Every now and then someone writes to me with a question about liberation theology, or just plain theology for that matter, and I struggle to come up with a response that brings light to the topic. This blog is a record of the best of those exchanges. You are welcome to submit questions and comments using the contact form on this site. Time may not allow me to write in response to each question (I am a volunteer) but I will do my best to pick illuminating questions and write illuminating answers.
Dennis Rivers, Editor
Freedom Plaza participant explains protests.
The Spirit of Freedom Square in Cairo, Egypt,
Comes to Washington, DC, October 6, 2011
Dear Friends,
The wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq rage on. For ten years the people of Afghanistan have suffered US bombing, invasion and occupation of their country. Thousands of innocent people have died. Through our military actions there we are recruiting ever more people to Al-Qaeda and the war on terrorism could continue forever. The wars and US addiction to militarism are bankrupting the United States and our government is forced to make drastic cuts in social services including funds for schools, libraries, job training, and programs for the young and elderly.
We have prayed, we have written letters to our Congresspeople, we have vigiled, demonstrated and gone to jail, but our government has not listened to the majority of American people who want to end these wars. If not now, When, If not us, Who?
NOW is the time to speak with our lives and bodies that this senseless killing and destruction must end. This is the time the American people must DEMAND that we bring the Billions of dollars squandered in these wars home to meet human needs at home. Security is found not through wars, military bases all over the world and a new generation of nuclear weapons, but in building a world in which every person can live with dignity with food, education, healthcare and a home to live in. How much safer we would be if we contributed billions for improving the lives of people all over the world rather than for weapons to kill?
Now is the time to bring the Spirit of Tahrir Square in Egypt to the United States and demand that our government listen to the people instead of the military industrial complex and the corporations.
We invite you to join thousands of us who will gather in Freedom Plaza in Washington DC October 6 to begin sustained nonviolent resistance to the wars and American militarism and demand that we bring the billions of dollars home to our communities across this country which so badly need these funds.
Please look at the website www.october2011.org and if the Spirit moves you, join us for a day, a week or as long as you can. Thousands of us will nonviolently demand:
- End the wars, bring the troops home, cut military spending and bring the billions of $ home
- Tax the Rich and corporations
- Protect the Social Security net, strengthen Social Security and Medicare for all
- End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests
- Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation
- Protect worker rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages
- Get Money out of politics
Hope to see many of you in Washington and please help spread the word!
Peace,
David and Jan Hartsough
September, 2011
www.peaceworkersus.org
By Dennis Rivers
This Easter I have been depressed
about the fate of the Japanese
as they face their natural
and man-made disasters.
It is hard to imagine
how they will extricate themselves
from their tomb of radioactive sorrows
kin washed out to sea
birth defects that will continue for centuries.
A friend sent me a link to a video
about Christians in a Beirut restaurant
suddenly standing up and singing
a beautiful Easter hymn.
He is risen!
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By Dennis Rivers — April 2011 (Printer-friendly PDF version)
Who are you?
In this essay I’m going to explore some of the ways in which we are grander than our wildest dreams, and I am also going to explore one of the greatest paradoxes of being human: the fact of simultaneously being great and small.
There is a movie currently in theaters that provides me with a wonderful jumping off place. The movie is called Limitless. But it could have just as easily been titled, Limited, because the main character, falling into possession of a cognition enhancing wonder drug, uses his newly expanded powers in service only of ancient motives. He is now smart enough to accomplish practically anything, so he chooses to become a stock market wizard. Then he goes for the really big stuff: he becomes a player in the mergers and acquisitions game on Wall Street. And he persuades his beautiful ex-girlfriend to come back to him. Cure malaria? Forget it. Cause the leaders of the world to see that peace makes more sense than war? Not a chance. Truly, this is new wine poured into very old bottles. But as flawed as it is by its limited horizon of possibilities, the film still raises a deeply important question, how could each of us grow into greater fullness of being?, even if the film itself gives a shallow answer.
Spirit Within Matter — Sculpture by Vijali
By Dennis Rivers — December 28, 2010
One idea I have been developing in my journals for many years is a "theory of moral overload." In my theory, we each have a nervous system that has evolved to handle the amount of bad news, failures and emergencies that might be generated in a circle a few miles wide. But now we participate in a mechanically connected world which brings to our awareness many more requests for help than we can ever respond to. As a result of this, it is very difficult to feel good about oneself, no matter how hard one tries to be helpful. Every situation of suffering we give our efforts to improve is accompanied by thousands we could not reach. The technologies that have expanded our world have inadvertently nailed us to a psychological cross, which influences all our relationships as we struggle to reassert some personal boundaries, hide from our overwhelming sense of failure and salvage some shred of self esteem.
There is no clear answer to the question that you raise.
July 2010
QUESTION:
The New Oxford American dictionary defines theology as the study of the nature of God and religious belief. Based on this definition of theology I am led to believe that liberation theologists believe in God. If I am wrong in this belief please inform me otherwise. However, if liberation theologists do believe in God and the Holy Bible, could you explain to me with Scripture examples the means by which the oppressed and the oppressors receive his/her salvation? Thanks for your time.
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