benevolent king edward

 

According to the Google dictionary, 

benevolent means well meaning and kindly and has the following roots:

Both parts are from Latin.

"bene" meaning well; "velle" meaning to wish. 

bene volent = well wishing

benevolent.

Something said about royalty, as in "He was a benevolent ruler."

As king, he acted in ways which showed he wished well upon his subjects.

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But who needs Latin, when you can speak French.

The word "bene" is quite similar to the French "bien", which in English is "good"

The French word "volent" means to steal.

So benevolent could also mean "good thief"

Something also said about royalty, as in, "He was a good thief."

As in, the king was good at stealing. So good, that no one even thought of him as a thief. 

Not even when he stole millions of acres of land from Indigenous peoples around the world. Or when he stole the lives of millions of people by enslaving them...

Just something to think about ...

[standing up for people being called what they want to be called...]

Here's an interesting clip from a TV show, which nicely shows the challenges of challenging other people when they use derogatory and disrespectful terms for others. Ironic though not surprising that the person doing the challenging is a QPOC (queer person of colour).

Watch how this discussion evolves, and some of the classic responses that those challenged pull out.

🚧 SPOILERS AHEAD 🚧 This was a very important scene in the latest installment of @TalesofTheCity. Watch the whole thing on @netflix. https://t.co/LkbYB9T0gh

— GLAAD (@glaad) June 21, 2019

If the tweet and embedded video do not show up above, click here.

Read CBC's article "We need to talk about the dinner party scene in the Tales of the City reboot"

[asset mapping for straight white folks and others with privilege]

What Jamila says here is also true for any sort of privileged people who want to take positive action -- asset map and then utilize your assets to create real impact for the liberation of others...

white privilege is like...

god's tired of the same old thing...

God, contrary to what one might expect from observing some of God's followers, is very much into thinking. And having thought more about the upcoming bus ad campaign by the Edmonton Atheists Society, God has issued another statement:

Check out God's previous response 1 and previous response 2.

jesus faces a difficult decision

Jesus faces a difficult decision. Neither option is a winner, neither promises to end well. Yet because of his love for every one of us, he gave up his privilege, he "emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant," he became one of us.

History moves on. Two thousand years later, the same crap is still happening in this world of ours.

Instead of following his example, we picked up the pieces of privilege and made gods of ourselves....

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.

okay with jesus

We who are Christians like Jesus. We like that he gave his life for us so that we can go to heaven. And we generally like the way he reached out to the poor and the lepers.

We're okay with the Jesus of the Bible.

But because we also like things the way they are, we often don't believe in the Jesus of today. We don't want our world shaken up. We don't want a Jesus who breaks our religious rules. We don't want a Jesus who overturns tables in our temple. We don't want a Jesus who embraces marginalized people in our culture. That just won't do.

So we believe in the Jesus of yesterday. He did all those wonderful things in his culture, and as these issues are all fixed now in our world, there's not much more to do except send out missionaries, get people to say the sinner's prayer, and have potlucks.

We're okay with the biblical Jesus as we have created him, but not with the real Jesus....

darts

It's not that simple or random, is it? But note two things: it's names of minority groups that are put on the dartboard, and the clerics' assumption that they have the right to ostracize....

the right side of history

"Here's the funny thing about history: sometimes you can't tell you're on the wrong side of it, especially when it's being made."
John Boyle, Citizen Times, Aug 11/12 (source)

Here is a review of history, and some of the times that the church has been on the wrong side of it. Note that in most cases, there were also believers on the right side of history, but it seems it took quite some time before that became clear to all involved.


Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, in an article about Evangelicals and the Wrong Side of History, says the following:

While evangelicals used Bible verses to deny women the right to vote, a very religious Fredrick Douglass and the suffrage movement used the Bible to support the full enfranchisment of women.

... the largest and most powerful evangelical denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist Convention, does not allow women to serve as pastors and through its lobbying arm has supported anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, and anti-immigrant agendas.

Rev. Billy Graham is another example of the evangelical tendency to lag behind in social progress. Rev. Graham, the undisputed leader of American evangelicalism for the past five decades, used a biblical argument to support the passage of North Carolina constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.... In the same manner, Graham refused to denounce segregation after a direct appeal from Dr. King in 1957. (source and full article)

150 years ago	100 years ago	50 years ago	Today
Abolishment of slavery	Suffragette / right to vote	Desegregation	Marriage equality / civil rights for LGBT people
Churches used the bible to defend slavery	Churches used the bible to keep women "in their place" and deny the right to vote	Churches used the bible to justify lesser status of blacks	Churches use the bible to put down lgbt people

Most Christians, looking back at history, would be loathe to return to the days when black people were enslaved, aboriginal people were beaten down, women had no vote and so on. In other words, they now accept that history was right. Yet in today's current hot issue – the acceptance of gay and lesbian people, they fight and object and "stand firm".

sparrows

colour-blind society

The cartoon takes the literal meaning of "colour" and therefore allows the speaker to like a society with black people and white people, but not (for example) red people and green people.

In the real world, colour-blindness is generally meant to indicate that a person is blind to the race of others. This is sometimes presented as a positive, but can actually be a problem. As Derald W. Sue from the Teachers College at Columbia University writes,

I have come to realize that color blindness uses "whiteness" as the default key and mimics the norms of fairness, justice, and equity by "whiting" out differences and perpetuating the belief in sameness and equality. The denial of power imbalance, unearned privilege, and racial discrimination is couched in the rhetoric of equal treatment and equal opportunity. The pretense of not seeing color is motivated by self deception. To be colorblind not only denies the central importance of racial differences in the psychological experience of minorities (racism and discrimination), but also allows the White person to deny how his or her whiteness intrudes upon the person of color.

