Shawna R. B. Atteberry

At True Majority you can type in your zip code, and see how much your state senators and representative have received from the big 3 oil companies, and how much of the time they have voted for big oil interest instead of their own constituency. Here are how the Illinois senators and one representative are doing:

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL)

Accepted $40,850 from the oil and gas industry since 2000.
Supported the industry in 44% of selected votes.

Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)

Accepted $70,000 from the oil and gas industry since 2000.
Supported the industry in 33% of selected votes.

Representative Danny Davis (D-IL07)

Accepted $13,000 from the oil and gas industry since 2000.
Supported the industry in 18% of selected votes.

Way to go Rep. Davis! Now Senators Biden and Obama: follow suit. Although, I have to say that I am glad Sen. Obama changed his mind on offshore oil drilling (what a joke that is. Even if we were pumping more oil, it would have to be sold to the rest of the world because our refineries are working at capacity, so we wouldn’t get it.). We need other alternative energy sources–not more oil dependence.

Speaking of off-shore drilling, do you know why on June 20, Sen. McCain decided that offshore drilling was okay after being against it? It could have something to do with the $875,000 donation from Chevron. In June the big 3 oil companies contributed over $2 million towards his campaign using loopholes in the “public” election funding.

Here is the letter that you can sign that True Majority is sending out to the Senators and Representatives:

I know the facts about how much you take from oil and gas companies.

It’s time for you to show whose side you’re on: create the energy rebate for American families by making big oil pay it is fair share.

It’s time for big business to stop buying our ELECTED officials. This also includes the big business of health care, but that’s another post.

I normally don’t write political posts, but I am infuriated with our government, and the passing of the FISA amendment. The UCLA is taking out a full page ad in a major national newspaper to announce taking the un-Constitutional amendment to court. They want tens of thousands of signatures on the ad:

We want Congress to stand up for our freedom, but they keep caving in to fear mongering! Help the ACLU spell it out for them.

The ACLU is preparing to challenge the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act in court and protect your right to privacy.

In addition, the ACLU will be taking out a full-page ad in a major national newspaper announcing the lawsuit and expressing outrage at this abandonment of our Constitutional principles. Their goal is to run an ad containing the names of tens of thousands of Americans who believe in the Constitution and want Congress to hear our message loud and clear: next time, stand up for our rights.

There has never been a more important moment to demonstrate to our leaders that we believe in freedom – not fear.

Go here to sign. I already did. Tell this government that illegal wire tapping is a crime, and that the Fourth Ammendment is still part of the Constitution. Treason is NEVER legal or moral.

1. Family is always more important than work.

2. You can have strong faith, a strong family, and a strong career (and so can your spouse).

3. It’s okay to ask hard questions.

4. It’s okay to push people to answer hard questions.

5. Play hookie and go do something you love with someone you love.

6. Do what you love in all of life.

7. At the end of the day (or the end of the primary), smile, laugh, and talk about baseball.

The picture is from MSNBC.com.

Tim Russert died today of a heart attack. I didn’t always agree with him, but I always loved watching him back politicians against the wall and not letting them off with easy outs. And good for Tim for playing hookie at work to take his son to baseball games. Rest in peace Tim.

Almighty God, we remember before you today your faithful servant Tim Russert; and we pray that, having opened to him the gates of larger life, you will receive him more and more into your joyful service, that, with all who have faithfully served you in the past, he may share in the eternal victory of Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (From The Book of Common Prayer)

Russ, Maureen and Luke, may the God of all comforts, comfort you now. May you feel God’s love and peace and know the hope you have: that you will be reunited in God’s kingdom.

Dwight Hopkins at The Immanent Frame has posted a great article detailing the differences between Barak Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and why their parting of ways was inevitable. Here are a few excerpts:

Barack Obama is white and black and immigrant and multicultural. His mother and his grandparents hail from a white, heartland America and semi-rural America. Growing up with a white mother and white grandparents, Obama caught a glimpse of how many white citizens expect society and government to respond to their needs. Socialization processes in the U.S. (i.e., media, education, movies, power positions, etc.) produce white citizens who imagine whatever options they wish to choose in life. Not only can one envision different options, one can also decide to implement and, thus, realize those dreams. Despite his grandmother mentioning her fears of inner city black people, Obama grew up in a predominantly white environment that nurtured a view of government and American citizens as working together so each citizen could realize their desires. This perspective invites a career as a politician.

