[global morality gap]

A global morality gap.

I'd never heard of the term until I read a recent article in the Spectator. It suggests that there is a significant gap in morality between two parts of our world, and that this distinction may be as or more important than other distinctions (such as First World / Third World, developed / developing, etc.) that are more commonly talked about.

This gap is between the part of the world that has been enlightened, that believes in human rights and all that we can be, and the part that maintains strict moral codes, where men are not equal to men and women are definitely less, where might is right and non-heterosexual is wrong. The part of the world where police are not your friends, where citizens are ten to one hundred times more likely to be murdered than citizens of Europe, and other nightmares are commonplace.

The author suggests that the gap is only going to get wider. Whether that is true, I don't know. On one hand, many countries in Africa are currently enacting extreme laws especially in regard to gay people. On the other hand, Nigerian author Binyavanga Wainaina, who came out recently, is hopeful that though there will be a difficult time ahead, lgbt rights "have traction". And while the western world is very keen on human rights, there are extreme elements within it which would be happy to see many of those rights removed and a more fundamentalist control re-established.

Read the whole article and give it some thought.

Update: In late January 2014, thousands of French citizens marched in the streets of Paris yelling, "Jews get out of France" while giving Nazi salutes. (source). Around the same time, there were also extensive anti-gay protests related to the government legalizing same-sex marriage. Perhaps the gap is not as clear-cut as some think...

western decadence

Of course, it's not that simple, is it. The context of the cartoon, if you are not familiar with it, is the objection to "western decadence" that the Russian government has and which it is reacting against with its anti-gay laws.

While we might think of decadence as rich desserts or luxury handbags, Google defines decadence as "moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury." Moral decline is the operative part of this definition, and that is what is being objected to.

(The other context, for those who don't live in Canada or near shops selling President's Choice products, is that the President's Choice brand has an entire line of "Decadent" products, such as the Decadent Chocolate Chip cookies Obama is eating above).

two for one deal

As the Olympics approach and the torch is being carried across the country on the way to Sochi, Vladimir Putin is getting desperate...

[we are all insiders]

From an advertising perspective, I like the MEC's "We are all outsiders" ad campaign. It's kinda catchy in the way it twists the idea of "outsider" to mean someone who likes being outdoors.

MEC is playing on the reality that many in our world are really on the outside, on the margins. Are they hoping that giving being an outsider a positive spin will get them more sales? Or have they not thought beyond the double entendre?

The kingdom of God gives another spin to it all: everyone is an insider. Everyone is loved by God, Jesus spends a lot of time hanging out with outsiders, and the first shall be last.

doublespeak

Doublespeak is language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs, "servicing the target" for bombing [1]), in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning (for example, naming a state of war "peace"). In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth. Doublespeak is most closely associated with political language.

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak)

Here's some words of the pulpit that can be doublespeak:

Speaking about gay marriage, a well-known pastor recently said, “Don’t take a term and and make it something different. Orwell talked about doublespeak, where words mean the exact opposite of what they used to mean.”

He seems to be suggesting that the way gay people use the word "marriage" is the exact opposite of what marriage "really means" or used to mean. This handy chart shows that there are very few differences between the two, making me wonder who is really the one "doublespeaking":

comparison	traditional marriage	gay marriage
two people	yes	yes
life-long commitment	yes	yes
mutual relationship	yes	yes
love	yes	yes
one man and one woman	yes	no
traditionally based on ownership	yes	no

i'd rather be skiing

p.s. On February 20, 2014, about a month after this was posted, this cartoon was the #4 result on Google Images if you searched for "I'd rather be skiing".

Imagine that! The rest of the results were mostly shirts and buttons and such which said "I'd rather be skiing".

equality for all

If you haven't been keeping up with all the news, here are some disturbing items from the past few weeks:

India:
In 1861, the British instated a law that made non-heterosexual sex illegal.
In 2009, a lower court determined that this law was unconstitutional and overturned it.
In December 2013, the Supreme Court reversed the 2009 judgement, saying that "only Parliament can change that law" and thus recriminalizing homosexuality. The fine for gay sex is once again 10 years in prison.

