Real Change Articles
Written By Rev. Rich Lang
Published in Real Change Newspaper
“Real Change publishes the only “street newspaper” in Washington State and the only newspaper that consistently focuses on poverty, homelessness, and social justice.
2013 |
Work in Progress |
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| 4/24/13 | Without A Vision The People Perish |
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| It’s hard to be happy these days. Try as we do it is getting increasingly difficult to pretend that the times we are living in are morally normal. We’ve done a pretty good job pretending that we are not at war. Most of us are oblivious to how much the military steals from our national treasury, and most have certainly forgotten about our invasions… |
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| 4/10/13 | The Friendly Neighborhood Church | |||
| Link to Article | One of the reasons that churches get property tax breaks is that the buildings are suppose to be used for the enhancement of the neighborhood in which they are located. Churches are suppose to be sites for the common good. This is the reason that churches are often hosts for homeless shelters, food banks, and free meals… |
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| 3/13/13 | Apocalypse Now? You Better Believe It | |||
| Link to Article | In the Bible there is a type of literature called apocalyptic. It’s a writing style that focuses on visions and cosmic catastrophe, with an almost psychedelic quality about it, as if the author took one too many mushrooms. This is the type of writing we encounter in the Book of Revelation, along with the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and others… | Download PDF | ||
| 2/27/13 | If you live on the edge, there’s a way back from the brink | |||
| Link to Article | I received another call today. This time from a woman with a four year old daughter. They needed $80 to pay the rent. I suspect she was just calling random churches because she’d already checked out other helping agencies. But it always strikes me as a bit odd that folks seem to think that random calls produce results… | Download PDF | ||
| 2/13/13 | Can we reconcile religion’s often violent past to help create a more compassionate future? | |||
| Link to Article | For Christians the holy season of introspection is upon us. We call this Lent, and it is a time when we follow Jesus’ example of going out into the wilderness to wrestle with the devil for 40 days. As the story goes, it was immediately upon his return that Jesus began his public ministry of confrontation with that era’s 1 percent… | Download PDF | ||
| 1/30/13 | Walking and Praying for a Peaceful World | |||
| Link to Article | Guns in America are like cars in America. Woe to anyone who tries to take them away. Of course the truth is that no one is trying to take away guns — regulating gun ownership is similar to how we license cars. Banning the sale of automatic weapons with their high-capacity… | Download PDF | ||
| 1/16/13 | People Who Are More Informed Can Dream Up a Better Revolution | |||
| Link to Article | When the institutions of society are corrupted, or the institutions’ actions become repetitive, unfocused, dull and merely uphold the status quo, cultural atrophy begins to wither a nation’s spirit. The Bible speaks of it this way: “Without a vision the people perish.” When our institutions of commerce, political order, religion, media and education stop functioning for the common good, they become part of the problem. | Download PDF | ||
| 1/02/13 | Refusing to Choose Sides in the Israel-Palestine Conflict | |||
| Link to Article | Most of us are just normal human beings. But every once in a while we get an opportunity to be in the presence of a great soul whose commonplace demeanor shines a bright light that illumines the goodness of life itself. When we have those opportunities we come away profoundly… | Download PDF | ||
2012 |
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| 12/19/12 | Knowing Your Rights Won’t Keep You From Losing Them | |||
| Link to Article | Adnan Latif, a citizen of Yemen who was detained at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, died there in early September after being imprisoned and tortured to protect our freedom (“Despite Seattle activists’ efforts to free him, Yemeni man perishes in Guantanamo Bay prison,” RC, Sept. 19, 2012). He was accused… | Download PDF | ||
| 12/05/12 | ‘Twas the Tithe Before Christmas | |||
| Link to Article | Let’s face it: Christmas is a consumer holiday. It has little if anything to do with celebrating the birth of a peasant child whose teachings have inspired countless acts of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. Even Christians put the Christ-child in the backroom at Christmas time. Indeed, quite often… | Download PDF | ||
| 11/21/12 | A Liberal Lament for the Liberal Church | |||
| Link to Article | I am a pastor at one of many dying liberal churches. Liberal churches are those that affirm many paths up the mountain of God. We affirm that life itself is good and that we human beings are capable of great… | Download PDF | ||
| 11/07/12 | After the Election, Will the Left Get Things Right? | |||
| Link to Article | I’m writing this a week before the election only to have it published the day after the election. Who knows what mood we’ll be in? Will happiness rule as we allow marriage equality for all? Will smoking… | Download PDF | ||
| 9/26/12 | Hope in ‘leaps and bounds’ | |||
