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Showing posts from August, 2012

The New Jim Crow

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The new UUA Common Read book for the year is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, and I, for one, could not be happier with the choice.  I read this book and preached on it last year after reading a Leonard Pitts article about the book.  The book was revelatory, even for someone who thought she was pretty liberal on this issue.  Two other people who I encouraged to read the book have had the same response.  I was so pleased to have the opportunity to hear her speak this year at General Assembly, and the experience in the room was electric.  She didn't have to say it out loud, even, but the thought that the New Jim Crow applies to the immigration system as well was surely at the front of everyone's mind. I'm looking forward to the Discussion Guide that the UUA will put online in October.  There is a discussion guide written by a UU, but it's the discussion guide to a discussion guide written for Christian churches--a guide of a guide , and, as such, I ...

The War on Women

This blogger has been suffering from writer's block.  The problem is, when I think about opening up a page and writing, there's one thing that's been on my mind to write about.  And when I think about that one thing, I've been so boggled and amazed by what's going on that I can't find a way to write coherently. So, about this war on women... Now, I can appreciate and respect a pro-life position.  It's theologically consistent, and has a clear and hard line: life begins at conception, and so abortion is murder.  Unless the life of the woman is at stake, so that it's one life vs. another, or unless the fetus is not viable, murder cannot be justified.  That makes sense to me as a stance to take.  I don't agree, but I respect it.  I understand that what the Republicans are trying to express is, in part, the perspective that while rape is horrible and wrong, it doesn't change that abortion is horrible and wrong.  But there are whole other level...