11 Temmuz 2012 Çarşamba
10 Temmuz 2012 Salı
8 Temmuz 2012 Pazar
Tax season is here.
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Well it is official. It is March 1, 2011. Get those RRSPs topped up today. It also means all T slips should be filed and the personal tax season is here. Will had a great week off to prepare and I enjoyed a weekend of skiing before the craziness begins.
It is truly beautiful in Calgary's backdoor.
So for the next few months I'll try to keep the discussion relating to personal taxes to help you all out. This week I'll discuss employment expenses.
In 2010 if you were a salaried employee or commissioned employee and you were required to incur certain expenses to conduct your job, you may be eligible to deduct those expenses on your personal return.
The first step is to have your employer file and sign a for T2200. This form is a statement from your employer that declares your employment conditions. For example if you were required to work away from your regular place of business and had to incur vehicle expenses, purchase you own supplies as well as work from home, this declaration would allow you to deduct those specific employment expenses on your tax return. Here is a link to the form T2200
Now if you qualify and your employer has signed the T2200, on your return we can deduct expenses such as:Professional fees, Travelling expenses, Supplies, Office Rent, Allowable motor vehicle expenses, Parking, Salary expenses, and work space in the home expenses.
As a commissioned employee you can deduct the above expenses and additionally:Advertising, Food and beverage, Entertainment, Lodging, Licenses, Training costs and few more expenses.
Keep in mind that the qualifying expense must meet certain criteria, such as time away from your regular place of business, home office qualifications, and hours worked to qualify for meal expenses.
So if you regularly have to incur expenses to earn your employment income you may qualify to deduct those expenses on your personal tax return. As mentioned this requires certain forms to be completed and certain criteria to be met. Contact your accountant to discuss your options.
Have a great week, stay warm and bring on the spring already.
It is truly beautiful in Calgary's backdoor.
So for the next few months I'll try to keep the discussion relating to personal taxes to help you all out. This week I'll discuss employment expenses.
In 2010 if you were a salaried employee or commissioned employee and you were required to incur certain expenses to conduct your job, you may be eligible to deduct those expenses on your personal return.
The first step is to have your employer file and sign a for T2200. This form is a statement from your employer that declares your employment conditions. For example if you were required to work away from your regular place of business and had to incur vehicle expenses, purchase you own supplies as well as work from home, this declaration would allow you to deduct those specific employment expenses on your tax return. Here is a link to the form T2200
Now if you qualify and your employer has signed the T2200, on your return we can deduct expenses such as:Professional fees, Travelling expenses, Supplies, Office Rent, Allowable motor vehicle expenses, Parking, Salary expenses, and work space in the home expenses.
As a commissioned employee you can deduct the above expenses and additionally:Advertising, Food and beverage, Entertainment, Lodging, Licenses, Training costs and few more expenses.
Keep in mind that the qualifying expense must meet certain criteria, such as time away from your regular place of business, home office qualifications, and hours worked to qualify for meal expenses.
So if you regularly have to incur expenses to earn your employment income you may qualify to deduct those expenses on your personal tax return. As mentioned this requires certain forms to be completed and certain criteria to be met. Contact your accountant to discuss your options.
Have a great week, stay warm and bring on the spring already.
Tax credits
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So things at the office have been good. Lots of activity lately in the office, we have seen many new as well as familiar faces dropping by, very nice. Good ole taxes are getting done. It is time to come on by to see us and join in the fun.
This week's posting is a quick discussion on non refundable tax credits available to taxpayers.
Non refundable tax credits are personal tax credits available, these credits are calculated by adding up the total of credits that you qualify for and multiplying them by 15% (lowest federal tax rate, provincial rates differ).
The following is a list of a few of these credits
Personal ($10,382)Over age 64 (max $6,446)Transfers from spouse/dependantAmount for children born after 1993CPP/EIPension incomeDisability/CaregiverTuition/education/student loan interestCanada Employment CreditPublic TransitChildren’s Fitness amountHome Buyers’ amountAdoption expensesMedicalDonationsDividend tax creditOverseas employment
So if you think you qualify for any of the above credits let your accountant know when getting your personal taxes prepared.
Have a great weekend and let the spring shine in. Remember to set your clocks ahead one hour on Sunday. Day light savings already.
For federal tax purposes you add up all the credits you qualify for and multiply the result by 15% to determine the amount you can deduct from your taxes owing.
This week's posting is a quick discussion on non refundable tax credits available to taxpayers.
Non refundable tax credits are personal tax credits available, these credits are calculated by adding up the total of credits that you qualify for and multiplying them by 15% (lowest federal tax rate, provincial rates differ).
The following is a list of a few of these credits
Personal ($10,382)Over age 64 (max $6,446)Transfers from spouse/dependantAmount for children born after 1993CPP/EIPension incomeDisability/CaregiverTuition/education/student loan interestCanada Employment CreditPublic TransitChildren’s Fitness amountHome Buyers’ amountAdoption expensesMedicalDonationsDividend tax creditOverseas employment
So if you think you qualify for any of the above credits let your accountant know when getting your personal taxes prepared.
Have a great weekend and let the spring shine in. Remember to set your clocks ahead one hour on Sunday. Day light savings already.
For federal tax purposes you add up all the credits you qualify for and multiply the result by 15% to determine the amount you can deduct from your taxes owing.
Family fun
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So we are now in mid March, the snow is melting and the sun is shining. We are getting very busy at the office and looking forward to having you come in and get another year of taxes completed.
It was a week to celebrate the Irish, March Madness and spring time.
Also we have now started a facebook account check it out the name is of course, Henderson Campeau Chartered Accoutnants.
This week to build on the tax credit posting last week. I'll inform you that if you have a spouse,common law partner or dependants; and they don't use all of their tax credits, certain amounts can be transfered to you.
These credits include:
Therefore it is in your best interest to file the entire family's returns at the same time to ensure all the credits are optimized.
Additionally if you are single and have children, infirm dependants, elderly parents and maintain a dwelling for these dependants you may qualify for additional credits, such as eligible dependant amount or the caregiver tax credit.
Another confirmation that discussing your entire family situation with your accountant and for accountants getting to know their clients personal situation is very important.
It was a week to celebrate the Irish, March Madness and spring time.
Also we have now started a facebook account check it out the name is of course, Henderson Campeau Chartered Accoutnants.
This week to build on the tax credit posting last week. I'll inform you that if you have a spouse,common law partner or dependants; and they don't use all of their tax credits, certain amounts can be transfered to you.
These credits include:
- Tuition credits (up to $5,000 federal and provincial)
- Disability credit
- Personal credit of $10,382
- Child amount (can be used by either parent)
- Age amount if you are over 64
- Pension amount (If you are receiving a pension the income can be split between spouses)
- Donations (the amount of donations between spouses can all be used by one individual)
- Medical expenses (family medical expenses can be optimized on one return)
Therefore it is in your best interest to file the entire family's returns at the same time to ensure all the credits are optimized.
Additionally if you are single and have children, infirm dependants, elderly parents and maintain a dwelling for these dependants you may qualify for additional credits, such as eligible dependant amount or the caregiver tax credit.
Another confirmation that discussing your entire family situation with your accountant and for accountants getting to know their clients personal situation is very important.
Birds and the Bees
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Ok, so this time I think spring is on the way for real. The sun over the last couple of days has been nice and getting everyone giddy after a long, long, long Calgary winter. Here at Henderson Campeau we are putting in the time to ensure you are getting your tax refunds back in your pocket and ensuring you are not overpaying for fun things like elections.
We are still managing to enjoy life amongst all the busy office hours. Paul got out with his brother's family to do some cross country skiing at the Canmore Nordic Centre. I have much more respect for those cross country skiing athletes.
Will has been enjoying the spring thaw right here in Calgary and Kensington getting out and enjoying the city.
Seeing it's spring it's a good time to talk about children and dependents.
The CRA has several tax credits in place for children and dependents. Here is a brief description of them:
Eligible dependent amount: If at any time in the year you were single and cared for a dependent in your home you would be eligible for this tax credit. This credit can be up to $10,382 federally.
Child amount tax credit : For each child under the age of 18, one person can claim a child amount for $2,101.
Caregiver and amount for infirm dependents : If you maintain a dwelling for a infirm dependent or a parent over the age of 65, you may qualify for the caregiver tax credit. If you care for a dependent over the age of 18 and is infirm there is also an amount for infirm dependents.
Disability amounts and medical expenses : If you care for a dependent and they qualify for the disability tax credit you can transfer that amount to you. Also if you incur certain medical expenses to care for a dependent some of those medical expenses may be deductible on your return.
Childcare Expenses and fitness amount: I discussed these in a previous posting, check out the archives for more specifics. If at any time you paid for child care or fitness for your children these expenses may be deductible on your return.
Universal Child Care Benefit and Canadian Child Tax Benefit : Once you have your child please fill out the Child Benefits Application to ensure you are not missing out on any child benefit payments. The UCCB is for any child under 6 years of age and the CCTB is a benefit for lower income families. Here is a link to the application to ensure you are not missing out: Child Tax Benefits.
Having an accountant to advise and ensure you are taking advantage of all your available tax credits in regards to children or dependents can save you a lot of hard earned money.
Enjoy the start to April.
We are still managing to enjoy life amongst all the busy office hours. Paul got out with his brother's family to do some cross country skiing at the Canmore Nordic Centre. I have much more respect for those cross country skiing athletes.
Will has been enjoying the spring thaw right here in Calgary and Kensington getting out and enjoying the city.
Seeing it's spring it's a good time to talk about children and dependents.
The CRA has several tax credits in place for children and dependents. Here is a brief description of them:
Eligible dependent amount: If at any time in the year you were single and cared for a dependent in your home you would be eligible for this tax credit. This credit can be up to $10,382 federally.
Child amount tax credit : For each child under the age of 18, one person can claim a child amount for $2,101.
Caregiver and amount for infirm dependents : If you maintain a dwelling for a infirm dependent or a parent over the age of 65, you may qualify for the caregiver tax credit. If you care for a dependent over the age of 18 and is infirm there is also an amount for infirm dependents.
Disability amounts and medical expenses : If you care for a dependent and they qualify for the disability tax credit you can transfer that amount to you. Also if you incur certain medical expenses to care for a dependent some of those medical expenses may be deductible on your return.
Childcare Expenses and fitness amount: I discussed these in a previous posting, check out the archives for more specifics. If at any time you paid for child care or fitness for your children these expenses may be deductible on your return.
Universal Child Care Benefit and Canadian Child Tax Benefit : Once you have your child please fill out the Child Benefits Application to ensure you are not missing out on any child benefit payments. The UCCB is for any child under 6 years of age and the CCTB is a benefit for lower income families. Here is a link to the application to ensure you are not missing out: Child Tax Benefits.
Having an accountant to advise and ensure you are taking advantage of all your available tax credits in regards to children or dependents can save you a lot of hard earned money.
Enjoy the start to April.
Children's art amount
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Happy spring. At the office we are busy meeting personal clients, completing corporate year ends and excited for yet another personal tax season. It's nice to see everyone this time of year and do a little catching up.
With the 2011 personal tax season here, there are some additional credits available in 2011. Probably the most common credit will be the children's art amount.
All the details can be found by following this link: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/tpcs/ncm-tx/rtrn/cmpltng/ddctns/lns360-390/370/menu-eng.html
For clarification or just to arrange a personal tax meeting please get in touch with us.
Have a great week
With the 2011 personal tax season here, there are some additional credits available in 2011. Probably the most common credit will be the children's art amount.
All the details can be found by following this link: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/tpcs/ncm-tx/rtrn/cmpltng/ddctns/lns360-390/370/menu-eng.html
For clarification or just to arrange a personal tax meeting please get in touch with us.
Have a great week
7 Temmuz 2012 Cumartesi
Ottawa Dwellings and Homes for Sale
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Just in case you missed the market collapse in the last couple of years, it has had a massive affect on Ottawa dwellings and homes and property for sale all over the world. There was a massive exodus towards DIY Real Estate Sales that has only increased awareness of the importance of a qualified, experienced Real Estate Agent.
