Showing posts with label Public theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public theology. Show all posts

Monday, August 19, 2019

Public Theology - The end of nation states



The end of nation states

Indeed, government’s role in the world has already changed. The nation-state is not as important as it used to be. No longer are the nation-states islands unto themselves; today we truly live in a global age where ideas, people, capital, and technology flow freely across borders. Entrepreneurs view problems in the aggregate and will source labor from the best available minds, regardless of where people are physically. Nation-states, however, tend to limit themselves to the talent within their own borders.

Jain, Naveen. Moonshots : Creating a World of Abundance (p. 200). John August Media, LLC. 

John Lennon’s dream in his song Imagine is coming true. The importance of nation states is on the decline as transnational corporations and entrepreneurs puruse their transnational goals of serving humanity to make money.

Teihard de Chardin saw this in his evolutionary vision of humankind moving from Alpha to Omega with the development of the “noosphere.” There is a diminishment of tribal and national identities as humanity increasingly recognizes and acknowledges and works to enhance its common bond and soul.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of existence as well as the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.


Sunday, August 18, 2019

Public theology - Trump and the evangelicals


From The Washington Post on 08/14/19, "In God's Country" by Elizabeth Bruenig.

Exit polls show that Trump carried 85 percent of evangelical voters here (Texas) in 2016, a touch higher than the national white evangelical average of 81 percent. That in itself wasn’t surprising: For decades, evangelicals have been a reliable Republican constituency.

.....

Theories about Trump’s connection with evangelical voters have long been dubiously elegant. The simplest, and perhaps most comfortable for Trump’s bewildered and furious opposition, is that evangelicals are and always were hypocrites, demanding moral rectitude from their enemies that they don’t expect from their friends. Others held that evangelicals must simply be ignorant, taken in by a campaign narrative that attempted to depict Trump as privately devoted to Christ, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Some argued that evangelicals just wanted an invincible champion to fight the culture wars, even if he didn’t share their vision of the good life. And then there was the transactional theory: Their votes were just about the Supreme Court.

There was probably some truth to every suggestion, with all the usual caveats about different individuals having different priorities, and all due distinctions made between the committedly vs. casually religious. But as 2020 approaches and evangelicals again find themselves evaluating against traditional, moderate Democrats such as Joe Biden and the ever-present possibility of just staying home, I wanted to ask evangelicals how they’re feeling about their alliance with the president and what their expectations are going into 2020.

Editor's note:

It appears that Evangelicals have sold their souls to the devil for the transactional benefit of a authortarian willingness by Trump to protect their values. Christians did the same thing in Nazi Germany with Hitler and became complicit in the hollocaust.

What evangelicals and Trump have in common is a shared belief in their victimization by the liberal values of others who want to deprive them of Christmas with "Happy Holidays."

Evangelicals while they claim to love Jesus and His message of loving one's enemies, they admire Trump's pugilistic and vengeful attack on those who he perceives as not paying homage to his superior ego.

Trump is very egotistical and narcissitic and attacks anyone and anything that does not agree with his estimation of himself. Evangelicals operate from this same mindset and in that commonality they have found each other and have become mutually supportive. Evangelicals fervently believe that they are saved and everyone else is going to hell who has not accepted their belief and become "born again."

Bruenig predicts that evangelicals will support Trump again in 2020 and see their support of him as a holy war, a jihad of sorts, against their perceived mutual enemies.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Public theology - Is the US in need of a spiritual revolution?


People have a remarkable capacity to bring themselves into conformity with opinions that are clearly contrary to the evidence, if it reduces social dissonance. To do otherwise would rock the boat, expose the fact that the emperor has no clothes. (As we used to joke, you can fool some of the people all the time—and that’s our target market!)

Jain, Naveen. Moonshots : Creating a World of Abundance (p. 86). John August Media, LLC.

It is a psychological fact that perception is reality for most people. However, Jain misses the observation about what influences our perception, and the answer to that is our beliefs.

As Flip Wilson used to say in his Geraldine routine, "Honey, what you see is what you get!" Or better said, "Honey, what you think you see is what you get!"

This, of course, leads to the idea of bias and prejudice which we are confronting as a nation with Black Lives Matter and the xenophobia, racism, and mysogony coming from the highest office in our country, and being acted out in our communities every day with horrific consequences decreasing significantly the quality of life in our communties and country.

If there to be a moonshot that would eliminate the xenophobia, racism, and mysgogony in our country what might it be?

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership fascilitating nonviolent civil disobedience, based on love for our enemies, worked somewhat in the US in gettng rid of the Jim Crow laws in our Southern States in the 50s and 60s as it did for Gandhi in India in throwing off British colonialism.

What would be a moonshot in our current time to overcome Trumpism?

It seems to me that we would utlitmately have to change people's belief systems about separation, isolation, othering, and encourage people to look for their problems within rather than without. What we need is a spiritual revolution in the US if we are going to signicantly make headway in what I think of as a spritiual sickness. We can coerce people's poltical behavior by criminalizing it but criminalizing behavior does not necessarily lead to a postive corrective spiritual change.

The moonshot that could bring about a spiritual revolution is our country is the spread of the covenantal relationship of Unitarian Universalism which is based on our seven principles. UUs are lousy marketers and operate on the idea of attraction rather than marketing.

The other big problem is that UUs are not aware of the goldmine they are sitting on. If we uncovered the shade over our lamp, we could significantly help the world. Can we find ways to let out little light shine?

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Public Theology - Is America a "mean" nation?

Rev. Peter House gave a sermon well worth listening to entitled, "A Mean Nation" at First Universalist Church of Rochester, NY on 07/28/19.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Public theology - Catholic protesters arrested at capitol on 07/181/9 protesting degrading human conditions at the border.



Unitarian Universalists convenant together to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.

Some of us are Roman Catholic Unitarian Universalists and are proud of people of faith who are standing up for the racist and xenophoic policies of the Trump Administration.

Public theology - Is Mike Pence as bigoted as Donald Trump?

This is the first article in a new feature on UU A Way Of Life being tagged "public theology."

AS PART OF his annual commencement speech tour, Vice President Mike Pence warned graduates at Christian colleges such as Liberty University that they would be “shunned or ridiculed for defending the teachings of the Bible” and adherence to “traditional Christian beliefs.” As an example, Pence cited the backlash he and his wife, Karen Pence, received after she took a job at Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Va., a private Christian school that bans LGBT employees and students and the children of gay parents.
What the vice president and many like him are describing, however, is not an infringement of their rights or persecution, but theological disagreement and different beliefs that are as protected as their own. While the Constitution protects their right to choose their religion and how to practice their beliefs, the Constitution does not protect against theological or philosophical disagreements.
Pence’s assertion that his rights are being infringed upon ignores the historical understanding of the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. The First Amendment protects my Judaism just as it protects another’s Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or atheism.
From Jack Moline, Mike Pence Is Wrong, Sojourners, August, 2019
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
Mike Pence's bigotry is another example of how evangelicals have lost their way and no longer follow the teachings of Jesus. Mike Pence's religious bigotry is also another example of how his thought processes align with Donald Trump's racism. Both men manifest significantly prejudiced behavior.
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