Marginal Christianity

Easter is all about newness, victory, resurrection. Yet after all the hoopla things go back to normal and we face the prospect of Low Sunday a week later and a world that seems not to have changed. How do we “practice resurrection” (Wendell Berry) in the ordinariness and opaqueness of life? 1.     The world often (always?) seems more darkness than light.                                       The best I can do is trust that God has this whole mess completely under control.   2.     There’s not much I can do about this mess.                                       ...

by Amy Laura Hall on April 14, 2015     If I were one of a homosexual couple — the same as I am one of a heterosexual couple — I would place my faith and hope in the mercy of Christ, not in the judgment of Christians.  – Wendell Berry A few years ago I realized that I wanted to be a bit more like those people. I realized that if I wanted to do that I was going to have to work harder to save my own soul. – David Brooks Two links about morality appeared on my twitter feed this week.   One describes David Brooks’s “moral bucket list.”  The other is on Christianity and debates about homosexuality in the United States , by Wendell Berry. People within a select demographic were sharing David Brooks like caramel popcorn. While I washed the breakfast dishes, NPR announced they would be visiting with Brooks about his new book on morality. Even though this is WUNC (NPR in North Carolina) I do not remember hearing them run a piece featuring Wendell Be...

September 11, 2012 By John Pattison http://shar.es/uqWYL This morning I was re-reading my favorite Wendell Berry essay, “Discipline and Hope,” which has become an essential text for me in trying to understand the meaning and implications of Slow Church. I was struck today by a short passage on the ways we have come to idolize the present economy. Berry writes: “If the Golden Rule were generally observed among us, the economy would not last a week. We have made our false economy a false god, and it has made blasphemy of the truth. So I have met the economy in the road, and am expected to yield it right of way. But I will not get over. My reason is that I am a man, and have a better right to the ground than the economy. The economy is no god for me, for I have had too close a look at its wheels. I have seen it at work in the strip mines and coal camps of Kentucky, and I know it has no moral limits.” I’ve been thinking a lot lately about economics, partly because it is electio...