Standing Rock: A Clergy Call to Action

On October 31, 2016October 31, 2016 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Just Peacemaking, Race, Subverting Empire2 Comments

A message from the United Church of Christ:

To the broader church:

As Christians, we, the undersigned clergy, are conditioned by the gospel to stand on the side of the persecuted and the jailed. As such, we are compelled by our faith to stand with the water protectors of Standing Rock, who have pricked the conscience of a nation and the world. In opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline that would carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois, they have resolutely declared that they are not protestors but protectors and defenders acting out of a sacred obligation which affirms “water is life.” Continue reading “Standing Rock: A Clergy Call to Action” →

Faith in the Life of César Chávez: Part I, “Abuelita Theology”

On October 30, 2016October 24, 2016 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

By Robert Chao Romero, originally posted on the Jesus 4 Revolutionaries website

César Chávez was the preeminent leader, voice, and public face of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. Chávez is to Latinas/os what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is to the African American community. Moreover, as the posthumous recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Aztec Eagle,[1] and a U.S. postage stamp in his honor, Chávez has been called the world’s most famous Latino.[2] Together with Dolores Huerta and Filipino organizers Larry Itliong and Phillip VeraCruz, Chávez founded the United Farmworkers of America (UFW). The UFW fought for increased wages and better working conditions for exploited California farmworkers and rose to national attention through the famous Delano grape strike and international boycotts of 1965-1970. Continue reading “Faith in the Life of César Chávez: Part I, “Abuelita Theology”” →

Deodorized Discourse

On October 23, 2016October 3, 2016 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From Dr. Cornel West in Black Prophetic Fire (in conversation with and edited by Christa Buschendorf, 2014):

The central role of mass media, especially a corporate media beholden to the US neoliberal regime, is to keep public discourse narrow and deodorized. By “narrow” I mean confining the conversation to conservative Republican and neoliberal Democrats who shut out prophetic voices or radical visions. This fundamental power to define the political terrain and categories attempts to render prophetic voices invisible. The discourse is deodorized because the issues that prophetic voices highlight, such as mass incarceration, wealth inequality, and war crimes such as imperial drones murdering innocent people, are ignored. Continue reading “Deodorized Discourse” →

I Am Being “Unsettled”

On October 17, 2016October 17, 2016 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

A excerpt from Dr. James Perkinson’s “Unsettling Whiteness: Refocusing Christian Theology on Its Own Indigenous Roots” in Wrongs to Rights: How Churches Can Engage the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2016):

What is this thing called “Whiteness” as a force of history? A hidden Power that inhabits institutions, influences policies, whispers in psyches, and colors perceptions without itself appearing, except in shadows and at the edge of vision. I have only become aware of how profoundly this Power has moved my will, shaped my desire, and birthed my thought, as black and native people in my life have called out its nearly invisible Presence that is so obvious to them. I am married to a Filipina, from a country colonized by my own for half a century, so the scrutiny is relentless–but also very healing, in the midst of the “trouble” it occasions. I am, year-by-year, deepening my understanding that I am a Settler on someone else’s land, and enjoy access to unjust amounts of “resources” and goods because of someone else’s labour. I am being “unsettled.” Or more precisely, what is being unsettled within and around me is White Power (I am actually more than just the Whiteness that “possesses” me).

To Rekindle Our Indigenous Souls

On October 10, 2016September 27, 2016 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

bab Excerpt from Lily Mendoza’s keynote at the recently concluded Third International Babaylan Conference held in the Unceded Coast Salish Territories, Vancouver, Canada:

This is what we’re doing when we come together in this way, and in our respective local communities, when, in ritual and ceremony, we ask help from our Ancestors to joggle our memories so we can remember once more how to live on the earth in a good way, in order that we, as a people seeking to rekindle our Indigenous Souls can remember once more the Original Instructions that every natural people has lived by for hundreds of thousands of years. What we’re doing, often in fumbling, bumbling, and groping ways–in the process inevitably making many mistakes–is striving to create cultures capable of sprouting seeds of vitality worthy of feeding a time beyond our own, cultures that could not be designed by humans using the imperial mind. In other words, they could not be grown by us simply upping and leaving our cities and current places for a hoped for new life among our indigenous kin (Empire is there, too!). Continue reading “To Rekindle Our Indigenous Souls” →

It Will Be Waged in the Streets

On October 9, 2016September 27, 2016 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

From Russell Rickford is an associate professor of history at Cornell University, an excerpt from his article The Fallacies of Neoliberal Protest on the African American Intellectual History Society website:

Truth is, we don’t need “diversity” training. We don’t need focus groups. We don’t need consultants and experts. We don’t need the apparatus of our oppression—racial capitalism itself—to rationalize and regulate our dissent. The logic and techniques of the corporate world won’t end the slaughter of black people, or the dispossession and degradation of indigenous people, or the transformation of the entire Global South into a charred landscape of corpses and refugees. Continue reading “It Will Be Waged in the Streets” →

Have Mercy on Us!

On October 6, 2016July 28, 2017 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

The final leg of the journey to Jerusalem begins with this week’s gospel (Lk 17.11-19). Alert readers, though, will note that Jesus and the disciples have not gotten very far. At the very beginning, Luke tells us that “they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him” (9.52). Now, eight chapters later, Luke says, “On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the midst (Gk, dia meson, misleadingly translated by NRSV as “between”) of Samaria and Galilee.” Like the Israelites in the wilderness, they seem to be going in circles in the land north of Judea. Perhaps this is a sly reference to the disciples, like their Israelite ancestors, lacking the faith that the journey they are on will lead to the place of God’s abundant provision. Indeed, as we heard last week, the disciples had just demanded of Jesus, “Increase our faith!” (17.5). Continue reading “Have Mercy on Us!” →

Frank Talk with Ruby Sales

On October 5, 2016October 6, 2016 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

ruby-sales Some highlights from Krista Tippett’s recent interview with Ruby Sales:

I think that one of the things that theologies must have is hindsight, insight, and foresight. That is complete sight.

—————-

I really think that one of the things that we’ve got to deal with is that how is it that we develop a theology or theologies in a 21st-century capitalist technocracy where only a few lives matter? How do we raise people up from disposability to essentiality? Continue reading “Frank Talk with Ruby Sales” →

Real Estate, Oil Pipelines & The Kingdom of God?

On October 2, 2016October 2, 2016 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

enbridge An Open Letter To The Diocese of Hamilton, ON

Dear folks at the Diocese,

Thanks for all the good work you do to keep the name of Jesus alive and well. It’s important that we are reminded, in word and action, that the essence of Jesus’s life was to love one another. As far as I can tell, that love means one thing, perhaps two: a sacrifice that leads to joy, a reminder that the goods of the world belong to the poor, first of all. Bearing these little thoughts in mind, it is interesting to note that there seems to be a large discrepancy at work in the workings of the Diocese. While, with one hand, it clothes the poor, as G-d clothed Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden, and feeds the hungry, as G-d fed the prophet, Elijah, by way of a raven, it, with the other, denudes and starves them both. I speak, specifically, of two actions. Continue reading “Real Estate, Oil Pipelines & The Kingdom of God?” →

Beyond Christian Duty Into the Way of Jesus

On September 29, 2016July 28, 2017 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment