Friday, September 06, 2002

Iraq - FaithandValues.com From Faith and Values.com - Denominational Releases on the U.S. discussions about waging war on Iraq: Denominational Responses Central Committee 'profoundly concerned' about US threats of violence against Iraq September 2, 2002 - Amid a series of comments on world trouble spots, the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) expressed "concern and alarm" Monday (2 September) about United States aims to overthrow the government of Iraq. more... WCC calls on Iraq to respect UN, expresses alarm at US military stance September 2, 2002 - The World Council of Churches called on the United States to desist from military threats against Iraq and on Baghdad to respect United Nations Security Council resolutions, including demands that it destroy all weapons of mass destruction and that it co-operate fully with UN inspectors. more... A call to stop the rush to war August 30, 2002 - The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches has issued a statement calling for a stop to the U.S. government's plans to attack Iraq. more... A call to stop the rush to war August 30, 2002 - As representatives and participants from the United States, British and Canadian churches meeting at the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, we have heard and share the concern of those of other nations about the apparent drift towards military confrontation in Iraq. more... US, UK and Canadian church leaders urge a halt to 'rush to war' with Iraq August 30, 2002 (WCC) - Thirty-seven church leaders from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada have called upon the US and British governments to use restraint in "the apparent drift towards military confrontation in Iraq". more... Interchurch relief group urges lobby against Iraq attack Church World Service is asking citizens to "contact the President and urge him to resist unilateral military action against Iraq for the sole purpose of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein." It says the U.S. should "support efforts to implement UN resolutions on weapons inspections and military sanctions rather than the use of force to address the problem." more... How not to get rid of Saddam The alternative to war or appeasement is 'passive aggression,' says security analyst Andrew Mack in this commentary. more... Middle East churches decry war talk "As talk focuses upon escalating this low-intensity war into a full-scale military offensive, the churches in the Middle East are truly alarmed," says a statement from the Middle East Council of Churches. "Not only has the sanctions regime failed; that failure is now to be compounded by an initiative that lacks justification and has no discernable or constructive goal. It has no support in the region." more... Vatican Radio warns U.S. attack on Iraq would create worse crisis An authoritative Vatican official has warned the Bush administration that a U.S. attack on Iraq would only create new and worse crises. more...   9/11 Remembered Bible Debate Death Penalty Forgiveness High Holy Days Iraq Islam Racism-Prejudice Sukkot ..... Bible Study Daily Scripture Devotional Search Sacred Text ..... Best Of Class Award Current Events Faith Groups Featured Topics Holidays/Holy Days Most Requested Webcast   Contents of this page may be freely reproduced by any not-for-profit organization, provided the following notice is included: "Provided by www.FaithandValues.com...'light for the journey'." Please note that FaithandValues.com does not claim primary copyright on the source material. If you wish to reprint entire articles, you must obtain permission of the copyright holder. comment [] 9:54:05 PM     JOHO the Blog asks what Faith sees in the Sept. 11 events? I wrote a little article called  Islam Hijacked a few days after the attacks,  because I worried about the impact of this event on the relationships between the Muslim and Christian worlds,  and on Muslims at the hands of ignorance on the part of bigoted people, Christian or not (the "Christian" forms of bigotry REALLY bother me,  since I find myself having to defend the Christian faith I adhere to against the faith that these "alien religion" bashers spout as "truth".  I find it very bothersome that so many "Christian " people can be so blind to the existence of extremist fanaticism within  the ranks of "Christian" factions and sub-cultures of all sorts,  like the "survivalist" types and the McVeighs and the Klu Klux KLan.  The West Wing episode that aired just prior to their season opener last fall had Josh Lyman's character make a comparison:  MUslim extremists are to Islam as ______ is to Christianity.  Answer: KKK.  Add a healthy dose of apocalyptic fervor,  and a few dashes of a Nationalistic sense of destiny,  baptize it with theocracy visions,  and motivate it all with conquest of the foe,  and you get the BinLaden-AlQuida extremism.  To sum it all up,  you have self-deception of demonic dimensions.   My home page (at least as of 9/2) shows me in a T-shirt sporting several flags of different nations, and bearing the title "Citizen of the World".  My Christianity is a tad more universalistic than a good many of other Christians are willing to embrace.  For me,  Christ is a "Cosmic Christ",  revealing himself in every culture,  even though the spiritual identifications made within differing spirtualities across the world are cast in different characters,  each is an attempt to capture the essence of divine revelation.  "Islam Hijacked"story linked here Islam Hijacked Tony Campolo has an excellent speech on the topic of Christians and Sept 11 ,  which I link to in this blog Gordon Cosby reflects on how All Are Connected .. comment [] 8:33:40 PM

