T06:34:00.001-05:002018-03-08T16:24:40.250-05:00Berry Friesen, Goodbye<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">IN MEMORIAM</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">BERRY FRIESEN</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Age 69</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Died January 17, 2018</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Berry died of renal cell carcinoma, but maybe too of grief for the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">He wrote this blog for several years, his last one in December, <a href="http://www.bible-and-empire.net/2017/12/christian-hope.html">here</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">His obituary is <a href="http://www.thegroffs.com/obituaries/Berry-Friesen/#!/Obituary">here</a>. But if the link no longer works, here is the text of the obit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">Berry Friesen, 69, of Lancaster, died on Wednesday, January 17, 2018 of advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma at Hospice & Community Care, Mount Joy.</span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">Berry was born in 1948 to the late John V. and Blondina (Blanche) Friesen in Mountain Lake, Minnesota. The third of three boys, he grew up on a farm in Cottonwood County where he tended chickens, swam in nearby lakes, and planted soybeans row by row with his dad. He met his future wife Sharon Klassen in Sunday school at Carson Mennonite Brethren Church where both families attended. </span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Sharon; his two daughters, Amber Friesen, married to Rehan Hanif of London, England, and Emily Burkholder, married to Guy Burkholder, III of Lancaster; six granddaughters, Saffiyah Friesen Hanif and Anna, Elena, Addie, Olivia and Clara Burkholder; and one brother, LeRoy Friesen. His brother, Marlyn Friesen, and nephew, Chad Friesen, predeceased him.</span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">Following graduation from Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas in 1970, Berry volunteered with Mennonite Central Committee as an alternative to the draft; he and Sharon spent three years in Jamaica (1970-1973) teaching in a local secondary school. Berry continued to teach after returning to the US, until deciding to pursue a law degree at the University of Minnesota, where he graduated Juris Doctor cum laude in 1979. After graduation Berry joined Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services where he spent ten years advocating for Native Americans, Hmong refugees, farmers, and families on social benefits, and also leading the Minnesota Family Farm Law Project. </span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">During those years in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Berry and Sharon had two daughters, Amber and Emily, and were active members of Faith Mennonite Church. He loved to play pickup basketball, sing and play his guitar, tease his girls, and watch the Minnesota Twins lose … and then win big. </span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">Berry left his legal career in 1989, in order to continue his work for social justice within a faith-based organization. The family moved to Lancaster where he worked for Mennonite Central Committee, first as Director of the U.S. Service Program (1989-1992) and then as MCC’s Director of Administration (1993-1997). </span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">From 1997 to 2007 Berry was the Executive Director of Pennsylvania Hunger Action Center, leading the advocacy organization’s work related to food security. In the years following he worked for several other non-profits, the last in 2016 when he was appointed President of the Nazareth Project, which supports health care and health education services in Nazareth. Berry resigned that position after receiving his cancer diagnosis.</span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">Berry spent his career working for people and causes he believed were important, and his passion for peace and justice infused his life. He was an avid reader, bird watcher, writer and blogger. He authored two books which have been published (“Water from Another Time” and “If Not Empire, What?”), many articles, opinion pieces and letters to the editor; prior to his death completed a third book written for his granddaughters titled “Believing in god”. Berry was committed to following the way of Jesus, and was an active member of East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster and also the 1040 For Peace organization. </span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">A memorial service will be held at East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church, 432 E. Chestnut Street in Lancaster, on Monday, January 22, 2018 at 10:30 a.m. The family will receive friends at East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church on Sunday, January 21, 2018 from 4:00–6:00 p.m. </span><br style="color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">In lieu of flowers, Berry would welcome donations to The Nazareth Project, </span><a href="http://www.nazarethproject.org/" style="background-position: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: rgb(25, 40, 154) !important; float: none; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; height: auto; line-height: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: static; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;" target="_blank" title="Click to open in a new window or tab">www.nazarethproject.org</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We remember him with admiration and appreciation, and give our condolence to his wife Sharon and children and grandchildren. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">—John K. Stoner</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-10020248601342276952018-01-16T06:52:00.001-05:002018-03-08T16:01:38.504-05:00Tom Engelhardt on The American Empire<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (January 16, 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Tom Engelhardt’s engaging smile on his home page is real. Why wouldn’t it be—his TomDispatch.com website </span> is described as "A Regular Antidote To the Mainstream Media."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/tom/">(click here)</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whose face wouldn't break into a smile if they knew they were providing such a needed public service?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica";">Tom is on my short list of trustworthy commentators. