Progressive Politics Update

This blog has seen some very long posts recently, and I apologize to those who are turned off by a deluge of words. In the future, I hope to keep my posts to a more decent length. I will be unable to blog much this weekend, since my wife and I will be on a camping trip in Pennsylvania. So for now I wish to point people to a couple sites that Chris, a friend here at PTS, showed me recently.

First of all, however, I highly recommend listening to the interview with George Hunsinger on the theology and politics of Karl Barth and Hunsinger's current theo-political campaign against torture. Dr. Hunsinger is a great theologian, a passionate pastor in the PCUSA, and now he's fighting to end torture and make this world a more humane place in light of the gospel. The church needs to stand by his side.

The first is truthout and the second is Common Dreams. Truthout.org has a great mailing feature that sends a compilation of recent important articles from various news sources to your e-mail inbox. Common Dreams has a nice index of all the most useful and important news sources, similar to what you find at the Drudge Report.

All of the articles are interesting, but a couple are especially noteworthy. The first is at Common Dreams, and it is a scathing op-ed piece from the Daytona Beach New-Journal Online regarding the Religious Right/pop-evangelical pursuit of political power in the United States. Gregory Boyd, made famous in the NYTimes article, is presented quite positively. One serious question from both articles on evangelicals is what kind of relation to politics should Christians have, between the extreme poles of theocracy and quietism? My short answer is that because our loyalty is to Christ and the church alone, our Christian voice should be a prophetic one, a voice which views no party and no ideology as God's own but rather places all platforms and positions under the lordship of Christ.

The second article is a stunning bit of news: "Half the population still believes in WMDs." If you needed more evidence that we live in a nation of self-deluded fools, look no further.

Finally, in the wake of seeing An Inconvenient Truth, I wish to commend the environmental articles at truthout.org.

Comments

byron smith said…
Did you enjoy An Inconvenient Truth? I'd love to see a review as I've always appreciated your take on films.
I believe, if I am not mistaken, that you left a comment on my review that I posted a few weeks ago. Granted, it was more of a sermon than a review, but sometimes I just can't help myself. :)
Anonymous said…
David,

Personally, I haven't been put off by the long posts -- I've been reading them with great interest. I have no idea where you find the time to write them all, but I'm enjoying them rather a lot. So don't write shorter posts on my account. :)

-Mike Harrel