So you remember the furor about the Episcopal diocese that elected the first openly gay bishop? Well, he’s the Right Reverend Gene Robinson, and he’s got a speech posted at Alternet.
There are two kinds of giving, but I like to think of it as downstream giving and upstream giving. It’s not enough to pull the drowning victims out of the river, you need to walk back upstream and find out who’s throwing them in. So there’s both downstream-giving that actually takes care of victims of oppression. And then there’s upstream-giving — walking back upstream to do justice and to promote systemic change to find the underlying causes that are causing all this.The religious right is upstream, throwing people in the river and it’s time we named it for what it is. It’s time we took the Bible back. It’s time we took our faith back and stopped having to apologize for being Christian or Jewish or Muslim without having to explain, “No, we’re not that kind of a Jew, we’re not that kind of a Christian.”
I think right now for gay and lesbian people it’s easier to come out to someone as gay than it is to come out as Christian. We have allowed ourselves to be hijacked. Part of what I’m trying to do in my ministry is use my skills and my office to say that there are Christians in this world who feel differently about these issues. It takes religious people to fight back against religious people.
Great post.
Posted by: Wayne Uff on December 22, 2005 5:06 PMMaybe it could be like a movement, kind of an anti Fallwell, anti Ralph Reed, anti Pat Robertson organization. We could call it 'Christians for Christ." A bold concept to be sure, but hard times call for thinking outside the box.
Posted by: CCRyder on December 22, 2005 9:40 PMGreat idea CCRyder. I've heard Al Gore has talked of starting a television network. Why not let him bankroll a television TV preacher instead as a starter project. I'm serious. A liberal TV preacher could get a boatload of folks watching, and unless the networks are truly inherently eveil, they would take the $$. The minister would get the viewers. Lets think outside the box and inside the box.
Posted by: Buck on December 23, 2005 3:07 AMBuck, if Gene Robinson had a TV show, *I* would watch faithfully (pun intended), and I'm an atheist. But I just don't see it happening. Not because the networks are evil, but because they're sociopathic. A subtle distinction, I suppose, but basically I don't think they're malicious, they just don't care about anyone or anything but their own personal gain. And as our libertarian friends will tell us, that's how things are 'supposed to be'. In this case, finding sponsors would be difficult because of the clout (largely illusory, I believe, but appearance is all that matters here) of the fundamentalists. Plus, unlike the fundamentalist preachers, a show with a liberal preacher would have to subsist on either charity or advertising, while Robertson et al rake in plenty by scamming their viewers -- something you'll never see done by someone like Robinson.
Posted by: qubit on December 24, 2005 1:16 AMThe TV preachers do quite well showcasing the poor in foreign countries.
Why not ask for money for those who need it? If we build it, they will come.
They would support radical Jesus (and he was quite radical I think-thats why they strung him up).
I go to church because of my wife, but she's a lot smarter than me. She's partly right and Joe Bageant is partly wrong. The church was intended by the founders to be a socialist instituion.
Posted by: Buck on December 24, 2005 8:50 AMAll good points, Buck, and now that I think of it, such a show would probably have negligible production costs, so they really wouldn't need much money to run it.
Not sure I agree about the founders of the church, though. The founders of Christianity, certainly. But the church (as an institution)? I suppose this is just semantics -- I know what you mean.
Posted by: qubit on December 25, 2005 12:29 AM