Postmodern Renaissance Culture Revolutionary

Everyone knows that politics are not just for government. There are politics involved in everything. Even little league baseball. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that the church is just as political. If it does surprise you, let me invite you to click on one of your other favorite websites now. I realize that Conference politics is more complicated than the simplified, hardcore Liberal/Conservative division. I know pastors who fall into the nebulous Moderate category. Then you have apolitical types who move along the spectrum depending on the issue or current life circumstance. So it is not as easy as this side or this group against that group. What I have come to realize is that church politics, maybe more than any other manifestation of politics, relies on the perspective of the one observing others. We use words like liberal, conservative, progressive, and traditional. The shortcoming of these qualities is that they are adjectives and not nouns. They cannot stand by themselves u...

Resolution 4 wanted the Conference to endorse the creation of a bipartisan task force by the Oklahoma State Legislature to explore and create a plan to provide health insurance for every person in Oklahoma. Opinion We live in a time when people cannot get basic medical care due to the costs. Insurance is available but not to all people. And some insurance doesn't really provide for the care that people truly need. There is a critical need for some type of plan so that people can get the health care then need. But the State Legislature is probably not where that should come from. This resolution was wanting a "citizen" task force. Can we honestly believe that our party-based, political machine can produce a group of people whose sole agenda is creating a health care plan devoid of any political muckery. Or can there be a program that is amenable to private health care systems without being a government funded social medical system. Social medicine is not going to provide t...

I've been a little tardy about this last update. Two reasons: I was busy and I didn't know how I felt about Thursday. The entire family went down Thursday. Which means we were late getting to Conference. Thursday was the "big day" so to speak. Most of the resolutions that were hot topic were scheduled for the day as well as finishing up the voting process. I'll deal with the resolutions first. The first resolution sparked a little bit of discussion. It was a resolution calling on the UM's in Oklahoma to, in essence, boycott any sporting event that use Native American names or mascots. There was no distinction given to professional or local school teams. This was asking for a general boycott of any team that used Native American names or mascots. Opinion I am not against changing team names to remove reference to Native American heritage. I believe that some enduring images of the injustice done to Native Americans are still too fresh to simply say that it is h...