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">He is a Consulting Editor at Metropolitan Books, as well as co-founder and co-editor of Metropolitan's </span><a href="http://www.americanempireproject.com/" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The American Empire Project</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Today I introduce Tom Engelhardt via his last column for 2017 and his first for 2018. On December 21 Engelhardt wrote:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "helvetica" , "arial"; font-size: 30px; font-weight: bold;">The Most Dangerous Man on Earth: </span><strong style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", helvetica, arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Who Cares?</span></strong><strong style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman", helvetica, arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not Them, Not It, Not Him, Not (Evidently) Us </span></strong></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "helvetica" , "arial";"><b> <span style="font-size: large;"> </span></b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "helvetica" , "arial";">Let’s start with the universe and work our way in. Who cares? Not them because as far as we know</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "helvetica" , "arial";"> </span><em style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", helvetica, arial;">they</em><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "helvetica" , "arial";"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , "helvetica" , "arial";">aren’t there. As far as we know, no one exists in our galaxy or perhaps anywhere else but us (and the other creatures on this all-too-modest planet of ours). So don’t count on any aliens out there caring what happens to humanity. They won’t.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As for <em>it</em> -- Earth -- the planet itself can’t, of course, care, no matter what we do to it. And I’m sure it won’t be news to you that, when it comes to <em>him</em> -- and I mean, of course, President Donald J. Trump, who reputedly has a void where the normal quotient of human empathy might be -- don’t give it a second’s thought. Beyond himself, his businesses, and possibly (just possibly) his family, he clearly couldn’t give less of a damn about us or, for that matter, what happens to anyone after he departs this planet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As for <em>us</em>, the rest of us here in the United States at least, we already know something about the nature of our caring. A Yale study released last March indicated that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-attitudes-usa/climate-change-is-a-threat-but-it-wont-hurt-me-americans-say-idUSKBN168589" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">70% of us</a> -- a surprising but still less than overwhelming number (given the by-now-well-established apocalyptic dangers involved) -- believe that global warming is actually occurring. Less than half of us, however, expect to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/21/climate/how-americans-think-about-climate-change-in-six-maps.html" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">personally harmed</a> by it. So, to quote the eminently quotable <a href="https://media-exp2.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAKVAAAAJGI3MGE1NjdlLWE5MGUtNDU2NC1iZjBhLTM2ZTJhMDM2ZTIwZA.jpg" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Alfred E. Newman</a>, "What, me worry?" ....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Engelhardt goes on to help us to think about Donald Trump in context--as an expression of American character and Commander in Chief of the world's biggest military machine. This is help which we need, and I hope you will <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176367/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_most_dangerous_man_on_earth/#more">(read more).</a> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">On January 4 Engelhardt wrote: </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "helvetica" , "arial"; font-size: 30px; font-weight: bold;">Seeing Our Wars for the First Time: </span><span style="font-size: large;"><strong style="font-family: "Times New Roman", helvetica, arial;">Mapping a World From Hell ,,,</strong><strong style="font-family: "Times New Roman", helvetica, arial;">76 Countries Are Now Involved in Washington’s War on Terror </strong><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">He left Air Force Two behind and, unannounced, “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan/pence-visits-afghanistan-says-u-s-will-see-this-through-idUSKBN1EF2U3" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">shrouded in secrecy</a>,” flew on an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/world/asia/mike-pence-afghanistan.html" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">unmarked C-17</a> transport plane into Bagram Air Base, the largest American garrison in Afghanistan. All news of his visit was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pence-visits-troops-in-afghanistan-in-first-trip-to-a-war-zone/2017/12/21/eb14316a-e662-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.9d096256c4d3" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">embargoed</a> until an hour before he was to depart the country.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">More than 16 years after an American invasion “liberated” Afghanistan, he was there to offer some good news to a U.S. troop contingent once again <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2017/11/16/trump-surge-in-afghanistan-is-underway-as-14000-us-troops-are-now-in-afghanistan/" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">on the rise</a>. Before a 40-foot American flag, addressing 500 American troops, Vice President Mike Pence praised them as “the world’s greatest force for good,” boasted that American air strikes had recently been “dramatically increased,” swore that their country was “here to stay,” and <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/21/vice-president-mike-pence-makes-surprise-visit-to-afghanistan.html" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">insisted</a> that “victory is closer than ever before.” As an observer <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pence-visits-troops-in-afghanistan-in-first-trip-to-a-war-zone/2017/12/21/eb14316a-e662-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.9d096256c4d3" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">noted</a>, however, the response of his audience was “subdued.” (“Several troops stood with their arms crossed or their hands folded behind their backs and listened, but did not applaud.”