Author: ppadmin

by Ken Sehested

Mother’s Day is celebrated in many cultures. Although others are given credit for founding the observance, Julia Ward Howe led in establishing what some believe to be the first observance of Mother’s Day in the U.S. (2 June 1872) after witnessing the carnage of the U.S. Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War in Europe. The Mother’s Day festival, she wrote, “should be devoted to the advocacy of peace doctrines.”

Born in New York City in 1819, Howe—author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”—was a published poet, author, and advocate of better treatment for prisoners and those living with mental and physical disabilities.

Selected by Ken Sehested

§ To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world. —Karl Barth

Ken Sehested, Alliance of Baptists Convocation
17-19 April 2015 [expanded version]

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and
to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.
The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement,
seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to
destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
—Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

by Ken Sehested

      Unfortunately, it’s too easy to write off Tim Nolan’s decision to commit civil disobedience at the U.S. Supreme Court, calling for the closure of the Guantánamo prison for the suspects in the U.S. “war on terror,” as political looney-tune. But no less a public figure than former Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated: