“To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely – to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away. This is the kind of vision and courage required to enable the renewal of prophetic, democratic Christian identity in the age of the American empire”
[Cornel West, Democracy Matters, 172]
We’re reading Cornel West‘s “Democracy Matters” for one of my classes this semester, and I just want to encourage you to check it out and give it a read. There are so many sections I’ve underlined in this book that I could share with you, but you’ll have to read it for yourself. He has a very good chapter on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as a chapter entitled “The Crisis of Christian Identity in America.” In that chapter he argues for a prophetic Christianity, as opposed to the American Constantinian Christianity that is so prevalent in America today, especially in the form of the Religious Right in national politics.
At any rate, the book is worth checking out and I encourage you to do so. It’s Cornel West at his best – fiery, passionate and prophetic.
