I’ll be at The Wild Goose Festival later this week, and my friend Jeremy John and I have set aside two sessions there for some conversation about the Occupy movement and what it means for the church. I just saw this article from last fall at the beginnings of Occupy by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove re: Occupy and the church. for many Continue Reading
Muslim Imam speaks of the prescence of Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, and Buddha with the Occupiers instead of up there in the offices of power. I found this video via “Faith in the 99%” on occupycafe.org http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QYxrFtROe5I#!
Chris Hedges in TruthDig yesterday: Trinity had the demonstrators arrested. It chose to act like a real estate company, or the corporation it has become, rather than a church. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/americas_street_priest_20120611/ Fr. D.Berrigan: “It is up to us to take the initiative and hope the churches catch up” Berrigan believes, as did Martin Luther King, that “the evils of capitalism are Continue Reading
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgf4ozKHmA4&feature=player_embedded
The occupation movement has, at its heart, the unmasking and unveiling of true identity. Through the shared communal practices and liturgies of general assemblies, common language, shared music, disciplined endurance, and a willingness to suffer, Occupy Denver seeks to reclaim not only physical public space, but also, a deeper sense of communal identity. It seeks to make visible a different Continue Reading
I believe that the most loving thing we can do for the richest and most powerful is to tell them the truth: call them to the truth and challenge them to live truthfully. After all, one of the spiritual works of mercy is to admonish sinners. If this is so, we must love the 1% enough to speak the truth Continue Reading
What so many don’t understand is the point made in this article: This is a structural sin: despite best intentions, we have made it impossible to do good. This sin must be repented of and atoned for. In drawing attention to it, the Occupy Movement is a prophetic voice. http://www.rockandtheology.com/?p=4694 Structural sin is so imbedded, that the dictates of the Continue Reading
from the article: Occupy is appealing to Trinity, a very wealthy church, to share its resources (prime Manhattan real estate, currently empty but presently leased on a short-term basis to a tenant) with the Occupy movement whose social goals are ostensibly the same as Trinity’s – a more just world for more people – and many of whose participants explicitly Continue Reading
The issue of the role of social media in movements dovetails nicely into a lot of my thinking about “online church”. I have long said that there are several avenues INTO Church from online spaces that can and do happen. But the “virtual space” becomes inhabited by the “physical space” as veterans from the physical spaces and events come back in via Continue Reading
Jesuit priest and war resister Daniel Berrigan, soft-spoken but still eloquent at 91, and journalist Chris Hedges joined members of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Faith at Zuccotti Park on Thursday morning. They gathered to sing, pray and denounce the continued determination of Trinity Church, an Episcopal parish, to cooperate with the prosecution of OWS protesters. http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/06/ows-presents-a-fracture-of-good-order-for-trinity-church/ To understand why Continue Reading
“Obama didn’t want to come here to this state because he didn’t want to touch this race with a ten-foot pole. He wanted more than anything to avoid this race becoming a referendum on his presidency, because this recall election is going to affect his campaign in November,” says Ben Sparks, communications director for the Republican Party of Wisconsin.” http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/06/201267172957750224.html?utm_content=features&utm_campaign=features&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=rss&utm_medium=tweet Continue Reading
@MicahBales tweeted an article from DailyKOS on continued conflict bewtween Trinity Wall St. Church. other Episcopalians, and the #OWS movement. On June 11th, the first trials of Occupy activists accused of trespassing on church land at Canal Street and Sixth Avenue on December 17th are scheduled to begin. Activists said they hoped to establish a new encampment on the vacant lot, though Continue Reading
I just found this in a Google search on “occupy faith church theology” , under the heading “Was Jesus a Communist?”. Turns out it was an article by a right wing group, and it fed right into their mentality of “warnings” about the “unholy” or “dangerous” evils that lurk in protest movements. The Occupy Wall Street OWS movement, which the Continue Reading
But just what are “associated forces”? That question appeared to stump Obama administration lawyers when pressed by Judge Katherine Forrest during a recent hearing.”I dont have specifics,” an attorney told her. via 7 Ways To Get Yourself Detained Indefinitely. Are you kidding me? “Don’t have specifics”? Then you don’t have a case (if this is to attain the stature of a Continue Reading
I am so pleased to see a theologian of “Radical Orthodoxy” ilk (many of whom may sound very standoffish toward much of U.S. politics) articulate what I feel has been much of the theme I have sounded since opening Occupy Theology in November. They are a new kind of political phenomenon because it is not possible to say that they are emerging from Continue Reading