Plunderbund

I just added a new link to the blogroll - Faithful Ohio. I did so because I think what is discussed there and what should be discussed here and on other blogs is the taking back of religion from the extreme right and reclaiming the true meaning of Christian faith. I grew up Catholic and now practice Zen Buddhism, but I understand the impact of Christianity on politics today and the need to curb what I see as non-loving agendas that are fueled not by the love of Christ but by the fear of man.

Renee has a great post about the Jim Wallis event at OSU, a story of which I hope she won’t mind me using here:

I was asked to speak at Sing Sing prison in upstate New York. I asked, when do you want me to come, and the prisoners’ representative said, “Well, we’re free most nights! We’re kind of a captive audience here!”

I was given a room in the bowels of Sing Sing, this infamous prison, and I was left in a room alone for 5 hours with 80 guys. One of the prisoners said, “You know, Jim, all of us at Sing Sing are from just about 4 or 5 neighborhoods in New York City. It’s like a train you get on in my neighborhood when you’re 9 or 10 years old, and the train ends up here, at Sing Sing.

But he had a spirtual conversion inside those walls. The New York Theological Seminary offers a Masters of Divinity program inside the walls of that prison. You become a preacher inside the joint–you graduate when your sentence is up. And he looked at me and said, “When I get out, I want to go back and stop that train!”

I was in New York a few years later, and guess who I saw, back home, leading a town meeting on poverty…trying to stop that train. That’s what *I* mean by faith-based initiatives.

Please bookmark/blogroll that site as well as Renee at Howard Empowered.