New Christain Social Justice Website
I recently stumbled across an excellent Christian social Justice website. I definitely am not in the target audience since it is geared toward post-modern 20- somethings. But I have found the articles to be quite refreshing. The site is One Sabbath and is associated with Neue Ministries and their social justice blog.
Here are some articles I found interesting from both and quotes from the articles for reflection.
but what might happen now to a city that can identify with financial pain, crisis and hardship across class systems? how might a new dose of empathy injected into our social systems change our perspective on local and global community transformation? maybe it will never happen. but what if it did?
may this season of hardship and trial teach us empathy and compassion unlike any other other moment in our history. may we never forget how it feels to be foreclosed on and unable to find a decent paying job. may our unmet needs be burned into our story so that we never forget what has been constant in the lives of so many others.
Where Do We Go From Here? Figuring Out the Next Steps of the Pro-life Movement.
While the culture has changed over the years, the language used to communicate a culture of life has not. Many major pro-life organizations haven’t changed their rhetoric since abortion was made legal in 1973. Their message is targeted to a modern audience, stating scientific facts and focusing on the baby. However, a postmodern society sees the issue as more complex than that.
One of the biggest blows to the pro-life movement was abortion clinic violence. The media used it to create a false caricature of those who care about human life, and painted what was actually a peaceful movement with the traits of a few mentally unstable radical activists. If one takes a stand for the culture of life, there is a legitimate fear of being aligned with the fringe extremists. To say that the movement has an image problem is an understatement. Thankfully the violence has come to a halt, but sadly the stigma remains.
Africa has become the contemporary Church’s pet social justice topic. Leaders across the board in the Christian community are finally talking about the tragedies of hunger, extreme poverty, AIDS, international debt and unsafe drinking water. Yet despite the topic’s newfound status, the gap between intellectual assent and practical intervention is still a gaping chasm. Has your church or group made itself relevant to Africa? Here are some practical ways to become part of the solution:
Poverty is More than a Spoonful of Rice
But the real issue is not only poverty with regard to hungry bellies, but also the poverty of identity that happens in the communities around the globe. Food and water are certainly the immediate needs, but community is also a part of our fight. We don’t just want people to live day-to-day, hanging on every penny we give to help feed them. We want people to experience their dreams, live out their hopes and feel that they are a part of a global movement.
This is a very personally challenging article.
It is not “cheap” to open ourselves to the intensity of this kind of exposure. There is a cost involved. A cost that we often don’t want to talk about and don’t want to consider. Do we not understand that there is a tremendous cost to our exposure? Can we not wrap our minds around the truth that to see the suffering we’ve seen, that in submitting ourselves to community and in forming friendships with the oppressed, our lives are forever changed? Our freedoms are forever limited? That there are things we must never allow ourselves to do and people we can never allow ourselves to become? Can we find the courage to be honest with ourselves, that to whom much is given much is required? The challenge is to not allow the limiting of our freedoms to become a prison, but rather a gift of grace.
This should be profoundly disturbing to us. If we will have three meals today, then we are rich relative to those who will have fewer. If we will sleep with a roof over our heads tonight (made of something other than cardboard), then we are rich relative to those who will not. If we will have a choice of what clothes to wear tomorrow, then we are rich relative to those who will not. You get my point. We are rich, and therefore, Jesus’ teachings regarding the rich apply to us. And that, to put it mildly, should give us cause for concern.
And you speak of signs and wonders
But I need something other
I would believe if I was able
I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table—“Crumbs from Your Table,” U2
Some very practical tips to help feed others.
Joining the New Conspirators in Putting Mission First in a Hungry World
Frankly, there are very few discipleship resources that challenge us to change our time-styles or lifestyles to put mission first in our lives. In fact, much of American Christianity seems to baptize the notion of allowing our class and income to define how we steward our lives instead of scriptural call to care for those in need. The marketers of this new global economy have been very successful in persuading many American Christians to spend a growing share of our income on ourselves … often on things we don’t really need.
Break Forth Like the Dawn: A Call to Christ-Centered Good Works
Will the Piety of Sunday Produce a Passion for Justice on Monday?