Uganda:
An anti-homosexuality bill was proposed which would make homosexuality a capital offense. There was much support for this bill both from Ugandan Christians and from evangelicals in the west. Due to protests, the death penalty has been removed from the bill, and it was passed with life imprisonment for "repeat offenders."

Russia:
Along with legislation prohibiting "gay propaganda", there has been an increase in anti-gay violence. And then there's people like Ivan Okhlobystin, a popular actor who is also an Orthodox priest, who was applauded for recently saying (during a "Spiritual Talks" tour), "I myself would shove all live gays into furnaces. This is Sodom and Gomorrah, I as a believer in God can not treat this indifferently, this is a live threat to my kids!... I do not want my kids to think that faggots are normal. This is lavender fascism. If a person can not choose someone of an opposite sex for procreation - this is a overt sign of mental abnormality, so they should be denied of voting rights."

Ethiopia:
Seyoum Antonius, president of United for Life, a "western Evangelical Christian organization that receives funding from the west", "has made clear that he won't quit anti-gay advocacy until Ethiopia adopts the death penalty. One of his rallying cries is, 'Africa will become a graveyard for homosexuality!'" (source). The irony of such statements from an organization of such a name does not seem apparent to everyone. This is one small example of what is happening in Ethiopia (read the whole Newsweek article).

United States of America:
While things are getting better, there is still much legalized discrimination and injustice against sexual minorities in the U.S. For example, there are still 29 states in which a person can be fired from their job simply for being gay (source). This is slowly changing for the better, but there are still citizens who would be happy to see the laws become harsher as they are in other parts of the world.


Increasingly, Christians in North America are speaking out against such discrimination and injustice. We are tired of the dominant view of Christians being those who are bigoted and hateful. We are speaking up to say, being silent isn't good enough. We're raising our voices to say that standing by while lgbt people are put down is not good enough. We are proclaiming the good news that God loves everyone and his arms are open wide to all.

conflicted, or just double-thinking?

In a recent interview, a prominent evangelical pastor said the words in the first two panes. The words in the third pane logically followed for me, as his statements imply them.

But I then wondered what it must be like to believe in something and to also believe in someone who does not believe that same something. What options does this pastor have?

1. Give up his belief in equality and stick to his God.
2. Hold to his belief in equality and give up his God.
3. Live a conflicted life of struggle and cognitive dissonance due to believing two contradictory things.
4. Believe both parts simultaneously -- in other words, believe that you truly believe in equality, and believe in God. This is typically easier when a person is not verbalizing the fact that their God does not believe the same thing as they do.

I suspect that #4 happens quite commonly, that people believe they are good even while doing bad things, believe they are pro-life even while advocating the death penalty for murderers and lgbt people, believe they are tolerant even while they tolerate others only on their own terms, believe they are embracing of all even while they are excluding of some. And they do this without feeling any conflict about it.

Kinda like being against sweatshops, yet buying more cheap clothes produced in them. Or buying chocolate that's not fair trade, while objecting to child labour and human trafficking. Those are examples from my life. Perhaps you can think of your own examples....

Believing both parts simultaneously ties in with the term "doublethink", coined by George Orwell in 1949 and appearing in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: 

"Doublethink is the act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts. Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Somewhat related but almost the opposite is cognitive dissonance, where contradictory beliefs cause conflict in one's mind. Doublethink is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance — thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction."

 (from Wikipedia, emphasis added)

So what about that God I believe in who believes things I don't believe in? Is it time to reconsider whether God really does believe those things, or whether I am believing limited human interpretations that have become "gospel truth"?

the four arms of god

The four arms of God — two embracing the world, and two open to those whom we exclude when we say "for God so loved the world"....

more important things

This is how some people feel. They've listened to the listening committees, they've written to their member of parliament, they might have even protested outside some office or against a parade. But now, they would like to move on to other things, and someone like me drawing cartoons about the same topic again and again can be irritating.

