Endorsement Deals
Dear Reader,
We have a two announcements for you.
1) To help with submissions and in seeking out new writers, we’ve brought on associate editors in a few areas. There were some concerns we’d go over budget, but then we realized none of us get paid, and there is no budget, and we could add as many additional editors as we wanted. What a relief!
We hope to have the whole updated Burnside staff up on the contributors page soon, but thanks to Bryan Allain, Chad Gibbs, Aaron Donley and Matt McKechnie for answering our call for help.
We’re still looking for folks to assist Ariele Gentiles with the Book Reviews Section and Penny Carothers with the Social Justice section. Our goal by Summer is to double the number of weekly articles we run. If you’re interested in helping us out, please send your resume in through the submissions email address (I’m not putting an email address on here because Entourage has an awful junk mail filter). We’ll take a look and see if it’s a fit.
2) We’re pleased to announce Aaron Donley and Chad Gibbs have formed a Burnside Comedy Department. They will be coming up with ideas, finding new voices and keeping in contact with our comedy writers. We won’t have a new section on the main page…the comedy articles will still run under General Articles…but we hope this will lead to a steady flow of entertaining and hilarious pieces.
The Comedy Department’s first contribution to Burnside is a whole other site entirely, a webcomic page featuring Aaron Donley’s Bits of Life. Aaron’s Jack Handey-esque musings will be posted daily (ala “Toothpaste for Dinner” and “Married to the Sea”). We’ll be featuring a link from our main page soon. Aaron’s old “Bits of Life” articles are no longer available in Burnside’s archives, but he’s got 6 months worth of daily material as for right now. 6 months.
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I’ve received a few emails asking if Burnside will endorse a particular presidential candidate.
Over at the Burnside Writer’s Blog, we’ve posted quite a few entries regarding Barack Obama, and another discussing Mike Huckabee. The 2008 Presidential Election is huge, especially considering the last 16 years have put us at an important crossroads.
Any of our contributors are welcome to make their feelings known, and I hope this site will a place for healthy debate regarding our next President, but Burnside will not officially endorse any one candidate.
Plenty of Christians believe strongly in participating in our political systems and have good spiritual reason to do so.
Personally, though, I don’t want Burnside to become a mouthpiece for any one candidate. There is some reaction to not participating, but here are the words of theologian Jacques Ellul, pictured above:
“…the Christian must not act in exactly the same way as everyone else. He has a part to play in this world which no one else can possibly fulfill. He is not asked to look at the various movements which men have started, choose those which seem ‘good,’ and then support them. He is not asked to give his blessing to any particular human enterprise, nor to support the decisions of man.” -The Presence of the Kingdom
So, instead of an endorsement, let’s hope to play the part in this world no one else can possibly fulfill.
Thanks a million times for reading,
Jordan Green
BWC
Posted on February 11, 2008 12:00 AM
Comments
Our culture needs to pay more attention to Ellul. I know in interviews, he has said that he doesn't believe in national democratic elections, since there is no way for anyone to know more about the candidate than her/his slogans and advertising. He may be right--how far beyond the local level can we truly extend our ability to make informed decisions?
Posted by: non-metaphysical stephen | February 16, 2008 1:42 PM
Stephen,
If our communications were less open, we wouldn't be able get "far beyond the local level" in our political involvement. However, we do have a mound of access to information. We can relatively simply get a hold of soundly-aimed (if not holistically considered) criticism of Obama's foreign policy (http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/07/cn070607.html); this piece points out some of Obama's decidedly militaristic ideas, while leaving out his very unique critical understandings of war/culture.
In any case, this is just an instance of how, if you do just a modicum of research yourself, you CAN make very informed decisions.
Posted by: Thomas Escherelate | March 1, 2008 5:33 PM
Having grown up in the 60s, my trust in government being anything but self-serving is almost nil. Therefore, when a presidential candidate says or does something that is out of mainstream thought, it gets my attention. Because of that, there are two thoughts that Obama has represented which seem to be leaning toward a Christ-like understanding of how to treat our enemies and less like how things have been done in this country from its inception. In being against the war and for communication with our enemies, Obama has represented an understanding that leans toward the spiritual understanding of Yeshua as found in Matthew 5:44.
Posted by: Wayne F. Bays | March 4, 2008 12:51 PM
Ron Paul anyone? just because the media doesn't cover someone, does not mean they are not a viable candidate. check him out. he's given an anti-political anything, something to hope for our government...republican or democrat.
Posted by: katiedL. | March 5, 2008 9:46 PM