Original Rubiconography

Challenge, contradict, confirm, converse

Transformed by the Renewing of the Mind

“I just want to see men of kindness and vision and oratory. I long for someone to speak so that our hearts catch fire and we go, ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ instead of just thinking, ‘You tossers.’ ” (Joanna Lumley)

There is a story told that that when Julius Caesar was marching toward Rome – about to become the first general to lead his troops inside the city walls and thereby setting off an irrevocable chain of events leading to his dictatorship and, eventually, his assassination – he came to a small river that runs on the dividing line between France and Italy called the Rubicon. As he stepped in the river, he supposedly said: “I’m crossing the Rubicon, there is now no turning back.” This is how the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” came into usage as an adage.

theRubicon is an independent, volunteer-driven online magazine. We are Christians with our roots in The Salvation Army. We are doers who have learned that we need to think deeply, rigorously and critically about what we do, why we do it and why there are things we don’t do. “Contemplative activists,” is one way of putting it, or “field theologians.”

Deeply grateful for and mindful of our heritage, we are also aware that the world has changed and that these changes require a rethinking of that faith tradition that has been our legacy: “Tradition is not wholly static, because it has to be reinvented by each new generation as it takes over its cultural inheritance from those preceding it,” points out Anthony Giddens.

We haven’t lost our faith in God – nor have we lost touch with the world. To quote C.S. Lewis (who doesn’t quote C.S Lewis): “Because we love something else more than this world we love even this world better than those who know no other.” We never forget that it was because God so loved the world, that he sent his son to his death. It all starts with a love for the world.

theRubicon is based on exchange and participation – thoughtful, well-written contributions from people well-known and from those on the fringes of obscurity and audio presentations that challenge and inspire.

Debate and discussion is welcomed and hoped for. Information, formation, conversation and persuasion are what magazines of thought are all about. “Journals of opinion… perform a critical function in bringing before their communities a continuing conversation about how to make meaning,” says Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, editor of the Commonwealth magazine. They are “… the pre-eminent place in our pluralistic society, with its babble of voices and unexamined opinion, where a reader finds his or her deepest religious, political and cultural understandings stretched, sometimes challenged, sometimes contradicted, sometimes confirmed.” Well put, Margaret!