When it comes to Ottawa Real Estate, Jacen specializes in making home purchases sustainable, and even profitable. Since the collapse, people have been looking at ways of generating income, leveraging equity and some even buy their first home while creating equity. In the last few years he has been helping with the purchase multi-dwelling properties including Duplex, Triplex, Fourplexes and homes for sale in Ottawa. With extensive knowledge in the Ottawa market, reliable tradesmen to rely on and a proven formula for sustainable success, he is able to help homeowners and house hunters well beyond the sale of a property.
The Ottawa Real Estate Market is flooded with discount brokers. Everyone is competing for the bottom dollar, and not matter what industry you’re in, “you get what you pay for.” Not the best strategy when making the largest single investment of your life. You do not need to ask too many people to get a horror story. The key is to identify the true value that an experienced person brings to the transaction, and then find that person with the skills, connections, experience and understanding.
I know that it sounds simple, but like most things that are worth the effort, it’s not as easy as it seems. Anyone can sell you a house. I have a neighbor who is selling his own house, and I see him letting people in while he is wearing his PJ’s. I see new Real Estate Agents sticking warm loaves of bread in ovens to give the house a “homey appeal.” But that is not going to be comforting after the deal is done and you find all of the little surprises that were masked by the low commission rate of my neighbour and the aromatic smokescreen of fresh bread.
But don’t get me wrong, I love the smell of fresh bread, and the numbers have to work, but I also understand that successful business relationships are built on communication, respect and sustainability. My name is Jacen Matthews with Royal LePage Performance Realty at 165 Pretoria Avenue, Ottawa Ontario, K1S 1X1 and 613.238.2801Cell: 613.296.8582. Let’s work together to make your largest financial investment work for you.
Posted via email from Ottawa Social Media Marketing
I AM A CONVINCED UNIVERSALIST by William Barclay
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I AM A CONVINCED UNIVERSALISTby William Barclay Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at Glasgow University and the author of many Biblical commentaries and books, including a translation of the New Testament, "Barclay New Testament," and "The Daily Study Bible Series." --------------------------------------------------I am a convinced universalist. I believe that in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God. In the early days Origen was the great name connected with universalism. I would believe with Origen that universalism is no easy thing. Origen believed that after death there were many who would need prolonged instruction, the sternest discipline, even the severest punishment before they were fit for the presence of God. Origen did not eliminate hell; he believed that some people would have to go to heaven via hell. He believed that even at the end of the day there would be some on whom the scars remained. He did not believe in eternal punishment, but he did see the possibility of eternal penalty. And so the choice is whether we accept God's offer and invitation willingly, or take the long and terrible way round through ages of purification. Gregory of Nyssa offered three reasons why he believed in universalism. First, he believed in it because of the character of God. "Being good, God entertains pity for fallen man; being wise, he is not ignorant of the means for his recovery." Second, he believed in it because of the nature of evil. Evil must in the end be moved out of existence, "so that the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all." Evil is essentially negative and doomed to non-existence. Third, he believed in it because of the purpose of punishment. The purpose of punishment is always remedial. Its aim is "to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness." Punishment will hurt, but it is like the fire which separates the alloy from the gold; it is like the surgery which removes the diseased thing; it is like the cautery which burns out that which cannot be removed any other way. But I want to set down not the arguments of others but the thoughts which have persuaded me personally of universal salvation. First, there is the fact that there are things in the New Testament which more than justify this belief. Jesus said: "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32). Paul writes to the Romans: "God has consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy on all" (Rom. 11:32). He writes to the Corinthians: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22); and he looks to the final total triumph when God will be everything to everyone (1 Cor. 15:28). In the First Letter to Timothy we read of God "who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," and of Christ Jesus "who gave himself as a ransom for all" (1 Tim 2:4-6). The New Testament itself is not in the least afraid of the word all. Second, one of the key passages is Matthew 25:46 where it is said that the rejected go away to eternal punishment, and the righteous to eternal life. The Greek word for punishment is kolasis, which was not originally an ethical word at all. It originally meant the pruning of trees to make them grow better. I think it is true to say that in all Greek secular literature kolasis is never used of anything but remedial punishment. The word for eternal is aionios. It means more than everlasting, for Plato - who may have invented the word - plainly says that a thing may be everlasting and still not be aionios. The simplest way to out it is that aionios cannot be used properly of anyone but God; it is the word uniquely, as Plato saw it, of God. Eternal punishment is then literally that kind of remedial punishment which it befits God to give and which only God can give. Third, I believe that it is impossible to set limits to the grace of God. I believe that not only in this world, but in any other world there may be, the grace of God is still effective, still operative, still at work. I do not believe that the operation of the grace of God is limited to this world. I believe that the grace of God is as wide as the universe. Fourth, I believe implicitly in the ultimate and complete triumph of God, the time when all things will be subject to him, and when God will be everything to everyone (1 Cor. 15:24-28). For me this has certain consequences. If one man remains outside the love of God at the end of time, it means that that one man has defeated the love of God - and that is impossible. Further, there is only one way in which we can think of the triumph of God. If God was no more than a King or Judge, then it would be possible to speak of his triumph, if his enemies were agonizing in hell or were totally and completely obliterated and wiped out. But God is not only King and Judge, God is Father - he is indeed Father more than anything else. No father could be happy while there were members of his family for ever in agony. No father would count it a triumph to obliterate the disobedient members of his family. The only triumph a father can know is to have all his family back home. The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love. The only possible final triumph is a universe loved by and in love with God.
I AM A CONVINCED UNIVERSALISTby William Barclay Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at Glasgow University and the author of many Biblical commentaries and books, including a translation of the New Testament, "Barclay New Testament," and "The Daily Study Bible Series." --------------------------------------------------I am a convinced universalist. I believe that in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God. In the early days Origen was the great name connected with universalism. I would believe with Origen that universalism is no easy thing. Origen believed that after death there were many who would need prolonged instruction, the sternest discipline, even the severest punishment before they were fit for the presence of God. Origen did not eliminate hell; he believed that some people would have to go to heaven via hell. He believed that even at the end of the day there would be some on whom the scars remained. He did not believe in eternal punishment, but he did see the possibility of eternal penalty. And so the choice is whether we accept God's offer and invitation willingly, or take the long and terrible way round through ages of purification. Gregory of Nyssa offered three reasons why he believed in universalism. First, he believed in it because of the character of God. "Being good, God entertains pity for fallen man; being wise, he is not ignorant of the means for his recovery." Second, he believed in it because of the nature of evil. Evil must in the end be moved out of existence, "so that the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all." Evil is essentially negative and doomed to non-existence. Third, he believed in it because of the purpose of punishment. The purpose of punishment is always remedial. Its aim is "to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness." Punishment will hurt, but it is like the fire which separates the alloy from the gold; it is like the surgery which removes the diseased thing; it is like the cautery which burns out that which cannot be removed any other way. But I want to set down not the arguments of others but the thoughts which have persuaded me personally of universal salvation. First, there is the fact that there are things in the New Testament which more than justify this belief. Jesus said: "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32). Paul writes to the Romans: "God has consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy on all" (Rom. 11:32). He writes to the Corinthians: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22); and he looks to the final total triumph when God will be everything to everyone (1 Cor. 15:28). In the First Letter to Timothy we read of God "who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," and of Christ Jesus "who gave himself as a ransom for all" (1 Tim 2:4-6). The New Testament itself is not in the least afraid of the word all. Second, one of the key passages is Matthew 25:46 where it is said that the rejected go away to eternal punishment, and the righteous to eternal life. The Greek word for punishment is kolasis, which was not originally an ethical word at all. It originally meant the pruning of trees to make them grow better. I think it is true to say that in all Greek secular literature kolasis is never used of anything but remedial punishment. The word for eternal is aionios. It means more than everlasting, for Plato - who may have invented the word - plainly says that a thing may be everlasting and still not be aionios. The simplest way to out it is that aionios cannot be used properly of anyone but God; it is the word uniquely, as Plato saw it, of God. Eternal punishment is then literally that kind of remedial punishment which it befits God to give and which only God can give. Third, I believe that it is impossible to set limits to the grace of God. I believe that not only in this world, but in any other world there may be, the grace of God is still effective, still operative, still at work. I do not believe that the operation of the grace of God is limited to this world. I believe that the grace of God is as wide as the universe. Fourth, I believe implicitly in the ultimate and complete triumph of God, the time when all things will be subject to him, and when God will be everything to everyone (1 Cor. 15:24-28). For me this has certain consequences. If one man remains outside the love of God at the end of time, it means that that one man has defeated the love of God - and that is impossible. Further, there is only one way in which we can think of the triumph of God. If God was no more than a King or Judge, then it would be possible to speak of his triumph, if his enemies were agonizing in hell or were totally and completely obliterated and wiped out. But God is not only King and Judge, God is Father - he is indeed Father more than anything else. No father could be happy while there were members of his family for ever in agony. No father would count it a triumph to obliterate the disobedient members of his family. The only triumph a father can know is to have all his family back home. The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love. The only possible final triumph is a universe loved by and in love with God. Bishop Kallistos on the Possibility of Universal Salvation: There is no terrorism in the Orthodox doctrine of God.
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There is no terrorism in the Orthodox doctrine of God. Orthodox Christians do not cringe before Him in abject fear, but think of Him as philanthropos, the ‘lover of men.’ Yet they keep in mind that Christ at His Second Coming will come as judge.
Hell is not so much a place where God imprisons man, as a place where man, by misusing his free will, chooses to imprison himself. And even in Hell the wicked are not deprived of the love of God, but by their own choice they experience as suffering what the saints experience as joy. ‘The love of God will be an intolerable torment for those who have not acquired it within themselves’ (V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 234).
Hell exists as a final possibility, but several of the Fathers have none the less believed that in the end all will be reconciled to God. It is heretical to say that all must be saved, for this is to deny free will; but it is legitimate to hope that all may be saved. Until the Last Day comes, we must not despair of anyone’s salvation, but must long and pray for the reconciliation of all without exception. No one must be excluded from our loving intercession. ‘What is a merciful heart?’ asked Isaac the Syrian. ‘It is a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for all creatures’ (Mystic Treatises, edited by A. J. Wensinck, Amsterdam, 1923, p. 341). Gregory of Nyssa said that Christians may legitimately hope even for the redemption of the Devil.
from Bishop Kallistos' book, The Orthodox Church.
There is no terrorism in the Orthodox doctrine of God. Orthodox Christians do not cringe before Him in abject fear, but think of Him as philanthropos, the ‘lover of men.’ Yet they keep in mind that Christ at His Second Coming will come as judge.Hell is not so much a place where God imprisons man, as a place where man, by misusing his free will, chooses to imprison himself. And even in Hell the wicked are not deprived of the love of God, but by their own choice they experience as suffering what the saints experience as joy. ‘The love of God will be an intolerable torment for those who have not acquired it within themselves’ (V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 234).
Hell exists as a final possibility, but several of the Fathers have none the less believed that in the end all will be reconciled to God. It is heretical to say that all must be saved, for this is to deny free will; but it is legitimate to hope that all may be saved. Until the Last Day comes, we must not despair of anyone’s salvation, but must long and pray for the reconciliation of all without exception. No one must be excluded from our loving intercession. ‘What is a merciful heart?’ asked Isaac the Syrian. ‘It is a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for all creatures’ (Mystic Treatises, edited by A. J. Wensinck, Amsterdam, 1923, p. 341). Gregory of Nyssa said that Christians may legitimately hope even for the redemption of the Devil.
from Bishop Kallistos' book, The Orthodox Church.
The Bible in the Episcopal Church
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A balanced view of the Bible Recognizes both its divine and human elements. The Anglican model of authority that features the Bible, Tradition, and Reason, is well suited to understanding the Bible properly.
IntroductionThe Bible is a very important part of my life as a Christian. I believe that it is the Word of God in written form. The Bible contains all that is necessary for salvation. It is the Word of God in a derivative sense, that is, it derives its authority because it witnesses to Jesus Christ, who is the Living Word of God.
My Church, the Episcopal Church, part of the world-wide Anglican Communion, is a Bible Church. Our liturgy is full of scriptural references, our Book of Common Prayer is 70% scripture, and our Daily Office assigns robust Bible readings for every day of the year. In this essay, I try to give an idea of how those of us in the Episcopal/Anglican tradition understand the Bible.
My Own Practice
I read the Bible every day, I hardly ever miss, and this has been my practice for over 30 years now.
