Obama’s Nobel War speech: What if?

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Keep watching Mark Van’s “Jesus Manifesto” for the unedited cut but in the mean time,

Over at Jim Wallis blog God’s Politics I’ve been asking “What if” Obama took a different direction at Oslo

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaM94mieeLg]

click on the text to read full article and view Cornel West video:

This got me thinking, “What if.” What if instead of Reinhold Niebuhr being Obama’s favorite theologian, it were Martin King, Dorothy Day, or John Yoder? What if Obama, like Gandhi and King, looked to Jesus’ example not as an ideal but as a practical program for transformation? What if Obama had made a study of the few places nonviolence was tried against Hitler (like in Denmark) and successfully halted Hitler’s armies and saved the lives of 7,000 Jews? What if instead of merely quoting the Balkans, Obama made a real study of the nonviolent movement “Otpor!” that brought down Slobodan Milosevic? What if Obama fought terrorism by taking the billions in his war budget (which exceeds that of George W. Bush), and invested it in grassroots community development, health care, and education in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq (and at home)? What if Obama saw what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the love ethic of Jesus” as the pragmatic and realistic way forward? What if a head of state could risk being guided by Christ’s example embodied by Gandhi and King?

Nobel Peace Nominee receives news in jail: our mate John Dear

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My friend and inspiring brother John Dear sent me an email reading like an epistle from jail that brought to mind both the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther King’s vision and faith behind bars. While the Powers that be had him in court doing all they can do accuse him personally and attack him, including the judge calling him (“a renegade priest, a renegade citizen”, “a phony”, and “a person of violence’), John received news that he has been officially nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as well as India’s Peace Prize by people like the Vice President of India and Desmond Tutu. John has also been nominated for India’s Gandhi Peace Prize.

 

It was only this time last year that we were both swimming of the cost of Waterman’s beach in Western Australia, when John was letting me that we have do this “for the God of Peace and we might never get recognised. But who cares… we are having so much fun!”

Congratz John from our Peace Tree Community and our mates in Australia. We thank you for your witness, your life, your friendship, your faith and your courage and the way you make us laugh and worship. Thanks for reminding us all that this journey with the Spirit is fun!

If you haven’t read any of John Dear’s writing click here, it’s moving, inspiring and motivating.  www.johndear.org/