Monday, June 20, 2011

Five myths about incarceration - The Washington Post

Five Myths is not just about making sure we get the story straight but about helping us realize that these myths continue to believe them. Please share with friends and family, let us spread the word so that we can help our society to make better decisions regarding our prison population. Read and Share.

Five myths about incarceration - The Washington Post

State and Federal Confrontation over what is a “Secure Community”

This is an article worth reading. Read and share. Blessings.
State and Federal Confrontation over what is a “Secure Community”

Friday, June 10, 2011

Church must ‘measure what we treasure’ - UMC.org

This is a wonderful article written by the Rev. Beverly L. Wilkes Null. We need, among the other thousand things we need to address, the recommendations coming from the Connectional Table of the United Methodist Church. These recommendations, from my perspective, are a reflection of our old ways of addressing our church's current situation; the CT believes that by changing the furniture on the top deck of a sinking ship that is going to resolve our problems. By becoming more like a corporation we are going to solve our problems, as if our problems were lack of a corporate structure. This reminds me every day that we are making the same mistakes we made during our 1968 union conference, back then we adopted a corporate vision for our church (corporate in the capitalistic sense) believing that was going to solve our problems too. We thought, and still do, that we need to be more like the world (the business world at that) to be a successful church, we keep equating political/social power with God's power disregarding the words of John Wesley: “I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.” We are asking the question about how can we bring people in, and we call that to make disciples, discipleship, as we all know is a life gripping commitment to live, and be the presence of Christ in this world. Please read and share. Blessings,

Church must ‘measure what we treasure’ - UMC.org

Left of Black | Stephanie Li on "Ugly White People" and White Self-Consc...

Excellent discussion about whiteness and white privilege. Certainly a great conversation about the history of the United States. Certainly w...