1
April
2007
From remarks by Rev. John C. Forney, March 25 Peace Rally, Rancho Cucamonga
For Christians the Lenten season is a time of reflection. The lectionary turns us back to the story of Christ’s temptations in the wilderness. Wilderness becomes our context as well.
Today our nation finds itself in a vast wilderness of human malfeasance and failure: a wilderness of lies and deceit, a wilderness of utter incompetence, a wilderness of fear mongering.
And as Jesus found, so we too find that there are many temptations in this wilderness: the temptation to think we can go it alone with utter disregard for the opinions of the rest of the world, the temptation to think that salvation can be found in the power of empire and oil, the temptation to cover up our self-inflicted disasters with bread and circuses, to declare “mission accomplished” in a flyboy suit.
Lent is a time to discern – to discern what it is that truly gives life, what it is that will truly restore equity and justice in the land, what it is that will truly restore sense of national purpose, what it is that will truly restore our commitment to one another. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Happening in the World, Reflections
24
March
2007
Today is the beginning of 7-day SOLIDARITY FAST for the people of Darfur. This week is an opportunity for students, faculty, staff, and recent college graduates to come together to reflect on the connection between our own humanity and the humanity of those suffering in the region of Darfur.
How is it possible for a group of American Christian students from more privileged backgrounds to understand the suffering that men, women, and children of Darfur experience each day for the past three years? Consciously abstaining from food for 7 days will only be a tiny fraction of the pain and hunger that Darfurians go through daily. So why are we fasting?
Through the Solidarity Fast Week we hope to start the process of the type of spiritual transformation that connects us our being and sense of survival with that of the world. As Americans, some of us do not experience the level of suffering and injustice the rest of the world faces each waking day (e.g. ethnic cleansing, war, national hunger, the AIDS epidemic, displacement, and extreme poverty). As Arundhati Roy most humbly said when many Americans experienced devastation and national heartache probably for the first time in their lives, “Welcome to the world.”
This is Christ’s invitation to us. Welcome to the world, he says to us when we enter the wilderness with God. Welcome to the world, he says to us when we try to make sense of the destruction in places like New Orleans, Guatemala, Sudan, Uganda, Mexico, Southeast Asia, Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq. Welcome to the world, he says to us as an invitation to a deep and transformative experience with the Creator of the world.
The season of Lent is a time of reflection, confrontation, and realization of our vocational call to the world. Where will your faith take you this week? Will your faith bring a deeper connection to life around you? Will it bring a recognition of your over-consumption and waste? Will it be a determination to act and affect lasting change? Will it call you out of your passive slumber and stand for an end to genocide forever?
Many of the students participating in the Solidarity Fast (regardless of the amount of days they choose) have expressed their deep commitment to justice, equality, and dignity of all peoples-regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, and citizenship. But our commitment to justice and peace struggles might still be disconnected from the actual experience of pain, injustice, fear of death, hunger, and international neglect and indifference.
As Carter Heyward said, “As we withstand and experience our connectedness with Jesus’ life of love and death of love and our connectedness with those who suffer, so that becomes our primary resource for compassion and healing, the raw material of solidarity and liberation. And there lies the possibility of transformation.”
WE NEED YOUR HELP!! Please help offset the cost for the college students attending. To draw a larger student participation to the BREAK THE FAST event, we are promoting it as a free event, but donations will be accepted. If you can help us with $35, $50, $100 to take care of some of the catering costs, rentals, promo materials, etc. Please click here if you would like to donate online.
Or mail your check (payable to Progressive Christians Uniting; memo: Solidarity Fast 2007) to our office at 1501 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90017 ATTN: Solidarity Fast. Thank you.
Peace.
Posted: Reflections
3
November
2006
From Dick Bunce, past Executive Director of PCU:
I’ve always needed mentors, whether they are close at hand or far away, whether I know them or not, whether they are living or have passed to the “great beyond”. Life is difficult, as Scott Peck famously announced, and life is especially difficult when we want to make a difference for justice and peace in a world of hurt and heartache. Some people negotiate the difficulties better than others, and I need such people in my life.
One of my mentors, for some years now, has been Dorothy Day. I’ve had a love relationship with her for quite some time. My good wife understands this and is unthreatened. For one thing, Dorothy died in 1980 at the age of 83.
To be honest, if I’d been young when she was young and we had met, she would not have brought out the best in me nor I in her. As an activist, she was something of a dilettante. She hung out with the bohemian set, she had her share of lovers, and she was floundering. She had dropped out of college, was often unemployed, and ran with a fast and footloose crowd.
But she changed. She really changed. So much so, that she exemplifies ways for us to persist and prevail in the struggle. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Reflections
17
May
2006
[Note: This post is extracted from a Baccalaureate sermon given for the Claremont Colleges on May 14, 2006, by the Rev. Dr. Mary Ellen Kilsby, a past president of PCU and Senior Minister Emerita of the First Congregational Church of Long Beach. Rev. Kilsby’s texts were Hosea 6.1-6 and John 21.15-17]
Thank you for inviting me this morning. I am honored to be here. Honored and challenged, read nervous, because this graduation weekend is one of the highlights of your lives. The comic author extraodinaire, Garry Trudeau, once said that graduation speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released in the world until they have been properly sedated. So the challenge is to not repeat all the cliches that are so tempting on a day like today. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Reflections
12
May
2006
As we approach Mother’s Day, I’d like to talk about a truly memorable mother. Her name is Mary Harris Jones, better known as Mother Jones. She never got the message that women are to be the caretakers, leaving the pioneering to men. She was both caretaker and pioneer – especially the latter. And what a pioneer she was.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Reflections
30
March
2006
Tom Barry is policy director of the International Relations Center. The following appeared today on TomPaine.com.
A common denominator unites the otherwise fractious immigration debate. That’s the widespread congressional concern with security—national security and border security. All the major players—whether anti-immigration conservatives or pro-immigration liberals—stress that any new immigration legislation must ensure that Americans are secure. The hard-line restrictionists in the House of Representatives, with their “Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Control Act of 2005,? established law enforcement as the baseline of any new immigration reform. In the Senate, security is also the leading component of the various reform proposals. The bipartisan bill that received early support from pro-immigrant and church groups was the “Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act,? sponsored by Sens. Ted Kennedy and John McCain. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Happening in the World, Reflections
30
March
2006
Bill Moyers is President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. This is the prepared text of his remarks delivered on March 14 upon the establishment by Marilyn and James Dunn, of the Wake Forest Divinity School, of a scholarship in religious freedom in the name of Judith and Bill Moyers.
When Dean Bill Leonard asked James Dunn to join him here at Wake Forest’s new Divinity School, my soul shouted “Yes!” These two men personify the honesty and courage we need to meet the challenge of faith in the fundamentalist dispensation of the 21st century as radical interpretations of both Islam and Christianity seek, in the words of C.Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance, “to take over the government and use cause structures to advance the ideology, hierarchy, and laws” of their movement.
James Dunn and Bill Leonard are Baptists. What kind of Baptist matters. At last count there were more than two dozen varieties of Baptists in America. Bill Clinton is a Baptist. So is Pat Robertson. Jesse Jackson is a Baptist. So is Jesse Helms. Al Gore is a Baptist. So is Jerry Falwell. No wonder Baptists have been compared to jalapeno peppers: one or two make for a tasty dish, but a whole bunch together will bring tears to your eyes.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: Reflections
