Faith And The City e.Letter
May 20, 2005
Volume 4, Issue 5

Greetings! Faith And The City offers the following information for your review. Use the associated links to learn more about each topic. For information on a wider range of public issues, visit our home page at http://www.faithandthecity.org.

Georgia Gets a Failing Grade on Minority Graduation Rates
By Paul Donsky
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 18, 2005
Less than half of Georgia's black and Hispanic students graduate from high school within four years, according to a study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. The report, to be released Thursday during a conference at Atlanta's Spelman College, found that 47 percent of the state's black students and 43 percent of Hispanic students graduate on time, compared with 64 percent of non-Hispanic white students.
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The ‘Holey’ Bible or the ‘Holy’ Bible?
By Byron Thomas
Wesleyan Christian Advocate
April 15, 2005
[I]f the poor, oppressed and dispossessed are central to the Bible and to the ministry of Wesley, is this ministry focus central to the contemporary United Methodist Church? Or, have the poor simply been cut out of our Bibles? Minimally, ministry to the poor, oppressed and dispossessed calls for us to preach, teach, and live out a faith whereby, as my Old Testament professor made clear, the “Bible holds that there is a preferential option for the poor.”
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For One Student, a Lesson in the Power of Images
By Leonard Pitts
Miami Herald
April 18, 2005
For the past couple of weeks, I've had students in my pop culture class talking about African-American images in entertainment media. As part of that discussion, I showed them a movie -- Spike Lee's 2000 satire, Bamboozled. It is in some ways a deeply flawed film. But it derives an undeniable power and poignancy from its evocation of a century's worth of African-American stereotype…. When the movie went off, the room was sullen, silent and maybe a little shell-shocked.
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Gays Face Same Enemy as Jews in '30s: Hatred
By Leonard Pitts
Miami Herald
Posted May 2, 2005
Gay Holocaust? That was the subject line of an e-mail I received last week from ''Chris,'' a lawyer in a red state. He wanted to know if anybody else sees a similarity between the beginning of the Holocaust -- the nibbling away of rights and personhood that ultimately led to the attempted extermination of a people -- and what is happening to gay people in American right now.
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The Black and Latino Clash
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
AlterNet
Posted May 9, 2005
Tensions between Latinos and blacks have always lurked dangerously close to the surface. The tensions have been fueled by the changing ethnic realities in L.A. and America in the past decade.
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Ravenous Media Ate Up Bride's Tale
By Mike Buffington
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 4, 2005
The truth is, we're feeding at the trough of a shallow celebrity culture. It's all around us. We're inundated with it. Real issues that require thought and reflection have been replaced by fluff profiles of the famous or infamous. Maybe the only good thing about the "runaway bride" is that she bumped the sordid Michael Jackson trial off the air for a while.
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Can Both Sides of the Sprawl Debate Find Common Ground on Property Rights?
By Ronald D. Utt
The Heritage Foundation
April 25, 2005
One of the great myths spread by opponents of suburban development is that the land-use patterns we have today are the result of free-market forces, greedy developers, and unregulated property rights. Contrary to urban legend, gaudy strip malls and tacky subdivisions are more often a consequence of over half a century of zoning and land-use planning conducted under the guidance of professional planners in cooperation with elected officials. What repel us today are not the unintended consequences of free enterprise, but planning concepts from the 1960s that have dropped out of fashion.
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Heading South: Population Boom Shows Region's Clout
By Bob Dart
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 21, 2005
Look out, y'all! Within three decades, nearly four in every 10 Americans will be Southerners, the Census Bureau estimates in a report to be released today…. Growing like kudzu, the South is expected to have a population of about 143.3 million in 2030. In percentage terms, that means 39.4 percent of the U.S. population will live in the South. With another quarter in the West, that leaves just over a third in the once dominant Midwest and Northeast.
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Finding a Space for Faith in Politics
By Stephen Ruckman
Center for American Progress
January 5, 2005
[Barry] Goldwater recognized a core problem with how religious belief was then being injected into public policy, a problem that has only grown in the forty years since. That problem is the misuse of religious belief as a goad – an uncompromising prod dictating what actions public officials should take based on religious teachings. Criticizing attempts by religious leaders to tell citizens and lawmakers what they "must believe," and to "force government leaders into following their position," Goldwater was speaking out not against the expression of religious belief to public officials, but against the imposition of religious belief on those officials.
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Stuck in Lincoln's Land
By David Brooks
New York Times
May 5, 2005
Today, a lot of us are stuck in Lincoln's land. We reject the bland relativism of the militant secularists. We reject the smug ignorance of, say, a Robert Kuttner, who recently argued that the culture war is a contest between enlightened reason and dogmatic absolutism. But neither can we share the conviction of the orthodox believers, like the new pope, who find maximum freedom in obedience to eternal truth. We're a little nervous about the perfectionism that often infects evangelical politics, the rush to crash through procedural checks and balances in order to reach the point of maximum moral correctness.
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The Future of Islam
By Lakshmi Chaudhry
AlterNet
Posted April 28, 2005
[Reza] Aslan's new-found popularity is hardly surprising since his latest book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. Islamic terrorism, he argues, is for the most part a symptom not of a clash of civilizations but an internal conflict within the Muslim world – a centuries-old battle over the future of Islam. In offering a rich, nuanced, and insightful history of Islam, the book challenges dogmatic views on both sides of the political divide, be it the right-wing conflation of the battle against terrorism with a Christian crusade or liberals' fear of Middle Eastern groups that call for the establishment of a religious state. More shocking for progressives: he is also optimistic about the future of Iraq as the first successful experiment in Islamic democracy.
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Africa Needs Both U.S. & UN
By E.R. Shipp
New York Daily News
April 17, 2005
Africa is not a poor continent, but is bereft of wise, honest leaders with the clout to control tribalism, demand more from the Western corporate world or appeal to the international community to live up to its pledges of commitment to securing and maintaining peace.
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Leadership Institute Co-Sponsors Systems Thinking Training for Non-Profit Organizations
Faith And The City Leadership Institute
May 2005
The Sustainability Institute and the Faith And The City Leadership Institute are pleased to offer a two-day training session, June 2-3, introducing the tools and use of systems thinking in the non-profit, education, public and service sectors. The for-profit business sector has long understood the value of systems thinking to “bottom line” strategies. Here is an opportunity for organizations that serve the common good to explore systems approaches to the bottom lines — social sustainability or what we might call “wellth.”
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Southern Institute Launches
Summer Workshop Series
The Southern Institute for Business and Professional Ethics
April 2005
The Southern Institute series kicks off on June 15 with Does Religion Have a Place in the Workplace?: Emerging Issues in Employee Relations. This interactive and informative seminar will be held at the corporate headquarters of UPS. Case histories will be presented by several leading employers. Experts will provide practical guidance for navigating the legal and employee-relations issues arising from religious expression and practice in the workplace.
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Event: Systems Thinking Training for Nonprofit Organizations (June 2-3, 9am-5pm)
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Event: Faith Alliance of Metro Atlanta (FAMA) Assembly (June 7, 12 noon)
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Event: Does Religion Have a Place in the Workplace?: Emerging Issues in Employee Relations (June 15)
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Event: Undoing Racism Workshop (July 15-17)
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Event: Ethics and Compliance in the Global Marketplace: Management Strategies for Doing Business Abroad (August 24)
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Event: World Pilgrims Trip to Israel (August 2005)
Contact: Sherry Frank, 404.233.5501

Event: Undoing Racism Workshop (Oct. 21-23)
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