Explains ever-inspired cartoonist Dave Walker: "Th[is] drawing illustrates the fact that people cannot often be subdivided into those who talk continual sense and those who talk continual rubbish. Life is more like B) than A), although I would be unwise to generalise." [Pic (c) the artist]
Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.
Comment on this post: FaithInSociety
The history of a dangerous idea was explored on Radio 4's Start The Week (available to listen to online for a week) by the American writer Mark Kurlansky yesterday. Non-violence, he argues, is one of the rare truly revolutionary ideas, a threat to the established order. A clue to its subversive nature lies in the fact that there is not even a 'proper' word for it, except as an expression of what it is not. Kurlansky explores political and religious views towards non-violence in the context of wars throughout the centuries and asks why religions, which reject violence in their teachings, are so often the cause of war. Appropriately, his book has a foreword by the Dalai Lama. The work, Non-Violence: The History of a Dangerous Idea, is published by Jonathan Cape. Mark Kurlansky is also appearing in a debate with A. C. Grayling at the Purcell Room (London's South Bank Centre) on 28 November at 7.45pm: Fighting Talk: Pacifism, War and International Relations.
Rowan Williams in his recent lecture on St Benedict and the Future of Europe: "Borrowing a Hegelian insight refined by the late Gillian Rose in her political philosophy, we must say that every initial self-description of a person’s or a community’s interest is necessarily involved in error to the extent that it has not yet fully engaged with what is other to it, with the stranger whose presence may first be felt as a threat or a problem. Good governance and government is always about an engagement with the other, a developing relation that is neither static confrontation nor competition, but an interaction producing some sort of common language and vision, a common vision that could not have been defined in advance of the encounter."
The word "philosophy "means "love of wisdom," but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In The Erotic Phenomenon, leading postmetaphysical philosopher and Catholic thinker Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question about his own discipline, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins with a critique of Descartes' equation of the ego's ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists -"I think therefore I am" - arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter love, he says, when we first step forward as a lover: I love therefore I am, and my love (regard for the other) is the reason I care whether I exist or not. Marion then probes several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, he stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one's sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love in its various guises. {edited description}
The row over whether British Airways (BA) staff can wear religious costume jewellery trivialises the real issues highlighted by the Cross – turning it into a club badge rather than a symbol of liberation, claims a leading Christian commentator today. Giles Fraser – who is vicar of Putney, an Oxford philosophy lecturer and founder of Inclusive Church – said on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day slot this morning that “many Christians like me remain deeply uneasy that the way the cross is being defended by some is transforming it into a symbol of cultural identity.” Continued.
Jim Wallis: Religion Must Be Disciplined by Democracy. This week, The Washington Post and Newsweek launched a new feature – "On Faith" – an online discussion of religion and its impact. Wallis has joined more than 50 other religious leaders, scholars and activists from different faiths and different places on the political spectrum on a panel that includes Desmond Tutu, Karen Armstrong, Elie Wiesel, and many more. In the succeeding features, a question on a topic connected to religion or spirituality in the public sphere will be posed and panel members as well as readers will respond.
I've often wondered why so many Christians get knicker-wettingly uptight about comedy -- especially satire. It's as if some of us were born with a massive irony defecit. What prompts this thought is the lastest rehearsed outrage at the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Borat is, of course, deliberately intended to make us uncomfortable about how we and those around us see things and each other. Its main target is prejudice itself. Well, apart from making us belly laugh and feel a bit guilty for doing so at the same time. No bad thing. Comedy can be a good way of disarming both ourselves and the powers-that-be, refusing to take either too seriously, though it is rarely morally unambiguous (if it's any good).
New Generation Network is the name of a new think tank and discussion initiative which is being launched later today by the admirable Sunny Hundal [pictured] of Pickled Politics, an acclaimed webzine which focuses on British and international politics, media and society from a broad, mainly South Asian perspective. NGN's initial 'manifesto' is calling for an improved debate on race and faith - which at the moment is dominated by extreme sectional interests, the government's demonising of minority communities, and a self-selecting "great and good" approach to public consultation. The NGN founding statement raises important issues from an independent perspective, and I was pleased to sign it myself - Ekklesia is certainly supportive of this venture, but it is one forged by individuals rather than organisations and 'representatives'. Indeed the question of who really 'represents' whom in the fields of religion and race is one of the necessarily awkward questions it is raising. The 'manifesto' will be published on The Guardian’s Comment is Free pages today and is noted in a short news story. That will also serve as a starting point for a week of debates on CIF around the future of race and faith in the UK. The NGN will be on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme at 7:20am, Five Live at 8:35am (they are doing a big programme on Islam), and Asian Network at 11:15am. Possibly also Channel 4 TV. Ekklesia will be issuing a supporting press release, which will also be on our news brief and in the Daily Email Bulletin. Sunny Hundal's hard-hitting Guardian article is entitled: This system of self-appointed leaders can hurt those it should be protecting. "It is in all our interests to challenge those who wrongly claim to be speaking for Britain's minority communities."
Martin E. Marty on the recent US elections and religion: 'The Christian Right took shape in the 1980s with the motives of the "politics of resentment," its members having long felt, and been, disdained. In the years of the Reagan charm, they found it easy to gain power, so they moved to the "politics of will-to-power," still voicing resentment. Many sounded as if they should and maybe could "win it all" and "run the show." They have now begun to learn what mainline Protestants and mainline evangelicals, Catholics, Jews, and humanists know: No one is simply going to "run the show" in the American pluralist mix, as we watch shifting powers face off against other shifting powers, which is what happened again in the mid-term elections.'
So much churchgoing is just religious practices and not godly living and godly exploring. Something seems to have gone very wrong. I believe that [through pluralism and secularity] God is bringing pressures to bear on us which could and should reawaken us to the immense God-possibilities which are around in the world and in people and in the church. We ought to be reawakened to the powerful resources and insights which are available in and through the biblical records and in and through the various Christian traditions—if only we will not shut them up in the practices of religion.
