Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“Richard Hill, history professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, explains that New Zealand police were disarmed for routine work in 1886, following the principle of the British police that: “Constables are placed in authority to protect, not to oppress, the public.” For officers to carry guns would not just be unnecessary, he…
“Difference is endless, and so we are endlessly—infinitely—tangled in it.” –Catherine Keller It struck me recently that All Lives Matter, the defiant, pious, racist push-back to the very important Black Lives Matter movement, should also be filed under the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is one of my favorite Whiteheadian theories;…
I’m pretty pumped about these theological/philosophical trading cards my friend Tripp and I have been collaborating on. They’ll probably be for sale sometime soon at Homebrewed Christianity, so collecting them all will obviously be the thing to do (if nothing else they’ll make badass, nerdy bookmarks!). In the future we plan to feature other schools of thought like, Masters of Suspicion, Mystics, Heretics, Early Church Thinkers, Radical Theology, and Queer Theology, for instance, as well as release additional thinkers for Team Process, Team Idealism, and Team Liberation.
“The soul is nothing else than the succession of my occasions of experience, extending from birth to the present moment.” —Whitehead Talking about the soul is confusing. I believe my earliest understanding of the soul was instilled in me by my mother at a fairly young age. Hers was a very Jewish understanding of the…
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” — Isaiah 45:7 I’ve been listening and reading a lot about the Devil in relation to Christian theology lately. Yesterday I listened to the “Devilpalooza” episode of Homebrewed Christianity which featured Richard Beck talking about…
“At the center of the new philosophy of nature that emerged victorious in the 17th century was a mechanistic doctrine of nature. This position was, in fact, often referred to as the “new mechanical philosophy.” This view of nature had two fundamental dimensions, both of which exemplified the demand that all “occult” qualities and powers…
“Adults may feel that praising children for their inherent qualities helps combat low self-esteem, but it might convey to children that they are valued as a person only when they succeed. When children subsequently fail, they may infer they are unworthy.” – Eddie Brummelman I recently listened to an episode of Homebrewed Christianity in which…
“Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience, or God is a God of racism.” —James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation I’ve recently been thinking about the connections between beliefs about God, guns/killing, and privilege/power. My views on guns/non-violence/killing humans have changed quite a bit over…
“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness…
“During the French Revolution, France developed a much more aggressive approach to church/state separation than other European countries. Instead of merely keeping religion out of state affairs, French secularism condemned religion’s influence on political culture in general as pernicious. Formal separation of church and state isn’t enough; you need to exclude religion from national identity…