Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) has quickly become a controversial topic in recent years. Whereas other books on the subject describe the condition as inherited, Dr. Gabor Maté believes that our social and emotional environments play a key role in both the cause of and cure for this condition. In Scattered, he describes the painful realities of ADD and its effect on children as well as on career and social paths in adults. While acknowledging that genetics may indeed play a part in predisposing a person toward ADD, Dr. Maté moves beyond that to focus on the things we can control: changes in environment, family dynamics, and parenting choices. He draws heavily on his own experience with the disorder, as both an ADD sufferer and the parent of three diagnosed children. Providing a thorough overview of ADD and its treatments, Scattered is essential and life-changing reading for the millions of ADD sufferers in North America today.
“Cancer is not a disease of the individual. It reflects a lifelong set of relationships with yourself and your environment.”
–Gabor Maté
Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) Presenting at the March 2016 Perinatal Services BC Healthy Mothers & Healthy Babies conference, renowned speaker and author Dr.Gabor Maté illuminates the sources of developmental challenges, childhood and adult mental disorders, and physical health issues as originating in the prenatal, perinatal, and early childhood periods. Based on Dr. Maté’s bestselling books and on current neuroscientific and developmental research, the presentation focuses on how we can prevent maldevelopment through attuned parenting and restore and foster resilience in children already facing developmental challenges.
Community Update June 2021HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING!
Summer Class Series: The Prosperos is pleased to invite you to join our continuing summer series of online classes! To learn more about each class, and to register, please visit our website at https://www.theprosperos.org/events, and click on the calendar date for the class you want. We look forward to seeing you in class! TRANSLATION June 25-26, 2021 – Al Haferkamp, H.W., M. This practical technique—also called “Straight Thinking in the Abstract“—shows how to reduce every appearance, and every problem, back to underlying Wholeness. It offers a system of thought which releases the immortal, whole, perfect identity of mankind, as Consciousness. RELEASING THE HIDDEN SPLENDOUR July 17-18, 2021 – Anne Bollman, H.W.,M., monitor This essential technique gives you a safe and systematic method of re-perceiving the past, freeing yourself from negative emotions, conflicting memories, and self-defeating habit patterns. This presentation was originally recorded by Thane. SELF-ENCOUNTER July 31, 2021 – Rick Thomas, H.W.,M. An adjunct to Releasing the Hidden Splendour, this class provides fast techniques for uncovering the origin of self-defeating attitudes in order to allow your true Self to flourish.Sunday Meetings Presenting Prosperos Mentors and inspiring guests, these online events are open to all who are interested. There is no charge, although we do encourage contributions.
Coming this month:
SUNDAY, JUNE 20 (11:00 am PDT) – “Finding ‘Right’” William Fennie, H.W., M., examines the underlying Reality Self, ever-present for each of us, that offers guidance and the key to meaningful engagement. SUNDAY, JUNE 27 (11:00 am PDT) – “Conversations with Calvin” Calvin Harris, H.W., M., continues his series of compelling interviews with fascinating, accomplished people from all walks of life.Have you missed a meeting? Recordings of selected Sunday Meetings areavailable; for information, please contact us at info@theprosperos.org.
Plan Now for Assembly 2022!LABOR DAY WEEKEND, SEPT. 2-5, 2022 – COLORADO We are really looking forward to next year’s gathering! Won’t you join us? We’re planning interesting and inspiring presentations, activities and experiences, and of course, friendship and lots of ALOHA! So, clear your calendar and start saving up for that trip to gorgeous Colorado!
Watch this space for more information…. MAY WE HELP YOU?
High Watch Translation Service Need help with a problem? You can request Translation for any issue: illness, relationships, professional difficulties, etc. Members of The Prosperos High Watch—students who have shown their understanding of Translation—will work to reveal the Truth behind the appearance. Contributions are welcome; all information is confidential. Please post your request at: http://TheProsperos.org/community/hwts.
Personal Counseling Prosperos Mentors (Teacher/Counselors) are available for personal counseling, using the principles taught through the School. If you wish to arrange for personal counseling, or need questions answered about the techniques, or just want to talk, Prosperos Mentors are ready to help. For counselor names and contact information, please contact us at info@theprosperos.org.
