Here’s the article.

I feel that there’s almost too much to grasp in the first two chapters of Cone’s “A Black Theology of Liberation.” Rather than respond to his introduction and methods, I’d rather present a couple crucial quotes. I’ll write my short responses below, but consider them for yourself (albeit largely out of context).

In Chapter 1: “The rise of Old Testament prophecy is due primarily to the lack of justice within that community. The prophets of Israel are prophets of social justice, reminding the people that Yahweh is the author of justice.”

This seems pretty straightforward – as the Israelite people turn away from God, they turn away from justice. If I may infer, Cone reverses that order and says that to turn away from justice is to turn away from God.

Cone continues from where he left off: “It is important to note in this connection that the righteousness of God is not an abstract quality in the being of God, as with Greek philosophy. It is rather God’s active involvement in history, making right what human beings have made wrong.”

Cone states what might be obvious: God can’t be righteous without acting righteous. Being is inseparable from action. If you’ll note previous posts on Kierkegaard (who Cone quotes at one point), you begin to note the sincere tension between his existentialism and the Greek-infused philosophical approach, which looks at God as real idea (see Augustine) and not necessarily as an experienced, real being. Augustine clearly believes that God exists, but he approaches theology without the same experiential lens as Cone or even Kierkegaard. Cone will later use the above principle of righteous action alone to do his black theology.

From Chapter 2: “Literalism thirsts for the removal of doubt in religion, enabling believers to justify all kinds of political oppression in the name of God and country.”

Here, Cone is talking about the literal interpretation of Scripture. Is this true? Do we want to abolish doubt? Why? Is it for the safety of our religious institution or because we truly do not doubt?

Finally, a question that the church needs to answer and act on: “Is it possible for the church to be the church (committed unreservedly to the oppressed in society) and at the same time be an integral part of the structure of a society?”

Cone’s answer: “I think not.”

What’s yours?

One, a Danish philosophical theologian. The other, an unidentified prophet of the Hebrew Bible. No one knows who he was, apparently, but the name Malachi means “my messenger.” Brought together by my theology class and my personal reading (guess which was which).

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard writes of faith through the story of Abraham. He creates a character called the “knight of faith” to represent the actions of a true faithful person, who sees absolutely that something is not possible but in the realm of the absurd believes absolutely that it is possible. This is an oversimplification. Anyway, Kierkegaard holds that the essence of the knight of faith is completely interior despite his exterior actions. Like Abraham, he doesn’t announce his faith. We might not know him from any other bourgeois fellow (or Joe Six-Pack) walking down the street. He’s completely in the world.

In Malachi, among other threads, the author writes of belief. The book of Malachi is different from the other prophetic books in the Bible. It’s structured in a series of questions posed by the Israelites to God and by God to the Israelites, with answers in between. Throughout the book, Malachi emphasizes the inevitable marriage of belief and actions that support that belief. This isn’t much different than the entire course of the relationship between God and Israel as told in the Hebrew Bible. God asks in Psalm 51 for sacrifices of the heart and not of animals. God simply wants faith.

How do I think faith and actions are related? If I “believe” something, I must act in a way that confirms that belief. A simple example from the modern world: If I believe that baseball is my favorite sport, I will spend more time watching, playing, thinking about, reading about, and immersing myself in all things baseball than I will in any other sport. I can’t force myself to act as if baseball is my favorite sport through doing all those actions. Those actions spring from an authentic belief that baseball is better than other sports.

In much greater significance, so it is with God. We can profess to believe in God, but that belief can fade into an abstract idea of the sort Kierkegaard condemns. If we believe absolutely that God exists and that God is good and that God alone saves us, we’ll act accordingly. Of course, I have real trouble believing absolutely, but what matters is the core belief that guides my actions. This is why God so emphasizes knowing him. We must know God as real to act with God as real and share God as real. We cannot tell someone about our abstract idea and expect them to form a relationship with it. We cannot do actions and expect them to turn into faith, though it’s different with God because grace is so much more powerful than our idolatry of process and ritual.

Just a verse from Malachi to expound upon…
“‘When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?’ says the LORD Almighty.” – Malachi 1:8
Our sacrifices to God, whether bloody animals or our gifts and talents, should be given in reverence and belief. If the Israelites really believe that God is God, wouldn’t they bring healthy sacrifices to the altar instead of keeping the best animals for themselves? Like us, they were thinking in the temporary.

In some ways, I think the hopes expressed here are for perfect faith, which only comes through grace, but which also seems to always get fouled up by my imperfections. So it’s not like you’re not a Christian once you do something bad, that’s not my point, but rather that we should really understand our beliefs – all of them – through our actions and words done and spoken in the moment and not premeditated as what we “should” do. Thoughts and feedback welcome.