Saturday, August 24, 2002

Business 2.0 - Blogging for Dollars (and relevance for Church KM) Businesses are starting to use weblogs as powerful tools for knowledge management and communications. By Dylan Tweney, August 23, 2002 With regard to the Church and the business of "Business Blogging for Knowledge Management, there seems to be another key theological concept here:  that personal weblogging and business or Knowledge management blogging are "intertwined",  since when we blog personally as Church people who are interested in how this whole phenomenon will help us draw on each other and collaborate,  we are in the business of "knowledge management" for the Church (at least that potion of it that cares about the same things that we do....and believe me,  there are MANY approaches and theologies.  for more on this,  see Being Called from the periphery in to the heart of it comment [] 8:42:08 AM

Saturday, August 17, 2002

Juge Pressler's Book describes his campaign to purge the SBC (1999) A  book review of a 1999 release of a Pressler book on his crusade to purge the SBC of liberalism With publication of this book, Pressler for the first time gives a public record of the conservative movement from his own perspective. The 362-page volume, titled "A Hill on Which to Die," is published by the SBC's publishing house, LifeWay Christian Resources. "Since he and the conservative movement burst onto the SBC scene 20 years ago, Southern Baptists have developed starkly different perceptions of the appeals-court judge who devoted himself to ridding the denomination of liberalism. Some bless him as a hero who saved the SBC; others blame him for a witch-hunt that damaged the convention and destroyed lives. " I choose "B", as do most who recount the movement.  Most who know of him are of the negative opinion The book was needed to set the record straight, Pressler writes, because so many "liberals" have unjustly attacked him and other leaders of the conservative movement. "History might not deal charitably with the conservative movement, because so many of those who write history are not sympathetic with our goals and purposes." Neither did Bill Moyers in a PBS interview in a series called God and Politics in the early 80's The title, he explains, comes from a frequent comment made by Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., and the first in a string of conservatives elected SBC president beginning in 1979. comment [] 4:48:45 PM

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

blogs4God - a Semi-Definitive List of Christian Blogs I made the list again today: "TheoBlogical Community looks at Scripting News take of Meg Hourihans Blogging for Dollars and has his own take on the religious community." comment [] 6:42:22 AM

Monday, August 12, 2002

Blogging as Strategy in Religious Publishing It seems to me that as Macromedia has done,  and InfoWorld has done,  and also in ways that perhaps nooone has yet done,  corporate Weblogs provide an effective format for telling a story.  Seen in business terms,  a story that is intended to sell the customer on the trustworthiness of their wares by exhibiting their expertise on the issues around which these wares explore (in the case of religious publishing, and Christian Church related publishing in particular,  these wares are Chrsitian resources and Christian Ed resources). The idea is to create an online content store that persuades by its expertise,  and by exposing to the public the hard work and stategizing that happens around the publishing of a product.  To clue in the customer base on how the resources are conceived and created and made available to the market is to give the customer an opportunity to be a contributor to the process.  In the context of Religious Communities and/or Churches,  this practice is not only good business,  it is good theology as well. This is a theological variation on the Cluetrain Manifesto theme.  What excites people,  what interests people,  what drives people,  is what retains people.  The customers for whom a business provides a way for them to find things that interest them and impassion them will be not only paying customers,  but a business's biggest evangelist.    comment [] 6:20:07 PM     Architecture Matters: The Rebirth of Public Discussion Dave pointed this article about how Weblogs tend to minimize "noise", or "flames" in public discussion due to the fact that people who flame tend not to be widely linked,  except by other "logo-pyros" --- people who like discussions with lots of flaming---  It seems to me that this too, his theoblogical implications:  Theology has laways been shaped by the level and quality of dialogue that takes place around it.  Catholic middle age dogma had very little growth for a long period becuase communication was much less two-way until the printing press allowed for more voices and the distribution of those voices of the less powerful (even though to be able to print, it took SOME power,  but the frequency and amount of dialogue in theology was much more rare until printing.   Now , with the immediacy of online communication,  a more dialogical theological process can shape that theology (at least the opportunity is there and being grabbed by some).  Others simply use the network to perpetuate the traditional orthodoxies,  and so some orthodoxies are even strengthened among that online audience. comment [] 6:07:50 PM