Read the rest of this short article online:
The Color Blind Society: Whiteness as the Default Standard

heavenly homonyms

Straight people. People in dire straits. People in straitjackets. People in Armani jackets.

Is there really that much difference between us?

Does the bouncer at heaven's gate let some in and keep others out? On what basis?

culture war

Are we in a culture war?

What cultures are involved?

On a friend's blog, Jarred posted a comment which speaks to this:

Jarred said...
Emily: I would encourage you to beware of the Middle Ground Fallacy when it comes to speaking of the "culture war." After all, only one "side" of the "culture war" thinks of it in terms of being a "culture war" and has invested much time and effort in painting the other "side" as thinking in the same terms and behaving accordingly. The other "side" thinks of it in terms of struggling to gain the same human dignity and legal protections for all people.
May 16, 2012 10:10 AM  (source)

So there is the question of, "are we really in a culture war" or are Christians just not happy about no longer being in power. There is also the reality of the gap between what pastors and denominations believe and what the parishioners believe, and correspondingly, what each is willing to "fight" for.

 Ironically, in a world where the dominant perception of Christians is that we are judgemental and anti-gay, many evangelicals are rushing to support and promote Chick-fil-A now that its owner has publically stated that his company is against same-sex marriage. That's sure to help everyone to see and know that Jesus loves them no matter what!!

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More reading: Some words for Christians on both sides of the Chick-fil-A war by Rachel Held Evans.

[joel mckerrow :: confession for the white part in me]

"Joel McKerrow is an international touring performance poet, writer, educator, youth worker, thinker and activist based out of Melbourne, Australia. He is the founder of ‘The Centre for Poetics and Justice’ (www.cpj.org.au/), a not-for-profit, community arts organisation focused on using poetics as a form of literary education, self-expression and social engagement for marginalised teenagers." (from his website).

 What Joel confesses in these videos fits perfectly with this site, in terms of addressing marginalization and in terms of saying sorry for what has been done from positions of power and privilege. These are amazing videos -- both in terms of the confessions being made, the speaking of them, and the appropriately artistic videography.

The four videos in the series:
my confession part 1: for the white part in me (featured above)

my confession part 2: for the rich part in me

my confession part 3: for the Christian part of me

my confession part 4: for the masculine part of me

---

For those of you living near Edmonton, Joel will be part of an evening event on Thursday, August 2nd at the Bleeding Heart Arts Space.

defining anti-gay

The pastor and church doesn't treat lgbt people the same as straight people, yet claims to not be anti-gay. Do you agree? Does it matter how lgbt members of the congregation feel about this?

Who defines anti-gay — the powerful or the powerless? The privileged or the marginalized?

Compare this cartoon with the 'defining hate' cartoon — there it is pretty obvious that we wouldn't and shouldn't let the slave owner decide whether he is being hateful toward his slaves. Is it as easy to decide with this cartoon? While the overall situations are not parallel, do the same principles apply in terms of the minority being given a voice and the right to say whether they feel those in power are against them?

defining hate

Would you believe the slave owner who says that he does not hate his slaves? Would you even need to ask the slaves their opinion on this question? Or would you say that owning someone is inherently hateful regardless of whether you "take good care of them" or not?

Who defines hate - the powerless or the powerful?

the first shall be last

defense of marriage

It's been said that what we value is seen less by our words and more by what we spend our time, energy and resources on. If that's the case, one might wonder how much we as Christians really value marriage.

Both divorce and common-law relationships are counter to the traditional Christian understanding of marriage, yet I do not see anyone engaging in protests or political action to have those revoked or cancelled. Yet when gay and lesbian people want to enter into committed marriage relationships with their partners, straight conservative Christians are expending enormous amounts of energy to stop them.

So do Christians value marriage? Really??

Perhaps some Christians just value heterosexuality and the privilege that comes with it, including the privilege of promoting marriage but having the option to get out of it. That's a convenience many do not want to give up, considering that divorce rates are generally as high among Christians as they are among those of other faiths.

Or perhaps, rather than being about valuing marriage or heterosexuality per se, this is about conformity and order and power, and thus some devalue and castigate those who are different from themselves – men and women who are equally loved by our heavenly Father and who have other beliefs, views, interests, attractions.

n.b. I am not a historian, and do not know how many objections Christians had to the legalization of divorce and the establishment of common law status and benefits, at the time that these were initially happening. I am commenting here on the current reality of what I see taking place in North America.

family friendly

Two things stand out for me about this cartoon. First, when the preacher says "God loves everyone!" and expands on it by saying "Gay, lesbian, bi, transgender" without including "straight", he is speaking from a place of privilege. Privilege here assumes that "of course God loves heterosexuals; what is not clear is whether or not God loves those who are non-heterosexual." Inherent in this type of privilege is the assumption that the privileged majority is included, is right, is best, and so on, and usually those who are part of it never question or even think about such things.

Secondly, are gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender people not from families? Do they not have families? And are there not families in the church who have gay sons and lesbian sisters and bisexual cousins and transgender partners? So the not-yet-spoken implication by the pastor that "because this is a family-friendly church we can't have LGBT people running around", is actually counter-family, or family-unfriendly.

If Jesus had been as picky as we often are about whom we associate with, he would have avoided the lepers, the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the woman who had been bleeding for years and years, the beggars on the street, the man who was demon-possessed, Zaccheus and other tax collectors, prostitutes, and general sinners of all sorts. He would have spent his time with nice religious people, reading the Torah, and looking good. And with all of that he wouldn't be Jesus anymore ... he'd be a Christian*.

* north american variety. And yes, I realize this is a grand generalization which is not fair to the many north america-based followers of Jesus who do get it. However, this is what the majority of non-Christians perceive when they think of Christians.