Not that I want to rehash the simplistic brouhaha over Rev. Wright, but this interview with Rev. Michael L. Pfleger reframes the issues prophetically.

It's great to see a minister of the gospel pushing back against the spinning ignorance of our gotcha political culture.

Only one day until the Compassion Forum. Already the pundits are opining about what this means for Americans of faith and the presidential candidates. It was not long ago that the media mostly treated the GOP as more Christian than Democrats, and forgot to talk about the interfaith diversity of the American public.

CNN is starting to plug Sunday's Compassion Forum.
Faith leaders will converse with presidential candidates about poverty, global HIV/AIDS, genocide and Darfur, climate change, human rights and torture.

I was down at the San Francisco Olympic protests this week, and while Tibet was the biggest draw, the green-shirted Save Darfur folks were a strong presence. Mix in Burma, the Vietnamese fishermen and it's pretty clear that the next U.S. president will have to take some serious leadership in addressing the human rights abuses fueled by run-away Chinese capitalism.

Learn more about this Sunday's Compassion Forum here. Faith leaders, presidential candidates and Jon Meacham of Newsweek this Sunday. 8PM ET/5PM PT on CNN.

DARFUR

The Washington Post writes:

Some friends of mine, including my cool girlfriend, organized this panel discussion on campus. I thought - in light of Opening Day and all - that the questions might provoke some interesting discussion.

• Do pastors really need to know anything about sports?
• What can sports teams and sports fans teach Christians about community?
• How do athletics serve a liturgical purpose?
• Are sports competing with church in US society? How so? Is that a bad thing?
• What sermon will you give on Super Bowl Sunday?

Atheists

Have We Lost the Plot?

h/t to Fuller Seminary grad. student Nick Zork for alerting me to this great The Blind Boys of Alabama rendition of Amazing Grace set to the House of the Rising Son. In addition to the great soulful sound, this recontextualization of the song returns it to its origins as a confession of personal salvation and social justice, in this case, abolition.

Good friend of the Spectrum Blog, Pastor Ryan Bell gets a nice write-up in the current Adventist Review. (h/t Jeff's Justice Journal)