Volunteer Opportunities WEBSITE ASSISTANCE: We are currently seeking volunteers with experience in web design and social media. To offer your services, or request more information on how you can help, please write to info@theprosperos.org. Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION…We invite you to visit our websites for information about the School, as well as for descriptions of our wide selection of printed, recorded, and online resources (many are free; others are available for purchase). General Information – For our calendar, newsletter, blogs and other articles and information, please visit https://TheProsperos.org. Audio Center – This site offers free podcasts, talks and lectures, and a wealth of other recorded material for our students and friends. To see what’s available, please visit https://TheProsperos.com.
Hayek served in World War I during his teenage years and said that this experience in the war and his desire to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war drew him into economics.[6][7] At the University of Vienna, he studied economics, eventually receiving his doctoral degrees in law in 1921 and in political science in 1923.[6][8] He subsequently lived and worked in Austria, Great Britain, the United States, and Germany; he became a British subject in 1938.[9] Hayek’s academic life was mostly spent at the London School of Economics, and later at the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg. Although he is widely considered a leader of the Austrian School of Economics, he also had close connections with the Chicago School of Economics.[6][10][11][12] Hayek was also a major social theorist and political philosopher of the 20th century and as the co-founder of Mont Pelerin Society he contributed to the revival of classical liberalism in the post-war era.[13] His most popular work, The Road to Serfdom, has sold over 2.25 million copies (as of 2020).[14][15]
Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna to August von Hayek and Felicitas Hayek (née von Juraschek). His father, born in 1871 also in Vienna, was a medical doctor employed by the municipal ministry of health.[21] August was a part-time botany lecturer at the University of Vienna.[2] Friedrich was the oldest of three brothers, Heinrich (1900–1969) and Erich (1904–1986), who were one-and-a-half and five years younger than he was.[22]
His father’s career as a university professor influenced Hayek’s goals later in life.[23] Both of his grandfathers, who lived long enough for Hayek to know them, were scholars.[24]Franz von Juraschek was a leading economist in Austria-Hungary and a close friend of Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, one of the founders of the Austrian School of Economics.[25] Hayek’s paternal grandfather, Gustav Edler von Hayek, taught natural sciences at the Imperial Realobergymnasium (secondary school) in Vienna. He wrote works in the field of biological systematics, some of which are relatively well known.[26]
On his mother’s side, Hayek was second cousin to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.[27] His mother often played with Wittgenstein’s sisters and had known him well. As a result of their family relationship, Hayek became one of the first to read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus when the book was published in its original German edition in 1921.[28] Although he met Wittgenstein on only a few occasions, Hayek said that Wittgenstein’s philosophy and methods of analysis had a profound influence on his own life and thought.[29] In his later years, Hayek recalled a discussion of philosophy with Wittgenstein when both were officers during World War I.[30] After Wittgenstein’s death, Hayek had intended to write a biography of Wittgenstein and worked on collecting family materials and later assisted biographers of Wittgenstein.[31] He was related to Wittgenstein on the non-Jewish side of the Wittgenstein family. Since his youth, Hayek frequently socialized with Jewish intellectuals and he mentions that people often speculated whether he was also of Jewish ancestry. That made him curious, so he spent some time researching his ancestors and found out that he has no Jewish ancestors within five generations.[32] The surname Hayek uses the German spelling of the Czech surname Hájek.[17]
