Jenn @ Words From Poor Folks: “Like Being Punched in the Face Over and Over”
Will someone stop for a moment and tell me in what world is it considered moral for a person to work three jobs and still be unable to support their family. It just isn’t right.
Living in poverty is like being punched in the face over and over and over on a daily basis. It’s pulling yourself out of a hole, only to fall over a cliff. Every step in the right direction is rewarded with a hearty push several steps back. The changes to one’s mental health when living in poverty can be astonishing. I suffered a miscarriage years ago and I knew anger and sadness then. I made my way through it and survived. I didn’t think I would feel such strong emotions again. I was wrong. The anger is back. Anger is for everything. I’m angry I am in this situation. I am angry I’m not good enough for proper employment. I’m angry my children are living through this. I am angry at my husband. I’m angry at Christians who preach against me, ignoring the words of Christ. I’m angry at politicians who vote against people like me. I’m angry at a society that views me as a leech, as a welfare queen, as someone who deserves the be on the bottom of humanity’s shoe.
Peter Enns: “Upcoming ETS conference geared toward nervous protection of theological boundaries”
“The Evangelical culture” is under threat, and the propriety and necessity of defending that culture’s continued existence is simply a given. Whether said culture is true or the most faithful expression of the Gospel is not up for discussion and requires no deliberation. Ever. It would be like questioning air. This is tribal thinking, and if criticism is blocked like this, the only by-product is insular thinking and intellectual inbreeding.
… What organizations that espouse such tactics do not understand is the high price they pay in the long run for presenting their cause in this way: poeople see through it and leave.
A faith like this, that needs such nervous protection, is not worth giving your life to.
Brian McLaren: “You, Rob Bell, Don Miller, and Christianity Today”
I think significant percentages of older Evangelicals are deeply wrong on a wide range of issues – including homosexuality, our spiritual responsibility for the environment, the reality of evolution and climate change, solidarity with the poor, our role regarding peacemaking and war, equality for women, the reality of white privilege and systemic racism, and the legitimacy of torture, to name a few. So homosexuality is only one of a long list of things that I think older white evangelicals need to rethink. Thankfully, on most if not all of these issues, younger evangelicals are moving to a more just and wise understanding than their parents and grandparents, just as their parents and grandparents forsook much of the overt racism and anti-Semitism that were much more common among their parents and grandparents.
Rachel Tabachnik: “The John Birch Society’s Anti-Civil Rights Campaign of the 1960s, and Its Relevance Today”
On page 25, Koch explains his fear of the Civil Rights Movement: “You may be sure the Communists are fishing furiously in the troubled waters of integration on both sides. The Communists are not interested in the aspirations of the negro except as a means to stir up racial hatred … The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America.”
Koch continues, “I have been told by the ex-Communists that the Communist Party has been influential in changing the relief laws of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Detroit, and Chicago to make it attractive for rural Southern Negroes and Puerto Ricans to come to those cities. In the first place, the Communist Party intends to use the votes of these people to swing the balance in these populous states; secondly, when the Party is ready to take over these cities it will use the colored people by getting a vicious race war started.”
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