Dragon's Drum
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Former Guatemalan dictator convicted of genocide and jailed for 80 years | World news | The Guardian The former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide on Friday after a court found him guilty of crimes against humanity for his role in the slaughter of 1,771 Mayan Ixils in the 1980s. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison. It is the first time a former head of state has been found guilty of genocide in their own country.
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“I have contended for some time that you cannot rightly assess the spiritual state of America today and the weakness of the Christian church in society here without going back to the 1950’s and 60’s and recognizing how much being wrong on the racial segregation issue affected our witness in the South and across the nation. Never was the Evangelical church more powerful than in Alabama and Mississippi in 1960-1965. Never did we have more ability to change the culture and influence people for good. And, never have we been more wrong in how we treated other people and in what we DID NOT speak against than during that time. Ignorance was not an excuse as we had people like Martin Luther King calling us to repentance. But, so often, we were unwilling to listen. I wonder what America would be like today if Evangelical Christians would have been laying their lives down to see justice come to African Americans, many of whom were also Christians.” -
Sorry that this plaque is a little hard to read in the photo. It says, “Truth Exists. Only Falsehood Has to Be Invented,” a quote from Georges Braque.
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Jeanette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress (on November 7, 1916) at a time when women lacked suffrage on a national level. While in office she did many things, her efforts included work on the 19th Amendment (ensuring a woman’s right to vote), giving married women citizenship separate from their husbands and legislation on government-sponsored instruction for pregnant and nursing women.
However, she was a passionate pacifist and when she (along with 49 other representatives) voted against the United States’ entry into World War I many believed it meant women were unable to be national leaders and she was not reelected and left Congress at the end of her single term.
That was not the end of her life in politics though, running primarily on an anti-war platform she won reelection to the House in 1940 where she shortly was asked to vote again on whether or not the US should enter a world war. Sticking to her beliefs, despite the majority of American’s outrage over Pearl Harbor, she again voted against war, famously saying, “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else,” an act that ended her political career.
She continued to advocate pacifism through the rest of her life and even led a march on Washington in her eighties to protest the war in Vietnam. Jeannette Rankin died in 1973 at the age of 93 and will always be remembered for her tireless work for women’s suffrage, her pacifist beliefs and for being a groundbreaking legislator, as both the first woman in Congress and the only person to vote against both world wars.
Jeanette Rankin was a courageous advocate for peace.
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“The Testament of Mary” written by Ireland’s Colm Toibin might just be the strongest play on Broadway these days.
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Fiona Shaw delivers an extraordinarily powerful performance in “The Testament of Mary” on Broadway. (Photo by Chrysis Graham)
Ms. Shaw portrays a very human Mary. The performance is riveting. It’s also challenging and thought provoking.
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“What you and I understand is that when Jesus says, ‘You can’t hang onto me,’ he says, ‘You know it’s not about the past, it’s not about the before, it’s not about the way things were, but about the way things can be in the now.’ … Will you accept the invitation from our Gospel today to see things with Easter vision, recognizing reality in a different and new and wonderful way?” — Dr. Luis Leon, Episcopal pastor who led an Easter service attended by President Obama: Pastor slams religious right at Obamas’ Easter service - CBS News -
Minister criticizes ‘captains of the religious right’ at Obama’s Easter service Quoting from John 20:1-18, [Luis] Leon [of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington] said in the same way Jesus told Mary Magdalene not to hold onto him, it is time for conservatives to stop holding on to what he considers outdated stances on race, gender equality, homosexuals and immigrants.
“It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back … for blacks to be back in the back of the bus … for women to be back in the kitchen … for immigrants to be back on their side of the border,” Leon said.
Leon said people instead should use “Easter vision” to allow them to see the world in a different, more “wonderful” way.
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“I believe that Christian marriage is a lifelong commitment made in love between two people. I see no reason why that should not be open to people of the same-sex. I look forward to an Easter Day when I can celebrate new marriages for gay members of my congregation just as I can for straight couples.” —Kevin Holdsworth, provost of St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland on Easter Sunday: BBC News - Christian persecution claims ‘unfounded’
Holdsworth also said the church was not “under attack because of same-sex marriage” as some conservative politicians had claimed and that Christians were more concerned with compassion in welfare reform and immigration policies.