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Think of this as but the latest episode in an upside down geopolitical fairy tale, a grim, rather than Grimm, story for our age that might begin: Once upon a time -- in October 2001, to be exact -- Washington launched its war on terror. There was then just one country targeted, the very one where, a little more than a decade earlier, the U.S. had ended a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175578/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson,_the_cia_and_a_blowback_world/" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">long proxy war</a> against the Soviet Union during which it had financed, armed, or backed an extreme set of Islamic fundamentalist groups, including a rich young Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">By 2001, in the wake of that war, which helped send the Soviet Union down the path to implosion, Afghanistan was largely (but not completely) ruled by the Taliban. Osama bin Laden was there, too, with a relatively modest crew of cohorts. By early 2002, he had fled to Pakistan, leaving many of his companions dead and his organization, al-Qaeda, in a state of disarray. The Taliban, defeated, were pleading to be allowed to put down their arms and go back to their villages, an abortive process that Anand Gopal vividly <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175837/" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">described</a> in his book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250069262/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><em>No Good Men Among the Living</em></a>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was, it seemed, all over but the cheering and, of course, the planning for yet greater exploits across the region. The top officials in the administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were geopolitical dreamers<strong> </strong>of the first order who couldn’t have had more expansive ideas about how to extend such success to -- as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld indicated <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1547561.stm" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">only days</a> after the 9/11 attacks -- terror or insurgent groups in more than 60 countries. It was a point President Bush would <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">reemphasize</a> nine months later in a triumphalist graduation speech at West Point. At that moment, the struggle they had quickly, if immodestly, dubbed the Global War on Terror was still a one-country affair. They were, however, already deep into preparations to extend it in ways more radical and devastating than they could ever have imagined with the invasion and occupation of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the domination<strong> </strong>of the oil heartlands of the planet that they were sure would follow. (In a comment that caught the moment exactly, <em>Newsweek</em> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/opinion/things-to-come.html" style="color: #9b3921; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">quoted</a> a British official "close to the Bush team" as saying, "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.") ...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">One simple question: where did Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, just a few days after 9/11, get the number 60 as the number of countries where the US would take the war against terror, and George Bush get the same number for a speech at West Point nine months later? (See the links to their speeches in the excerpt above.) To me this sounds like a prepared script. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: large;">Read Engelhardt's full column to help yourself be impressed at the beginning of 2018 that the US has now taken the "war on terror" to 76 countries. <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176369/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_seeing_our_wars_for_the_first_time/">(seeing our wars)</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Tom Engelhardt--a voice of truth. </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-87019155241044829922018-01-12T07:10:00.000-05:002018-01-12T07:14:08.960-05:00John Dear--Teacher of Nonviolence<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (January 12, 2018)</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"> We have all heard people say, “I don’t know who to trust, the media is so unreliable.” And that is a serious problem. But I wonder, are all of the people who are saying this making a serious effort to find reliable voices? I don’t see the evidence that they are.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">This has set me on a course to use some blog entries here to share with readers some of the voices I have found reliable over the years</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Last blog I shared John Dear’s essay “The Year of Nonviolence or Nonexistence.” John is in the Roman Catholic tradition, which has a mixed record on the embrace of Jesus message of nonviolent resistance to empire—actually more dark than light over the centuries. And the Jesuit Order to which John belonged for years saw fit to make his life so uncomfortable that he left it a few years ago. But John has remained firm in his witness. Here you can learn more about that. <a href="http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201402/breaking-ranks-john-dear-jesuits-and-working-peace-28522">Breaking Ranks</a> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">As a teacher and educator, John has written many books and articles. He now works with Pace et Bene (Peace and all good). You can educate yourself and help others understand the power of nonviolence by reading his writings. And learn about the nonviolence workshops taught around the country—these are a strong alternative to the apathy and despair into which people sink when they do nothing to act on their sense that something better must be done for our world. See John’s books and workshops here <a href="http://www.paceebene.org/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">http://www.paceebene.org</span></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">John Dear, a reliable voice. </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-12692148881812167252018-01-09T07:13:00.000-05:002018-01-09T07:24:54.193-05:00Year of Nonviolence or Nonexistence--John Dear<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(50, 51, 51); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #323333; font-family: "PT Serif"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">by John K. Stoner (January 9, 2018)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Rev. John Dear, a consistent and courageous peacemaker, wrote recently in <u>Common Dreams</u>, </span></div>