I am a Benedictine Oblate (a lay Christian who associates with a monastic Benedictine Community). The Benedictine tradition enjoins regular reading of the Sacred Scriptures and the practice of Lectio Divina, which is an attentive, meditative method of reading the Bible developed by the ancient and medieval monks and nuns.
Because I understand the Bible from within the Church, I read with the Church. The Episcopal Church has Bible readings assigned every day through the Daily Office found in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. We also on Sundays read the Bible passages assigned in the Revised Common Lectionary, which is used also by the other mainline Churches, such as the Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians, and somewhat aligned with Roman Catholic lectionary. In this way, Christians read the same passages every Sunday, and hear the Word of God together.
Bible Versions
Lately, I have been alternating between the Authorized (King James) Version, and the New Revised Standard Version.
The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible is the historic version of the Episcopal Church. It certainly has an unmatched literary status in the Church and in the history of the English language itself. In 1786, the Roman Catholic scholar Alexander Geddes said of the Authorized Version, "If accuracy and strictest attention to the letter of the text be supposed to constitute an excellent version, this is of all versions the most excellent." The Authorized Version is the traditional version of the Anglican Church, and some would argue, still the best we have. To all the conservative and evangelical Protestants who have cherished the King James Bible for so many years, we Anglicans say to you, "you're welcome!"
The New Revised Standard Version is the choice of scholars, and the pew Bible for mainline Churches. It is a very reliable version. Its translation philosophy is to be "as literal as possible, [and] as free as necessary." Because the NRSV stands in the lineage of the Authorized Version (a revision of the Revised Standard Version, which is a revision of the American Revised Version, which is a revision of the Authorized Version), the two versions share some common phraseology which form the backdrop of our common Biblical heritage.
Reading and Understanding the Bible
Although the Bible for me is the Word of God in written form, I study and read it critically. The Bible, like Christ Himself, is both divine and human. There are human elements in it, which are culture and time bound. But by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Bible points us to our Lord Jesus Christ. The Key to interpreting the Bible is Jesus Christ.
The late mainline evangelical theologian, Donald Bloesch, compared the nature of the Bible to the nature of Christ. Just as Christ has both a divine and human nature, so does the Bible, according to Bloesch.
In the ancient Christiantiy, various groups of Christians had different view of the Person of Christ. One group, the Ebionites, saw Christ as human only; on the other hand, another group, the Docetists, saw him as only divine. We can see these understandings of the Person of Christ reflected in different views of the Bible.
Some people only see the Bible in rational terms. They see it as a flawed and human book. Some have a bias to dismiss and supernatural or miraculous occurrences in the Bible out of hand. It is a presupposition for them that there are no supernatural events. They seek to "de-mythologize" the Bible, and seek "the historical Jesus," but they do not believe that the Bible is inspired in any divine sense. Their view of the Bible is an Ebionite view.
On the other end of the spectrum are certain fundamentalists that identify every word of the Scriptural text with the very Word of God. They do not believe there any mistakes or errors in the Bible, even in matters that do not touch faith. Any science, math, or historical events as recorded in the Bible are considered accurate and true. They insist that cultural norms from the Bible era regarding the roles of men and women, for example, are still in force today. They defend uncritically the savagery of the conquest of Palestine by the Israelites described in the Old Testament. C.S. Lewis (the great Anglican Christian writer) said in his book on the Psalms that there are parts of the Psalms that should repulse us as Christians. Those that believe that the Biblical text is infallible and wholly without error have a Docetic view of the Bible. They regard the Bible as divine only, scarcely acknowledging the real human element in the Bible.
There is a wide range of views regarding the Bible's inspiration in between these two poles.
Like the orthodox definition of the Person of Christ, which holds him to be both God and Man, a wholesome and balanced view of the Bible holds the divine and human elements of it together.
As Episcopalians (Anglicans), we understand the Bible through Tradition and Reason. Tradition and Reason can both greatly aid us in understanding the Bible, and help us recognize its human and divine elements.
In the Anglican tradition, three sources of authority are: The Bible, Tradition, and Reason; they are described as three legs of a stool. The Bible is the sole source of our faith, but we understand it with the aid of the other two legs of the stool (John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was an Anglican Priest till he died. He added to these three legs a fourth leg, Experience). Richard Hooker, the great Anglican Theologian, described this as a hierarchy of authority, with Scripture as our foundational authority, and reason and tradition as vitally important, but secondary, sources of authority.
Tradition
One of the five "Solas" of the Reformation is Sola Scriptura, that is, the Bible Alone. The Reformers insisted that the sole authority for Christians is the Bible. The Anglican Church, being both Catholic and Reformed, strikes a balance between the "Bible Only" in Protestantism, and the authority of the Church as understood by Catholicism.
The Anglican Churches indeed hold that the Bible contains all things necessary for salvation. The Sixth Article of Religion in the Book of Common Prayer, Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation, states:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
Yet, Episcopalians understand the Bible through the tradition of the Church. In their theological writings and biblical commentaries, the Fathers of the ancient Church quote Sacred Scripture abundantly. Some of the greatest Bible Scholars of all time hail from Christian antiquity, people like Origen and Jerome.
As the various Christian communities began compiling writings ascribed to Christ's Apostles and their immediate disciples, a canon of the Holy Scriptures came into being. Those ancient communities of Christians, guided by the Spirit, formed the canon of the Bible; certainly their interpretations should be given great weight. Catholic and Orthodox apologists are correct to argue that the books of the Bible were chosen in part for their conformity with Christian doctrine, not the other way around.
Christian Tradition does not stop with the ancient Church, but continues through all the centuries, in the Eastern and Western Churches, in male and female saints and doctors of the Church, in the theology and liturgy of the Church. Tradition amplifies the Bible. The Bible is the Church's Book, and we must read it within the Christian tradition. The historic Creeds of the Church, and the doctrine of the Person of Christ and the Holy Trinity, emerge from a common understanding of Biblical teaching.
However, the Church must also be constantly reformed in the light of Scripture. The Bible is still ultimately the source of our faith, containing all things necessary for salvation. So while Tradition is a guide to understanding Scripture, we must also remember the teaching of St. Paul, who says that "Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word..." - Ephesians 5.25.
Reason
The Anglican tradition recognizes the use of Reason: "Properly speaking reason means simply the human being’s capacity to symbolise, and so to order, share and communicate experience. It is the divine gift in virtue of which human persons respond and act with awareness in relation to their world and to God, and are opened up to that which is true for every time and every place." (Ronald C. Stevenson, Chancellor of the General Synod the Anglican Church of Canada, 2003).
Reason is an aid to understanding scripture. There is no reason why Scripture should not be studied, for example, with tools of Biblical scholarship, such as historical-criticism, literary criticism, form criticism. We should be able to study the Bible as any other type of literature. We should not be afraid to read the Bible with contemporary understandings of science.
“Reason increases and enlarges human understanding of divine revelation through its own workings, so long as reason is used in humble dependence upon the God who gave it.” ( Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury).
Experience
We should also include Wesley's leg of experience in understanding the Bible. We must seek to understand the Bible within our own cultural and historical context. The famous theologian Karl Barth said that we should read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper with the others. Many voices through out the centuries have been effectively silenced- women, ethnic minorities, the poor and oppressed. The Bible has often been interpreted by those in power. But the Bible must also be viewed from "below." Various liberation theologies, feminist theologies, and theologians working on the margins of society, in minority communities, and in the so-called developing world, bring us fresh new understandings of the Biblical text.
Often we find the Biblical message obscured by Christian Tradition. For example, Liberation Theology, often maligned, accentuates the message of liberation that has always been present in the text. The Bible clearly proclaims liberation from oppression, a message that has often been ignored.
The Purpose of the Bible
The purpose of the Bible is for us to know God and have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), chronicles God's Relationship with humanity and the nation of Israel, and points to the future coming of the Messiah. In the New Testament, the Messiah, the Christ, comes, and reveals God to us. The New Testament is the book about Jesus Christ, and contains eye witness accounts of his life and ministry, and the memoirs of his disciples.
St. Jerome said "Ignorance of the Bible is Ignorance of Christ." While this statement may not be true in an absolute sense, it reminds us as Christians that we come to know Jesus through the Bible. It is in the New Testament that the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, are recorded. The Bible is an indispensable component to our personal relationship with Christ.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
About the Bible from the Episcopal Church Web site:
The Bible
"Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them" (Book of Common Prayer, p. 236).
It is our foundation, understood through tradition and reason, containing all things necessary for salvation. Our worship is filled with Scripture from beginning to end.
The Bible Challenge
The Episcopal Church takes reading the Bible very seriously. Approximately 70% of the Book of Common Prayer comes directly from the Bible, and Episcopalians read more Holy Scripture in Sunday worship than almost any other denomination in Christianity. The Bible Challenge, sponsored by the Center for Biblical Studies, helps individuals and parishes set goals to read the entire Bible, to receive its comfort, strength, wisdom, and guidance, and to gain a deeper understanding of how God has worked, and continues to work.
Approved Translations of the Bible for the Episcopal Church
The Episcopal Church has authorized the use of the following translations of the Bible:
A balanced view of the Bible Recognizes both its divine and human elements. The Anglican model of authority that features the Bible, Tradition, and Reason, is well suited to understanding the Bible properly.
IntroductionThe Bible is a very important part of my life as a Christian. I believe that it is the Word of God in written form. The Bible contains all that is necessary for salvation. It is the Word of God in a derivative sense, that is, it derives its authority because it witnesses to Jesus Christ, who is the Living Word of God.
My Church, the Episcopal Church, part of the world-wide Anglican Communion, is a Bible Church. Our liturgy is full of scriptural references, our Book of Common Prayer is 70% scripture, and our Daily Office assigns robust Bible readings for every day of the year. In this essay, I try to give an idea of how those of us in the Episcopal/Anglican tradition understand the Bible.
My Own Practice
I read the Bible every day, I hardly ever miss, and this has been my practice for over 30 years now.
I am a Benedictine Oblate (a lay Christian who associates with a monastic Benedictine Community). The Benedictine tradition enjoins regular reading of the Sacred Scriptures and the practice of Lectio Divina, which is an attentive, meditative method of reading the Bible developed by the ancient and medieval monks and nuns.
Because I understand the Bible from within the Church, I read with the Church. The Episcopal Church has Bible readings assigned every day through the Daily Office found in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. We also on Sundays read the Bible passages assigned in the Revised Common Lectionary, which is used also by the other mainline Churches, such as the Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians, and somewhat aligned with Roman Catholic lectionary. In this way, Christians read the same passages every Sunday, and hear the Word of God together.
Bible Versions
Lately, I have been alternating between the Authorized (King James) Version, and the New Revised Standard Version.
The Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible is the historic version of the Episcopal Church. It certainly has an unmatched literary status in the Church and in the history of the English language itself. In 1786, the Roman Catholic scholar Alexander Geddes said of the Authorized Version, "If accuracy and strictest attention to the letter of the text be supposed to constitute an excellent version, this is of all versions the most excellent." The Authorized Version is the traditional version of the Anglican Church, and some would argue, still the best we have. To all the conservative and evangelical Protestants who have cherished the King James Bible for so many years, we Anglicans say to you, "you're welcome!"
The New Revised Standard Version is the choice of scholars, and the pew Bible for mainline Churches. It is a very reliable version. Its translation philosophy is to be "as literal as possible, [and] as free as necessary." Because the NRSV stands in the lineage of the Authorized Version (a revision of the Revised Standard Version, which is a revision of the American Revised Version, which is a revision of the Authorized Version), the two versions share some common phraseology which form the backdrop of our common Biblical heritage.
Reading and Understanding the Bible
Although the Bible for me is the Word of God in written form, I study and read it critically. The Bible, like Christ Himself, is both divine and human. There are human elements in it, which are culture and time bound. But by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Bible points us to our Lord Jesus Christ. The Key to interpreting the Bible is Jesus Christ.
The late mainline evangelical theologian, Donald Bloesch, compared the nature of the Bible to the nature of Christ. Just as Christ has both a divine and human nature, so does the Bible, according to Bloesch.
In the ancient Christiantiy, various groups of Christians had different view of the Person of Christ. One group, the Ebionites, saw Christ as human only; on the other hand, another group, the Docetists, saw him as only divine. We can see these understandings of the Person of Christ reflected in different views of the Bible.