I don't think I'll be stopping anytime soon.

For starters, if there are some people who are treated as less than other people, all of us are less. Desmond Tutu said: "If I diminish you, I diminish myself", and in a similar way, if others are diminished, we are all diminished. It is not enough for women to be liberated if some women are oppressed for being black. It is not enough for black women to be liberated if some black women are oppressed for being lesbian. It is not enough for black lesbian women to be liberated if some are being oppressed for being Jewish. And so on.

So I draw cartoons in a desire to increase embrace and decrease exclusion, so that all people would be welcome and embraced, and so that we will all be more aware and thinking about what we think, feel and do.

Is this the most important issue of today? I don't know. What I do know, is that matters of sexual orientation are ubiquitous. Whether it's bullying of gay students at school here in Canada or employees being fired solely due to their non-heterosexual sexual orientation being discovered in the U.S., to the greater extremes of countries around the world having or enacting laws which imprison or execute lgbt people, this is one of the key justice issues today. And because of a long legacy of Christian churches rejecting those in sexual minorities, this is a key spiritual issue. If we believe God loves everyone, why is it not more obvious??

Finally, I do comment on many other things on this blog -- check out the Categories section on the side and you'll see that the posts range from aboriginal to hell to mental illness to sex trade workers. But just as a political commentary blog deals with current political events and happenings, this is a social commentary blog and many of the happenings right now, happen to be lgbt. Thus, there is "a lot of fodder for the cannon." Not that I'm shooting at people -- it's just a metaphor, one that stems from the violence within me and within us all, the violence that Jesus came to undo and overcome and dissolve by giving his life non-violently for us all. See, I even managed to get a gospel message in this post.


rob g

p.s. Please use the comments feature to respond to this altar call.

relics

museum, hospital, or ? [pt. 2]

The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.

In the first part, I expressed my dislike of both the museum of saints and the hospital for sinners analogies.

so what are some alternatives?

The other "place-oriented" alternatives that come to mind are personal ones. This means that they might work for me, but you may have a very different experience of the same kind of place and thus, it may mean nothing to you or in fact have negative connotations.

These often depend on a personal experience that might mean the world to the person who experienced it, and very little to others, as it is especially hard to capture and describe those magical things that make the experience what it is.

Consider a night with friends at the pub. Some only associate this with excessive drinking. Others think of hanging out with friends to watch the game. For me, it meant spending time with others in a context of acceptance, honesty and trust, regardless of what we talked about.

Many churches have small groups, and these can be amazing for some, boring for others, and downright toxic for a few. The same could be said for most other place-oriented analogies. So what else is there?

museum, hospital, or ? [pt. 1]

The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.

The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.

After hearing this saying in a recent sermon, I realized I don't like "hospital for sinners" anymore than I like "museum for saints".

But first, here's what the point of this saying seems to be: Rather than the church being for those who are perfect and do not need to change anymore, the church is for those who need God and His healing.

As Fr. Peter Daly said, "A broken world needs a place to bring its spiritual injuries. We need an emergency room more than a courtroom. We want healing more than judgment."

More on this perspective from the National Catholic Reporter.

I get that. That makes sense. So what's there not to like?

For starters, I don't like hospitals.

In fact, I don't think most people like hospitals.

And I'm not sure if people who are not part of a church culture think of themselves as sinners. (Do those who are in a church culture think of themselves as sinners? Or are sinners "the people out there?")

But more than that, while all analogies break down at some point, this one breaks down very quickly. Here's a little destruction for your day:

A hospital is run by professionals.
Professionals are not sick like you.
Professionals know what's best for you.
They prescribe medications and treatments.
They focus on the problem, not the person.
They usually don't care about the rest of your life.
There is no personal relationship between you and them.
The other patients are simply that, other patients.
There is little or no relationship between you and the other patients, unless you are in long-term care.
Once you are better, you leave, hoping not to have to come back.

