I’ve been very unhappy and discouraged with the whole political scene, very angry with the fact that wealthy corporations have bought our government and can use it to further their selfish greed, instead of the government advancing the people’s welfare.\u00a0 I believe that Mussolini defined fascism as “when government and corporations are acting together.”\u00a0 (I heard this at the retreat with Matthew Fox and don’t have a proper citation.)<\/p>\n
A quote from Matthew Fox gives me heart.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been reading his book Original Blessing<\/em> and I really like much of what he has to say.\u00a0 He talks about \u201ccreation-centered spirituality\u201d and contrasts it with \u201cfall \/redemption theology\u201d which focuses on sin instead of celebration, supports the idea that the earth and its creatures are not divine and so can be exploited, and on getting your reward in Heaven so you don\u2019t ask for it while you\u2019re on earth. From Matthew Fox, Original Blessing<\/em><\/a>, p267 By the way, “Creation-centered” is very different from Fundamentalist “Creationism” which takes the Bible story as truth, and says god created the world in seven days, and now sits outside the world and judges it.\u00a0 “Creation-centered” means the world is continuously being created, and god is right here, in the soil and the creatures, in our joy and our pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been very unhappy and discouraged with the whole political scene, very angry with the fact that wealthy corporations have bought our government and can use it to further their selfish greed, instead of the government advancing the people’s welfare.\u00a0 … Continue reading
\nFox asks \u201cWhy is it that fall \/redemption theology has so dominated in the West?\u201d and goes on to say \u201ca fundamental answer has to be this: it has served the purposes, conscious and unconscious, of empire builders and patriarchy and certain political and economic systems to encourage a fall \/redemption instead of a creation-centered spirituality.\u00a0 Fall \/redemption ideologies help to keep the poor poor.\u00a0 They do not encourage the trust, the creativity, the moral outrage, the prophetic call and bonding for social transformation that the oppressed need to hear.\u00a0 In fact, fall \/redemption theology is a theology of the oppressor.\u00a0 Creation-centered spirituality is a spirituality of the oppressed and of those who have learned, as Jesus did, to identify with the oppressed in order that the oppressed might liberate themselves and eventually even the oppressor might become liberated.\u00a0 If global citizens are eager today to create a global civilization that is based on justice and on the elimination of war and the obscene national expenditures that go towards militarism the world over, then they should heed Gandhi\u2019s advice.\u00a0 He believed that the \u2018prime cause of modern wars\u2019 was \u2018the inhuman race for exploitation of the so-called weaker peoples of the earth.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe quote from Gandhi is from Raghavan Iyer,<\/a> The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi<\/em>, p208<\/p>\n