My beloved mother used to say to me as a kid when my imagination ran wild, “Stop living in your dream world!” What she meant was that my fanciful, quixotic ruminations on life as I had imagined and hoped would not come true in the immediate moment and that I had better come back to reality right [...]
The movie Wall Street by Oliver Stone has become a landmark film in American popular culture. The central character of the film is Gordon Gekko who gives a speech before the Board of Directors of a major corporation whose now famous statement that” greed is good” is often proudly and widely quoted in the American business lexicon as the mantra of capitalist free enterprise. The [...]
In this day of the twenty four hours news cycle, info-tainment and stuff that passes as news but really is more personal opinion designed at fashioning a true idiocracy; where news organizations focus more on the celebrity life styles of the rich and famous than any serious or insightful analysis of American political life and culture, the political commentary [...]
Several weeks ago I had a discussion with a man who said quite heatedly. “Christians should only be concerned about spiritual things and stay out of politics.” I asked this man why he thought that spiritual things did not involve our participation in politics since so much of political decision making affects us at every level of our daily lives. I [...]
I have learned through many years of dealing with people to avoid the overgeneralizations and broad brushing tendencies that lump all persons of a particular group into one negative type. There are always exceptions to the rule that defy categorically the labels that we place on persons and groups. This can be said of today’s Republican Party. The Tea Party members who now [...]
Recently there has been much discussion about rebuilding America’s physical infrastructures. Roads and bridges are in disrepair and the general condition of many pathways and passageways in America beg a complete overhaul and redoing. Congress should act immediately to provide funding for these initiatives and do so post haste. In another sense however, America should not only be [...]
Delivered at the Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, Birmingham Community House, Birimingham, Michigan January 16, 2011 America has made great progress in the granting Civil and Human rights to African Americans and other groups the last sixty years. Blacks are no longer the victims of the virulent and violent forms of racism so prevalent in the South [...]
Recently, we have witnessed the emergence of the new American Occupy movement whose cries for justice, fairness and equality resonate with millions of people throughout this land. It is a movement that has taken upon itself the concerns of the many, the 99 percenters, whose pleas and protests for human dignity and equality of opportunity often fall upon the deaf [...]
“And Still We Rise ” Delivered on the Lord’s Day for Black History Month January 28, 2007 Acts 26:12a-18; Nehemiah 2:11-20 Carlyle Fielding Stewart, III So they said, Let us rise up and build. Then they set their hands to this good work.” Nehemiah 2:18b ”So I said, “Who are you Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom [...]
Delivered on the Lord’s Day Political Candidates Sunday/October 23, 2011 II Kings 4:1-7; Matthew 19:16-26; Luke 12:16-2 The scriptures for today’s sermon provide a glimpse into the power of creative thinking. Jesus, the master teacher, always provided food for thought through lessons that challenged people to think differently about themselves and world so they could solve [...]
