These are questions worth asking - and if you're interested you can read a bit more on the subject here. If you feel that the Pledge is problematic, you can also join a growing number of others who are making their feelings known here.
The Pledge of Allegiance is a hot topic of late, as a YouTube video of two Maine town council members refusing to recite it made the rounds and led to a flurry of harsh responses, including "calls for everything from deportation to public flogging." Why is it that the Pledge inspires such strong feelings, and are those feelings justified based on the actual history of the pledge? These are questions worth asking - and if you're interested you can read a bit more on the subject here. If you feel that the Pledge is problematic, you can also join a growing number of others who are making their feelings known here.
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Liberation Theology is in the news lately after Pope Francis invited the Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez to speak at the Vatican. Gutierrez is widely considered as the founder of the approach, described as "a political movement in Roman Catholic theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in relation to a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions." Writing in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza notes that Pope Francis is " is much more open to individual liberation theologians," having not only met with Gutierrez, but "encouraged advancing the process for the canonization of Oscar Romero" and "consulted with Leonardo Boff."
Though rooted in the Catholic Church, Liberation Theology "has grown into an international and inter-denominational movement," and thus should be of interest to anyone studying the intersection of faith and economics. Rather than summarize existing resources, this post points readers to reviews of not only an updated version of Gutierrez's 1971 A Theology of Liberation, but more recent releases, as well: "Toward a New Theology of Liberation" "The goals of striving to reduce needless human misery and poverty and offering humanity hope in salvation from sin through Christ that Gustavo Gutiérrez outlines in A Theology of Liberation should be central to any theology that claims a connection to Christianity. Nonetheless, the means he chooses to advocate to achieve those ends raise significant concerns." Review of Desire, Market and Religion by Jung Mo Sung and No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, Individualism and the Economic Order and the Future by Joerg Rieger "It is not inconceivable that liberation theology can add to the richness of the theological landscape and should not be ignored as such. Nonetheless, as proponents of this view, Rieger and Sung would be more convincing if they displayed a greater depth of economic knowledge." National Quaker organizations have the unfortunate tendency to address war spending from the perspective of budget realignment or reallocation. This approach puts forth the false notion that national governments sit atop vast reserves of wealth that should be spent on nonviolent rather than violent ends. The reality, of course, is that no such infinite reserves exist. If the government sits atop anything, it is more likely a mountain of debt than wealth. National governments cannot spend new wealth without either issuing new debt (that will have to be repaid) or extracting it directly from taxpayers through the implicit or explicit threat of violence. If Quakers (or anyone else for that matter) want to be known as "Champions of Peace," it would be better to strive toward a reduction in the war spending that seeks to keep funds in the hands of individuals to peacefully pursue their own ends instead of merely shifting line items in national budgets. The former focuses on individual and local empowerment, and the latter focuses on somehow "winning" in the national political game. Given that it is primarily national Quaker organizations spreading the budget realignment message (see also AFSC's "If I Had a Trillion Dollars" campaign https://afsc.org/resource/2nd-annual-if-i-had-trillion-dollars-ihtd-youth-video-festival, and FCNL's "Cut the Pentagon, Not Our Communities"http://fcnl.org/events/week_of_action/cut_the_pentagon_not_our_communities/) it may make sense to ask whether this message reflects a bias that funds should be gathered in a central location to be redistributed by "those who know better." That is unfortunate if it is the case - it is unlikely to succeed and distorts any true sense of the ideals of Quakerism. |
Matt HisrichQuaker and Libertarian Archives
January 2023
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