NYT: Tish Harrison Warren: "Why We Need to Start Talking About God," (Aug. 22, 2021)

Karl Barth, a 20th-century Swiss theologian, is credited with saying that Christians must live our lives with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Barth, who was a leader of a group of Christians in Germany resisting Hitler, understood that faith is not a pious, protective bubble shielding us from the urgent needs of the world. It is the very impetus that leads us into active engagement with society. People of faith must immerse ourselves in messy questions of how to live faithfully in a particular moment with particular headlines calling for particular attention and particular responses.

[...] As a pastor, I see again and again that in defining moments of people’s lives — the birth of children, struggles in marriage, deep loss and disappointment, moral crossroads, facing death — they talk about God and the spiritual life. In these most tender moments, even those who aren’t sure what exactly they believe cannot avoid big questions of meaning: who we are, what we are here for, why we believe what we believe, why beauty and horror exist.

These questions bubble up in all of us, often unbidden. Even when we hum through a mundane week — not consciously thinking about God or life’s meaning or death — we are still motivated in our depths by ultimate questions and assumptions about what’s right and wrong, what’s true or false and what makes for a good life. [...]

It won’t look the same every week: Though the Bible may remain the same, the newspaper changes each day. And different events and seasons in our lives and in society throw us back on old questions about truth, beauty and goodness in new ways. In a cultural moment when faith is often used as a bludgeon for our political and ideological enemies, we need space to talk about belief and practice with nuance, curiosity and reflection.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/22/opinion/faith-spirituality.html

NYT: Tish Harrison Warren: "My Hope for American Discourse," (Aug. 6, 2023)

 The “outsides” of holy things, to me, describes the difference between speaking about divine or sacred things and encountering the divine or the sacred directly. To be sure, we need more and better religious discourse in America. In my very first newsletter for The Times, I wrote that “we need to start talking about God,” and I still believe that. I believe that religion and, more broadly, the biggest questions in life are the driving forces behind much that is beautiful, divisive, unifying, controversial and perplexing about our culture and society.

Yet there is danger in becoming a pundit, particularly on matters of faith and spirituality. It can be deadening. I plan to continue to write about faith, to explore its impact on politics, study it sociologically, think about its metaphors and claims of truth. But for any person of faith, public engagement must be balanced with times of withdrawal, of silence, prayer, questioning and wonder beyond the reach of words. Otherwise, faith with all its strange and startling topology becomes a flat and sterile thing, something to be dissected, instead of embraced. And typically once something is fit only for dissection, it is dead. I bring this up because it is a temptation for all of us now. Social media and digital technology have made us all pundits. We are faced with a constant choice: Every experience, belief, feeling and thought we have can be shared publicly or not. In a single day, we can take in more information and ideas than was ever possible, yet at the end of the day we can still lack wisdom.

Constant connectivity empties us out, as individuals and as a society, making us shallower thinkers and more impatient with others. When it comes to faith, it can yield a habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things, fostering an avoidance of those internal parts of life that are most difficult, things like prayer, uncertainty, humility and the nakedness of who we most truly are amid this confusing, heartbreaking and incandescently beautiful world.

Public debate and dialogue are the crux of our democracy and an important way to seek truth. It is good to speak up and be heard — and I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to do so as a writer. [...]

We become like Linus in the old “Peanuts” cartoons who famously said: “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.” True community, however, is made of real people with names, of friends with true faults, of congregations with faces, of the local, the small. Don’t get me wrong: Global and national news is important and I will continue to read news and opinion pieces nearly every day. But for me, as for most of us, the places we meet God — the places we become human — are not primarily in abstract debates about culture wars or the role of religion in society, but in worship on a Sunday morning or in dropping off soup for a grieving friend, in a vulnerable conversation or in making breakfast at the homeless shelter down the street, in celebration with a neighbor or in the drowsy prayers uttered while rocking a feverish toddler in the middle of the night. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/opinion/saying-goodbye-social-media-prayer.html 

Guardian: Big oil uncovered: Harvard environmental law professor resigns from ConocoPhillips after months of scrutiny

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/04/harvard-professor-resigns-conocophillips-board

