Consumerism in America
From The American Muslim:
Given our love affair, no scratch that, our obsession, with shopping, acquiring, owning, and consuming, we keep the Once-ler’s fat, happy, and running at full throttle. As the Truffula trees, Humming-fish, Bar-ba-loots, and Swomee- Swans disappear at an alarming rate, we’re too busy “lovin’ it” at McDonald’s and cashing in on Wal-Mart’s “always low prices” to notice or care. Global temperatures rise, ice shelves plunge into the sea, glaciers recede at alarming rates, violent storms rage, species become extinct, and bees disappear en masse as we intrepidly continue filling our two lives per gallon Hummers with inane consumer goods that we don’t need. “Keeping the economy strong” is indeed a noble calling.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, April 17 | 0 comments | Permalink
Building Bridges Across Faiths
From The Hartford (CT) Courant:
Leaps Of Faith To Build Bridges
Lina Stas loves the story of Moses leading his people out of Egypt, particularly the part where he plunges his staff into the Red Sea and parts the waters as the Pharaoh’s chariots approach, because it sends such a clear message about God’s mission.But Stas, who celebrated her first Passover Seder Tuesday night at Temple Beth Hillel in South Windsor, is not Jewish, or even Christian.
She is Muslim and she came to the United States two months ago from Syria - a nation that President Bush described Tuesday as a “state sponsor of terror” - on a mission, of sorts, of her own.
Stas, who along with six other Syrian scholars is studying Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim relations for a year at Hartford Seminary, is painfully aware of how her nation is perceived by the U.S. government and some of its people.
“If we knew each other better, we would communicate better,” Stas said. “That is part of why we are here. We are all human beings and we have to do something to bridge the gap between us.”
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Posted by Media Team on Monday, April 09 | 0 comments | Permalink
Featured Faith Leader: Imam Ali Siddiqui
Imam Ali Siddiqui is a Peace and Labor Activist and an Advocate for Justice who is immersed in the Liberation Philosophy of Islam which is evident in his 34 years community service including spiritual/educational development, service to the low wage workers, sick and incarcerated.
He is also a Friday Khatib, Islamic teacher, Muslim Chaplain, youth advisor, poet and a writer with a vision who has been involved in the teaching Islam, comparative religion, history, and contemporary issues including Economic Justice, War and Peace.
Imam Ali Siddiqui is the founding director (along with Hon. Linda Sanchez, now the member of the Congress) of Orange County Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice.
He has been on speaking tours to Belgium, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, India, Iran, Pakistan, Switzerland and across the USA. He frequently presents Islamic Prospective and Muslim Point of View on current affairs to Non-Muslims and Muslims. He has been very active in organizing seminars, workshops, teach-ins, retreats, and conferences to promote Justice, Islamic awareness and inter-faith understanding.
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Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Friday, April 06 | 0 comments | Permalink
Religion and the State Come Together
From New Hampshire’s Union Leader:
State, religious organizations swap social service information
Church and state came together yesterday and found common ground.
Department of Health and Human Services officials spent the morning swapping stories with leaders from a variety of faith-based groups, and both sides agreed to get together again next month.
“We’re not seeing it as a state and religion issue,” said Maggie Bishop, director of the Division for Children, Youth and Families. “It’s really more about community.”
The groups met at the Sununu Youth Services Center to explain what social services they provide and see how they can work together.
“I believe this is the first meeting of this kind that we’ve had in the state of New Hampshire,” said DHHS Commissioner John Stephen. “I think this is a new beginning.”
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Posted by Media Team on Wednesday, April 04 | 0 comments | Permalink
Religious Leaders Lead Awareness Walk
From the Associated Press via the Christian Post:
Interfaith Group Braves Storm to Raise Environment Awareness
As the world’s warmest winter on record drew to an end with a weekend snow storm, a group of religious leaders started walking across the state Friday to bring attention to global warming.
Participants in the Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue, a group advocating environmental issues who are walking between Northampton, Mass., and Boston, trudge through a spring snowstorm on the first day of the walk in Northampton on Friday.
“People have been asking me what happens if it snows,” said the Rev. Fred Small of the First Church Unitarian in Littleton. “I tell them: ‘we walk.’”
The nine-day haul from downtown Northampton to Copley Square in Boston was planned far before forecasts called for a weekend of snow and sleet just a few days before the start of spring.
“It was windy and cold. I was walking on the front of the line and I felt like I was bow of a ship with the wind just coming into my face,” said the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas of the Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, where the group warmed up on bowls of lentil and minestrone soup after walking eight miles in deep snow from Northampton to Amherst.
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Posted by Media Team on Wednesday, March 28 | 0 comments | Permalink
Wal-Mart Watch Vigil for Justice
The faith community, along with Wal-Mart Watch Interfaith Coalition, is calling for a National Vigil for Justice because of the unfair treatment of employees by the Wal-Mart Corporation. While acknowledging that Wal-Mart has taken a positive step in partnering with groups like SEIU (Service Employees International Union) to address the health crisis, we in the faith community have decided to watch and pray. Our prayer is that this leads to tangible solutions, yet we are watchful because of past indiscretion. Because of the growing number of workers at Wal-Mart who are forced to suffer from various issues such as discrimination, lack of affordable health care, unreasonable long waiting period and for those working while off the clock; we are calling on people of faith to a Vigil for Justice during the next forty (40) days.
