Shameful and outrageous.
It’s popular these days to talk about food and justice in terms of local foods and fair trade and animal welfare. But how much of the food on our plates is coming to us from hands that have wiped away many tears over vile and violent abuse?
Sandy Brown of the Swanton Berry Farm in California says this: “When people ask about food justice, I tell them, ‘you have to go contact your Congress[person] about immigration.’”
For all of you who have been following the Anglican shenanigans in the past months: In an interesting turn of events, Bishop Todd Hunter has decided to bring his church planting network, C4SO (Church for the Sake of Others) into ACNA, rather than following TheAM into the Congo.
I think Rachel Held Evans is right on in this blog post. Thoughts?
My generation is tired of the culture wars.
We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.
And when it comes to homosexuality, we no longer think in the black-at-white categories of the generations before ours. We know too many wonderful people from the LGBT community to consider homosexuality a mere “issue.” These are people, and they are our friends. When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen. And Amendment One hurts like hell.
Regardless of whether you identify most with Side A or Side B, (or with one of the many variations within those two broad categories), it should be clear that amendments like these needlessly offend gays and lesbians, damage the reputation of Christians, and further alienate young adults—both Christians and non-Christian—from the Church.
So my question for those evangelicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it?
via Rachel Held Evans | How to win a culture war and lose a generation.
There aren’t many books out there that give instructions about how to shrink your church — in fact, usually we think a shrinking church = a dying church. Tim Suttle’s article, despite painting with some rather broad strokes, makes some excellent points.
Success is a slippery subject when it comes to the Church. That our ultimate picture of success is a crucified Messiah means any conversation about success will be incompatible with a “bigger is better” mentality. Yet, bigger and better is exactly what most churches seem to be pursuing these days: a pursuit which typically comes in the form of sentimentality and pragmatism.
Sentimentality and pragmatism are the one-two punch which has the American Church on the ropes, while a generation of church leaders acquiesces to the demands of our consumer culture. The demands are simple: tell me something that will make me feel better sentimentality for the churchgoer, and tell me something that will work pragmatism for the church leader. Yet it is not clear how either one of those are part of what it means to be the church.
I especially appreciate that he calls out the “new niche industry” that he calls “the Church Leadership Culture” — dead on.
via Tim Suttle: How to Shrink Your Church.
HA! I love SNL, I really do. This past Saturday, the cold open featured a parody of “Fox and Friends” (a Fox News Show). The whole thing was priceless, but I particularly loved the list of “corrections” — they fly by so fast, I just had to look them up on the good ol’ internets. Laugh out loud worthy, IMO. Which ones are your favorites?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LIST OF FOX & FRIENDS ERRORS ON SNL:1
• There are currently no bills before the House that would require a woman to have a transvaginal ultrasound before buying sunglasses.
• The Taliban is not producing a cereal called “Honey Bunches of Goats.”
• Kirk Cameron is not the voice of Siri.
• Miss America is not third in the order of succession for the Presidency, nor is Miss Teen USA fourth.
• Airplanes do not fly by flapping their wings.
• Patricia Heaton did not win a Nobel Prize for her work on “Everybody Loves Raymond.”
• Hail consists of frozen water; it is not “made of sins.”
• President Obama does not plan to take the forwarding option away from e-mail.
• Disney World is not planning to add Rush Limbaugh to their Hall of Presidents.
• Nowhere in the Bible does it mention Garth Brooks or Chris Gaines.
• Turtles do not have “tiny TV’s and sofa beds” inside their shells.
• Pete Rose did not receive a lifetime ban from the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
• “National Treasure” is not a documentary even though it feels very real.
• Wisconsin is an American state and not “just a bit.”
• Mormons breathe air.
• Horses do not have “teeth so sharp you wouldn’t even believe it.”
• Children raised by same-sex couples are not statistically more likely to let the American flag touch the ground,
• “Psych” is a popular detective show on the USA Network, not a super-secret NASA Mind experiment.
• It takes more than five to six months of medical school to become a surgeon.
• Sour Patch Kids are a snack food and therefore physically incapable of pulling a knife on someone.
• Congress has not declared a war on jean shorts.
• It is unlikely that Fareed Zakaria is Willem Defoe in character.1
• Babies tend to like hugs.
• It is not illegal to discard a Christmas tree.
• John Wilkes Booth was not wearing a hooded sweatshirt when he shot President Lincoln, nor were the Lincoln’s attending a staging of “The Vagina Monologues.”
• There is no federal program called “Cash for Bees.”
• You do not need a spaceship to get to China.
• The Watergate is a hotel in Washington D.C., not a portal to an undersea kingdom.
• The new World Trade Center does not transform into a karate robot.
• Seeing-eye dogs are neither able to nor allowed to drive.
• It is likely that immigrants do not feed on the blood of our cattle at night while we are all sleeping.
• Baseball is a land sport.
• It is widely accepted that ears are used for hearing.
via That Hilarious List of Corrections from SNL’s ‘Fox & Friends’ Sketch.
Fascinating! I hope we can recapture the sense of unity implied in this article.
Cinco de Mayo — the unofficial U.S. holiday long believed to have been imported, with celebratory beer, from Mexico — isn’t a Mexican holiday at all but rather an American one created by Latinos in the West during the Civil War, according to new research by a California professor.
via Cinco de Mayo a Mexican import? No, its as American as July 4, prof says – CNN.com.
I don’t even know what to say about this story, except that it makes me sad and makes me wonder.
Love this.
More info: http://www.stayclassy.org/events/build-future-50k-50-days/e16054
For all who struggle…
He asks me if I would really do it? Give away all the pain if I could.
And I sit silent and still. Waiting, trying to honor the question.
Would I really give it away?
When it’s quiet I can almost feel it, the deep sorrow curling slow and steady in my stomach’s bottom, up into my chest cavity, through my heart. I want to breathe thorough. Burrowed down Yoga breath.
But I am weeping, leaking soundless tears into my rose blush,mixing a face palette of brown skin, black mascara. Are teardrops really the color of fresh water?
“It is so hard.” my voice fractures slight, like my heart keeps doing.
Enough to undo me.
“So hard…but I have this odd feeling…”
Read the whole thing, please.
via Would You Give Away Your Pain? (On Spiritual Direction).
As some of you may have heard, AMiA published a communique yesterday, announcing that they have been granted residence in the Anglican Church of the Congo. They are no longer free-floating agents — that’s the good news.
But at the same time, I think this news should deeply sadden us. The Congo [formerly Zaire] was at one point in the same Anglican province as Rwanda! It saddens me that the AMiA bishops, whom I love, consider “reconciliation” with Rwanda as friendly separation. It saddens me that these godly men can on the one hand talk about the need for AMiA to not be governed by “remote control” (i.e. by Rwanda), but on the other hand to turn to one of Rwanda’s neighbors for spiritual covering. Granted, I don’t know all the details — but with this latest move, the situation seems clear to me.
Lord, have mercy.
I don’t agree with all of the the negative rhetoric in this article, but I do agree with the basic premise:
