AI – Principalities, Powers & Mass Movements

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By Rev. Joanna Shenk, the fourth and final sermon in a series at First Mennonite of San Francisco called “Living with Courage and Clarity in the face of AI.”

When I was growing up we read a lot of books together as a family. One significant book series was the Lord of the Rings – a fantasy trilogy about good and evil, with many Christian themes. 

The Lord of the Rings movie adaptations came out in the early 2000s and were an instant family favorite. No one loved them more than my youngest brother, Jonny, who watched all three movies 50 times each, as well as read the books and other writings of the author, JRR Tolkien. 

For those who aren’t familiar, Lord of the Rings is a deeply spiritual tale, reflecting on the nature of power and its ability to corrupt. In the story, the smallest and humblest creatures, the Hobbits, are tasked with saving the world from the powers of evil that are a destructive, extractive force. Although there are ways that Tolkien was problematic in his binary thinking, he was telling a story in response to the rise of fascism in his day. 

Jonny told me that Tolkien was always suspicious of people with grand plans and he was not a fan of technology. Tolkien believed that you couldn’t beat an enemy with their weapons, but instead had to use simplicity and creativity, like the earthy Hobbits or the angry Ents – ancient tree people – who destroyed Isengard, an evil fortress, by rupturing a dam.    

I was inspired to talk with my brother while writing this sermon because two of the most powerful AI tech companies draw their names from Lord of Rings – Palantir and Anduril. There are many others (over 20) including Valinor (the undying lands), Isengard (the evil fortress I just mentioned), & Sauron. 

Yes, Sauron, which is the death dealing force hell bent on destroying all living things not under its control. Sauron the company “is the first home security system that accurately identifies, understands, and deters threats” using military grade technology, facial recognition and AI predictive threat technology. 

But I digress.. Back to Palantir and Anduril. Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel, who I mentioned in my sermon last Sunday. It is difficult to explain what Palantir does, but I found this helpful summary from the American Friends Service Committee: Palantir vacuums up massive amounts of data collected by governments and corporations. Palantir is used by militaries, police forces, banks, hospitals, and even your local pharmacy or favorite fast-food restaurant. Palantir’s AI algorithm then combines all this data into a single, gigantic dataset and looks for patterns that are hard to see.

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There is Another Court

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From Dr Kamal AlHindi, a professor, an astute analyst and a genocide survivor from Gaza, re-posted from the Substack of Dr. Farah El-Sharif

This is not how the story ends.

Those who think that Gaza’s bloodshed will end with a “two state solution” type of peace agreement or some hollow, fragile truce are deeply mistaken.

Human courts have failed Gaza, and they will continue to fail her. 

But there is another court—the Divine Court—and one day it will render justice for Gaza and call the maniacal oppressors to account.

The oppressed will not depart this world without bearing witness to this promise, in one way or another, and will live to see the day of reckoning, soon.

The truth is, many of our “brothers” conspired against us, and even more who stood by in cowardice and silence.

But what Gaza gave the world was nothing short of a miracle in every sense of the word—a sacrifice in defense of this slumbering ummah that had grown too accustomed to the taste of humiliation and resigned itself to living on the margins of history.

Indeed, this ummah has been worn down by cowardice and fear for far too long. 

Historians will record this shameful chapter of humanity, but by God, your cowardice did not add a single day to your lives, nor did our courage take away single day from the lives of her children.

To the naysayers and cowards: one day, you will look back at this time and you will be ashamed of yourselves. You will remember that you left a child, standing with his bare chest exposed, to face an entire global system of oppression alone.

And surely, one day, you will rush to pay homage to the brave and you will want to visit Gaza.

When you do, please, tread softly upon her soil.

For beneath that earth lie the finest souls humanity has ever brought forth

3 Years Later

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By Tommy Airey, originally posted to his Substack, which provides an audio version and important links

*A letter to my niblings (ages five to thirteen), on the 3rd anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

Dear Riley, Mason, Milo and Haylen,

Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that the whole future of America depends on the impact and influence of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Abraham Joshua Heschel was a rabbi and professor who marched with MLK in the Black freedom struggle.

You already know who MLK is. You’ve read about him in children’s books. You’ve seen photos and murals of him all over the place. You hear about him every January, in the lead-up to his holiday weekend.

It is one thing to know who MLK is. It is another thing to be impacted and influenced by him.

