intersections

The Way of Openness airs tomorrow

If you live in Los Angeles, tune in or set your DVR to record The Way of Openness, a new documentary produced by the City of Los Angeles Human Relationship Commission. If you don't get Channel 35 or live in Los Angeles there are two other options:

1. You can watch online live at www.lacityview.org

2. You can wait a bit longer and see the film in its entirety online. Stay tuned for more details.

 

Thomas Merton | Letter to a Young Activist

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all,if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it get much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that save everything.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Prayer Breakfast

I am deeply honored to be making some brief comments at the Martin Luther King, Jr Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.

More information here: http://www.cocosouthla.org/node/788

My speech from yesterday's Prop 30 Press Conference

Pastor Bell Explains to Local College Students Why He Supports Prop 30

Los Angeles City College | October 11, 2012

Good morning. My name is Ryan Bell. I am the pastor of the Hollywood Adventist Church and a clergy leader with LA Voice—a local affiliate of PICO California and the PICO National Network. Here in Los Angeles we represent 20 congregations working together for social justice in our communities. 

As a pastor, I know that one of the most important obligations we have is to the most vulnerable members of our community. PICO and LA Voice have a history of standing with our community’s children when others would forget them or brush them aside. In my faith tradition we have a story of Jesus’ closest followers shooing away the children—assuming, I suppose, that Jesus wouldn’t want to be bothered. Jesus rebukes them and says, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

Click here to read the whole thing...

Who is left to love life?

"Whether people throw themselves into the pleasures of the present or flee into the next world because they either cannot or will not withstand the threats, they destroy the love for life and put themselves at the service of terror and the annihilation of the world. Today life itself is in acute danger because in one way or the other it is no longer loved but is delivered over to the forces of destruction."

--Jürgen Moltmann

Resisting and Anticipating

I am frequently asked how my involvement in issues of justice and peacemaking relate to the gospel. People have said to me, "It's great that you're creating opportunities for the working poor/advocating for affordable housing/developing a community garden/working to change predatory banking practices/fill in the blank, but don't forget about the gospel." I shouldn't be, but I'm still surprised by these reactions. I invariably say, "This is the gospel. We want people to be saved." Often what's enslaving them is various forms of economic and racial injustice, even though inside of that is what you and I might call sin.

Questions about the church's involvement in justice initiatives usually comes back to eschatology and without fail I find myself referring to Jurgen Moltmann. This quote is from the first chapter of his most recent book, Ethics of Hope, and it expresses as clearly as I could hope to the theology behind our work in Los Angeles to create a more just and equitable social order.

Commenting on 2 Peter 3:12 he writes:

Waiting: that doesn't mean a passive waiting-it-out; it means an active expectation.

<snip>

The ability to wait also means not conforming to the conditions of this world of injustice and violence. People who expect God's justice and righteousness no longer accept the so-called normative force of what is fact, because they know that a better world is possible and that changes in the present are necessary. Being able to wait means resisting the threats and seductions of the present, not letting oneself be brought into line, an not conforming.

The ability to wait means not giving oneself up, not capitulating, either before the supremacy of the powers of this world or before one's own helplessness, but living with head held high. The 'upright walk' Kant commends is deserving in every respect. It is the heroic stance of the unbowed back of the free. But 'the head held high' is a result of the approaching redemption (Luke 21.28).

<snip>

Hastening: to hasten is really to go swiftly in space from one place to another. To hasten 'toward the future' transfers this movement from space into the time of history. The present becomes the transition from what has been to what will be, to the future. To 'hasten' in time means crossing the frontiers of present reality into the spheres of what is possible in the future. In crossing these frontiers we anticipate the future for which we hope. With every doing of the right, we prepare the way for the 'new earth' on which righteousness will 'dwell'. If we achieve some justice for those who are suffering violence, then God's future shines into their world. If we take up the cause of 'widows and orphans', a fragment of life comes into our own life. The earth is groaning under the unjust violence with which we are exploiting its resources and energies. We are 'hastening' toward the Lord's future when we anticipate the righteousness and justice out of which, on the Day of the Lord, a new and enduring earth is to come into being. Not to take things as they are but to see them as they can be in the future, and to bring about this 'can be' in the present, means living up to the future. So looking forward, perceiving possibilities and anticipating what will be tomorrow are fundamental concepts of an ethics of hope. Today 'waiting and hastening toward the Lord's future' means resisting and anticipating (7-8, italics in original, bold type is my emphasis).

Needed: Prophetic Voices for a Just Economy

Last week I spent three days in Washington, D.C. with clergy from the PICO National Network. PICO is a congregation-based community organization that is working for justice in our communities. The clergy work toether, locally and nationally, to give a prophetic tone to our voice as we speak and act for justice. Yesterday I posted some reflections at The Huffington Post about my time spent with these faith leaders as we think about where we're at as a nation. You can read a portion below or click here to read the whole thing at the Huffington Post.