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<span style="color: #323333; font-family: "pt serif"; font-size: 17px;">“Sadly, in the same way that warnings of climate change have mostly been dismissed for decades, Dr. King’s stark framing of the pivotal choice before us—nonviolence or nonexistence—was steadfastly ignored over the past half-century as the United States lurched from another seven years of the Vietnam War to decades of war in Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other places, even as the violence of racial injustice, economic inequality, environmental destruction, nuclear proliferation, gun deaths, armed drones, and many other forms of violence spiraled out of control." </span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Today I introduce you to, or remind you of, John Dear and his call to active nonviolence as the road to peace and justice, rather than war and superior violence as the road to peace and justice, as advocated by the American empire. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There is a clear choice between these two ideas of how to make the world a better place. Nonviolence or nonexistence, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. framed the choice at the Riverside Church in New York in 1967, is the stark choice which faces us more dramatically in 2018 than ever before. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "pt serif" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Dear goes on to say, "Indeed, over these decades we have consistently opted for violence even as we have shunned the word “nonviolence,” as if it were the most dangerous word in the English language" </span></span><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/01/02/year-nonviolence-or-non-existence">(full article)</a>.<br />
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I invite you to read Dear's article, and to make a commitment in 2018 to act on the truths he and Martin Luther King have set before us.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-40269228946845018942018-01-05T07:22:00.000-05:002018-01-05T07:22:27.622-05:00Generals Speak on Human Flourishing<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (January 5, 2018)</span><div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I promised blogs about those who pursue the goal of peace with the methods of peace. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">But first, one more on how hard it is to believe that war will get us to peace. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here it is: How hard is it to believe, as the networks and millions of their viewers obviously do, that retired generals are a good source of wisdom and guidance on world affairs? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Having generals, active or retired, comment on world affairs makes as much sense as having slave owners comment on civil rights.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Would you believe it? Generals on human flourishing. Slave owners on human rights.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-62213158669109126562017-12-29T07:32:00.001-05:002017-12-29T08:09:13.930-05:00It's Hard to Believe that War and Lies Will Prevail<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (December 29, 2017)</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">On the cusp of year 2018 it is hard to believe that peace will prevail.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And yet, think about it—it’s even harder to believe that war and lies will prevail.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Put yourself in their shoes. First of all, they have to start by agreeing with us that peace is better than war. That’s big. They have to agree with us on the ultimate goal—the goal is peace. That’s at least half of the whole discussion, isn’t it? Is it better to have peace or to have war? Why, of course, it’s better to have peace. Ask the world’s millions of refugees and displaced persons—which is better, peace or war? Ask the world’s millions of injured, maimed and starving—which is better, peace or war? Ask the world’s millions of veterans—which is better, peace or war? I’d tell you to ask the world’s tens of millions of dead from war, if we could get them to speak: which would you have, peace or war? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So at least in talk, in public posture, in theory at least, they agree with us that peace is where we all want to be. They have to position and posture every plan and preparation and program of war as if it were serving our cause and our goal, which is peace. Or maybe, attributing less deceit to them, they believe that superior violence is more likely than risk-taking love and compassion to, not achieve peace, but mitigate evil and violence. <span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">We on the other hand, do not start by granting them half of the ground which is in dispute. We do not have to say, well, yes, peace is good, but we’ll give that up for now, we’ll accept war as good enough until we get to peace, where we really want to be. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Humanity, at this point in its brief history, is poised on a platform in a big dug well, or silo, with a ladder extending up to air and life, and a ladder extending down to water and drowning. Some people are saying we have to go up to get up, and others are saying we have to go down to get up. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">How hard is it to believe that the way to overcome evil and violence is with superior evil and violence?