Pledge Of Commitment Quotes

I promise to remain faithfully beside you. I pledge to conquer faults; perfect my character. I vow to deserve you. I declare you're my dream, my fervent wish fulfilled. I offer my past wealth and future promises. I swear to keep your trust." I commit my soul's fire and my body's force. I profess I am forever bound to your heart. I proclaim I am yours.

Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow [...] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes

To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity. Yet in a less assured mood, birth seems a calamity I would be miserable not having known.

The real promise in too many promises is a promise that I’m going to be disappointed.

We find these joys to be self evident: That all children are created whole, endowed with innate intelligence, with dignity and wonder, worthy of respect. The embodiment of life, liberty and happiness, children are original blessings, here to learn their own song. Every girl and boy is entitled to love, to dream and belong to a loving “village.” And to pursue a life of purpose. We affirm our duty to nourish and nurture the young, to honour their caring ideals as the heart of being human. To recognize the early years as the foundation of life, and to cherish the contribution of young children to human evolution. We commit ourselves to peaceful ways and vow to keep from harm or neglect these, our most vulnerable citizens. As guardians of their prosperity we honour the bountiful Earth whose diversity sustains us. Thus we pledge our love for generations to come.

The Happiness Manifesto Pledge not to complain needlessly. Vow not to anger unecessarily. Promise not to crititize unreasonably. Commit to thinking positively. Aspire to speak intelligently. Strive to live enlightenedly. Your happiness is in serenity. Your contentedness is in charity. Your righteousness is in integrity. Your nobility is in humility. Your innocence is in sincerity. Your blessedness is in humanity.

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens--and honor its own previous commitments--by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel's right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.

People who live up to their words shouldn't make blind promises.

Patriotism is a thing difficult to put into words. It is neither precisely an emotion nor an opinion, nor a mandate, but a state of mind -- a reflection of our own personal sense of worth, and respect for our roots. Love of country plays a part, but it's not merely love. Neither is it pride, although pride too is one of the ingredients. Patriotism is a commitment to what is best inside us all. And it's a recognition of that wondrous common essence in our greater surroundings -- our school, team, city, state, our immediate society -- often ultimately delineated by our ethnic roots and borders... but not always. Indeed, these border lines are so fluid... And we do not pay allegiance as much as we resonate with a shared spirit. We all feel an undeniable bond with the land where we were born. And yet, if we leave it for another, we grow to feel a similar bond, often of a more complex nature. Both are forms of patriotism -- the first, involuntary, by birth, the second by choice. Neither is less worthy than the other. But one is earned.

A wedding ring is a symbol of commitment; a promise, a pledge, and a vow. The promise is to forsake all others, to stay devoted and true; the pledge is to honor that promise selflessly, to see the whole thing through; and the vow is to keep that pledge unwaveringly, until the days are few. It is a mutual agreement to become one instead of two.

I pledge allegiance to myself and to my Soul for which I stand. I honor my goodness, my gifts, and my talents. I commit to remaining loyal to myself from this moment forward for all of my days.

These memories are the memorials and pledges of the vital hours of a lifetime. These hours of afflatus in the human spirit, the springs of art, are, in their mystery, akin to the epochs of history, when a race which for centuries has lived content, unknown, behind its own frontiers, digging, eating, sleeping, begetting, doing what was requisite for survival and nothing else, will, for a generation or two, stupefy the world; commit all manner of crimes, perhaps; follow the wildest chimeras, go down in the end in agony, but leave behind a record of new heights scaled and new rewards won for all mankind; the vision fades, the soul sickens, and the routine of survival starts again.

...education is a sacred thing, and the pledge to build a school is a commitment that cannot be surrendered or broken, regardless of how long it may take, how many obstacles must be surmounted, or how much money it will cost. It is by such promises that the balance sheet of one's life is measured.

Sometimes your pledges become your problems.

The Excellence Manifesto #1 I pledge myself to patience. I pledge myself to boldness. I pledge myself to kindness. I pledge myself to prudence. I pledge myself to cheerfulness. I pledge myself to genuineness. I pledge myself to goodness. I commit to skilfulness. I commit to diligence. I commit to resourcefulness. I commit to excellence. I commit to perseverance. I commit to brilliance. I commit to transcendence.

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Mark's, theywere everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning. These memories are the memorials and pledges of the vital hours of a lifetime. These hours of afflatus in the human spirit, the springs of art, are, in their mystery, akin to the epochs of history, when a race which for centuries has lived content, unknown, behind its own frontiers, digging, eating, sleeping, begetting, doing what was requisite for survival and nothing else, will, for a generation or two, stupefy the world; commit all manner of crimes, perhaps; follow the wildest chimeras, go down in the end in agony, but leave behind a record of new heights scaled and new rewards won for all mankind; the vision fades, the soul sickens, and the routine of survival starts again. The human soul enjoys these rare, classic periods, but, apart from them, we are seldom single or unique; we keep company in this world with a hoard of abstractions and reflections and counterfeits of ourselves -- the sensual man, the economic man, the man of reason, the beast, the machine and the sleep-walker, and heaven knows what besides, all in our own image, indistinguishable from ourselves to the outward eye. We get borne along, out of sight in the press, unresisting, till we get the chance to drop behind unnoticed, or to dodge down a side street, pause, breathe freely and take our bearings, or to push ahead, out-distance our shadows, lead them a dance, so that when at length they catch up with us, they look at one another askance, knowing we have a secret we shall never share.

To Marry One's Soul Being true to who we are means carrying our spirit like a candle in the center of our darkness. If we are to live without silencing or numbing essential parts of who we are, a vow must be invoked and upheld within oneself. The same commitments we pronounce when embarking on a marriage can be understood internally as a devotion to the care of one's soul: to have and to hold … for better or for worse … in sickness and in health … to love and to cherish, till death do us part. This means staying committed to your inner path. This means not separating from yourself when things get tough or confusing. This means accepting and embracing your faults and limitations. It means loving yourself no matter how others see you. It means cherishing the unchangeable radiance that lives within you, no matter the cuts and bruises along the way. It means binding your life with a solemn pledge to the truth of your soul. It is interesting that the nautical definition of marry is “to join two ropes end to end by interweaving their strands.” To marry one's soul suggests that we interweave the life of our spirit with the life of our psychology; the life of our heart with the life of our mind; the life of our faith and truth with the life of our doubt and anxiety. And just as two ropes that are married create a tie that is twice as strong, when we marry our humanness to our spirit, we create a life that is doubly strong in the world.

