Vatican, Air Strikes, Jesus

Who would Jesus conduct "limited air strikes" on?

If the French Press Agency is right, the Vatican has now given its support to American "limited" air strikes to "save Yazidis and Christians" threatened by the armed forces of ISIS who have militarily conquered parts of Northern Iraq.

Letter to my pastor

Dear Father Shaun,

You were not at Mass this morning; and a guest priest presided.  But as the leader of our parish, I must address this to you.  I hope you will share it with other members of the staff, even though what I am about to say may not be well-received.  I am writing you with a grievance about today's Mass, and what I say, though it will be unavoidably pointed, is offered in the spirit of Christian fellowship and with personal rancor for no one.

Why Christians Ought to Care About Scarcity, Dependency, and Relocalization

At one point in the film Titanic, the character Thomas Andrews (who was the naval architect who designed the ship) is talking with J. Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the steamship line that owned the Titanic.  Ismay is incredulous about Andrews' pronouncement that the ship will sink in less than two hours.

ISMAY:  But this ship can't sink.

ANDREWS:  She's made of iron, sir.  She can . . . and she will.  It is a mathematical certainty.

The Pro's

Just saw an article that is making the rounds about an American Christian doctor who explains why he will perform abortions.  People circulate the article because it is a hot button, and American Christians circulate the article because we are just as polarized around the topic of abortion as everyone else in American society.

Hondo Hillary - 1

"Why has there never been a coup in Washington, DC?"

"There's no US Embassy there."

               -Latin American joke

Picketty's Provocation

Post-marxish writer Mike Davis, author of the superlative Ecology of Fear, once remarked at a conference, "Socialists have predicted eleven of the last three recessions."  Self-help philosophical idealism gives rise to similar proclamations of the power of positive thinking.  Recessions, the unstated reasoning goes, are good for "revolutionaries," because when the contradictions of capital are doing their worst, public education by an enlightened vanguard will cause the masses to flock to the banners of the left, and at some point, these flockings will build into the perfect storm that will overthrow the present and unjust order.

Chasin' News

Most Christians agree that we need to understand things more than superficially. In our own idiom, we call this discernment. Even those of us who are of an anti-constantinian bent tend to agree that rejection of violence and political power carried out "at the end of a gun" doesn't mean we oughtn't have an idea about what is going on in the world. This is even more urgent now, because the scale of dominant institutions that run the world has become truly transnational, and because macro-trends have profound consequences at the local level where many of us like to concentrate our practices. Moreover, Christians -- at least in my view -- need to overcome the stumbling blocks of public perception that we are all anti-intellectual and authoritarian (read: carrying around ossified rule-books for everyone).