"How do you respond when you see this chart?"

That was the question Scott Reed, Executive Director of the PICO National Network, asked a room of about 25 pastors and rabbis who had gathered in Washington, D.C. for the first meeting of the new National Clergy Leadership Council.

"How does it feel to be faith leaders during such a time?" he asked.

A few people had seen this already during a presentation by Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute and author of the recent book, Failure by Design: The Story Behind America's Broken Economy, but it was brand new to me. It took me, and others, a few minutes to digest what we were seeing here. One by one we commented about what we thought caused this. We tried to explain it, justify it, and rationalize it. Then Scott said something that stopped me cold in my tracks. <keep reading>

 

Also, if you haven't checked The Hillhurst Review in a while (or ever) I have posted several reviews there in the past couple of months. Stay tuned for new reviews in the coming days including a new book by Miroslav Volf called Allah and a helpful book for faith leaders in multicultural settings, Churches, Cultures and Leadership, by Mark Lau Branson and Juan Martinez.

[HuffPost] Killing the DREAM Act: Still No Room in the Inn

Today we witnessed another skirmish in the real "War on Christmas". As Christians all over the world celebrate the final weekend of Advent and prepare for Christmas in just one week, the U.S. Senate once more dashed the hopes of almost 2 million children and young adults, many of whom have lived in the United States all their lives. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act failed to pass a procedural vote today in the Senate. First introduced in Aug. 2001, the DREAM Act would allow the children of undocumented immigrants a path to legal residency by either going to college or enlisting in the military.

 As the media prattles on about the so-called "War on Christmas" -- an ideological battle over terminology, at best -- people's lives hang in the balance. Actions speak louder than words. One way Christians can protect the place of Christmas in our society -- indeed, the credibility of Christianity more generally -- is by acting in harmony with its core principles: grace, welcome and hospitality.

But today there was no hospitality, no grace.

 

Read the rest on Huffington Post, here.

Also, learn more about the DREAM Act from the non-partisan Immigration Policy Center.

Budrus - opens Friday in L.A.

Last night I had the privilege to attend a private screening of a new documentary called, Budrus, with my wife, Elysabeth, and Leslie Foster. It is the story of how the tiny village of Budrus, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, resists the take over of their land by the Israel, for the construction of the separation barrier. The route of the new fence runs directly through their ancient cemetery and would mean the destruction of 3,000 olive trees, which has been the source of the Budrus' survival and identity for generations.

It's an amazing story about the power of community organizing and, once again, the way women have a unique power to change the world. After the screening, director Julia Bacha said that after seeing her earlier film, Encounter Point (equally amazing!) people asked, 'Where is the Palestinian Ghandi?' The implication, she said, is that if nonviolent methods of resistence were employed the conflict would end. They wanted to show one example of the success of such methods, but also point out that nonviolent resistence alone will not change the situation. These methods work when the international community is paying attention. So, please, pay attention to this film!

This film opens Friday at the Laemmle Music Hall for a limited, one week engagment. Click here to check show times and buy tickets. I highly recommend you see this film while it's in town. No matter what your perspective is, it will challenge your views of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, stereotypes about Hamas and Fatah, and most of all, inspire hope in the power of ordinary people to change their social situation.

The trailer is below. Visit their website for more information.

L.A. Faith Leaders Support Muslim Center in NYC

Here's some of the press coverage of the interfaith event I was a part of in support of Cordoba House in NYC...

Interfaith Statement Supporting President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg on Religious Freedom | MPAC
We, the people who seek to preserve America's open society, following in the footsteps of the founders of our great nation, in order to form a more perfect pluralism, stand in solidarity to guarantee the right of Muslim Americans to build a house of worship like any other American, at any location according to local ordinances and U.S. law, principally the constitution of the United States which guarantees that there will not be an established religion in our nation and that all chttp://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d8341e80fc53ef00d8341e80fe53ef/post/composeitizens will be free to exercise their religion. [Read more...]

Southern Calif. interfaith coalition supports ground zero Muslim center | 89.3 KPCC

L.A. Faith Leaders Support Muslim Center in New York | LA Times
Standing near a poster that read, "An attack against one is an attack against all," about 30 representatives of various faiths gathered Friday outside a central Los Angeles mosque to announce their support for an Islamic center planned near ground zero in New York.

[snip]

Those assembled included representatives of the Catholic Church, various Jewish organizations, United Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Seventh-day Adventists, Quakers and a pastor from the First AME Church, among others. The Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council released a statement in support of the Islamic center that was signed by 71 religious leaders in Southern California. [Read more...]

Interview with Jihad Turk & Rabbi Jonathan Klein | CNN

California interfaith leaders back 'ground zero' Islamic center | CNN