A favor is a friendly, gracious, kind, generous or obliging act that is freely granted. It is offered and not solicited. A promise is a declaration assuring that one will or will not do something. It is a vow to commit oneself by a promise to do or give. It is a pledge: to make a declaration assuring that something will or will not be done. When you assume and mistook favor for a promise, then misunderstanding comes in. Learn to distinguish clearly between a favor and a promise to avoid false expectations, blind hopes and deep disappointments. Never demand on favours given. Never impose on mistaken promises. Never put under pressure the people who have given you favor. Have a humble and grateful heart for both favors and promises fulfilled.

In this first foray into politics, Lincoln also pledged that if his opinions on any subject turned out to be erroneous, he stood “ready to renounce them.” With this commitment, Lincoln revealed early on a quality that would characterize his leadership for the rest of his life—a willingness to acknowledge errors and learn from his mistakes.

Who can forget the contract issued at Apple’s Foxconn plants in China, in 2010, forcing workers to sign a pledge not to commit suicide due to workplace stress?4

Presidents lie all the time. Really great presidents lie. Abraham Lincoln managed to end slavery in America partially by deception. (In an 1858 debate, he flatly insisted that he had no intention of abolishing slavery in states where it was already legal — he had to say this in order to slow the tide of secession.) Franklin Roosevelt lied about the U.S. position of neutrality until we entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Though the public and Congress believed his public pledge of impartiality, he was already working in secret with Winston Churchill and selling arms to France.) Ronald Reagan lied about Iran-Contra so much that it now seems like he was honestly confused. Politically, the practice of lying is essential. By the time the Lewinsky story broke, Clinton had already lied about many, many things. (He’d openly lied about his level of commitment to gay rights during the ’92 campaign.) The presidency is not a job for an honest man. It’s way too complex. If honesty drove the electoral process, Jimmy Carter would have served two terms and the 2008 presidential race would have been a dead heat between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable.

Nike acted in synchrony, pledging “a $40 million commitment over the next four years to support the Black community in the U.S.”27 This followed Nike’s widely aired commercial featuring former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who kneeled during the national anthem in protest of social injustice. The trick? Distracting you from Nike’s practice of employing child labor in sweatshops across southeast Asia or marketing $200 sneakers to inner-city black kids who can’t afford to buy books for school.

You did a fine job mending Maria’s dress.” “I was glad to help.” She looks down at her shoes, scuffed gray at the toes but polished all the same. She blushes, caught in the hot rush of some emotion, some thought she will never share with Anton. He offers an arm. “Shall we go in?” When the ceremony is over and the bells ring out brightly, Anton feels as tired as Elisabeth looks, as stunned and committed. They have said the holy words before God; they have taken the sacrament and made their pledge. There is no going backward now. Their road stretches out before them, straight

On May 10, 1933, the Nazi Party burned unwelcome books—Einstein, Freud, the brothers Mann, and many others—in great pyres throughout Germany, but seven days later Hitler declared himself committed to peace and went so far as to pledge complete disarmament if other countries followed suit. The world swooned with relief.

The Constitution certainly supposes that the crime of treason can be committed only by man, as an individual. It would be very curious to see a man indicted, convicted, or hanged, otherwise than as an individual; or accused of having committed his treason otherwise than as an individual. And yet it is clearly impossible that any one can be personally guilty of treason, can be a traitor in fact, unless he, as an individual, has in some way voluntarily pledged his faith and fidelity to the government. Certainly no man, or body of men, could pledge it for him, without his consent; and no man, or body of men, have any right to presume it against him, when he has not pledged it, himself.

I want to mention one other reason why we shy away from commitment. It is, very simply, the fear that we will not be able to fulfill our covenant. We may have made commitments in the past that we were not able to fulfill—perhaps a marriage vow or a promise to our children. Or it could have been something far more simple—a pledge to be diligent in devotional reading, for example.

On your wedding day you will participate with your spouse in one of the most solemn pledges ever given to humankind—the vow of marriage. This vow, or covenant, is a lifelong commitment, a promise not just between two people but between a man and a woman and their God. It involves three promises: To stay married throughout your lives To love and care for each other To maintain sexual fidelity

We regret because we fail to listen to an inner voice that says "I Can" and we watch as that pledge is hushed by our doubts and fears. We regret because we listened to someone else's voice rather than our own or because we knew what was right and didn't do it. Imagine a life where we trusted ourselves more, believed what others said less and committed to do what was noble. There would be no regret in that.

never feel lonely with you,” said Bean when they stopped kissing. “I keep expecting to feel lonely or shut out or irritated, but the more we are together, the more right it feels, the more we seem to belong together.” Isadora felt the same, but she feared admitting it. She feared the commitment it implied, she feared the heartbreak, the entanglement that leads to bitter loss. Bean waited for her to pledge herself to him in turn, but she remained silent through fear and the recentness of her heartbreak.

This is surely the main problem of the twentieth century: is it permissible merely to carry out orders and commit one's conscience to someone else's keeping? Can a man do without ideas of his own about good and evil, and merely derive them from the printed instructions and verbal orders of his superiors? Oaths! Those solemn pledges pronounced with a tremor in the voice and intended to defend people against the evildoers: see how easily they can be misdirected to the service of the evildoers and against the people!

The state of peace among men living side by side is not the natural state; the natural state is one of war. This does not always mean open hostilities, but at least an unceasing threat of war. A state of peace, therefore, must be established, for in order to be secured against hostility it is not sufficient that hostilities simply not be committed; and, until security is pledged to each by his neighbour (a thing that can only occur in a civil state) , each may treat his neighbour, from who he demands this security, as an enemy.