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Right after 9/11 George Bush the Lesser announced a war on evil in the world. And a war on violent terror. Look around at the nations destroyed since then—if you have any empathy beyond your own skin, you can see that it has not gone well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">There’s a familiar Bible story about this, the Great Flood and Noah (Genesis 6-8). It is usually badly interpreted, but here is its central message. The writer turns loose his imagination and depicts God looking down on the world, and God is deeply disappointed in humanity. God sees much evil and violence, “And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">So, comes the flood, everyone and everything destroyed except a handful of survivors on the ark. Afterward, “the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">So, we are told, as a result of the flood God had a change of mind about what to do about evil and violence in the world. God tried there to overcome evil and violence by killing all the bad ones, and apparently, by the writer’s interpretation, decided that it had not worked and another way of dealing with evil and violence would have to be found.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">You can read the whole Bible as a report on the search for an alternative to superior violence as a method of dealing with evil.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Bottom line: if you put yourself on the side of superior violence to deal with evil you disagree with that writer and his God—you refuse that ancient, basic learning, and you are back on the Dark Side, the Other Side, of that Flood, always trying to rerun it with success instead of failure. Not an easy project. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">A different approach is that marked by Jesus, and all of those before and since him, who choose the methods of peace to pursue the goal of peace. More on that in future blogs. </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-88609841555857342282017-12-26T08:33:00.000-05:002017-12-26T15:50:39.975-05:00On Earth Peace<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (December 26, 2017)</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“On earth peace” was the message of the angels to shepherds at the birth of Jesus, according to Luke. (Lk. 2:4)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>This puts peace at the center of the Christmas and Christian message.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>We should notice that the angels did not say “In Bethlehem peace” or “in Israel peace.” “On earth” includes the whole planet, to “the four corners of the earth” as the ancients sometimes put it. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If we know anything about the will of God, it is safe to say that peace is the will of God. If we asked the world’s millions of war refugees and displace persons, it’s a good bet they would agree that peace is the will of God, and an ever growing percentage of war veterans are saying the same thing. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The pursuit of peace by war as a method to get there has not been marked by great success. It has been said that no goal that is reached is ever better than the methods used to attain it. There is much empirical evidence for that. Put differently, those who claim that “the end justifies the means” have not proven, or persuaded all of us, that weapons of gradual and mass destruction, nuclear bombs, drones and weaponized space hold for us a great and comforting promise of peace. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Nevertheless, there is not a lie that is promoted with more energy, subtlety, nor sophistication than the lie that war will bring peace—or defeat evil. Americans live in the country that lives by that lie. Not the only country, but probably the one most exceptionally deluded, and determined to make this futility work. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But then there is Jesus. The most attractive and misrepresented figure in all of history. The one who said “love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The one whose kingship, or kingdom, or way of running the world, was altogether in this world, but as he said, “not of it.” HIs way of running the world did not start with the world’s delusional methods of homicidal violence and “pre-emptive war,” retribution, retaliation and vengeance. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jesus had a program to defeat evil, and it was to overcome evil with good. This has not been found impossible, but difficult and therefore left untried. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> A timely essay appeared yesterday. Naomi Klein and Opal Tometi wrote “Forget Coates vs. West— We all Have a Duty to Confront the Full Reach of US Empire.” <a href="http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/47543-focus-forget-coates-vs-west-we-all-have-a-duty-to-confront-the-full-reach-of-us-empire">(click here)</a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the time of Jesus there were religious people who collaborated with the Roman Empire, going along to get along. There are a lot of people like that in our empire today, and what is most astonishing, doing it in the name of Jesus! A more bizarre misrepresentation of Jesus could not be imagined. Promoting violence to make peace. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I hope you will read Klein and Tometi, and think with Jesus about how peace on earth might be possible. </span><span style="font-size: 17px;"> </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-58359171678392954902017-12-22T05:57:00.000-05:002017-12-22T06:34:42.590-05:00Christian Hopeby Berry Friesen (December 22, 2017)<br />
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Today I am blessed to celebrate birthday #69. Family will surround me, we will eat seafood and carrot cake. It will be a special day.<br />
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Then comes Christmas. I anticipate celebrating that day too. And I’m bringing this additional post to <b>If Not Empire, What?</b> in honor of and preparation for Christmas.<br />
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What is the hope of those of us who identify ourselves as Jesus-followers? What do we expect to happen when “the great day of the LORD” arrives in full?<br />
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A dozen years ago, I led a class in my local congregation on the content of "Christian hope." It was a good experience. Here are two of the questions we explored:<br />
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<i>"If the substance of Christian hope is the human eperience of living in the full presence of YHWH (a view I affirm), is this experience of YHWH manifest physically? Or is the experience of YHWH’s full presence only spiritual and conceptual?"</i></div>
