Tag: Empire Values

To pressure us toward honesty, Johnson provides seven sections of powerful essays on aspects of our culture: irrelevant religion and idolatry, exclusion and thin democracy; biblical certitudes and ignorance; individualism and cheap grace; ecological crisis and greed; silence and job security; and empire and civil religion.

For me, honoring First Nation people and ensuring environmental justice is essential, especially if we claim to truly love this "blue dot" (what astronauts have called the earth from space, depicted in my poster above) we all call home.

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” he says. When he himself was the target, he added, “Forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23: 34). Who heard these radical words and copied them down? Who later collected and preserved them? By the grace of God, we can find testimony today for this minority position against revenge in the words and acts of Jesus, Terence, Gandhi, Daryl Davis, and others. By binding our hearts to Jesus and his words, we can counter our intuitive responses and lift up even our enemies to the Creator’s loving care.

In Mexico the Day of the Dead is widely celebrated, but this year it is overshadowed by the disappearance on Sept. 26 of 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero, 120 miles south of Mexico City, and by the deaths of many others who have been bystanders in Mexico’s war on drugs.

Today there’s a term: transnational feminism. As Alena Amato Ruggerio reminded us in her keynote speech at the 2012 EEWC-CFT gathering, once you have a word for a feeling or a problem, you have means to tackle it. The issue becomes widely recognized.

The Ruler’s life has been irrevocably changed as a result of absorbing Christ’s world view, and his epiphany results as he sees for the first time his position in his own world. The pathology of that position is now clear to him: he sees the poor and their condition, and he sees in their watchfulness that they are Christ’s emissaries to him.

"Perhaps that’s the worst part of being a modern-day Samaritan in southern Arizona: you may never know if the persons you have hugged and tried to help are living or dead. Laws prevent you from taking a shivering immigrant to shelter: actions like those of the kind traveler in Jesus’ story are currently illegal in the US. You can provide food, water, blankets, jackets, shoes—but for transportation you could be punished with 15 years in prison."

Into this theological ferment, Schüssler Fiorenza inserts her feminist vision of radical democracy. Rather than “patriarchy” or “hierarchy,” what she opposes is “kyriarchy/kyriocentrism.” These terms derive from the Greek kyrios (lord) and describe how empire works—through “domination by the emperor, lord, master, father, husband, elite propertied male.”

This book can be extremely helpful to Christian feminists who care both about properly interpreting the Bible and who oppose all kinds of private and public oppression. There are many parallels between the ancient Roman Empire and the "American Empire" of the 21st century.