Beatitudes Blog

Glimpses of the Reign of God

Submitted by Richard Burden on November 20, 2008 - 3:35pm.

http://www.playingforchange.com/

Moral Leadership = Being Vulnerable + Getting Into Trouble

Submitted by Richard Burden on October 22, 2008 - 6:17pm.

This past weekend at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies in The Episcopal Church, gave a phenomenal sermon on Matthew 22:15-22. You can read the whole sermon here

Here's a taste

God requires us to act. We are called by our baptism to be moral leaders. We are required to go beyond moral authority and into the acts of moral leadership. To be a moral person, to be a moral Christian, a moral Episcopalian, to then to act on that moral authority and take moral leadership, requires sometimes, and more often than not, that we get into trouble, not stay out of trouble as the passive interpretation of morality would have us do (a moral person stays out of trouble). That is the way of the cross.
It is from Jesus, a servant leader, a troublemaker, that we take our moral leadership direction. And if we follow it, if we keep our baptismal promises, we are willingly vulnerable and we will get into trouble.

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Who lost the debate? We ALL did.

Submitted by Richard Burden on October 5, 2008 - 3:18pm.

Mary E. Hunt, a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER), and occasionally blogs over at Religious Dispatches, offers her assessment of a debate "in which the bar was set so low as to be subterranean, [and] values-related issues were almost entirely ignored." It's a substantial take on the confection that passes for political discourse these days. Read the whole essay here.

Below are some highlights.

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This Present Darkness—Preacher's Post addendum

Submitted by Richard Burden on September 25, 2008 - 3:37pm.

One of my favorite commentators on life in this modern world and the reign of God, David Dark, reminds us that we've been here before—Steinbeck, Wink, etc.

Check out this chilling passage he offers from "The Grapes of Wrath" in light of our present financial darkness. Then bookmark his blog!

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Doesn't everyone love HAT?

Submitted by Richard Burden on September 23, 2008 - 2:17pm.

I love HAT who blogs over at nothing but HAT's. HAT asks hard, graceful questions. HAT offers poetic, meditations on lived theology that force me to face, and help me to rethink, what it means to live as a follower of Christ in this world.

Here's a recent item from the HATbox that I found particularly troubling/helpful to meditate on in the supercharged, partisan atmosphere that we inhale minute by minute. Thanks to HAT for allowing me to cross-post this. Blessed is HAT.

Doesn't everybody love HAT?

Today, I am my own enemy. Actually, I was reminded that I could very well be someone else's enemy. Me? Enemy? I love all peoples! Ah, but what if other people find it hard to love me?

I wondered: who stays up at night hating me with every fiber of their being? Who in their right minds (or wrong minds) is thinking that I'm the enemy that needs their love? Who finds it difficult to love me? Who wants to read me I Cor 13, citing passages about unconditional love because they dislike me so much?

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It's not that easy being...

Submitted by Richard Burden on September 11, 2008 - 2:18pm.

Jean Fitzpatrick, over at the Episcopal Cafe (Daily Episcopalian), offers a nice meditation on being a "liberal religious voter," and the difference between being an LRV and what she, following Andrew Sullivan, calls "a Christianists." "The view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda."

It reminds me of the distinction Diana Butler Bass has made between "generative" and "militant" Christians.

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Green Jobs Now—Are You Ready?

Submitted by Richard Burden on September 5, 2008 - 2:33pm.

Here's a great opportunity that I would commend to each of our chapters, and/or our parishes. It's simple to join and create a Green Jobs Now action in your area. Follow this link for more information.

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Decoding Politics

Submitted by Richard Burden on August 22, 2008 - 3:40pm.

"Politics: (n.) A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."—Ambrose Bierce.

The Pew Forum has new research that says "Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics."

This summer, I had a conversation with a clergy person who said that when people complained that there was too much politics in the sermon that it was code for "I disagree with what you said." And rather than being the start to a conversation, claiming a sermon is too political is a way of shutting down discussion. I guess because we don't discuss politics in polite company?

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You gotta serve somebody

Submitted by Richard Burden on August 21, 2008 - 4:12pm.

The good people over at Orion Magazine have asked several climate change experts to weigh-in on how they have personally been affected—call it eco-witness (?).

My favorite is the piece by Carl Safina called The Moral Climate

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Summer Fellowship: Connecting the (Green) Dots

Submitted by Richard Burden on August 6, 2008 - 11:27pm.

Every time I start talking about Green-Collar Jobs, it doesn’t take long before I start channeling Van Jones, one of the founders of the Ella Baker Center and now executive director of Green for All, the organization that does nationally what the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign does for California. Green-collar jobs is an attempt to view and treat the problems of poverty and the environmental crisis as deeply related issues. This might be a new paradigm for policy work, but it is ancient theology. Jeremiah links exile and environmental collapse as the consequences of idolatry and sin,[See, Northcott, Michael S. A Moral Climate: The Ethics of Global Warming (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2007)] as does Hosea (Hosea 4:1-3).

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