Quotes about Power, Institutions, and Civil Disobedience

Today (8/18/2012) several posts from the Episcopal Cafe' had similar though not exactly parallel themes about power, institutions, and civil disobedience. The three sections are far to lengthy to include all that they said so I choose some quotes from each as well as links to the original web address so that you can read the complete articles if you wish.

The first quote is from Lawrence L. Graham and was titled "Born Again" (not the evangelical writing one might expect from that title.):

“Jesus dared to confront the religious powers and secular principalities of his own time. And his teachings are not merely artifacts of an historic past, nor the story of a one-time rabbi in long-ago Israel. They are the plumb line by which real Christians measure the uprightness of their every thought, prayer and action – no matter how impolite or shocking or radical or liberal our fickle secular society may think them.”

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/episcopal_church/born_again.php

The next quote comes from Lowell Grisham:

“Martin Luther King said, ‘ Everyone has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.’ ‘An injustice wherever it is, is a threat to justice everywhere.’ He quoted future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, ‘A justice too long delayed is justice denied.’ “

“I see another more subtle threat to justice these days -- a threat to economic justice. For the past thirty years the wealthy and powerful have manipulated the political and economic system to their advantage. They have created a massive concentration of wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The greed and manipulation of the elite in the financial industries provoked the recent economic meltdown that has injured so many and threatened the foundations of government and economic stability. While cloaking themselves in the guise of freedom, the wealthy and elite have declared a silent war on the rest of us and upon the government, the only thing that can stand up to them on behalf of the poor. They are attacking the safety nets and programs of compassion and opportunity that offer a hand up to the unfortunate. Who will stand up to them?”

-From a post by Lowell Grisham http://www.episcopalcafe.com/thesoul/civil_disobedience_and_the_str.html

The final quotation is from Andrew Gerns:

"A Russian judge convicted the three singers known as Pussy Riot to two years in jail for "hooliganism" because they sang (or at least videotaped themselves singing) a protest song in a Moscow cathedral. Were they hooligans or prophets? ...

Using swear words in church is an abuse of God," said the prosecutor, demanding three years jail for the punk band Pussy Riot following their 40-second protest in Moscow's Orthodox cathedral. Their crime was to sing "Mother of God, chase Putin out", invoking that young Palestinian woman who desired that the mighty be brought down, the lowly lifted up and the hungry fed. Her story, and that of her son, was also to end up in court. And the charge against him was not wholly dissimilar.

To many, swear words are more than mere rudeness. Profanity is a theological category generated by the binary opposition of sacred and profane. As expressed in the book of Leviticus, the things of God are strictly to be separated from the moral and physical corruption of the world. Death, shit and blood represent a threat to God's perfection, just as dirty fingers threaten the perfection of a blank piece of paper. Thus the complex rites of purification for those who would approach the holy....

...The problem comes when the holy is employed as a cover to evade critical scrutiny. Even more so when questionable moral or political ideologies are smuggled into the holy – from menstruating women being ritually unclean (thus unable to be priests doing holy stuff in the sanctuary) to the Orthodox church's support for Putin. For values thus inscribed within the holy can easily come to regulate the politics of a community in ways that resist any sort of challenge. Then religion becomes an adjunct of totalitarianism. And when this happens a pussy riot is an absolute moral necessity."

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/religion_in_the_news/hooligans_or_prophets_whats_th.htm

We have heard that our mothers tell us not to mix religion and politics; but our mothers were wrong with this one piece of advice. Others have said that we should have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other (or perhaps in the 21st century a laptop or i pad). These quotes speak to that concept and it is interesting to note that all of the above quotes come from a church web site, The Episcopal Cafe'.