And then there are bigger words, like power and privilege.

Hospitals are built on them.
And therefore, hospitals are othering.

No thanks.

---

[part 2]

[republic of outsiders, by alissa quart]

"Republic of Outsiders is about the growing number of Americans who disrupt the status quo: outsiders who seek to redefine a wide variety of fields, from film and mental health to diplomacy and music, from how we see gender to what we eat. They include professional and amateur filmmakers crowd-sourcing their work, transgender and autistic activists, and Occupy Wall Street’s “alternative bankers.” These people create and package new identities in a practice cultural critic Alissa Quart dubs “identity innovation”: they push the boundaries of who they can be and what they can do, even turning the forces of co-optation to their benefit.

In a brilliant and far-reaching account, Quart introduces us to individuals who have created new structures to keep themselves sane, fulfilled, and, on occasion, paid. This deeply reported book shows how and why these groups now gather, organize, and create new communities and economies. Without a middleman, freed of established media, and highly mobile, unusual ideas and cultures are able to spread more quickly and find audiences and allies. Republic of Outsiders is a critical examination of those for whom being rebellious, marginal, or amateur is a source of strength rather than weakness."  (source)

I learned a lot from this book. Not life-changing stuff, but about the people who live in this world, some of whom have ideas that have never crossed my mind and who make choices for their lives that I didn't know people were making. I also learned new terms which are not yet in common usage. Take, for example, "counterpublics:"

[Michael] Warner's term can be used to describe both the neurodiverse and many of the other renegades in this book who frequently turn to writing as a tool for expression and resistance. He sees these groups as creating their own fictions to counter the supreme fiction of the majority group, which is never the true monolith so may imagine it to be. According to his theory, what we usually call the public sphere is based on exclusion, and excluded groups are assigned lesser status. "Counterpublics" attempt to correct this, Warner says. The notion of a "public" is a social fiction, the "normal," and it becomes the frame for our lives. Counterpublics, such as the Mad Priders and all the others in this book, carve out separate spaces through writing in particular, through a strong message that people in the broader public may not have heard before and that could potentially change and shape minds.

(p. 21)

While it was an interesting read, I probably won't read it again -- so I'm glad I got it from the public library.

[if people can learn to hate...]

[white christmas]

From my company's Christmas e-card Generator, with a message from me:

p.s. because we just merged with another company, I have no idea who is in charge of this...

p.p.s. Found out who designed the e-card generator. He told me the name of the graphic designer, who is in another country. I emailed the following to her on December 5th.

Hi _____:

I emailed _____ yesterday about the great e-card generator that he built. I really like the interface – easy to use, and fresh compared to the usual e-card sites.

The graphic design, which I understand you created, looks really sharp too – professional and yet warm and friendly. And the red half-transparent triangle nicely ties in with the red that is common at Christmas time too.

I do have a question. I’m with the new division, __________, in Canada. Our country is quite multi-cultural and in fact my own family is multi-racial. I was wondering if you could provide a second choice of graphic which, in terms of the people shown, better reflects our diversity?

Best regards,

Rob

* I welcome comments from readers on the card, the wisdom of writing (or not), the contents of my email, etc.

jesus confirms the plan

[pure scum by mike sares]

"An exhilarating faith life is a tricky business. But ask anyone who's sought after it--from the founders and members of Scum of the Earth Church in Denver to the apostle Paul, from whose letters the church took its name--and they'll tell you it's worth it. In Pure Scum Mike Sares, pastor of Scum of the Earth, takes us along a faith journey, telling the story of how a pretty normal, middle-aged guy met and became friends with Reese Roper and other members of the band, Five Iron Frenzy, and got hoodwinked by FIF and the Holy Spirit into pastoring of a vibrant church full of artists and skater punks. For anyone--pastor, church leader or plain old Christian--who wants to share the amazing grace of God with the "left-out" and "the right-brained," Mike's story will show you what this kind of exhilaration looks like, and more importantly, what it costs. It's a tricky business, but it's worth every step and misstep."        (source).

From the reviews I had read, I expected this book to be amazing. It was certainly interesting, but unlike jesus freak and  fall to grace it did not pull me onward. Instead, I had to push through it. Maybe the writing style just didn't work as well for me. However, I include it here in any case because it is about a church that embraced others in ways which are far too rare, and that made it worth reading.

russian lgbt = my neighbour

When Jesus was crucified, the Roman authorities put up a sign which read, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews". The religious authorities protested, wanting the sign to say that this was Jesus' claim, as they did not follow him nor take him as their king. (John 19:19-20).

Today, the sign could well say something like "Jesus, Lover of Russian Queers" or "Jesus, Lover of Ugandan Homosexuals."

Outrageous and offensive? Probably, but not anymore than "King of the Jews" was.

And maybe such a sign wouldn't happen, as those who use words like queer and homosexual tend to be in favour of Jesus, and would not write both on the same sign.

But if it did appear, this version of the sign would be protested by some of today's religious people for a different reason. While they would agree that Jesus is their king, they don't follow Him. At least not to the margins, the outcast, the dispossessed, the oppressed. And there would be disagreement as to whether Jesus even loves LGBT people of any sort, let alone Russian or Ugandan LGBT people.

Ironic and sad, isn't it? Has Jesus' love not really conquered hate after all? Or perhaps those of us who follow Jesus need to follow Him in standing with men and women at the margins, standing up for those who are oppressed and downtrodden, no matter how great or small the divide between us seems ....

Who is my neighbour? My answer is clear:

ha #5

For those of you who don't read the Russian script, here's the Russian law spelled out in plain English:

Propaganda is the act of distributing information among minors that 1) is aimed at the creating nontraditional sexual attitudes, 2) makes nontraditional sexual relations attractive, 3) equates the social value of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations, or 4) creates an interest in nontraditional sexual relations.

This might seem innocuous to some persons who would like to restrict the amount of information about sexuality that is available to minors, but its lack of definition means that people can readily be charged or arrested under this law for all kinds of things. Not only that, but anti-gay violence has increased in Russia since the law was passed, making Russia a hostile place for those in sexual minorities.

Not only that, but some American evangelical pastors, feeling they've "lost the culture war" in their own country, are promoting oft-extreme anti-gay laws in other parts of the world. Google it and see....

[touching strangers]

For six years, photographer Richard Renaldi has been working on the "Touching Strangers" project, where he asks complete strangers to pose as couples, friends or family members, and takes their portrait.

Many of the portraits show a surprising degree of comfort, even though the people in them have never met before.

And some speak of feeling connected to the other person, based on this shared experience. 

Interesting, how little it can take to connect people to one another — no matter how different, yet how rarely we connect.

Read an article "New York photographer turns strangers into friends" Link

Check out Richard's book Touching Strangers.

faceless

Do we see other people as faceless?

What preconceived ideas do we have as to what constitutes a person and what does not?

Google seems to have some ideas about it. Here's that it said when I uploaded my choice of profile photo:

the homeless are not human

If you haven't heard about the Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC for short), here's a quick explanation followed by the disturbing results of an experiment:

According to Psychology Today, the mPFC "activates when people do things that involve perceiving and relating to other people, such as recognizing and distinguishing between faces and empathizing." This means that it activates for your mother and your partner, but it does not activate when you see the sandwich your mother made for you or the sweater your partner gave you (no matter how tasty the sandwich or lovely the sweater).

