We must remember that many Christians find Bush and his policies abhorrent. These are our allies and can play a strong role in fighting the neo-conservatives:
The Christian Left
Christian Allies
The Rapture Debunked
And from across the pond:
Save us from the politicians who have God on their side
Remembering what spirituality might look like:
Karen Armstrong: The Spiral Staircase--My Climb Out of Darkness
4 comments:
I enjoyed Karen Armstrong's History of God. Or rather, still enjoying it. Thick book. But so much more substantive than the likes of Bernard Lewis, you know?
Karen Armstrong is a great writer, I was very happy to find this audio interview...
A group of us in Lexington, Ky have been working for 15 years to build a community of acceptance and welcoming of all Wisdom traditions. Visit us at www.lexpages.com/sgn, or my blog at www.paschalbaute.com/blog/.
I have much writing on the subject, some published on the web. Here is an intro (next post) from one article published some ten years ago: "The Ultimate Temptation of the Christian."
THE ULTIMATE TEMPTATION
c. Paschal Baute, 1985
Once, out of time, the devil went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick up something from the ground.
"What did that man find?" asked the friend.
"A Piece of truth,” said the devil.
"Doesn't that disturb you?" asked the friend.
"No," said the devil, "I shall help him make a belief out of it. Before long, out of the vanity of his own discovery, he will end up worshiping his belief. Then he will become blind to all other truth!" And the devil laughed.
The temptation to use one's vision of God to judge others is the ultimate temptation of the religious person down through the ages.
Once we decide we have some hold on some truth, then bolster this by some appeal to faith, bible or orthodox teaching, we put ourselves on the side-of-the-angels, and assume that God supports OUR view. Then we believe that anyone who opposes this view is either "blind," further removed from God, or perhaps even on the side-of-the-devil.
Our blindness in this is that we are more interested in proving the rightness of our point of view, than in discovering others views, finding out what else God may have said, or in appreciating that other sincere people, devout people of any Wisdom traditon, can come to very different points of view.
To the extent that we do this with faith, we have made an idol of our belief, and judged others by this belief. What concerns us is not God's truth, which in its depths is unknowable and incomprehensible, but such a passionate attachment to our idea of God that we find it impossible to believe that God does not share our vision.
more...published in a Jungian journal, 1985
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