rama and precariousness are markers of Jesus’s birth rather than peace and tranquility. “Silent Night, Holy Night” does not capture what it means to be born in a stable at a time when many babies and quite a few of their mothers died in childbirth. Jesus’s life is at high risk right from the beginning. Immediately after his birth, his life is put in danger again by King Herod, who is worried about possible competition.
Read MoreWithout an understanding as to how power flows in our current economic and political system, organizations will be at the whim of the broader partisan tides. Which, in an environment where money dominates politics, ends up meaning that the highest bidder directs the tide. It is not just that global financialized capitalism dominates, but that there is a deep concentration of wealth and power in elites who dominate our collective political life. Building power in working people’s communities means building collective organizations that exercise agency over the conditions of our collective life.
Read MoreGrowing up as a queer individual below the poverty line in rural America, I witnessed firsthand the chasm between the promise of freedom and its stark reality. Raised by a single mother who toiled tirelessly, I saw the uncelebrated labor that sustains our nation. Yet, the political narratives, especially those targeting white, working-class communities, often peddle a hollow version of freedom—one that resonates like an empty echo.
Read MoreWhile the United States has long and complex traditions of political democracy, economic democracy has often been overlooked, if not actively repressed. Many reasons can be given for that neglect, but perhaps the most important one is that putting political and economic democracy together is hardly in the interest of the dominant powers.
Read MoreThis is the social location of theology, where religion – in one way or another – plays a role in class formation. As seen in our traditions and continuing today, religion often supports dominant powers, making it easy to forget or overlook its contributions to resistance movements. Jörg Rieger rightly reminds us that we need the class perspective not only to understand and explain social relations correctly, but also to be part of class formation (p. 136). We should ask ourselves how we actually want to organize our society and remember that the way we organize life and labor is not a law of nature or God-given, but made by people.
Read MoreAt a time when protest often seems to be the last recourse for those longing for a better world and a more sustainable faith, the Solidarity Circles of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University are designed to expand horizons by constructing and building alternatives. Our approach is wholistic from the outset.
Read MoreIn the next few moments, I want to take a look at the bigger picture of which Barbara’s life reminds us, and to which it testifies. This is the good news: Barbara’s life can make us see a bigger picture and something that is happening in the world, which is bigger than us. I take this to mean that we are never alone, even if it may sometimes feel that way. This is, of course, what Christians believe, but this is also what many other faith traditions tell us. Even people who don’t embrace any particular faith often have an acute sense of something bigger at work than the individual, and many intuitively grasp that we are not alone.
Read MoreWe know that political power is deeply entangled with other forms of power:
cultural, religion, and economic. We are concerned that political power cannot truly change
without changing cultural and religious power, and without the economic strongholds of power
that fund all of these powers.
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