Hayek displayed an intellectual and academic bent from a very young age.[9] He read fluently and frequently before going to school.[33]He was at the bottom of his class in most subjects, and once received three failing grades, in Latin, Greek and mathematics.[34] He was very interested in theater, even attempting to write some tragedies, and biology, regularly helping his father with his botanical work.[35] At his father’s suggestion, as a teenager he read the genetic and evolutionary works of Hugo de Vries and August Weismann and the philosophical works of Ludwig Feuerbach.[36] He noted Goethe as the greatest early intellectual influence.[35] In school, Hayek was much taken by one instructor’s lectures on Aristotle’s ethics.[37] In his unpublished autobiographical notes, Hayek recalled a division between him and his younger brothers who were only a few years younger than him, but he believed that they were somehow of a different generation. He preferred to associate with adults.[33]Austro-Hungarian artillery unit appearing in The Illustrated London News in 1914
In 1917, Hayek joined an artillery regiment in the Austro-Hungarian Army and fought on the Italian front.[38] Hayek suffered damage to his hearing in his left ear during the war[39] and was decorated for bravery. During this time, Hayek also survived the 1918 flu pandemic.[40]
Hayek then decided to pursue an academic career, determined to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war. Hayek said of his experience: “The decisive influence was really World War I. It’s bound to draw your attention to the problems of political organization”. He vowed to work for a better world.[41]
Hegel has influenced many thinkers and writers whose own positions vary widely.[37] For example, Paul Tillich wrote that the historical dialectical thought of Hegel “has influenced world history more profoundly than any other structural analysis.”[38]Karl Barth described Hegel as a “Protestant Aquinas“[39] while Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote that “all the great philosophical ideas of the past century—the philosophies of Marx and Nietzsche, phenomenology, German existentialism, and psychoanalysis—had their beginnings in Hegel.”[40]Michael Hardt has highlighted that the roots of post-structuralism and its unifying basis lies, in large part, in a general opposition not to the philosophical tradition tout court but specifically to the “Hegelian tradition” dominating philosophy in the twentieth century prior to post-structuralism.[41]
Hegel’s work has been considered the “completion of philosophy”[42][43][44] by multiple of the most influential thinkers in existentialism, post-structuralism, and twentieth-century theology.[45][46][43][47][44][48] Derrida wrote of Hegel in his work Of Grammatology that “he undoubtedly summed up the entire philosophy of the logos. He determined ontology as absolute logic; he assembled all the delimitations of philosophy as presence,” later remarking that Hegel is thus “the last philosopher of the book and the first philosopher of writing,” indicating the relation of Hegel to post-structural thought by stating “if there were a definition of Différance, it would be precisely the limit, the interruption, the destruction of the Hegelian dialectical synthesis wherever it operates.”[49] In his work Systematic Theology, theologian Paul Tillich referred to Hegel’s work as “perfect essentialism,” later writing “essentialism was in Hegel’s system fulfilled.”[48]Martin Heidegger observed in his 1969 work Identity and Difference and in his personal Black Notebooks that Hegel’s system in an important respect “consummates western philosophy”[42][43][44] by completing the idea of the logos, the self-grounding ground, in thinking through the identification of Being and beings, which is “the theme of logic”, writing “[I]t is… incontestable that Hegel, faithful to tradition, sees the matter of thinking in beings as such and as a whole, in the movement of Being from its emptiness to its developed fullness.”[43][44]Heidegger in various places further stated Hegel’s thinking to be “the most powerful thinking of modern times.”[50][51]
Written in political exile in New Zealand during the Second World War and published in two volumes in 1945, The Open Society and its Enemies was hailed by Bertrand Russell as a ‘vigorous and profound defence of democracy’. This legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx prophesied the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and exposed the fatal flaws of socially engineered political systems. It remains highly readable, erudite and lucid and as essential reading today as on publication in 1945. It is available here in a special centenary single-volume edition.