Obama also emerges from an immigrant sensibility. His father was from Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. to get a prestigious education. Barack Obama, Sr. did not come to America to find the American dream—get married, have children, and seek permanent residence and naturalized citizenship. Rather, he saw the U.S. as a place to obtain the best resources and then return back to his own home in Kenya. Senior Obama’s consciousness and history were not rooted in the black American story. Rather, his heart and priority were at home in Kenya.

In contrast, Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. hails from inner city Philadelphia and from a black family that traces parts of its roots back to Virginia and the slavery era. And Wright is a third generation black preacher.

Wright’s world was intensely racialized by the awareness of Africa’s contributions to humanity, his slavery history, northern racial discrimination, and the segregation he encountered when he went south for his B.A. degree. At the same time, he grew up in a loving household and city where blacks told folk tales, recounted the heroics of enslaved blacks, swayed with jazz rhythms, doo wop, and R&B, and played the dozens on ghetto street corners. Wright knew about other great black achievements such as the Harlem Renaissance, A. Phillip Randolph’s threat against FDR if the president didn’t integrate the armed services, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

Wright emerged out of a specific lineage of black preaching. His father was a big name Baptist preacher in Philadelphia and he, too, was a son of a Baptist preacher. Thus Jeremiah Wright, Jr. symbolizes three generations of the prophetic wing of the black church, one where Christianity is empty rhetoric if not linked to social justice and occasional prophetic denunciation of the powerful.

Wright and Obama—the preacher and the politician, race and multiculturalism—have different parental, geographic, historical, and personal experiences. Yet both agree on the Bible as being partial to the poor. Both agree on church function as organizing justice.

Wright is deeply connected to a segregated black community and the importance of its voice and its ability to obtain resources for living. From that particularity, he bridges into conversation and coalition with all of America. In contrast, Obama begins with a vision for all of America. From that perspective, blacks are simply one strand among many in a larger narrative about whites and blacks (as well as yellows, browns, and reds) being their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.

Go read the whole thing and let me know what you think.

Chuck Warnock has a very through-provoking post up: 10 Marks of the Church-as-Abbey. Here are two of the marks:

Hospitality. The Celtic abbey was open to all who needed its hospitality and help. Monks, even those fasting, would interrupt their discipline to greet and welcome those who came into the abbey’s confines. Welcoming the stranger is a vital part of the abbey’s ministry.

Economics. The abbeys were self-supporting, engaged in cultivating fields, raising livestock, operating public markets, and giving employment opportunities to the community. I read about a church the other day that also operates a farmers’ market, and has been doing so for years. I am exploring the agrarian movement, particularly as it attracts followers of Christ. More on that later.

He also has this post following up on the economics of the church-as-abbey, The Abbey Church and Economics. When I think of the church I want, I think like this. I want a community that is very involved in the larger community. I need to get one of the books he recommends. I already have Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization (Hinges of History), which I loved (may need to review it). I now need to add George Hunter’s The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again.

Julie Clawson has a great post up titled Sexism Sells.

It is hard to avoid given the current political situation, but it serves as a sad reminder of how normal sexism is in the daily life of many people. I’ve mentioned that I am not a Hillary supporter, but I am becoming more and more upset at how she is being used as an excuse to trash women. I am sick of hearing news commenters ridiculing Hillary because she is a woman. I’m sick of hearing, “we can’t have a woman president because then other countries wouldn’t respect us.” (do people realize that most other countries are far ahead of us in electing women leaders!!!). It’s not about her it is about women, she is just an excuse to be sexist on national television.

How many years ago was Margaret Thatcher prime minister of England? The German Chancellor is a woman, and Kenya voted in their first female president last year. Oh yes, so many countries that won’t respect us. Have these people never heard of Golda Mieir, Catherine the Great, or Elizabeth I for that matter? Like Julie this bothers me as well. She goes on to say:

No one would dare call a black man lesser, or make fun of his race, or question if he deserves respect (which is good), but it’s okay for that to happen to women. And then people get upset at you for if you get upset by it - they say you are overreacting, or just roll their eyes and mumble “feminist” under their breath.

