In the online spat between Cornel West and Ta-Nehisi Coates, West is softening up and giving a page number now. This does not change two things, though: 1. West did not read more than the title We Were Eight Years in Power when he first commented on Coates and translated his beef with Obama to the book. He did not read the first page where Coates explains the quote where he got the ‘eight years’ and ‘good negro government.’ Now... Read more
This is the seventh in a series of posts testifying about my conversion to liberation theology. For previous posts, here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. By the time I started reading Žižek, de Certeau, and Freire in earnest (thanks in large part to the influence of Sam Rocha), I was in the Eastern Catholic catechumenate. As I’ve written many times on this blog, I had encountered the Eastern Catholic churches during the Umbrella Movement because our Vancouver solidarity prayer movement was led in large... Read more
This is the sixth in a series of posts testifying about my conversion to liberation theology. For previous posts, here are the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. I promised that I’d write about Eastern Catholicism and my turn to liberation theology, but there’s actually something I need to expand on before I get there. I said in my last post that what happened after the Umbrella Movement was that I became paralyzed in my writing. The problem, as my friend Sam Rocha informed me, was... Read more
This is the fifth in a series of posts testifying about my conversion to liberation theology. For previous posts, here are the first, second, third, and fourth. I had no idea that all of the exploration of the primal and the personal that I had commenced while hanging out with real Catholics was beginning to change my thinking on Radical Orthodoxy and the politics of the parish. I should have known, though. For one, it would have explained why I felt so ideologically confused during... Read more
This is the fourth in a series of posts testifying about my conversion to liberation theology. For previous posts, here are the first, second, and third. There is something beautiful about the vision of the church as ‘harmonious communion’ that is prescribed by Radical Orthodoxy and attempted to be lived out in the Anglican Communion. It was music to my ears. I am, for example, a bass and cannot sing soprano. Harmony is wonderful. However, I found shortly after advocating strongly... Read more
This is the third in a series of posts testifying about my conversion to liberation theology. Previous posts can be found here and here. Before moving on to my discovery of liberation theology proper, I want to talk a little bit more about the implications of the Radical Orthodoxy with which I was enamored while I was an Anglican and a graduate student in geography. It has taken me a while to admit that much of the inspiration behind my work on ‘grounded theologies‘ –... Read more
This is the second in a series of posts testifying about my conversion to liberation theology. The first can be found here. I was an Anglican in graduate school. Someday, I will tell the true story of how I became an Anglican, but not today. However, it can be said that it worked to my academic advantage for most of the time I was hanging out in the Anglican Communion, from my final year in my undergraduate studies to the end of my postdoctoral... Read more
I was telling a colleague recently that it is a little bit funny that my students know me for teaching Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and for trying to practice liberation theology more generally, even though I am quite bad at it. I was singing quite a different tune when I was in graduate school, and it is because of this that I know that the Lord has done something truly conversionary in my life when I became Eastern Catholic. On this Feast of... Read more
My family is in Canada, and I’ve already celebrated Thanksgiving with them in October. Accordingly, while I wish all of my American friends a very happy thanksgiving, today is a work day for me. Do not feel sorry for me; I am going home to Vancouver very soon and will be reunited with my loved ones. Before that, I’ll have to put in my hours. This morning, while on the more intellectual corners of Orthodox Internet, I came across one... Read more
The Latin Church celebrates the Feast of All Saints today, so Eugenia Geisel very appropriately published her final piece on World Youth Day on my blog today, launching her blog Lipstick on My Relics. In the Kyivan Church, though, today is the anniversary of the falling-asleep of our father among the saints Metropolitan Andrey (Sheptytsky); he reposed in 1944. Metropolitan Andrey is a key figure not only in our church, but as Archimandrite Robert Taft SJ points out, in the development... Read more
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