Round Tables

A shared topical conversation

  • A Church That Does Body Counts III

    About two weeks ago, a U.S. led NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan killed seven civilians while they were going about their daily lives, working in their fields.  Six of these seven civilians were children and five of these children were… Continue reading

  • What the War on Drugs and the War on Terror Have In Common

    What does it say about us as a nation when even the killing of sleeping children is incapable of making us change our course? As Amy Davidson of the New Yorker reports, U.S. led NATO forces have killed four Afghan… Continue reading

  • Does God Bless the USA?

    United Statesians have always claimed to live in a nation blessed by God–white Americans interpreted the near complete destruction of certain Native American communities by smallpox as a sign of God’s blessing, believing that God had cleared the land of… Continue reading

  • Was It Worth It?

    Let’s assume that Jesus never said, “love your enemies,” or “do good to those who persecute you.”  Let’s forget that Jesus told Peter to put the sword away, (if you can’t use the sword to defend the life of Jesus,… Continue reading

  • A Church That Does Body Counts II

    Today in North Waziristan, Pakistan, a United States Predator Drone killed 23 people, at least nine of whom (five children and four women) were civilians simply going about their daily lives.  The rest, the U.S. military assures us, were “militants.”… Continue reading

  • The Cross and the Lynching Tree

    In this 2007 interview with PBS’ Bill Moyers, James Cone argues that the lynching of African-Americans throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was an almost literal crucifixion because “the cross was a first century lynching.”  Lynching, like the crucifixion, was a… Continue reading

  • Women Speak About Natural Family Planning

    If we listen to the stories of all women, not just those for whom natural family planning works in the way that the magisterium says that it does, we will see that natural family planning is not always good.  In… Continue reading

  • A Church that Does Body Counts

    According to the NYTimes, last Friday “A NATO airstrike targeting Taliban fighters Friday accidentally killed seven civilians, including three children, in the southern province of Helmand, one of the most insecure regions in the country, Afghan officials said.” Sadly, despite searching for… Continue reading