Category: quote
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“But why is it so hard for us to admit that as human beings and moral agents, Americans are just like everyone else?”
For over a century, the United States has wielded extraordinary economic and military power. That power has shaped the world, and us. Abroad, it has often been used in ways that reveal our most undemocratic, exploitative, racist tendencies. But that we have betrayed our principles and hoarded our liberties does not make them empty—they are…
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“There is no more important calling for the church in our time than claiming the self-identification of the God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
A fundamental problem is that it is not at all clear exactly who God is. We have not become a secular society so much as we have become a generically religious one. Undifferentiated spiritual objects, therapies, and programs are widely marketed. Popular religion in America tends to be an amalgam of whatever presents itself. Discerning observers…
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“Oh, yes, rowdy old capitalism. Let it ply its music.”
Workers, a category that seems to subsume us all except the idlest rich, should learn what they need to learn to be competitive in the new economy. All the rest is waste and distraction. Competitive with whom? On what terms? To what end? With anyone who has done a clever thing we did not think…
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“Everyone knows, deep down, that there has to be some sort of judgment if there is to be justice.”
Moore: You argue that our understanding of the judgment of God has become untethered to His love. Kindly unpack that some for us. Rutledge: Well, I guess it’s pretty obvious that our culture despises “judgment” above all things. There is hardly any room for discernment or connoisseurship any more. If you love Bach more than you love…
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“Her death, like her father’s to some extent, is another reminder of what it means to embody and to carry in the body the full experience of being Black in the United States.”
Ms. Garner’s death means much and it’s impossible for me to distance her death from her father’s death. They were two different people and if I can find one common line between them, it is, for me, that neither of them should have died when they died. Her death, like her father’s to some extent,…
David W. Swanson 