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We have a new shop on Etsy! We've added several new bumper stickers so far. Our newest is directly below. "Say Gay" is our response to Ron DeSantis and his "Don't Say Gay" laws in Florida.   We have a new shop on Etsy! We've added three new bumper stickers so far. Our newest is directly below. "Equality Hurts No One"   We have a new shop on Etsy! We've added two new bumper stickers so far. Our newest is directly below. "This Christian Rejects Trumpism"   We have a new shop on Etsy! Our first product is a bumper sticker! "Trumpism = Idolatry"  If you have requests for other bumper sticker ideas please let us know in comments on our Facebook page.  Make no mistake about it. We're going to have to fight this fight all over again. We're all going to have to make our voices heard yet again. We're going to have to tell them once again that they don't get to make laws about a woman's private medical choices. They don't get to legislate a woman's body. We're doing our part to provide you with the fodder you'll need to take to the streets. Here's what we've come up with so far. Each of the sentiments can be selected for a variety of applications, whether it's on a canvas, as a sticker, or on a shirt or hoodie sweatshirt. Take your pick. The links to each are provided below the graphic. Just scroll down inside each link to view all the available items. Let's get to it!  01) Women's Rights: https://bit.ly/tcl-womens-rights 02) Pro-Women, Pro Family: https://bit.ly/pro-women-pro-family 03) Pro-Women, Pro-Choice: https://bit.ly/tcl-pro-women 04) Pro Roe: https://bit.ly/tcl-pro-roe 05) My Body, My Choice: https://bit.ly/tcl-my-body 06) Women's Bodies: https://bit.ly/women-s-bodies-more 07) Bans Off: https://bit.ly/tcl-bans-off 08) Mind Your Own: https://bit.ly/your-own-uterus 09) Mind Your Own Two: https://bit.ly/tcl-your-own-uterus Go out there equipped with knowledge! Being pro-choice is consistent with following Jesus. Being pro-choice respects women and acknowledges their full and complete autonomy as human beings. They alone are endowed with freedom over their own bodies and their own medical and family planning decisions. No one has the right to make laws to the contrary.
These two articles provide a rich history to back up the actions we take together. - The Real Origins of the Religious Right (Politico) - The Surprising Role of Clergy in the Abortion Fight Before Roe v. Wade (TIME) We'll see you out there! -- The Christian Left  Link To Place Orders At The Bottom Of This Blog Post: We moved our Ukrainian support designs to a new storefront that has more options in available products, colors and sizes. We can now offer items like magnets, posters, art prints, and a greater selection of apparel, such as baseball t-shirts. There's a much greater selection of colors as well. The canvases are a bit spendy. This company charges more to make them, but posters and art prints are available at a reasonable price as well as tapestries. It makes accounting easier when we have these designs by themselves in their own storefront. We can route funds to artists and our chosen charity in a more efficient manner. The charity we donate proceeds to is the 'Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund,' by Global Giving. It's a better situation all the way around. As indicated in our individual listings, most of the designs have been purchased from artists living in Ukraine right now. We don't disclose their names for obvious reasons. They're living in the middle of a brutal, bloody war. God only knows what the Russian troops are capable of based on reports we've all heard. This is what one of the artists said: "A few weeks ago I started creating a new collection. Now I shudder and hide from explosions, cry for murdered children and pray for Ukraine. My heart is bursting with pain, but I decided that I have no right to give up when my people are fighting! I will use the money you pay to help those who are really in need. By purchasing this design you are supporting UKRAINE. Thank you for your prayers and support. It's very important to us now. May God keep us!" This is a tragic and heartbreaking situation. We couldn't stand by and not do something to try to help. This storefront will be up for a limited time only. You can find all available items on the left column of the storefront.  When you open an individual design you can find all available items for that design by scrolling down.   That's about it in terms of explaining the new storefront. We've added two new designs created by Ukrainian artists. We're really happy to have discovered them. We're happy we were able to get them some cash in what is a tenuous situation to say the least. We hope and pray that all of this ends quickly. The Ukrainian people have been very brave. We hope they drive the Russian dictator out of their country and back to his own.
