Religion
Related: About this forumRekindling a Prophetic Moral Vision for Justice, Social Change and Movement Building
From the page:
To read more, and more:
http://www.breachrepairers.org/
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Who exactly gets to identify what "the moral principles at the heart of the great moral teachings" are?
littlemissmartypants
(22,632 posts)It's an off shoot of Moral Monday Movement. Revered Doctor Barber videos are pinned in the NC group. I highly recommend a visit.
Rekindling a Prophetic Moral Vision for Justice, Social Change and Movement Building
WHAT IS REPAIRERS OF THE BREACH?
Repairers of the Breach, Inc. is a nonpartisan and ecumenical organization that seeks to build a progressive agenda rooted in a moral framework to counter the ultra-conservative constructs that try to dominate the public square. Repairers will help frame public policies which are not constrained or confined by the narrow tenets of neo-conservatism. Repairers will bring together clergy and lay people from different faith traditions, with people without a spiritual practice but who share the moral principles at the heart of the great moral teachings. Repairers will expand a school of prophets who can broadly spread the vision of a nation that is just and loving.
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. Isaiah 58:12
Our communities are torn apart by hateful violence and words, often in the name of opportunistic and hypocritical interpretations of the world's oldest holy books and teachings. To repair the breaches caused by centuries old systems of racial and gender inequality, we need thousands of clergy and lay leaders who will dedicate their lives to rebuilding, raising up and repairing our moral infrastructure. They shall be called, "The Repairers of the Breach: The Restorers of Our Communities".
OUR MISSION
OUR GOALS
Educate church and lay leaders who will pursue policies and organizing strategies for the good of the whole. Educate the public about the deep connections between shared religious faith traditions and public policy, deeply rooted in our Constitutions and the moral values of justice, fairness, and the general welfare. Challenge the version of the ultra-conservatives who have misinterpreted Christianity and other faith traditions as a faith that hates the poor. They call 47% of us Takers, and they want to shut down any government agency that tries to provide for the general welfare and just economic systems.
Develop effective messengers of the social gospel in places of worship, communities and workplaces who will understand the values at the heart of an anti-racism, anti-poverty, and the anti-extreme militarism movement. Develop leaders with a clear progressive moral vision for leadership in the 21st century. Create 21st century prophetic critique and consciences. Develop local leaders/clergy who can withstand the sirens of opportunism and neo-conservatism while remaining true to a principled approach to eliminating poverty and racism.
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Goldsboro, North Carolina and architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement that gained national acclaim with its Moral Monday protests at the North Carolina General Assembly in 2013. These weekly actions drew tens of thousands of North Carolinians and other moral witnesses to the state legislature. More than 1,050 peaceful protesters were arrested, handcuffed and jailed.
A highly sought after speaker, he has keynoted hundreds of national and state conferences, including the 2016 Democratic National Convention. He has spoken to a wide variety of audiences including national unions, fraternities and sororities, motorcycle organizations, drug dealer conferences, womens groups, economic policy voting rights LGBTQ groups, environmental and criminal justice groups, small organizing committees of domestic workers, fast food workers, Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists and others.
He has served as president of the North Carolina NAACP, the largest state conference in the South, since 2006 and sits on the National NAACP Board of Directors. A former Mel King Fellow at MIT, he is currently Visiting Professor of Public Theology and Activism at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and is a Senior Fellow at Auburn Seminary. Dr. Barber is regularly featured in media outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post and The Nation Magazine, among others. He is the 2015 recipient of the Puffin Award and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award. His two most recent books include Forward Together (Chalice Press) and The Third Reconstruction (Beacon Press).
Facebook page here
https://m.facebook.com/breachrepairers/events/?refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.breachrepairers.org%2F&_rdr
We just had an event today.
Link to tweet
TWitter here: Check out RepairersOfTheBreach (@BRepairers): https://twitter.com/BRepairers?s=09
♡lmsp
trotsky
(49,533 posts)What exactly makes them the experts on every religion on the planet to identify what those moral principles are?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Obvious answer is obvious.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Interesting how some seem to invariably look for the negative in anything positive.
Perhaps DU should have a "Glass half empty" group.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Post on religion. It has become a habit for some.k
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)To the folks who sent any bad exists at all, ever.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)I will diligently look for all of those posts as I keep looking for the other posts that I am told about.
Meshuga
(6,182 posts)I believe that appeal to religion here is futile. The moral foundations of liberals and conservatives are very different and it is easy for conservatives to dismiss the liberal moral foundations as it is easy for liberals to do the same about conservative morality.
Let's reverse things and have a conservative group of religious people try to appeal religiously to liberal believers and we will see that it won't work either. For example, would a campaign from religious conservatives to change the religiously liberal's hearts on "virtues of chastity" or what they call "control of desires" work? What about "social order" and "proper role fulfillment" that are so important to conservative morality? Would appeals to that work to reach out to liberals? The answer is no.
In other words, I can see how the liberal religion leaders appeal to fairness, compassion, social justice, equality, etc. to change a conservative politician's mind will NOT work.
