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Instructors at the Academy for the Common Good

It is a real joy to share glimpses of the extraordinary instructors who share their wisdom, knowledge, expertise and passion for social justice. As a group, they are diverse in academic background, advocacy activity, organizational associations, and experiences as educators or trainers. They are persons of faith, active in Christian community and eager to bring their theological commitments to bear on assessing public policy and working on behalf of the well-being of all and the realization of the beloved community. These will be joined by others in the 2009 program offerings of the Academy. More information is available at The Academy for the Common Good , including a complete listing of the participating instructors as well as the schedules and locations of the program offerings. Click on the up-arrow in the lower right corner of the video screen and select the screen option icon that appears for more information on the instructor. Clicking on the arrows on the left and right sid

Belief and Change

As one who has been interested in the nature of “belief” from theological and social-scientific perspectives, I was quite taken with one of the slogans of the Obama presidential campaign: Change We Can Believe In . There can be no serious doubt that many people who were caught up in the campaign in support of Obama were also energized by the prospect of change. He declared, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours.” Apparently, enough voters chose to “believe” in change as expressed by his vision for America and our recent politics that he is now our President-elect—and many have considerable energy built up and pent up. But apparently, a vast array of these supporters also believe in their own ability to bring change, just as President-elect Obama declared. Now, what to do? It is not likely that the change envisioned by Candidate Obama can be achieved without the help—and continued activity—of

A Call to Civic and Religious Duty

Some years ago, back when the war and the soldiers were young, mortgages and cell phones cheap, executive bonuses and political corruption out of sight, and most Americans cruising along on the waves of a strong economy, an ethics and legal scholar at Saint Mary’s College of California wrote a book entitled Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground: Public Religion and Pursuit of the Good in a Pluralistic America (SUNY Press, 2003). In this book, Barbara A. McGraw argues that this country’s “sacred ground” is freedom of conscience, and she makes her case not only by an analysis of our founding documents, but an examination of the social and political mind of the intellectual architect of our system of government, the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke. As she sees it, this freedom, first elaborated at length by Locke in the context of social contract and natural law theory, is the ground on which all the enumerated freedoms in our Constitution and Bill of Rights are planted: U

Just, In The Interests Of Others

On a bright and shiny day, a young woman carried her newborn child through the open door of a fire station, laid the little bundle next to the wall, and promptly vanished into the pedestrian traffic, never to be heard from again. Pinned to the baby’s bunting was a hand-written note that simply said, "Please take care of my baby." Why would a mother do that? For what reason—or multitude of reasons—would a mother abandon her child like that? Is it possible to explain this so that it makes sense? Perhaps the young woman was not emotionally ready to take on the responsibility of motherhood. Maybe she was all alone in the world with no one to help care for her and her newborn. If so, her isolation probably contributed to a profound sense of fear and maybe even shame. There may have been other factors involved. Maybe the young mother found herself in circumstances that she could not "control." Maybe time and place had already decided that she wasn’t going to realize her h