Abortion being the sensitive issue it is, involves heavy emotion, and sometimes Christians do not act very Christ-like in their treatment of Pro-Choice individuals. This perturbs me. I remember as a small boy going to a picketing/demonstrative event where I, along with hundreds of others, held signs that said "Abortion is murder." I remember vividly people shouting at the pro-choice people on the other side of the street saying they were murderers and the judgment of God would be upon them. I remember, developing animosity inside towards the "other people" and the "sinners" and "murderers" across the road. Since I can remember, the issue has been 'us' verses 'them.' Obviously, not everyone is this way, but it was my experience and is the mindset that I come across most often. I think this does a serious dis-service to the vision of ending abortion.
To be more clear, my issue is this: Christians talk, and talk, and talk about how pro-life they are, and how much they wish Roe V. Wade over-turned, and how much God hates it, and how you must vote for a pro-life candidate if you're a real Christian, but at the end of the day, the number of Christians (I am speaking only from my exposure) actually working to help young woman, to educate them (sexual education?), to provide alternatives for them, to love them, to treat them as humans made in the image of God, to offer hope, etc., is significantly lower than volume of the clamoring voices. Have you noticed the same? I would not say voting for a pro-life candidate is saying much about a person's involvement. Essentially I am saying there is an uproar about the issue among the "right", but very little movement. Please know that in incriminating these clamoring voices, I incriminate myself.
Where I might see gray is in this: with the Bush administration i believe, if I am not mistaken, there was at one point a Republican President, Senate, House of Reps., and with that I am unaware of any legislation set up to eliminate abortions. Funds may have been diverted, partial birth abortion banned, or what have you, but the overturning of Roe v. Wade was not contended seriously in the Supreme Court. I may be showing ignorance here. If it did happen, I am unaware, and I admit being wrong. Nonetheless, if abortion is here to stay (and it appears it is) why shouldn't we work to make abortion at least safe and rare? That is the questions we are asking. I am not suggesting simply giving in to the culture of death we find ourselves in, but I am suggesting that we at least start reaching for obtainable goals that can be agreed upon at this point until further progress can be made.
Seeing Gray:
Homosexuality: If it affected us we might think differently.
Abortion: Work to lessen abortions.
Hell: Eternal punishment doesn't fit a temporal sin.
Each issue is a "hot" topic.
Ryan - please respond to homosexuality.
Scott - please respond to abortion.
Garrett - please respond to hell.
Currently Reading:
Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White: Thoughts on Religion, Morality, and Politics by Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist Pastor and Writer.
Some Reviews:
BlogCritics
JourneywithJesus
Epiteleo
Check out Jesus Creed for various posts interacting with several chapters. Search for posts with the key words "Third Way."
I am considering resuming the meetings, however I need to know who is interested.
I will be going to Legal Grounds Coffee (@ Abrams and Gaston) every Saturday morning between 9:30 and 10:00 AM. I will be starting this Saturday, January 17th. 
We will be reading Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.
We all have memories that we treasure, memories of our family and friends or memories of accomplishments. We also all have memories that torment us, memories of times when we have failed and been failed by others. Memory, both positive and negative, is critical to our spirituality, serving as a foundational aspect of our worship of the Triune God. Israel was commanded to remember God's mighty actions throughout history. At the Lord's Table we remember Christ's body and blood given for us. But remembrance, both biblically and theologically, is no passive act. Rather, through remembrance, we participate in God's activity. Memory creates our life's context, not only by recalling the past, but by establishing the present and anticipating the future. Rowan Williams, in Resurrection, connects memory with hope.
What happens in the resurrection is that this memory is given back in a particular kind of context - in the presence of Jesus. I wrote at the beginning of this chapter that 'God is the "presence" to which all reality is present.' So to be with God is to be (potentially) present to, aware of, all of one's self and one's past; which is why, as St John repeatedly reminds us, presence to God can be excruciating, and some will hate and reject the possibility. But when that God is revealed and embodied and 'specified' in Jesus, the victim who will not condemn, we can receive it. If God's presence is Jesus' presence, the past can be borne. For the Lord who returns, bringing our memory with him, is, as he always was, the Lord who waits on our love: 'Simon, son of John, do you love me?' He asks us to respond to him, engage with him; he proposes a new stage of relationship. Peter's fellowship with the Lord is not over, not ruined, it still exists and is alive because Jesus invites him to explore it further. Here the past is returned within a lived relationship that is evidently moving and growing. To know that Jesus still invites is to know that he accepts, forgives, bears and absorbs the hurt done: to hear the invitation is to know oneself forgiven, and vice versa.But will there come a time when memory will cease? Does the 'remembrance of hell negate heaven?' Will God not one day forget? "I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more" (Jeremiah 31:34). Miroslav Volf, in Exclusion and Embrace, discusses this final act of nonremembrance, and how it may affect us in the present.
It does [affect us] - provided we do not forget that, as long as the Messiah has not come in glory, for the sake of the victims, we must keep alive the memory of their suffering; we must know it, we must remember it, and we must say it out loud for all to hear. This indispensable remembering should be guided, however, by the vision of that same redemption that will one day make us lose the memory of hurts suffered and offenses committed against us. For ultimately, forgetting the suffering is better than remembering it, because wholeness is better than brokenness, the communion of love better than the distance of suspicion, harmony better than disharmony. We remember now in order that we may forget then; and we will forget then in order that we may love without reservation. Though we would be unwise to drop the shield of memory from our hands before the dawn of the new age, we may be able to move it cautiously to the side by opening our arms to embrace the other, even the former enemy.Thoughts?
Our very own John Dyer was recently interviewed by Pontifcast. He talks about the effects of technology on a message. Check out the podcast here.
Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel
by Rowan Williams
August 18, 2008
The Crooked Tree, Dallas @ 7:00 PM
[NOTE] Reconciliation by Karl Barth is the book we have chosen for September.
As we read and dialogue together, here's a quote on the importance of remembering our sanctification—but not merely our moral holiness as individuals, but the sanctification of our reason, our very ability to engage in theology inside the church.
When reason is expounded as a natural competency, then it is no longer understood as fallen and in need of reconciliation to God. Again, when reason is considered as a human capacity for transcendence, then reason's continual dependence on the vivifying Spirit is laid to one side, for natural reason does not need to be made holy.
Christian theology, however, must beg to differ. It must beg to differ because the confession of the gospel by which theology governs its life requires it to say that humankind in its entirety, including reason, is enclosed within the history of sin and reconciliation.... And if what Paul calls the renewal of the mind is to be visible anywhere, it has to be in Christian theology, in which holy reason is summoned to address the great matter of God and of all things in God.-John Webster, Holiness
Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel
by Rowan Williams
August 4, 2008
Gingerman Pub, Dallas @ 7:00 PM
We are an informal, inclusive group in Dallas. We read and dialogue inside a variety of traditions: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox. German, English, American. Liberal, conservative. Ancient, medieval, reformation, modern.
1st and 3rd Monday each month.
Gingerman Pub @ 7:00 PM
All are welcome.