first quote on the back of a book jacket that made me buy it without even cracking open the cover: "The Left mocks the Right. The Right knows it's right. Two ugly traits. How far should we go to try to understand each other's point of view? Maybe the distance grace covered on the cross is a clue." Bono, naturally. Desmond Tutu & Cornell West are on the jacket as well. So far, a great read. God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get it, by Jim Wallis. apparently he heads up Sojourners magazine, which i haven't read yet, and Call to Renewal, which I've heard good things about.
i suppose most of you who have interest in this topic have already read this, but it's fresh for me. nice to see someone with a national audience addressing issues that have been rattling around in my head and heart for a while. my dad and the ann arbor vineyard have been thoughtfully tackling these issues (ie, how to keep Jesus and his church from becoming a political tool, how to keep the church from being ideologically predictable or a loyal partisan, and most specifically loving across the political divide) for the last number of months.
not long ago a friend shared about someone close to her whose spiritual life has been in a tailspin triggered when his church's pastor announced during a sermon that Christians had a moral obligation to vote for Bush, and that he couldn't consider himself a true Christian if he voted for Kerry. as sincere and well-intentioned as that pastor may have been, i can't help but think that a sober reading of Exodus 20:7 would suggest such sentiments are better expressed with a great deal more caution and even equivocalness. (is that even a word, and if so, the right word? i'm not entirely sure. hopefully, you catch my drift, assuming, of course, it's a drift worth catching. which it very well might not be.)
5 comments:
that sounds like a cool book! i'll have to check it out... [of course, the right mocks the left like there's no tomorrow (Rush Limbaugh), and i'm sure the left believes it's *truly* in the right (haven't heard much self-doubt or self-critique from the likes of Al Franken or Michael Moore)]. but i love that quote, and the reference to the cross... way to go Bono!
Hey Jesse this is grace! I'm at school so I've got to go.
hey, time for a new entry!
i looked it up... "equivocality" and "equivocalness" are both correct forms of the noun... nice work. i would have guessed that the former was correct, but not the latter.
Checked out the Sojourners website. Pretty interesting. They started out in the early 70's and went through a phase where they formed a community with a common purse, then morphed to an intentional community living by a common set of life principles, which seemed to have dissolved somewhere along the way. It's fascinating to me how every "common purse" community I know of (four now) started in the early 70's.
interesting observation. certainly i'm familiar with the one i grew up in, and the sojourners would be a second. which other common purse communities are you familiar with originating in the 70's?
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