Category: Subverting Empire

When The Carnival Came to the Twin Cities

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire1 Comment

maestroBy Tommy Airey (all photos from Tim Nafziger)

Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.
Victor Hugo

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The past two weekends, Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis showcased the Carnival de Resistance, a traveling arts carnival and ceremonial theater company performing at the intersection of ecological justice and radical theology. These performers converged upon the Twin Cities during the month of September, migrating from the four corners of North America to reclaim and reframe the biblical prophetic tradition. They combined their standard four productions into two: “Rooted Wind” and “Burning River” (playing on Friday and Saturday on consecutive weekends). But the bulk of their month-long residency was devoted to uplifting projects and voices that are indigenous to this watershed, the mostly white crew consistently passing the baton to Native American leaders, people of color and women, those well-acquainted with the kind of grief and passionate resistance that it will take to create and construct Something sustainable in a culture well-adept at fooling itself into thinking America ever was great.   Continue reading “When The Carnival Came to the Twin Cities” →

The Rich Man and Lazarus: Warning Tale and Interpretive Key to Luke

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation9 Comments

fyodorBy Ched Myers, on Luke 16:19-31 (19th Sunday after Pentecost)

Note: This post is part of a series of weekly comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during Year C, 2016. As was the case last week, this is a longer post, because of the importance of Luke 16 to those of us suffering from “Affluenza.” For a recording of a recent webinar Ched did on this gospel text, go here. [Right: Fyodor Bronnikov, “Lazarus at the rich man’s gate,” 1886.]

This Sunday’s gospel completes our journey through Luke 16. How rare it is that the lectionary allows a sustained look at Luke’s narrative argument! Last week’s text was Jesus’ subversive tale of the “defect-ive” discipleship of the beleaguered middle manager of a “filthy rotten system” (16:1-13). I read it as a poignant fable for those who would try to monkey-wrench the dominant economic system to provide a modicum of Jubilee justice for themselves and others.  The “paired” story of Lazarus and the Rich Man represents, in turn, a warning tale about the dark consequences of failing to deconstruct the systems of vast social and economic disparity that hold our world hostage. Continue reading “The Rich Man and Lazarus: Warning Tale and Interpretive Key to Luke” →

Love Must Win Out

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

weddingbelleisleIf anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
I John 4:20-21 (The Message Version)

A wedding homily preached by Tommy Airey for Eliisa & Peter Croce-Bojanic (right, September 18, 2016, on Belle Isle, Detroit, MI).
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God and people: you’ve got to love both. Sounds so simple. But the author of these sacred words from First John knew what an extreme challenge that this real, gritty, self-donating love presented. In fact, in the Gospel of John and all three letters that bear John’s name, there is only one ethical command provided for readers: to love. And because love is such a contested concept, because there are so many ideas floating around about what local and organic ingredients actually constitute love’s recipe, John holds up the cross of Jesus as the ultimate symbol: Continue reading “Love Must Win Out” →

Something Much Greater At Stake

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire51 Comments

michelle-alexanderAn announcement from Michelle Alexander on social media (September 16, 2016):

I am taking a long break from social media, but tonight I want to thank the Heinz Foundation which offered me today a large monetary award (along with several amazing individuals). See https://medium.com/…/announcing-the-21st-heinz-awards-honor….

Continue reading “Something Much Greater At Stake” →

A Shift Towards Sustainable Community

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire1 Comment

golden calfAn update from Mark Van Steenwyk, the co-founder of the Minneapolis Mennonite Worker:

I’ve gotten a few comments and messages expressing the assumption that The Mennonite Worker is closing, or has closed. That isn’t true (in one way), but it is true (in another way). Let me explain.

