8 Religious People Who Were Not Oppressors

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/belief/8-religious-people-who-were-not-oppressors


Martin Luther King (C) waves to supporters on August 28, 1963 on the Mall in Washington DC. President Barack Obama will lead his nation in homage Wednesday to King at the spot where the civil rights icon voiced a soaring dream of equality 50 years ago.

1. The Rev. Willie Barrow

Barrow, who turned 89 last year, has been called “The High Priestess of Protest” and has been fighting for liberal causes for over 60 years. Barrow became a strong ally of Martin Luther King in the 1950s, when she started helping him organize protests and marches in Chicago (her adopted home since 1943).

***SNIP

2. The Rev. Addie L. Wyatt

One of Willie Barrow’s closest friends was also a female Protestant minister based in Chicago: the Rev. Addie Wyatt, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 88. Some of the more fundamentalist Protestant churches don’t believe women should be ministers, but not all Protestants are fundamentalists—and Wyatt was both a church leader and a political activist.

***SNIP

3. Father Gustavo Gutiérrez

Far-right Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. love to deify the rich and describe poverty as a moral failure, but Verse 10:25 in the New Testament’s Book of Mark certainly doesn’t portray the ultra-rich as morally superior: according to English-language translations of Mark 10:25, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” In Latin America, a school of left-wing Catholicism known as liberation theology has taken that idea to heart.

***SNIP


4. Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan

***SNIP

The junta wasn’t shy about killing religious figures: San Salvador-based Archbishop Óscar Romero, a Catholic priest who was outspoken against the junta’s brutality and urged the Carter administration to cease all military aid to that regime, was assassinated on March 24, 1980. Then, on December 2 of that year, three American nuns—Maura Clarke, Ita Ford and Dorothy Kazel—and American lay missionary Jean Donovan (who had attended Romero’s funeral) were murdered in El Salvador by one of the death squads while doing charity work in that country. The killings were clearly planned in advance: after Donovan and Kazel (who were under surveillance) picked up Clarke and Ford at the airport in San Salvador, members of the Salvadoran National Guard stopped their vehicle, took them to a remote area, and raped and beat all four women before shooting them. Despite the outcry over the killings, U.S. military support for the Salvadoran junta continued under the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Sr.

[cbayer]

1. The intro to this article is really worth reading as well.

There is always good and bad and it's important to never loose sight of that fact.

Great post. Thanks, xchrom.

[xchrom]

2. ...

[Warren Stupidity]

3. It is interesting that this needs to be stated.

[rug]

13. It doesn't.

Some people need too hear it though.

[trotsky]

18. But not surprising.

Even here in this group the people who truly act like a "Christian" should are few and far between.

[Brettongarcia]

4. I often like to try to calculate the good done by religion, vs. the evil

At some point in the progress of civilization, it seems to begin to overall do more harm than good.

Like, right about ... now.

[Htom Sirveaux]

5. The separation of church and state was inaugurated in America by Roger Williams, a baptist minister.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_%28theologian%29

The current head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State is also a minister, Rev. Barry Lynn. They work frequently with The Interfaith Alliance, led by Rev. Welton Gaddy, a reliable liberal (his radio show can be found here).

[Bluenorthwest]

6. And yet Father Gustavo Gutiérrez espoused the dogma that gay people are inherently disordered

and did nothing nor said nothing to oppose that oppressive hateful and loudly professed teaching of hate and glorification of discrimination.
I think you and I have differing definitions of what 'not an oppressor' means. I think Gus wanted to have his host and eat it too. Anti gay theocrats are oppressors. The end. They might be kind to their own sort of person, but frankly, who isn't?

[cbayer]

7. I have done a search and can't find anything substantiating what you say about Gutierrez.

In fact, he was apparently repeatedly investigated by the vatican for his liberation theology writings.

I'm not saying it's not true, but I would really appreciate a link if you can find one.

[Htom Sirveaux]

8. It might be one of those "by belonging to the church, he's

supporting everything the church teaches, unless he speaks out against it" things.