In their experiment, researchers Lasana Harris and Susan Fiske showed pictures of specific groups of people and measured the response of the mPFC. Here's what they found:

Images of all other groups besides the homeless activated the mPFC. This suggests that the homeless are not recognized as human relative to other groups. They actually are perceived, at least in this area of the brain, more like objects, such as tables.

(source)

The cartoon above is suggesting that Jesus' mPFC was malfunctioning, as he saw the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, as people. Of course, it wasn't malfunctioning -- he was correctly functioning in seeing everyone whom God has made. So the questions I have are:

• If the study was done among the religious in Jesus' day, would it have had similar results?
• If this study had includes homeless persons among the subjects, would their mPFC activate when shown images of homeless people? (I'd assume "yes," but there could be other variables involved).
• Some non-homeless people do see homeless people as people. Why is this different for them?
• Can we use our mPFC as an excuse for ignoring some people?

Some words from Jesus:
 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’" Matthew 25:37-40 NIV


Read more about mPFC studies.

[enemies are our neighbours]

Jesus said,

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5:43-45 NIV

"Opus Prize and UN Nansen Award winner Marguerite Barankitse, known as "Maggy," witnessed the murder of over 70 people in Ruyigi, during the civil war between Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Burundi. Maggy responded by founding Maison Shalom (House of Peace), “I am a tutsi woman. Before the war began I already had seven adopted children, four hutu and three tutsi." (more...).

In this short video and several others at Works of the People, she shares about loving others, particularly those who have committed horrible crimes....

Watch more at Works of the People.

loving strangers

"I used to think that the greatest command in the Bible was "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." I was wrong. Only in one place does the Bible ask us to love our neighbour. In more than thirty places it commands us to love the stranger. Don't oppress the stranger because you know what it feels like to be a stranger--you were once strangers in the land of Egypt. It isn't hard to love our neighbours because by and large our neighbours are people like us. What's tough is to love the stranger, the person who isn't like us, who has a different skin colour, or a different faith, or a different background. That's the real challenge. It was in ancient times. It still is today."

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks (quoted on pp 101-102 of Just Hospitality).

In Jesus day, weren't strangers simply people you were not acquainted with? In the Jewish towns and villages, there would have been the people you knew, and the people you didn't know. And for the most part, while the latter were strangers, they weren't particularly strange. There would have been exceptions, of course. Some lepers may have seemed pretty strange as a result of deformation and loss of limbs. Those possessed by demons would have been strange. But generally, most strangers looked fairly normal.

In one famous story, Jesus tells of a despised foreigner -- a Samaritan -- helping a stranger who had been robbed and left to die at the road side. There were significant religious differences between them, but otherwise, not that much was strange about the stranger. Jesus told this story of loving a stranger, in response to someone asking, "who is my neighbour that I'm to love?"

Fast forward to today. For the conservative person, there's a whole world of strangeness out there. Goths and punks, transgender people and drag queens, and much more.

But one thing hasn't changed: God's love for everyone, no matter how strange someone might seem to us.

Read True Biblical Hospitality: Loving Immigrants, Strangers, and Enemies at sojo.net.

HIV=

This weekend is the official launch of HIV Equal, "a national multimedia campaign that aims to end HIV stigma and promote HIV testing by creating a social art movement that changes the way people think about HIV and which reopens the national dialogue about HIV."

After hearing about the campaign, I realized I had never thought about the stigma that accompanies being HIV+. Not that it isn't obvious when mentioned, but sometimes it takes mentioning for people to think about it.

And I asked myself, would Jesus have stigmatized people who are HIV+? With his record as a stigmatoclast, the answer is clear: "not a chance."

Would he have taken part in an HIV= campaign? Who knows. But there's no doubt that he embraced those at the margins, the outsiders, the least of these. He looked past the labels and past all the things we use to reject and exclude, and loved the men and women whom his Father had created.

Find out more about the HIV Equal campaign.


