Author: RadicalDiscipleship
Community Acts of Remembering and Resistance
By Susie Henderson. This article first appeared in Geez magazine Issue 58, Fall 2020, Breath & Bone.
Beyond the borders of church, communities are crafting practices of remembering on their own terms.
What I have learned about mourning in the streets has prompted me to dig deeper into my Christian roots, pulling forward ways of caring for, and remembering, the dead that have been covered over with weeds. These liturgies in public space have reinforced my understanding of liturgy in its original terms – work of the people.
Continue reading “Community Acts of Remembering and Resistance”With Her Tears
From Denver-based poet, pastor and teacher Dale Carl Fredrickson.
Soul Talk in a Neoliberal Age, Part V
On Fridays, we are posing questions to Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn (right), an ordained Baptist minister, pastoral psychotherapist and Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and the author of Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age (Palgrave, 2019).
*This is our fifth Friday with Bruce. See this for Part I, this for Part II, this for Part III and this for Part IV.
Continue reading “Soul Talk in a Neoliberal Age, Part V”I Need a Moment to Breathe
By Rev. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin (August 16, 2020), from the second-half of her homily at Salt + Light Lutheran Church (Portland, OR)
Radio silence. Is that what you’re giving me? Radio silence? I expected better from you, Jesus. I just told you my daughter is horribly demon-possessed, and you ignore me! We’re family, remember? From way, way, way back. Or did you forget that your ancestors Rahab, Tamar and Ruth were all Canaanite just like me. We’ve got the same blood, Jesus. Breathe the same air, too. Our bodies made of the same earth. Our spirits part of the same God.
Well, if that’s how you’re going to roll, then I guess I’ll have to get a little louder.
“Heir to the house of David, have pity on me! You are a healer and my daughter is sick!” Continue reading “I Need a Moment to Breathe”
The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World
By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann
Radical Discipleship friends,
I wanted to share some exciting news! For the past year and a half, I have been working on pulling together a beautiful anthology that will soon be a very real book! It’s called The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World. It is being published by Broadleaf books and will be released March 30, 2021.
I began this book as a most selfish of projects as a parent overwhelmed and tired and searching for communities raising kids in these unbelievable times with a passion for justice. The contributors in this book are all ones I love dearly. They have been mentors, friends, co-conspirators, and kindred spirits.
Continue reading “The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World”Luxury Communist Jesus
An excerpt from Michael J. Sandford’s “Luxury Communist Jesus: Ideology, the Work Ethic, and the Antiwork Politics of Jesus” (2012).
Jesus discourages his followers from working and encourages them not to worry about the provision of material needs. The gospels give a strong impression, however, that such behaviour will not lead to impoverishment, but rather to abundance. The Jesus of the gospels does not endorse the “worldly asceticism” (Weber) of the Protestant ethic. Rather, Jesus appears to live lavishly, when the opportunity for such indulgence arises, as the comparisons that are drawn between Jesus and his disciples and the ascetic John the Baptist suggest. In Luke’s Gospel the Pharisees and scribes state, “The disciples of John fast often and offer prayers, and so
do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink” (5: 33). Jesus
himself seems to agree that “John the Baptist has come eating no bread
and drinking no wine” (7: 33). On the other hand, Jesus states that people call him “a glutton and a drunkard” (7: 34). In stark contrast to John,
Jesus is accused of living indulgently; an accusation which neither he nor
the narrator rejects. Continue reading “Luxury Communist Jesus”
Soul Talk in a Neoliberal Age, Part IV
On Fridays, we are posing questions to Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn (right), an ordained Baptist minister, pastoral psychotherapist and Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and the author of Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age (Palgrave, 2019).
*This is our fourth Friday with Bruce. See this for Part I, this for Part II and this for Part III.
Tommy Airey: Last week, you described neoliberalism as a “neo-coloniality”—that it is about class, but about race and gender too. In your book, you write that “progressive narratives concerning inclusivity and diversity that separate gender and race from class are vulnerable to being co-opted by neoliberal agendas.” Please explain!
Continue reading “Soul Talk in a Neoliberal Age, Part IV”The Rich Young Ruler as Privileged Liberal
By Seth Mountain, originally posted to Facebook on August 23, 2020.
In Biblical language, I think the story of the Rich Young Ruler offers an excellent case study of a privileged Liberal–someone who excelled at performative actions and who had studied deeply all the woke texts of the time, and who was profoundly attracted to the vision of a just and righteous world. Someone upset about the system and initially eager to join in the new community and way of life Jesus was describing. But when faced with what justice (and, ultimately, salvation) demanded, the figure was tragically unwilling (or unable?) to “Go, sell all that you have, and give the money to the poor.” Continue reading “The Rich Young Ruler as Privileged Liberal”
A Tribute to a Jail-House Monk
By Dean Hammer
One of the amazing gifts of the Holy Spirit amongst believers is that we are afforded the capacity to be present to fellow travelers from a distance. Each day since the Kings Bay Plowshares (KBP) disarmament action (April 4, 2018), Steve Kelly and the other six of the KBP (Clare Grady, Patrick O’Neill, Elizabeth McAlister, Martha Hennessy, Mark Colville, and Carmen Trotta) gift me with their witness against omnicide on behalf of human survival. Liz McAlister has been sentenced and the others await sentencing, currently scheduled for mid-October. This reflection is meant as a tribute to the extraordinary example of Steve Kelly and the KBP community.
Continue reading “A Tribute to a Jail-House Monk”