We launched the Mennonite Worker (originally called Missio Dei) in 2004. We started as an urban church with a strong commitment to living out the way of Jesus in a particular area of Minneapolis (mostly around the Cedar Riverside neighborhood). Within the first couple of years, we began a strong radical shift towards becoming an intentional community that lived more deeply into the sorts of radical practices Jesus calls us to embrace: hospitality, peacemaking, prayer, and simplicity. Continue reading “A Shift Towards Sustainable Community” →

Empire Baptized

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

wesDuring our current lectionary cycle, we’ve been downright spoiled with the scholarship that Ched Myers, Wes Howard-Brook (right) and Sue Ferguson Johnson bring every Thursday with their weekly comments on the Gospel passage.  When Wes is not busy teaching at Seattle University, serving at the local soup kitchen, leading the weekly Bible Study in his home, participating in liturgical direct action, hiking up Tiger Mountain or making Sue a latte, he spends his free time researching church history for his next publication.  Last week, his Empire Baptized: How The Church Embraced What Jesus Rejected (Orbis) was released for public consumption.  We sat down for a long-distance dialogue about what to expect next.

RD.net: What were the circumstances in your own life that led to writing Empire Baptized?

WHB: Two major realities led to this book. First, in doing Come Out, My People!, the contrast between the New Testament’s clear message of embodied resistance to empire and historical Christianity’s embrace of empire jumped out at me. Second, in teaching undergrads who are often deeply and rightly suspicious of “Christianity” as well as older and often lifelong church people, I regularly experienced the shock people express when they discover that, for instance, Jesus not only wasn’t concerned with “how does my soul go to heaven,” but wouldn’t even have understood the question!

I had inherited the Yoderian narrative [Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder] of “it was great for three centuries, but then along came Constantine,” but several things led me to question that story. For instance, that Constantine embraced “Christianity” did not explain such things as many churches’ obsessive focus on right “doctrine,” sexual ethics, and lack of regard for social injustice. I wanted to find out, at least for myself, what “really happened.”

Continue reading “Empire Baptized” →

Adventures in Recovering the Telos

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire2 Comments

CatonsvilleBy Tommy Airey

It was a cool Tuesday night in mid-June, four hours north of Detroit and forty-five days after the death of Daniel Berrigan. Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann gathered an intergenerational group from among original members and friends of the Detroit Peace Community–so named by members of Jonah House back in 1980 during a week of civil disobedience at the Pentagon. This night’s topic was the Catonsville Nine action of 1968, the mid-day, non-violent storming of the Catonsville, Maryland draft board: they took 378 draft files and set them on fire with homemade napalm in the parking lot and then waited in prayer and song for the police to show up. It sparked hundreds of similar actions all over North America. After Bill’s introduction and historical context, we read The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, a reworked transcript of the trial, put to poetry by Berrigan. I was struck by how coherently these nine spoke about the theological and spiritual motivations for their hit-and-stay action. They were all speaking the same compelling language. Continue reading “Adventures in Recovering the Telos” →

The Inevitable

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KingBy Tommy Airey, a homily on Luke 12:49-56 (St. Peter’s Episcopal, Detroit, MI)

For all intents and purposes, in the Gospel this morning Jesus is sounding a whole lot like my high school basketball coach, unrelentingly lighting a fire under our asses, telling us that it’s not his job for us to like him, a rant filled with name calling and rhetorical questions. But this is more than a game: “You hypocrites!” Jesus scolds, “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” We know when the Perseids are going to light up the night in Michigan, but we struggle to respond to the signs chronicled by Dr. King: “when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people.” Continue reading “The Inevitable” →

Willful Blindness

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FlintFrom economist and Wayne State University Law School professor Peter J. Hammer who recently submitted written testimony to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission as part of their hearings on the Flint Water Crisis titled, “The Flint Water Crisis, KWA and Strategic-Structural Racism.” Click here to download the report:

The problem is the often willful blindness of people in positions of privilege and authority (Knowledge-&-Power) to the needs, perspectives and interests of others, particularly when the “other” is from a community that differs from their own in terms of race or class or ethnicity. The problem is that the information and beliefs held by people in authority often reinforce that blindness and permit the unquestioned projection of policies and programs on others, even when it is clear that those policies are inappropriate or have harmful consequences. The problem is that vulnerable populations are often subject to exploitation that strategically manipulates the very vulnerability created by express racism, structural racism and unconscious bias, and yet this exploitation finds ready shelter in the very forces it exploits.