(Dr. Hamza el-Bekri Şerhu'l Akaid 1. Dersi) شرح العقائد الدرس ١

https://youtu.be/3pNNnvP5GEA

Dr. Hamzeh Al-Bakri

Born in Jordan in 1982, Dr. Hamza Muhammed Wasim Bekri completed his BA (2004) at al-Balqa Applied University, where he graduated from the Department of the Methodology of Religion with honors. He went on to complete his MA and PhD at the University of Jordan’s Department of Hadith. He has published many beneficial articles and works and is currently an assistant professor in the Faculty of Islamic Sciences at Ibn Haldun University. In addition to this, he has taught and continues to teach kalam, aqidah, fiqh, usul al-fiqh, and hadith at such institutions as Istanbul Sultan Ahmet Vakfı, EDEP, ISM, and ISAM. [Source: https://iss.ihu.edu.tr/en/summer-school-instructors] 

Democracy Now Special on Sinéad O’Connor (8/1/2023)

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/1/remembering_sinead_oconnor

NYT: Affirmative Action Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Admissions at Harvard and U.N.C. (6/29/23)

"In disavowing race as a factor in achieving educational diversity, the court all but ensured that the student population at the campuses of elite institutions will become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino."

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/29/us/affirmative-action-supreme-court

Jill Lepore's This America (2019)

Just completed reading this little book called This America which I enjoyed for its erudition, snapshots of significant events, thinkers/writers, and lively writing style. I would like to further investigate explorations of liberalism. I'm particularly interested in the ability of contemporary believers, especially Muslims, and their ability to practice their faith commitments and flourish in a US context, but also elsewhere in Europe or Muslim-majority countries. 

The book is based on her previously published articles linked here:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2019-02-05/new-americanism-nationalism-jill-lepore

Abraham/Ibrahim

Abraham/Ibrahim is mentioned nearly seventy times throughout the text of the Qur'an, and only Moses's/Musa's name appears more frequently in the book. [...] A title the Qur'an uses for Abraham/Ibrahim that is also shared by both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is "friend of God" [khalil Allah] (Q4:125; cf. Isa. 41:8; Jas 2:23).

 The Qur'an presents Abraham/Ibrahim as a true believer who, even though he predated the Prophet Muhammad by centuries, is the prototype for all Muslims to follow because he lived his life in complete submission to God's will. 

His exemplary character is summed up in this verse, which explains both what Abraham/Ibrahim was and what he was not. "Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian, but he was an upright person [hanifan] who submitted [musliman] and was not one of those who associate [mushrikin]" (Q3:67).

Because he lived long before both Judaism and Christianity, he should not be identified with either of those religions. He was also not someone who committed the sin of shirk, or association, by violating the unity of God and associating something or someone in creation with the uncreated diety. 

Abraham/Ibrahim is described in this verse as a hanif, which is translated as "upright person," and is often understood to be someone who practices monotheism. The word hanif appears twelve times in the Qur'an with eight of them referring to Abraham/Ibrahim, who is the only person identified this way by name in the text. [...]

The important role that Abraham/Ibrahim plays as a model believer can be seen in another way in Q3:67. The Arabic word that is translated here as "who submitted" is "muslim," a term that describes a person who engages in the act of submission that gives the religion of Islam its name. The verse reflects the belief that, long before the coming of Muhammad, prophets like Abraham/Ibrahim and their followers were living lives of submission to God's will. This is why Muhammad is repeatedly told in the Qur'an that he should follow the "religion of Abraham/Ibrahim" -- his task was not to found a new faith, but to call people back to the way that God had intended for humanity from the beginning. "Then We revealed to you (Muhammad) to folllow the religion of Abraham, who was an upright person and was not one of those who associate (Q16:123; cf. Q2:135; Q3:95; Q6:161; Q22:78).

[...] Abraham/Ibrahim was not guilty of shirk (association) because he practiced shukr (thankfulness).

"Truly, there is a good example for you in Abraham" (Q60:4).

--John Kaltner & Younus Y. Mirza, The Bible and the Qur'an: Biblical Figures in the Islamic Tradition (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 10-15.

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

Circling the House of God: Martin Lings Narrates His Hajj Journey

https://youtu.be/R9w-KN4LfjQ

Malcolm X at 98: Angela Davis on His Enduring Legacy & the "Long Struggle for Liberation"

https://youtu.be/nOXvwzcEH0o