The state of peace among men living side by side is not the natural state (status naturalis); the natural state is one of war. This does not always mean open hostilities, but at least an unceasing threat of war. A state of peace, therefore, must be established, for in order to be secured against hostility it is not sufficient that hostilities simply be not committed; and, unless this security is pledged to each by his neighbor (a thing that can occur only in a civil state), each may treat his neighbor, from whom he demands this security, as an enemy.3

There existed at this time a widespread perception that Hitler's government could not possible endure. Germany's military power was limited... And Hitler himself had begun to seem like a more temperate actor than might have been predicted given the violence that had swept Germany earlier in the year. On May 10, 1933, the Nazi Party burned unwelcome books -- Einstein, Freud, the brothers Mann, and many others -- in great pyres throughout Germany, but seven days later Hitler declared himself committed to peace and went so far as to pledge complete disarmament if other countries followed suit. The world swooned with relief.

One of the hardest battles to overcome is simply having enough courage and inner security to adopt a lifestyle that supports your evolution and mental health. Once you make this lifelong pledge to grow, your task will be to apply effort so that you can remain on the path. Emotional maturity is a lifelong practice in humility and persistence, because you understand that your immediate thoughts are not always correct and that it is worth your time to patiently investigate the roots of your patterns. At its core, emotional maturity is a matter of improving your communication with yourself. This ongoing commitment to yourself will also enhance outward connection and communication with others.

There are five, and only five, possible types of speech acts, five types of illocutionary acts.4 These are (1) Assertives (statements, descriptions, assertions, etc.) whose point is to represent how things are and which therefore have the downhill or word-to-world direction of fit↓;(2) Directives (orders, commands, requests, etc.) whose point is to try to get other people to do things, and which have the uphill or world-to-word direction of fit↑;(3) Commissives (promises, vows, pledges, etc.) whose point is to commit the speaker to some course of action, and which, like directives, have the uphill or world-to-word direction of fit↑;(4) Expressives, (apologies, thanks, congratulations, etc.) whose point is to express the speaker’s feelings and attitudes about a state of affairs that is in most cases presupposed to exist already; and (5) Declarations, which, remarkably, have both directions of fit at once. In a Declaration we make something the case by declaring it to be the case. The first four types of speech acts have exact analogues in intentional states: corresponding to Assertives are beliefs↓, corresponding to Directives are desires↑, corresponding to Commissives are intentions↑, and corresponding to Expressives is the whole range of emotions and other intentional states where the Presup fit is taken for granted. But there is no prelinguistic analogue for the Declarations. Prelinguistic intentional states cannot create facts in the world by representing those facts as already existing. This remarkable feat requires a language.5

In New York, Italian Americans became symbols of success; one of these, the half-Jewish Fiorello LaGuardia, represented the state as a Republican in Congress. Another proud group were his cousins, the Jews, both the older German Jews and the newer East European Jews. Jews at the time had a general belief in charity and taking care of one another: “All Israel is responsible for one another.” In addition, they were aware of a specific history in New York; Peter Stuyvesant had asked the Dutch West India Company to ban Jewish settlement, but the company had allowed Jews to stay as long as the Jewish poor “be supported by their own nation.” The colonial Jews had pledged that they would, and the commitment was still alive. As late as the 1910s, philanthropist Jacob Schiff said that “a Jew would rather cut his hand off than apply for relief from non-Jewish sources.

Today Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very different values and goals, but they have all come to believe that economic growth is the key to realising their disparate goals. Thus in 2014 the devout Hindu Narendra Modi was elected prime minister of India thanks largely to his success in boosting economic growth in his home state of Gujarat, and to the widely held view that only he could reinvigorate the sluggish national economy. Analogous views have kept the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power in Turkey since 2003. The name of his party – the Justice and Development Party – highlights its commitment to economic development, and the Erdoğan government has indeed managed to maintain impressive growth rates for more than a decade. Japan’s prime minister, the nationalist Shinzō Abe, came to office in 2012 pledging to jolt the Japanese economy out of two decades of stagnation. His aggressive and somewhat unusual measures to achieve this have been nicknamed Abenomics. Meanwhile in neighbouring China the Communist Party still pays lip service to traditional Marxist–Leninist ideals, but in practice is guided by Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxims that ‘development is the only hard truth’ and that ‘it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice’. Which means, in plain language: do whatever it takes to promote economic growth, even if Marx and Lenin wouldn’t have been happy with it. In Singapore, as befits that no-nonsense city-state, they pursue this line of thinking even further, and peg ministerial salaries to the national GDP. When the Singaporean economy grows, government ministers get a raise, as if that is what their jobs are all about.2

We are here to swear a vow! As many of you have already noticed, this is no random field. It is an ancient site. A place of power. Holy to our family, to our ancestors, and, some say, even to those ancient ones who preceded us upon these lands. ‘We gather here on this day in the sight of one another to swear a binding oath. What we here swear is unrelenting and unending opposition to the Malazan Empire for so long as it shall endure. To never abandon or turn away from such opposition. To this cause all gathered here must give their individual agreement and binding commitment. Those of you who know doubt, or who feel unable to pledge yourselves utterly to this cause, are free to go. Nay, are encouraged to go. And all without rancour or ill-feelings.’ ‘So … this is my Vow. This is what I here pledge and what I, in turn, ask of anyone who would choose to follow me. Now … what say you,... ?

As arrogant as I may be in general, I am not sufficiently doltish or vainglorious to imagine that I can meaningfully address the deep philosophical questions embedded within this general inquiry of our intellectual ages—that is, fruitful modes of analysis for the history of human thought. I shall therefore take refuge in an escape route that has traditionally been granted to scientists: the liberty to act as a practical philistine. Instead of suggesting a principled and general solution, I shall ask whether I can specify an operational way to define “Darwinism” (and other intellectual entities) in a manner specific enough to win shared agreement and understanding among readers, but broad enough to avoid the doctrinal quarrels about membership and allegiance that always seem to arise when we define intellectual commitments as pledges of fealty to lists of dogmata (not to mention initiation rites, secret handshakes and membership cards—in short, the intellectual paraphernalia that led Karl Marx to make his famous comment to a French journalist: “je ne suis pas marxiste”).

