politics of religion & spirituality

[jesusdiedwoke]

[jesusdiedwoke]

The birth of the modern American conservative movement came in response to collective pro-worker New Deal policies of the 1930s and 1940s and their popularity. The millionaires were so mad that they created their own churches to spread anti-new Deal propaganda. Kevin Kruse talks about this in his book One Nation Under God.

H.W. Prentice, president of the Armstrong Cork Company, and Alfred Haake, consultant to General Motors and former chair of the Rutgers economics department, both conspired to hijack churches to bend the Bible to their will to effectively brainwash Americans to be Christian capitalists, a view that was politically unpopular and religiously incompatible.

James W. Fifield Jr., a minister who did not believe in literalism, holding socially and economically conservative views created a theology that linked capitalism with Christianity.

Dwight Eisenhower was seen as being an ideal president to support these views and to link a vapid form of civic religion and patriotism to this view. This pro-capitalistic and anti-humanitarian impulse is at the core of much of today's evangelical and religious right's identity. The irony being that to arrive at these views required a rejection of the literalism at the core of most of the evangelical movement and to opposes Americans working together to improve their communities.

[jesusdiedwoke]

Practical Theology and Related Branches

I am interested in a field called practical theology which emphasizes how churches and faith-based organizations actively work to transform the lives of the poor and marginalized through impactful ministries like soup kitchens and community care

The emphasis of the practical theology stems off into other areas: 1. Social justice is the moral engine of the framework. Social justice emphasizes the theological belief that a society should distribute its resources according to people's needs and prophetic texts that emphasize that helping the poor is God's requirement about giving the less fortunate what is rightfully theirs, not just charity.

2. Liberation theology is about how and why society must be transformed through practical theoloy. Liberation theology explains the depravity or our society through moral failures to the 'least of us' and expresses that this disregard is collective sin not just an individual failure. It argues that spiritual salvation is linked to the struggle for a just society.

3. Public theology is about the public relations, the hype man. It is about proclaiming publically that Christian faith informs and sustains faithful public witness through transformative community engagement and addresses systemic injustice for the common good. It uses collective exhortation and prophsying for the collective good and the edification of the whole.

[jesusdiedwoke]

The Devil is in the Details of White Takes on Black Popular Culture

I am curious about how the devil is characterized and the origin of the idea of blues as the devil's music. I have a feeling that it is racial since most of black culture has historically been characterized as evil by the white American Christian mainstream projecting their ideas of evil on black culture as an avoidance tactic to justify intransigence and the lack of repentance of for a never-ending list of race-based evils perpetuated in the United States. Looking forward to reading this book to see how and if Gussow tackles these questions.

[jesusdiedwoke]

Really great book full of inspiring poetry based on lyrics of popular rappers. Grounds expressions of grief and spirituality in the everyday experiences of people in search of something beyond the gross mischaracterization of religion in the hands of anti-human and anti- humanitarian gatekeepers.