This reminds me of all the hot water Joe Biden got himself into when he said Barak Obama was articulate and clean. Yet, we hear none of the same thing when announcers basically do the same thing with Hillary. Like Julie, I am not a Hillary fan, but I am tired of all the sexism and female-bashing going on because she is running.

Sally has a beautiful, haunting poem about The Samaritan Woman up on her site.

Instead of simply celebrating Martin Luther King Day, Dustin Wax at Lifehack has a list of things we can do to continue making King’s dream a reality in 12 Ways to Make MLK’s Dream a Reality. Here are a couple of them:

Re-examine what you “know”: It turns out our minds are full of racist stereotypes, even among the most saintly people. We act every day on things we “know” are true, without realizing that those “facts” are grounded only in stereotypes, not reality. Consider:

• The lowest violent crime rates in the US are found in Hispanic neighborhoods.
• White teens are more likely to use and sell drugs than any other teenagers — even drugs like crack that we associate with minorities.
• Almost all school shootings have been carried out by white students.

None of these facts conforms to our expectations, which are shaped more by the stereotypes we’ve internalized and the sensationalist media than by actual experience.

Think community: Kant’s Categorical Imperative states: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. What he meant in a nutshell was that you should act the way you wish everyone would act. Don’t just ask yourself if your behavior is in your own best interest, but if it also makes your community better (which, if you think about it, is also in your best interest).

In The Outrage of Outsiders: Why So Many People Dislike Christians (Hat tip to Gord), Journey with Jesus has an article about a three year study that resulted in David Kinnaman’s book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters. He found that an overwhelming majority of young adults view Christianity with quite a bit of hostility. They see us as judgmental, bigoted, and extremely critical and unaccepting. All I can say is can you blame them? When you have people constantly telling you (or yelling at you) that you’re going to hell for one reason or another, I’d have to say you wouldn’t like them. May be the church (particularly the evangelical church) needs to take its cue from Jesus and the Christians in the New Testament instead of the “hellfire and brimstone” preachers of the 30s and 40s revivials.

Following the example of Jesus, the first Christians broke down social barriers. They disregarded religious taboos that judged people as ritually clean or unclean, worthy or unworthy, respectable or disrespectable. They subverted normal social hierarchies of wealth, ethnicity, religion, and gender in favor of a radical egalitarianism before God and with each other: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

In a word, the first believers were generous. They demonstrated authentic transparency, not moral superiority or ulterior motives. Like their Lord, they exuded compassion rather than condemnation. They lived out of gratitude not fear, and had a reputation for empathy rather than fault-finding. The first followers of Jesus were people of self-sacrifice, not self-interest. They insisted that God was like a tender father, not a vindictive tyrant, and encouraged every person without exception to believe what the psalmist said: “This I know, that God is for me” (Psalm 56:9).

Pastor Dan over at Street Prophets reminds the right-wing, anti-immigration crew that they Can’t Fool the Faithful: Immigration is a Moral Issue, Not a Political Football. American Christians are going to have to decide are we going to be Americans first or Christian?

Pastors and people in the pews know that inhumane raids, deportations, local anti-immigration ordinances, and racist sentiment against various groups of immigrants fly in the face of the Lord’s admonitions to not “oppress the stranger” (Ex. 23:9) or “pervert the judgment of the stranger” (Deut. 24:17). Instead, the Lord taught us to “love the stranger as ourselves” (Lev. 19:34), and “allow the stranger to live among us” (Lev. 25:35). Christ’s teachings in the New Testament reaffirm the Lord’s commandments of inclusion by urging us to welcome the stranger. He promises that as we provide for the stranger (or “alien,” NIV), we are serving Him (Matt. 25:35-40). How many of these politicians really want to deport Jesus?

And may be those anti-immigration people need to remember who the illegal immigrants of 300 years ago were. Bet the Native Americans wished they had built a big, honking wall right after we started showing up. (I saw a great cartoon of this, but I don’t remember where. If you know, leave a link in the comments, and I’ll update this post.)