“We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
– Henry Beston (June 1, 1888 – April 15, 1968) was an American writer and naturalist, best known as the author of The Outermost House, written in 1928. Wikipedia
“Billy Sunday” George Bellows, 1915; Wikimedia Commons
[Editor’s Note: In identifying the immoral acts taking place in many Churches in America, we at Tikkun acknowledge that provoking or supporting violence is not the message many Christians attending other kinds of churches hear. We know the passion for peace and justice in many Christian denominations, just as there are in Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and other denominations. And it is important to remember that way more people were killed or wounded in the capitalism and nationalism-generated 1st WW, 2nd WW, the wars of colonialists trying to hold their power, the Communist purges and oppressions in Russia and China than in any religiously inspired wars in the 20th and 21st centuries. So while we challenge violence and oppression whether it be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc., we know that it is also important to challenge the ethos of global capitalism and its various manifestations in toxic nationalisms around the world, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and Jew-hating (read my essay on Jew-hating here) please do read the important article by Dr. Smelcer below and circulate it widely together with this Editor’s note! And please consider coming to our High Holiday services –at the very beginning of September to experience a Judaism which Challenges Zionism, Capitalism, Materialist Reductionism, and all other forms of oppression, details soon at Beyt Tikkun. Let me know what you think of Smelcer’s article and this introduction to it. –Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com]
The Pulpit of Fear
Millions of Christians across America attend church every Sunday morning. For the most part, they hear sermons about Jesus’s two thousand-year-old message of love, kindness, charity, forgiveness, mercy, and non-violence. They hear how Jesus said, “those who live by the sword perish by the sword” and “Love thy enemies.” They hear uplifting sermons about “The Prodigal Son,” “The Good Samaritan,” and the story of how Simon of Cyrene helped to carry Jesus’s burden—stories that teach us how to be better people. But in some churches, the preacher’s thunderous sermon is vitriolic, inciting hatred, divisiveness, suspicion and aggression toward others, and ultimately violence. These preachers are out of touch with reality from consuming too much right-wing media. Does any of the following sound familiar to you:
“Democrats are all part of a global cabal of Satan-worshippers who kidnap babies as part of a child sex trafficking ring. They abuse them and then eat them in the basements of pizzerias and wear their skin to make them look younger. They want to steal away all your freedoms. They want to make it against the law to drive gas-powered automobiles or to eat steak and hamburgers. They want to make it illegal for you to worship in church. The liberal media is the enemy of the people! We are the real Americans. They are enemies of America and of Jesus who must be destroyed in the name of God!”
I know of no parallel dehumanizing and violence-inciting narrative told about Republicans by Democrats. Things are so bad that some clergy have complained that the persistent presence of conspiracies among church members is “like an infection.” Some have said they are “exhausted” from dealing with their conspiracy-crazed members. Overwhelmed, a few preachers have even left their church for a kinder and more rational denomination.Tikkun needs your support to bring the kind of analyses and information we provide. Click Here to make a tax-deductible contribution.
As if perpetuating such absurd conspiracy theories is not enough, some of those fearmongering preachers, including televangelists, go even further and proclaim that Jesus has returned in the form of a corrupt and obese old man whose vanity knows no bounds, who more than once pushed aside other world leaders just so that he could be in front and center during a photo op. They idolize an adulterous man who has told us in his own words that he can violate any woman he wants whenever he wants, who lies, bullies, name-calls, cheats, and even separates children from their parents—a man who told us that the most important thing in his life is money: “When I see money, I want it all!” he said, while gesturing as if scooping up armfuls of cash. (Photo: “Greed” Liz West, 2008; Wikimedia Commons) What happened to Jesus’s admonishment that a person cannot serve both God and money? What happened to “it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle?” He once told us the biblical characteristic that he most admires is revenge. “I do whatever it takes to win!” the obese false prophet once told us. We later learned that he was true to his word when it was revealed that his campaign did in fact conspire with a hostile foreign government to influence an American election in his favor. What happened to the lesson we teach every child about how winning isn’t important; it’s how you play the game that matters?” Honesty, integrity, compassion, humility, sportsmanship, selflessness, generosity . . . traits to which we should all aspire.
Emboldened by the serpent-like whispers of some religious leaders in his ear, this vain man proclaimed that he is “The Chosen One” as he slyly gazed heavenward with a mischievous glint in his eyes. (Photo: “Serpent whispering to Eve” Walter Crane, 1899; Wikimedia Commons) “Only I can save you!” exclaimed the wannabe dictator to his Christian followers who conveniently forgot that the most fundamental tenet of their faith says that only Jesus can save you. Oblivious of the contents inside, the fake news prophet once celebrated the violent clearing of peaceful protesters with tear-gas and rubber bullets by holding up a bible on the steps of a church. Like Machiavelli, this would-be despot believes only in force and cruelty, deceit, instant gratification, and power for the sake of power. He and his followers forgot that Jesus was a protester of color. If he were here today, Jesus would likely stand on the side of Black Lives Matter. Jesus often drew on the long tradition of Old Testament prophets chastising the powerful when they exploit or fail to protect the vulnerable. He resented the way Romans oppressed Jews and ruled them as if they were second-class citizens with few rights in their own country. With little or no agency, Romans could do anything they wanted to Jews without accountability, similar to the way Blacks have historically been treated in America.
