What is Dignity?

What is Dignity? Webster’s defines it as “the quality of being worthy of esteem or respect.” The definition of “Blest Are We is “the specialness of people because they are God’s children.” Every person strives for some sense of self-worth. People seek to have dignity and self respect. One way of attaining this is by working.

When a person works it builds self esteem, especially if one is able to work independently from state assistance. Working gives one a sense that ‘I may be different, but I can make it if people just give me a chance.’

Do you hear that Wal-Mart? As people of faith, we affirm that all of us are God’s children. And God didn’t create any junk. When I see people who suffer from a disability I applaud them when they strive for sameness. When they shout out, ‘Treat us the same as you do anyone else.’ My uncle, who was blind, use to say, “I can see better than many people, but they just can’t see me.” My son’s godfather is blind, but last I checked he earned his doctoral degree, started a church in Florida and he is still doing well. Imagine that, someone with a handicap can contribute to society.

Most people who suffer from a disability don’t want to be treated differently or receive hand outs, but they do want a chance to prove that they are human and have worth. That is what a job brings. To hear that Wal-Mart denied Steve Bradley, Jr. a job because of his disability makes me angry.

This was another example of Wal-Mart’s discriminatory practices which are well documented. This young man was not asking for a hand out; he was simply saying, ‘I can do the job, why deny me the chance to work.’ When people can do the job we must give them the chance to prove themselves. Remember the scripture says in Zephaniah 3:18-19 (CEV) “The Lord’s has promised, “Your sorrow has ended, and you can celebrate. I will punish those who mistreat you. I will bring together the lame and the outcasts, then they will be praised, instead of despised, in every country on earth.” Wal-Mart, you are being watched. Do the right thing and never discriminate against people because of a handicap.

Click here to visit the Wal-Mart Watch faith page.

Posted by Rev. Jarvis Johnson on Tuesday, March 13 | 2 comments | Permalink

When Religion and Politics Collide

From the Dallas Morning News:

Editorial: When religion and politics collide

If you consider the rancor within the worldwide Anglican Communion as only being about church politics or gay rights, you’ll miss the larger point. Like nearly all mainline Protestant denominations, Episcopalians in Texas and their Anglican colleagues abroad are indeed facing extreme tensions over homosexuality. But the broader question is why this debate is occurring — and what the why means for global politics.

Penn State historian Philip Jenkins has written widely about the why. As he recently told Dallas audiences, Christianity is experiencing explosive and historically consequential growth in Latin America, Asia and Africa — the so-called Global South. Brazilian Christians, for example, are among the world’s largest buyers of Bibles. Africa is home to half the world’s Anglicans, and Nigeria alone will soon have more Anglicans than England. There is power in numbers, and Third World Christians are starting to exercise it.

Westerners usually err in seeing global Christianity through the lens of our own culture war. But the religious beliefs of Global South Christians, while prescribing a conservative sexual morality, also can lead them into taking economically liberal stances — including radical demands for better health care, schools and jobs. Being largely poor themselves, they take seriously Jesus’ admonitions about treating the poor fairly.

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Posted by Media Team on Monday, March 12 | 0 comments | Permalink

Farrakhan Steps Down From Leadership

From the New York Times:

Nation of Islam At a Crossroad As Leader Exits

Louis Farrakhan, the departing leader of the Nation of Islam, gave what was billed as his last major public address here on Sunday, with his extended illness throwing into sharp focus the question of whether the group will shift toward more mainstream Islamic teachings to survive once it loses its central charismatic figure.

Mr. Farrakhan, 73, looking fairly robust for a man who emerged from major surgery six weeks ago, spent most of his two-hour address denouncing the war in Iraq and calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

‘’If you don’t want to impeach him,’’ Mr. Farrakhan said, ‘’censure him, say to the world something went wrong with our leadership and we repent after our wrongdoing.’’

He also made an appeal for religious unity in the address before thousands at Ford Field, home to the Detroit Lions football team, capping an annual convention of Nation of Islam members.

It was his first major speech since August, when health problems forced him to turn over control of the Nation of Islam to an executive committee. His health problems stemmed from radiation seeds implanted a decade ago to combat prostate cancer, said Ishmael Muhammad, the organization’s national assistant minister. The treatment obliterated the cancer but also damaged nearby organs.

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Posted by Media Team on Monday, February 26 | 0 comments | Permalink

A Preacher’s Place is in the Ballot Box

From the Dallas Morning News:

Politics and the prelates: Clergy, take on immigration, but don’t forget justice for all

When people say that religion should stay out of politics, what they really mean is they want religious leaders to get off their backs.

You hear it mostly today from liberals incensed over the possibility that “theocrats” are going to swoop in like Grand Inquisitors and throw stem-cell scientists and abortion-promoting Catholic politicians into a stockade with the moldering corpse of Galileo.

Funny, but liberals didn’t seem to mind in 1962 when New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel threatened Louisiana Catholic politicians and others with excommunication if they continued to defy his order to desegregate Catholic schools. In those days, it was conservatives furious at pastors and rabbis active in the civil rights movement - which, like the abolitionist movement, would have been unthinkable without clergy leadership - who huffed and puffed against religious leaders getting involved in politics.

