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Greening the evangelicals

A new video about creation care

Posted by David Roberts at 12:45 AM on 07 Jun 2008

Another sharp new piece from the American News Project:

The Right is Right

Arent they always? Its in their name.
There is no global warning.

Kill all the blacks & browns. Murder the poor
Theyre eating up our precious fuel. Disturbing our way of life.

Forget Science, Knowledge and the Future.
Have more babies. Populate the planet with more god-fearing, hate-loving fundamentalists in all of his (or her) many forms.

God (or the gods) is (are) good.  Man is bad.

So sorry for being so bold. Im under the weather (which I should ignore).  
Its just that its a national rain cloud and Im getting soaked to the skin.



well, yes, this is good

But there is nothing particularly new to readers of Grist and Gristmill.  DR already interviewed Richard Cizik a while ago, didn't he.  (Though I do not remember if he got Jim Wallis too.)

As a Catholic in love with the Catholic artistic tradition, I was puzzled and disappointed to see two Catholic masterpieces, Michelangelo's "Last Judgement" (poorly reproduced here color-wise) and Raphael's "Transfiguration," dragooned to stand up as examples of a kind of destructive thinking, which they are not at all.

It is true that there is a Neo-Platonic strain in much of the thought and practice of Catholics and other Christians, i.e. a development of a philosophical school influential in Late Antiquity which tended to undervalue material existence.  But at least among Catholics, those anti-materialist prejudices have never been allowed to become normative.  Our doctrine of sacramentality, which was widely dropped by Protestants, is an example of the great high regard that Catholics have for the physical universe: simple physical objects such as water, bread, wine, and olive oil are worthy to become the vehicles of the divine presence.

And the very voluptuousness of Catholic art at its best, the rich colors and designs and figures and forms, similarly imply that the things of this world are very good indeed.

One Catholic figure who is well-regarded among some environmentalists is the early-13th-century saint, Francis of Assisi, famous for his Italian vernacular poem, the Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon.  The concept of incarnationalism, the important idea that our bodily existence has supreme divine value precisely because God is NOT the eternally super-spirital "One" of the Neo-Platonists, but in fact has chosen to become a real, physical creature, was an important emphasis of Francis and the Franciscans.  On a rather humble level, they are the ones who invented the now-traditional Christmas creche.

By contrast, look at the video's evangelical worship-space, with vanilla walls and a flat vanilla ceiling, in which the only feature of visual interest is the super-dooper electronic sound stage with all its techno-cool paraphernalia and trappings.  It is really much more reminiscent of a Muslim mosque than a Catholic church.  And Islam, with its eschewing of figural representation, and its puritanical preference for simple, abstract, geometrical design, is in that regard a true descendant of the Neo-Platonic sentiments of Late Antiquity.

"The Rapture," by the way, is NOT, in its literal form, a Catholic doctrine.  Yes, it is in Scripture (1 and 2 Thessalonians).  But once the Rapture-plus-Second-Coming did not happen during the watch of the first Christian generation, thoughtful Christians got the idea that all that Rapture-talk must be re-interpreted in a quite different way.  All that "Left Behind" nonsense strikes mainstream Catholics as at best a bizarre irreligious fantasy, at worst an evil misrepresentation of Jesus Christ.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

sacramentality: baptism

Sorry, I was too sweeping earlier, referring to Protestants' dismissal of sacramentality.

They are indeed all over the place regarding the Eucharist.  But as the Randy Travis $50 video (it's OK, Tanya Tucker's could not have cost more than $10), on Gar Lipow's latest thread, illustrates, Baptism is alive and well.

And when people baptized in rivers, or wherever, want to enter the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil, their baptisms ("in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit") are most certainly accepted as fully valid.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

race war!

family planning = ZPG
steee-rike one!

family planning = white supremacy
steeeee-rike two!

family unplanning = social bliss and stability
steeeeeee-rike three!

yer out!


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