[Oe List ...] The Church as Pioneer

[David Flowers]

The Church as Pioneer

Hi everyone!

I've been teaching leadership studies in some pretty diverse classrooms the
last few years and, to make a long story short, have come to see the
imagery associated with the term "pioneer", in my classrooms, as part of a
distinctly Western and North American paradigm in particular. Which then
evokes images and notions of expansionism and colonialism (often
Patriarchal).

Don't get me wrong - I love H.R. Niebuhr's paper but ... am recently
ruminating on how this pioneer imagery/story might not work for a
Global/intersectional Church in community.

The Church dynamic is the 1st to respond - and is called for adaptive and
creative - human-centered - christ-centered -  responses to human suffering
(and a suffering biosphere, for that matter) but - our Western history of
pioneers doesn't quite speak to who we are or who the Church is - for me.

On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 11:10 PM, <oe-request at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

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>    1. Re: [Dialogue] 10/12/17: Spong/Vosper: REFORMERS, ALL; Spong
>       revisited (James Wiegel)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2017 21:54:46 +0000 (UTC)
> From: James Wiegel <jfwiegel at yahoo.com>
> To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>,
>         oe at lists.wedgeblade.net, jlepps39 <jlepps39 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 10/12/17: Spong/Vosper:
>         REFORMERS, ALL; Spong revisited
> Message-ID: <1783080715.144293.1508190886443 at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>
> TheChurch's responsibility to God for human societies doubtless varies
> with itsown and the nations' changing positions, but it may be described in
> a generalfashion by reference to the apostolic, the pastoral and the
> pioneeringfunctions of the Christian community.
>
> ?Apostolicresponsibility?The Church is by nature andcommandment an
> apostolic community which exists for the sake of announcing theGospel to
> all nations and of making them disciples of Christ.?
>
> Theshepherd of the lost??
>
> The Church discharges itsresponsibility to God for society in carrying out
> its pastoral as well as itsapostolic functions. It responds to
> Christ-in-God by being a shepherd of thesheep, a seeker of the lost, the
> friend of publicans and sinners, of the poorand broken-hearted.?
>
> The Church as social pioneer??
>
> Finally, the social responsibility of the Church needs to be described as
> that of the pioneer.?The Church is that part of the human community which
> responds first to God-in-Christ and Christ-in-God.?It is the sensitive and
> responsive part in every society and mankind as a whole.?It is that group
> which hears the Word of God, which sees His judgments, which has the vision
> of the resurrection.?In its relations with God it is the pioneer part of
> society that responds to God on behalf of the whole society, some?what, we
> may say, as science is the pioneer in responding to pattern or rationality
> in experience and as artists are the pioneers in responding to beauty.?
>
>
>
>
> Jim Wiegel ?
>
> ?That which consumes me is not man, nor the earth, nor the heavens, but
> the flame which consumes man, earth, and sky." ?Nikos Kazantzakis
>
> 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353
> 623-363-3277
>
> jfwiegel at yahoo.com
>
> www.partnersinparticipation.com
>
>
>     On Friday, October 13, 2017, 11:38:13 PM MST, jlepps39 <
> jlepps39 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Jim et al.
> I believe Neibuhr's other 2 categories were prophet and priest.
> John from Paris.
>
>
> Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
> -------- Original message --------From: James Wiegel via Dialogue <
> dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net> Date: 10/13/17 23:49 (GMT+01:00) To:
> dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net, oe at lists.wedgeblade.net Cc: James Wiegel <
> jfwiegel at yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] 10/12/17:
> Spong/Vosper: REFORMERS, ALL; Spong revisited
> As always, thanks, Ellie for passing these on . . .? This one seems a cry
> for Niebuhr's 3rd social responsibility of the church, the social pioneer.?
> Yea.? What about the other 2 -- the part of the paper we skipped over to
> get to that last page . . .
> Jim Wiegel ?