Alternative news outlet Crosscut.com, with at least a cutting-edge vision for local news, even if it hasn’t been financially successful yet, plans to move toward nonprofit status. Check that out here

Interestingly, the New York Times also featured a front-page story about nonprofit news websites in various American cities, mentioning Crosscut and the more-developed Twin Cities-based site MinnPost. If I choose to enter the journalism world after college, I’d likely apply to work at one of these places. Read that story as well, here.

Check out Crosscut.com here.

Apparently, the city of Seattle is going to give $10 million more in new programs to youth-violence prevention programs and to homeless shelters and other services. I hope that the Times and other Seattle news outlets can keep the city accountable for responsibly spending this money. It’s a step in the right direction, particularly for a mayor who has continually antagonized the city’s homeless population in the name of a positive image, so much so that a new tent city named itself “Nickelsville” in his honor. Overall, this story is great for me because I don’t live in Seattle but support anything that helps the city’s homeless. Read the Times story here.

For the last story, I was fascinated by this story from the Snohomish County bureau. I have several friends with families who own homes in the unincorporated Snohomish County area (which Lynnwood proposes to annex). The story is fascinating for its look at Lynnwood’s perception relative to Edmonds, which the article claims is changing, though the article neglects to mention the new convention center Lynnwood built a few years ago (crucial in their desire to change the city’s identity/perception). I don’t know much about all the zoning details mentioned in the article, but I’ll definitely ask people more about this possibility when I’m home for breaks. Read the article here.

Hope you enjoy today’s most important Seattle-area news, at least from my perspective!

No, Kierkegaard himself didn’t have any thoughts on American Christianity, but as a citizen of a country (Denmark) where becoming a citizen also meant instantly becoming a Christian, even his less explicit thoughts on the relationship between a state and faith hold relevance for us. Here’s a quote from Problem III of ‘Fear and Trembling’:

“The ethical is the universal and as such in turn the divine. It is therefore right to say that every duty, after all, is duty to God, but if no more can be said, then one is saying as well that I really have no duty to God. Duty becomes duty by being referred to God, but in the duty itself I do not enter into relation to God.”

In other words, saying “I’m doing these things for God, man” too often becomes an abstract concept. We don’t actually encounter God. Actions like that, and living with a duty to God (we might use the words “worship” or “constant prayer”) can become about detaching ourselves from the action and dedicating them elsewhere. If I see my homework as a duty to God in an abstract sense, then I fail to see what the homework itself might do to draw me closer to God. (For example, reading Kierkegaard for a religion class has provoked conviction in my own life).

I’ll let Kierkegaard say a little more (this directly follows the above quote): “For instance, it is a duty to love one’s neighbor. It is a duty by its being referred to God, but in the duty I do not enter into a relation to God but to the neighbor I love. If I say then in the connection that it is my duty to love God, I am really only stating a tautology insofar as ‘God’ here is understood in an entirely abstract sense as the divine, i.e. the universal, i.e. the duty … God becomes an invisible vanishing point, an impotent thought, his power being only in the ethical, which completes existence.”

For Kierkegaard, faith is all about transcending the ethical. We can certainly apply that to a legalistic brand of Christianity. Let’s begin to pursue a relationship in knowing God through what we do, rather than viewing what we do through some abstract lens.

On folks who say simplistically that Christians walk in complete light and pagans walk in the dark: “Such a statement may be explained by one not knowing what one should say but only that one should say something.”

On the source of greatness: “If the one who is to act wants to judge himself by the outcome, then he will never begin. Even though the outcome may delight the whole world, it cannot help the hero, for he only came to know the outcome when the whole thing was over, and he did not become a hero by that but by the fact that he began.”

Too often I do exactly what Kierkegaard identifies in the first quote: say something just to say something. I don’t mean anything by it but to show effort and excuse myself from any further action. Proverbs emphasizes at several points the importance of the tongue, as does James. I, as I know others in the church do, waste the tongue. The church wastes it on movements like Proposition 8 in California or otherwise meddling in politics as an ideological-interest organization rather than as church people voting their considered conscience. I waste it on trite answers to important questions like “How are you doing?”

The second requires more difficulty. In some sense, as Christians, we all attain to Christ’s victory. We want to participate in his “heroism” on the cross. But we can’t attain that end, Kierkegaard says, without simply beginning. The end does not demonstrate greatness. The process, and even the beginning, demonstrate greatness. Today, where are we called to begin, today and every day?

I’ll try to get James and Proverbs verses up.

Whether or not you supported Obama, I imagine you support people. So read this.

From Lawrence Downes for the New York Times, Nov. 10 – “Obama’s Call to Change: What is Everyone Waiting For?”

Last week many Americans stopped to savor a moment of such beauty and amazement that the thought of it, even now, is enough to draw tears.

But never mind that now. It’s time to pack away the Obama glow. Young people should save it for when they’re old. The men who landed at Normandy spent no time thinking about what an awesome invasion they had just pulled off; they had to go liberate Europe. Postgame celebration and analysis are fine, for a game, but this country’s challenges are not recreational.

