I've seen a few things in the past several days that I want to draw people's attention to, but didn't really have much comment to offer, so I have held off on posting. Rather than let stories come and go without a mention, I thought I should just go ahead and do a general "some stuff you might be interested in" post.
First of all, I highly recommend checking out Accessible Airwaves, which is "A Campaign by the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ Inc." There is a guest entry there by Rev. William Sloane Coffin about CBS and NBC's refusal to air a UCC ad that included an image of a same-sex couple holding hands.
I have been hearing for a while that Coffin is very ill and near the end of his life. It is truly an inspiration to see him continue to do Good Work wherever and however he is able to.
On an entirely different note, I wanted to share
this story about a
"Men's Night Out" at Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky. I found it linked in a Kos diary entitled
"Was Allawi Iraq's Kerry?" (The diary author, dddemocrat, notes that Allawi and Kerry both failed to stem the tide of radical fundamentalists.)
An excerpt from the conservative blogger, locomono, who shared, in words and pictures, what he found disturbing about the Men's Night Out in the Kentucky Baptist church:
Even as I had already taken these photographs of something that I clearly know is wrong, hell we ended with "I`m proud to be an American", after a sermon and a combined rendition of all the services anthems. I was conflicted. I knew, and know that almost all of the people I'm depending on to bring this to light disagree with me on virtually every issue. I wasn't going to release this unless they were recruiting. They were.
Jesus himself only got mad once. It was because merchants were using the church to sell their wares, he flipped their tables, seized a whip, and attacked them. This day the answer to "what would Jesus do?" is grab one of the m-16s laying around and start kneecapping.
Speaking of "what Jesus would do", I just found this web site called Jesus Politics today. There are a number of interesting posts there, including:
Presbyterians and the Federal Budget
Charles Haynes on Buster Bunny
The Most Polluting Nation on God's Earth
The Political Jesus and the Crazy Jesus
Anyway, it looks like a blog with a lot of good "food for thought".
And finally, yesterday I made a first attempt to start a dialog about the need for genuine dialog--the kind where we listen and genuinely try to understand where the other person is coming from instead of just trying to make sure that our side "wins". I have no idea how we get there, but I think we at least need to start talking about it.