My hope is that you and your generation will not only be impacted by MLK’s beautiful words, but also that you will be influenced by his brave actions.

Six years before George Floyd and I were born, MLK said that the greatest purveyor of violence in the world was his own government. A lot of Americans got really angry when he said this. The next day, 168 newspapers condemned him.

MLK made it clear that real terrorism is what America does to other people all over the planet.

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“The Baptism of John—From Heaven or From the Human?”: A Brief Riff on the Rain of God

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By Jim Perkinson, a sermon on Matthew 21:23-32, preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, MI on September 27, 2026

“Not Me” Attention

A prelim footnote: my evangelical, born-again, Pentecostal, tongues-speaking, word of the Lord-seeking “Christianity” all to the good, much of my adult life has been about learning to see, appreciate, honor, and finally be amazed by what is not me.  “Not me” in terms of living for 15 years in community sharing all things in common under the same roof with as many as 20 other people in one single family dwelling; “not me” as a white male in east side inner city, Black Detroit; “not me” in terms of gender and orientation; “not me” in having a wife who is Filipino-born and enculturated; and with her, “not me,” in learning from indigenous cultures and peoples how to turn aside from human focus on human concerns to fall in love with the Wild World of more-than-human elders and co-dwellers, whether plant, animal, soil, season, weather. Or water. 

We are in the Christian lectionary “Season of Creation” with a central theme of Living Water.  And the question for me is: Can I pay attention to water outside of my concern to drink it, wash with it, ask it to cleanse my dishes and tools and take my garbage and pollution away, grow my crops or transport my computer chips from Taiwan or my I-phone from DRC?  Can I get fascinated with Water on Her own terms and for Her own sake?  Can I stop being human supremacist and only paying attention to such things to the degree they support me or give me some kind of experience I can capture in a selfie?  Can I stop being the center of my own universe?  After all, I am more than 60% water myself and Her dwelling in me means I am not primarily “me,” but another creature who is literally billions of years old and only for an evolutionary split-second, “agreeing” to be in this strange conjunction of all kinds of other creatures—eaten plants and metabolized animals, cavorting bacteria and provocative viruses, a little bit of residual iron and copper, bone and nails and hair, etc.—whose sum and substance for some 70+ years has rambled across a small piece of this planet as an upright oddity called “Jim Perkinson.”  Can I relate to Water without instantly colonizing it?

Nepal Devastation

8:37 am Nepal Time on August 26, 2026, a seismic thud registered at 5.2 magnitude on the Richter scale. A slice of glacier-covered-rock 5,000 feet long, 3,300 feet wide, 425 feet thick, sheered off the north face of Langtang Lirung Mountain, plunged nearly a mile almost straight down into the Lhende Khola valley tributary to the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river systems, landing with the force of 950 tons of TNT, pulverizing the rock, melting the ice, and then surging with a force 30 times that of Niagara Falls, at times racing more than 100 miles an hour with a wave crest as high as 300 feet, downstream for 60 miles before finally slowing and settling into a “mere” flood. 

A “Water Word” sounding at a mega-decibel level heard round the globe.

The human consequence is still being figured in the multiple thousands of deaths, entire villages wiped out, 41 bridges swept away, thousands of homes destroyed.  And we can be tempted to say—Ah, Nature! So cruel! So brutal! So uncaring in the trajectory of its “wild agency,” mindless of its effect, in an eyeblink taking out vast numbers of our species who did nothing to warrant such an annihilation!”

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The Hip-Hop Gospel

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Another compelling offering from The Alternative Seminary.

An Online Gathering on Saturday, October 10, 2026 from 10:30am to 12:30pmET – Led by Rev. Donte Milligan.

Hip Hop is a genre of music deeply rooted in and inseparable from Black culture and community. More than almost any other genre, Hip Hop has created space for marginalized voices to speak, resist, testify, and imagine new possibilities.

In this program, we will explore Hip Hop as a prophetic and mystical tradition. Rappers often function as prophets and mystics of marginalized Black and Brown communities, giving voice to experiences that are too often ignored, silenced, or misunderstood. Through their lyrics, they name injustice, expose systems of oppression, wrestle with suffering, celebrate resilience, and imagine liberation. 

Even when its language is bold, brash, or profane, Hip Hop can speak a gritty truth on behalf of God’s beloved. Together, we will ask what happens when we take those voices seriously as sources of theological reflection and prophetic wisdom.

