Saturday, October 22, 2011

Fordham Theology Professor Tom Beaudoin Says Jesus, John The Baptist And Our Lady At OWS

John the Baptist this everyday theological authority in the Sacred Space area. To be sure, images of Jesus (and Mary) are on the altar, but I wonder if others find it interesting that in this improvisational spiritual space in which religious symbols and statements must sit pluralistically, John has his own sign, and as far as I know, Jesus does not (yet). Both figures (as well as Jesus’ mother, Mary, who also has her own pictures and statues at the Community Altar) are portrayed in Christian scriptures as prophetic people, invoking a divine vision and judgment on their social situation. It is easy to imagine any of them at Occupy Wall Street. Much harder to discern is who would be the first to take up drumming and which one would sport the OWS t-shirt first.
Link (here) to  Professor Thomas Beaudoin's full post at his blog entitled Rock and Theology, cross pollinated at America  magazine's In All Things (here)

6 comments:

Sawyer said...

Boodoing is clearly and enthusiastically jumping on the OWS bandwagon, desperate to carve out a new superficial niche for his "academic" work in "theology". He's drawn to pseudo-spirituality like a fly to dung.

Teresa said...

John the Baptist, Jesus, and Mary may be with the OWS protesters in some sense but the protest as a whole is far from being Jesus centered (Christian) with the protesters having a skewed view of economics, reality, and wanting to topple our current economic system instead of wanting to reform it. There are a couple things I do sympathize with though. But their anger is being directed at the wrong people.

Anonymous said...

Didn't Jesus drive the money lenders out of the temple? He lived among the people and slept under the stars.

The OWS people are targeting their anger at exactly the right people.

Sawyer said...

Anonymous, your facile reading of Scripture and your application of a leftist, class-warfare template to distort Christianity would make Boodoing proud.

Jeff in Oyster Bay said...

Beaudoin is like a theological Frankenstein created in some strange theological laboratory.

Anonymous said...

Sawyer: Have you actually ever read a work of academic theology?! It really doesn't seem so.