>
> ?That which consumes me is not man, nor the earth, nor the heavens, but
> the flame which consumes man, earth, and sky." ?Nikos Kazantzakis
>
> 401 North Beverly Way,Tolleson, Arizona 85353
> 623-363-3277
>
> jfwiegel at yahoo.com
>
> www.partnersinparticipation.com
>
>
>     On Thursday, October 12, 2017, 7:31:46 AM MST, Ellie Stock via OE <
> oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
>
>
>
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> REFORMERS, ALL
>
> By Rev. Gretta Vosper
> ?We?ve been anticipating the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the
> Protestant Reformation for some time. Now that the month is upon us, it
> seems more like a private birthday party than something worthy of global
> attention. In truth, I suppose it is. With the global number of Reform
> Tradition Protestants diminishing, the celebration of the dramatic and
> cataclysmic leave-taking that was our birth seems of little interest to any
> but those enchanted by the history of such things and the few others taking
> advantage of the liturgical and party possibilities offered up by the
> date.The Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues of the past few decades
> culminated in the document From Conflict to Communion, published in 2013.
> Within it, Five Ecumenical Imperatives are laid out, providing a base from
> which the two traditions could ramp up together for a joint celebration of
> the Reformation, a healing of the centuries old rift between them. Shoving
> a new foundation of respect under the violence and
>   rancour of the past, the Catholic and Lutheran ecumenists have demanded
> a new and generous spirit from their adherents: choose unity over disunity;
> start from a place of agreement rather than focusing on easily spotted
> differences. They seem simple and wise choices. If only we had managed to
> get to this place four hundred and ninety-five years earlier. So much
> hatred, horror, and bloodshed may have been avoided.There is no doubt that
> our great faith traditions have provided the human family much that has
> been of benefit. Perhaps their most important work was built of the
> evolutionary advantage provided humans by what we might nowadays call
> ?group think?. Religion gave us a bigger and stronger clan than family.
> Members would die for us just as quickly as we would die for them; we were
> no longer alone but had the safety of our religious affiliates to add
> strength to our prejudices and personal desires. And those prejudices and
> personal desires were, in turn, further refined by our re
>  ligious beliefs. Put in such a way, it is easy to see how, in the early
> 16th century, neighbours could turn against one another to the point of
> death, uncovering allegiances that damned an individual or family to the
> ultimate exclusion from God?s grace and forgiveness for all of eternity.
> Taking leave of an institution with that much power was a risky thing to
> do. The rhetoric continues to be chilling to this day.Bishop Spong has
> presented visionary work on what a new reformation might look like, what it
> might provide humanity in the third millennium, and how we might get there.
> His forthcoming book will take that work further, providing much more than
> the meticulously negotiated but necessarily simplistic Lutheran Catholic
> Imperatives. I expect this book will crown the past four decades of his
> leadership in this progressive Christian landscape, a terrain still
> tragically unknown to so many.CHOICEAt any point in time, a range of
> possibilities lie before us. We make the best decision
>  s we can, given the information we have at the time. Decades later, we
> sometimes realize that a single choice resulted in a myriad of other
> choices, each circumscribed by the first, and all resulting in a reality
> that, had it been clear to us from the beginning, we may have refused. We
> cannot see what the future brings and we are very poor at extrapolating our
> possibilities out much further than our immediate creature needs. And so we
> end up in situations, relationships, jobs, communities, social structures,
> or a whole world we may not have chosen had we been able to see the
> extrapolated implications of our every choice.But you don?t need to keep
> going in the same direction just because that is the direction you happen
> to be going. You certainly can and many do. But others, either because of a
> sudden reorientation of their perspective or because they were just born
> without a personal comfort zone, refuse to just keep on keeping on. To
> them, the cost is too high. In fact, it is idioc
>  y.Enter, the Reformer. Many are the times I?ve heard Martin Luther
> compared to Jesus in the work they both undertook. They didn?t start
> dramatically; reformers rarely do. It may have been a conversation here or
> a private rant there. It may have begun in whispers and only risen to an
> audible level over many months or even years. It may have been with or
> without design, beginning with a broad, unfocused list of laments or
> emerging from the womb, so to speak, with a well-honed mission. But both
> Luther and Jesus, at some point in time, and very likely supported by the
> gifts of countless unnamed others who listened, shared, cajoled, and
> criticized, noticed that the faith traditions they cherished had veered in
> directions that were unacceptable to them. Choices made by those in
> leadership developed norms for the practices, thinking, attitudes, and
> prejudices embraced within the tradition, each chosen from the creative
> potentialities of time and place. For most believers, all was accepted
>  as it was received.But for Reformers, what is normal for the masses is
> anathema to them. Both Jesus and Luther honoured their traditions. Though
> we long assumed Jesus was Christian, we now know he wasn?t; he was a Jew.