It also seems those preachers and their congregants have forgotten that Jesus and his mother and father were once refugees, immigrants looking for a safe place to live their lives without the threats of famine, drought, war, rape, enslavement, and violence. They were like all the parents today in search of a safe haven to raise their children, a land with the promise of opportunity, a land where a father might be able to support his family. Where would Christianity be if Egypt had turned away Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus and delivered them into the waiting hands of Herod’s murderous soldiers? (Photo: “Palestinian Iraqi IDP family near Jordanian border” Graham A. Paulsgrove, 2006; Wikimedia Commons)
Nothing I have said here is new. As the Bible says, there is nothing new under the sun. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Great religious thinkers have always known that faith breeds violence. Thomas Merton warned us of it in his last book, aptly entitled, Faith & Violence (1968). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and staunch critic of Hitler’s euthanasia program and his genocidal persecution of the Jews knew firsthand how faith can be turned into violence. More recently, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks warned us of it in Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence (2015) in which he calls the kind of evil that turns “ordinary non-psychopathic people into cold-blooded murderers” altruistic evil. Just as Nazi members swore allegiance to Hitler, too many Americans of faith have sworn allegiance to a flawed, corrupt, and power-hungry would-be despot instead of to the Constitution. These people oppress and injure and slaughter with vicious delight, certain that they are doing God’s work. As proof, many of the violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol wielded bibles, enormous crosses, and signs that stated that they were doing the violence in the name of God.
Don’t pretend to deny it. It’s really quite simple. Faith pits one religious group against other groups. In fact, the term for such behavior is called “Group Think.” Our tendency to “groupishness” makes us to believe, “We are righteous and know the true Word of God, while They are wicked sinners in league with Satan who preach a false gospel!” The “Other” is dehumanized, made to be less than human, the way Nazi propaganda posters vilified Jews as caricatures of lasciviousness and evil. It’s easier to hate that way. That terrible sentiment is at the heart of most violence and death in the history of the world. In simple terms, by its very existence, religion creates a “We versus They” or “Us versus Them” tribalism. “If you are not with us,” so the saying goes, “you are against us.” Oftentimes, the differences are minuscule: which hymnal to use during service, the use of religious iconography in church, the use of musical instruments, and so forth. Anyone who believes or thinks differently is called an extremist, a radical, a traitor, and even a terrorist. Sound familiar? It is the rationalization for all violence and oppression, including two thousand years of persecuting Jews. It also explains the recent surge (up more than 60% this year) of violence against Asian Americans and Jewish Americans. John Lennon of The Beatles knew this to be true when he penned the lyrics to “Imagine,” considered one of the greatest songs in the history of popular music. He knew that a peaceful, heaven-like world was only possible in a world without religion—a world in which members of one religion do not force their beliefs and opinions on other, sometimes violently. Lennon got a lot of criticism for saying that. But God is not a Republican. God does not love America more than any other country. Nowhere did Jesus say to hate those who voted differently from you in a democratic election. It is always wrong for one group to believe they must force their beliefs or opinions on everyone else, especially regarding matters as personal as religion. Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. To be free means to have the ability to choose. Democracy sometimes dies slowly, in increments: loss of the freedom of the press, loss of freedom of intellectualism, loss of individual rights, loss of the ability to vote, etc. The list is long.
Parroting the Republican lie to shield the obese, false prophet, some preachers and priests told their congregation that the global pandemic was fake. They instructed church-goers not to wear masks or to practice social distancing. Courting conservative Christians, one deceitful Republican congresswoman erroneously compared wearing a mask to help save lives during a global public health crisis with the horrors of the Holocaust. The Vatican recently removed one American priest for endangering the health and lives of his parishioners and the community at large by perpetuating the lie. The result of so much disinformation has been partially responsible for the death of 600,000 Americans so far. And later, once efficacious vaccines were widely available, these Covid-Deniers urged people not to get vaccinated. In their idiocy, they expounded conspiracies that the vaccine was really a government tracking system, and they even claimed that it made you magnetic. What would Jesus think about such utter selfishness, such lack of concern for the well-being and lives of others? We know what Jesus would say. He told us so. He said, “Above all, you will be known as my followers by your love for others.” Love means compassion and compassion means taking action to alleviate suffering. If Christians were like Jesus, they would have cared about their neighbor’s health, if not for their own safety or the safety of their own family. They would have gladly worn masks to protect others and to demonstrate their love for their neighbors. Instead, too many Christians flouted all attempts to save lives. “I have a right to get my hair done!” they bellowed from trucks and cars blockading access to state capitols.