Some people only see the Bible in rational terms. They see it as a flawed and human book. Some have a bias to dismiss and supernatural or miraculous occurrences in the Bible out of hand. It is a presupposition for them that there are no supernatural events. They seek to "de-mythologize" the Bible, and seek "the historical Jesus," but they do not believe that the Bible is inspired in any divine sense. Their view of the Bible is an Ebionite view.
On the other end of the spectrum are certain fundamentalists that identify every word of the Scriptural text with the very Word of God. They do not believe there any mistakes or errors in the Bible, even in matters that do not touch faith. Any science, math, or historical events as recorded in the Bible are considered accurate and true. They insist that cultural norms from the Bible era regarding the roles of men and women, for example, are still in force today. They defend uncritically the savagery of the conquest of Palestine by the Israelites described in the Old Testament. C.S. Lewis (the great Anglican Christian writer) said in his book on the Psalms that there are parts of the Psalms that should repulse us as Christians. Those that believe that the Biblical text is infallible and wholly without error have a Docetic view of the Bible. They regard the Bible as divine only, scarcely acknowledging the real human element in the Bible.
There is a wide range of views regarding the Bible's inspiration in between these two poles.
Like the orthodox definition of the Person of Christ, which holds him to be both God and Man, a wholesome and balanced view of the Bible holds the divine and human elements of it together.
As Episcopalians (Anglicans), we understand the Bible through Tradition and Reason. Tradition and Reason can both greatly aid us in understanding the Bible, and help us recognize its human and divine elements.
In the Anglican tradition, three sources of authority are: The Bible, Tradition, and Reason; they are described as three legs of a stool. The Bible is the sole source of our faith, but we understand it with the aid of the other two legs of the stool (John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was an Anglican Priest till he died. He added to these three legs a fourth leg, Experience). Richard Hooker, the great Anglican Theologian, described this as a hierarchy of authority, with Scripture as our foundational authority, and reason and tradition as vitally important, but secondary, sources of authority.
Tradition
One of the five "Solas" of the Reformation is Sola Scriptura, that is, the Bible Alone. The Reformers insisted that the sole authority for Christians is the Bible. The Anglican Church, being both Catholic and Reformed, strikes a balance between the "Bible Only" in Protestantism, and the authority of the Church as understood by Catholicism.
The Anglican Churches indeed hold that the Bible contains all things necessary for salvation. The Sixth Article of Religion in the Book of Common Prayer, Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation, states:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
Yet, Episcopalians understand the Bible through the tradition of the Church. In their theological writings and biblical commentaries, the Fathers of the ancient Church quote Sacred Scripture abundantly. Some of the greatest Bible Scholars of all time hail from Christian antiquity, people like Origen and Jerome.
As the various Christian communities began compiling writings ascribed to Christ's Apostles and their immediate disciples, a canon of the Holy Scriptures came into being. Those ancient communities of Christians, guided by the Spirit, formed the canon of the Bible; certainly their interpretations should be given great weight. Catholic and Orthodox apologists are correct to argue that the books of the Bible were chosen in part for their conformity with Christian doctrine, not the other way around.
Christian Tradition does not stop with the ancient Church, but continues through all the centuries, in the Eastern and Western Churches, in male and female saints and doctors of the Church, in the theology and liturgy of the Church. Tradition amplifies the Bible. The Bible is the Church's Book, and we must read it within the Christian tradition. The historic Creeds of the Church, and the doctrine of the Person of Christ and the Holy Trinity, emerge from a common understanding of Biblical teaching.
However, the Church must also be constantly reformed in the light of Scripture. The Bible is still ultimately the source of our faith, containing all things necessary for salvation. So while Tradition is a guide to understanding Scripture, we must also remember the teaching of St. Paul, who says that "Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word..." - Ephesians 5.25.
Reason
The Anglican tradition recognizes the use of Reason: "Properly speaking reason means simply the human being’s capacity to symbolise, and so to order, share and communicate experience. It is the divine gift in virtue of which human persons respond and act with awareness in relation to their world and to God, and are opened up to that which is true for every time and every place." (Ronald C. Stevenson, Chancellor of the General Synod the Anglican Church of Canada, 2003).
Reason is an aid to understanding scripture. There is no reason why Scripture should not be studied, for example, with tools of Biblical scholarship, such as historical-criticism, literary criticism, form criticism. We should be able to study the Bible as any other type of literature. We should not be afraid to read the Bible with contemporary understandings of science.
“Reason increases and enlarges human understanding of divine revelation through its own workings, so long as reason is used in humble dependence upon the God who gave it.” ( Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury).
Experience
We should also include Wesley's leg of experience in understanding the Bible. We must seek to understand the Bible within our own cultural and historical context. The famous theologian Karl Barth said that we should read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper with the others. Many voices through out the centuries have been effectively silenced- women, ethnic minorities, the poor and oppressed. The Bible has often been interpreted by those in power. But the Bible must also be viewed from "below." Various liberation theologies, feminist theologies, and theologians working on the margins of society, in minority communities, and in the so-called developing world, bring us fresh new understandings of the Biblical text.
Often we find the Biblical message obscured by Christian Tradition. For example, Liberation Theology, often maligned, accentuates the message of liberation that has always been present in the text. The Bible clearly proclaims liberation from oppression, a message that has often been ignored.
The Purpose of the Bible
The purpose of the Bible is for us to know God and have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), chronicles God's Relationship with humanity and the nation of Israel, and points to the future coming of the Messiah. In the New Testament, the Messiah, the Christ, comes, and reveals God to us. The New Testament is the book about Jesus Christ, and contains eye witness accounts of his life and ministry, and the memoirs of his disciples.
St. Jerome said "Ignorance of the Bible is Ignorance of Christ." While this statement may not be true in an absolute sense, it reminds us as Christians that we come to know Jesus through the Bible. It is in the New Testament that the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, are recorded. The Bible is an indispensable component to our personal relationship with Christ.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
About the Bible from the Episcopal Church Web site:
The Bible
"Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them" (Book of Common Prayer, p. 236).
It is our foundation, understood through tradition and reason, containing all things necessary for salvation. Our worship is filled with Scripture from beginning to end.
The Bible Challenge
The Episcopal Church takes reading the Bible very seriously. Approximately 70% of the Book of Common Prayer comes directly from the Bible, and Episcopalians read more Holy Scripture in Sunday worship than almost any other denomination in Christianity. The Bible Challenge, sponsored by the Center for Biblical Studies, helps individuals and parishes set goals to read the entire Bible, to receive its comfort, strength, wisdom, and guidance, and to gain a deeper understanding of how God has worked, and continues to work.
Approved Translations of the Bible for the Episcopal Church
The Episcopal Church has authorized the use of the following translations of the Bible:
- King James or Authorized Version (the historic Bible of The Episcopal Church)
- English Revision (1881)
- American Revision (1901)
- Revised Standard Version (1952)
- Jerusalem Bible (1966)
- New English Bible with the Apocrypha (1970)
- Good News Bible / Today's English Version (1976)
- New American Bible (1970)
- Revised Standard Version, an Ecumenical Edition (1973)
- New International Version (1978)
- New Jerusalem Bible (1987)
- Revised English Bible (1989; the version used at Westminster Abbey)
- New Revised Standard Version (1990)
A Conversation with James H. Cone
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Enthralling interview with the founder of Black Liberation Theology, James H. Cone. Cone bears witness to his Christian faith, which is the center of his life. He reads the sacred scriptures from the vantage point of the poor and the oppressed. He says that an appropriate symbol for the cross in our day is a lynched black man. Cone's theology is centered squarely on the Cross of Christ. Cone says that to become authentic Christians, we must identify with the powerless, not the powerful. Cone states in the beginning of his interview that he has sought with his theology to combine the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr. with the Black Power Movement represented by Malcom X.
"The Cross is God taking the side of the victim...God making ultimate identification with the powerless...if you want to be a Christian, you have to identify with the powerless. You can't be a Christian and identified with the powerful, that is a contradiction in terms...I read the scriptures from the vantage point of the the weak, the poor, and the helpless. You see that in the book of Amos and the prophets...and in the Exodus, and in the story of Jesus' life of Jesus, and in the Cross." - James H Cone
"The Cross is God taking the side of the victim...God making ultimate identification with the powerless...if you want to be a Christian, you have to identify with the powerless. You can't be a Christian and identified with the powerful, that is a contradiction in terms...I read the scriptures from the vantage point of the the weak, the poor, and the helpless. You see that in the book of Amos and the prophets...and in the Exodus, and in the story of Jesus' life of Jesus, and in the Cross." - James H Cone
5 Temmuz 2012 Perşembe
A Burgeois Revolution- Howard Zinn on the American Revolution
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For the 4th of July, I would like to remind my readers that the American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution. The American Revolution was not a revolution in any sense of the word. It was not an overthrowing of one class for another, it was merely an exchange from the British Ruling Class to the American South Slave Owning Class. Our American Revolution produced a democracy where 90% of the population could not vote.
The slave owning aristocracy controlled America both politically and economically until the Civil War. The American Revolution was fought primarily over concern that Britain would end slavery in the American Colonies. Even though slavery was legal in the Southern Colonies only, the whole American Colony economic life depended on maintaining slavery. The U.S. Constitution held that a Black person was only 3/5 a human being.
Below is part of a transcript from a broadcast of Democracy Now! with Howard Zinn as guest. He talks about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. The section below is dealing with the American Revolutionary War.
- Lance
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Let’s start with the Revolutionary War. Let’s do it in chronological order, because, after all, I’m a historian. We do everything in chronological order. I eat in chronological order. All-Bran. We’ll start with All-Bran. We’ll end with Wheatena.
Anyway, the Revolutionary War. Balance sheet. I don’t want to make it too mathematical, you know, I’ll be falling in line with all these mathematical social scientists. You know, everything has become mathematical — political science and anthropology and even social work. You know, mathematical — no, I don’t want to get that strict. But a rough moral balance sheet, let’s say. Well, what’s good about the Revolutionary War? And — oh, there’s another side? Yes, there’s another side to the balance sheet. What’s dubious about the Revolutionary War? And let’s — yeah, and let’s look at both sides, because if you only look at, “Oh, we won independence from England,” well, that’s not enough to do that. You have to look at other things.
Well, let’s first look at the cost of the war, on one side of the balance sheet. The cost of the war. In lives, I mean. Twenty-five thousand. Hey, that’s nothing, right? Twenty-five thousand? We lost 58,000 in Vietnam. That’s — 25,000 — did you even know how many lives were lost in the Revolutionary War? It’s hardly worth talking about. In proportion to population — in proportion to the Revolutionary War population of the colonies, 25,000 would be equivalent today to two-and-a-half million. Two-and-a-half million. Let’s fight a war. We’re being oppressed by England. Let’s fight for independence. Two-and-a-half million people will die, but we’ll have independence. Would you have second thoughts? You might. In other words, I want to make that 25,000, which seems like an insignificant figure, I want to make it palpable and real and not to be minimized as a cost of the Revolutionary War, and to keep that in mind in the balance sheet as we look at whatever other factors there are. So, yes, we win independence against England. Great. And it only cost two-and-a-half million. OK?
Who did the Revolutionary War benefit? Who benefited from independence? It’s interesting that we just assume that everybody benefited from independence. No. Not everybody in the colonies benefited from independence. And there were people right from the outset who knew they wouldn’t benefit from independence. There were people from the outset who thought, you know, “I’m just a working stiff. I’m just a poor farmer. Am I going to benefit? What is it — what difference will it make to me if I’m oppressed by the English or oppressed by my local landlord?” You know, maybe one-third of the colonists — nobody knows, because they didn’t take Gallup polls in those days. Maybe one — various estimates, one-third of the colonists were opposed to the Revolutionary War. And only about maybe about one-third supported the Revolutionary War against England. And maybe one-third were neutral. I don’t know. I’m going by an estimate that John Adams once made. Just a very rough.
But there obviously were lots of people who were not for the Revolution. And that’s why they had a tough time recruiting people for the Revolution. It wasn’t that people rushed — “Wow! It’s a great crusade, independence against — from England. Join!” No, they had a tough time getting people. In the South, you know, they couldn’t find people to join the army. George Washington had to send a general and his troops down south to threaten people in order to get them into the military, into the war.