Saturday, August 10, 2002

NPR : All Things Considered for August 9, 2002 Make me vomit.......What an embarassing display of gullibility with decades of inept eschatological interpreting by the fundamentalist groups and the more conservative "Bible" crowd who see no other hermeneutic than this one.  It makes me sick because this is the impression millions of Americans get of Christians.  It makes me cringe to hear of the constant theme of demonizing many of the world's "broad-based alliinace efforts" such as ecumenical organizations and multi-country alliances as "insidious fronts for Satanic infiltration".   So much of these books (and although I haven't read any of the Left Behind things,  I read Tim LaHaye's book on the end times about 25 years ago,  and read a couple of novels of similar ilk wiuth the same exact themes and interpretations of world events based on what I was to later discover to be a very questionable lifting of questionable references from a wide variety of passages,  many of which were obviously dealing with events current to the author and not at all mean to be used to "crystal ball" gaze. The NPR audio clip does include a quote from somebody pointing out the extremely cynical view of collaborative and cross-cultural and alliances of various kinds such as the "European Common Market,  and ecumenical agencies that are portrayed as stale, corrupt,  "believe in so many things they believe in NOTHING".......which is a theme you hear time and time again from fundamentalist circles,  becrying the evils of religious pluralism.   What it is usually,  is an inability to think outside one's own cultural context.   And this often reaches the level of doctrine within churches,  where it is perpetuated and encouraged as a "defense" against the forces that would destroy orthodoxy. " 'Left Behind' Series The Remnant is the tenth installment of the Left Behind series, and it is at the top of The New York Times bestseller list. Evangelical titles have become big business in the last few years and now both Christian and secular publishing houses are cashing in. Some call it profitable proselytizing; others are worried about the world view evangelical fiction spreads. Fred Mogul of member station WRTI Philadelphia reports. (5:30) " More in the article Relgious Publishing that Sells comment [] 11:24:19 PM

Thursday, August 08, 2002

From WIRED:  makes me think I ought to start a blog on religious publishing and the use of Blogging as a means to open up a net-enhnaced dialogue among the religious-digerati. Blogging Goes Legit, Sort Of  One of the country's most respected training grounds for professional reporters has become the first school to offer a class on the 21st century symbol of do-it-yourself journalism. Next fall, a handful of students at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism will convene weekly to learn about blogging from John Batelle, a co-founder of Wired magazine, and Paul Grabowicz, the school's new media program director. comment [] 7:12:39 PM     Theological Unity on the Issue of Weblogs In Notes from the Cave: The online journal of Frank McPherson, computer professional and freelance writer. ,  Frank blogs : I found Dale Lature's weblog, and he writes "Weblogs seem to be such a theologically sound communication tool. " I agree. I've also been thinking about whether a weblog would be a good tool for conducting a web-based bible study. I think it is, and I'm thinking about doing an experiment over on the other site. Should be an interesting experiment.  Frank and I have to work out just how we're going to do this,  ut we both use Radio, so I suppose we'll do something in a category,  and see if I can post something to his category when I upstream (I think I can) comment [] 6:38:01 PM     After signing up as a MetaBlog on blogs4God,  I got on the "Cache of the Day" listing there: blogs4God - a Semi-Definitive List of Christian Blogs: "Metablogs and Zines Cache of the Day" Bene Diction at 08:08 PM Theoblogical has an interesting take on weblogs. comment [] 6:07:22 PM     On the subject of "deep linking",  this has Theoblogical Implications.  The Bible,  or any other Holy Book for that matter.  These books DEMAND deep linking.  They have been "Deep Linked" for centuries,  just with older technology (like word of mouth or scribal notes in the margins) Another Run to a Deep-Link Suit (WIRED) comment [] 7:19:35 AM     The Theobloggers;  a case for weblogging as an expression of theological community;  the TheoBlogical Community. comment [] 7:05:32 AM

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