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Jewish and Christian scripture strongly suggest that the physical creation as we know it (yes, only partially) is part of what YHWH saves in Messiah Jesus. Texts from <b>John</b> (3:17), <b>Romans</b> (8:19-22), <b>Colossians</b> (1:19-20), <b>Ephesians </b>(1:9-10) and the 21st chapter of <b>Revelation</b> bear witness to this. They assure us the salvation of YHWH reaches not only souls, but the physical world too—including our hybrid world of physicality and spirituality.<br />
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As <b>Revelation</b> puts it,<br />
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<i>“See, the home of YHWH is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them”</i> (21:3).<br />
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Hear these words from Romans 8:19-21:</div>
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<i style="text-align: center;"><i>"For the created universe waits with eager expectation for YHWH’s children to be revealed. It was made the victim of frustration . . . yet always there was hope, because the universe itself is to be freed from the shackles of mortality and enter upon the liberty and splendor of the children of YHWH.” </i></i></div>
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Not to be forgotten are the hybrid structures of authority so corrupted by sin and so dominating in our lives. Hear how the transformed "city of YHWH” is described in Revelation 21:24-26:<br />
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<i>“The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.</i></div>
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<i> Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. </i></div>
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<i> People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”</i></div>
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In other words, “the nations” also will be transformed. Western, Euro-Asian and Asian peoples will live together in peace; Persian, Semitic and African peoples too. Likewise the peoples of the Americas.<br />
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This too is the Christian hope. It was why the angels sang “hosannas” in the night skies over the fields of Bethlehem; it was why the shepherds left their posts in joyful abandon to see Jesus of Nazareth lying in such humble repose. It was because his birth and life “changed everything.”<br />
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There is so much more to say—things to remind us as followers of Jesus to expect this story of Earth and its inhabitants to end well. As we hear from the gospel of <b>John</b>,<br />
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<i> “YHWH did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, </i></div>
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<i>b</i><i>ut that the world might be saved through him.”</i> (3:17).</div>
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How then should we live? How do we endure the burdens of empire, the weight of its deceptions, the apparent inevitability of global warming, the galloping inequality sweeping through our world? Somehow, it all must be perceived through this lens of hope we have been given in Scripture.<br />
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May it be so! And may we join the shepherds in joyful anticipation!<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-55399517324735904632017-12-15T06:38:00.000-05:002017-12-15T06:43:21.730-05:00The Nuclear Family<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Of all the things for which Americans give their country a pass, claiming "exceptionalism," one of the most egregious is this nation’s history of use, threatened use, and stockpiling of insane numbers of nuclear weapons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">In my last blog I recommended an Advent reflection on the Holy Family in which we think of humanity as our family, and actually </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;">The Holy Family</span><span style="font-kerning: none;">. <a href="http://www.bible-and-empire.net/2017/12/the-holy-family.html">click here</a> If we thought of our fellow humans as the holy family we would not be at peace with our country’s use of nuclear weapons against them, and stockpiling thousands of weapons as a threat against them.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Last Sunday, December 10, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign Against Nuclear weapons. Did American media report that? The speeches of the two women recipients can be seen here. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2017/ican-lecture_en.html">click here</a> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">Today let us celebrate and give thanks for people of conscience who say "no" to the unconscionable in our world, and call the bluff of our ridiculous claims of exceptionalism. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">I will let Beatrice Fihn and Setsuko Thurlow, who received the prize, speak for themselves here in excerpts from their acceptance speeches. The link to their full speeches is above. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 14px;">Nobel Lecture given by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2017, ICAN, delivered by Beatrice Fihn and Setsuko Thurlow, Oslo, 10 December 2017.</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">[Beatrice Fihn:]</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>At dozens of locations around the world - in missile silos buried in our earth, on submarines navigating through our oceans, and aboard planes flying high in our sky - lie 15,000 objects of humankind's destruction.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>Perhaps it is the enormity of this fact, perhaps it is the unimaginable scale of the consequences, that leads many to simply accept this grim reality. To go about our daily lives with no thought to the instruments of insanity all around us.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: "helvetica";">For it is insanity to allow ourselves to be ruled by these weapons. Many critics of this movement suggest that we are the irrational ones, </span><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;">the idealists with no grounding in reality. That nuclear-armed states will never give up their weapons.