And in fact, in the war itself, the poor people, the working people, the farmers, the artisans, who were in the army, maybe some of them were there for patriotic reasons, independence against England, even if they weren’t sure what it meant for them. But some of them were there for that reason. Others were there — you know, some of them had actually listened to the Declaration of Independence, read from the town hall. And inspiring. You know, liberty, equality, equality. We all have an equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You know, it can make people — some people were inspired, and they joined.
Other people joined because they were promised land at — you know, they were promised at the end of the Revolution — you know, they were promised, you might say, a little GI Bill of Rights, just as today recruiting offices make promises to young guys that they want into the Army. They give them bonuses, and they promise them maybe a free education afterward. No, people don’t naturally rush to war. You have to seduce them. You have to bribe them or coerce them. Some people think it’s natural for people to go to war. Not at all. No.
Nations have to work hard to mobilize the citizens to go to war. And they had to work in the Revolutionary War, especially, well, when they found out that, although there was a draft, there was a kind of conscription that the rich could get out of the conscription by paying a certain amount of money. But the young, the farmers who went into the Revolutionary Army and who fought and who died and who were wounded in the war, they found that they, the privates, the ordinary soldier in the war, that they weren’t treated as well as the officers who came from the upper classes. The officers were given splendid uniforms and good food and were paid well. And the privates very often did not have shoes and clothes and were not paid. And when their time was supposed to be up, they were told, no, they had to stay. There was a class difference in the Revolutionary War.
You know, in this country, we’re not accustomed to the idea of class differences, because we’re all supposed to be one big, happy family. One nation, indivisible. We’re very divisible. No, we’re not one nation. No, there are working people, and there are rich people, and in between, yes, there are nervous people. So, yeah, the conditions of the ordinary farmer who went into the Revolution, the private, the conditions were such that they mutinied — mutinied against the officers, against George Washington and the other officers. And when I say “mutinied,” I mean thousands of them. Ever hear about this in your classrooms when you discuss — when you learn about the Revolutionary War? When you learn about Bunker Hill and Concord and the first shot heard around the world — right? — do you ever hear about the mutinies? I doubt it. I never learned about it. I didn’t learn about it in elementary school or high school or college or graduate school. You find very often that what you learn in graduate school is what you learned in elementary school, only with footnotes. You see. No, I never learned about the mutinies.
But there were mutinies. Thousands of soldiers mutinied, so many of them that George Washington was worried, you know, that he couldn’t put it down. He had to make concessions, make concessions to what was called the Pennsylvania Line, the thousands of mutineers. However, when shortly after he made those concessions and quieted down the mutiny by saying — promising them things, promising them he’d get them out of the army soon and give them pay and so on, soon after that, there was another mutiny in the New Jersey Line, which was smaller. And there, Washington put his foot down. He couldn’t handle the thousands in the Pennsylvania Line, but he could handle the hundreds in the New Jersey Line, and he said, “Find the leaders and execute them.” You hear about this in your classrooms about the Revolutionary War? You hear about the executions of mutineers? I doubt it. If I’m wrong in the question period, correct me. I’m willing to stand corrected. I don’t like to stand corrected, but I’m will to be stand corrected. And yeah, so they executed a number of the mutineers. Their fellow soldiers were ordered to execute the mutineers. So the Revolution — you know, not everybody was treated the same way in the Revolution.
And, in fact, when the Revolution was won, independence was won, and the soldiers came back to their homes — and some of them did get bits of land that were promised to them, so, yeah, many of them became small farmers again. And then they found that they were being taxed heavily by the rich, who controlled the legislatures. They couldn’t pay their taxes, and so their farms and their homes were being taken away from them, auctioned off. “Foreclosures” they call them today, right? It’s an old phenomenon.
So, there were rebellions. I think everybody learns about Shays’ Rebellion. They don’t learn much about Shays’ Rebellion, but they learn it enough to recognize it on a multiple choice test. Shays’ Rebellion in western Massachusetts. Thousands of farmers gathered around courthouses in Springfield and Northampton and Amherst and Great Barrington around those courthouses. And they stopped the auctions from going on. They prevent the foreclosures. It’s a real rebellion that has to be put down by an army, paid for by the merchants of Boston. It’s put down. But it puts a scare into the Founding Fathers.
Now, there’s an interesting chronology there. Shays’ Rebellion takes place in 1786. The Founding Fathers get together in 1787, for the Constitutional Convention. Is there a connection between the two? I don’t remember ever learning that there was a connection between Shays’ Rebellion and the Constitution. What I learned is that, oh, they got together with the Constitution because the Articles of Confederation created a weak central government, that we need a strong central government. And everybody likes the idea of a strong central government, so it was a great thing to have a Constitutional Convention and draft the Constitution.
What you were not told, I don’t think — I wasn’t told — was that the Founding Fathers on the eve of the Constitutional Convention were writing to one another before the Constitutional Convention and saying, “Hey, this rebellion in western Massachusetts, we better do something about that. We better create a government strong enough to deal with rebellions like this.” That’s why we need a strong central government.
There was a general, General Henry Knox of Massachusetts, who had been in the army with George Washington, and he wrote to Washington at one point. And I don’t have his letter with me. I do have it somewhere, you know. I’ll paraphrase it. It won’t be as eloquent as him. You know, they were eloquent in those days. Take a look at the language used by the political leaders of that day and the language of the political leaders in our day. I mean, really, it’s, you know — yeah. So when Knox writes to Washington, it says something like this. It says, “You know, these people who fought in the Revolution, these people who are rebelling, who have rebelled in west Massachusetts” —- and other states, too, not just in Massachusetts -—
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Maine.
HOWARD ZINN: In Maine, too. Yeah, you know that, Roger. You were among the rebels, I’m sure. You were there, I know.
Knox says to Washington, says, “These people who have rebelled, you know, they think that because they fought in the Revolution, they fought in the war against England, that they deserve an equal share of the wealth of this country.” No. Those were the kinds of letters that went back and forth. “We’ve got to set up a government that will be strong enough to put down the rebellions of the poor, slave revolts, the Indians, who may resent our going into their territory.” That’s what a strong central government is for, not just because, oh, it’s nice to have a strong central government. The reason’s for that. The Constitution was a class document written to protect the interests of bondholders and slave owners and land expansionists. So the outcome of the Revolution was not exactly good for everybody, and it created all sorts of problems.
What about black people, the slaves? Did they benefit from the winning of the Revolution? Not at all. There was slavery before the Revolution; there was slavery after the Revolution. In fact, Washington would not enlist black people into his army. The South, Southern slave owners, they were the first with the — for the British, doing it for the British. The British enlisted blacks before Washington did. No, blacks didn’t benefit.
Hey, what about Indians? Should we even count the Indians? Should we even consider the Indians? Who are they? Well, they lived here. They owned all this land. We moved them out of here. Well, they should be considered. What was the outcome for them when we won the Revolution? It was bad, because the British had set a line called the Proclamation of 1763. They had set a line at the Appalachians, where they said, no, the colonists should not go beyond this line into Indian territory. I mean, they didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They just didn’t want trouble. They set a line. The British are now gone, and the line is gone, and now you can move westward into Indian territory. And you’re going to move across the continent. And you’re going to create massacres. And you’re going to take that enormous land in the West away from the Indians who live there.
These are some of the consequences of the Revolution. But we did win independence from England. All I’m trying to suggest, that to simply leave it that way, that we won independence from England, doesn’t do justice to the complexity of this victory. And, you know, was it good that we — to be independent of England? Yes, it’s always good to be independent. But at what cost? And how real is the independence? And is it possible that we would have won independence without a war?
Hey, how about Canada? Canada is independent of England. They don’t have a bad society, Canada. There are some very attractive things about Canada. They’re independent of England. They did not fight a bloody war. It took longer. You know, sometimes it takes longer if you don’t want to kill. Violence is fast. War is fast. And that’s attractive — right? — when you do something fast. And if you don’t want killing, you may have to take more time in order to achieve your objective. And actually, when you achieve your objective, it might be achieved in a better way and with better results, and with a Canadian health system instead of American health system. You know, you know.
OK, all of this — I won’t say anything about the Revolutionary War. I just wanted to throw a few doubts in about it. That’s all. I don’t want to say anything revolutionary or radical. I don’t want to make trouble. You know, I just want to — no, I certainly don’t want to make trouble at BU. No. So — yet I just want to — I just want to think about these things. That’s all I’m trying to do, have us think again about things that we took for granted. “Oh, yes, Revolutionary War, great!” No. Let’s think about it.
source: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/1/8/howard_zinn_three_holy_wars
For the 4th of July, I would like to remind my readers that the American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution. The American Revolution was not a revolution in any sense of the word. It was not an overthrowing of one class for another, it was merely an exchange from the British Ruling Class to the American South Slave Owning Class. Our American Revolution produced a democracy where 90% of the population could not vote. The slave owning aristocracy controlled America both politically and economically until the Civil War. The American Revolution was fought primarily over concern that Britain would end slavery in the American Colonies. Even though slavery was legal in the Southern Colonies only, the whole American Colony economic life depended on maintaining slavery. The U.S. Constitution held that a Black person was only 3/5 a human being.
Below is part of a transcript from a broadcast of Democracy Now! with Howard Zinn as guest. He talks about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. The section below is dealing with the American Revolutionary War.
- Lance
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Let’s start with the Revolutionary War. Let’s do it in chronological order, because, after all, I’m a historian. We do everything in chronological order. I eat in chronological order. All-Bran. We’ll start with All-Bran. We’ll end with Wheatena.
Anyway, the Revolutionary War. Balance sheet. I don’t want to make it too mathematical, you know, I’ll be falling in line with all these mathematical social scientists. You know, everything has become mathematical — political science and anthropology and even social work. You know, mathematical — no, I don’t want to get that strict. But a rough moral balance sheet, let’s say. Well, what’s good about the Revolutionary War? And — oh, there’s another side? Yes, there’s another side to the balance sheet. What’s dubious about the Revolutionary War? And let’s — yeah, and let’s look at both sides, because if you only look at, “Oh, we won independence from England,” well, that’s not enough to do that. You have to look at other things.
Well, let’s first look at the cost of the war, on one side of the balance sheet. The cost of the war. In lives, I mean. Twenty-five thousand. Hey, that’s nothing, right? Twenty-five thousand? We lost 58,000 in Vietnam. That’s — 25,000 — did you even know how many lives were lost in the Revolutionary War? It’s hardly worth talking about. In proportion to population — in proportion to the Revolutionary War population of the colonies, 25,000 would be equivalent today to two-and-a-half million. Two-and-a-half million. Let’s fight a war. We’re being oppressed by England. Let’s fight for independence. Two-and-a-half million people will die, but we’ll have independence. Would you have second thoughts? You might. In other words, I want to make that 25,000, which seems like an insignificant figure, I want to make it palpable and real and not to be minimized as a cost of the Revolutionary War, and to keep that in mind in the balance sheet as we look at whatever other factors there are. So, yes, we win independence against England. Great. And it only cost two-and-a-half million. OK?
Who did the Revolutionary War benefit? Who benefited from independence? It’s interesting that we just assume that everybody benefited from independence. No. Not everybody in the colonies benefited from independence. And there were people right from the outset who knew they wouldn’t benefit from independence. There were people from the outset who thought, you know, “I’m just a working stiff. I’m just a poor farmer. Am I going to benefit? What is it — what difference will it make to me if I’m oppressed by the English or oppressed by my local landlord?” You know, maybe one-third of the colonists — nobody knows, because they didn’t take Gallup polls in those days. Maybe one — various estimates, one-third of the colonists were opposed to the Revolutionary War. And only about maybe about one-third supported the Revolutionary War against England. And maybe one-third were neutral. I don’t know. I’m going by an estimate that John Adams once made. Just a very rough.
But there obviously were lots of people who were not for the Revolution. And that’s why they had a tough time recruiting people for the Revolution. It wasn’t that people rushed — “Wow! It’s a great crusade, independence against — from England. Join!” No, they had a tough time getting people. In the South, you know, they couldn’t find people to join the army. George Washington had to send a general and his troops down south to threaten people in order to get them into the military, into the war.
And in fact, in the war itself, the poor people, the working people, the farmers, the artisans, who were in the army, maybe some of them were there for patriotic reasons, independence against England, even if they weren’t sure what it meant for them. But some of them were there for that reason. Others were there — you know, some of them had actually listened to the Declaration of Independence, read from the town hall. And inspiring. You know, liberty, equality, equality. We all have an equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You know, it can make people — some people were inspired, and they joined.