> Luther learned the only acceptable religion of his day, a Rome-centred
> Catholicism. They were steeped in their traditional religions, born into
> and formed by them. Like everyone around them, they were supposed to fit
> in. Their education, far above the level of the average believer, was
> supposed to further hone their beliefs. It was not supposed to expose the
> little hypocrisies and gross abuses that had been so artfully woven into
> the everyday business of religion. Once noticed, however, the normal way of
> doing things became unacceptable. There were no options for Jesus or Luther
> but those that would bring about catastrophic change in their religious
> traditions. Even as others fought to maintain the status quo, forcing
> banishment or conspiring toward more final solutio
>  ns, the Reformers laid out and presented their arguments. And the world
> changed.LEGACYWe stand on the shoulders of great men and women. Countless
> Reformers dared challenge the norms of their day ? religious, political,
> economic, and social. And they did it at great cost. We are grateful to
> them for their struggles, for their lives, for their blood, and for the
> first discomfort noticed that set them on their course. They created the
> world in which we live, the freedoms we cherish, the perspectives we are
> welcome to embrace or refuse, the right to make our own decisions, whether
> wise or foolish. They set in course the possibilities from which we have
> chosen our new realities and so have become, with them, co-creators of the
> world we know.They also, however, created gross disparities and abuses that
> yet plague humanity and the planet: the economic enslavement of whole
> nations for the provision of privileges assumed by others; the legal
> jargons that entrap indigenous peoples in politica
>  lly ritualized battles for sovereignty; the lines that set out who is
> worthy of the right to choose their own lifestyle and who is not; the
> notion that humanity is separate and above the natural world rather than
> enfolded within and vulnerable to it; the entertainments by which we
> anaesthetize ourselves to the truths that quake around us; the cruelties
> endured by herded, caged, and crated animals so we might pleasure our taste
> buds and sooth our sun-scarred skin. And we, in making our choices, remain
> co-creators, complicit in a litany of normals that, had we the heart of
> Jesus or Luther or the millions of unnamed men and women who have poured
> their lives out in the pursuit of justice and compassion and the building
> up of love in the world, would make every one of us a Reformer.There is a
> legacy in the Reformation that I believe belongs in the middle of our work,
> calling out the power brokers, the hegemonists, the deceivers. Ours is not
> the work of complacency or settling for imperat
>  ives that take decades to conjure only because it takes that long to
> soothe the sensitivities of those still wielding ecclesial powers that make
> no difference to the challenges facing our world. Our reforms must be much
> bolder, our work in the world more creative than what those beyond our
> walls believe is all we do. It may be that humanity is facing the greatest
> crises of its too-brief history as it reels with the challenges of global
> warming and climate change, exponential population growth, and resource
> depletion. There may be no future moment for us to step up. Now may be all
> there is. Literally.Change is our very birthplace. It is our right and
> responsibility as heirs of the Reformers, to stare down every comfortable
> ?normal? that sings its siren song and refuse to be enchanted by it. It is
> our right and responsibility to count up every ease and privilege we enjoy
> and educate ourselves about its source ? what makes it possible? Who pays
> for our pleasures and how? And when we fi
>  nd that ?normal? is built on the subjugation of others ? our tea, our
> chocolate, our party-ready shrimp rings ? work to redistribute or limit
> those pleasures until all have access to shelter, security, food, clean
> water, and the joy of planning for their children?s futures.ECLESIA AS
> REFORMERBut change is costly and few have the strength or fortitude to
> bring about its grander accomplishments. That?s why those usually
> identified with the most highly evolved faith in James Fowler?s Stages of
> Faith, a Universalizing Faith, are so few, so well known, and all
> assassinated: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. We aren?t that strong,
> most of us. We might start out heartily, but we then draw up far short of
> our goals, beaten by our own fears, our own comforts, our own weakness. We
> may be legion but we are ordinary, too.Throughout the New Testament, the
> word translated to ?church? is originally ecclesia. It?s a poor
> translation. Rather than ?church?, it shared the idea of government. In G
>  reece, the ecclesia was the council of elect elders who governed the
> city. It?s use in the early Christian writings was a radical refusal to
> live according to the rules of the day by a ragtag group of people who
> believed they had a better way. They believed they were called to a bolder
> and more perfect reflection of the dignity of humanity as they had seen it
> represented in or inspired by a heretical Jew who?d once moved among them
> and left a residual and radical idea of what community should look
> like.Perhaps it is not we, frail and human as we are, but our ecclesia that
> can set out upon the sea of change and call us forward. Perhaps we can use
> the New Testament ideal of an alternative ecclesia to set the standards,
> the ideals, the vision by which the corrective to human destruction of the
> earth might be realized. Perhaps my United Church of Canada and your United
> Church of Christ, United Methodist, or Disciples of Christ could be called
> to this greater and most urgent vision that
>  lies in the roots of all our Christian traditions. Perhaps the
> sacramental traditions, Reformed and Roman, might step up together in this
> celebratory year and cry out the words that need to be heard by all,
> challenging us to notice that normal isn?t acceptable, even if it is the
> culmination of all our choices. We need our religious institutions to be
> the ecclesia they were called to be, to be great for us and challenge us to
> be the reform we want to see in the world. Perhaps this is the year for our
> ecclesial institutions to step into the role of the Reformer and built a
> vision we can work toward. Isn?t this the nature of the gospel call, that
> our ability to notice provides us the challenge to change for the better,
> to take and make good news and not simply welcome it?Like most, I?ve been
> largely indifferent to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It seemed
> to esoteric, to trivial in the face of what challenges us today. But
> perhaps it is exactly the opposite. Perhaps, like Jes
>  us and Luther before us, it is time to challenge the traditions by which
> we have been formed. We would challenge them to reawaken to the purposes
> set out in their deep, deep roots: to bring the people together, to be the
> assembly of Christians and call us all to the frightfully challenging tasks
> ahead of us. To be sacrificial in their work, giving everything even if it
> leads to death.Or perhaps the Reformation anniversary is, more personally,
> a reminder that to each of us that we are a people born of cataclysmic
> change and inheritors of its demand: notice what lies all about you, what
> humanity?s choices have led to, what a continued trajectory might mean.
> Notice, and then stand up and make your stand.~ Rev. Gretta Vosper
>
> About the AuthorThe Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada
> minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without
> God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen:
> What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three
> books of poetry and prayers.Read the essay online here.  |
>
>
> |
> Question & Answer
> ?Lesley from Minnesota, writes:
> ?
> Question:
> What are your views about so many Christians being in favor of gun
> ownership? Doesn?t that completely contradict the Jesus of peace we read
> about in the Bible??
> Answer: By Eric Alexander
> ?Thanks for your question Lesley. This is a timely question for me as I
> was in Las Vegas during the recent shootings. Being so close to an event
> like that made this issue feel even more urgent than it already did to
> me.What made the Las Vegas shooting so interesting to me is that it
> involved a large group of mostly white conservative casualties. It made a
> large demographic of people suspend their NRA sponsored talking points and
> deal with the reality of the situation in their own hearts and minds. And I
> should note here that I enjoy a good skeet shoot as much as the next guy,
> but that is not the issue at hand here.I think it?s an absolute perversion
> of the U.S. 2nd amendment to allow nearly anyone who can fog a mirror to
> have a cache of assault rifles. In my mind, there is no way America?s
> founding fathers intended that. And even if they did, they may not have
> imagined what the world would come to hundreds of years later. People say
> ?guns don?t kill people, people kill people? and I
>  say fine ?let?s not put the guns that kill people in the hands of those
> people that kill people?? There are many sensible steps we can take to find
> a more sustainable footing here.The bottom line is that many Christians are
> not all that interested in Yeshua of Nazareth. Rather they follow a Jesus
> who has been morphed into a pawn of radical right-wing political agendas. I
> don?t think there is any way a disciple of Jesus, or someone who was
> brimming with love, compassion, and forgiveness in their hearts, would feel
> a need to accumulate military grade weapons and thousands of rounds of
> ammo. Disparate militias have no place in 21st century American politics,
> especially in a nation with over 325,000,000 people.No hunter alive needs