</span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>But we represent the<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;"> only</span> rational choice. We represent those who refuse to accept nuclear weapons as a fixture in our world, those who refuse to have their fates bound up in a few lines of launch code.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ours is the only reality that is possible. The alternative is unthinkable.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>One of these things will happen. ...</i></span></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">[Setsuko Thurlow :]</span></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Your Majesties,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />My fellow campaigners, here and throughout the world,<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Ladies and gentlemen,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">It is a great privilege to accept this award, together with Beatrice, on behalf of all the remarkable human beings who form the ICAN movement. You each give me such tremendous hope that we can - and will - bring the era of nuclear weapons to an end.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">I speak as a member of the family of hibakusha - those of us who, by some miraculous chance, survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For more than seven decades, we have worked for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">We have stood in solidarity with those harmed by the production and testing of these horrific weapons around the world. People from places with long-forgotten names, like Moruroa, Ekker, Semipalatinsk, Maralinga, Bikini. People whose lands and seas were irradiated, whose bodies were experimented upon, whose cultures were forever disrupted.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">We were not content to be victims. We refused to wait for an immediate fiery end or the slow poisoning of our world. We refused to sit idly in terror as the so-called great powers took us past nuclear dusk and brought us recklessly close to nuclear midnight. We rose up. We shared our stories of survival. We said: humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Today, I want you to feel in this hall the presence of all those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want you to feel, above and around us, a great cloud of a quarter million souls. Each person had a name. Each person was loved by someone. Let us ensure that their deaths were not in vain.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">I was just 13 years old when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb, on my city Hiroshima. I still vividly remember that morning. At 8:15, I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window. I remember having the sensation of floating in the air. ...</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "open sans" , sans-serif;">There is much here to think about. I invite you to think about it. </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12886742015394327859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2990991178749505824.post-28910410237631544922017-12-07T06:45:00.000-05:002017-12-07T06:47:50.023-05:00The Holy Family<span style="font-size: large;">by John K. Stoner (December 7, 2017)</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">During Advent you will see pictures or creche depictions of The Holy Family—the Child Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Today I ask, “Might the human family be thought of as a, or the, holy family?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A family may be called a small community. It is the first community which most of us know, and the social unit bigger than ourselves in which most of us grow up. The family sustains our life with food, clothing and shelter, and teaches us something of how to live in the world. That makes it a very important piece of community. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the family, if we are reasonably fortunate, we learn to cooperate enough to survive, and if we are more fortunate, even to thrive. But there are, sadly, many broken and dysfunctional families, and children raised in these situations may struggle throughout life to recover what they never had as infants or youth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The message of Christmas is that in Jesus God came into the world in a special way to live in and among humans. I understand </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">the teaching of Jesus to be that God dwells in all of us in a fashion similar to how he, or we, claim that God dwelled in Jesus. Repeatedly he challenged his peers to see God in their neighbors, and even enemies. That is a radical concept!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">It implies, or clearly teaches, that God is to be found in human beings, not to be sought in a far off heaven. And it means that what we do to one another, we do to God.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is the most clear and profound reason for treating all human life as sacred, and refusing ever to commit homicide—to kill a human. As created children of God we are all siblings, which makes all homicide fratricide. As the place where God dwells, all people are small expressions of God, which makes all homicide deicide—the killing of deity. Jesus, looking at a child, said, “Whoever welcomes this child welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes my Father who sent me” (Luke 9:48). So the reality is, whoever thought they were killing their enemy were killing their brother, sister, and God. People who kill people experience not just PTSD, but moral injury, because they have violated a truth of the universe which is written indelibly into their moral DNA. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In today’s blog I am drawing out implications of the first blog in this series, </span><a href="http://www.bible-and-empire.net/2017/10/communities-of-nonviolence.html" style="font-family: -webkit-standard;">Communities of Nonviolence</a>. There I discussed the possibility of choosing to belong to a community which nurtures you in the understanding and practice of your better rather than your worse impulses and possibilities. This is no small thing, because we become what we choose one day after another. </div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">So at this advent, let’s think in the big picture. What if we made the human family our holy family, and sought to value the larger circle of our relationships in a manner similar to our value of the close ones? </span></div>
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