Other people joined because they were promised land at — you know, they were promised at the end of the Revolution — you know, they were promised, you might say, a little GI Bill of Rights, just as today recruiting offices make promises to young guys that they want into the Army. They give them bonuses, and they promise them maybe a free education afterward. No, people don’t naturally rush to war. You have to seduce them. You have to bribe them or coerce them. Some people think it’s natural for people to go to war. Not at all. No.
Nations have to work hard to mobilize the citizens to go to war. And they had to work in the Revolutionary War, especially, well, when they found out that, although there was a draft, there was a kind of conscription that the rich could get out of the conscription by paying a certain amount of money. But the young, the farmers who went into the Revolutionary Army and who fought and who died and who were wounded in the war, they found that they, the privates, the ordinary soldier in the war, that they weren’t treated as well as the officers who came from the upper classes. The officers were given splendid uniforms and good food and were paid well. And the privates very often did not have shoes and clothes and were not paid. And when their time was supposed to be up, they were told, no, they had to stay. There was a class difference in the Revolutionary War.
You know, in this country, we’re not accustomed to the idea of class differences, because we’re all supposed to be one big, happy family. One nation, indivisible. We’re very divisible. No, we’re not one nation. No, there are working people, and there are rich people, and in between, yes, there are nervous people. So, yeah, the conditions of the ordinary farmer who went into the Revolution, the private, the conditions were such that they mutinied — mutinied against the officers, against George Washington and the other officers. And when I say “mutinied,” I mean thousands of them. Ever hear about this in your classrooms when you discuss — when you learn about the Revolutionary War? When you learn about Bunker Hill and Concord and the first shot heard around the world — right? — do you ever hear about the mutinies? I doubt it. I never learned about it. I didn’t learn about it in elementary school or high school or college or graduate school. You find very often that what you learn in graduate school is what you learned in elementary school, only with footnotes. You see. No, I never learned about the mutinies.
But there were mutinies. Thousands of soldiers mutinied, so many of them that George Washington was worried, you know, that he couldn’t put it down. He had to make concessions, make concessions to what was called the Pennsylvania Line, the thousands of mutineers. However, when shortly after he made those concessions and quieted down the mutiny by saying — promising them things, promising them he’d get them out of the army soon and give them pay and so on, soon after that, there was another mutiny in the New Jersey Line, which was smaller. And there, Washington put his foot down. He couldn’t handle the thousands in the Pennsylvania Line, but he could handle the hundreds in the New Jersey Line, and he said, “Find the leaders and execute them.” You hear about this in your classrooms about the Revolutionary War? You hear about the executions of mutineers? I doubt it. If I’m wrong in the question period, correct me. I’m willing to stand corrected. I don’t like to stand corrected, but I’m will to be stand corrected. And yeah, so they executed a number of the mutineers. Their fellow soldiers were ordered to execute the mutineers. So the Revolution — you know, not everybody was treated the same way in the Revolution.
And, in fact, when the Revolution was won, independence was won, and the soldiers came back to their homes — and some of them did get bits of land that were promised to them, so, yeah, many of them became small farmers again. And then they found that they were being taxed heavily by the rich, who controlled the legislatures. They couldn’t pay their taxes, and so their farms and their homes were being taken away from them, auctioned off. “Foreclosures” they call them today, right? It’s an old phenomenon.
So, there were rebellions. I think everybody learns about Shays’ Rebellion. They don’t learn much about Shays’ Rebellion, but they learn it enough to recognize it on a multiple choice test. Shays’ Rebellion in western Massachusetts. Thousands of farmers gathered around courthouses in Springfield and Northampton and Amherst and Great Barrington around those courthouses. And they stopped the auctions from going on. They prevent the foreclosures. It’s a real rebellion that has to be put down by an army, paid for by the merchants of Boston. It’s put down. But it puts a scare into the Founding Fathers.
Now, there’s an interesting chronology there. Shays’ Rebellion takes place in 1786. The Founding Fathers get together in 1787, for the Constitutional Convention. Is there a connection between the two? I don’t remember ever learning that there was a connection between Shays’ Rebellion and the Constitution. What I learned is that, oh, they got together with the Constitution because the Articles of Confederation created a weak central government, that we need a strong central government. And everybody likes the idea of a strong central government, so it was a great thing to have a Constitutional Convention and draft the Constitution.
What you were not told, I don’t think — I wasn’t told — was that the Founding Fathers on the eve of the Constitutional Convention were writing to one another before the Constitutional Convention and saying, “Hey, this rebellion in western Massachusetts, we better do something about that. We better create a government strong enough to deal with rebellions like this.” That’s why we need a strong central government.
There was a general, General Henry Knox of Massachusetts, who had been in the army with George Washington, and he wrote to Washington at one point. And I don’t have his letter with me. I do have it somewhere, you know. I’ll paraphrase it. It won’t be as eloquent as him. You know, they were eloquent in those days. Take a look at the language used by the political leaders of that day and the language of the political leaders in our day. I mean, really, it’s, you know — yeah. So when Knox writes to Washington, it says something like this. It says, “You know, these people who fought in the Revolution, these people who are rebelling, who have rebelled in west Massachusetts” —- and other states, too, not just in Massachusetts -—
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Maine.
HOWARD ZINN: In Maine, too. Yeah, you know that, Roger. You were among the rebels, I’m sure. You were there, I know.
Knox says to Washington, says, “These people who have rebelled, you know, they think that because they fought in the Revolution, they fought in the war against England, that they deserve an equal share of the wealth of this country.” No. Those were the kinds of letters that went back and forth. “We’ve got to set up a government that will be strong enough to put down the rebellions of the poor, slave revolts, the Indians, who may resent our going into their territory.” That’s what a strong central government is for, not just because, oh, it’s nice to have a strong central government. The reason’s for that. The Constitution was a class document written to protect the interests of bondholders and slave owners and land expansionists. So the outcome of the Revolution was not exactly good for everybody, and it created all sorts of problems.
What about black people, the slaves? Did they benefit from the winning of the Revolution? Not at all. There was slavery before the Revolution; there was slavery after the Revolution. In fact, Washington would not enlist black people into his army. The South, Southern slave owners, they were the first with the — for the British, doing it for the British. The British enlisted blacks before Washington did. No, blacks didn’t benefit.
Hey, what about Indians? Should we even count the Indians? Should we even consider the Indians? Who are they? Well, they lived here. They owned all this land. We moved them out of here. Well, they should be considered. What was the outcome for them when we won the Revolution? It was bad, because the British had set a line called the Proclamation of 1763. They had set a line at the Appalachians, where they said, no, the colonists should not go beyond this line into Indian territory. I mean, they didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They just didn’t want trouble. They set a line. The British are now gone, and the line is gone, and now you can move westward into Indian territory. And you’re going to move across the continent. And you’re going to create massacres. And you’re going to take that enormous land in the West away from the Indians who live there.
These are some of the consequences of the Revolution. But we did win independence from England. All I’m trying to suggest, that to simply leave it that way, that we won independence from England, doesn’t do justice to the complexity of this victory. And, you know, was it good that we — to be independent of England? Yes, it’s always good to be independent. But at what cost? And how real is the independence? And is it possible that we would have won independence without a war?
Hey, how about Canada? Canada is independent of England. They don’t have a bad society, Canada. There are some very attractive things about Canada. They’re independent of England. They did not fight a bloody war. It took longer. You know, sometimes it takes longer if you don’t want to kill. Violence is fast. War is fast. And that’s attractive — right? — when you do something fast. And if you don’t want killing, you may have to take more time in order to achieve your objective. And actually, when you achieve your objective, it might be achieved in a better way and with better results, and with a Canadian health system instead of American health system. You know, you know.
OK, all of this — I won’t say anything about the Revolutionary War. I just wanted to throw a few doubts in about it. That’s all. I don’t want to say anything revolutionary or radical. I don’t want to make trouble. You know, I just want to — no, I certainly don’t want to make trouble at BU. No. So — yet I just want to — I just want to think about these things. That’s all I’m trying to do, have us think again about things that we took for granted. “Oh, yes, Revolutionary War, great!” No. Let’s think about it.
source: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/1/8/howard_zinn_three_holy_wars
The Scandalous Gospel According to a Bleeding Woman: A Re-Telling- by Wilda Gafney, PhD.
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via Luther Theological Seminary at Philadelphia
Let us pray: In the name of the One who waded in the waters of Miryam’s womb, walked the way of suffering as one of the woman-born, and woke from the grasp of death in the deep darkness of the morning. Amen.
Sarah’s daughter was bleeding from her vagina, again, still. It wasn’t the not-so-secret monthly blood whose scent was part of the cacophony of smells which perfused the Iron Age and passed largely without comment from anyone else. This was something else entirely. This was a flow that never quite stopped. It dwindled from time to time, giving birth to aborted hope that this time it had stopped for good. A day or two of respite, and then the bleeding started again. There were some years that she had gone for months without bleeding at all. And just a few months – she could count them on one hand – that she bled like other women. She had bled this way since her first bleeding. It was nothing like what her mother and aunts told her to expect. Her sisters didn’t bleed like this. She drank the teas the midwife gave her, tied the knots in the cord around her body as prescribed by the healing prophets (like those in Ezekiel 13), nothing helped. She never felt clean. There were stains on all her clothes, her chair, her bed. She was tired, tired of bleeding and just tired.
She had moved to a town where no one knew – or admitted that they knew – her story. She couldn’t stay at home any more; all of her sisters were married and having children. She loved her sisters and their children and yet every time she saw one of them blossoming with yet another pregnancy or putting a baby to her breast she felt an ache in her empty, broken, bleeding womb. The other mothers in town wouldn’t consider her for their sons. She could have married an older, widowed man to help him with his children, but that wasn’t the life she wanted for herself. And she made a decent life for herself, as a midwife, a healer, hoping to learn something that she could use to heal herself. She also became a midwife because she hoped no one would think twice if they saw blood on her skirts. All of the money she earned, all of the goods and services she received, she sold or bartered away in hopes of healing herself. She spent all of her income on every healer and physician in her town, within walking distance and sometimes beyond. She was Sarah’s daughter and she decided to do whatever it took to heal herself, save herself, to live.
Her vaginal hemorrhage didn’t affect her day-to-day life as much as people might have imagined when the flow wasn’t too heavy. After all, being ritually not-yet-ready for worship – a better translation than “unclean” in terms of illness or naturally occurring bodily cycles – was quite common and in most cases remedied by bathing and an inexpensive offering. Some cases also required physical inspection by a priest or for women – I believe – a woman who was both the daughter of and the wife of (another) priest with the pronouncement of restoration being made by the priest. But her vaginal bleeding would have to stop first, long enough for her to qualify for and pass inspection. And in the past twelve years it hadn’t and as a result she couldn’t go to Jerusalem and worship in the temple, and she wanted to go. She had been there as a child, but she wanted to go as an adult and take her own offerings and say her prayers facing the place where the living God resided, bathed in clouds of incense. It wasn’t required for women, but so many women went that there were mikvahs – baths – dedicated for them, there was a plaza named in their honor and, special gates and balconies for women who didn’t want to mix with men.
Even though she poured herself into the healing arts and her life-giving work, rejoicing at each new life born into her hands, Sarah’s daughter longed to be free of her terrible illness, the weakness, the pain, the constant washing and cleaning and to have some new things, new clothes, unstained. Her affliction also affected her sense of herself, her sense of her own value and beauty and worth. She was distant from her own family and had no family in this town. She had no one with whom to share Shabbat meals, she lit the candles by herself. Sometimes families she helped invited her for celebrations but she was always afraid her body would betray her, like that one time she thought she had enough padding and then it broke through in front of everyone. She had moved again after that. She was keenly aware that her body didn’t work like other women. She felt broken. And she knew she could die from this.
But Sarah’s daughter refused to be destroyed by her pain or paralyzed by fear. She didn’t know why her body was the way it was, but she knew it didn’t have to be. She knew it could be, should be, would be different. And she would do whatever it took to save herself, be healed, be made whole, be restored, to live – the verb means all of those things. She had heard that there was a miracle-working rebbe, Yeshua ben Miryam, (Jesus, Mary’s child) based in Capernaum who regularly crossed the Sea of Galilee. And today he was here. She was going to see him.
