Nominees for awkward sermon contest

Keep the drums rolling . . . with pleasure we announce the top six nominees for our Daringly Awkward Sermon Contest (because social change is a bit  awkward). Three of the following sermons (in alphabetical order by author) will be named winners, with winning preachers receiving $400 each.

Standing up for what you believe is awkward, especially when you yourself are part of the problem. Each of the sermons in some way identifies the struggle of responding to social injustice with compassion and complicity. We’ll announce the winners in our summer issue, Geez 14, set to ship mid-late May.

Thanks to all the sermon contributors,

Aiden Enns, publisher, co-editor, Geez magazine

2009 Geez magazine
Daringly Awkward Sermon contest nominees

Reverend Billy joins New York race for mayor

 

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel choir are singing the gospel of strong local neighbourhoods on the streets of New York. Officially a Green Party candidate, Reverend Billy Talen is running for mayor on a platform that will sustain recessions: let’s stop the rampant consumerism, support each other, and shun the ethics and aesthetics of corporate America.

The Wall Street Journal posted a video to its website along with a story by David Weidner. See the posting on voterevbilly.org here. - Aiden Enns

 

Geez on Utne’s shelf life

Last week the Utne librarian, Daniel Maestretti, featured Geez magazine on Shelf Life, a short spot where they feature important or nifty stuff. She pointed out Josh MacIvor-Andersen’s story in Geez issue 13. He’s a “hippie-sounding dude,” she says. And his article on bartering with a Starbucks clerk and others is “sort of a fun essay.” We’d agree. See her Shelf Life here, and Josh’s article here.

Smashing Pumpkins

Smashing Pumpkins chatted with Aaron Epp about faith and music. Aaron, was guest editor of Geez’s issue on music. 

“It’s difficult for any band to combine faith with rock,” he starts, “because nobody likes being preached at, or having something shoved down their throat, or feeling as though they’re being talked down to. Ultimately, people are weary of anything with an agenda. I know I am.”

See the full article “Super Christ” here.

Job opportunity: Associate Publisher

 

With an office in an old church in the heart of Winnipeg, Geez looking for a half-time, Winnipeg-based person to help with the business aspects of running a spunky little magazine. She or he would work closely with the two other part-time staff here. If you know of possible candidates, please give them a copy of the job description, available here.

Compassionate thoughts from a good doctor

For every politician seeking election this season, I recommend Gabor Maté’s book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (Toronto: Knopf, 2008). It offers a compassionate view of troubles affecting the core areas of North America’s major cities.

Maté is a doctor in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, a community of concentrated poverty and drug addiction, sometimes described as Canada’s poorest postal code, and this book, like the doctor himself, does good work.

‘Irreverent yet always earnest,’ Globe and Mail

It’s nice to get a mention in Canada’s paper of record, The Globe and Mail. Not bad; we’re stuck between Vanity Fair and Wax Poetics. Thanks to JB for the headsup and DD for the clipping. - Aiden Enns, publisher, Geez magazine

 

Geez [Summer, 2008]

The best line in a long time: An open-minded woman (writer Sarah E. Truman) tries to talk about The Golden Compass with her arch-Catholic grandmother. The film was, you may remember, seen by some as anti-church. Said granddaughter to grandmother: “Grandma, if God is all present, wouldn’t he have seen the film himself?” Grandmother: “Don’t be clever.”

In that line, you have the essence of Winnipeg-based Geez, a thoughtful, often irreverent and yet always earnest literary magazine on religion and the belief systems lying fallow under everyday life. A brilliant idea for a small publication that makes it worth looking for.

A little later in the article, after establishing with the grandmother that the Lord grants us free will, even if we use it badly, damning ourselves for eternity: “But Grandma, how is that ‘free will?’ It sounds like ‘not-so-free’ will. Like, ‘I’m going to let you think you’re free, but if you choose wrong, you’re going to hell.’”

Grandmother: “Is that Scotch you’re drinking?”

“Yes, single malt.”

From On the Stand: A weekly roundup of the best magazine reads on the racks, by Guy Dixon, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, August 2, 2008

Aliens and margins

 

Bob Ekblad’s new book, A Christian Manifesto (Westminster John Knox) has been dominating my thinking over the past few weeks.  It’s a bold call to Christians to make themselves aliens to the dominant powers of culture – especially militarism, nationalism, and violence – and relocate at the margins of society alongside the poor, illegal immigrants, prisoners, and addicts.  

He draws together his work as a scholar, contemplative, activist, evangelist, and charismatic, each role informing the other.  

Reverend Billy preaches on Fox Business

 

"We're shopping ourselves to death.... We are in the valley of the shadow of debt. Amen! Hallelujah!"--Rev. Billy

Starbucks announces the closing of 616 of its stores across the United States. So, for fun, Fox TV gets Reverend Billy from The Church of Stop Shopping behind the camera for Fox Business Happy Hour. He actually preaches against the pitfalls of Starbucks (it breaks up communites with independent shops, it’s wages are too low, it makes bad coffee, it’s a chain store which erodes local character) and she changes the subject to shopping in general. “Capitalism does not necessarily mean freedom,” he says. See the video here.

Geez is camped outside

If you’re a Geez reader and still like shiny things, including Oprah’s O magazine, you’re not alone. Trudy J. Morgan-Cole, a blogger from Newfoundland is your friend. She writes, 

These two magazines sit uneasily on my coffee table together, as if they’re the two hemispheres of my brain — different, yet each necessary. Not that they’re the right and left hemispheres — politically, the editorial slants of both O and Geez could easily be labelled “left” though Geez is certainly more radical. O resides in a comfortable, well-decorated corner of the political left, sort of like the American Democratic party, while Geez is camped outside in the parking lot in a cardboard box. [See full entry here.]