> to take more than one shot per second to put dinner on the table. And even
> though full automatic weapons are now illegal in many cases, it is quite
> easy to master or manipulate a semi-automatic weapon to inflict mass
> destruction.We need more stable progressiv
>  e voices countering the NRA arguments within Christian circles. And as a
> side note, this was a key reason why I started the Progressive Christianity
> and Politics group on Facebook a couple years ago. It is now over 2000
> members strong and we are propagating progressive principles out to
> compassionate and thoughtful people all across the world. If you or anyone
> else reading this would like to join, please feel free to register at
> www.JoinPCP.com~Eric AlexanderRead and Share online hereAbout the
> AuthorEric Alexander is an author, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is a board
> member at ProgressiveChristianity.org, and is the founder of Jesism,
> Christian Evolution, and the Progressive Christianity and Politics group on
> Facebook. Eric holds a Master of Theology from Saint Leo University and
> studied negotiations at Harvard Law School, and is the author of?Teaching
> Kids Life IS Good.________________________________________________
> Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
> The Bible, Corporal Punishment and Human Guilt - Part 2
> ?The physical abuse of children under the guise of "proper discipline" has
> been practiced in western history so frequently as to be thought of as
> normative. It has had the approval of those recognized sources of cultural
> value - tradition, Bible, Church, School and family. It found expression in
> popular novels written by such noteworthy authors as Charles Dickens and
> Mark Twain in the 19th century and by no less a person than the 20th
> century's ultra-conservative political pundit, William F. Buckley. When
> some of these novels were turned into motion pictures, the corporal
> punishment scenes were quite graphic.In the schools of western history,
> which were normally church-related parochial or church-influenced public
> schools, corporal punishment was regularly employed until quite recently,
> certainly within my lifetime. Almost always this discipline was
> administered with parental approval. In boarding schools of the 19th and
> early 20th centuries this disciplinary activity sometimes had a
>  bout it a quality of a ritualistic act and even came to be thought of as
> a kind of "liturgical observance." That is, the act of discipline was
> carried out at a time-certain. It was scheduled on a particular day for all
> offenders during a specified period of time for which the school staff
> prepared the instruments to be used, such as a bunch of bound switches or a
> freshly prepared cane. It was followed through in a prescribed, unchanging
> and traditional manner.The intended victim or victims would have to wait in
> fearful anticipation until the proper moment when the price of their
> misbehavior was exacted. The disciplinary act clearly defined boundaries
> and made all aware of where authority resided.In my own experience, as a
> public school boy growing up in the Southern Bible Belt, corporal
> punishment was employed, but much less ritualistically. It was administered
> on the spot whenever it was deemed essential to control the classroom and
> as a response to a particular act of misbehavior.
>   Yet it also followed a set form that we all recognized. It was not used
> frequently. I recall that in my seventh grade class, which was the last
> time I knew it to take place, only two of my classmates were subjected to
> this discipline during the entire year. The fact, however, that I can still
> recall both instances some sixty years later, indicates that each of these
> occasions made an indelible, albeit not a positive impression, upon my
> young mind. Most of us who were not the actual recipients of the punishment
> were in fact intimidated by it.The offending student, in both cases, a boy
> 12-13 years old, would be asked to accompany the teacher who had ruler in
> hand, to the room adjacent to the principal's office, which was reserved
> solely for this purpose. That room also happened to be next door to our
> classroom, so even though we could not observe the act of discipline, we
> could not fail to hear it. The students remaining in the classroom sat in
> silence during the period of time it to
>  ok the teacher and the pupil to reach the required location and to assume
> the proper positions for discipline. Then the noise of the ruler landing on
> its target resounded. No cries were ever heard because proving that "he
> could take it" preserved the pupil's last shred of dignity. Finally the
> blows would cease and in a few minutes the chastened student would return
> to the class, followed by the teacher, still gripping her ruler. The
> student would take his seat saying something about it "not hurting at all,"
> a brave attempt to reestablish his place in the social fabric of the class.
