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Showing posts from January, 2010

The Rule of the (Wealthy) Few

By now you have probably heard that five of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court cannot think of any reason why corporations doing business in this country should be prevented from spending as much money as they want to defeat a political candidate or policy that is not to their liking, or to elect one that is. For more than sixty years there have been campaign finance rules in place that prohibit corporations from spending their own money on the production and distribution of campaign ads. However, on January 21, 2010, the Court ruled in a five-to-four decision that if it’s their money, a corporation can spend as much as it wants to produce and run campaign ads. In other words, Corporation X cannot give a dime to Candidate Smith, but a handful of executives who call the shots can pony up millions of dollars of the corporation’s assets to promote her campaign. Or suppose those same corporate executives don’t like Smith’s opponent, Candidate Jones. Too bad for Jones, becaus

Churches and Social Justice - Type One

The last few weeks have seen a lot of media attention directed toward religious organizations, their representatives, and the positions they are taking on various public issues, from climate change to marriage equality for homosexuals, from health care reform to hate crime laws, from rising poverty rates and income disparity to the decline of religion in the U.S., based on the number of U.S. citizens who claim “no religion” in answer to survey questions. With the possible exception of this last item, all these are issues of some moment. Indeed, they are issues of public policy that are highly contested not just among citizens and lawmakers but also Christians themselves. For a good many people – religious or not – these are also issues of social justice, matters that affect the well-being, the common good of all. We’ve spent a little time in previous blogs finding our way into the questions: What type of congregation takes up organizing and mobilizing itself on behalf of soci