As much as deceitful and power-hungry politicians are responsible for what happened on January 6, so too are some Christian preachers partially responsible. (Photo: “Tear gas Capitol” Tyler Merbler, 2021; Wikimedia Commons) For years, some of them have abused their authority from the pulpit to espouse hatred and fear and to perpetuate lies. More than a few preachers have told their flock to stockpile guns and prepare for a civil war, whereas Jesus told us to turn the other cheek and to love everyone as a neighbor and to love even our enemies. One preacher recently told his flock to hoard guns to shoot our fellow Black American citizens, whose only crime is they want a safer and more equitable world to live in for themselves and for their children.
It is our mutual trust in shared truths and common knowledge that holds a society together. A society based on lies cannot survive for long. Despots around the world follow the same authoritarian handbook, which instructs them to muddle the truth so much that citizens can no longer tell truth from lie. They exploit all forms of media to spread their campaign of disinformation. “Divide and conquer” is their mantra. In the confusion, the irrational masses are seduced by conspiracy theories, hidden symbols, and secret language that seem to explain everything. “Just listen to me!” exclaims the Great Manipulator. “I alone will tell you the truth!” And the duped masses with poor critical-thinking skills applaud wildly, unable or unwilling to recognize their role in the destruction of democracy. At the same time, they swear they would die for America. Being a nationalist does not make one a patriot. A patriot is someone who is concerned for the well-being of his or her fellow citizens—the love of neighbors. A true patriot cares more about the continuation of democracy and America than they do about a political party or a single voting issue.
How do we dial back the heated rhetoric, you ask? Walk away. For one month stop consuming news . . . all news. Give it up cold turkey the way some people try to end their addiction. Reset the dial. Allow yourself the chance to look at the world with optimism. See your neighbors for who they really are—fellow human beings, fellow Americans, who just want to live in a safe and just society with fairness and opportunity to pursue happiness as the Declaration of Independence promised all of us. Smile more often. Wave at your neighbors on both sides of the fence. If nothing else, you’ll sleep better.
Any preacher who incites hatred, divisiveness, prejudice, and violence instead of proclaiming Jesus’s message of understanding, tolerance, unity, mercy, forgiveness, love, and peace is violating the sanctity of the pulpit. They are not Children of God. They are not ambassadors of Jesus. They are not Vicars of Christ. They do not know the Word of God, for the words never made their way into their callous heart. They have no business standing in the pulpit. Instead, they should be working in a politician’s election campaign office selling baseball caps, yard signs, and bumper stickers. If you are a member of a church like the ones described above, it’s time to find another church with a pastor who espouses Jesus’s messages of love and compassion and tolerance and mercy. Tell them you left because you wanted to live by Jesus’s example of love, not hate. Tell them there’s already enough hatred in the world.
News Flash
Southern Baptists Elect Ed Litton as New President–June 16th, 2021
The Alabama pastor, known for his inclusion of women and work on racial justice, beat out Mike Stone of the Conservative Baptist Network in a runoff.
The Southern Baptists have elected an Alabama pastor known for his reconciliation work as their new president. Ed Litton’s win required a run-off, and it was something of a surprise. His winning margin was one of the thinnest in recent history, a result that reflects what some are calling a divided denomination. Example of great localize national religion story.
A relative unknown, Litton has made racial reconciliation a hallmark of his work since at least the 2014 riots after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. His election is considered a defeat for hard-right conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention’s recent battles over race, sexual abuse, and gender roles.Tikkun needs your support to bring the kind of analyses and information we provide. Click Here to make a tax-deductible contribution.
Dr. John Smelcer is the Inaugural Writer-in-Residence for the Charter for Compassion where he teaches a global online course called “Poetry for Inspiration and Well-Being.” He studied world religions at Harvard University, including a course in Religion and Violence. He is the author of over 60 books, including the award-winning, The Gospel of Simon, a retelling of Jesus’s crucifixion by Simon of Cyrene, and A New Day, a pocketbook of meditations to inspire love, compassion, hope, mercy, charity, tolerance, contemplation, and peace.
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