Dr. Robert Linthicum has just made available for downloading the complete three year cycle of his “The Gospel of Shalom: A Justice Reading of the Lectionary Scripture” This is based on his 48 years of study of how the Scripture deals with the issues of social justice. Reading along for the past year has changed my theology and given me a much better understanding of the problems in my community and the Church’s role in responding to those problem. Evangelicals please don’t be afraid this is a thoroughly solid evangelical work.That expresses both aspects of loving God and loving your neighbor.
The work is available in PDF downloads based on the lectionary year.
This summer he plans to release Truly Strategic Scriptures Avoided by the Lectionary, which I am looking forward to.
Anyone who wants a solid theology perspective on social justice issues should check out his website.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Categories: Christianity, Community Organizing, Following Christ, Holistic Ministry, Must Reads, Poverty, Scripture, Social Justice, The common good, The whole Gospel, Theology of Social Justice, urban ministry
I posted as a page an article by Ms. Ann Pettifor from issue Number 1 of 2009 of Global Future by World Vision. I think she really hits the nail on the head and says much better than I ever could how to both view and address the international economic crisis. To read the article go here.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
One thing that often gets shoved to the backburner is the effect of the global financial crisis on the poor. The new edition of Global Future which is publisehed by World Vision tackles that question.
Articles include:
- More than financial by David Lansley
- Aid in the time of financial meltdown by Roy Culpeper
- Small fish: global crises and the Latin American poor by Eduardo Nunes
- Africa: to integrate or to de-link? by Simon Heliso
- The global crisis and developing countries: what role for the G20? by Dirk Willem te Velde
- Families lose their main source of income (Armenia) by Gayane Ayvazyan
- Global crisis affecting micro-enterprise (the Philippines) by Jonar Dorado, Jonathan Neri & Roni Oracion
- Remittance : the past and future for Albania’s rural families (Albania) by Bardha Prendi
- Averting a development crisis by Rica Garde
- Re-thinking food security by David Lansley
- Bailing out the world’s poorest by Martin Ravallion
- Re-building the world’s financial architecture by Steve Keen
- Morals and money by Ann Pettifor
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
World Focus has an excellant video, very well produced and clear about a young family forced to flee there homes in eastern DRC. War in DR Congo: The story of Pascal and Vestine. Pascal was just picking up his certification as a school teacher as the rebels attacked. Vestine gave birth to their second child in the refugee camp. A powerful and moving story which puts very human faces on the crisis in the DR Congo. This crisis is about thousands of others just like Pascal and Vestine.
Read about how difficult it was even to film the documentary:
Detained by Congo’s secret police
For more on Congo’s secret police read: Torture fate ‘awaits UK deportees‘
Also please read:
Giving a human face to Congo’s conflict
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
In this article, A Massacre in Congo, Despite Nearby Support and its accompanying video the New York Times reports that more than 150 people mostly young males were killed in a spaced of about 24 hours in the village of Kiwanja in northeast Congo by CNDP rebels. The CNDP is Gen. Laurent Nkunda’s rebel force in eastern DRC.
According to witnesses and clips of video shot at the time, Jean Bosco Ntaganda, Mr. Nkunda’s chief of staff, commanded the troops that carried out the killings. Mr. Ntaganda, whose nom de guerre is the Terminator, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed while he was commanding a different armed group earlier in the war.
This all took place while UN MONUC troops were less than a mile away, unaware of what was happening.
The video accompanying the article features an interview with Gen. Nkunda who denies it was his troops but the evedence says otherwise.
See also Congo Needs 5 Minutes and 27 Seconds of Your Time Today in the Huffington Post.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Medicins Sans Frontieres has set up a very powerful site on the situation in the DR Congo at present.
Condition Critical This site includes:
News
Blogs
Eyewitness
Memory
MSF Activities
and a Photo Timeline
The site combines very powerful images and hard-hitting compelling text. This is a must see for anyone concerned about the situation in the DRC.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
The Greatest Commission is to me one of the most significant calls to the Church in recent years.
The greatest victories of the Church have often been victories over our own moral failings, like the abolition of slavery. Today, one of the greatest moral failures for US churches is that while Christian growth in places like Africa has fast outpaced church growth in America, the gap between rich Americans and impoverished Africans has also grown. The question we have to ask ourselves is that, in trying to save Africa, have we begun to lose our own souls? How we deal with this issue is the great moral calling of the new generation of Christian leaders.
The reality is that while U.S. churches have been very generous in giving to global mission or humanitarian efforts over the last 30 years, there has been no organized Christian movement against global poverty in the way William Wilberforce mobilized Christians against slavery in the British Empire or churches stood as the moral force behind the sweeping social change of the civil rights movement. In a world where the difference between poor and rich is often as arbitrary as one’s skin color or nationality, and where poverty is a form of bondage or death for millions, it cannot be that extreme poverty isn’t worthy of the same moral outrage as slavery or segregation.
Ironically, it is our own religiosity that has been our biggest stumbling block. We have let the evangelical mission to save the world get in the way of our ability to actually change it. The Great Commission, the call to disciple all nations, has overshadowed the Greatest Commandment, the call to love both God and neighbor. This is the result of a generation of Christian mission that has put spiritual conversion, or evangelism, in competition with social change. What we need today is a new, missional generation led by what might be called “The Greatest Commission,” or the belief that true spiritual conversion cannot be separated from social change. Greatest Commission evangelicals would believe that planting churches is important, but also insist that these churches must play a role in creating communities that are more just, prosperous and compassionate.
Amen!
This short article really sums up an important truth: The Great Commission and the Great Commadments together sum up the mission of the Church in the World. To take the Gospel into the whole world, to love God with our whole heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves, and our neighbor is every person in the the whole world. This is the whole Gospel.
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
SocialVibe