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In his new book 24/6, Matthew Sleeth connects Sabbath-keeping to social justice. Here’s a taste of a recent essay based on the book:

The Bible is about peo­ple try­ing to have a rela­tion­ship with God while exist­ing in a fallen world. Yet in our twenty-first cen­tury cul­ture, we’re not con­tent just to live in a fallen world: we’re putting rocket boost­ers on our backs to accel­er­ate our descent. And because our rela­tion­ship with God is inter­twined with how we care for cre­ation and for our global neigh­bors, when we don’t spend enough time with God, all our rela­tion­ships are adversely affected. . . .

The Sab­bath was not meant to be saved by human­ity; rather, human­ity was meant to be saved by the Sab­bath. I know from first-hand expe­ri­ence. After prac­tic­ing the Sab­bath for almost a decade, I have seen how it has saved me from the dis­ease of worka­holism. It has saved count­less num­bers of my patients from the phys­i­cal, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual con­se­quences of unremit­ting stress. If prac­ticed reg­u­larly, the Sab­bath can save you, too. . . .

Indeed, the future of our planet may very well depend upon Sab­bath rest. The 24/6 life allows us to see the earth not as an object for con­sump­tion but as a sub­ject for rela­tion­ship. It reminds us that God made the earth to meet every generation’s needs, not just one generation’s desires.

You are invited to a book talk/discussion/signing of Moral Minority. The event will be held at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Ky., this Wednesday at 6 p.m. For some local coverage on the event in the Lexington Herald-Leader, click here. Hope to see you there!

From the “Peace and Life Connections” newsletter of Consistent Life:

       In the largest single-year drop since legalization, the Centers for Disease Control report the U.S. abortion rate dropped 5% in 2009, the latest year for which it has figures.
The number of abortion clinics plummeted more in the 8 years when Bill Clinton was president than during any other 8-year period. Now the first year of Barack Obama’s term has offered another steep decline of another kind. But unlike that in the Clinton years, this decline can’t be attributed to relative economic prosperity; 2009 was the worst year of the Great Recession.
There are many ideas on why the abortion rate fell. One is that grassroots pro-life people take more action when not relying on presidential lip service.
In a similar dynamic, the peace movement held the largest world-wide peace demonstration ever under George W. Bush. It’s not nearly as active under the Obama administration. Yet with a kill list, weaponized drones, nuclear weapon “modernization,” the Guantanamo Bay prison still open and continuing wars, grassroots peace action is needed every bit as much under either administration, just as pro-life action is needed at all times.

It’s becoming the most prominent theme on this blog: the stories of Christians who don’t fit electoral structures. Here are a few more:

“20 Reasons Why the Christian Right and the Christian Left Won’t Adopt Me”

Very rarely do we see leaders or movements today in the spirit of Joseph Cardinal Bernardine who advocated “the seamless garment,” protesting against abortion as well as the causes which produce poverty and unjust war. To Bernardine, to fight against abortion, war, poverty, and the death penalty was to be consistently pro-life.

“Why This Christian Voted for Obama but Is Not (Yet) a Democrat”

Democrats are the pro-choice party, and I am concerned about the many Democrats who believe there should be no restrictions on abortion.

My faith and ethics say that Christians should have a completely pro-life bias.  Human life is sacred and the taking of human life should only be under the most extreme conditions.  We may defend ourselves, our loved ones, and the innocent.  Military actions should be a last resort and only for just reasons.  The death penalty as currently imposed in America has killed too many innocent people and should be stopped.

Wheaton sociologist Amy Reynolds just posted a nice reflection on why thanksgiving is not enough.

