Category: Politics

Art, Children, Christianity, Gospel music, Justice, Music, Politics4 Comments

Thank You, Ella Jones: Churches, the Arts and Why They Matter

Gary Furr

I nearly always prefer the hidden, obscure, local and unnoticed to the Big Stuff.  Celebrity…zzz…even small pond big fish I find relatively uninteresting.  It’s just all so predictable and often pompous.  When I opened today’s Birmingham News, the top of the front page, as usual, was about Alabama and Auburn football, which is as always.  You just have to understand that in Alabama, I would fully expect to see this on a front page: TIDE LANDS FOUR FIVE STAR RECRUITS AUBURN HOPES NEW DEFENSIVE COACH WILL “TURN THE TIDE” NUCLEAR WAR PROBABLE IN NEXT FEW DAYS (Section B) GOD SAYS … Continue reading Thank You, Ella Jones: Churches, the Arts and Why They Matter

Culture, Ethics, Hope, Leadership, Politics, Theology, Theology and Life2 Comments

The Other Two Sides of the Coin

Gary Furr

Do you remember the old television show, “Newhart?”   It lives only on reruns now.  Bob Newhart and actress Mary Frann played an author and his wife who owned an inn in a weird little rural Vermont town. Among the strange characters who inhabited the town were three goony looking brothers, only one of whom ever spoke, named Larry.  Larry introduces the group the same way every time they make an appearance: “Hi, I’m Larry; this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl.” It’s crazy.  How can there be three brothers with two names?  Life tends to … Continue reading The Other Two Sides of the Coin

Christianity, holocaust, Jesus, Norway massacre, Politics, Prayer, Theology and Life, violence, worldview2 Comments

War of the Worldviews?

Gary Furr

Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar, wrote an opinion piece for CNN in the aftermath of the horrendous mass murder in Norway by suspect Anders Breivik.  Breivik set off a bomb and then, disguised as a policeman, infiltrated a youth camp where leadership and politics are taught and opened fire, at this point claiming at least 76 deaths. Breivik is white, Christian, and released a bizarre 1500 page manifesto in which he advocated a revolution in which the cultural dominance of Christianity might prevail over what he saw as an “Islamic-Marxist” alliance.  He wanted to speak on television in … Continue reading War of the Worldviews?

Immigration, Politics3 Comments

A Political Glossary for Newcomers

Gary Furr

I offer this to students from other countries here on visas for college and to politically uninformed citizens to help them understand the current debates going on in our country.  GF Entitlements—a word that once referred to “something earned or deserved, or given out of mutual agreement and covenant and generally accepted and validated by law.”  Lately it has devolved to a more primitive association to refer to another as “a deadbeat.” Today in politics it has a very strict meaning, as in, “money given to someone I don’t know and don’t really care about or from whom I can … Continue reading A Political Glossary for Newcomers