Omowale Jabali : The Spiritual Divide

“The role religion is going to play in the 21st century is going to be one of the key issues. Faith can either be a barrier of division, a bomb of destruction, or a bridge of cooperation. Our job is to make it a bridge of cooperation.”

In What it Means to be an American , Michael Walzer points out that political theorists since the Greeks believed that participatory politics – democracy – could only exist in ethnically or religiously homogenous nations. “One religious communion, it was argued, made one political community … One people made one state.” The section ends with this line: “Pluralism in the strong sense – One state, many peoples – is possible only under tyrannical regimes.”
The next section begins with this: “Except in the United States.”
America ushered in a very new idea - a place where people from the four corners of the earth gather together to build a nation. President Obama spoke of it in his inaugural: “Our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”
We are a nation that allows its citizens to participate in its progress, to play a part in its possibility, to carve a place in its promise.
It was an ethic that our first president, George Washington, embraced as well: “The bosom of America is open to receive … the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...sue-of-our-time/2011/04/25/AFXzCUiE_blog.html
 
Is the divide too wide between spirituality and technology?














Brittney M. Walker | OW Staff Writer



Some say yea, others say nay
The world is in an age where people young and old are addicted to social media networking, constantly on their smart phones and otherwise absorbing every bit of drama on reality television shows. They call it the Digital Revolution.
In this movement of constantly evolving digital technology, many have been accused of neglecting their spiritual health.
Michel Bauwens, Internet consultant and technology researcher, writes in a peer review study called “Spirituality and Technology: Exploring the Relationship,” that some scholars and critics agree that technology could ultimately mean the demise of human spirituality but others say it can be transformational.
“Technology can be seen both as a degenerate practice and/or as a means to bring mankind to a higher level of consciousness or to a more well-developed civilization,” the abstract reads.
Bauwen allows that there are both pessimistic and optimistic interpretations of technology and its effect on spiritual and religious thought.
http://ourweekly.com/spiritual-living/divide-too-wide-between-spirituality-and-technology
 
There is a story, which is fairly well known, about when the missionaries came to Africa. They had the Bible and we, the natives, had the land. They said "Let us pray," and we dutifully shut our eyes. When we opened them, why, they now had the land and we had the Bible. ~Desmond M. Tutu, "Religious Human Rights and the Bible"
 
When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned. ~Robert Ingersoll, Some Reasons Why
 

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