"Branding Christianity" by John Whitehead is confusing. (See River Cities' Reader Issue 699, August 27-September 2, 2008.)
In the first place, Rick Warren is not "America's pastor." There is no "America's pastor" any more than there is "America's rabbi" or "America's imam." If we could get that straight, perhaps our presidential candidates would not feel like they have to "pander" to us. Rick Warren is a nice guy, but he is not "the future of Christianity in America." We have thousands of spiritual leaders in our country. A few of them are brilliant and/or charismatic. Most of them are simply faithful and hard-working. We should listen to them, study our own sacred texts, and, yes, "speak truth to power."
Second, PEACE is not an acronym. Mr. Warren's initiatives are good; may he and they prosper. But "peace" is the strongest word in every language. It is about how we live together on our tiny planet. It is not about something vaguely nice in the dim future; it is about how we plan, how we talk, how we listen, how we spend our wealth now, so that we can even have a future.
There are people who love war and violence, and there are many more who just enjoy how they can get rich from it or feel powerful. But the great majority of the world's people only long for peace; they only want to live in security and justice, to raise their children, and to help each other build and not destroy. This is the truth that we must speak to those who have power, and to those who have lost all hope: We are by far the majority of the world's people, and we only want peace.
Dorothea Buck
Davenport
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Internet Provides More Fairness Than the Government
The obvious discrimination against Ron Paul's campaign was pretty obvious this year, but to mandate what a station puts on the air goes against what even Paul believes in. (See "The Thing That Would Not Die," River Cities' Reader Issue 700, September 3-9, 2008.) You can find plenty of independent news sources on the Web; and as more people realize the biased nature of the big news corps, they will naturally gravitate to these sources.
Freedom of the Internet is more important than government-dictated fairness anywhere.
DaddySteve
From the Reader Web site
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Enamored with Communism
I'm glad to see that well-off college students, in the freedom of the United States of America, still are enamored with communism and dictatorships. (See "Fact Vs. Misinformed Philosophy," River Cities' Reader Issue 700, September 3-9, 2008.)
Mark
From the Reader Web site
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The CIA Kool-Aid
Mark, you are the very type of person this piece was meant to set straight, and has obviously failed, not because the author is incapable, but because you are willfully ignorant. This isn't communism or dictatorship by any stretch of the imagination. Everything Chávez does is ratified and approved - not only by the Venezuela parliament, but by the people. They've got more democracy down there than you have in your mother's basement, so put down the CIA Kool-Aid and wake up. Better still, go on down there and ask around - outside the rich neighborhoods, that is. The rich down there are just as deluded as you.
Bina
From the Reader Web site
