Christian Satyagraha

What is Satyagraha?:  Satyagraha and Christianity
Mohandas Gandhi called his philosophy of social change by peaceful means satyagraha. The word is derived from the Indian words satya (truth) and graha (from the same Indo-European root word from which comes our ‘grasp’, ‘grab’, and ‘grip’).
Satyagraha is more than a philosophical system; it is a metaphysical [...]

Notes: On the unity of world religious culture

I recently ran across the following quote from 20th-century Christian author, C. S. Lewis in his book, The Abolition of Man. These remarks preface an assemblage of quotes that relate to what Lewis termed Natural Law, which he more or less equated with ancient Chinese term, the Tao:
The idea of collecting independent testimonies presupposes [...]

Countering Political Evil

At the Watchblog Third Party Website, Joel S. Hirschhorn wrote an good article titled The Evolution of Evil. He identifies as an essential problem the current two-party system. To quote Joel:
Most corrupt and legally sanctioned forms of tyranny hide in plain sight as democracies with free elections….  Nothing conceals tyranny better than elections. [...]

America’s Malaise: What is the Real Problem?

In her Huffington Post blog, Middle-East expert and columnist Judith Kipper recently added an article titled “America’s Malaise“. She made some good points. At least it’s good to see someone explicitly addressing the problem. America does suffer from something – you can call it malaise, severe uncertainty, a crisis of confidence, [...]

Urbanization Crisis and Sustainable Transportation

Ran across this article at the World Resource Institute website:
SUSTAINABLE CITIES, SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION
From the article:
Urbanization - A Glimpse of the Future
“Cities continue to be seen as offering economic opportunity superior to what can be realized in the countryside. Urban migration takes place on such a scale that we now have a new category [...]

Redeeming Corporations and Renewing America

Recently AOL, whom I pay to host one of my websites, has begun treating its customers so badly it’s almost unbelievable. I won’t go into details, but the bottom line is that I need to find a new hosting service. The search led me to the company BlueHost.com, where, among other things, I [...]

Politics: Inner and Outer

A fairly little-known fact is that Plato’s Republic, a work often taught in government and political science classes, is really about psychology. If you read the Republic closely, you see that Plato (through the character of Socrates) introduces the ideal State as a metaphor for the human soul. The idea is to, using [...]

Comments on “A Common Word between Us and You”

Comments on “A Common Word between Us”
In October of 2007, 138 Muslim leaders, clerics, and scholars published an open letter to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI titled, A Common Word between Us and You. The letter was unambiguously positive and well motivated. The summary of the letter states succinctly (and correctly): “The future [...]

On Religious Inclusivism and Exclusivism
John S. Uebersax
Summary
Here we make two main points:

Religious inclusivism – the view that “all religions are but different paths to the same goal” — is often presented as a means to promote peace. However, if religions actually are true to varying degrees, then radical inclusivism merely tries to sweep genuine [...]