My apologies for not having a more middle eastern jesus. A search of Google images finds very few results of a non-white jesus, and then mostly he is wearing robes and such. To match the photos in the HIV= campaign at least somewhat, I needed to be able to place the "HIV=" sticker on his skin in a way that looked semi-realistic, and this is the best picture I found for that purpose. If anyone has a picture of a non-white jesus with a suitable area of skin showing to place the HIV=, please let me know.

key terms related to exclusion and embrace

This is an ongoing collection of key terms and concepts that people should know and understand, to assist with understanding exclusion and embrace, diversity, and more. Most items are a brief introduction to the concept, with links to more detailed information or discussion.

concept: generous spaciousness*

This is an absolutely key concept, related to the "environment, climate, ethos within expressions of the Christian community as it pertains to engaging with gender and sexual minority persons."

Rather than providing a really brief explanation on this page, read more about generous spaciousness on its own post and then follow up by clicking some of the links on that page.

concept: privilege*

Google offers the following definition of privilege:
"A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to one person or group of people."

KJ Ward, writing at Black Girl Dangerous, defines privilege this way:
"unearned access to a bunch of good stuff and an arbitrarily granted protection from a bunch of bad stuff".

Accordingly, one might think of diplomatic immunity or the privileges that come with membership in an exclusive golf club or with first class plane tickets. But privilege as we are talking about it here is a more complex term, and one which is often difficult for those who are in privileged places to grasp. Let's use an example to illustrate it:

A white person goes into the store to get a birthday gift for their niece. Generally speaking, they never have to think about the following:
Will I be able to find a doll of the same race as my niece?
Will the store staff be worried that I'm going to steal things?
Will store security follow me around?

A black person or an aboriginal person goes into a store for the same purpose, and for them, these are often relevant questions!

Privilege is being able to live your life without ever having to think about such questions.

There are many kinds of privilege: white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, cis privilege, Christian privilege, and others.

Read more about white privilege (including 50 daily effects of white privilege).
Read more about straight privilege (with parallels to the white privilege article).
Watch some amazing videos by Australian performance poet Joel McKerrow, as he says sorry for the white part in him, the rich part in him, the Christian part of him, and the masculine part of him.
Read Christena Cleveland about Killing Me Softly: On Privilege and Voice.
See also white fragility further down on this page.

[just hospitality: God's welcome in a world of difference, by letty m russell]

"In this, her last book, theologian Letty Russell redefines the commonly held notion of hospitality as she challenges her readers to consider what it means to welcome the stranger. In doing so, she implores persons of faith to join the struggles for justice.

Rather than an act of limited, charitable welcome, Russell maintains that true hospitality is a process that requires partnership with the “other” in our divided world. The goal is “just hospitality,” that is, hospitality with justice.

Russell draws on feminist and postcolonial thinking to show how we are colonized and colonizing, each of us bearing the marks of the history that formed us. With an insightful analysis of the power dynamics that stem from our differences and a constructive theological theory of difference itself, Russell proposes concrete strategies to create a more just practice of hospitality.

With careful attention, she writes, we can build a network of hospitality that is truthful about our mistakes and inequities, yet determined to resist the contradictions that drive us apart. This kind of genuine solidarity requires us to cast off oppression and domination in order to truly welcome the stranger. Russell’s lasting message is a highly practical theology for both the academy and the church. The book contains questions for study and reflection."

(description from amazon)

A sample quote:

My experience as an outsider within has led me question the rigid clergy line that divides our church communities and increases hierarchy and competition for power in our denomination. At the same time, it has led me to focus in a theology of hospitality that emphasizes the calling of the church as a witness to God's intention to mend the creation by bringing about a world of justice, peace, and integrity of the natural world. There are a lot of "missing persons" in our world today whose situation of poverty, injustice, and suffering makes God weep. These missing persons are not strangers to God, for God already has reached out to care for them. Yet they are strangers in the world who need to know God cares through the witness of a church that practices a ministry of hospitality and justice on their behalf.       (p. 18-19)

Read an excerpt at Spirituality & Practice.

lay your burdens down

Some days it's just a bit much. It's bad enough that we need to love people, but to forgive them? To work at being reconciled with them? To live in peace? To be hospitable to the stranger and the foreigner?