[cbayer]

9. That would be unfortunate, because this particular priest has really

taken on the RCC in some very significant ways.

People like him need to be supported, not painted with a broad brush they don't deserve.

But I know that you already know that.

In my search, I found I lot of pro-GLBT civil rights pieces that sourced or quoted him.

[progressoid]

15. " wanted to have his host and eat it too"

I LOLed.

[roguevalley]

10. Look through the archives of civil rights marches and see the priests and nuns, the pastors and the

like marching at the front of the line with the people and getting the beatings and abuse they got. Remember the nuns killed in Guatemala, the endless lines of good people who BECAUSE of their faith do good everyday and always have. To lump them all together is to make it simple to say if you're a democrat, you are just like Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emmanuel. It is possible that there are nuances in all things. TO deny otherwise is to be a pug tea bagger.

[cbayer]

11. Amen. Those are the images that I grew up with that are indelibly etched

into my memory

Whatever the religious right does, I know first hand and profoundly what the religious left does.

And we should be very grateful to them and support those that continue the tradition.

[roguevalley]

16. me too. monks and nuns ... i loved them with all my heart. the courage and conviction ... it was lov

[pinto]

12. I would add Father Phillip Berrigan to that list, as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Berrigan

Berrigan was born in Two Harbors, Minnesota, a Midwestern working class mining town. He had five brothers, including the Jesuit fellow-activist and poet, Daniel Berrigan. His mother, Frieda (née Fromhart), was of German descent and deeply religious. His father, Tom Berrigan, was a second-generation Irish-Catholic, trade union member, socialist and railway engineer.

Philip Berrigan graduated from high school in Syracuse, New York, and was then employed cleaning trains for the New York Central Railroad. He played with a semi-professional baseball team. In 1943, after a semester of schooling at St. Michael's College, Toronto, Berrigan was drafted into combat duty in World War II. He served in the artillery during the Battle of the Bulge (1945) and later became a Second Lieutenant in the infantry. He was deeply affected by his exposure to the violence of war and the racism of boot camp in the Southern US.

Berrigan graduated with an English degree from the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit university in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1950 he joined the Society of St. Joseph, better known as the Josephite Fathers, a religious society of priests and lay brothers dedicated to serving those of African descent, who were still dealing with the repercussions of slavery and daily segregation in the United States. After studying at the theological school of the Society, St. Joseph's Seminary in Washington, D.C., he was ordained a priest in 1955. He went on to gain a degree in Secondary Education at Loyola University of the South (1957) and then a Master of Arts degree at Xavier University in 1960, during which time he began to teach.

In addition to his academic responsibilities, Berrigan became active in the Civil Rights movement. He marched for desegregation and participated in sit-ins and bus boycotts. His brother Daniel wrote of him:

From the beginning, he stood with the urban poor. He rejected the traditional, isolated stance of the Church in black communities. He was also incurably secular; he saw the Church as one resource, bringing to bear on the squalid facts of racism the light of the Gospel, the presence of inventive courage and hope.

Berrigan was first imprisoned in 1962/1963. During his many prison sentences he would often hold bible study class and offer legal educational support to other inmates. As a priest, his activim and arrests met with deep disapproval from the leadership of the Catholic Church and Berrigan was moved to Epiphany Apostolic College, the Josephite seminary college in Newburgh, New York, but he continued his protests. Working with Jim Forest, in 1964 he founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship in New York City. He was moved again to St. Peter Claver Parish in West Baltimore, Maryland, from where he started the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission, leading lobbies and demonstrations.

[okasha]

14. Fr. Bill McNichols, a contemporary icon painter,

Last edited Sun Jul 27, 2014, 07:19 PM - Edit history (1)

doesn't restrict himself to already-canonized saints. One of his pieces is a portrait of "Holy Prophet Philip Berrigan;" another depicts "Holy New Martyr Jean Donovan."

His web site is Andrei Rubelev Studios.

[cbayer]

17. He was one of my childhood heroes and had a very positive impact on me.