Here's the link to our new storefront. -- The Christian Left  Lawrence O'Donnell said it better than anyone we've heard so far this evening on "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell."
"Donald Trump did something that no one-term president has ever done before. He appointed 3 Supreme Court justices. The last president to appoint 3 Supreme Court Justices was Ronald Reagan and it took him 8 years to do it. Donald Trump, the president least capable in our history of evaluating candidates for the United States Supreme Court got to appoint three of them and all three of them are voting to revoke a constitutional right. 70% of the country is opposed to what the Supreme Court is doing and in a democracy this could never happen, but we do not live in a democracy because of the Electoral College and the United States Senate. The only way the Alito opinion can get a majority vote in the Supreme Court now is thanks to the Electoral College installing two Republican presidents who came in second with the voters. Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush but George W. Bush got the presidency thanks to the Electoral College. Donald Trump came in 2nd with the voters by a wide margin but was installed in the presidency by the Electoral College. Democrats in the United States Senate represent far more people than the Republicans represent but both parties have the same number of seats in the United States Senate because of the profoundly anti-democratic formula that each state gets two senators. The 44 million people of California get 2 senators and the 1.6 million people of the Dakotas get 4. That is not democracy. That can never be democracy and so 70% of the country is living tonight under the anguish and the weight of minority rule. 70% of the country is losing a constitutional right against their will. 70% of the country has had the constitutional right for their entire lives, but for Samuel Alito that is not deeply rooted in our nation’s history. There is one president in our history who was impeached twice, and never won a majority vote in a presidential election and he got to appoint the same number of justices as Ronald Reagan, who won 49 states in his reelection campaign. There is one president in our history who provoked serious public discussions of using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office, and he got to appoint 3 Supreme Court justices. The first public discussion of using the 25th Amendment with Donald Trump that I’m aware of to remove him from office was on this program during the first month of the Trump presidency and we now know that in the last month of the Trump presidency, in the last days of the Trump presidency there were serious discussions about removing Donald Trump using the 25th Amendment and those discussions were taking place among congressional leadership in both parties. Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House Republicans participated in discussions about removing Donald Trump using the 25th Amendment after the January 6th attack on the capital. Today the authors of the new titled book, “This Will Not Pass,” released audio tape of Kevin McCarthy in a meeting with House Republican leadership discussing the possible impeachment of Donald Trump and the possibility of removing him from office using the 25th Amendment. The president they were talking about got to appoint 3 Supreme Court justices after coming in 2nd with the voters and after Mitch McConnell defied the Constitution and refused to bring President Obama’s last Supreme Court nominee to a vote in the Senate so that Donald Trump could choose one of the names on Mitch McConnell’s list to fill the seat on the Supreme Court that the Constitution said should have been filled by President Obama. Such is the Constitutional treachery of Republican minority rule in the 21st century which is well on its way to being deeply rooted in this country’s history." [We wanted to get this up as quickly as possible so people can begin considering this information sooner rather than later. We didn't have a second pair of eyes tonight so please email us if you notice any typos. TCL@TheChristianLeft.org We don't read hate mail. We just close it and delete it.]  We're beyond weary of a phenomenon we've experienced since we started as a Facebook Group in 2009, 13 years ago. Every time we create any kind of post depicting Jesus, a good number of people think they're being witty when they say things like, "Jesus wasn't white," "White Jesus!" "European Jesus!" on, and on, and on, and on. We get really tired of it and it never ends. It distracts discussion threads, dilutes the message, and disrupts the community. Time to take action. We should have done this long ago. Yesterday we created the sticker below.  Most people loved it, probably 95%. As usual with topics like this some people told us off in one way or another. There was considerable trolling and concern trolling, something we've prohibited from the beginning. The comments ranged from "Who cares!" to outright accusations that we were "race bating." It was ridiculous to say the least. We ended up deleting the post because we were tired of babysitting the thread. The die cut sticker is still available here. The nice thing about discussions like this is that we almost always gain at least one good insight. One community member pointed out that after Jesus' death he appeared several times where people didn't recognize him, even his disciples. They noted that, "These narratives are there to tell us that Jesus was no longer a regular flesh and blood human being. He was resurrected and transcended. His appearance wasn't the same as when he walked with us on earth." So what DID Jesus look like? We have very few clues from scripture. Some scholars point to Revelation 1:14-15, "The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace." Others have noted that he was a Palestinian Jewish man living in Galilee in the first century. He would have looked like a first century Jewish Galilean. Isaiah 53:2 says, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.” One thing is certain. He wasn't white.  To address this ongoing problem we're announcing a contest! Calling all artists, painters, sketchers, graphic artists, and all artistic followers of Jesus! Create a depiction as Jesus as a person of color! Send it to us at TCL@TheChristianLeft.org. We will accept entries until the end of April. In early May we will announce a winner, post their creation, give them credit, and award them with $100. For all other entries we will give them honorable mention by posting their creations in a blog post with credit to the artist. All participants must give The Christian Left the rights to their creation. We need a trove of pictures of Jesus as a person of color. As usual, some folks will take issue with this stipulation. What we say to them is that no one is forcing anyone to submit an entry. This is a contest. Everyone is free to participate or not participate. Here's one example we found long ago.  Good luck! Let's get some great art of Jesus going!
-- The Christian Left P.S.: Since we've highlighted our email address in this blog post we should let everyone know that we don't accept hate mail. When we open a piece of mail and read the first few sentences, if we see that it's hate mail of any kind we close it and delete it. Don't even bother. Same goes with anyone wanting to concern troll us (lectures or scold us) by mail. After 13 years we've seen and heard it all.  Via solopoly.net A concern troll chimed in today and informed us that our usage of the term ‘concern troll’ wasn’t correct. As we’ve explained over the years, we have our own house definition. Other online forums use the same policy and it is defined by sites like 'Urban Dictionary,' but it's usually like the third definition down and most people don't read that far.
See, the thing is, with a community this large it simply isn’t possible to please everyone all the time, especially when discussing religion and politics from a progressive point of view. The Christian Left ministry and community is for people who truly WANT to be here. The key word being 'want.' We are not a drive-by page. We aren't a debate page. We're a page and a forum for Christian progressives and their allies. We are a haven for people who have been beat up by The "Christian" Right. Our community is a safe place for people who have had to read those stupid emails all there lives that insult liberals and any politician that isn't a Republican. All of this being the case, for our purposes a ‘concern troll’ is someone who engages behavior similar to the following example, "I really love your page BUT, I’m really concerned about (blah, blah, blah, blah) that you are doing," or, "(blah, blah, blah, blah) that you are not doing the way I think it should be done." It then devolves into something along the lines of, "You need to take down this post," or "You need to stop doing that. It isn’t very Christian." We could continue with the variants of concern troll statements ad nauseam. Some critics would call what we have an 'echo chamber.' So be it. We are what we are, and we make no apologies. There are many echo chambers out there these days. Fox "News" is one big one. Besides, everyone has a right to have a haven. Lecturing us is like an abusive partner busting into a battered women's shelter and proclaiming, "This place is nothing but an echo chamber!" We don't mind if someone imparts friendly knowledge to us about something in a civil manner. There's a big difference between that and concern trolling. If something is a matter of opinion, correcting someone about it is probably concern trolling. People are welcome to share their opinion on any topic as long as they are civil and polite. After that they should move on to the next topic. Their opinion will be noted for everyone to see. We must emphasize this point again, we aren't a debate forum. Some may not find this policy agreeable to them. They have feel like they are in charge of what we do and we must run the page the way they see fit. Sorry, that isn't going to happen. No one is forced to be here. If our policy isn't agreeable to you, you are invited to go in peace. Concern trolling is disruptive to the community and ends up crippling online forums to the point of being catatonic and ineffective, basically disabling them carrying out their mission. We’re not going to let that happen here. That’s why we initiated our trolling policy 13 years ago and included our variant of concern trolling. We ask that if you don’t like a post or something we say or do, please scroll on by to the next post. Again, there’s no way we can please all people, all the time. Thanks. |
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Charles Toy is the founding member of The Christian Left. We're sure you will enjoy his passion as well as his wit. Guest bloggers featured often.
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