Come listen with open ears, wrestle with the theology, and find God in the places you least expect it.

If you have any questions, contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com or 267-339-8989.

Whatever is Unsure is Possible

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire1 Comment

Wendell Berry died yesterday at the age of 92. He was a writer and farmer and activist for the earth. Jeremy Porter passed this poem along this morning. Porter is a spiritual director, farmer and bus driver in Lexington, KY who been influenced immensely by Berry’s life. The poem is called “Testament” and it was published in 1984.

Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don’t call it death —
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
And all my hopes. Say that I have found
A good solution, and am on my way
To the roots. And say I have left my native clay
At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where? Say you don’t know.

But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit’s whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say
Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure

Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all’s despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle

Hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
Need not be too rich to please
One who was happy in Port Royal.

I may be already heading back,
A new and better man, toward
That town. The thought’s unreasonable,
But so is life, thank the Lord!

So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don’t muck up my face
With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day’s round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.
He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

Another played the eternal fool
By riding on a circus mule

To be remembered in grateful laughter
Longer than the rest. After

Doing that they had to do
They are at ease here. Let all of you

Who yet for pain find force and voice
Look on their peace, and rejoice.

I Entrust You With Palestine

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Today is the one-year anniversary of the martyrdom of Anas Al-Sharif, a 28-year-old Palestinian journalist who grew up in a refugee camp and committed his life to tell “the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.” Because of this bold commitment, he was murdered by an IDF missile (probably made in America).

In his final message to the world, he called Palestine the heartbeat of every free person in the world. He wrote his message two months before his murder because he knew they were coming for him.

More than 260 journalists have been murdered in Gaza over the past three years.

This week, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)- is organizing a week of action, in honor of Anas Al-Sharif, to ensure that the voices of Gaza are heard and to let complicit media know that we will hold them accountable.

As Anas Al-Sharif said, don’t let chains silence you.

Be bold. Break rank. Go public. Free Palest1ne.

Pay Close Attention

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An urgent message from Rev. Dr. Edgar Rivera-Colon. Re-posted from social media.

I would pay close attention to this transparent warning to all progressive and left forces that the Trump regime published as a press release yesterday. I assume further arrests and violent repression in the run up to the midterms and more intensely during the national elections.

The US imperial state knows that the best way to neutralize justice movements is to entangle them in legal defense for political prisoners. A word to the wise should be sufficient.

The quote below is by Stephen Miller:

“One of the hallmarks of left-wing violence and terrorism is its completely pre-textual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties in an effort to shield its own violence… When the leftist — who does not believe in freedom, who does not believe in civil rights, who does not believe in any ordinary notion of justice — protests that we are violating his rights, understand the he is lying to try to persuade people who are not closely following the political scene that some injustice has perpetrated against him. We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.”

One of its Founding Habits

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This is what journalist and professor Dr. Stacey Patton wrote on the Fourth of July.

I was curious to see what Heather Cox Richardson would write about today.

Not surprisingly, she is doing the classic liberal historian move, which is trying to rescue America’s founding by treating slavery, Indigenous dispossession, and women’s exclusion as tragic “contradictions” rather than constitutive features of the American project.

Look at this phrase she uses in her piece: “the sticky little problem of Black and Indigenous enslavement”

Sticky little problem? Seriously?

Slavery was not a “sticky little problem.” It was THEEEE economic, political, legal, and psychic foundation of the country these men were building. You can’t sit there and call the Declaration of Independence “astonishingly radical” while treating the exclusion of most human beings as some damn parenthetical inconvenience.

Basically, her big argument in this piece is that America was founded on equality, betrayed by reactionaries, redeemed by civil rights struggle, and now its all being threatened again. She’s saying, yes, the Founders had blind spots, but the idea was radical. Yes, America excluded people, but eventually Americans expanded the promise. Yes, we are in danger now, but we can return to our better angels.

Listen, America was not merely founded on “the radical idea that all men are created equal.” America was founded on a RACIALIZED EXCEPTION CLAUSE hiding inside that sentence. The men who wrote “all men” did not accidentally forget Black people, Native people, women, the enslaved, the colonized, the poor, or the propertyless. They built a political order where equality could be proclaimed precisely because inequality had already been naturalized. Let’s start there ffs!

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