Author: RadicalDiscipleship

Our Oil-Future: Keep Pulling It Up, Or Learn to Pour It Down?

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By Jim Perkinson

Christianity is a tradition of oil, gift of trees of olives, first used to anoint a slab of stone by Jacob
(Gen 28:18), and then by Moses, explicitly directed by YHWH, to anoint a tent, a chest, a table,
a lamp, a laver, two altars, multiple utensils, and select humans (Exod 30:22-31). And then in
name—but without any written memory of actual pouring on the head in ceremony—of the
Nazareth prophet, described as the “living stone,” head of the corner (I Pet 2:4-8). An anointed
one, smeared with Life from the fruits of trees quite particular to that local ecology. Trees
anchoring human dwelling in such a domain that today, are being ripped up by the
thousands—just like State of Michigan settlers cut down birch forests central to Anishinaabe life
or US cavalry killed buffalo of plains Indian peoples in the 19 th century. All of it designed to
break the umbilical between indigenous cultures and local lands, genocidally disappear the
human communities thereby “orphaned,” and re-tool the environments for capital.

Continue reading “Our Oil-Future: Keep Pulling It Up, Or Learn to Pour It Down?” →

Damned Whiteness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From Nichola Torbett, the associate director of Kirkridge Retreat Center.

“Damned Whiteness: How White Christians Failed the Black Freedom Movement and How We Can Do Better”

Friday evening, February 27-Sunday midday, March 1

The phrase “damned whiteness” comes from a 1961 poem by white Christian missionary Ralph Templin, who recognized his own whiteness as a “frightening disease” that kept him from showing up in true solidarity with Black freedom fighters. In a new book that takes Templin’s phrase as its title, historian David F. Evans explores how white Christian allies failed the Black Freedom Movement. Evans focuses his study on Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement; Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm; and Ralph Templin, co-founder of the Harlem Ashram and director of the nonviolent School for Living, identifying some common ways that their locations, perspectives, and interests as white people got in the way of their solidarity.

Day, Jordan, and Templin are all three in the streams of discipleship that inform ours at Kirkridge, and so it feels important that we take in these critiques and discern how we may need to course-correct. 

We could not be more delighted that Dr. Evans will join us for this retreat open to all and especially targeted toward white Christians committed to solidarity with Black people in the United States. We’ll have opportunities to hear him present his findings, to digest them in racial caucus spaces, and to explore how to commit ourselves to a path of true solidarity with Black liberation struggles today.

Come be in community as we learn together. Register here: https://kirkridge.org/programs-container/1226/damned-whiteness-how-white-christian-allies-failed-the-black-freedom-movement-and-how-we-can-do-better/

Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement is available for purchase via the online Book Nest. It is NOT required that you read the book prior to the retreat.

A Spirituality of Resistance and of Renewed Hope

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Another compelling offering from Rev. Dr. Edgar Rivera Colón.

Beloved Comrades:

Starting next Monday January 26th, I will be teaching a three session mini-course on Latin American Liberation Theology at the University of Orange Free People’s University for Urban Restoration. All who are interested in this topic are welcome to attend. As we say at the U of O, everyone has something to teach and to learn. Hope to see you there. Registration link here and class information below:

“Latin American Liberation Theology is one of the signal developments in spirituality and transformative politics in the post-WWII era. This three session mini-course will introduce the historical contexts, community practices, and basic concepts of Liberation Theology to all those interested in the liberatory and spiritual aspects of community-building. Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian theologian, captured the essence of the spirit of Liberation Theology when he wrote: “The process of liberation brings with it a profound conflict. Having the project be clear is not enough. What is necessary is a spirituality of resistance and of renewed hope to turn ever back to the struggle in the face of the defeats of the oppressed.” In a time of increasing conflict and struggle in our society, join us to renew your sense of hope by learning from our Latin American friends and fellow sojourners in the struggle for a better world.”

Edgar Rivera Colón, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and ordained minister in The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries (TFAM) who provides pastoral accompaniment to tenant rights organizing groups, labor unions, and immigrant justice movements in Los Angeles. He offers spiritual direction for faith-based activists. He is a U of O board member and minister at Faith + Works Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Orange, NJ. He first encountered the practice and theory of Liberation Theology when he lived and worked in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the mid-1980s as a young Jesuit. He lives in East LA in a queer Latina multigenerational household with his nieces, their moms, and fury canine nephews Biscuit and Hans Solo.

Costly Solidarity

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From Cole Parke-West of Christians for a Free Palestine.

It’s been a month since I returned home from Palestine. Earlier this week I started sharing pictures and videos from my time there on social media, including a short clip of Israeli soldiers in full combat gear, training their guns on me and other unarmed civilians. Multiple friends have commented that their initial assumption upon seeing the footage was that it was of ICE agents here in the U.S.. Indeed, both are functioning as U.S.-funded, government sponsored militias, acting with impunity to advance the violent agenda of white supremacy and religious nationalism.