The truth is, it would be an abdication of their religious duties if the clergy didn’t get involved in politics. The Judeo-Christian tradition is prophetic, meaning that it has always held it a duty for religious leaders to speak truth to power, and to call society to righteousness. There is always the risk that religious leaders will be corrupted by involvement with the powers of this world, of course, but to stay entirely aloof from political affairs is at the very least un-biblical.

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Posted by Media Team on Wednesday, February 21 | 0 comments | Permalink

No Rest for a Feminist Fighting Radical Islam

From the New York Times:

No Rest for a Feminist Fighting Radical Islam

Ayaan Hirsi Ali came to the attention of the wider world in an extraordinary way. In 2004 a Muslim fanatic, after shooting the filmmaker Theo van Gogh dead on an Amsterdam street, pinned a letter to Mr. van Gogh’s chest with a knife. Addressed to Ms. Hirsi Ali, the letter called for holy war against the West and, more specifically, for her death.

A Somali by birth and a recently elected member of the Dutch Parliament, Ms. Hirsi Ali had waged a personal crusade to improve the lot of Muslim women. Her warnings about the dangers posed to the Netherlands by unassimilated Muslims made her Public Enemy No. 1 for Muslim extremists, a feminist counterpart to Salman Rushdie.

The circuitous, violence-filled path that led Ms. Hirsi Ali from Somalia to the Netherlands is the subject of “Infidel,” her brave, inspiring and beautifully written memoir. Narrated in clear, vigorous prose, it traces the author’s geographical journey from Mogadishu to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and her desperate flight to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage.

At the same time, Ms. Hirsi Ali describes a journey “from the world of faith to the world of reason,” a long, often bitter struggle to come to terms with her religion and the clan-based traditional society that defined her world and that of millions of Muslims all over.

Ms. Hirsi Ali, now 37, belongs to the Osman Mahamud subclan of the Darod clan. Its members, by tradition, are born to rule, which may explain the author’s self-possessed, imperious gaze on the cover of her book. Her mother came from a family of nomads, and Ms. Hirsi Ali grew up listening to desert folk tales narrated by her grandmother, who, like many Somalis, followed a “diluted, relaxed” version of Islam that included traditional magic spirits and genies. It also required that young girls undergo genital mutilation, which Ms. Hirsi Ali, a victim of the practice, describes in horrific detail.

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Posted by Media Team on Wednesday, February 14 | 0 comments | Permalink

Do Women Have Issues?

Who among us can ever forget Jesus healing the woman who for 18 years suffered because her back was bent over? (Luke 13: 10-17) Remember how that woman, taking advantage of the fact that no-one paid any attention to her because she was a woman and bent over, sneaked into the Temple which was forbidden to her, and placed herself where Jesus could see her? Words were unnecessary. Communication was immediately established between them. All of her body cried for healing. All of her screamed for wholeness. Her faith was obvious!

For many of the women who have been involved in struggles around the world we have not heard the cry of justice. We have not heard the echoes of pain. We have turned a deaf ear to the anguish that comes forth from the mouth of our women. We have not taken on the spirit of Jesus when we deny women the right to be heard. My brothers and sisters, it is time to remove the wax from our ears and hear the suffering of others. Hear the marginalized. Hear those who have been without influence. Hear those who have been damaged by the issues of life.

We must listen when our mothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins are crying out from mistreatment. Hear the when they shout with despair. Hear them when they whisper with pain. Injustice to anyone is an injustice to everyone. Bring back the listening ear.

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Posted by Rev. Jarvis Johnson on Tuesday, February 13 | 27 comments | Permalink

Race in Religion

From Christianity Today:

Exit Interviews: Why blacks are leaving evangelical ministries.

I used to take a certain amount of pride in being the first African American on staff at Christianity Today. But I was routinely humbled when I realized that being first isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When you’re the only one, there’s always a sense that you’re in an extremely unstable position, as if one healthy gust of wind could topple you—and with you, the hopes of other people with your skin color.

Sometimes, I had to remind myself to “be black,” to make sure the rest of the editors weren’t overlooking some important point or advancing something that might be insensitive to nonwhites. This became exhausting. On the one hand, I wanted to be a good race man and represent “my people” well. But on the other, I hated all that responsibility. I just wanted to be an excellent journalist.

Washington Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon echoed the opinion of many African Americans when, in a column about golfer Tiger Woods, he wrote, “There’s a social responsibility that comes with being black in America, regardless of the profession, and that obligation increases exponentially with stature. There are rules adopted out of necessity, even desperation, by the subculture we as black folks inhabit. … One of the rules is you speak up, even if it means taking some lumps.”

I did my best to speak up when it seemed necessary, and at times I caught grief for it. Other times, I decided it would be best to act like Jesus before Herod and simply say nothing. It gets old, you know—this taking-your-lumps business.

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Posted by Media Team on Monday, January 15 | 0 comments | Permalink