Living Fully: Suffering and Hope
The article went on to cite that Americans don’t use 80 percent of what they own. These numbers seem to be corroborated by the state of my own home and the garages and basements of people I know. Over-consumption is a deadly disease in that it makes it impossible for the over-consumer to live fully. Satiated living kills the senses and stunts one’s ability to laugh all of their laughter and weep all of their tears. Despite my face-to-face encounter with grinding poverty, I must admit that one of my major worries is deciding what to do with all my stuff. My new husband and I have discovered since marrying and consolidating homes a couple months ago that we don’t have enough room to store our current possessions. Ironically, another thing we still think about—a lot—is how we’re going to get our next new thing: a new bike for me, a dresser for our bedroom (where we could keep more stuff), better clothes (although the less hip ones already spill out of our closets). When you pair these concerns with the reality that 32,000 children will die today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day—every day—because of a lack of basics necessities like food or clean water, it makes the banana-mango-açaí breakfast smoothie with protein powder and a double shot of wheatgrass rise up in your throat a bit. The problem is obvious. The connections seem clear. The “solutions” are complex and feel out of reach; they require more than a person is able (or would want) to give. Am I the only one who has stuck out a hip and waved a pointer finger at the sky? The accompanying exclamation is something like, “Oh no you didn’t just ask me to do that!” But change can only come at great cost to somebody, and maybe that somebody is me.
Author Henry Nouwen says:
Those who are marginal in the world are central in the Church, and that is how it is supposed to be! Thus, we are called as members of the Church to keep going to the margins of our society… We can trust that when we reach out with all our energy to the margins of our society we will discover that petty disagreements, fruitless debates, and paralyzing rivalries will recede and gradually vanish. The Church will always be renewed when our attention shifts from ourselves to those who need our care. The blessing of Jesus always comes to us through the poor. The most remarkable experience of those who work with the poor is that, in the end, the poor give more than they receive.
When we claim our own poverty and connect with the poverty of our brothers and sisters, we become the Church of the poor, which is the Church of Jesus. Solidarity is essential for the Church of the poor. Both pain and joy must be shared. As one body, we will experience deeply one another’s agonies as well as one another’s ecstasies. As Paul says: “If one part is hurt, all the parts share its pain. And if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.” (1 Corinthians 12:26)
Does the ONE Campaign Make a Difference?
Despite the rally, despite the unprecedented media coverage of life cut short all over the word, things look much the same three years later. According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, the rise in grain and food prices of the past two years has set back development progress by seven years. Life goes on, it appears, as normal.
Or does it?
In the US, PEPFAR was signed into law in 2003 and reauthorized in July of this year, allowing up to $48 billion to combat global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria treatment. …
The Roll Back Malaria Partnership is working hard to raise awareness of malaria …
2.4 million Americans have signed up for the ONE campaign, …
And no wonder. People all over the world want to do and be more than disconnected consumers; they want to serve and fight for the cause of the least among us. Young people in churches around this country want to know how they can help serve their communities and their world. It is admirable and encouraging. The next question on our agenda is harder, though: do we have the desire and the will to do so when it means we must put aside our privilege for the benefit of the least?
This is the crux: to deal with worldwide poverty we have to deal with structural imbalances in the world that benefit us. We must tackle trade injustice (we can’t force countries like Zambia to open up to cotton imports, restrict subsidies, and cut services like health and education while at the same time paying our own cotton farmers $3.9 billion [in 2000/2001] so we can dump cheap cotton on their market), debt (who wants to be responsible for the faulty loans often given to dictators?), and aid (it does work, in the right circumstances). And that means we contend with our own habits and expectations, because these issues are inextricably linked. So, what must we do?
The Simplicity of Justice
Usually, when I leave my apartment building to go pick up some groceries, rent a video, or buy a random household item like Krazy Glue, I turn left. After all, that’s where Wal-Mart is. That’s where the white people are. That’s where “safety” is.But for some reason, I went right that day and picked up my glue at the superstore where the Hispanics do their shopping. Now, I know that sounds potentially racist, but you don’t live where I live. It is racist. It’s that segregated. Half the people in my apartment complex go where the white suburbanites shop, and the other half go where there are signs intentionally written in Spanish, so that they know what they’re purchasing. Granted, pockets of cultural concentration exist in every city, but we need to learn to occasionally cross those borders and learn from those whom we so often avoid.
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