What if I say to the church, “God chose you for salvation and Jesus died for you,” and then some of those people fall away and apostatize and end up in hell? Haven’t I lied to them? No, I haven’t. I have spoken the truth. In Scripture, truth is more than just conformity to the facts. It is trustworthiness and faithfulness.10 I have spoken to these people in a trustworthy manner. I have spoken to them in a faithful manner, a manner that they can bank their whole lives on, because I have spoken to them in accordance with God’s revelation. There is a tough, challenging, and surprising passage in Ezekiel 33:13 and following. The Lord says there: When I say to the righteous, he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. But when I say to the wicked, “You will surely die,” and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes of life [NASB margin] without committing iniquity, he will surely live; he shall not die. None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he will surely live.11 Yet we want to say to God, “You said to the righteous man, ‘You will surely live’—living you will live, in the Hebrew idiom—but he died. You said to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die’—dying you will die—and he lived. You lied to them, didn’t you? You didn’t tell the truth to them.” But who are we to teach God how to speak the truth? This is how God speaks. He says to people, “You will surely live,” and then they die because they trust in their own righteousness instead of trusting in Him. But God was telling the truth when He said to them, “You will surely live.” He was not lying to them. He was saying something trustworthy. When He says to the wicked man, “You will surely die,” He’s saying something trustworthy to that man and the man takes heed to what God has said. He trusts what God has said. He believes that if he stays on the path on which he is going he will surely die. In faith he trembles at the warning and he will surely live. God speaks this way and we must learn from him how to speak. God speaks to His people and He calls them elect, and therefore we also need to speak to God’s people this way. We must. We have no other choice but to let God teach us how to address his people, even if we don’t have it all worked out in our minds. If we are not comfortable with biblical language, not only hearing it but also saying it, if biblical language sounds strange to us, and if our theology gets in the way of our speaking and receiving the language of Scripture, then what has become of us—we, who are to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord?

A similar theological—and particularly ecclesiological—logic shapes the Durham Declaration, a manifesto against abortion addressed specifically to the United Methodist Church by a group of United Methodist pastors and theologians. The declaration is addressed not to legislators or the public media but to the community of the faithful. It concludes with a series of pledges, including the following: We pledge, with Cod’s help, to become a church that hospitably provides safe refuge for the so-called “unwanted child” and mother. We will joyfully welcome and generously support—with prayer, friendship, and material resources—both child and mother. This support includes strong encouragement for the biological father to be a father, in deed, to his child.27 No one can make such a pledge lightly. A church that seriously attempted to live out such a commitment would quickly find itself extended to the limits of its resources, and its members would be called upon to make serious personal sacrifices. In other words, it would find itself living as the church envisioned by the New Testament. William H. Willimon tells the story of a group of ministers debating the morality of abortion. One of the ministers argues that abortion is justified in some cases because young teenage girls cannot possibly be expected to raise children by themselves. But a black minister, the pastor of a large African American congregation, takes the other side of the question. “We have young girls who have this happen to them. I have a fourteen year old in my congregation who had a baby last month. We’re going to baptize the child next Sunday,” he added. “Do you really think that she is capable of raising a little baby?” another minister asked. “Of course not,” he replied. No fourteen year old is capable of raising a baby. For that matter, not many thirty year olds are qualified. A baby’s too difficult for any one person to raise by herself.” “So what do you do with babies?” they asked. “Well, we baptize them so that we all raise them together. In the case of that fourteen year old, we have given her baby to a retired couple who have enough time and enough wisdom to raise children. They can then raise the mama along with her baby. That’s the way we do it.”28 Only a church living such a life of disciplined service has the possibility of witnessing credibly to the state against abortion. Here we see the gospel fully embodied in a community that has been so formed by Scripture that the three focal images employed throughout this study can be brought to bear also on our “reading” of the church’s action. Community: the congregation’s assumption of responsibility for a pregnant teenager. Cross: the young girl’s endurance of shame and the physical difficulty of pregnancy, along with the retired couple’s sacrifice of their peace and freedom for the sake of a helpless child. New creation: the promise of baptism, a sign that the destructive power of the world is broken and that this child receives the grace of God and hope for the future.29 There, in microcosm, is the ethic of the New Testament. When the community of God’s people is living in responsive obedience to God’s Word, we will find, again and again, such grace-filled homologies between the story of Scripture and its performance in our midst.

President George H. W. Bush flew to Rio de Janeiro to sign the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which committed its signatories to preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system.”107 President Bush then pledged to translate the written document into “concrete action to protect the planet.

We say farewell but not goodbye! After all, it is not possible for there to be actual separation or distance between us, only a change in expression. We hold your other aspects in safekeeping for you as you bravely go forth to complete our collective work. We thank you for your service in a realm that is challenging to work in and look forward to your return to the Team conference where all you have achieved will become part of our collective wisdom! We pledge to you our love and loyalty, as we commit to the next phase of our work. All that we learn will become available to you through our automatic connection.

Years ago when our kids were elementary age, Terrie and I planned a day to get away to have time to articulate the purpose of our family. After much prayer and Scripture reading, I took out a blank sheet of stationary and wrote these words: The mission of our family is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ through obedience to His written Word, and by edifying and exhorting one another as we grow to understand our diverse yet compatible personalities. After each of the children had read the new mission statement for our family, we each signed the bottom to pledge our commitment to live in accordance to it. Terrie and I often look back and remember that day as one of our most precious family memories. Each day as I leave our house, I walk past our written purpose statement.

Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.

Jesus dwell at the fountain of my life; if the currents of His life have displaced and superseded all self-currents; if implicit obedience to Him be the inspiration and force of every movement of my life, then He can safely commit the praying to my will, and pledge Himself, by an obligation as profound as His own nature, that whatsoever is asked shall be granted.

Today, take a pledge to love yourself. Do not cut, drown, get caught in the fire, or hang yourself. Reasons behind committing suicide can be cured!

You don't have to change yourself to meet the expectations of others. CIOs who not only accept you, but celebrate you for who you are. Give your time and energy to the ones committed to truth, the brave souls working toward a life of authenticity. Let that be your tribe, and you their family. Open yourself to connections formed from a pledge to be real.

What is the Paris Climate Agreement? 195 countries signed a pledge to keep global temperature rise below 2°C (3.6°F), and, if possible, below 1.5°C (2.7°F). All countries agree to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to net zero as soon as possible in the second half of the century. The U.S. pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. India aims to install 175 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2022. China will peak its CO2 emissions by 2030. Developed countries will provide $100 billion in climate finance by 2020. Countries should raise the ambition of their initial commitments over time to make sure we meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016.

