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Jimmy Reader combines 35 years as a pastor with experience as an adjunct college instructor and a seminar leader with a national business training company. His doctoral work at Princeton Theological Seminary focused on conflict, change, and transformation. His recent training has been in conflict transformation and trauma awareness and recovery. He brings an interactive style of teaching and coaching to his work as a consultant, and a retreat and workshop leader.
INVITE JIMMY READER TO SPEAK TO YOUR GROUP OR CONDUCT A WORKSHOP OR RETREAT.
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Print: $14.54 Download: $6.80 Can the Christian church, divided over different beliefs about moral values, create Safe Places so people can live together in love through the practices of compassion, grace, and generosity? Moral Values: What I Learned Growing Up in Church is an invitation to the church to find common ground in Jesus’ life and words. Love is the ultimate moral value; and compassion, grace, and generosity are the practices of love which empower us to live together in the love of God and one another to which Jesus called us. Listen to scripture and to the story of one man’s journey of transformation rooted in what he learned as a child growing up in church – that moral values follow the path of love.
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Jimmy Reader's Blog
2006 Mar 18 Read my regularly updated blog and find out what I'm doing now by visiting my website at www.safeplacenetwork.org.
2005 Apr 18 House Majority Leader Tom DeLay spoke at the annual convention of the National Rifle Association this weekend. According to the Associated Press, he thanked the members of the NRA for their support with these words: “When a man is in trouble or in a good fight, you want to have your friends around, preferably armed.”
In the past two weeks, this powerful congressman condemned what he calls “activist judges” and called for their impeachment or for their offices to be abolished, even using language which led some to wonder if he wanted them dead.
Next Sunday, April 24, Senate majority leader Bill Frist will speak via videotape at an event hosted by a conservative Christian group, the Family Research Council. It will simulcast live across the nation “to engage values voters in the all-important issue of reining in our out-of-control courts,” according to the FRC website. The FRC publicity for the event describes the Senate filibuster as being used “against people of faith.”
When the language of violence is joined with strident and reckless accusations, all of it claimed to be coming out of religious and moral values, no one is safe in the society governed by such leaders.
2005 Apr 08 Conservative groups have spent 30 years learning to “frame the issues” of moral and political discourse in this nation, according to UC Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff. With 1500 conservative radio talk show hosts, hundreds of conservative Christian radio and television stations and cable programs, and stores like Wal-Mart helping to sell millions of copies of conservative political and religious books, “the issues” of public debate in this country are often framed by conservatives. Moderates and progressives enter the debates on abortion, gun control, the death penalty, war, and sexuality, for instance, by attacking or defending the options as defined on the conservative side.
For example, the language of “moral values” as being pro-life and pro-family often becomes stridently discriminatory and hateful toward anyone who sees life as complex enough to allow for the choice of abortion or a natural orientation toward homosexuality or the gracious acceptance of death as sometimes a good decision. A “culture of life” has been defined in a way that opposes abortion and euthanasia, for instance, but supports the taking of life through capital punishment, in preemptive wars, and indirectly by corporations grown rich through making and selling the guns, bombs, and chemicals used daily to kill people around the world.
It is time for progressive and moderate political and religious leaders to “reframe the issues.” We can define “moral values” differently and engage conservative leaders in discussion using different language and paradigms. I am both pro-life and pro-choice. I am both a liberal and an evangelical Christian. I accept the importance of faithful, monogamous relationships in marriage which can provide a healthy environment for children without thinking the only model for that is some idealized 1950s-era suburban family.
Question the language and the definitions of moral values. Redefine them. Reframe the issues. Move the discussions in new directions. Challenge people with a conservative view of the world to consider a progressive view of the world and to engage you on another level of discourse.
2005 Apr 05 Power is not a moral value. A growing number of conservative leaders, both religious and political, use the language of power – dominion, authority, control, dominance, theocracy. How can Christian leaders, who presumably believe that our call is to follow Jesus, claim any moral validity to this desire to be in power? Some leaders of the radical religious right speak of ruling the nation, even the world, for Christ. They speak of being co-regents of Christ in this world, as Pat Robertson has said. And they mean by that term exercising legal, political, and military power to accomplish their goals. (See www.theocracywatch.org.) The gospels portray Jesus as a humble, gentle, compassionate man. As a man who said we must become as little children. A man who rebuked his disciples for wanting to do violence to their opponents. A man who said we are to love even our enemies. A man who told his disciples they were not to exercise authority over each other. How, then, can Christians (who claim to follow Jesus) think they can exercise moral power and dominion over people? We are called to live in compassion, grace, and generosity – the practices of love. These are the moral values of Jesus. 2005 Apr 03 Jesus lived and taught a nonviolent way of living in this world. People of all religious persuasions who read the gospels agree on that. Christians teach that our calling is to follow Jesus, to be disciples of Jesus who seek to live as he lived. “What would Jesus do?” is almost a mantra among many contemporary Christians.
Why, then, would a Christian website (http://www.forceministries.com/) open with images of Navy SEALS heavily armed and seeking a “kill” and then add words like “Mission: Christ-Centered Duty” and “Purpose: Impart faith in Christ”? Why would Christian leaders use violent language of “taking back” this nation by force (see www.yuricareport.com)?
Why would politicians and other national leaders who publicly profess a Christian faith and say they are committed to creating “a culture of life” in this nation also support pre-emptive military action against other nations and support minimal regulations on gun control? Violent language and actions are contrary to the way of Jesus.
2005 Mar 26 Some ultra-conservative religious and political groups used the tragic dilemma facing Terri Schiavo's family for their own purposes. But they claimed the high moral ground for themselves — insisting their concern was for the protection of human life. Yet a political memo in the U.S. Congress and fundraising appeals by some of those groups strongly suggested they were using it all for their own promotion. Where is the morality in that?
And why is the life of one woman who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years worth so much more than the lives of 1,500 soldiers who died in Iraq and tens of thousands more Iraqis? And why does a pro-life position seemingly oppose abortion and euthanasia while it supports the death penalty and the invasion of other countries?
Who defines what is moral? In my book Moral Values: What I Learned Growing Up In Church, I answer that question from my understanding of Scripture. I discuss abortion and homosexuality and what "moral values" might be in those areas of concern. Read the preview, order the book, and decide for yourself what is moral.
2004 Dec 19 My new book is now available for purchase. Moral values is about much more than the key issues of this past election. It is ultimately about love, compassion, grace, and generosity. Read more about this in ''Moral Values: What I Learned Growing Up in Church."
2004 Dec 06 Moral Values: What I Learned Growing Up in Church will be available online soon. This invitation to the church to live together in love presents love as the ultimate moral value. Love is lived out in compassion, grace, and generosity. A proposal to the church for how to create Safe Place groups for people concludes the book. My story interweaves with scripture to reclaim the language of Christian faith for the majority of Christians who agree that love is the most important thing.
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