Loving Our Enemies in the Work for Social Change: An Interview with Jonathan Matthew Smucker

On October 5, 2018October 5, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire3 Comments

Introduction: Jonathan Matthew Smucker (right) is a Mennonite political organizer and author who recently published Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. He is currently working in his home town of Lancaster Pennsylvania with Lancaster Stands Up to support Jess King, a Mennonite candidate for US House of Representatives. In our conversation we explored his relationship with his Mennonite faith and how his work relates to loving our enemies.

Note: A shorter version of this interview curated by Tim Nafziger was published in the October 2018 print edition of The Mennonite.

Tim Nafziger: How would you introduce yourself to Mennonites who aren’t familiar with your work?

Jonathan Matthew Smucker: I grew up Mennonite in Lancaster County in a rural, working class pretty conservative area. We went to Bart Mennonite Church until I was nine and then we went to Ridgeview Mennonite Church. Continue reading “Loving Our Enemies in the Work for Social Change: An Interview with Jonathan Matthew Smucker” →

A Revelation

On September 28, 2018September 22, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

An excerpt from Tommy Airey’s recent release Descending Like A Dove: Adventures in Decolonizing Evangelical Christianity.

A few weeks into 2016, the Flint water crisis went viral. Tap water was poisoned with high levels of lead and bacteria. As complaints from residents came pouring in, city and state officials did nothing to change the situation. Just denial. For almost two whole years.

A month after the crisis made the headlines of every major newspaper in the world, Flint native and retired autoworker Claire McClinton drove sixty miles south to visit a group of us organizing for clean and affordable water in Detroit. These were Claire’s opening remarks:

We send you greetings from the occupied city of Flint. You can go to the gas station and get lead-free gas. You can go to the hardware store and get lead-free paint. Even a capitalist knows the dangers of lead. But we can’t go to our sink and get lead-free water. I’ve got PTSD. In fact, everybody’s got it if you care about humanity.

Continue reading “A Revelation” →

Learning from Laughter and the Trees: He Comes with the Mountains

On September 25, 2018September 24, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Race, Identity, and History, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

20180618_150922 — Cedar at the Poor People’s Campaign action on June 18 in Detroit.

By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

“You have rocks in your bag.”

Stunned, I said, “it’s possible. I have kids.” I searched frantically through my bag that I had carefully packed that morning in hopes of getting quickly through security at the 36^th District Court before court. I tried to gloss over the contraband tics tacs and pencil I had hidden at the bottom- necessities for keeping a 2-year-old silent in the court room that day. I can’t find anything. They wait, “Check another pocket.” Sure enough, there in the front, I find them. I pull out hands filled with mountain stones, Detroit River rocks, and pine cones all covered in sand that pours through my fingers. I hand them over to the security guard who doesn’t flinch as I apologize and she heads for the trash can. Continue reading “Learning from Laughter and the Trees: He Comes with the Mountains” →

Visit from a Prophet

On September 11, 2018August 22, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

By Joyce Hollyday Praying mantis 2

I slept late yesterday morning. By the time I had emerged from the trees on my walk, the pasture was already blanketed in a sultry haze. My mind was preoccupied with an upcoming trip and the pile of tasks I need to accomplish before I can leave for a week. I plodded along, barely noticing what was around me.

I felt a tiny prick above my right ankle and reached down reflexively to brush away a mosquito. This was some mosquito—huge and bright green, with a triangular face. When I tried to pry the odd creature away from my sock, it dug in the sharp spines on its forelegs and clung more fiercely. I was afraid it would leave behind a leg or two if I persisted, so I sat down in the grass and stared for a while at its curious face. Continue reading “Visit from a Prophet” →

Connoisseur

On August 6, 2018August 6, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

index By Kate Foran

For Steve

Your appetite has a reputation of its own. Dinner hosts glow as you ask for seconds and thirds and they marvel that a person of your moderate size can put so much away. You must have several hollow limbs, they wonder, and you offer your compliments to the chef, tasting everything again. Before you go to a party you “pre-eat,” you say, so as not to embarrass yourself. You remember your life as a series of meals—the loaf of bread Mrs. DiMartino baked you for your seventh birthday, the pasta your grandmother made and draped over chairs and towel racks in the kitchen, the collards and fried chicken you ate with gusto, to the delight of the local cook in Memphis. You never encountered a meal you didn’t like. Continue reading “Connoisseur” →

Raising Boys

On July 31, 2018July 30, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Uncategorized1 Comment

20180722_114619 By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann. Published in Geez Magazine‘s most recent issue on Gender Flex.

“Mommy, baby is tired. I need to put baby in the pack and walk,” says Cedar, my two-year-old. I quickly design a make shift baby carrier tying his baby doll to his stomach. He walks back and forth across the house and then stops and sways. After five minutes, he heavy sighs and says disappointedly “baby is still awake.” He walks on mumbling to himself about how baby needs his milk and how the baby is too little to drink water out of a cup and baby just needs his milk. Continue reading “Raising Boys” →

The Dysfunction of Denial

On June 30, 2018June 13, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From Bill Wylie-Kellermann’s newest release Dying Well: The Resurrected Life of Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann:

I don’t intend to use it as a frame, but I do want to say something about denial. I understand how healthy a survival mechanism denial can be in certain circumstances, a sane way to cope in the short term. So let me affirm it up front and in passing, but add that as a long-run tactic it is dysfunctional. As already stated, I also believe it is politically endemic to the culture. On societal scale, it hides the body bags, renders the tortured or the prisoners or mistreated workers invisible, obfuscates privilege, distances us technologically from the explosion, misdirects our gaze with media, deadens us to suffering (of others), and outsources the necessary violence of empire. Among other things.

Why is Grandpa in Jail?

On June 21, 2018June 21, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Uncategorized12 Comments

33116241_10214353738810852_6880318968586829824_o By Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

I wrote this as a children’s book for Isaac during the Poor People’s Campaign. He was very concerned about why Grandpa kept going to jail when we were also teaching about how we dont believe in jails and prisons. So, I wrote this to try to explain it to him. We printed it out and he and Cedar and Ira and their friend helped illustrate it as a birthday gift to my dad.

Why is Grandpa in jail?
We don’t like jails. We think they shouldn’t exist.

If people make bad choices, there are better ways to help them be better.
Talking.
Caring.
Paying attention to what they need.
Teaching.
Loving.

Locking people up for years of their life only….
Takes them away from their families.
Makes people feel lonely.
Takes them away from the sun and the trees.

It is a broken, sad system.

So, why is Grandpa in jail? Continue reading “Why is Grandpa in Jail?” →

Wedding Poem

On June 18, 2018June 18, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

crescent_moon By Bill Wylie-Kellermann
For Joanna and Eitan, August 25, 2010

When the half-moon hangs
faint in the mid-day sky
and earth already turns toward dusk
make a wedding

When the city, faint and far, cracks and cries
and blood forgotten runs beneath the streets
make a wedding

When earth and sea gasp for air
when the heat is on
and dread would rise
make a wedding Continue reading “Wedding Poem” →

The Undoing of Theodicy

On May 30, 2018June 1, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment