Cynicism, the profound distrust in human possibilities, the banal acquisance in evil that results from presuming 'there is nothing we can do about it [the economic system, the war system, the interlocked systems of oppressions] has resulted in theologies of passivity and "coping." The churches have become like private gymnasiums that coach the people who come hungry for a spirituality of empowerment with impotent spiritualities of private peace and serenity.

How to rescue theology from cynicism and irrelevance? How to rescue the churches from accomodation to a system that is destroying our creation and dooming the generations to a tyranny of limits created by the domination system.

We must renew our theological work, we need a liberation theology of public engagement.

Not the Pope that Rush expected.

Rush Limbaugh complains about Pope Francis critical statements about market economies.

“Somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him,” Limbaugh said. “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope."

Limbaugh is saying that Francis is needs a writer, or he was influenced by "somebody" Kind of arrogant? Kind of?

And "it is pure Marxism? " or maybe Jesus. Wells some radical "somebody" got to the Pope and maybe even writes his stuff.

For Rush as ideologue, the Pope's job was to dress up in gold liturgicals, say vague platitudes and bless crowds. This is getting too close to the social gospel for Limbaugh.

theology is about convictions of a convictional community.

I found this helpful:

“The best way to understand theology is to see it, not as the study about God (for their are godless theologies as well as godly ones) but the investigation of the convictions of a convictional community, discovering its convictions, interpreting them, criticizing them in light of all that we know, and creatively transforming them into better ones if possible....Theologians, then, are concerned with convictions, not merely in themselves, but in relation to the persons and communities that embrace those convictions, and they are interested in what those convictions are about…”

James McClendon (1990.20)

Not seeking to be included in Jefferson's "Country."

Somewhere. I read someone suggest that while Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was a document by white men of property, for white men of property and written by a white man of property to be embraced and ratified by white men of property, still its words inspire the people who were "excluded" and over time they have fought to be "included."

I do experience the Declaration of Independence as excluding Native peoples, I experience the document as slandering and attacking Native peoples, and intending to remove all barriers for exterminating Native peoples. A key part of the Declaration is the list of grievances, where Jefferson writes this lie [the King] "has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

Indigenous peoples did not attack non combatants until long after they had experienced village burning, raping, and enslavement. The behavior that Jefferson projects onto "merciless Indian Savages" was the way of warfare brought to this continent by these shores.

Furthermore, Jefferson knew as a Virginia politician that the intention of his class was to seize the land beyond the mountains, and it was his own Province's militia excursions that had aroused indigenous resistance along the entire Appalachian frontier. Concurrent with the Declaration of Independence G. Washington ordered the burning of the indigenous villages along the Hudson.

No. I do not find Jefferson's words inspiring, motivating indigenous Americans to seek inclusion in "his Country." No, he is the visionary of Indian removal and extermination. He is not a flawed man of his times. His vision was conquest and extermination and extension of his slaveholders republic across my Country.

My Country seeks to remove Jefferson's legacy of White power and privilege and seeks to welcome all who will treat this land as their mother and not a thing to be exploited and will live in peace with the peoples of this world.

The idea of "tribe" is colonialism.

Not fond of the term tribe. Just saying.

It is a colonizers construct. At least among the Eastern Woodland Peoples each village was autonomous and linked to other villages by kinship and common ceremonies (including the ball games.) There were confederations, there were shared languages.

But the idea of a racial blood line is so 1493.

decolonizing religion

I start with the notion of the violent imposition of a hetero-patriachal class system that racialized those who were conquered. The Church enabled this conquest, and must bear responsibility for the imposition of hetero-patriachy — with its land lords and class oppression, its violence against all creation; the women, the children, the poor and the vulnerable especially.

I reject the notion that the Church is divided into parts; Roman Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Liberal. Christianity came to this continent accompanying conquest. And that scandal is shared by the whole Church. Thus for Protestants to argue that it was the Catholics is an evasion. For the Unitarian Universalists to claim the Puritans as their “spiritual ancestors” and to love their covenantal tradition and their congregationalism and not own their heritage in the conquest of America is an evasion. Such evasion perpetuates their role as sanctifiers of genocide, a role that can only be overcome and rejected by making a choice, a choice of decolonization. The Church justified conquest, and genocide and in process became part of the problem. The Church is colonized, it must decolonized.

The Church must choose if stands with conquerors or the conquered. The Church must choose where it stands relative to the make believe about the "Traditional Family " which is just the hetero-patriachy giving itself a pedigree. We need a creation story based on the reality that human beings formed loving families in loving societies and we need to show that human beings create oppressive families in oppressive societies. Societies that foster violence reproduce violent people through violence including violence in the family. Since the essence of the imposed order is violence, decolonizing religion must be about love concretized as resistance though non-violence.