• Distributism for the 21st Century, by Richard Aleman | The Humanitarian Chronicle
  After more than a century, attempts to apply Capitalism and Socialism have met with the same disastrous outcome. A select group possesses everything while the majority is either bound to stale and declining wages, or worse, they slide from poverty to destitution… For all their superficial differences, Capitalism and Socialism have much in common. Both bar the laborer, who produces the goods of society, from the means of production. Both discount the role of justice, restrict true freedom, and consolidate power. Both take for granted the materialism of man to the exclusion of his eternal soul.

  Due to growing discontentment with these systems, people are turning to alternatives in the hopes of solving our financial dilemmas. A rising popular philosophy involves nurturing individual initiative and social responsibility, while using the resources of the local marketplace to challenge our current shift towards globalization…

  The name of this movement is Distributism.

  (tags: justice economy)
• Contra Celsum: The West is Proving to be an Empty Facade
  In Western secular materialist societies, when Christians have sought to claim the public sphere they have been opposed and resisted. Some have been imprisoned. Others have had their children removed from them. Still others have been fined. Courts have ruled against them. Athens has largely successfully resisted Christian attempts to claim the public sphere. But not Islam. Why?

  It’s probably due to vast reserves of oil and capital controlled by Islamic countries, and fear of terrorist attacks. Therefore, discretion is the better part of valour.

  But there is another reason why Islam is confronting Athens so aggressively and winning, whereas Jerusalem is not… Islamic domination is materialistic and outward only. Islam is satisfied with conversion by the sword, by force, by compulsion. Islam is satisfied with external conformity.

  But Christianity, alone, is the faith of the one true Living God… [the Gospel calls for] change from the inside out [prior to external conformity].

  (tags: gospel society)

• TUMEKE!: When businesses make people starve
  A great essay from Bloomberg.com dispels the myth of business efficiency : Aid taking *six months* to reach Ethiopia because of the intervention of big business, whose primary motivations are profit rather than people.

  Interestingly, the true criminals in this case are not the Government, who tried to support local food production, but the big business lobbyists who moved to stop this. While the story characterises this aid as benefiting all Americans, the truth is that that any extra revenue goes towards those who are siphoning off profit from the top of these companies.

  Like Lehman’s “remorse” for shareholders melting away after he took half a billion dollars of profits from the company, profiteering corporations do little to spread the wealth to those everyday Americans now living in tent cities across the United States, having lost their jobs to outsourcing and their homes through foreclosures.

  (tags: justice economy)

• Medieval History of Science and Religion
  “God’s Philosophers” debunks many myths about the Middle Ages. Medieval people did not think the earth was flat, nor did Columbus ‘prove’ that it is a sphere. Everyone already knew. The Inquisition burnt nobody for their scientific ideas, nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution. No Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero.

  The Middle Ages were an era of invention and rapid technological change. For example, spectacles, the mechanical clock and the windmill were all invented in thirteenth century Europe. Ideas from the Far East, like printing, gunpowder and the compass were taken further by Europeans than the Chinese had imagined possible.

  Historians now utterly reject the idea that science and religion have been locked in a great conflict throughout history. The Church supported but also set boundaries for science in the Middle Ages. Medieval scholars laid the foundations of modern science.

  (tags: science church cosmos error)
• Quodlibeta: Honor your Fuhrer and master
  Hitler’s plan to gradually ‘Nazify’ the church began with a theological centre he set up in 1939… ‘The Bible must become Jew-free and the German people must see that the Jews are the mortal enemy who threaten their very existence’. Purportedly a “research” institute, it functioned as an antisemitic propaganda machine whose brief was to ‘cleanse church texts of all non-Aryan influences’.

  The 10 commandments were completely rewritten and two more added for good measure.

  ‘But it is clear’, noted Goebbels, ‘…there is namely an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a Germanic-heroic world view’.(Ian Kershaw, ‘Hitler : Nemesis’ p 449)

  Some version of Christianity might have survived had the Nazis won the war and carried out their purge — but it would be a faint mockery, consisting of anti-Jewish prejudice and unquestioning worship of the Fuhrer and the Nazi state. Hitler might have approved of the Ten Commandments, but then again he would do, he had them rewritten.

  (tags: evil 1984 church)

A couple of gems from the emergent village site.

Take Action: Advent Conspiracy

This Sunday marks the beginning of Advent, which makes it a great time to pass along the invitation to participate in Advent Conspiracy:

Leadership Network has a nice article that gives the history of Advent Conspiracy.

Pastor Abandons His Church

Hiam Shatir may look like your average pastor, but he’s not acting like one. In a nation filled with expensive mega-church buildings popping up, Hiam instead chose to sell his mega-church, Crestview Community Church, and attempt to live into what he says is the call to “be the church.” And although many doubt him, Hiam just knew it was the right move to make.

“We just felt it was the right thing to do,” said Hiam, a businessman turned pastor, from his converted basement where he now administrates the church. “We couldn’t put our foot on the problem. People were sitting in the pews and not doing anything. They would come and sit and leave. And we began to ask if this is the Gospel.”

In what many would consider a stunning move for a 8,000-member mega-church, Hiam and the board of elders chose to sell their recently developed $12 million dollar campus to a local technology company, which is now planning to convert the sanctuary into a manufacturing facility. “Selling the building was easier than we thought,” one elder stated.

So what made this ultra-successful pastor of one of the city’s largest suburban communities take such a radical step? Hiam shared that it was faith. “One day I walked into the main sanctuary, and it was empty. It was this huge building that we were paying a mortgage on and it was dark. I just had this sense of wonder if this is really what Jesus would do. Would he have created this building?