Video and Petition: A Prayer and Pledge for President-elect Obama

Click on the link above and it will take you to the Sojourners website where you can personalize a letter to President Elect Barack Obama, pledging your support and prayers as he embarks upon sober and important mission. There is also a video pledge/appeal from Jim Walis to the Obama. Be sure to check that out as well. Here, however, is a sample of the letter:

"I am one member of a growing movement of Christians and people of faith who support a broad moral agenda that includes a deep concern for poverty, peacemaking, a consistent ethic of life, and care for creation. During the campaign, you said that, if elected, you would face powerful special interests trying to block change. You said you would need a citizen movement to support and push you." (click on link above for the entire letter.)

Barak Obama is not our Savior!

Yesterday morning I got up and after a cup of coffee and a few other morning rituals, I sat down to read over the daily headlines, peruse my favorite blogs, and check in on a few forums that I frequent. On one such forum there was a negative post regarding Obama's recent selection of Eric Holder for the Attorney General spot, pending confirmation, of course.

I am a disabled and a chronic pain patient and this particular forum is related to that topic. There has long since been great concerns among those who suffer from chronic pain that this country's so called War on Drugs has turned into a war against doctors who treat the chronically ill. I won't spend any time substantiating this but if you do some research I think you will find that the concerns are valid. We don't often worry about stuff like this until we are the ones facing the probability that a doctor, out of fear of losing his license, is unwilling to treat our chronic pain. Since the War on Drugs has and is a losing battle, allot of the resources are now being directed towards doctors and prescription drugs. This is being done for two reason: one, there are doctors out there who are abusing their privileges and flooding the streets with dangerous medication; and two, since the war against illicit drugs offers few measures for success, the DEA and DOJ have begun targeting their resources in areas where they can gain some visible successes so that they can convince the American people that their efforts are really making difference regardless of the statistics to the contrary.

Now, before I lose you here, let me just say that I understand that this is a religious oriented blog. This post, however, seems more political than religious. But, let me try here to make the religious point that I have in mind; that is, Barack Obama, while definitely an icon of change and hope for this countries' future, is not our Savior. Laying aside his rhetoric, promises, the assumptions many American people have made about him (such as the idea that he will bring some rationale and direction to a war on drugs that is getting out of hand), the fact is that Obama is just a man and a politician. I have great hopes that he will succeed in his endeavor to change America at home as well as our image abroad. I hope that he will return our sons and daughters to us who are fighting on foreign battlefields. But, in the end, these hopes are just that. Their not solutions yet, not by a long shot.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine and organization, recently published a book entitled The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America . In this book, Walis outlines the plethora of issues facing America and our world: poverty, lack of quality health care, equity in death penalty cases, lessening the divide between the haves and have nots, among many others. He objectively points out that the President of the United States can only play a small role in bringing out real and consistent change in these areas. He then argues that the real responsibility here lies upon those of us on the grass roots level. He said that after the elections were over, regardless of who emerges as our next President, we have a responsibility to return to our communities and continue to grow social movements for change, citing that real change in this country has always come that way.

I appreciate many of the ideas and initiatives of President Elect Barack Obama but my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that there is a higher power at work in the world today. The future of this country, my future and the future of my children, does not rest in the hands of a mere man. He must do his part but we must do ours as well. We must get up out of our complacency and stop expecting government to do what we ourselves should do. The fight for social justice, whether for race equality, LGBT issues, eradication of poverty, I, immigration reform, religious tolerance issues, the fight is ultimately resting upon our shoulders. May the divine help us in this endeavor!

Compassion – Make a Donation – Sponsor a Child

Can people of different faiths coexist together intimately?

For many Christians there are two scriptures that serve to regulate relationships for them:

• Amos 3:3 "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?"

• 2Cor 6:14 "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
  

Regardless of whether or not the interpretation of these passages is correct or not, they are used as is to discourage the development of relationships with people who do not agree with or adhere to their particular religious perspective. It is considered to be unequally yoked to be friends or romantic partners with a non-Christian, regardless of whether or not that person is an adherent of another faith or not. This is an exclusive mentality that tends to invalidate any faith besides its own; to become relationally engaged with people unlike themselves is to break a fundamental rule.

Now, it would be a violation of the spirit of this blog to make light of this practice and the ideals behind it. There are many good conservative evangelical Christians that take this to heart and feel that it is a non-negotiable rule. And, in many ways, there are good reasons for it. All of us have heard the statement that there are two things you simply can not talk about in public or even family gatherings: politics and religion. How many uncomfortable settings have we endured and relationships strained because of conflict in these areas. Thus, it would appear that this prohibition, this need to agree so to speak, is warranted.

To be honest, I've felt this way for much of my life, no matter what religious persuasion I was operating from at the time. I have been an evangelical Christian, a Wiccan/pagan, an agnostic, etc, and today I am a left leaning liberal progressive Christian (now there is a label for you!). Throughout each season in my life, I naturally gravitated toward those people with whom I had the most in common. This is just human nature.

My question, however, is does it always have to be this way? Notwithstanding the scriptures mentioned above as well as the natural inclinations of our human nature, is there not something of value to gain from developing relationships with those who are vastly different from ourselves? Obviously these are rhetorical questions, but is my faith so secure and complete so as not to be affected by intimate relationships with people of different faiths? I would hope so.