As she hurried after the crowd, she thought about what she was going to say. She followed the sound of the commotion and saw more people gathered than lived in her town. All of them pushing towards a group in the middle, and one of them… Yes him. He’s the one. She pushed. Not caring if some stepped out of her path because they saw or smelled the blood that was flowing even harder. She had to reach him, had to get his attention…
But he was walking with Ya’ir (who the Greeks called Jairus). Ya’ir’s daughter – what was her name? was it Me’irah? Named for “light” like her father? I think so – Me’irah had died. A child whose whole life was the length of her disease, twelve years. And now she was dead. Sarah’s daughter said to herself, I won’t bother the Rabbi. He must go to comfort Me’irah’s mother.
She was all alone as she watched her daughter die, she was all alone as she planned and began the funeral of her child. She was like so many mothers left alone to do the difficult work of holding her remaining family together through the most trying of times. Her husband had not abandoned them, but he had left them. He missed the moment when the light left his baby girl’s eyes as she passed from life to death. He left her on her deathbed and her Mama in her deathwatch in the hope that he could persuade Rebbe Yeshua, Rabbi Jesus, to come and lay his hands on her. But she died in his absence and they started her funeral without him…
Yet Sarah’s daughter couldn’t walk away; she couldn’t take her eyes off of him and found herself within a hand’s breadth. Falling to her knees, reaching out, not knowing what she would do until she did it; (according to the other two gospels) she touched his tzit-tzit, the knotted fringe on the corners of his clothing – the sign of an observant Jew. She believed that this time she would be healed. She had believed before and been disappointed, but that didn’t matter. Sarah’s daughter had resilient, indefatigable, inexhaustible, inextinguishable faith. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be saved.”
More than healed, saved, saved from the death that was surely coming closer. Twelve years of pain, disappointment, sorrow and struggle did not diminish her faith; it was a living thing, carried inside of her, extended through her hand to One who was so worthy of her faith that he didn’t have to see her, speak to her or even touch her to save her, heal her, make her whole, grant her life and transform her.
And it was so. She drew the healing power from his body. She did it. The text is full of her verbs: She endured, she spent, she was no better, she grew worse, she heard, she came up, she touched, she said, she felt, she was saved/healed/restored and then she told him everything. Everything. All her pain, all her grief, all her hope, all her faith. All. She is the active agent in her healing eleven times, and once passive – her hemorrhage stopped.
And Ya’ir, Jairus, is waiting and watching. He left his child on her deathbed to find Rabbi Yeshua, Rabbi Jesus. He didn’t know if she would be living or dead when he got back; but he knew that if Yeshua, Jesus, just laid his hands on her, she would be alright. Ya’ir started his journey in faith. He said, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be saved, and live.” (There’s that verb again.) And Ya’ir ended his journey in faith. When he found Jesus, he found resurrection and life at the same time Sarah’s daughter found restoration and life.
One of the great ironies of the aftermath of this text is that the church of Jesus Christ and nominally Christian societies like ours have become so scandalized by women and our bodies that we dare not name our parts or the problems with our parts in polite company according to some folk. It is ironic, because silencing women and censuring our bodies denies the Gospel story itself: That God became flesh and blood in the body of a woman, was nourished by her blood in her body passed through an umbilical cord attached to a placenta, rooted in the wall of her uterus, and one day pulsed into this world through her cervix and vagina. Just like the rest of us – give or take the occasional caesarian.
This is the scandal of the Gospel, the Incarnation of a woman-born God. At the heart of Incarnation theology is the notion that the human body – and women are fully human – is neither accidental nor unworthy of the habitation of God. The scandal of the Incarnation is the scandal of the human body in all of its forms, genders, expressions, orientations, nationalities, ethnicities, abilities, limitations, communicable diseases, poverties. And this is what God became, for Sarah’s daughter and Ya’ir and his daughter and her mother and you and me, for the whole world, for all of groaning creation. To paraphrase Brother (Cornell) West: Jesus was born too close to urine, excrement and sex for the comfort of many. God became human to touch and be touched by the broken, bleeding, dead and dying and to be broken, bleed and die. And in so doing transformed that brokenness into a sacrament, body and blood, bread and wine, the shadow of death, grave-robbing resurrection.
This Gospel is that God’s concern for the woman-born was manifested in God, Godself, becoming woman-born, for the redemption and liberation of all the woman-born from fear and from death itself. Yeshua the Messiah, the Son of Woman, came to seek out and save the lost and to give his life as a ransom for many. Amen.
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| Woman with Blood |
Sarah’s daughter was bleeding from her vagina, again, still. It wasn’t the not-so-secret monthly blood whose scent was part of the cacophony of smells which perfused the Iron Age and passed largely without comment from anyone else. This was something else entirely. This was a flow that never quite stopped. It dwindled from time to time, giving birth to aborted hope that this time it had stopped for good. A day or two of respite, and then the bleeding started again. There were some years that she had gone for months without bleeding at all. And just a few months – she could count them on one hand – that she bled like other women. She had bled this way since her first bleeding. It was nothing like what her mother and aunts told her to expect. Her sisters didn’t bleed like this. She drank the teas the midwife gave her, tied the knots in the cord around her body as prescribed by the healing prophets (like those in Ezekiel 13), nothing helped. She never felt clean. There were stains on all her clothes, her chair, her bed. She was tired, tired of bleeding and just tired.
She had moved to a town where no one knew – or admitted that they knew – her story. She couldn’t stay at home any more; all of her sisters were married and having children. She loved her sisters and their children and yet every time she saw one of them blossoming with yet another pregnancy or putting a baby to her breast she felt an ache in her empty, broken, bleeding womb. The other mothers in town wouldn’t consider her for their sons. She could have married an older, widowed man to help him with his children, but that wasn’t the life she wanted for herself. And she made a decent life for herself, as a midwife, a healer, hoping to learn something that she could use to heal herself. She also became a midwife because she hoped no one would think twice if they saw blood on her skirts. All of the money she earned, all of the goods and services she received, she sold or bartered away in hopes of healing herself. She spent all of her income on every healer and physician in her town, within walking distance and sometimes beyond. She was Sarah’s daughter and she decided to do whatever it took to heal herself, save herself, to live.
Her vaginal hemorrhage didn’t affect her day-to-day life as much as people might have imagined when the flow wasn’t too heavy. After all, being ritually not-yet-ready for worship – a better translation than “unclean” in terms of illness or naturally occurring bodily cycles – was quite common and in most cases remedied by bathing and an inexpensive offering. Some cases also required physical inspection by a priest or for women – I believe – a woman who was both the daughter of and the wife of (another) priest with the pronouncement of restoration being made by the priest. But her vaginal bleeding would have to stop first, long enough for her to qualify for and pass inspection. And in the past twelve years it hadn’t and as a result she couldn’t go to Jerusalem and worship in the temple, and she wanted to go. She had been there as a child, but she wanted to go as an adult and take her own offerings and say her prayers facing the place where the living God resided, bathed in clouds of incense. It wasn’t required for women, but so many women went that there were mikvahs – baths – dedicated for them, there was a plaza named in their honor and, special gates and balconies for women who didn’t want to mix with men.
Even though she poured herself into the healing arts and her life-giving work, rejoicing at each new life born into her hands, Sarah’s daughter longed to be free of her terrible illness, the weakness, the pain, the constant washing and cleaning and to have some new things, new clothes, unstained. Her affliction also affected her sense of herself, her sense of her own value and beauty and worth. She was distant from her own family and had no family in this town. She had no one with whom to share Shabbat meals, she lit the candles by herself. Sometimes families she helped invited her for celebrations but she was always afraid her body would betray her, like that one time she thought she had enough padding and then it broke through in front of everyone. She had moved again after that. She was keenly aware that her body didn’t work like other women. She felt broken. And she knew she could die from this.
But Sarah’s daughter refused to be destroyed by her pain or paralyzed by fear. She didn’t know why her body was the way it was, but she knew it didn’t have to be. She knew it could be, should be, would be different. And she would do whatever it took to save herself, be healed, be made whole, be restored, to live – the verb means all of those things. She had heard that there was a miracle-working rebbe, Yeshua ben Miryam, (Jesus, Mary’s child) based in Capernaum who regularly crossed the Sea of Galilee. And today he was here. She was going to see him.
As she hurried after the crowd, she thought about what she was going to say. She followed the sound of the commotion and saw more people gathered than lived in her town. All of them pushing towards a group in the middle, and one of them… Yes him. He’s the one. She pushed. Not caring if some stepped out of her path because they saw or smelled the blood that was flowing even harder. She had to reach him, had to get his attention…
But he was walking with Ya’ir (who the Greeks called Jairus). Ya’ir’s daughter – what was her name? was it Me’irah? Named for “light” like her father? I think so – Me’irah had died. A child whose whole life was the length of her disease, twelve years. And now she was dead. Sarah’s daughter said to herself, I won’t bother the Rabbi. He must go to comfort Me’irah’s mother.
She was all alone as she watched her daughter die, she was all alone as she planned and began the funeral of her child. She was like so many mothers left alone to do the difficult work of holding her remaining family together through the most trying of times. Her husband had not abandoned them, but he had left them. He missed the moment when the light left his baby girl’s eyes as she passed from life to death. He left her on her deathbed and her Mama in her deathwatch in the hope that he could persuade Rebbe Yeshua, Rabbi Jesus, to come and lay his hands on her. But she died in his absence and they started her funeral without him…
Yet Sarah’s daughter couldn’t walk away; she couldn’t take her eyes off of him and found herself within a hand’s breadth. Falling to her knees, reaching out, not knowing what she would do until she did it; (according to the other two gospels) she touched his tzit-tzit, the knotted fringe on the corners of his clothing – the sign of an observant Jew. She believed that this time she would be healed. She had believed before and been disappointed, but that didn’t matter. Sarah’s daughter had resilient, indefatigable, inexhaustible, inextinguishable faith. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be saved.”
More than healed, saved, saved from the death that was surely coming closer. Twelve years of pain, disappointment, sorrow and struggle did not diminish her faith; it was a living thing, carried inside of her, extended through her hand to One who was so worthy of her faith that he didn’t have to see her, speak to her or even touch her to save her, heal her, make her whole, grant her life and transform her.
And it was so. She drew the healing power from his body. She did it. The text is full of her verbs: She endured, she spent, she was no better, she grew worse, she heard, she came up, she touched, she said, she felt, she was saved/healed/restored and then she told him everything. Everything. All her pain, all her grief, all her hope, all her faith. All. She is the active agent in her healing eleven times, and once passive – her hemorrhage stopped.
And Ya’ir, Jairus, is waiting and watching. He left his child on her deathbed to find Rabbi Yeshua, Rabbi Jesus. He didn’t know if she would be living or dead when he got back; but he knew that if Yeshua, Jesus, just laid his hands on her, she would be alright. Ya’ir started his journey in faith. He said, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be saved, and live.” (There’s that verb again.) And Ya’ir ended his journey in faith. When he found Jesus, he found resurrection and life at the same time Sarah’s daughter found restoration and life.
One of the great ironies of the aftermath of this text is that the church of Jesus Christ and nominally Christian societies like ours have become so scandalized by women and our bodies that we dare not name our parts or the problems with our parts in polite company according to some folk. It is ironic, because silencing women and censuring our bodies denies the Gospel story itself: That God became flesh and blood in the body of a woman, was nourished by her blood in her body passed through an umbilical cord attached to a placenta, rooted in the wall of her uterus, and one day pulsed into this world through her cervix and vagina. Just like the rest of us – give or take the occasional caesarian.
This is the scandal of the Gospel, the Incarnation of a woman-born God. At the heart of Incarnation theology is the notion that the human body – and women are fully human – is neither accidental nor unworthy of the habitation of God. The scandal of the Incarnation is the scandal of the human body in all of its forms, genders, expressions, orientations, nationalities, ethnicities, abilities, limitations, communicable diseases, poverties. And this is what God became, for Sarah’s daughter and Ya’ir and his daughter and her mother and you and me, for the whole world, for all of groaning creation. To paraphrase Brother (Cornell) West: Jesus was born too close to urine, excrement and sex for the comfort of many. God became human to touch and be touched by the broken, bleeding, dead and dying and to be broken, bleed and die. And in so doing transformed that brokenness into a sacrament, body and blood, bread and wine, the shadow of death, grave-robbing resurrection.