While I will continue to be thankful for the ability to give to my children, I believe simply being thankful is not only not enough.  It’s not the full story. It fails to see the way that our gifts are often not things that are ‘given by God,’ but rather are the result of a broken and unequal system. For me, that means needing to acknowledge that I benefit from a global economic system in a way that many do not, and to ask God what it means to be faithful with those resources that I have. As I think about what that means for my own life, I keep coming back to three things:

• To make a conscious choice not to exploit others, either indirectly or directly.  This requires me to more actively ask questions and investigate how I am able to achieve the lifestyle (and the “blessings” I have). For some, this entails questions about ethical and sustainable consumerism.
• To be committed to helping families thrive, and to help parents be able to support their own children.  I recognize that most parents want the best for the children, and being a good parent is largely (although not solely) about having certain resources.
• To remember why I became a sociologist. One of my central research interests deals with the way relationships are structured by changes in the international political economy.  While I often investigate macro-level concerns, it is because of the pupusa vendor in El Salvador trying to feed her children that I became a sociologist.

I’m in a football mood this week (Go Irish!). So I really enjoyed these fascinating portraits of professional football players. One–former NFL quarterback Jake Plummer–was desperate to leave the game. Another–aspiring NFL linebacker Pat Schiller–is intoxicated with the game and is willing to ruin his body for a shot to be a practice player.

Here’s a taste:

My last night with him in Atlanta, we went back to his town house after dinner to watch a little Monday-night Football. During a break in the action, he led me into his clothes-and-sneaker-strewn bedroom to show me the huge walk-in closet he felt would allow him to send back his rented dresser. I noticed that the dresser was topped with all manner of balms, unguents and painkilling medications: a 23-year-old with the medicine cabinet of a septuagenarian.

This post from Sojourners shows what the evangelical left is up to these days.

This Thanksgiving, we at Sojourners are thankful for each of you — for your activism, your readership, your donations, your prayers. We could not do any of this work without your support. So today, we’d like to highlight just a few of the ways your participation and contributions have helped affect real change in Washington, across the country in your communities, and truly worldwide.

Check out my guest post on Kurt Willems’ Pangea Blog. I write about Election Day Communion and evangelical trends toward post-partisanship. Here’s a taste:

That’s what is so encouraging about the Election Day Communion movement that caught fire in the weeks preceding November 6, 2012. The event I attended in Lexington, Kentucky (among the 700 events in all fifty states), was a beautiful scene of young and old, black and white, Anabaptist and Reformed, and Republican and Democratic. Inside a combination thrift store/coffee shop, about 60 of us worshiped the “slaughtered lamb” whose power came not from politics, but rather from death on a cross. For about an hour, on this most partisan of evenings, we transcended the vitriol through prayer, worship, and the celebration of communion.

Check out these two compelling posts on American poverty: “The Line, the 47%, and the Food Stamp Professor” by Soong-Chan Rah and “How Can We Love and Serve the Poor if We Don’t Even Know the Poor” by Eugene Cho. Each focuses on how the poor are often dehumanized and how “The Line” is a powerful film that can open our eyes to the humanity of those struggling with poverty.

Here’s a conservative the evangelical left would like. Check out this column by Andrew Bacevich at the Front Porch Republic:

In recent decades, the Republican Party’s version of conservatism has emphasized three major themes:

First, in the realm of political economy, Republicans favor small government and unbridled capitalism, looking to the market to solve our domestic problems.

Second, in the realm of foreign policy, Republicans favor big government and unbridled activism, looking to the military to prolong the American Century.

Third, in the realm of culture, Republicans have spoken in defense of so-called traditional values, making much of their putative opposition to abortion and the defense of traditional marriage.

Republicans have made the first two themes the actual basis for policy.  On the third theme, they have offered little more than symbolism and sanctimonious posturing.  So the real guts of GOP conservatism in recent decades have focused on unleashing the market and the military – less state regulation of the economy, more state resources funneled to the Pentagon.

I submit that neither of these qualifies as a genuinely conservative position.  To the extent that I have accurately characterized the Romney campaign’s position, I am glad Romney lost.

The essence of conservatism should be to conserve, showing respect for what is good in our inheritance.  I refer both to our human inheritance and our inheritance in the natural world.

The market does not conserve.  Capitalism is good for one thing:  creating wealth.  As an arena in which the pursuit of profit takes precedence over all other considerations, the market destroys much of what conservatives should value.

Except when used prudently to defend what is truly dear to us, the military does not conserve.  It consumes and wastes.