| Link to Article | There is simply no way to look at the environment, our earth, and walk away with a happy face. Global warming is no longer a hypothesis or a warning: It is the weekly news of… | Download PDF | ||
| 9/12/12 | Have a Seat in the Cafe that Serves the Common Good | |||
| Link to Article | At times we just need a place to gather and talk. We need a place where we can learn how to be with others in a sane, civil, civic conversation about matters that matter. We need to learn how to practice democracy. Every Thursday night, the Common Good Café hosts a… | Download PDF | ||
| 8/29/12 | Our Savior and Protector, Jack Bauer | |||
| Link to Article | I remember years ago, after 9/11, the Fox Network created the dramatic series “24,” giving America a new savior, Jack Bauer. Having viewed an episode with my two young sons, I said to them at the time that the whole purpose of that drama was to… | Download PDF | ||
| 8/15/12 | Fighting the Good Fight Means Getting Back to Fighting Weight | |||
| Link to Article | Recently I’ve been on a bit of a health kick. I’d allowed my weight to balloon up to 50 pounds over what my body frame can healthily carry. My blood sugar was nearing diabetes level, and I found myself tired all the time. So far I’ve lost 22 pounds… | Download PDF | ||
| 7/18/12 | In the Search for a More Moral Society, it’s Worth Considering All of the Options | |||
| Link to Article | A couple weeks ago I said in a sermon, “I advocate for political changes in the economy so that everyone can have a roof over their head, food in their belly, a job, free education and health care, but there is no political party… | Download PDF | ||
| 7/4/12 | On July Fourth: My Birthday Wishes for America | |||
| Link to Article | These are times that require a strong moral compass by which we can safely, securely, and faithfully navigate the strong headwinds that threaten to overwhelm our journey toward the pursuit of happiness. The latter phrase, the pursuit of happiness, is… | Download PDF | ||
| 6/20/12 | To Look Good on Wood, You Must Risk Looking a Little Crazy in Public | |||
| Link to Article | Jesuit priest, poet and activist Daniel Berrigan once said, “If you want to follow Jesus, you better look good on wood.” With a multitude of arrests and prison confinements… | Download PDF | ||
| 6/6/12 | Only Compassion Can Rebuild the Ruins | |||
| Link to Article | Each week in worship I pray for both the renewal of the church and the renewal of all faith communities. I pray that we will return to our roots and drink deeply from a common well of compassion… | Download PDF | ||
| 5/9/12 | Let’s Practice Listening to One Another, for Our Own Families and for the Common Good | |||
| Link to Article | Last week my wife and I went to visit the right-wing side of the family. This is always an odd experience because, on the one hand, we really love the folks. They are great, salt-of-the-earth people who have integrity and kindness as part of their character. But start talking religion and politics and suddenly… | Download PDF | ||
| 4/25/12 | We, the People, are the Problem. It’s p to Us to Create Solutions | |||
| Link to Article | It’s mind numbing just to try and actually do something to truly change the way we’re living. The problem isn’t just the politicians or the filthy-rich who own them. It isn’t just institutional inertia or a bureaucratic maze of Catch-22s. It’s also we the people… | Download PDF | ||
| 4/11/12 | Political Parties Aren’t Creating Change. It’s Time for the Common Good Cafe | |||
| Link to Article | For some 40 years now the business community has organized money and people for the purpose of seizing power over our lives. With the rise of the legal fiction known as the corporate person, we humans now serve immortal entities that increasingly set the rules by which we live… | Download PDF | ||
| 3/28/12 | Dare to Dream of Rights for People, Not Corporations | |||
| Link to Article | It’s becoming clearer every day that we are living in a time of great political turmoil and transition. The Republican Party swings wildly between the extremes of the outright nihilism of abolishing government to a fascist consolidation of militarized corporate rule over all spheres of society… | Download PDF | ||
| 2/29/12 | Progressive Christian Leaders Must Once Again Heed the Call for Moral Leadership | |||
| Link to Article | I’ve been thinking about the insanity of right-wing Christianity and its politics. How did we stumble into such an abysmal gutter?… | Download PDF | ||
| 2/9/12 | It’s Time to Occupy the Progressive Church | |||
| Link to Article | I’m a clergy, baptized with pepper spray after a Seattle police assault while trying to keep the peace in the midst of an ugly confrontation. Back in the day before the State crushed the Occupy encampments, I would venture into them amazed… | Download PDF | ||
| 2/1/12 | The Long Haul Game | |||
| Link to Article | These are times of great bewilderment when truth is shrouded and rarely clear. I have good friends, sharp, bright, politically alive, spiritually awakened friends who disagree with my assessment concerning the signs of the times. Take for example our interpretation of Obama… | Download PDF | ||
| 1/18/12 | The Crisis and the Cure | |||
| Link to Article | The crisis of Western Civilization is at its root a spiritual crisis concerning loss of identity and purpose. Western civilization is founded upon the redeemer myths of the Jewish-Christian sacred stories. The Jewish redeemer myth went something like this… | Download PDF |