As a practitioner of Witchcraft, my drive is to learn as much magic as I can from whatever sources resonate with me. In those instances in which a practice, symbol, or deity speaks to me and demands my devotion, I make a commitment to honor the cultures from which they originated by pledging to study their histories, to listen to the voices of those who identify as part of those cultures, and, where possible, to support the living people who belong to that cultural group.

It turned out pre-commitment was strikingly successful—resolving clearly to do something, and making a pledge that they’d stick to it, made the men significantly better at holding out.

it was easier to stay one-hundred-percent committed to anything than it was to stay ninety-eight-percent committed. One-hundred-percent commitment delivered the knowledge that you knew exactly what you were going to do, and you would never waver from that pledge. Ninety-eight-percent commitment created wiggled room for a back-and-forth decision-making process, which led to decision fatigue. In life, that fatigue turned into poor progress toward goals. In stunts, that fatigue led to hesitation. And hesitation led to accidents. Apparently, it was the theory of a Harvard professor,

Make a pledge and commit long-term to your goals.

But what impresses me most is that so many doctors were influenced by their pledge even though breaking it had no monetary penalty. A pledge like this stands in stark contrast to cash commitments, locked bank accounts, and deadline penalties, which I call “hard commitments” because they involve a more concrete cost. The clinician pledge is a prime example of what I call a “soft commitment”—a commitment that comes with only a psychological price tag for failure.

Signing a pledge is a particularly soft form of commitment because the penalty is simply the guilt and discomfort you’ll feel if you break your word, to others or yourself. Being at odds with yourself, which psychologists call “cognitive dissonance,” is a surprisingly powerful force first studied by Leon Festinger in the 1950s. People often go to great lengths to avoid reckoning with their internal contradictions. Cognitive dissonance can help explain why cults are so hard to leave (after you’ve joined and invested so much of yourself, it’s difficult to admit that you’re unhappy) and why smokers often underestimate the health effects of their habit (if you believe you’re intelligent and also have a nasty habit, cognitive dissonance pushes you to discount or ignore evidence that your habit is, indeed, nasty). Cognitive dissonance is also a handy tool we can harness to change behavior for good. By electing to make pledges and asking others to do the same, we can turn cognitive dissonance into a soft penalty that helps us and them achieve more.

Unsurprisingly, the nation’s xenophobia has seeped into popular culture. Bollywood, long known for its extensive Muslim involvement across the entire industry, is being forced to toe the anti-Islam perspective. Many in Bollywood happily pushed the hard-line Hindu nationalist agenda, releasing films that openly celebrated the actions of the Indian armed forces. In a similar vein, the Israeli series Fauda, which features undercover Israeli agents in the West Bank, has been hugely popular among right-wing Indians, looking for a sugar hit of war on terror and anti-Islamist propaganda in a slickly produced format. During the May 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, the right-wing economist Subramanian Swamy, who sits on the BJP national executive, tweeted that he loved Fauda.28 The post-9/11 “war on terror” suited both India and Israel in their plans to pacify their respective unwanted populations. To this end, Israel trained Indian forces in counterinsurgency. Following a 2014 agreement between Israel and India, pledging to cooperate on “public and homeland security,” countless Indian officers, special forces, pilots, and commandoes visited Israel for training. In 2020, Israel refused to screen Indian police officers to determine if they had committed any abuses in India. Israeli human rights advocate Eitay Mack and a range of other activists petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court in 2020 to demand that Israel stop training Indian police officers who “blind, murder, rape, torture and hide civilians in Kashmir.” The court rejected the request, and in the words of the three justices, “without detracting from the importance of the issue of human rights violations in Kashmir.

In a world of endless choices, unpredictable outcomes, and no guarantees, they are doing the bravest thing two people can do: making a commitment before their friends and family to devote the rest of their lives to each other. We call this a wedding, but really this word derives from an old Germanic word meaning a pledge. And this is worth remembering as we consider what this day is all about. We make few pledges in our modern lives, but today we celebrate with Petra and Alexander as they make their greatest: a pledge to and for each other, not as individuals, but as two that are choosing to become one.

The psalms lead us to do what the psalmists do—to commit ourselves to God through pledges and promises, to depend on God through petition and expressions of acceptance, to seek comfort in God through lament and complaint, to find mercy from God through confession and repentance, to gain new wisdom and perspective from God through meditation, remembrance, and reflection.

Therefore, whenever significant differences of opinion among faithful Christians occur, some of which continue to divide the church deeply today, neither surprise nor dismay should be allowed to separate the members of the Body from one another; nor should those differences be covered over with false claims of consensus or unanimity. To the contrary, such conflict must be embraced with courage and perseverance as all together continue to seek to discern God’s will. In that understanding and commitment, we pledge ourselves to acknowledge and to embrace with courage, trust, and hope those controversies that arise among us, accepting them as evidence that God is not yet finished in sculpting us to be God’s people.

This was their day, their moment, and this event meant everything to Kane, so in return it meant everything to Avery, too. He had worked hard to make today special for his Kane, and Avery understood the significance and devotion with which Kane would take his vows. It wasn't every day you committed yourself to one person for the rest of your life. To Kane, that was exactly what he was doing today, pledging himself to Avery forever. For Avery, he had tied himself to Kane the first night they'd made love. From that moment, he never wanted be without Kane and now he was finally having that same promise returned in front of their friends and family.

