Homecoming or Going-Away Party? Questioning the Rapture through the lens of homelessness

This is the sermon I gave at Patchwork Central’s Sunday evening worship on July 26, 2009. Of course, these texts are not the only ones pertinent to discussion of the so-called “end times,” but 1 Thessalonians in particular is of major importance since it is the text most-often used to discuss “what the Rapture will [...]

All things created for God’s pleasure: reflection for Earth Day

Revelation 4:11 can be legitimately translated thusly:
You are worthy, our Lord and God
to receive glory, honor, and dominion
for you created all things.
For your pleasure they came into being
and continue to exist.
Yesterday was Earth Day, a day when many people reflect on the health of the natural world and the relationship between human beings and the [...]

Finding a better story 3

In the last post in the series, I posted some general observations about the cultural context in which the Genesis 1 creation was composed. I contend that the Biblical creation story, as well as other parts of the primordial history (Genesis 1-11) were written to challenge the literary-symbolic world of the Ancient Near East, in [...]

Finding a better story 2

Since I have this unfortunate tendency to start a series and then never finish it, I’m not going to make any promises about how long this will go, how many installments it will have, or even if it will be all that coherent. However, I went back and re-read my “Finding a better story” entry [...]

Finding a better story

The dominant modes of social, political, and economic discourse in our day may be fragmented, they may seem without coherence, and they may be characterized more by argument than agreement. Indeed, I think even a cursory survey of the ongoing public discussions reveals this to be true. The landscape of public discourse over pretty much [...]

The irony of progress

However else it may be defined, it is generally agreed that a (if not the) major feature of modernity is the pervasiveness of the myth of progress. According to the progress myth, progress will be attained in a definite, concrete form as the continuing dialectic (and, in some forms, utopian end) of history if “we [...]

Notes from my Cornerstone seminar

I promised these over a week ago when I was still in Chicago, and haven’t yet got around to it – so here they are, the notes from my seminar, “Sacred Anarchy: The Image of God and Political (Dis)Order”, given on Saturday at Cornerstone.
Sacred Anarchy: The Image of God and Political (Dis)Order
The section on Genesis [...]

Cornerstone seminar

The Cornerstone seminar went really well. The title of my session was “Sacred Anarchy: The Image of God and Political (Dis)Order”. I focused on Wink’s formulation of the Myth of Redemptive Violence, focused on Genesis as subversive to the Myth, and then took a trip through modern political philosophy to demonstrate how the modern state [...]

“Green energy” and Amazon rain forests

People need to to read things like this before they ignorantly ramble about how great biofuels are.
At the bottom of page one it talks about the possibility of the Amazon rain forest turning into something like a savannah or even a desert. It wouldn’t be the first time human deforestation has caused a vital and [...]

IDEM hearing on “fine particle matter”

You know, the kind that gets in your lungs and doesn’t come back out, that contributes heavily to cancer, emphysema, and other fun things. They want to make it easier for industrial pollution in the area to increase so we can breathe more of it – in an area that already compares with Los Angeles [...]

Lent this year

It has now been six days since my Lent/Ash Wednesday reflection post, in which I promised I would post what I am doing for this Lenten season in a day or two. It should surprise no one at this point to hear that, on the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, I am a P (this is [...]

Derrick Jensen quote

If monetary value is attached to something it will be exploited until it’s gone. That’s what happens when you convert living beings to cash. That conversion from living trees to lumber, schools of cod to fish sticks, and onward to numbers on a ledger, is the central process of our economic system. — Derrick Jensen

Green consumerism? A short video

a summary of Christian anarchy

I posted this on an anarchist discussion group a short while ago, and thought it was worth sharing here.
I may be a bit of an oddball, because I actually came to my anarchist views through my religious studies.
I have written somewhat more about my views on my blog, http://propheticheretic.wordpress.com (though I’ve neglected it as of [...]

Ansell article

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can read this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2007/02/18/ansell-article/

The Liberating Image: Imago Dei in Genesis 1 by J. Richard Middleton

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can read this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2007/02/17/the-liberating-image-imago-dei-in-genesis-1-by-j-richard-middleton/

battle of the sexes and creation

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can read this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/10/04/battle-of-the-sexes-and-creation/

Nieztsche, the fall, anarcho-primitivism, and human domination

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can see this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/10/03/nieztsche-the-fall-anarcho-primitivism-and-human-domination/

boldly entering the new world we have created…

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can read this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/09/28/boldly-entering-the-new-world-we-have-created/

Peak oil, alternative energy sources, infrastructure, and the future of America

Absolution Revolution has moved! You can find this article at http://absolutionrevolution.com/blog/2006/09/14/peak-oil-alternative-energy-sources-infrastructure-and-the-future-of-america/