Sigh.
Tonight, I had dinner at my favorite sushi buffet. Eating there always leaves me feeling a little like Caligula, as if there are no pleasures left in the world.
I’ve been rethinking a long-held position of mine that politics really don’t have place in church, especially mine.
Sinkford’s grandstanding seriously makes me ill. Seriously.
But at the same time, I have been thinking about Universalists and how they were the first church to really come out against slavery. That undeniably kicks ass.
When I got home, the CSO sat on the edge of the bathtub as I washed my hair. We talked about the issue for awhile, deciding that political issues in historical retrospect become moral issues.
I remain uncomfortable with the idea of politics from the pulpit, yet I’m rethinking exactly how deeply into politics morality can go.
CC
6 comments:
There is absolutely a place for politics in the pulpit, but to be valid its place must be as the application of timeless and incontrovertible religious truths, not as a proxy for them. Political advocacy done primarily for its own sake, rather than as a particular expression of a more general and profound spiritual and moral foundation, is not religion, but religious platitutes and observances without practical moral application are just as meaningless.
"I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
"Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon.
"Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
"But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."--Amos 5:21-24 (sound familiar?)
Are you kidding? I'm humming already.
CC
Are you kidding? I'm humming already.
CC
Well, yeah, but politically conscious UUs who think it's in their hymnal just because Martin Luther King used it in an effective political speech are way missing the point.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an extraordinarily effective political activist, but it wasn't his political activism alone that made him righteous or effective.
Call me ignorant, but I didn't even recall that MLK had used the verse until you reminded me.
I just like the hymn.
CC
I admit it, so do I. I caught myself humming it in the shower the other day.
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