Developing Non-Toxic Communication Skills
We need to learn how to share a common meal or other event with people with whom we disagree and have conversations that shed light instead of heat.
Building Face-to-Face Democracy
I believe it’s important to have a face-to-face venue to practice those skills.
Until further notice, I will be at Fratelli Pizzeria & Cafe on Tuesday’s between 6 & 8 pm (excepting Christmas and New Year’s Eve and days in which the Bethlehem Area School District is closed. If we share phone numbers or apps such as Signal, I’ll give a text message head’s up if I can’t make it.)
Understanding Social Networks, Building Social Capital
The Korea Example: "Korean civil society, from student groups to religious organizations, maintains robust networks that can rapidly mobilize against perceived threats to democracy." What Just Happened in South Korea? | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
From Robert Putnam (“Bowling Alone”): Social networks have value. They build social capital and trust. They can defeat autocrats. I’ll talk about how.
Subverting Partisanship Through Community Service
To talk about politics we must first of all not talk about politics. We should work together and engage in hands-on works of community service in the great outdoors. Working together on some public good for the community again establishes the trust necessary to have riskier discussions.
“There is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets.” Fiorello La Guardia
American Civics and Political Partisanship
Political partisanship is not only good, it is essential to maintain a democracy. The alternative to partisanship is one party rule. And that one party often exists to rubber stamp the decrees of the executive.
Preparing for Disciplined Nonviolent Civil Resistance
In the movie, “Gandhi,” he is portrayed as saying that there are unjust laws just as there are unjust men. The extreme end of advocacy for a cause is nonviolent civil resistance and civil disobedience: a commitment to break the law with the purpose of getting arrested to draw attention to the unjustness of the law. It’s action we may be called to take.
Engaging White Christian Nationalism
I AM a Christian. But Christian Nationalism appears to me as an ideology that seeks the political power to purge American society of “the enemies of Christ”: liberals, socialists, and - way too often - people who don’t look like them. As a trained (if obscure!) Christian theologian, I’m going to learn a great deal more about it. [It is also more a Christian political movement than a Christian denomination and is involves a number of more or less like-minded movements such as the New Apostolic Reformation, Dominionism, the 7 Mountain Mandate, etc.]