The age old question — What does it mean to be human? — can be answered in part by looking at people’s daily conditions and rhythms, how people interact with others and within themselves. These routine acts, Yehudah Mirsky said, help define who a person is.
Poverty used to resemble a decades-old stereotype, thrust into public consciousness alongside President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” Tavis Smiley said. Today, one is more likely to find the face of poverty staring back in a mirror.
Glenn Loury painted a picture of social injustice: An African-American boy grows up in a housing project with no father because he’s been in prison for the last few years. There are gangs selling drugs on every corner, and although the gangs are clearly dangerous, as the boy gets older he’s swayed into joining a group because the alternative is to be victimized by it.
America has been fighting poverty for more than 50 years. It’s a continuous, uphill battle, but Peter Edelman insists that, despite the 46 million people living below the poverty line, Americans have not lost the fight. Keeping the beast at bay has been a success, and there is hope on the horizon. The nation just has to band together in political and civil cooperation to make it happen.
Spong said in his fifth Interfaith Lecture Friday in the Hall of Philosophy that the Christian religion is in need of a new Jesus story, and he believes John’s Gospel holds the key to redefining the tradition.
In the third of five Interfaith Lectures titled “The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic,” the retired Episcopal bishop spoke in the Hall of Philosophy Wednesday on the topic “Johannine characters: literary creations, not people of history.” Spong built off his previous lectures, which isolated John’s Gospel from the rest of the Gospels, then showed that the text was never meant to be read literally. Spong said the author leaves clues in the writing, telling the reader which characters are historical people — and which characters are merely symbolic.
Episcopal bishop isolates John’s Gospel so audiences can read with Jewish eyes.
The Chautauquan Daily 