The Politics of Exodus 32:2-6
The main problem is, we the people have given and continue to give it to them. Notice in the text that it is not Aaron who first announces that the calf is the god that delivered Israel from Egypt. It...
View ArticleThe New (Authoritarian) Capitalism
The image I have is of a balloon which now has too many people aboard and that, in order to stay airborne needs to throw some of its passengers overboard. I say this as what I believe is now happening...
View ArticleLive From Occupied Wall Street
Christianity was forged as a movement in opposition to a hegemonic and oppressive Roman empire. Today, in that same spirit, battling against the oppressive weight of corporate greed and a government...
View Article“We are paid to make money, not to be moral.”
This was the defense of a banker – as seen in a BBC interview Monday 7th November. Later that day, the long-awaited St Paul’s Institute report on its survey of London-based bankers was published. In...
View ArticleAn Invitation to the Wilderness: The Politics of Mark 1:1-8
The wilderness was not a place that good Romans went. In the view of Roman imperial cosmology, the wilderness was a place full of savage people to be subdued and conquered. The Augustus of Prima Porta...
View ArticleEurozone, or history repeating itself?
There were at least two fears expressed when the global financial crisis began in 2008. One was that we were in danger of repeating the 1930s and all that followed. The other was that this would be...
View ArticleThe Politics of Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
The vision of God’s kingdom espoused in Isaiah 61 seems more “not yet” than “already.” Jesus identified the first two verses as a prophecy regarding himself, the Messiah, when he read from this chapter...
View ArticleVoices Crying in the Wilderness
Here we have one of the classic Advent themes associated with our preparations for the birth of Christ, but actually referring to John the Baptist as the forerunner of Jesus’ ministry 30 years later. I...
View ArticleWhere’s Charlemagne When We Need Him? By Istvan Deak
WRITING some 50 years ago, Archduke Otto Hapsburg, the last pretender to the crowns of Austria and Hungary, warned that economic cooperation alone would not satisfy the peoples of Europe and that...
View ArticleGreed is Not Good: The Politics of 2 Samuel 12:1-7
While the abuses of power and privilege in modern banking may not be as explicit as David’s crime, they are parallel. People in power tend not to consider the cost of their self-interest in communal...
View ArticleA Revisionist Reading of the Midterm Elections, or the Unmentionable...
One can read the results of the 2014 mid-term elections in the United States in terms of whatever dominant political inkblot they favor. The narrative of the American right-wing, of course, is that the...
View ArticleThe New (Authoritarian) Capitalism
The image I have is of a balloon which now has too many people aboard and that, in order to stay airborne needs to throw some of its passengers overboard. I say this as what I believe is now happening...
View ArticleLive From Occupied Wall Street
Christianity was forged as a movement in opposition to a hegemonic and oppressive Roman empire. Today, in that same spirit, battling against the oppressive weight of corporate greed and a government...
View Article“We are paid to make money, not to be moral.”
This was the defense of a banker – as seen in a BBC interview Monday 7th November. Later that day, the long-awaited St Paul’s Institute report on its survey of London-based bankers was published. In...
View ArticleAn Invitation to the Wilderness: The Politics of Mark 1:1-8
The wilderness was not a place that good Romans went. In the view of Roman imperial cosmology, the wilderness was a place full of savage people to be subdued and conquered. The Augustus of Prima Porta...
View ArticleEurozone, or history repeating itself?
There were at least two fears expressed when the global financial crisis began in 2008. One was that we were in danger of repeating the 1930s and all that followed. The other was that this would be...
View ArticleThe Politics of Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
The vision of God’s kingdom espoused in Isaiah 61 seems more “not yet” than “already.” Jesus identified the first two verses as a prophecy regarding himself, the Messiah, when he read from this chapter...
View ArticleVoices Crying in the Wilderness
Here we have one of the classic Advent themes associated with our preparations for the birth of Christ, but actually referring to John the Baptist as the forerunner of Jesus’ ministry 30 years later. I...
View ArticleWhere’s Charlemagne When We Need Him? By Istvan Deak
WRITING some 50 years ago, Archduke Otto Hapsburg, the last pretender to the crowns of Austria and Hungary, warned that economic cooperation alone would not satisfy the peoples of Europe and that...
View ArticleGreed is Not Good: The Politics of 2 Samuel 12:1-7
While the abuses of power and privilege in modern banking may not be as explicit as David’s crime, they are parallel. People in power tend not to consider the cost of their self-interest in communal...
View Article