This Gospel is that God’s concern for the woman-born was manifested in God, Godself, becoming woman-born, for the redemption and liberation of all the woman-born from fear and from death itself. Yeshua the Messiah, the Son of Woman, came to seek out and save the lost and to give his life as a ransom for many. Amen.
Angela Davis speaking in Colorado Springs on the Prison Industrial Complex
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Angela Davis speaking in Colorado Springs on the Prison Industrial Complex. Angela is truly one of the most prophetic voices of our times. She is a prophet in the Old Testament sense, calling us to social justice. In the United States we incarcerate more of our people than any other country, including China. We have a large number of non-violent people in jails and prisons, largely as a result of the misguided "war on drugs." Also there is a racial dimension to the prison industrial complex, as a very large percentage African-American males are incarcerated. It costs more to incarcerate people than it does to send them to college. It is more expensive to incarcerate a drug addict than to pay for his or her rehabilitation. The Prison Industrial Complex is classist and racist, and it is economically inefficient.
Angela Davis speaking in Colorado Springs on the Prison Industrial Complex. Angela is truly one of the most prophetic voices of our times. She is a prophet in the Old Testament sense, calling us to social justice. In the United States we incarcerate more of our people than any other country, including China. We have a large number of non-violent people in jails and prisons, largely as a result of the misguided "war on drugs." Also there is a racial dimension to the prison industrial complex, as a very large percentage African-American males are incarcerated. It costs more to incarcerate people than it does to send them to college. It is more expensive to incarcerate a drug addict than to pay for his or her rehabilitation. The Prison Industrial Complex is classist and racist, and it is economically inefficient. Biblical Meditation for the 4th of July
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via Forward Day By Day
Deuteronomy 10:17-21. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords,…who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.
Certainly this is a day for celebration, for hot dogs and fireworks, for parades and ball games, and for enjoying being citizens of a great country.
At the same time, today is a day for us to be aware that, in terms of our intention that our people be happy and fulfilled, the United States falls short of her own goals. For example, one child in five in this country lives in poverty.
The Hebrews arrived in the land promised to them by God. God loved both them and the sojourners who passed through their land, and God called on the people to take care of new arrivals and visitors with justice and peace, making sure they were provided “with food and clothing.”
All of us on this continent either descend from newcomers or were once new arrivals ourselves. Our land is a gift, and God’s call for gracious hospitality toward all who come here is consistent with what God always demands of humankind.
+++++++++++++++
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.
- Deuteronomy 10:17-21 NRSV
via Forward Day By DayDeuteronomy 10:17-21. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords,…who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.
Certainly this is a day for celebration, for hot dogs and fireworks, for parades and ball games, and for enjoying being citizens of a great country.
At the same time, today is a day for us to be aware that, in terms of our intention that our people be happy and fulfilled, the United States falls short of her own goals. For example, one child in five in this country lives in poverty.
The Hebrews arrived in the land promised to them by God. God loved both them and the sojourners who passed through their land, and God called on the people to take care of new arrivals and visitors with justice and peace, making sure they were provided “with food and clothing.”
All of us on this continent either descend from newcomers or were once new arrivals ourselves. Our land is a gift, and God’s call for gracious hospitality toward all who come here is consistent with what God always demands of humankind.
+++++++++++++++
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.
- Deuteronomy 10:17-21 NRSV
When will the U.S. stop mass incarceration? by Lisa Bloom
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via CNN
Editor's note: Lisa Bloom is an attorney, legal analyst for Avvo.com and author of "Swagger: 10 Urgent Rules for Raising Boys in an Era of Failing Schools, Mass Joblessness and Thug Culture." Follow her on Twitter: @LisaBloom
(CNN) -- The United States leads the world in the rate of incarcerating its own citizens. We imprison more of our own people than any other country on earth, including China which has four times our population, or in human history. And now, a new Pew report announces that we are keeping even nonviolent inmates behind bars for increasingly longer terms.
This comes at a time when soaring costs of prisons are wreaking havoc on federal, state and local budgets, as schools, libraries, parks and social programs are slashed. When I graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1983, my state spent more on higher education than prisons, a lot more. That equation is now reversed. Money that could have gone into reducing skyrocketing tuition and cuts to education has instead gone to prisons and inmates.
Over the past 23 years, California constructed roughly one new prison per year, at a cost of $100 million each, while it built only one new public college during the same period. Nationwide, spending on prisons has risen six times faster than spending on higher education.
As I protest education cuts, I'm so often told, "We just don't have the money." It's a lie. We do have the money. We just choose to spend it on prisons. Why is this not a front and center issue in the presidential campaign?
Largely casualties of our misguided "war on drugs," and vigorously promoted at the federal level by the "drug czar" and a $15 billion annual budget, the number of incarcerated Americans has quadrupled since 1980.
More than two million of our people are now locked up, with another nearly five million under an increasingly restrictive system of correctional control in lieu of or after incarceration. Criminalizing human behavior like never before, our judges are required by law to mete out increasingly punitive, long sentences, even for children. Even after inmates are released, they remain under the heavy-handed and pricey control of the criminal justice system for years or for life, often legally barred from voting, receiving public housing, food stamps or student loans.
Forced to "check the box" on job applications that they are convicted criminals, even those who have had simple convictions like marijuana possession are often legally discriminated against by employers.An unemployed young man recently wrote to me about being shut out of his dream job, nursing, because of a decade-old marijuana offense. In fact, no one at all will hire him. As he languishes on a friend's couch, he is hopeless, depressed and suicidal.
In the United States, one man out of eighteen is incarcerated or on probation or parole, and more are locked up every day. We are the last developed country on the planet to lock up juveniles, overwhelmingly boys, for life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed when they were minors. (Though the Supreme Court banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for minors in June, judges may still impose the sentence as a discretionary matter.)
Here's one stark way to understand our new normal of mass incarceration: If we wanted to return to 1970s level of incarceration, we'd have to release four out of five people behind bars today.
Nonviolent offenders are 60% of our prison population. Releasing half of them would free up nearly $17 billion per year for schools or other worthy programs, with no appreciable effect on the crime rate. In fact, many studies conclude that mass incarceration is crimogenic, i.e., locking up people for minor offenses increases crime because they become hardened behind bars. Since few prisons offer therapy or vocational programs and children left behind in fatherless homes are more likely to grow up to become offenders themselves, the problem just gets worse.
But we cannot keep going down the road of locking up more people for longer amounts of time. According to Pew, prisoners released in 2009 served an average of nine additional months in custody, or 36% longer, than offenders released in 1990. Annually we now spend $68 billion and growing on local, state and federal corrections.
The American public strongly supports reducing time served for nonviolent offenders. But candidates appear afraid to touch this touchy third rail issue, for fear they appear less than "tough on crime."Why does the right not consider our multibillion-dollar prison system to be the type of bloated government program ripe for cost-cutting?
Why is the left so rarely concerned about the warehoused young lives and the destruction of inner city families from our culture of mass incarceration?
Why do both sides accept the framing of this question, so often parroted: In these tough economic times, should we cut more social services or raise taxes? It's a false dichotomy. The third alternative is to stop warehousing our own people.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinionJoin us on Facebook/CNNOpinion
via CNN
Editor's note: Lisa Bloom is an attorney, legal analyst for Avvo.com and author of "Swagger: 10 Urgent Rules for Raising Boys in an Era of Failing Schools, Mass Joblessness and Thug Culture." Follow her on Twitter: @LisaBloom
(CNN) -- The United States leads the world in the rate of incarcerating its own citizens. We imprison more of our own people than any other country on earth, including China which has four times our population, or in human history. And now, a new Pew report announces that we are keeping even nonviolent inmates behind bars for increasingly longer terms.
This comes at a time when soaring costs of prisons are wreaking havoc on federal, state and local budgets, as schools, libraries, parks and social programs are slashed. When I graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1983, my state spent more on higher education than prisons, a lot more. That equation is now reversed. Money that could have gone into reducing skyrocketing tuition and cuts to education has instead gone to prisons and inmates.
Over the past 23 years, California constructed roughly one new prison per year, at a cost of $100 million each, while it built only one new public college during the same period. Nationwide, spending on prisons has risen six times faster than spending on higher education.
 |
| Lisa Bloom |
As I protest education cuts, I'm so often told, "We just don't have the money." It's a lie. We do have the money. We just choose to spend it on prisons. Why is this not a front and center issue in the presidential campaign?
Largely casualties of our misguided "war on drugs," and vigorously promoted at the federal level by the "drug czar" and a $15 billion annual budget, the number of incarcerated Americans has quadrupled since 1980.
More than two million of our people are now locked up, with another nearly five million under an increasingly restrictive system of correctional control in lieu of or after incarceration. Criminalizing human behavior like never before, our judges are required by law to mete out increasingly punitive, long sentences, even for children. Even after inmates are released, they remain under the heavy-handed and pricey control of the criminal justice system for years or for life, often legally barred from voting, receiving public housing, food stamps or student loans.
Forced to "check the box" on job applications that they are convicted criminals, even those who have had simple convictions like marijuana possession are often legally discriminated against by employers.An unemployed young man recently wrote to me about being shut out of his dream job, nursing, because of a decade-old marijuana offense. In fact, no one at all will hire him. As he languishes on a friend's couch, he is hopeless, depressed and suicidal.
In the United States, one man out of eighteen is incarcerated or on probation or parole, and more are locked up every day. We are the last developed country on the planet to lock up juveniles, overwhelmingly boys, for life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed when they were minors. (Though the Supreme Court banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for minors in June, judges may still impose the sentence as a discretionary matter.)
Here's one stark way to understand our new normal of mass incarceration: If we wanted to return to 1970s level of incarceration, we'd have to release four out of five people behind bars today.
Nonviolent offenders are 60% of our prison population. Releasing half of them would free up nearly $17 billion per year for schools or other worthy programs, with no appreciable effect on the crime rate. In fact, many studies conclude that mass incarceration is crimogenic, i.e., locking up people for minor offenses increases crime because they become hardened behind bars. Since few prisons offer therapy or vocational programs and children left behind in fatherless homes are more likely to grow up to become offenders themselves, the problem just gets worse.
But we cannot keep going down the road of locking up more people for longer amounts of time. According to Pew, prisoners released in 2009 served an average of nine additional months in custody, or 36% longer, than offenders released in 1990. Annually we now spend $68 billion and growing on local, state and federal corrections.
The American public strongly supports reducing time served for nonviolent offenders. But candidates appear afraid to touch this touchy third rail issue, for fear they appear less than "tough on crime."Why does the right not consider our multibillion-dollar prison system to be the type of bloated government program ripe for cost-cutting?
Why is the left so rarely concerned about the warehoused young lives and the destruction of inner city families from our culture of mass incarceration?
Why do both sides accept the framing of this question, so often parroted: In these tough economic times, should we cut more social services or raise taxes? It's a false dichotomy. The third alternative is to stop warehousing our own people.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinionJoin us on Facebook/CNNOpinion
4 Temmuz 2012 Çarşamba
The final countdown
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Well dare I say it, spring is here. Or is it?With only 3 weeks remaining in the personal tax season, we strongly recommend getting in touch with us to get your tax return completed before it is too late. The streets in Kensington are getting busier, people are getting out and the smiles are plentiful. What would feel even better is having your taxes out of the way for another year.With the upcoming Canadian election, you’ve heard many promises or lack thereof. Most of them involve taxes and tax credits. There might even be a few you never even knew existed. It’s a good time to ensure you are getting the most of all credits and deductions available. Awareness is key. A good accountant can help you capture everything available on your annual tax return.A common situation we see on personal tax returns and tax planning is the treatment of a rental property. There are many deductions available against rental property income. Examples of expenses that can be deducted towards rental income include:· Advestising· Property taxes· Interest· Management and administrative fees· Utilities· Travel· Insurance· Even certain motor vehicle expensesThese must be all related to generating income and within reason.Even more importantly is to plan for the eventual sale of the property. Since the rental property is no longer your principal residence it is subject to gain/loss when you sell the property. To ensure you minimize the tax implications it is important to ensure the property is dealt with in the most tax advantageous method.
Get out and enjoy the spring weather while it lasts.
Get out and enjoy the spring weather while it lasts.
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