When it's all overwhelming, come to the cross and lay your burdens down....

Or for a better way, lay your fears down at the cross and ask Jesus to show you the way to love, to forgive, to embrace....

everyone's got a gay relative

For everyone who's ever complained about the gay movement stealing the rainbow to use as their symbol when it was originally a sign that the earth would never be flooded again as in the days of Noah, it was Joseph who really started the whole fad back in the day....

Posted belatedly for the 2013 National Coming Out Day. For fellow Canadians, I apologize for not having a turkey-themed cartoon to celebrate our Thanksgiving Day; however, as I'll take beef over turkey any day, I really wasn't inspired.

[culturally revealing]

A friend lent us a book by René Fumoleau, a French missionary who worked with the Dene in northern Canada in the 1950's.Very interesting and often humorous read which is giving me a broader cultural perspective.

I especially like this story, because of the cultural values which contrast so much with the values I see around me. René writes:

After living for a few months of 1953
with the K'ashot'ine of Rádeli Ko (Fort Good Hope),
I was teaching them the Ten Commandments.
You know them: love God, honour your parents,
don't kill, don't steal, don't lie,
and don't commit adultery.

I explained:

"It is a sin
to do what we shouldn't do,
or not to do what we should do.
Sins are rated as big or small.
What do you think is the worst sin of all?"

The ten Dene discussed together,
and after a while Radisca explained to me:

"We talked it over, and we all agree:
The worst sin people can make
is to lock their door."

From The Secret by René Fumoleau, (Novalis, 1997) p. 13.
Emphasis added.

[generous spaciousness: responding to gay Christians in the church, by Wendy Gritter]

"Committed Christians may respond differently to gay and lesbian Christians. How can we engage those with whom we might disagree and navigate our journey together in a way that nurtures unity, hospitality, humility, and justice?


Through her extensive experience in ministering to gay and lesbian Christians, Wendy VanderWal-Gritter has come to believe we need a new paradigm for how the church engages those in the sexual minority. She encourages generous spaciousness, a hope-filled, relational way forward for those in turmoil regarding a response to gay and lesbian Christians. This book offers a framework for discussing diversity in a gracious way, showing that the church can be a place that welcomes a variety of perspectives on the complex matter of human sexuality. It also offers practical advice for implementing generous spaciousness in churches and organizations."

(from Baker Publishing "About")

If you've been following her blog or heard her speak in person or video, you know what a phenomenal book this is.

Here's how Wendy described generous spaciousness in a recent article at Religion News Service:

In generous spaciousness, I choose to listen deeply to the other, expecting to encounter God in our conversation. With generous spaciousness, I am seeking to experience a sense of community with those with whom I disagree. That means I intentionally contribute to an ethos of mutual respect. True respect doesn’t whitewash differences as if they don’t matter. But in generous spaciousness I allow myself to wonder if there might be more for me to learn and discover as I build relationship with the one who sees things differently than I do.

Purchase via Amazon.ca using this link -- same cost to you, and New Direction, the ministry that is leading the way in encouraging generous spaciousness, gets a small cut.

(Other purchasing options).

holocaust

The American what?

When we hear the word "holocaust", we typically think of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. This is also how Wikipedia defines the term "The Holocaust".

But there were other holocausts and other genocides, not only in far away countries but also right here in North America where I live, yet these are hardly mentioned. I am specifically referring to the holocaust of aboriginal people across the North American continent.

In the U.S. there are 36 museums commemorating the Nazi Holocaust. There are none commemorating the American Holocaust which killed millions of First Nations people....

movie critique

Not needing to look him up in the book of names, the angel at the gate takes the opportunity to offer a critique of one of Hitchcock's movies: