The Death of the gods

This past Sunday I got to preach on my favorite Psalm!  In Psalm 82 the God of Israel puts other deities on trial for failing to support social justice and ends up condemning them to death.  Pretty sweet text and if you are interested here’s the sermon audio.  (right click and save as if you want to download it)

Ohhh I don’t preach from a script and when I listened to it back I realized I should have been more clear on one point.  I mentioned that in some situations an unjust system could be so distorted that even the victims support their own victimization.  There is a longer story I play with, but I mentioned females in Afghanistan believing that they should have a lower status than men ‘because the Koran says so.’  I should have been clear and said that that is an interpretation of the Koran and NOT the only one.  In fact, the day before I was reading an article on Riffat Hassan (a Pakastani, Feminist Muslim theologian) where she makes the point that the culture and NOT the Koran is the source of patriarchy.  She says, ‘Not only does the Koran emphasize that righteousness is identical in the case of men and woman, but it affirms, clearly and consistently, women’s equality with men and their fundamental right to actualize the human potential that they share equally with men.’  (Taken from an article in ‘After Patriarchy‘)  Any way, with all the stupidness going on with the NYC mosque I wanted to be clear that I do not believe the holy book and the religion is necessarily sexist.  I only mentioned the example because my church invests money in building schools for girls in Afghanistan.