Author: ppadmin

Forgiveness is not forgetting

Charleston's challenge

by Ken Sehested

        In the surge writing following the massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the most significant may be Roxane Gay’s “Why I Can’t Forgive Dylann Roof.”  (Stacey Patton has a similar piece in The Washington Post, "Black America should stop forgiving white racists.") I think it most significant not because I agree but because it states what so many feel because of a culturally-warped reading of Scripture.

        Gay realizes that this counterfeit forgiveness is a form of cruelty to victims. All she says is true—but not true enough.

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​News, views, notes, and quotes

18 June 2015  •  No. 26

Invocation. “The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want / Green pastures rise and from the font / Flow waters, ever gentle, to surround me / My soul restored, my heart aflame / My feet will walk and for that Name / My lungs will lift to sing, Hallelujah. —Ken Sehested, first verse of new lyrics (adapted from from Psalm 23) to Leonard Cohen’s song, “Hallelujah.” 

Left: Banner hanging in the Park Road Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Graduation season. The recent vicarious experience of friends’ delight (and a wee bit of anxiety) at their children’s graduation pivots make me recall my own emotions in that season from some years ago, including a poem, “On the flow of tears.” 

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Building a Culture of Peace: An Interfaith Agenda

“New faces: Charlotte’s Growing Interfaith Community” sponsored by Mecklenburg Ministries, Programa Esperanza, Community Relations Committee and International Ministries
Tuesday, 13 November 2001, First United Methodist Church, Charlotte, NC

by Ken Sehested

       In the 19th chapter of the gospel of Luke, in the Christian Newer Testament, is this brief transition narrative as Jesus approaches Jerusalem. He’s near the end of his career and is prepared for a showdown with the ruling elites of the age. And you should know that Luke purposefully arranges this episode immediately before the story of Jesus’ outburst in the Temple, where he turns over the money-changers’ tables, a notorious racket whereby corrupt religious authorities colluded with unscrupulous entrepreneurs to exploit poor and working-class people during their expression of religious fidelity and devotion.

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Speak out clearly, pay up personally

The purpose, promise and peril of interfaith engagement

by Ken Sehested, Lynn Gottlieb, and Rabia Terri Harris

        In the early weeks of 2011, during the Arab Spring uprising, Egyptian blogger Nevine Zaki posted a photograph from Cairo’s Tahrir Square. It showed a group of people bowing in the traditional style of Muslim prayer, surrounded by other people standing hand-in-hand, facing outward, as a wall of protection against hostile pro-government forces. Zaki affixed this caption: “A picture I took yesterday of Christians protecting Muslims during their prayers.”

        Similar scenes—some ancient, some as recent as yesterday’s newspaper—have been arranged in a host of ways with a variety of religious identities. No religious tradition can claim a monopoly on compassionate courage. And yet such snapshots remain rare.

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All People That On Earth Do Dwell

Old hymn, new lyrics

by Ken Sehested

All people that on earth do dwell, Sing to our God with cheerful voice
Let Resurrection joy foretell, Life in the Spirit’s breath rejoice

The Most High One is God indeed, Without our hand the world was made
Yet would not leave us in our need, But walks among us unafraid

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News, views, notes, and quotes

4 June 2015  •  No. 24

¶ Invocation. “I am, you anxious one. / Don’t you sense me, ready to break / into being at your touch? / My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings. / Can’t you see me standing before you / cloaked in stillness? / Hasn’t my longing ripened in you / from the beginning / as fruit ripens on a branch?
        “I am the dream you are dreaming. / When you want to awaken, I am that wanting: / I grow strong in the beauty you behold. / And with the silence of stars I enfold / your cities made by time.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

Last week's announcement that the US State Department has removed Cuba from its list of "state sponsors of terrorism" is one more significant step in reestablishing normal diplomatic relations. To celebrate, take a few minutes to view the grandeur in these photos: “Unseen Cuba: First aerial photographs reveal island's spectacular beauty.” Lithuanian aerial photographer Marius Jovaisa was the first artist to receive government permission to fly over the country and photograph it from above.

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“Stingy spenders hold back growth”

Is it a trivial matter to complain about such screamer headlines?

by Ken Sehested

       “Stingy spenders hold back growth.” So reads the title of a recent USA Today business section story reporting that “penny-pinching consumers tainted” otherwise robust economic indicators.

        Is it a trivial matter to complain about such screamer headlines?

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There is a new creation

The Apostle Paul’s vision of the ministry of reconciliation

by Ken Sehested

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,
and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them,
and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
2 Corinthians 5:17-19

        Few things are more uniform among Baptist churches the world over than Sunday school. Many are surprised to learn that this organized form of Bible study began in Britain in the 18th century. And its specific purpose was to provide literacy training for poor children. It was a ministry of reconciliation in an age when industrialization was deepening the chasm of poverty.

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