Posted by Pierre Berastain
Author: Alan Bean
In Memoriam: Gordon Cosby
By Alan Bean
Gordon Cosby died yesterday at the tender age of 94. With his wife, Mary, Gordon founded the Church of the Savior, and a long list of spin-off ministries, in Washington DC, over a period of sixty incredible years. The Cosby’s are best known for their Journey Inward-Journey Outward approach to life and ministry: grounding doing in being and being in doing.
I only met the Cosby’s once, and not at the same time. Gordon preached at the chapel of Southern Seminary in Louisville in the late 1970s and my wife, Nancy, was selected to give the introduction. Nancy recalls that as they waited for the service to begin the seminary chaplain was babbling on about nothing in particular. “Excuse me,” Cosby interrupted gently, “I am preparing myself for worship.” The Church of the Savior was almost 30 years old at this time, and Cosby (who seemed pretty old to me) had over three more decades of ministry before him. (more…)
Racist comments disrupt CPAC “Race Card” session
Pro-slavery comments from the audience drew unwanted attention to a breakout session at last week’s CPAC convention. The session was called, “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You’re Not One”. Unfortunately, some attendees were racist and proud of it. Or, to put the matter more delicately, they were proud of “their demographic” and feared that once-dominant white folks are gradually being disenfranchised. (more…)
Lutheran Pastor shares God’s love for the poor
The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra will be speaking at our Common Peace Community kickoff event at 12 noon at Broadway Baptist Church this coming Saturday. Alexia is a pastor with the Evangelical Church in America who works with the working poor of California (among other things). She gives the lie to the common (and understandable) notion that evangelicals don’t care about the poor. Caring about the poor is at the heart of Alexia’s life–and should be at the heart of ours. We invite you to worship and rejoice with us on Saturday.
A changed life gets a second chance
By Alan Bean
Hope and Nazry Mustakim will be speaking at the kickoff event for our Common Peace Community on Saturday. If you live in the DFW area, we invite you to join us at 12 noon in Room 302 at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth. Hope didn’t have to worry about the Department of Homeland Security until she married a man from Singapore. That simple decision opened a door to a strange and frightening world.
‘NAZ’ BEATS AN IMMIGRATION SYSTEM SLIM ON SECOND CHANCES
PUBLISHED: FEBRUARY 22, 2012
Armed immigration agents woke Nazry Mustakim and his wife, Hope, as dawn broke on March 30, 2011, banging on the door of their North Waco home. Even as they handcuffed 32-year-old Naz, as friends and family know him, agents promised the arrest was merely administrative. He’d be released within hours, they said. “His case had just been flagged for some reason,” Hope said. “I was told he’d be out in no time.” Naz texted his call-center boss, saying he’d be late for work.
Days later, however, U.S. Immigration and Customs officials told Hope that Naz would be deported to Singapore and he was sent to the ICE detention center in Pearsall, south of San Antonio, to wait. (more…)
Berastain: Domestic Violence in LGBT Communities
This post by Friends of Justice intern Pierre Berastain originally appeared in the Huffington Post.
By Pierre Berastain
Every time a celebrity suffers from or commits intimate partner abuse, the media responds by writing op-eds, hosting panels of experts, and making the public aware of resources available to them. As someone who works in the field of domestic violence, I am glad these conversations take place, and I wish they would occur with more frequency. After all, the Center for Disease Control indicates that 1 of 4 women and 1 in 7 men over the age of 18 experiences severe physical violence in their lifetime. These conversations clearly need to happen.
The public, too, reads more and becomes more informed every time a celebrity tragedy takes place. What we see and hear, though, usually consists of advice to determine whether the man is abusing the woman, and once abuse is determined, conversations turn to how women can escape abusive relationships. But what happens in same-sex or LGBT relationships? In this short piece, I would like to cover how partner abuse manifests itself in the LGBT community, which experiences domestic violence at equal rates–and sometimes higher–than those of the rest of the population (25-33% of the LGBT population experiences domestic violence in its lifetime). True, any person–gay or straight–can be controlling of finances, hit another individual, or constantly make derogatory comments. However, intimate partner abuse in the LGBT population also manifests itself differently, thus presenting specific challenges our community faces when recognizing partner abuse and when trying to access services.
