A voice of conscience for peace, justice, human rights, and intercultural encounter
Emmaus Road Mennonite Fellowship, December 5, 2021 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tibe′ri-us Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Iturae′a and Trachoni′tis, and Lysa′ni-as tetrarch of Abile′ne, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Ca′iaphas, the word of God…
For the last six-and-a-half years, I have facilitated a class of about 25 on Tuesday mornings, what I call a “community of deep meaning,” where we discuss issues at the intersection of Religion and Culture, following Paul Tillich’s well-known comment from his book of the same name: “Culture is the form of religion; religion is…
Christians in churches around the world celebrated the last Sunday of their liturgical year today (next week begins Advent) as “The Reign of Christ” (formerly “Christ the King”). The Gospel of John places Jesus before Pilate; their conversation ends with Pilate asking Jesus, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a…
So Says the United Church of Christ; So Say We All Indiana Center for Middle East Peace has been invited by the United Church of Christ Palestine-Israel Network (UCC-PIN) to partner with them to host a series of webinars for the church based upon the UCC’s 2021 General Synod Resolution, “Declaration For A Just Peace…
This past Friday, Israel Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, signed a military order declaring six leading Palestinian civil society organizations to be “terrorist organizations” – they are Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees. These organizations are at…
The following blog post is from a talk given as part of Spiritual Grounding, a program with the Rev. Graylan Hagler, with Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC, in Washington, DC, on Friday, October 15, 2021. The original presentation is included in the video embedded in this post. I want to say thank you to my friend,…
October 10, 2021 Commemorating the United Nation’s World Mental Health Day, Indiana Center for Middle East Peace will be hosting our friend, Lucas Zoughbi, son of Zoughbi and Elaine Zoughbi, from Bethlehem, and a PhD student in Psychology at Michigan State University specializing in psychological trauma of Palestinian children, women, and political prisoners, this Thursday,…
October 4, 2021 “The fifth string is the soul.” That’s how our ICMEP friend, composer/musician/educator Ronnie Malley, began his one-person musical play, Ziryab: Songbird of Andalusia. We hosted Ronnie this past weekend for his play as well as for three community workshops, “When the World Spoke Arabic,” with partial financial support from the National Endowment…
Israeli philosopher, Micah Goodman, has been described as “arguably Israel’s most influential public intellectual,” exerting an inordinate amount of influence on Israel’s Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, who just completed his 100th day in office. Goodman lives in Kfar Adumim, an illegal Israeli settlement just outside Jerusalem. He is the author of the 2017 book, Catch…
I first learned of the Brazilian humanist educator, Paulo Freire, in 1978, during a class in “liberation theology” at Eden Seminary in St. Louis with Dr. M. Douglas Meeks, where Freire’s critically-acclaimed Pedagogy of the Oppressed (translated into English in 1970) was required reading. I thought of Freire this week as we celebrate the centennial…