Religion empowers people to derive their morals from it, be it respect for authority, gender role, social order, etc. on one side or social justice, fairness, compassion, etc. on the other side. However, one important thing to note is that, without religion and scripture, you can easily defeat and eradicate the backward stuff that a Paul Ryan and other like-minded religious people can use to derive their values from.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)It's fine for people to have their personal religious beliefs based on their faith, I mean you can't stop people from having opinions. However trying to justify public policy by appealing to religion is just simply not going to work. It NEVER has. Because as you note, there is no way to reconcile differing religious opinions - the system guarantees it, particularly when the religion(s) involved is (are) based on divine revelation.
I don't think all that many people, no matter where they are on the political spectrum, truly understand this. Their religion is wonderful and perfect to them, they just can't understand how others have gotten it so "wrong."
Meshuga
(6,182 posts)Liberal believers are somehow unable to see how the use of religious language actually enables the other side as opposed to changing the hearts of the other side. I understand that liberal and conservative religions are very different morally but they are linked to each other since all sides get their "divine revelations" from the same source. I believe that "not understanding how others have gotten it so wrong" is merely a response to dissonance.
Getting morality from the same book makes it very hard to discredit all the unattractive moral teachings embraced by the other side. While it is great that liberal believers embrace social justice, compassion, equality, etc., giving relevance to the bible as a holy book is too big of a price to pay. At least that is what I have come to terms with in regards to religion.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)I refer to holy books as the Schrödinger's cat of moral guides. They can just as easily be used to justify slavery, rape and murder as well as peace and generousity.
When a believer cites their holy book as a source for morality they conveniently ignore the parts that call for women to be subservient, for slaves to be sold, for infidels to be slaughtered and the murderous genocidal rage their god frequently exhibits.
Take the bible: killing almost living creature on the planet is justifiable because humans did some bad stuff? What kind of loving father does that? If God knew his children would disobey him (and being omnipotent he must have known) why torture and slaughter them for disobedience?
And humans are condemned to burn forever for acts that pale by comparison?
Meshuga
(6,182 posts)Because it is hard to explain what is holy about the ugly stuff contained in scripture. The alternative is choosing what is still relevant or not based on their own pre-existing morality. If it is valid for the liberal believer to pick and choose what is true revelation then why shouldn't it be valid for the conservative believer to do the same?
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)for many people, religion provides a moral framework and a social organization.
And I appreciate your point about liberal believers versus conservative believers. People generally identify most strongly with things that they are philosophically disposed to accept.
As to your final point, absent religion, totalitarian regimes generally find no difficulty in building a secular equivalent to religion.
Thank you for the response.
Meshuga
(6,182 posts)And is a form of congregating like-minded people to work together towards a goal (good or bad, depending on the group's ideology), I believe the moral framework exists independent of religion.
Regarding totalitarian regimes, you can obviously have sociopaths in positions of power building a secular equivalent to religion. However, scripture provides the moral foundation that allows normal people to do and support some horrific things.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)so does patriotism.
Genocide, use of nuclear weapons, slavery.
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)In your holy book where it says how to treat slaves, and where God has commanded genocide.
Meshuga
(6,182 posts)...like rivalry in soccer, for example, that gets opposing fans to kill each other in places like Brazil and some European countries. I'm not for getting rid of soccer but the tribalism in soccer fandom certainly drives people to do some really stupid and ugly things that they would otherwise not do in their day-to-day lives.
Religion (like nationalism) can accomplish this at a larger scale but religion gives a lot of importance to material that leads normal people to do bad things by claiming it to be god's revelation, a world view that is extremely hard to counter with any amount of reason.
I say all this understanding that liberal believers congregate with each other for the sake of doing good and being good people, but my opinion is that the morals of liberal believers come from the believers themselves and not from the scripture. But again, like I said in my original response, there is a steep price to pay here since giving such importance to scripture (and some beliefs contained in it) at the very least helps make the ugly stuff in scripture relevant to the conservative counterpart. You see, choosing what is relevant in the bible (you know, god's revelation) relies heavily on the moral foundation of the follower.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)That right there is the difference - and what a HUGE difference it is.
Believers like guillaumeb like to proclaim from on high how religious belief motivates people to do good, but when it comes to the bad stuff well then it has nothing to do with religious belief, religion is the same as any other institution or human idea, etc.
Crazy double standard.
Meshuga
(6,182 posts)In the case of a ruthless authoritarian regime, all you need is for otherwise good people to trust in the judgement of the leader to do and support horrific things. However, this is much easier to accomplish with religious faith when the teachings come from a revealing god.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)or something.
Crazy indeed.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Yeah, I know, thanks!
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)do we get a say in which ones are real and which ones are nonsense?
Like, that whole prophetic moral vision in the bible where god/jesus comes back, ends the earth, keeps all his friends in heaven forever, and then sticks the unbelievers with everlasting life so they can suffer in hell forever.
Which one of the prophetic visions is accurate? Which is made up by man? Does the 'niceness' of the vision or it's 'appeal' to believers make the cherry-picking thing easier?
I'd rather not be destroyed and tortured forever by your god by the by.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Or not?