Monthly Archives: October 2009

I am a pacifist (a conflicted one during Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan, but a pacifist). I also like to think of myself as a realist. My friend Garry used to joke that I said “There would be no Martin without Malcolm” so often we should just give that speech a number so I wouldn’t haveContinue reading “All we are saying is…”

There’s a South Asian theologian named Thomas Thangaraj who taught at Emory and Candler for a number of years before retiring back to Tamil Nadu (southernmost state in India) a few years ago. I met him in 2001, and he told a story to a group of us about white-guilt-interfaith work versus interfaith work thatContinue reading “Aizwal, Mizoram…tribal theologies and gratitude for the gospel”

…and U of C and PSR don’t even try. 🙂   I just visited Tamilnadu Theological Seminary in Madurai.   Bachelor of Divinity students spend their first year on campus studying, their second year in a village where the faculty go and teach them periodically under a banyan tree, their third year in a slumContinue reading “this is the seminary Union in New York wishes it could be”

I visited my uncle in Malda last week, and he tends to fit the stereotype of the wise India elder. During our first conversation (I tend to think of them more as lessons, but…) he said, “Man evolved from monkeys, yes? Every day I pray that God will make man back into a monkey.” TheContinue reading “Practice and theory collide during a traffic jam”