Obama’s Nobel War speech: What if?

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?

Christian Nonviolent Direct Action as Public Theology

Nonviolent vigil at Baxter Detention Centre
Peace Tree Community nonviolent vigil at Baxter Detention Centre

In  August 2005 a group known as Christians Against Greed joined a rowdy protest against a conference of global corporations at the Sydney Opera House, and found themselves sharing the Eucharist with riot police and anarchists. On Human Rights Day that year, four activists calling themselves Christians Against All Terrorism broke into and attempted a “citizens’ inspection” of the Pine Gap spy base. One week after their trial ended in 2007, five people walked into a war games zone at Shoalwater Bay to play frisbee with defence personnel.

These events were all very public and deeply theological. Yet we tend not to consider them, and other actions like them, as examples of public theology – a term for the process of the church thinking and speaking to the general public about contemporary issues.

In this paper I want to argue that we need a broader understanding of ‘public theology’ that includes public action on the part of the church (or members of the church) that speaks directly into the public sphere. I suggest that Christian nonviolent direct action should be seen in this light, and that both the acts themselves and the public statements made by the actors are clearly designed to articulate a Christian message in response to critical problems of their time.

In this paper I look at three recent examples of Christian nonviolent direct action in Australia. Using the ‘best practice principles’ for public theology identified by John W. de Gruchy, I will explore the way in which these actions make statements to the public about God’s judgment of current policies and God’s vision for a transformed world.

Read the full paper here (4000 words, 434kb PDF)

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

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/