Virtual Methodist

Today President Obama takes his second inaugural oath for the second time, due to the vagaries of the 20th January falling on a Sunday. This is an event of immense importance for me, even though I am an insignificant blogger bashing away on his keyboard in the backwoods of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and could have no part in the election of this man. But there is no doubt that his decisions ultimately make as much, if not more, difference to my life as do those of the politicians I am able to elect who sit in the big white house on the hill little over a mile from where I am writing, or the contentious clowns we have managed to elect to the council that sits in Belfast City Hall down the road... There has been some controversy over who will lead in public prayer during the inauguration, but I was encouraged this morning by this prayer by Scot McKnight for the President, and perhaps I could do with using a variation on it as I pray for my political representatives at a loc...

Partly prompted by a disembowelling of this earlier in the year in another blog , I have been re-reading this book by Jim Wallis throughout the latter stages of the Presidential Election and over the period when the world economy has tanked. It was written against the background of W's election for a second term, but it will be interesting to see whether the new White House incumbent follows policies that are any closer to this manifesto than the current occupant of the same residence. My only problems with the book are that 1) It buys in unquestioningly to the idea that democracy is uniquely approved by God and that the United States of America is the finest flowering of that particular political ideology. He seems to have watered this down a little in the British version, but it still comes through loud and clear. 2) It is a tad self-beatifying and although I respect Wallis and his perspectives, I wish he wouldn't keep quoting himself! In our wee country politics have, for to...

In a truly momentous week, what has tickled my fancy in the blogosphere? Regarding the big news story (something about a new President of the USA incase you missed it) the blog that summed up the momentous nature of it all was Crookedshore's identification of the quote of the night. McCain's gracious concession speech and the inspiring words of Obama's acceptance, also caught the imagination of Crookedshore and others. William Crawley has posted the full text and visuals of the latter here. This is also the first week of NaBloPoMo 2008, or National Blog Posting Month, for the uninitiated, and a lot of the posting has been to do with the presidential campaign, but Marramgrass , who introduced me to the whole NaBloPoMo thang has to get the prize for one of the most feeble first posts.... But at least he admits it! Of course we're now rapidly heading towards season of Winterval, or whatever the loony leftwing halfwits want to call it this year, and the resultant waves of i...

I missed this cracker in the run-up to this week's momentous events... But given his gift of the gab it's obvious. Everyone join in now: O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara There's no-one as Irish as Barack O'Bama Thanks to a friend in Florida for sending me this one. And thank you Florida for not messing things up this time! Slainte

Well the race is over and is only the analysis left to pick over. Then we've got about 6 months before things start gearing up for the mid-terms and about 2 years before the Presidential roundabout begins again. When do they ever get time to actually govern? Anyway, I've made no secret of it in recent days in that I have been wanting Obama to win, and my boy gone done it! It's not just that his politics fit mine better than McCain and his co-pilot, but he's been a genuinely inspiring candidate, unlike Kerry and Gore, who really never got the pulse racing... did either of them actually have a pulse themselves? In both cases I was not so much pro-them as anti-Bush. This time it genuinely was different. Obama personifies change... politically, racially, socially, intellectually and generationally. He seems to have a good sense of how America is percieved in the eyes of the wider world and how it might function better as an agent of the common good. I've mentioned the q...

A song to be sung in response to the Annunciation... whether the coming one is McCain, anointed by the religious right, or the quasi-Messianic Obama, let's get our priorities right and our loyalties straight: Hail to the Chief of Chiefs! Glorify God alone, with all that you have and are. Rejoice in God, for he alone is our salvation. He remembers the humble when others forget, Bringing blessing for a single mother When others only offer shame. Doing great things for and through the accursed. That’s why he is different from others. That’s why his name is in a class of its own. Holy. He is merciful to all who truly bow before him… Who recognise his power and authority… Pouring out blessings on their children and their children’s children. He never stops performing miracles; He still scatters the arrogant like the men of Babel of old. He looks behind worn out words of faith to see thriving thoughts of pride. He topples thrones and casts kings down into the dust from which they came. B...

Young non-White senator wins democratic nomination against the odds, and picks old Washington insider with lots of foreign policy experience and campaign nous as running mate. They run against a veteran moderate Republican, who is disapproved of by the conservative evangelical powerbrokers and so he picks a known conservative evangelical as a VP nominee. They are running neck and neck until a crisis fatally wounds the republican campaign. Not the the political soap opera which reaches its denouement today... But the storyline of the last few seasons of the West Wing. The only things they got wrong was the gender of the Republican VP and the nature of the crisis that proved crucial inthe campaign. In the West Wing it was the meltdown of a nuclear powerplant. In reality it was the meltdown of the economy. But the similarities are striking... And actually some of the speechmaking on the Obama side has been of almost West-Wing standard... There are some who say that there was quite a bit o...

Well there's 2 days to go, and I know that thousands, if not millions of people out there have been waiting for me to virtually express my opinion on the US electoral process... But I thought it unfair for a person in another jurisdiction to have unfair influence in the electoral process. But then again... whatever happens on Tuesday is going to radically affect the whole world and most of us don't get a vote... Mind you given some of the voting registration scandals in the US that is true of many citizens there too... But selfishly most of what I will say is based upon an international perspective (let the citizens of the US look after their own backs!) In the run up to the election most of my thinking was of the "Things can only get better"-type. 8 years of world government by the Shrub and his cabal of Big-Oil Representatives and Neo-Cons, has made the world an infinitely more dangerous place, largely due to their unwillingness to use diplomacy where a Cruise missi...