He had known from the moment he saw her that she was dangerous, but he’d had no idea how lethal. She had pulled feelings to the surface that he thought he’d been in control of and now it was here—he felt it all and he was completely lost. Terrified. He adored her. He couldn’t stand the thought of this ending. He had felt something almost this deep and powerful once before, when he was much younger. He had been twenty-four when he found the beautiful, raven-haired Felicia. In her arms, in her body, he had come to life. He’d never fallen so hard before, and certainly not since. He had been surprised by the passion and commitment he felt, but he let it sweep him away. He loved her hard for a year, and then he had to leave on a mission. He went to Somalia. When the conflict was at its worst, it was her face in his mind that helped him get through, gave him purpose, something strong and powerful to fight for. He had pledged his life to her; he was going to love her till the day he died. When he got home he found out it had all been a lie; she had never been his. She’d been unfaithful since before he left; she cut him loose the first day he was back. It had been an ugly, bitter parting that left everyone scarred—mostly him. To say his heart was ripped apart didn’t touch it. For a couple of years at least the pain was so bad he thought it might kill him. When the pain stopped, he was empty inside. He made a firm resolution: that would never happen to him again. His involvement with women was purely recreational from that point on. He wasn’t about to be vulnerable to a woman, open himself to that kind of pain. Yet beside him, all gentle and sweet, was an incredible woman. He wanted to pull her into his arms, tell her how much he loved her, how far he’d go to make her happy, beg her to either change her plans or include him. But he wouldn’t. It was too risky. Another deal like the last one would kill him. He wouldn’t give his heart. The problem was, without meaning to, without wanting to, he had. *

Commitment devices are commonplace in business as well. Google has pledged to give its engineers 20% of their time to pursue personal projects. With that pledge, the company forecloses its ability to claim that time (at least without a lot of squawking). Small businesses get in on the act too.

Cheating with the bottle is not a mere distraction, not an evening’s entertainment, but an out-and-out commitment, a contract, a pledge, and it led him to turn away from his wife utterly and with finality. Todd’s mother was a forsaken woman, her loneliness a mist that enveloped him throughout his childhood.

Pay attention to when the cart is getting before the horse. Notice when a painful initiation leads to irrational devotion, or when unsatisfying jobs start to seem worthwhile. Remind yourself pledges and promises have power, as do uniforms and parades. Remember in the absence of extrinsic rewards you will seek out or create intrinsic ones. Take into account [that] the higher the price you pay for your decisions the more you value them. See that ambivalence becomes certainty with time. Realize that lukewarm feelings become stronger once you commit to a group, club, or product. Be wary of the roles you play and the acts you put on, because you tend to fulfill the labels you accept. Above all, remember the more harm you cause, the more hate you feel. The more kindness you express, the more you come to love those you help.

Federal review of San Diego police urges more supervision By ELLIOT SPAGAT SAN DIEGO (AP) — A U.S. Justice Department review of the San Diego Police Department finds lack of supervision and failure to hold officers accountable contributed to an environment that produced a rash of misconduct allegations. The audit released Tuesday offers 40 recommendations to improve recruiting, hiring, training and supervision aimed at more quickly identifying problem officers. Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman pledged to adopt all of the suggestions, but said some will require time and money. Zimmerman's predecessor, William Lansdowne, requested the federal review last year after misconduct allegations against officers rocked the department. Several were accused of committing sexual assault or battery while on-duty. Officer Anthony Arevalos was sentenced to eight years in prison after being charged with soliciting sexual favors from women he pulled over in traffic stops. Posted: Mar 17 3:56 pm

By creating the Third Order, though, Francis did accept the distinction between radical commitment and the necessity of living in the world. The point of the Third Order is to accept with humility the task of one’s secular profession and its requirements, wherever one happens to be, while directing one’s whole life to that deep interior communion with Christ that Francis showed us. “To own goods as if you owned nothing” (cf. 1 Cor 7:29ff.)—to master this inner tension, which is perhaps the more difficult challenge, and, sustained by those pledged to follow Christ radically, truly to live it out ever anew—that is what the third orders are for. And they open up for us what this Beatitude can mean for all.

Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, has in recent weeks abandoned his pledge to “tear up” the country’s bailout agreement with international creditors and is emphasising more moderate steps to address Greece’s debt load as well as his deep commitment to the euro. Krishna Guha, of Evercore ISI, warned that — at a minimum — investors now faced “a four-week period of elevated uncertainty in which eurozone risk assets will struggle to perform”. Yet Mr Guha added: “We believe that Tsipras will prove more pragmatic than past Syriza rhetoric suggests. He has opened back channels to Berlin, Paris and Frankfurt, and has every incentive to try to negotiate relatively cosmetic changes to Greece’s programme and ride the early-stage Greek recovery rather than derail it.” Nick Wall, a portfolio manager at Invesco, also noted Mr Tsipras’ recent attempt to tack to the political centre. “They are going to need private sector investors, particularly if they are going to start running deficits again.

Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it, and those committed to breaking it up; those whose aim is to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow, asking ourselves abut the future of our children, and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes, encouraging us to care only for our stomachs today, without thinking about the tomorrow of our country.

Your presence in a relationship is not indicative of commitment but rather inertia. Standing before your friends and family and pledging your love and loyalty is an essential ingredient of a long-lasting union.

There are a whole host of ways to do this. One of the best is the public pledge. Tell everyone you know that you will lose the excess weight or write that novel or whatever your goal might be. Once you make your goal known to the world, there will instantly be pressure on you to work towards its fulfillment since no one likes to look like a failure. In Sivana, my teachers used more dramatic means to create this positive pressure I speak of. They would declare to one another that if they did not follow through on their commitments, such as fasting for a week or getting up daily at 4:00 a.m. to meditate, they would go down to the icy waterfall and stand under it until their arms and legs went numb. This is an extreme illustration of the power that pressure can exert on the building of good habits and the attainment of goals.

Growing in knowing ourselves in relation to the world and to others means being strategically selective in our personal investments, attending to our own gifts and trusting the diverse gifts of others in our team. It means pledge-like guarding of other commitments we have already assumed.

The 'plan of secession,' if any, and the purpose of secession, unquestionably, originated, not in Washington City, or with the Senators or Representatives of the South, but among the people of the several States, many months before it was attempted. They followed no leaders at Washington or elsewhere, but acted for themselves, with an independence and unanimity unprecedented in any movement of such magnitude. Before the meeting of the caucus of January 5, 1861, South Carolina had seceded, and Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas had taken the initial step of secession, by calling conventions for its accomplishment. Before the election of Lincoln, all the Southern States, excepting one or two, had pledged themselves to separate from the Union upon the triumph of a sectional party in the Presidential election, by acts or resolutions of their Legislatures, resolves of both Democratic and Whig State Conventions, and of primary assemblies of the people—in every way in which they could commit themselves to any future act. Their purpose was proclaimed to the world through the press and telegraph, and criticised in Congress, in the Northern Legislatures, in press and pulpit, and on the hustings, during many months before Congress met in December, 1860.

