Philosophy and Religion departments in universities, once considered to be the "queen" of a college campus, are now being relegated to subheadings in either History or Anthropology departments, treated more like a scourge than a source of wisdom and guidance. The failings of organized religion cannot be denied but maybe we are being a bit hasty about this transformation. There is, after all, more to life than work and mindless entertainment.

Many of us like to say that we are “spiritual but not religious,” but what does that mean? As church attendance of all sorts is in steep decline, what exactly are we turning away from and what, if anything at all, are we turning to?

Is there a way to hold onto spirituality and still try to remain in community of some sort?

All over Europe there are memorial stones set in streets where the victims of the Holocaust once lived. These scattered memorials serve as reminders of the moral failure of the Nazis and their many sympathizers. In the USA, we have been more inclined to memorialize Confederate military leaders than to acknowledge the evils of slavery they sought to protect. The resistance to teaching a factual American history to young students about our nation’s moral failings leaves us vulnerable to making the same mistakes again. In fact, in many ways, we already are.

We are all connected to one another. We may not insist that our neighbors to the south use child labor to produce our fruits and vegetables in our grocery stores but, if they don’t keep the prices down, we won’t buy them. Our casual daily choices in which we are legally simply exercising our rights, has an impact on others that we often do not see. Still, our choices to do legal things, like buying an assault rifle or a handgun, choosing not to be vaccinated, or not to take public health precautions seriously, is why we have so many gun deaths in America, why we have lost over a million Americans to Covid-19, and why most of the people in rural Central America are still very poor. Hopefully, becoming aware can change our attitudes and eventually, our behaviors, so that the outcomes will eventually change as well.

Given the decisions handed down by an increasingly out of touch Supreme Court, today's message will be a reading of an article Dr. Ray has written for the July 4th edition of the LA Progressive outlining some of the philosophical challenges surrounding the court's decision to strike down Roe v Wade and the suggestion that they may go even farther in taking constitutional rights away from American citizens.