Tag Archives: Social Justice

The Nuns on the Bus go Round and Round Across Ohio

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The snappy headline comes from the Columbus Dispatch  on October 2, 2012, in a report written by Randy Ludlow.

Nuns criss-cross Ohio to advocate for "the least of these" in federal budget.

Roman Catholic sisters board the bus in Ohio to speak our for Catholic social justice teachings, caring for “the least of these” in the federal budget.

Roman Catholic sisters board the bus in Ohio to speak our for Catholic social justice teachings, caring for “the least of these” in the federal budget.

A group of Roman Catholic nuns launched a 1,000-mile anti-poverty bus tour across Ohio on Wednesday to call for a federal budget “that affirms the life of all God’s children — not just the wealthiest few.”

Led by Sister Simone Campbell, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, the tour will take them to Catholic social service agencies across the swing state which stand to lose significant funding if the budget proposals of Republican vice presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) are passed.

Their Nuns on the Bus Tour message  echoes the campaign last year of Sojourners magazine, a progressive Protestant publication, which rallied public support for the idea that a budget is a moral document, because of the values it represents through its funding priorities. Sojourners’ Jim Wallis wrote in his blog, God’s Politics, that the Republican budget proposal “is an immoral document.”

In Wallis’ testimony on Aug. 1, 2011 as part of a call from faith leaders across the religious spectrum urging Congress to extend the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit for low- and moderate-income Americans, Wallis said:

Here is what the debate reveals from the highest moral lens: the House GOP budget wants to extend tax cuts and credits for the wealthiest people of our society while cutting tax benefits for the poorest — including millions of low-income working families with children at risk.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne wrote in a recent column:

Sister Simone points to a study from Bread for the World, a nonpartisan group that advocates on hunger issues, to suggest one useful line of questioning. To make up for the food stamp cuts in Ryan’s budget, the group found, “every church in the country would have to come up with approximately $50,000 dedicated to feeding people — every year for the next 10 years.” Can government walk away like this? Can we realistically expect our houses of worship to pick up such a tab?

I say, “Keep on truckin’ (or busin’), Sister Simone!”

On Collective Guilt, Individual Responsibility and Forgiveness

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Since launching this blog, with its focus on “helping seat-of-the-pants peacemakers see they are not alone,” I’ve joined several conversations in which the topic of justice comes up almost immediately after the mention of peace.  More than once I’ve heard variations on the popular wisdom, “No justice, no peace.”

In conversations with people involved in Restorative Justice, the focus is more on repairing the harms of crimes and less focused on immediately finding a peaceful solution.  Justice lies in all parties being heard, especially the victims of crime or violence.  Focus on the larger issue of social justice is secondary to the goal of bringing offenders, victims and all relevant parties together to find solutions which restore community.

There is a creative tension between individual responsibility for wrongdoing and broader social forces which often shape individual actions.  Today a friend sent me a link which explores individual responsibility, national and group wrongdoing, and forgiveness — and, it included a movie clip, always a plus in my book.

Written by David Burns, a London-based feature film producer and composer, the essay cites the film, Tracker,  released in 2010, written by Nicolas Van Pallandt, directed by Ian Sharp, starring Ray Winstone.  (The film is now available on DVD, and it’s next up in my queue on Netflix.)

Burns explains his interest in the film in his reprised article on Day1.org:

When I first read Tracker . . . I knew I’d found the right script.  Set in 1903, the story revolves around two mature men whose lives have become defined by the atrocities they’ve suffered at the hands of the British.  – David Burns

David Burns on Day1.org

David Burns is a London-based feature film producer and composer

As a Brit, Burns confesses that he feels a deep sense of shame over the misdeeds of the British Empire, the expansive historic enterprise over which “the sun never set and the blood never dried.”  But this same civilization, which wrought such grievous harms, also gave the world Shakespeare, Dickens, Wordsworth and Donne, and was the first nation in the world to abolish slavery.

“But it is this very contradiction that reveals the problem.  It was Wilberforce whose indefatigable persistence led to the stopping of slavery, not “the British”.  It was individuals in the invading British armies that carried out the atrocities, not “the British”.  It is this distinction between individuals and a Nation’s responsibility that Tracker explores and makes it unique.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UMC Minister Disturbs the Peace for Justice

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Sometimes the path to a lasting peace leads through tumultuous times, conflict and a commitment to social and economic justice.  Seattle, Washington-area pastor Rich Lang raised a ruckus early in his pastorate when he brought a Tent City of homeless people to the parking lot of Trinity United Methodist Church.

In Lang’s eyes, the single event that galvanized Trinity around its new mission, simultaneously setting it on the path to survival while putting it at odds with some neighbors was the decision to bring Tent City to the neighborhood in 2001.

When he arrived at Trinity in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Rev. Lang found a church that had lost focus on its mission of social justice. Due to the church’s decline, it only had the energy to focus on its own survival, he said.

The controversial pastor will leave Trinity in June.  He is headed for Temple UMC, a struggling congregation in Seattle’s university district.  He told the KomoNews.com he has heard Temple UMC will be impossible to resurrect.  Always ready for a challenge, he asked, “Aren’t we in the raising-the dead business?”