Choosing Gods
Tonight I heard Rosemary Radford Reuther, the pre-eminent feminist and ecofemenist theologian and activist speak at the Old Brick Episcopalian church here in Iowa City.
If you're around these parts, you can hear her tomorrow night when she speaks on ecofeminism for the U of I's Religious studies department as part of the Spalding Lecture Series.
Tonight, tho, she spoke on a new book she's got coming out early next year about American imperialism, in which she not only surveys the evolution of America's ideas about its divine mandate for world domination, but also develops a discussion for how the confessing church TODAY can protest the use of Christian religious language by politicians and other social leaders to promote policies of brutality and exploitation across the world.
I'm also reading a book by Dorothee Solle, the late/great german social theologian, called Thinking About God.
Great quote from page 8:
"Tell me how you think and act politically and I will tell you in which God you believe"
Reading this book, hearing Reuther speak, living in the religious maelstrom of 2006, make me think about making the step of simply drawing lines between the different gods we're talking about in public discourse.
It's common these days to think we're being civil by saying things like "We all worship the same God," but I find at times a naming or definition of God thrown about that is entirely at odds with what and who I think God is.
For instance, many contend that God's will was that GWB be president and lead our nation in these dark times. Not only do I reject the notion that God works in this sort of puppet-masteresque way, I believe it is blasphemous to say that the God manifest in Jesus Christ would select a war-mongering and thoroughly empire-oriented man to be the most powerful person on earth.
Am I disagreeing with folks about God or am I actually talking about a God entirely different from the one Bush invokes in the war on terror?
posted by Rob Leveridge @ 11:42 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
As I read your post, I was reminded of the many times I have found myself wondering how my God had been kidnapped and held hostage to justify an unjust war, corruption, and lies. It is interesting that I often find myself remembering the goofy Veggie Tales song, "God is bigger than the Boogie Man," when I can't take another moment of the garbage that is being spewed forth in God's name.
God IS bigger than the Boogie Man. And God is bigger than the systems and policies that have attempted to kidnap our concept of God as an excuse to justify war, torture, and injustice. The boggie man can't continue to reign over us in fear...as long as we remember just exactly how incredibly big our God is!
Well, well; it's a deep subject. I believe in a personal God. The one who knows every hair on your head and every wart on your soul. That personal God is the one GWB should concern himself with. Any other time he opens his mouth and invokes The Lord in his causes he is playing with fire (it's Fire Safety week, everybody check your smoke detector, literally or figuratively...). Where was I? Well. I think what is happening is that God has provided for us and God is watching. The God I know isn't going to intervene directly in the messes that we create and/or allow to continue. God does miracles, not magic. We are responsible and God wants us to do the most we can to live in God's way here and now. When we don't and GWB and the ilk keep pulling the strings, and we sit idly by, it's not God's problem. But it is ours,in more ways than one. And, that personal God will have God's way with us, someday.
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