> The teacher would then use this episode as a teaching moment by warning the
> other students that a similar fate awaited each of them if their behavior
> made it necessary. It seemed to me that it took the disciplined child a day
> or so to absorb the humiliation before he began to ease back into the life
> of his school community. The ever-present threat that the ruler would be
> employed again, however, instilled
>   apprehension, fear and developed something of a herd instinct among us
> all. Instead of enhancing life, it seemed only to bruise a fragile ego. It
> certainly taught by example that physical force was a proper way to deal
> with those who are smaller and weaker. It surely issued in a more
> controllable classroom, but it was never, in my opinion, a pathway into
> maturity.It is interesting to note who, besides children, have been
> subjected to corporal punishment in the history of our Judeo-Christian
> world. There were basically four types of adults on whom corporal
> punishment was deemed to be appropriate discipline, at least during some
> part of our history. The one thing each of these four groups of people had
> in common was that they were thought to be deserving of the status of a
> child.The first category was adult prisoners. Those who had violated the
> rules of the society in such a way as to be judged a threat that must be
> removed, jailed and punished. I suppose the reasoning process was si
>  mple. If physical punishment made school children more pliable and
> obedient, to say nothing of being easier to control, then why should the
> same tactic not be used on those adults who consistently disrupted the well
> being of society's life? So the right to use corporal punishment was
> written into the penal codes of most Western, and by implication, Christian
> nations.The public whipping post was a regular feature in the criminal
> justice system in nations like Great Britain and the United States until
> the 20th century. The last state to make it illegal in America was
> Delaware. It is still employed to this day in Singapore and in several
> Muslim nations like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The familiar jail diet of
> "bread and water" was just another form of corporal punishment; that is,
> the punishment of the body.By extension from the penal codes physical
> discipline was used in situations where control was deemed essential to
> survival. It was a standard practice, for example, on the ships of
>   the colonial powers in the 18th and 19th centuries when the whole world
> was shrunk to the dimensions of an individual boat, with the captain
> exercising the decision making responsibility for discipline, indeed
> sometimes for life and death, with no further appeal. Physical discipline
> was also employed on the Lewis and Clark expedition across the Continental
> United States on their journey to the Pacific Ocean, opening the West. The
> diaries from that journey describe what they thought were its salutary
> effects.The second class of adults to be treated in this physically abusive
> manner during our history was the slave population. Christians must never
> forget that the institution of slavery was accepted as normal, even in the
> New Testament. Paul directs a runaway slave named Onesimus to return to his
> master Philemon, not with the request for his freedom, but with the request
> that he be treated kindly. In the Epistle to the Colossians (3:22), slaves
> are ordered to "obey in everything thos
>  e who are your earthly masters" and masters are urged to "treat your
> slave justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in Heaven
> (4:1)." With no rights accruing to the slaves, who were defined as
> sub-human and therefore childlike, it followed that disobedience was to be
> punished in slaves in the same manner that it was deemed to be appropriate
> in children. It is worth noting that even the popes have historically been
> slaveholders.No one denies that slaves were lashed in the United States for
> everything from disobedience to running away. The master had the right to
> do to his property whatever he wished. When slavery ended following the
> Civil War, these tactics of intimidation continued to be employed against
> powerless blacks in the South by quasi-religious organizations like the Ku
> Klux Klan. It is not as large a step as people now think to move from the
> corporal punishment of a slave or former slave with the bare back absorbing
> the lash while the victim was tied to a tree
>  , to the ultimate act of corporal punishment called lynching, where the
> victim was hanged from the tree. Violence is always violence. The degree of
> violence is the only difference. What the inmate or prisoner and the slave
> had in common was that neither had power and no vestige of adulthood
> accrued to their status so they could be treated like children who had no
> rights. If it was the proper thing to do to powerless children, it must be
> appropriate for powerless adults. That was the reasoning. Violence is never
> contained. It always seeks new victims. Corporal punishment was and is
> legalized violence.Corporal punishment has been used on two other types of
> adults in our history: women and people in religious orders. To their story
> we will turn next week.~ John Shelby Spong
> Originally published June 23, 2004  |
>
>
> |
> Announcements
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> 5th Annual Climate and Creation Stewardship Summit
>
> The 5th Annual Climate and Creation Stewardship Summit will be?Saturday,
> October 28?from?9:30 am ? 4:30 pm? in Hamden, CT.?
>
> The focus of this summit is on water, both on land and the oceans. It will
> consists of speakers, panels and workshops on different aspects of our
> current climate change crisis and other critical environmental issues ...
> ?Click here for more information/registration  |
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>  _______________________________________________
> OE mailing list
> OE at lists.wedgeblade.net
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> End of OE Digest, Vol 67, Issue 10
> **********************************
>



-- 
David Flowers

"Whatever the problem, community is the answer.  There is no power greater
than a community discovering what it cares about."  Margaret Wheatley
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