The part I find most difficult to accept in Jesus’s teaching from Luke 6 is not the extent of the love he commands, but rather his matter-of-fact acknowledgment that his followers will have enemies.
By opposing the political to the mystical, we risk missing Woolf’s theopolitical reach.
These devastating times and the repeated actions informed by the continued propagation of supremacist ideals may seek to drive us into hopelessness and inaction, but we know this is not the end. History reminds us that promoting an “us vs. them” thinking is destructive to all, including the earth.
Modernism’s frequent ambivalence toward religious traditions is in part a reaction against … an affective appropriation by the state, particularly in the service of war
All human beings (including me) are capable of dehumanizing others. Moreover, all dehumanizers (including Jesus) can change their minds.
The renunciation of God … does not insulate you from the part played by Christianity in collective practice and public ritual
For those of us who have experienced marginalization, are we confident that God is actively seeking the lost and rejected souls in our communities? And for those of us with social privilege, do we embody this confidence by extending love to those on the margins—the outcast, the silenced, those with no voice or vote?
Scripture has acquired a lethal familiarity in our political culture of scattering. Can we listen to its words differently together, so that the generous light of God’s creative Word might shine through them and gather us?
When Israel fights Hamas, very little is left for Mizrahim and women, but these two domestic Others of Israeli society are there as a form of resistance to the globalized lexicon of “War on Terror.” Both enable conceptualizing Gaza also in domestic terms, as another Israeli periphery.
Rather than starting from a diagnostic superficiality of her image, a seemingly inevitable lure as evidenced by the myriad books about Weil that display her photo on their cover, when we really dwell with Weil’s writing in relation to her self-fashioning, what emerges is how profoundly she sought a more engaged connection with the world.
Those experiencing rejection because of their sociopolitical identities can know that God does not condone discrimination, that God’s promises are a proclamation of reversal.
At best, a community’s accumulated power lies not just in its ability to tear others down but in a desire to use Grace-given resources to affirm what oppression never can – that all are worthy of love, care, life, and dignity.