‘Peace House Community Journal’ Archives
Grace in the Face of Destruction
from the series Peace House Community Journal... By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby Last month I wrote about the need to use power wisely, and the temptations that everyone faces when they get power over others. Power can be used for our own prestige and comfort, or for the good of others. We have plenty of examples every day of each of those options playing out in front of our eyes. Since I wrote that article, I have been reading Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide by George E. Tinker. It is a wonderful example of using power well, along with being a great book on many other levels. Tinker looks at four missionaries who are revered for their work among Native peoples in North America, but he shows how they all contributed to the destruction of Native societies, and the results that still haunt us today. One of the missionaries he writes about is Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple, an Episcopal clergyman who worked in Minnesota and after whom the [...]
Ensuring That Our Own Power is Used Wisely and Humanely
from the series Peace House Community Journal... By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby I recently reread James H. Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, which looks at the parallels between Jesus’ crucifixion and the lynchings that occurred during the Jim Crow era (1880-1940). Cone expressed his astonishment that no American theologian, white or black, saw the similarities between an innocent man being tortured and executed with the consent of the political and religious leaders, and the lynchings that took place in this country. Cone’s book covers many aspects of Christianity and lynching in a brief time (166 pages), but one of the most telling is the observation that crucifixion and lynching each played the same role in their respective societies. While they both inflicted tremendous suffering on the victim, the true target was the victim’s community. Those with the power to lynch others made sure the “others” knew they had the power, knew that what happened to one [...]
The Food Desert is Expanding
from the series Peace House Community Journal... By MARTI MALTBY Marti Maltby Food Deserts are neighborhoods where residents lack adequate access to food. Residents of a country as wealthy as the United States shouldn’t have to worry about getting enough to eat. In other words, we shouldn’t have Food Deserts. Unfortunately, in a country where economic statistics carry more weight than human need, things don’t run as they should. In the last six months, two feeding sites that served take out dinners in Ventura Village closed. Between them, they were serving over 700 meals a night. I don’t know the situation in the other neighborhoods covered by the alley, but I suspect many residents there rely on feeding sites or food shelves to meet one of the most basic human needs. Economics says that the United States is still the wealthiest country in history. The number of people going hungry say that economics is measuring the wrong things. Understandably, a lot of the [...]