Here, then, are some things to consider: (more…)
Cohen: The Lies We Tell Each Other About the Right To Counsel
By Alan Bean
Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright theoretically gave criminal defendants an iron-clad right to effective legal representation. But Andrew Cohen of the Brennan Center for Justice says it’s a lie. Everything was fine until America raced headlong into a self-destructive tango with mass incarceration. Suddenly, there were so many cases at bar that we faced a choice: either pump millions of dollars into the indigent defense system or whittle away at Gideon until the ostensible right to the services of a good lawyer meant next to nothing. Guess which way we moved? (more…)
Canadians outraged by immigration raid staged for the cameras
By Alan Bean
Canadian activists are outraged by an immigration raid in Vancouver that they claim was staged for a reality show. The folks with the cameras claim they are producing a documentary and only use footage after getting verbal permission. A woman working across the street from the action claims to be deeply upset: “It doesn’t seem very Canadian,” she told the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) “It’s very sensationalized. I don’t like it. It’s just very creepy.”
This video is taken from the Vancouver Sun’s story on the raid.
Canadians define themselves in opposition to the United States. As Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once explained to an American reporter, “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant . . . one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” When Canadians say something “isn’t very Canadian” we usually mean it is very American.
Canadians have just recently gained a passion for deporting undocumented aliens. True, the number of people deported from Canada increased by 50% between 1999 and 2009, but we’re talking about an increase from 8,361 deportations per year to 12,732.
Contrast that with the 400,000 folks the Obama administration deported last year.
Of course Canada is one-tenth the size of the US and doesn’t share a border with a less wealthy nation, so comparisons are precarious. Still, I find the reaction of the populace gratifying. People were generally outraged by the idea of staging an immigration sweep for the cameras, something that would hardly raise an eyebrow in the USA. And the immigration people were quick to insist that they were really looking for a genuine baddie and just stumbled over the other people by accident.
Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, appears to be fascinated by all things American, including our war on drugs and our prison industrial complex. Is he now taking an interest in mass deportation? Will private detention centers soon be springing up along the border between British Columbia and Washington State? Perhaps some of our Canadian readers can shed some light on these questions. (more…)
They shoot preachers, don’t they?
By Alan Bean
In his book Don’t Shoot, criminologist David Kennedy identifies a disconnect between a criminal justice system built on the notion of personal responsibility and the fact that gang bangers think and behave as members of a group. You can’t reduce gun violence by ratcheting up the penalties for individuals, Kennedy believes, you have to deal with entire neighborhoods at once.
Kennedy’s insight came to mind last week when I read Brent Younger’s post about “Preaching peace in a timid church“. A few years ago, Younger moved from Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth to teach preaching at the McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta.
At the 2012 William Self Preaching Lectures at the McAfee School of Theology, “Preaching Peace in a Crumbling Empire,” Brian McLaren argued that the Bible is a call to speak God’s word of peace to an empire built on power.
“We preach the peace of one who was crucified, so we cannot preach power that crucifies,” McLaren said. “We preach a way of love and service, so we cannot preach conquest and domination.”
McLaren’s words in the chapel were challenging and inspiring. The words in the hall — not so much. Popular opinion seems to be that peace belongs in lectures, but not in sermons:
“That peace stuff wouldn’t fly at my church.”
“Now we know why McLaren isn’t a pastor anymore.”
“His last church must have been in Switzerland.”
“If I preach on peace, war will break out in the next deacons’ meeting.”
“I’ll preach against the war when McLaren agrees to pay my kid’s college tuition.”
In Jesus’ day prophets were run out of town, thrown off a cliff or stoned in the middle of the village. Now we dismiss prophets in the conversations between lectures.
The fear of social consequences largely determines what is said and remains unsaid in the pulpits of Christendom. It isn’t just street punks who engage in group-think, it’s everybody. (more…)
The Conservative Case Against More Prisons
By Alan Bean
Vikrant Reddy and Marc Levin are unimpressed by arguments that associate high rates of American incarceration with white racism. In fact, race hardly figures in their argument. Liberals may not have created the high rates of violence that sparked a turn to punitive policies, they say, but liberals didn’t lift a finger to stop the killing.
Reddy and Levin aren’t even convinced that the shift to mass incarceration was a bad idea back in the day. But with crime rates plunging nationwide, they ask, does it make sense to keep pumping billions of dollars into prisons that aren’t making us safer?
The authors attribute about a quarter of the drop in crime to high rates of incarceration, and I suspect they have it about right. But that means 75% of the drop in crime has nothing to do with high rates of incarceration. Let’s lock up the violent criminals, they say, but find less expensive ways of dealing with non-violent offenders that involve less tax money and less government. To their credit, they realize that everybody suffers when felons who have served their time can’t find decent jobs. (more…)
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