It’s difficult to know how to talk about any of this, but the mandate from everyone I met in Palestine was, “Come and see; go and tell!” So I want to invite you to CFP’s upcoming community call on Thursday, January 22, at 8pm ET. I and others from CFP’s national leadership team will share about our recent trip to Palestine and how CFP plans on responding to Palestinian calls for “costly solidarity” — as well as how we’re connecting the dots between the influence of white Christian Nationalism and U.S. empire in Palestine, in Venezuela, and on the streets of Minneapolis.

I hope that you’ll join us, but more than anything, I want you to listen to Palestinians. Listen to their stories, listen to their dreams, listen to their anger and rage, listen to their laughter, listen to their questions, listen to their ideas — and know that ultimately, Palestinians will be the brilliant authors of their own liberation. (And thank god, because what I also know is that a free Palestine frees us all!)

My hope is that sharing our experiences, learnings, and observations will only serve to amplify theirs. So please come to CFP’s community call, where I’ll be sharing more reflections along with CFP’s leadership team, and we’ll talk about how we, collectively, can respond with solidarity to the calls of our Palestinian siblings. 

Click here to register for the call. It’s free.

A New Phase

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By Rev. Dr. Edgar Rivera-Colon, re-posted from social media

A Few More Notes on the Present Conjuncture

1. The Right’s Counter-revolution or Revolution (pick your nomenclature) is beginning to show cracks in its propaganda machinery at the meso-level. To my mind, the most prudent assumption is that this means we are entering a new phase of lethal political repression, ideological institution-scrubbing, and geopolitical violence. The Right doubles down when it smells an internal crisis. Its retort is to displace these contradictions unto its designated domestic and international enemies. Expect the cracks to turn into more extreme political action and rules breaking. We are at a point where we should retire the word “unprecedented” from our political vocabulary.

2. Local and state repressive apparatuses controlled by Democrats in large cities sooner or later will enact an armed intervention against Trump’s ICE militias which are drawn from various federal law enforcement entities (e.g., DEA, FBI, ATF, etc). The local and state police “professionals” are beginning to chafe at ICE’s disregard for even a simulacrum of protocols and procedures. Traditional policing is suffering its deepest legitimation crisis since the BLM uprisings. Expect bullets to fly soon. It is not unheard of for cold and hot civil wars to accelerate from within the state apparatus itself and then spread into the broader civil society.

3. Before Renee Good’s assassination, her wife advised one of the ICE fascists to deescalate: “I say you get you some lunch, big boy”: in that little phrase, she exposed one of the core elements in the relentless campaign of persecution against immigrants and their allies. The ICE agents are entangled in a cis straight masculinity that longs for a “big boy” status through which they could subordinate the rabble that has taken “their white country” away from them — its rightful owners and citizens. Attend to their swagging and penis-centered form of ambulation: the real Trumpian phallus is only available to them in their moments of violent abusive action against state-designated others.

4. Trump and his minions are enacting a hostile amendment to US ‘foreign policy’ by demarcating the Americas as their unquestionable domain. Repetition is the progenitor of all fascist polity. The kidnapping of Maduro and his wife being the first gambit in this new great game of blood and lucre. To impute madness to this new turn is to misread the moment. Clearly there is no normative rationality that US imperialism recognizes. Rather, we are entering an invigorated era of instrumental rationality wherein annexing Greenland, attacking Cuba even more intensely, and subordinating states in Latin America to US economic blackmail will be routine. The unipolar world is over. One has become three or four depending on how you measure it. You can imagine who the other global powers are now.

5. All of the above is made possible by what can be called the “Palestine Method”: what was exceptional is now an emerging baseline in which genocide, mass starvation, built environment destruction, and engineered population health disasters are now toolkits of preference for US and European elites protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. The babble of human rights, international law, and democracy are tantamount to political white noise machines deployed by shrinks to avert the attention of those waiting outside the door where the real talk is happening. The Palestine Method or some kind of multi-strategy people’s war. That is the binary choice now. The time for speeches is over. Let the bodies enjoin the machinery until the wheels stop grinding. G-d help us all.

Interrupted and Subverted

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Dean Hammer, on the Feast of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents (on the 135th anniversary of the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890)

This year’s Prayer Service and Nonviolent Witness at the Pentagon on Dec. 29th  commemorates the Feast of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents—past and present. This day is also the anniversary of the “Wounded Knee Massacre,” where nearly 300 Lakota were killed by U.S. Army soldiers on that day in 1890. The Feast of the Holy Innocents recalls Herod’s retribution against the Jewish population–seeking to destroy Jesus and all male Jewish children in Bethlehem (two years old and younger), who represent a threat to his imperial power. Jesus’ earliest years as a refugee link the biblical story (Matthew 2:16–18) to the current state sanctioned atrocities by the U.S government against people seeking sanctuary and their advocates. The witness is sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, carrying forward the Atlantic Life Community’s ongoing witness at the Pentagon on the Feast of the Innocents since 1975.

