Category Archives: Ecumenical & Interfaith

Breaking: Barber Goes National – Updated

The Kairos Center [an organization created by Union Theological Seminary inNew York City] is excited to announce that the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II will be transitioning out of his role as the president of the North Carolina Conference of the NAACP in June, in order to join the growing leadership of the New Poor People’s Campaign. [The New PPC is a project of the Kairos Center.] The North Carolina NAACP announced the news in a press release this morning,

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A story for today: “I Hate Dill Pickles”

“Watch this, Amber,” Sara said, building up to a big finish. She whirled around and threw her arms out in a wide flourish. And when she did, the scoop of soft cookies and cream flew right off the top of the cone and landed splat! right on the side window of a parked white van.
Sara heard the splat and stopped to look, and we both saw a long white drip sliding down the dark glass. She turned to me, eyes wide, mouth open, ready to start giggling.
But then the van’s window rolled down several inches, and a man in dark sunglasses looked out at us. “Hey, young lady,” he said, “better be careful with that stuff.”
Now instead of giggling, Sara squealed and we both turned and ran down the block, all the way to where our houses faced each other across the street. When we got to her place I stopped and glanced back, and the van’s window was closed again. We both stood by her porch for a minute, giggling and laughing and trying to catch our breath. Finally Sara said, “That was wild!”
“Yeah,” I said, “if Sanjaya had tried that, he would have won for sure!”

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Free Speech, Islamophobia & The Murder of Innocents

I’m mindful of, and disturbed by the steady stream of articles I see decrying there decline of free speech on and around U.S. universities. Many of these come from rightwing pundits; but others come from worried but otherwise progressive observers.

A Carolina memorial to three victims of anti-Muslim violence, February 2015.
I’ve held back from joining the fray, mainly because it’s almost twenty years since I worked on a college campus, and it’s way too easy to succumb to hand-wringing fads and facile generalizations about “kids these days”; to moan about how academia is abandoning rational discourse, and its millennial occupants are all going to hell in a handbasket woven from organic fair trade dried kale.

Perhaps it’s so; but how would I know that? I live near some large campuses, but don’t hang out there.

But then a week or so ago, an advocacy group I’m part of was asked to sign on to a letter. The missive, written by Manzoor Cheema, for the Movement to Ed Racism and islamophobia, called for a lecture series in Chapel Hill NC, to be shut down. The letter’s money quote was:

“we urge Extraordinary Ventures to say no to the voices of hatred and bigotry. We request Extraordinary Ventures to cancel Diana West’s upcoming speech and the future lecture series by ICON.”

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Michelle & Larycia: Two Remarkable Women Speak

The uproar that led to the firing of Larycia Hawkins was what we call a total flustercluck, which surfaced so many ugly currents that swirl through the evangelical constituency that the oppression bean counters had to scramble to keep up: there was race (of course), but also gender (& single too, i.e., not under a man’s “headship”, and — dare I say it — attractive); she’s also an accomplished intellectual; staunchly Christian, yet theologically adventurous; well-spoken, vocal and assertive.
“Wheaton College cannot scare me into walking away from the truth that all humans, Muslims, the vulnerable, the oppressed … are all my sisters and brothers and I am called by Jesus to walk with them.”
Michelle Obama spoke today (10-13-2016) in New Hampshire, and her speech will, I believe, go down as a landmark of humanist political rhetoric. She was angry, she was eloquent, she was unanswerable & unstoppable, and the crowd (sounded like students) went totally bonkers.

Yes, it was a campaign speech. But I’ve left out the parts that urge her listeners to vote for a particular candidate; because that’s not what I want to highlight here.

I want to pass the heart of the speech, a woman speaking to other women, and men, about the issues that have leapt to the fore in the past few days. You know what they are. But she says it best:

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