For many, many reasons, we need to “see God in every person.”

Many of the problems in our nation and in our world worsened and persist because people have created a gap between “us” and “them.”

“Real” Americans vs. immigrants, Christians vs. others, rich vs. poor, straights vs. LGBTQ persons, and so forth — all of these divisions are ways for privileged people to put themselves above people of lower status.

In 2018 some Church leaders who were appalled by the Religious Right’s cruelties and abuses wrote a statement they called “Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis.” The document identifies six serious theological errors that the Religious Right has made that have hurt social justice in addition to unwittingly distorting Christianity into the opposite of what Jesus and the Early Church intended.  I encourage people to read this short (3-page) article at www.ReclaimingJesus.org

The “Reclaiming Jesus” document explicitly deals with how we treat immigrants, poor people, and other marginalized people. The document says 2,000 verses in the Bible assert that our religion requires us to protect the poor. Indeed, many parts of the Bible urge people of faith to welcome strangers – including foreigners.

The great American rabbi, author and political activist Arthur Waskow wrote a short article about “Seeing God in Every Person.” Rabbi Waskow’s article is relevant to this situation.  I encourage you to read it at this link:

Seeing God in every person — Arthur Waskow’s article

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About GlenAnderson 1499 Articles
Since the late 1960s Glen Anderson has devoted his life to working as a volunteer for peace, nonviolence, social justice, and progressive political issues. He has worked through many existing organizations and started several. Over the years he has worked especially for such wide-ranging goals as making peace with Vietnam, eliminating nuclear weapons, converting from a military economy to a peacetime economy, abolishing the death penalty, promoting nonviolence at all levels throughout society, and helping people organize and strategize for grassroots movements to solve many kinds of problems. He writes, speaks, and conducts training workshops on a wide variety of topics. Since 1987 he has produced and hosted a one-hour cable TV interview program on many kinds of issues. Since 2017 he has blogged at https://parallaxperspectives.org He lives in Lacey near Olympia WA. You can reach him at (360) 491-9093 glen@parallaxperspectives.org