The prayer service at the Pentagon is offered in the context of our dire times and the piercing question: Can the juggernaut of untethered corruption and mass violence be interrupted and subverted? Alligator Alcatraz, United States support for mass killing atrocities in Gaza, thousands of people in the US arrested and deported (many to unknown destinations and torture prisons) without due process, and millions of US citizens threatened with the loss of food, housing, and medical care: a dystopian time with incomprehensible suffering. The core beliefs, attitudes, values, and actions of Make America Great Again leaders and followers have fueled a degeneration of democracy in the U.S. at breakneck speed.

Paul Hawken reflects in Blessed Unrest (2007) how the largest movement to save the planet is restoring grace, justice, and beauty to the world. In this way, the Pentagon witness on Dec. 29th joins with the spirit of the Sumud Flotilla (bringing lifesaving aid and civilian protection to Gaza), and the Palestine Action (a UK pro-Palestinian direct action group, currently involved in a significant hunger strike by imprisoned members, protesting detention conditions and demanding release). Sumud is an Arabic word meaning steadfastness or perseverance, deeply rooted in Palestinian culture as a powerful form of nonviolent resistance and resilience against oppression and violence. Embracing an unwavering commitment to living with integrity and dignity amidst hegemonic power, the community of blessed unrest dares to dream and acts as a nemesis to illegitimate authority. In celebration of steadfast nonviolent witnesses, may we all find ways to honor the Holy Innocents, past and present.

Defiance in the Face of Death

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From Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, a Palestinian pastor from Bethlehem. Reposted from social media (Dec 19, 2025).

Today I had the chance to visit Christmas Lutheran Church, where I served for more than ten years—eight of them as the main pastor. Returning to a place that shaped so much of my life and ministry is never an easy experience. It carries memory, prayer and appreciation.

Under the faithful and courageous leadership of my dear friend Rev. Ashraf Tannous, the church made a deliberate and meaningful decision: to keep Christ in the Rubble—but to place it under the Christmas tree. This old-new crib spoke to me again.

The rubble remains. The broken stones are still there. The Christ child still lies among the rubble, reminding us that God chose not safety, not power, not palaces—but vulnerability and solidarity with the crushed of the earth. And yet now, rising from that rubble, stands a tree – a living tree.

For me, this is a profoundly Palestinian image—and a profoundly Christian one.

Continue reading “Defiance in the Face of Death” →

Come. Watch. Wait. Prepare.

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Tonight, Christians for a Free Palestine will be hosting a virtual community call at 8pmEST. Register here.

Advent! A coming in the middle of endings! Join CFP witnesses and friends from across the country for a time of biblical reflection, action testimony, and ritual reinforcement to conclude the “season of actions” carried out by Solidarity Circle participants. CFP Solidarity Circles across the land have been organizing their voices and bodies enjoining Chevron to cease its support for the continuing Israel-U.S. genocide against Palestinians. The hour and a half will ramp up with sharp commentary provoked by apocalyptic visioning and counsel in the biblical text. It will feature 1st person reportage from the previous week of hands-on protest against fossil fuel complicity with the Gaza genocide, and conclude with worship honoring both grief and resistance. Come, watch, wait, prepare!

Your Dress Would Not Make Anyone Bat An Eyelid

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From Dr. Farah Al-Sharif, a scholar of Islamic Intellectual History, re-posted from her Substack.

Not that I want to give it any airtime, but I had not seen any intelligent responses to this so I felt compelled. I had the misfortune of watching a clip in which rabid Islamophobe Bill Maher is having a discussion with supposed “friend” of Palestine 

Ana Kasparian wherein he slings the typical gendered imperialist tropes of “where in the Middle East could you wear that dress” to which she shrinks and concedes. She agrees “jihadism” is a problem and makes a whimper about “destabilized” societies.

First of all, no one cares about your dress, Ana. I grew up in more than one Westernized postcolonial Arab city and trust me, your dress would not make anyone bat an eyelid. Even if it did, that does not give anyone license for Israelis/Americans to kill, colonize and pillage innocents as they are currently doing.

It is 2025. A genocide has been committed and you are talking about mini skirts?! Could we drop the obsession with womens’ dress? Gazan women have been sniped for their hijabs and they have been mocked for their lingerie by their genociders. Muslim men have shown more tenderness and honor than that decrepit and racist Bill Maher could ever fathom. Maybe Muslim women don’t need to dress provocatively to make a name for themselves and be heard?

Continue reading “Your Dress Would Not Make Anyone Bat An Eyelid” →