The name of the new peace organization is to be the United Nations. It is a misnomer and will mislead the people. The name of the organization should be the League of Free and Independent Nations pledged to Enforce Peace, or the Fifty Sovereign Nations of the World Solemnly Sworn to Prevent Each Other from Committing Aggression. These titles are clumsy, candid, and damning. They are exact, however. The phrase 'United Nations' is inexact, because it implies union, and there is no union suggested or contemplated in the work of Dumbarton Oaks. The nations of the world league will be united only as fifty marbles in a dish are united. Put your toe on the dish and the marbles will scatter, each to its own corner.

Over 15 years ago we pledged our Sisterhood. And promised we would always be there for each other. Today, we renew that commitment. Diane continued. To accept each other with all our flaws. Give encouragement and hope support each other through the laughter and tears. To listen with an attentive ear and kick each other's butts into gear when needed. And to celebrate the beauty and joy of this bond. Forever. [...] This is not goodbye. Just see you later. Until we meet again. To friendship, sisterhood, and living life with no reservations. The sun was sitting on this chapter of their lives but tomorrow the sun would rise again and bring new life.

Miriam Farid has founded END VIOLENCE UK Ltd to eradicate violence internationally. Join to pledge your commitment to eradicating violence globally.

Despite Sharanda’s growing realization that the attorneys she and her family continued to pour money into were not going to help her, she found reserves of courage and strength within herself that she didn’t know she had. Committed to her mother’s care, she made a pledge. “God is not going let you stay like this forever,” Sharanda told herself. “But you are here right now. You can’t live for the outside. You’ve got to be fully present. You’ve got to live here. In this moment. In this place.

The fourth member of the Colorado-class was never completed because the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 brought new battleship construction worldwide to a halt. The World War I victors agreed to limit capital ship construction and scrap certain existing vessels to result in a 5:5:3 ratio among the three major naval powers of the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Signatories pledged to honor a ten-year moratorium on capital ship construction and guarantee ships would not exceed thirty-five thousand tons or carry armaments larger than sixteen-inch guns. The treaty also contained a non-fortification clause aimed at American and Japanese intentions across the broad reaches of the Pacific. Beyond what the United States might undertake in Hawaii or what Japan might do in its home islands, the signatories agreed not to fortify bases on their island possessions, including Japan’s Caroline and Marshall Islands, recently won from Germany, and such American outposts as Wake, Guam, and most important, the Philippines. Whether Japan would honor this commitment was a matter of considerable debate. Franklin Roosevelt, out of the public eye while recovering from polio, asked in an article, “Shall We Trust Japan?” Citing Japan’s participation in the Washington Naval Treaty and noting there was “enough commercial room” in the Pacific “for both Japan and us well into the indefinite future,” Roosevelt answered with an optimistic yes.7 The end result was that America honored its treaty commitment and built no new battleships between commissioning the West Virginia in 1923 and the North Carolina (BB-55) in 1941. This left the Arizona and its sisters the undisputed, though aging, queens of the seas on the American side during the latter 1920s and throughout the 1930s. But even queens require an occasional facelift, and from May 1929 to March 1931, Arizona underwent a twenty-two-month modernization at the Norfolk Navy Yard.

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity.

As communal and composite creatures, we human beings often symbolize our important relationships in physical ways. Nations create flags to represent their country, and pledging allegiance to those flags displays and reinforces the patriotism of its citizens. Couples exchange rings during a wedding ceremony, embodying their commitments to each other into wearable symbols that become a part of everything they do from then on. These symbols not only help us stay mindful of the fundamental relationships that shape our activity, they actually make those relationships stronger. That same dynamic, then, can be seen in the way sacraments function in the church's worship of God. First through the waters of baptism and thereafter through the bread and the wine of communion, we express and extend our devotion to God in physical ways. To be entirely devoted to God, we must make God a part of everything that we do. What better way to symbolize that than by eating and drinking the representations (i.e., “presenting to us again”) of Christ's broken body and shed blood. Sanctification is about living as a representation of Christ, and we become more mindful that Christ fills us and empowers us spiritually when we celebrate that filling and empowering physically. By recognizing our dependance on God in this way, we demonstrate to ourselves and others how important God is to us; we “worth-ship” God. Because this is an act of “communion,” the very same sacrament that celebrates our dependance on Christ also celebrates our interdependence on one another. It is hard to imagine a better medicine for sin-sick, self-addicted people to take than one that celebrates how much God loves them and calls them to love one another.

We are horror-struck,” Garrison wrote of the rebellion. In America’s “fury against the revolters,” who would remember the “wrongs” of slavery? Garrison would, and he listed them. But he could not condone the strategy of violence. He did not realize that some, if not most, enslavers would die rather than set their wealth free. Garrison pledged his undying commitment to his philosophy: that the best way to “accomplish the great work of national redemption” was “through the agency of moral power,” that is, of moral persuasion.

Our nation and the world are faced with a great crisis. This is a time for each and every one of us to commit ourselves to the highest level of personal and civic service and sacrifice. To win the war against the Coronavirus, we must exhibit the highest level of self-leadership possible. This current crisis requires from each of us new faith in Divinity and humanity, and it requires a new patriotism grounded in self-discipline, compassion, and undying respect for our own life and the lives of others. By honoring this pledge, together we can return stability to our lives and the world.

What the critics don’t seem to recognize is that the Paris agreement itself was a huge failure. It contained no uniform commitments and no enforcement provisions. Sure, the whole world signed. But onto what? A voluntary set of vaporous promises. China pledged to ‘achieve the peaking of [carbon dioxide] emissions around 2030.’ Meaning that they rise for another 13 years.

