From Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States (1980):
The idea of saviors has been built into the entire culture, beyond politics. We have learned to look to stars, leaders, experts in every field, thus surrendering our own strength, demeaning our own ability, obliterating our own selves. But from time to time, Americans reject that idea and rebel.
An exclusive RadicalDiscipleship.Net interview with Ryan Newson, professor of religion, philosophy and ethics at Campbell University. He is the author of Radical Friendship: The Politics of Communal Discernment, coming out on April 1.
RD: Describe how this project started.
RN: This project began during my doctoral studies when I was immersed in Anabaptist theology and political theology, respectively. As I read Anabaptist theologians in depth, I was drawn to a communal form of reasoning about spiritual and moral questions that seemed to haunt that tradition—always lurking even if it was not always perfectly implemented. This picture of radical disciples drawing near one another in order to figure out what God would have them do, or who God would have them be, was magnetic. It reminded me of the form of Christianity that had always appealed to me, and that I had seen practiced by house churches in Camden, NJ, and New Monastic communities in Durham, NC, and Catholic Worker communities in Silk Hope, NC. In particular, I was attracted to the way in which this practice had the potential to guide communities into new waters without fear, acquiescence, or retreat. It certainly carried much more power, it seemed to me, than the way many of my fellow Christians approached questions of discernment: through a wooden, legalistic application of scripture. Continue reading “Radical Friendship”
From Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ (1995):
Meditation is not a drug to make us oblivious to our real problems. It should produce awareness in us and also in our society. For us to achieve results, our enlightenment has to be collective. How else can we end the cycle of violence? We ourselves have to contribute, in small and large ways, toward ending our own violence. Looking deeply at our own mind and our own life, we will begin to see what to do and what not to do to bring about a real change.
From Martin Prechtel in The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise (2015):
That feeling of frustrated justice and hatred for the unpunished “perpetrator” is the hardest thing for people who cannot truly grieve. On the other hand, it is also not any good to become people who glide along on bliss and don’t care about anything, either. It’s needful for the peace of a people, peace of the human heart, peace of the earth, for grief to be there, not transcending on a bliss journey to avoid grief. Being zoned out, numb, unconnected, “above it all,” and not caring is just the lazier flip side of the coin of vengeance. They need one another. Continue reading “A Culture of Passionately Gradual People”
By Tommy Airey
Many of us have been unpleasantly awakened to the fact that “national politics” does matter, as Princeton’s Jeffrey Stout concisely articulated in Blessed Are The Organized (2010), his aptly-titled Obama-era book on grassroots democracy:
Presidents, federal legislators, judges, bureaucrats, Wall Street bankers, insurance executives, media moguls and generals are making decisions every day that have a massive impact on our lives.
A couple of weeks ago, our flight to snow-driven Portland diverted, Lindsay and I found ourselves laid over and out for two nights in Seattle. There we were, deliriously sharing a falafel burger at a hotel bar with Fox News on surround sound. After compulsory knee-jerk lamentations, we grounded ourselves in the reality of the next four years of banality. We acknowledged the tension, though, of committing ourselves to “knowing what’s going on in the world” with being bombarded with a plethora of despairing headlines and sound-bites, news spin a no-win situation. What now with the need to protect ourselves emotionally and spiritually more important than ever? Continue reading “A Modest Proposal for Radical Disciples: Swearing Off”
Reprinted from an interview Rex Weyler and Catherine Ingram did with Brother David Steindl-Rast in New Age, September 1983:
How can people learn to communicate effectively, without anger or aggression?
That is where we have to work with ourselves. Anger in itself is not really wrong, but we cannot allow our anger to carry us away and make us violent. This I find myself a most difficult task: to always think in terms of “we” and not “they and us.” The moment that you divide people with they and us, you’re always on the right side and they are always on the wrong side, and I find that makes communication very, very difficult. Continue reading “They and Us”
This is the first question of a longer interview that Dan McKenzie did with Wes Howard-Brook in Seattle in October. A read of the full interview is well worth it, available HERE on Dan’s blog.
Dan: You mention that between the years of 1979 and 1983, you were working in Washington as a government attorney. Then, something happened and by 1985 you were completing an M.Div. You seem to allude to a remarkable, and unexpected transformation taking place in your own life. I wonder if this is also why you emphasize some of the more mystical and experiential components of faith, not to mention things like communal readings, faith-based readings with the assistance of the Spirit, and hiking in the mountains or on trails by the waterways close to you. Your studies and your areas of focus, seem to arise from deeply personal spiritual experiences. Am I wrong it wondering about this? Could you share a bit about your personal journey and how you ended up where you are today? Continue reading “Baptized Into Resistance Work”
From Vincent Harding in Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement (1990):
Who knows, perhaps with insight, courage and serious study we could introduce ourselves and our students of all ages to some of the basic tenets of this nonviolent way, exploring such convictions as:
Tomorrow, Shaun King and Injustice Boycott will be announcing specifics about an ongoing boycott of cities, states, businesses, and institutions which are either willfully indifferent to police brutality and racial injustice or are deliberately destructive partners with it. Sign up to join the boycott and get more details HERE.
On this Dec. 5, the anniversary of when Dr. King and others began the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, we are launching our own Montgomery Bus Boycott to show every city, state, institution and corporation in this country that meaningful, reasonable, achievable reforms on police brutality and injustice are not our long-term dreams. They are our immediate emergency priority… Continue reading “A New Boycott for a New Era”
From Martin Luther King in his last book, The Trumpet of Conscience:
Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level to correspond to heightened black impatience and stiffened white resistance. This higher level is mass civil disobedience. There must be more than a statement to a larger society. There must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key points.
Radical Discipleship 