Barack Obama acknowledged as much in a victory speech that was serious, almost somber. He did not rejoice or gloat. Instead, he warned people of the hard work ahead: “I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years — block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.”

Mr. Obama was speaking about next year, and his subdued tone was fitting. The country has lost so much since 9/11. The sense of national unity forged in that catastrophe has been squandered. Fear and a sense of impossibility have taken root like viruses. The country is not in the best shape to simultaneously fix a sinking economy, a withered government and an ailing planet. But it has no choice, and not much time.

So why wait until January to get started?

Mr. Obama has troops for the job: tens of thousands who spent months on the ground campaigning for him, becoming conversant in the issues and comfortable with approaching strangers to enlist their help.

There are millions more who embraced his urgent message: he rode to victory on the leading edge of a wave of Americans, including millions of new, previously disengaged voters — young people, immigrants and others — who wanted to change the country’s direction, to reassert a hopefulness that many feared had been lost.

It would be a shame to have poured all that idealism — and money, don’t forget — merely into one man’s election. Mr. Obama could set loose his army right now to start bringing about the change he promised — by working for local nonprofit groups and causes.

He could use his enormous database to lead this effort. Through cellphone texting and e-mail he could quickly mobilize thousands, maybe tens of thousands of volunteers — not for partisan purposes; what’s the point of that? — but for the everyday, unsung, tiring work that gives community organizing a good name.

Mr. Obama doesn’t have to tell anyone what to do, only to do something good. All you phone-bank callers and door-to-door volunteers, you envelope stuffers and canvassers, who worked countless hours and now may have a little time and energy left over: Help homeless and hungry people.

Work for an environmental organization, a food pantry or a community garden, or all three. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will soon be flooding colleges on the new G.I. Bill, many of them wary and troubled by traumas overseas, unready for the shock of immersion. Some local cause is struggling even now. Find it and pitch in.

Mr. Obama always said the race wasn’t about him. That’s true. Of course he ran a great campaign. It was awash in energy, talent and money. He outorganized, outmaneuvered and outspent John McCain all over this country.

Mr. Obama, who surfs, knows that you can take credit for timing, grace and balance on the face of a great wave, but not propulsion. Americans who surged to the polls to give him their votes are surely ready right now to give even more, to one another, if he asks.

Our school newspaper, like probably all newspapers, receives about one e-mail or letter each day with publicity about this or that event. It’s routine. Sometimes these e-mails even catch our interest and we’ll do further research. That’s the key – further research.

Often, these e-mails contain “news articles” that the advertiser suggests we put in the paper. Directly in the paper. These articles are written by the advertiser, not a real journalist, and they innocently call themselves “news” articles, even though they contain obvious bias and are designed for advertisement. Particularly on campus, we face the constant misperception that we’re a public relations vehicle for the school or for student organizations.

Anyway, we recently received an e-mail about a multi-campus computer science competition put together by ACM (Associated Colleges of the Midwest), an organization of several private colleges (including my own). For full disclosure, ACM runs the off-campus study program I will participate in next semester. This e-mail told our editors and, I assume, editors from other ACM campuses involved, about the computer science competition and sent a variety of information. It included this line: “To help promote your university’s team, enclosed please find: News article that can easily be inserted into your campus publications.”

That’s fair. Most of these e-mails contain some sort of press release “for immediate publication.” In other words, they’re saying “Please don’t edit this for any bias. Just place it right into your article because we’ve lovingly prepared a highly subjective promotional piece that will be even more powerful even if we can disguise it with journalism’s credibility.”

But I don’t think it’s OK for an academic institution to promote this sort of dishonesty, though of course the responsibility would fall on us as editors if we chose to print something like that. In a journalism class, we’re learning all about media dishonesty and the ongoing blurring of the lines between public relations and journalism. At the same time, an academic-focused organization which my school is affiliated with is using a public relations firm to promote their program through the same subversive, but completely legal, tactics.

I don’t think is new, and is completely legal, but it just doesn’t make me feel good.

From an article on seattletimes.com, originally by two LA Times writers:

“Fox News reported Wednesday that Palin’s lack of knowledge on certain topics also strained relations. Carl Cameron reported that campaign sources told him she had resisted coaching before her faltering Katie Couric interviews; did not understand that Africa was a continent, not a country; and could not name the three countries that are part of the North American Free Trade Agreement — the United States, Canada and Mexico.”

Scary. Did she understand that North America contains more countries than just the United States? I don’t want to bash someone, especially after they’ve just lost a campaign, but is Palin even fit to be governor of Alaska? Even her resistance to coaching signals serious problems. Even the best writers, to use an analogy, get critiqued by their editors, essentially getting “coached.”

It’s nasty and elitist to make fun of someone for being uneducated, but it’s perfectly reasonable to be upset at someone with privilege’s willful inability to educate themselves.