Welcome to my website!
I've posted here a number of my articles, speeches and sermons. The site is a work in progress, and I'd welcome suggestions. In fact, I have just switched over to a new format for the site, and I'm sure there are errors. Please contact me to let me know.
Clicking on an item from the primary menu(say Economics), brings up all the Economics essays, lectures, and sermons on one page. Clicking on a submenu (say Essays), brings up just the essays from the Economics section.
You may notice substantial duplication among lectures and between lectures and sermons. I've tried to keep these to a minimum, but in lectures and sermons subtantial new material is sometimes woven into old material. If you are perusing the entire site, I beg your tolerance.
All the material on the site is published under a Creative Commons license, which basically means that you're free to use anything here as long as you reference this site and don't make any money off the material. For details click here.
I also welcome the opportunity to teach or to speak to your group. For details, click here.
January 2012
Hope in an Environmental Wasteland
If we can’t fix something, does it make sense to try?
It's too late to prevent climate change; it already happening, and much worse is coming. The powerful forces of consumerism, a capitalist economic system, government, the power of the corporations, and the influence of the media create a web that we will not untangle without profound changes in our society. If we can't actually solve the problems of global warming and climate change, if the results are going to be tragic, where do we find hope? How do we respond? Paradoxically, responses are is popping up everywhere. Something new is afoot.
March 2012
Geoengineering ... because we must[1]
As climate change denial fades as an argument, geoengineering techniques will become the focus in delaying adequate CO2 controls. Suggested geoengineering solutions are blocking the sun's rays, manipulating Earth's biology to absorb more CO2, and scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere. These techniques are expensive, dangerous or both. Nevertheless we must probably use some form of geoengineering but not as a replacement for carbon controls but as a necessary adjunct.
October 2011
The New Jim Crow
Attorney Michelle Alexander has written a most astonishing book, The New Jim Crow, about the mass incarceration of black men in America. The facts themselves are astonishing enough, but even more important is the evidence that mass incarceration is not an attempt to solve a drug problem but to subjugate poor black men. Mass incarceration is how our society keeps the inner-city ghetto devastated. The following is an extensive review. I hope it only whets your appetite to read the book.
September 2011
A Theology of the Cross—Part I
The environmental crisis--especially global climate change--has reached such a point that it is no longer reversible and that considerable further damage to the Earth and us its people is inevitable. Yet very few people--even within the environmental movement--seem to be willing to acknowledge (at least in public) that fact. This sermon and the following one along with the lecture Finding Hope in an Environmental Wasteland explore some of the depth of the environmental crises and the forces that make them virtually invulnerable to the usual modes of attack and explores some possible reasons why the American "positive outlook" may be obstructing our view of reality. The two sermons also look at the Christian "theology of glory" and how Christianity may have played a historical role as well as a continuing role in our illusions. Finally all three begin to look at what hope might look like in our situation.
September 2011
A Theology of the Cross - Part 2
The environmental crisis--especially global climate change--has reached such a point that it is no longer reversible and that considerable further damage to the Earth and us its people is inevitable. Yet very few people--even within the environmental movement--seem to be willing to acknowledge (at least in public) that fact. Along with Part I this sermon along with the lecture Finding Hope in an Environmental Wasteland explore some of the depth of the environmental crises and the forces that make them virtually invulnerable to the usual modes of attack,explores some possible reasons why the American "positive outlook" may be obstructing our view of reality. The two sermons also look at the Christian "theology of glory" and how Christianity may have played a historical role as well as an continuing role in our illusions. Finally all three begin to look at what hope might look like in our situation.
August 2011
The Debt Crisis
The more threatening dangers in the political handling of recent "debt crisis" are not over with the legislation to raise the debt ceiling. Even beyond the legislation's disastrous consequences of for the poor, the process used to arrive at the decision poses a direct threat to democracy. The direct power of the financial industry over government has also become explicit.
The so-called debt crisis is over. It had little to do, however, with the national debt and the real crisis is far from over.
Government
The debt crisis was completely manufactured. Everyone knew from the very beginning that the ceiling on the national debt limit would have to be raised because the country must take on more debt in order to pay its past debts
March 2011
More on the History of the Black Ghetto
Ten years ago I wrote Urban Injustice, a short book about the history of the inner-city, African-American ghetto. I now think that the book is misleading. It’s not that it’s inaccurate: no one has disputed the claims in the book. But it leaves out three important episodes of overwhelming violence and oppression that are necessary to understanding the ghetto’s history.
A recent speech and slide-show on the history of the Lakota people provides important background. In this fifteen-minute video the photographer contrasts photos of the current desperate poverty of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota with a partial history of the US government’s violent oppression of the Lakota tribes. Before reading on, watch it at: http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_huey.html.
January 2011
Paul and Secession from Empire
This is a sermon offered at the Eighth Day faith community on January 30, 2011. It presents some information from recent scholarship on the writings of the Apostle Paul, and its relevance to the church as we confront the American empire, and how we in the Eighth Day community might respond.
We’ve talked a good deal in this community about empire. We’ve found considerable insight in scripture and current literature that challenges the dominant consciousness of our day: its militarism, consumerism, individualism, and idolatry of money, prestige, and power. This has given our community a foundation on which we’ve worked to build an alternative vision of peace, solidarity with the oppressed, downward mobility, ecological sanity and community.
November 2010
Common Sense on Social Security
As politicians and pundits debate what to do about the exploding federal deficit, the Social Security Trust Fund will be an easy target. Dire predictions about the future of the fund will create pressures to reduce Social Security benefits. In fact Social Security currrently has a $2.6 trillion surplus, has not contributed at all to the federal debt, and minor corrections will be enough to keep the fund solvent indefinitely. Let's not be confused by the hype!
Note: The decision to reduce 2010 FICA taxes in order to stimulate the economy considerably alters some of the calculations below, especially if the cuts are continued indefinitely, as -- given political realities -- they probably will. This will radically reduce the long-term viabililty of Social Security.
April 2010
The Earth’s Immune System
When we consider the state of the Earth--its environment, its injustice, its economics, and governance--its difficult to retain hope. But there are many hundreds of thousands of nonprofits around the world actively working to change those conditions, to raise our consciousness and rouse our attention. The whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. Earth's Immunity gives us reason to hope.
Over the past several years, I’ve been writing a lot about death: the deaths of millions of children around the world, the deaths within our environment, the deaths from militarism, the million small deaths from consumerism, the death of our economic system, and so on. And while I’ve tried to hold on to hope (sometimes even successfully), much of me has leaned toward despair. I really haven’t seen any way out of this morass that is even remotely possible. The essential vision, as I’ve seen it, is to support justice around the world and to save the Earth from the depredations of our consumer culture.
