The Unbelieving Future of Christian Faith
Adherence to doctrine has long been a marker of faith among Christians. But what do the creeds and fine distinctions of theological argument have to do with commitment to justice?
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Anachronistic Arrogance: How Scorning Our Intellectual Mothers and Fathers Makes Us Real Dumb Real Fast
We might be tempted to dismiss the entire legacy of an artist or thinker whose political position or moral beliefs do not accord with our own enlightened views. We forget that we, like they, are products of an age—and that what we are throwing away might be worth far more than the pieties we cling to.
Read MoreDebt Peonage Update: Making Home Unaffordable
Mortgage companies, the New York Times reports, make money by keeping people in delinquency. In this way, the minorities who were targeted for subprime loans in the first place are being exploited a second time.
Read MoreSpecial Interests are Not “Ideas”: Moral Lessons from the Health Care Reform Factory
Politics at this level is a blood sport, not a seminar, and the president seems a bit behind on his combat training.
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“God Needs You To Get Out of the Bubble”: Riverside Controversy Exposes Theological, Racial Fault Lines of the Christian Progressive Movement
What does it mean that Rhodes Scholar and Progressive Evangelical Brad Braxton resigned as senior pastor of the influential Riverside Church? In this discussion over the implications, a reverend and a scholar ask whether multiracial churches require making white people comfortable, why God needs liberal protestants to get out of the bubble, and what the future holds for the mainline church as a whole.
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Economy Yields Too Few Prophets
Few mainstream journalists are truly capturing the reality of the economy in terms of the nation’s worst off. As of last month, the actual number of workers in crisis is not the 14 million but more like 29 million, or 18 percent of the total workforce. Where are the religious coalitions willing to challenge the president’s policies?
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Respectability and Its Discontents: Missing the Louche, Loud, and Lovely World of Sexual Outlawry
In this meditation on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots an ordained minister, while eulogizing his own outlawry, notes that God’s goodness is evident in the way in which new and seriously maladjusted queer youth are still rising up to bring new energy and edge to the movement.
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Gordon Gekko Gets God: The Heritage Foundation of Theology
Even after the “revelation” that letting unregulated moneymen run the country isn’t a good idea, the neoliberals at the Heritage Foundation are still churning out the message; like the latest book by “theologian” Jay W. Richards, Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution And Not the Problem.
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I Owe, Therefore I Am: Why Struggling Against the Banks is a Holy Obligation
When we take the approach that “all are sinners,” we confuse big-time criminality with small-time folly. This moral obfuscation allows the far greater misfeasance of corporate creditors to get airbrushed out of the picture.
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RDPulpit: No Time for Lukewarm Economic Reform
New dimensions of criminality and injustice in the world of finance are revealed every day. So why are religious progressives—who know a thing or two about revelation—still posing, equivocating, and trimming around the edges while poor people suffer at the hands of a predator elite?
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