Billy Graham, a peerless communicator and the public face of evangelicalism for over sixty years, turns 90 today. Happy Birthday, Billy! Here are two entertaining videos that reveal his sincere and engaged interaction with those of other traditions…in this case, Woody Allen.
Here is the first…
Here is the second…
My friend asked this in a previous post of mine. My answer? Well, Jesus didn’t live in a democracy, so that wasn’t a real option for him. I don’t think we can argue about voting in the abstract — is voting always a good thing or a bad thing? We need to ask what voting is doing in a particular context, whether voting is liberating or oppressing for those who live in that particular context. We will need to reason from the way of life Jesus lived in Palestine.
Jesus was about creating a community of the outcasts and marginalized and giving them a voice — transforming them from objects of God’s wrath to subjects in God’s kingdom. The ‘rule of Paul’ as some call it, was the idea that everyone got a voice when Christians got together. They didn’t know who the Holy Spirit might speak through, so, even those who were considered less important, had a voice at the gathering.
We need to ask, for a particular context and time, is voting a liberating or an oppressive activity? Was voting a Jesus-like activity in South Africa when blacks voted for the first time in 1994? I would say it was. Is voting a Jesus-like thing when a one-party government has 99% support? Probably not — voting would reinforce the illusion of support that those in power hold.
So, the question must be asked — is this a time to vote, is it a liberating activity for those in our country or or not? Does this election offer a means by which those who have been shut out and lack a real role in the political process receive their voice? I think for many in the country, voting in this election represents a turning of the tide. I believe we have, in this election, an opportunity to elect a person who represents voices that have rarely been heard, at this level, in the political process. Giving a voice to the voiceless is something Christians need to rally around. And back up with a vote. Today.
I created a slide (still rough) that merged the work of David Bosch, Andrew Walls, and Wilbert Shenk into a map of the local theologies in history. We often think of theology as revealing universals that will be true for all people in all cultures for all time, but in reality theology is more about answering local questions that reside in particular contexts at particular times. The church gets into problems when it asserts that one theology is to be imposed on all other churches or cultures, outside of the one local culture where and when that particular theology was created. Reflection about God and creation, through the Bible, and with the church, while immersed in the culture, needs to be done for every context and time…
image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace