Cathleen Falsani explains the background of this interview transcript: At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 27, 2004, when I was the religion reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, I met then-State Sen. Barack Obama at Café Baci, a small coffee shop at 330 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, for an interview about his faith. From the interview: OBAMA: The way I came to Chicago in 1985 was that I was interested in community organizing and I was inspired by the Civil... Read more
When the Republican bishops insist on making themselves ridiculous, honest people will provide the only appropriate response: ridicule. Amy Poehler and Seth Myers: “Really!?! With Seth and Amy” Jon Stewart: “Sir, your parable about the kosher deli, while delicious, makes no [frocking] sense …” Mark Silk: “Lori’s Kosher Deli” What’s interesting about Lori’s little jeu d’esprit is not how inept the analogy is, however, but how a proper Parable of the Kosher Deli would prove the opposite of what he’s seeking... Read more
Here’s a bit more from David Graeber in the Boston Review: [Debt: The First 5,000 Years] came out of the strange moral power that debt has over people. So many times you’re talking to people about the depredations of the International Monetary Fund in the third world, telling these horrible stories about the thousands of babies dying of preventable diseases because people aren’t allowed to maintain malaria-eradication campaigns or basic health services due to austerity measures and debt servicing, and... Read more
Good news, glad tidings and other otherwise delightful, happy or amusing stuff from recent days. Keith Humphreys reminds us that many men of the cloth don’t spend their days testifying before Congress in all-male panels dedicated to denying rights to women — “Christianity and the Least of Us“: This week’s Economist article about the remarkable work of Jesuit Priest Greg Boyle could thus not be better timed. Father Boyle’s “Homeboy Industries” in Los Angeles has turned around the lives of... Read more
Internet Monk just celebrated “Jubilee Week: All Grace All the Time!” Jubilee is one of my favorite things. Debts are cancelled. Slaves are set free. Olly olly oxen free. What could be better? First thing that Jesus talked about in his public ministry? Jubilee. It pervades his parables. It’s right there in the prayer he taught us to pray — “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Jubilee is rarely included in discussions of “theories of atonement.” My... Read more
These folks aren’t driven by religion. They’re not really even driven by politics. It’s just a big fantasy role-playing game. Rick Warren, Charles Colson, Richard Land and Father Jonathan Morris all might as well be playing World of Warcraft. Let me show you what I mean. Here’s Rick Warren, boasting of his own courage in a tweet allegedly responding to the news that health insurance for women must include health coverage for women: I’d go to jail rather than cave... Read more
Charlie Pierce: “Austerity: The Beatings Will Continue …“ Austerity has murdered any hope of recovery in the UK. It seems to have done the same thing in Italy. And, in Greece, the citizens of democracy’s birthplace seem to be taking offense at the notion that their first obligation is to punish themselves to make a lot of international bankers whole again, and to cement Angela Merkel’s place in European history, which will be further propped up in Germany by an... Read more
Matthew 7:12 In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Read more
I forgot the pie. (It’s a tradition. Contentious threads must be followed by pie.) Haven’t got any pie just now, so instead here’s a couple of other things that every right-thinking person enjoys — Martha Plimpton and “Thunder Road”: She’s not the only actress covering this song on YouTube, either. Here’s Jill Hennessy’s version. One more. Jim Boggia: “Well I got this ukelele and I learned how to make it talk …” Read more
In 1979, McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal. Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception. Ask any American evangelical, today, what the Bible says about abortion and they will insist that this is what it says. (Many don’t actually believe this, but they know it is the only answer that won’t get them in trouble.) They’ll be a little fuzzy on where, exactly, the Bible says this, but they’ll insist that it... Read more
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