Yet society has in every possible way created the impression that only some are in God's favor and the others out. By our dress, color, nationality, wealth, age, gender, education, language, looks, and health, others can recognize instantly whether we are blessed or cursed, beloved or rejected.

There are enormous benefits in going along with this selective grading of human beings, and severe penalties inflicted for its rejection.

For these that God does not sit atop the pyramid of power accidents of genetics and class determine one's social location and power, and anyone who tampers with them undermines the foundations of unequal privilege. To say legitimating the entire edifice, does not favor some and reject others, is to expose the entire structure as human contrivance established in defiance of God's very nature.

--Walter Wink

300 words for forum.

How do Wink's ideas about privilege and power compare to Johnson's, Ehrenreich's, and Bader-Saye's ideas? [This question casts a wide net; please feel free to write about the ideas in which you are most interested.]

How are they different? How might you integrate Bader-Saye's ideas about the risks of hospitality, generosity and peacemaking with Wink's theology of social transformation [as represented in his quotation above]?

How might you use the experiences/stories of the people we have read about/viewed/listened to this semester including all of the following:

the women in Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed,

the characters from your Multicultural Children's Picture Book

the characters from Hotel Rwanda, Come See the Paradise and El Norte

the characters in If These Walls Could Talk 2

The Girls Next Door

In your posting please use these stories to illustrate Wink's view of the connection between social transformation and our commitment to the general welfare--regardless of our social location.

Post three questions about how Nickel and Dimed and Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear deal with the focus of this forum and respond to at least four other questions posted by the other members of your cohort.