The grandfather had died, Low undoubtedly loved him, but he was not as wealthy, or such a philanthropist, as his grandson made out. Neither was Low himself so charitable; the Jynwel Foundation had done little through 2012, while Low was busy raiding the 1MDB fund, even during his own cancer scare. It was true that the Jynwel Foundation had pledged more than $100 million to charities, although it had actually paid out only a fraction of that amount. Its activity began to pick up only in late 2013, just as negative media stories about Low were snowballing, and more so in 2014. In order to change the narrative, Edelman counseled Low to publicize his charitable endeavors, including pledges of tens of millions of dollars to National Geographic’s Pristine Seas endeavor and to the United Nations to save its news service from closure. Low was even planning to donate to his alma mater. At his request, an architect drew up plans for a new building at Wharton to be called the Jynwel Institute for Sustainable Business. Low was planning to make a $150 million commitment to build and operate the institute over thirty years, a munificent gesture, redolent of a Rockefeller or a Carnegie.

With a determined sense of responsibility, I pledge these statements: I will follow my True North, I will commit to what is important, I will be ambitious and motivated in all that I do, I will value my time, I will make all my decisions by examining the upside and downside, I will delay gratification, I will grit it out, I will shift my frame of reference, I will live each day honoring my journey to live the Spartan Way.

A great party has pledged itself to the protection of children, to the care of the aged, to the relief of overworked girls, to the safeguarding of burdened men,” she said. “Committed to these humane undertakings, it is inevitable that such a party should appeal to women, should seek to draw upon the great reservoir of their moral energy, so long undesired and unutilized in practical politics….The new party has become the American exponent of a world-wide movement toward juster social conditions, a movement which America, lagging behind other great nations, has been unaccountably slow to embody in political action.

To join a monastic community, people promise stability, pledging to remain in that community for life. At the same time they also promise to remain always open to change, to what is loosely translated as a “conversion of life.” We know what happens when we have stability without conversion; we end up stagnant, curled up comfortably with that familiar idol called “This is the way we’ve always done it.” And conversion without stability may describe the current state of affairs with regard to the spiritual life in America. Many seem to value change for its own sake; we’re always after something new. But when seeking the holy becomes a goal in itself, the last thing we want to do is find it. In all of the religious traditions I know of, anything that feels like finding translates into commitment. And like conversion itself, commitment is scary.

In the wake of my divorce, friends and family members encouraged me to seek professional help, but I was resistant. I am dubious of the efficacy of therapy for me. It seems to entail a pledge of honesty that I have a hard time keeping. I am, by nature, a storyteller; when I chronicle the past I inevitably craft it. And so I don’t think I could commit to speaking truthfully in a therapeutic context—let alone in a courtroom.

The Nazis in America had been hiding in plain sight for decades; now finally, the government was pledging to go after them in earnest. But the nascent effort, seeking to hold American immigrants accountable for crimes committed almost forty years earlier across the Atlantic Ocean, faced legal and political obstacles from the start.

the prophetic books, as books, have the same theological purpose as the books of the New Testament. They speak of God’s continuous commitment to his covenant pledge to bless Israel and the nations by means of a “new” covenant (Gen. 12:1–3). The mediator of that pledge is the “seed of Abraham” (Gen. 22:18; Gal. 3:16). God’s means of accomplishing his pledge is to inscribe the divine law upon the hearts of all believers. The prophets did not write their books to teach their readers the Sinai covenant. Their intent, like Moses’s, was to call their readers to a life of faith under the new covenant (Isa. 7:9b).

When one believes or disbelieves the gospel and God (Rom 10:6–11, 14, 17), one also obeys or disobeys (Rom 10:16, 21), because the good news is not merely a divine announcement or promise; it is a call, a summons. To believe and confess that Jesus is Lord is hardly just an intellectual affirmation; it is a personal and public commitment to obey this Lord Jesus; it is a promise of loyalty, a pledge of allegiance. Faith is not something that happens once; it is the ongoing reality of life in Christ.

Singapore was vulnerable to the kind of ethnic pulls evident in the 1960s. The problem with this strong regulatory emphasis, however, is that it has allowed Singaporeans to enjoy the fruits of inter-ethnic peace without having to work significantly hard for it. To use a fashionable economic term, most Singaporeans are free-riders when it comes to race relations. Children recite the Pledge every school day. But , in truth, no deep commitment to multi-racialism is required, either in thought or action. Singaporeans can leave such work to the government, which is empowered to deal with prblems under a host of laws and regulations. This, sadly, does not say much for the whole Singaporean enterprise. A society which ethnic conflict is engineered out of existence by physically dispersing minorities and curbing rights of speech and assembly, is nothing to shout about.

Singapore was vulnerable to the kind of ethnic pulls evident in the 1960s. The problem with this strong regulatory emphasis, however, is that it has allowed Singaporeans to enjoy the fruits of inter-ethnic peace without having to work significantly hard for it. To use a fashionable economic term, most Singaporeans are free-riders when it comes to race relations. Children recite the Pledge every school day. But , in truth, no deep commitment to multi-racialism is required, either in thought or action. Singaporeans can leave such work to the government, which is empowered to deal with prblems under a host of laws and regulations. This, sadly, does not say much for the whole Singaporean enterprise. A society which ethnic conflict is engineered out of existence by physically dispersing minorities and curbing rights of speech and assembly, is nothing to shout about

At Cal State, the nation’s largest university system with nearly 450,000 students on 23 campuses, the chancellor is preparing this summer to withdraw official recognition from evangelical groups that are refusing to pledge not to discriminate on the basis of religion in the selection of their leaders. And at Vanderbilt, more than a dozen groups, most of them evangelical but one of them Catholic, have already lost their official standing over the same issue; one Christian group balked after a university official asked the students to cut the words “personal commitment to Jesus Christ” from their list of qualifications for leadership. At most universities that have begun requiring religious groups to sign nondiscrimination policies, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and mainline Protestant groups have agreed, saying they do not discriminate and do not anticipate that the new policies will cause problems. Hillel, the largest Jewish student organization, says some chapters have even elected non-Jews to student boards.

And it was as a diplomat that Congress dispatched him to Montreal. Under nineteen paragraphs of instructions signed by Hancock, Franklin’s task was nothing less than to restore Canadian faith in America’s ideals, innocence, and military commitment after the debacle in Quebec. As leader of a small commission, he was “to settle all disputes between the Canadians and the Continental troops,” persuade Canada that “their interests and ours are inseparably united,” urge Canadians to join “our union as a sister colony,” and pledge “the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion.

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