This time coincides with the Christian Lenten season and the Jewish Passover celebration. Upholding their Islamic faith, Muslims also are joining people of all faiths in this vigil of justice, seeking justice for the impoverished, destitute and oppressed. Many traditions embrace vigils with different methodologies. We hope that people of faith will commit themselves to “fast” from buying products at Wal-Mart.
While people have differing capacities to engage in the fast – some might do it one day a week while others might fast throughout the entire period – we hope that everyone will seek to stretch themselves to live out their solidarity to Wal-Mart workers and commitment to justice. This is a moral and spiritual issue.
This is a moral and spiritual issue. Isaiah 58:5-7 called out, on behalf of God:
What is the fast I demand of you? —
What is a day to press down your ego?
Is it bending down your head like a bulrush?
Sitting on sack-cloth and ashes?
No!
This is the fast that I have chosen:
Break the handcuffs put on by wicked power;
Undo the yoke of heavy burden;
Let the oppressed go free.
Share your bread with the hungry;
Bring the homeless to your own house.
When you see the naked, clothe them;
Don’t hide yourself; they are your flesh and blood!
Why a Vigil?
- We are in a vigil for all the women like Betty Dukes who suffered and are suffering from sexual discrimination while working at Wal-Mart.
- We are in a vigil for disabled people like Steve Bradley, Jr. who was discriminated by Wal-Mart because of his cerebral palsy.
- We are in a vigil because of thousand of reported and unreported workers who have been forced to work off the clock with no pay.
- We are in a vigil for thousands of full time workers who have to wait six months to qualify for a health care plan which has a $1,000 deductible for individuals and $3,000 deductible for a family.
- We are in a vigil for part time workers who have to wait one year for this same plan.
- We are in a vigil for people like Cindy Bowling who worked faithful for Wal-Mart until she was injured on the job and then fired because of the injury.
Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Monday, March 26 | 0 comments | Permalink
Faith and Consumerism
From It’s time to realize that having more stuff is not the road to paradise.
Bill McKibben has been writing about global warming and the recklessness of oil-addicted economies since George W. Bush was a part owner of the Texas Rangers, Al Gore was the junior senator from Tennessee, and informed adults could still speak of climate change as hypothetical. If the stretch of history that has followed seems all too familiar, so will many of the players in McKibben’s new book, “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.” You’ll recognize the ticking time bombs (climate change and peak oil), the villainous corporations (Wal-Mart and ConAgra), the do-nothing politicians (pretty much all of them), the consumerist and apathetic citizenry (pretty much all of us), the cadre of witch doctors with their trickle-down pablum (the Federal Reserve and the World Trade Organization), and of course the plucky heroes (small farmers and grass-roots activists). But with “Deep Economy,” McKibben does more than just stage another culture-war drama. He offers both a compelling account of what brought us to this perilous moment in history and a credible vision of a more promising future.
The supply of fossil fuels that has put an end to scarcity in much of the Western world and continues to drive the dizzying economic growth of China and India, McKibben argues, is “a one-time gift.” And rather than continue to gorge, we ought to be investing our surplus in figuring out how to live on less. The good news is that while we have already made our planet sick, we are beginning to notice when we have consumed enough: when more no longer makes us happier. Here and there we have begun to scale back our economies, to try to get more of what we need from our neighbors, both because we want to do less damage and because we enjoy it.
McKibben takes up the cause championed by the economist E.F. Schumacher in his classic book “Small Is Beautiful” and by the Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry (to whom the book is dedicated) and gives it fresh urgency and a human face. He chronicles a year spent eating exclusively from the valley around Lake Champlain in Vermont, where he works as a writer in residence at Middlebury College—mainly to prove to himself that it can be done without suffering too great a deprivation. He visits with local farmers, politicians and brewers, but also makes trips to factories and sprawling cities in China and a tiny refusenik village in Bangladesh to see how the oil-mad global economy and its alternatives are playing out in the developing world.
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Posted by Media Team on Friday, March 23 | 0 comments | Permalink
Faith Groups Come Together for Justice
From Christian Peace Witness Report
Carrying their message from the National Cathedral to the White House, a massive nonviolent witness marked the anniversary of the Iraq war with a Christian Witness for Peace.
Braving rain, sleet and finally, snow.... Over 4,000 people gathered at the National Cathedral and New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington DC Friday evening for the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq. The service at the cathedral was amazing, opened by a procession of candles and with words by the Dean of the Cathedral. He said that though the sanctuary was used for many different purposes, it always had a historic role as a place of peace and that though there may be many different thoughts on how to end this war, we were united in our desire to bring it to an end.
Celeste Zappala talked about the death of her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker. Soldiers came to her door asking if she was Baker’s mother, she said yes. “‘Yes,’ and then I fell to the ground and somewhere outside of myself I heard someone screaming and screaming,” she said.
As she attended the funeral of another fallen soldier, being buried at Arlington National Cemetary, her eyes drifted to the other places where the earth was being prepared for even more bodies. She knew she had to do something to end this tragedy.
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Posted by Media Team on Wednesday, March 21 | 0 comments | Permalink
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