Frantz Fanon was one of the great prophetic voices of the anti-colonial and anti-racist struggle. His ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ shook many people deep down to their roots and told an untold story. This documentary draws on Fanon’s ideas about the violence inherent in both colonialism and racism. These are words from half a century ago but resonate still in a neo-con 21st century….
Watch and see what you think….
‘When the world’s attention shifted to Ukraine and Israel last week, the Islamic leaders in Iraq capitalized on the distraction. For weeks the functional government in central Iraq (ISIS) had told Christians they had to make one of four choices by this past Saturday: forfeit their property as a “Christian” tax, convert to Islam, leave, or die…..’
To carry on reading this blog post from ‘The Cripplegate’ just click the link – Kristallnacht: The end of Christianity in Iraq.
In recent years levels of poverty not seen since the Great Depression have returned to the UK. Poverty has increasingly become a new defining issue in urban political theologies. Are faith groups called to be pragmatic conduits of the common good – sites of social capital capable of fostering well being in the big society without raising too many awakward questions of government? Alternatively, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it are people of faith called to ram a ‘spoke in the wheel of injustice’? In my recent article for ‘Public Spirit’ I argue that consensual community engagement is not enough in an inherently unequal and unjust society – If God is ‘biased to the oppressed’ then theology becomes a motor for progressive social change and theologians public/political intellectuals.
The African-American activist philsopher Cornel West exemplifies this perspective better than most as the video below reveals. What challenges does West lay at the feet of academics, theologians, people of faith in the UK?
Chris Shannahan - Finding Faith in an Urban World 