7/25/2017 3 Comments The illusion of american innocenceWe promise, this time we will actually talk about chapter 2! From the School of the Americas to Vatican 2 and the Christian Base Communities, we've got a lot of content in this chapter.
Yale theologian Miroslav Volf says that Americans have a "pervasive sense of innocence" and "optimism," that we see ourselves as "good people" and therefore tend to see others as "bad people" (http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/america). While many of us do see ourselves as generally good people, I suspect we would struggle to unanimously claim that in seeing ourselves as good means that we see others as automatically bad people. However, this chapter lifts up for us how the assumption that Americans and American policy leans toward good and leans toward justice, might be blinding us a little when it comes to the real picture of what our involvement in the global economy is doing to people in other countries. What do you think? Do you agree that Americans have a pervasive sense of innocence? Also in this chapter, we begin to see similarities between the ways that Christian Base Communities in Latin America and African American Churches in the U.S. are beginning to organize in ways that would forever change theology, the Church, and the world. Seeing the power of faith communities to move the arc of justice makes us wonder, where and for what is the church organizing today?
3 Comments
Beth Walters
7/26/2017 06:01:44 pm
Ben refers to a talk we had after his sermon two weeks ago; I would like to build on that. Yes, I see both of the sowers as, of course, characters in parables. In the parable from the first week with Matthew, the whole image of seeds falling on rocky, pathway, weedy or fertile soil can be interpreted as being very judgmental -- which is not the way I hear it. Jesus who, it emphasizes nearby, “did not say anything to them without using a parable,” explains himself later as being the sower. (I actually believe the last section was added later, as most explanatory passages surely have been, but...)
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Beth Walters
7/26/2017 06:04:39 pm
Oops. The comment above was supposed to go on the July 18 discussion instead.
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Beth Walters
7/27/2017 05:01:34 pm
Miguel’s use of the word Christendom here jumped out at me, making me curious about the difference between that and Christianity.”
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