If the ideals of religious pluralism and tolerance are to prevail in our day, we are going to have to be willing to live and let live. This means that we must acknowledge that each person is on their own spiritual journey; a work in progress, an evolution if you will. Regardless of of how their faith measures up to ours, their spiritual journey is equally as valid as our own. This is not a matter of right and wrong. It is a matter of freedom to follow the dictates of one's own heart. Each of us are free to develop our own ideas of of the divine and to formulate beliefs and opinions about how life is to be lived and how God is to be understood. It only becomes detrimental when we try to impose these ideas and understandings of God as the only legitimate way.

Tolerance is the key and we must learn to practice it in every sphere of our lives; in our families, marriages, and places of employment, etc. How rich our lives would be if we could share our faith with others and learn from them as well? The chasm between groups is man made and it can be bridged or removed altogether with some concerted effort. I happen to know this from personal experience.

This subject is more than abstract to me because my wife and I are very different in our religious beliefs. As I've stated before, I am more liberal than her in just about every area. Contrarily, she is more of an evangelical Christian and more conservative than I am. I would like to say that it has not been problematic but the fact is, it has. And, I would like to say that because I am the liberal one and inclined to represent myself as being more open minded, that she has had the greatest difficulty adjusting to our situation. But, unfortunately, I am not sure that is true. Ideological differences between people who are intimate can be a difficult hurdle to overcome.

One of the first things I had to do in coming to grips with our differences was to give her permission to not be like me. That may sound haughty; I mean, as if she needed my permission for anything. But, on my side, I had to give her the same latitude that I wanted myself. Shakespeare's famous quote in Hamlet is most applicable here: ”This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Just as I must have the freedom to live out my spiritual and religious convictions, so should she be given the same freedom to be true to her self.

Because of our love and commitment to one another, we have made allot of progress in this area of tolerance and giving the other the space to be who and what they are. Fact is, her faith and convictions have positively affected me in too many ways to share here. I am thankful for how she sees God and she has helped me to be more sober and circumspect in how I relate my current beliefs with those I held in the past. To use a common cliché', its so easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Thankfully, I am learning that I don't always have to relinquish every thing in my effort to embrace new and fresh ideas.

Lastly, I am not sure that there is an appropriate way to end this article, so I am not going to try. What I hope is that we can continue this discussion in our comment section. This should be an ongoing conversation among people of faith. Some questions for discussion: can two people get married and stay married with opposing belief systems? How can we introduce issues of faith in our relationships in a way that is non-threatening and productive? How do we reconcile our right to formulate beliefs and opinions about how life is to be lived and how God is to be understood with the civility of respecting other people's right to do the same thing? With a Mosque on one end of a street and a Synagogue on the other, how do we coexist together, pooling our resources to make positive changes for the community at large? These are all pertinent issues facing our world today.

Meet me in the comment section to continue this discussion.

Bishop Gene Robinson: The Man Behind the Rhetoric

The name Gene Robinson invokes varied responses; a plethora of emotions and polarized opinions surround this man about the legitimacy of his ministry. Being the first openly gay man ordained as a bishop has brought him allot of notoriety, much of which I am sure he would gladly relinquish if possible.

Robinson's case has served to bring the divide within the church regarding homosexuality into sharper focus. For many years now homosexuals have lobbied among most of the mainline churches for recognition and equality. Some churches, such as the United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church of American, just to name a few, have officially sanctioned the ordination of homosexuals to the ministry. Others, such as the Presbyterian Church USA have sanctioned compromises that allows the issue to be taken up within local bodies and decided there rather than taking an official stance that's sure to invoke a schism. There are a few mainline denominations, the United Methodist Church being the first that comes to mind, that is still holding to its standards; but the opposition is alive and well in the UMC and continues to challenge the general church to accommodate the growing number its gay and lesbian constituents.

Amid this worldwide debate within the church catholic, men like Gene Robinson are reduced to symbols and icons of the ongoing struggle. Many people formulate opinions and ideas about Robinson without having any first hand knowledge regarding the man himself. However, I think the first thing we need to do in this debate is to humanize these people who represent a departure from how its always been done. In so doing, I think it will bring a realism and compassion to the polemic that is not currently present. It is real easy to herald against ideals and to spout biblical mandates and prohibitions, especially when we are dealing with abstracts. But, we must realize that these mandates, positions, and prohibitions affect real people; people with real lives and aspirations whose future depend upon the ultimate conclusion of this controversy.

While its not a place one would normally go for information on the lives of religious icons such as Gene Robinson, GQ magazine ran an article about him in its June 2008 edition. I know this is old news per se, but I've found that allot of people missed this article and I think its an important read. No matter where you stand on the issue of homosexuality in the church, I think seeking to know the people behind the issue is important. GQ did an excellent job on this article/interview and I gained a deeper respect of Bishop Gene Robinson.

Go here to read this article.

There is also an excellent podcast that accompanies this article. I highly recommend it! You can listen to it here.

Religious Pluralism: Seeing Religions Again with Marcus Borg

Best-selling author Marcus Borg, Professor in Religion and Culture, uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine the role and importance of religions and religious pluralism in contemporary life in this presentation at UCSD.