Category: Subverting Empire

Evicted

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

EvictedFrom Matthew Desmond, Harvard sociology professor and author of the best-selling Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016):

Those of us who don’t live in trailer parks or inner cities might think low-income families typically benefit from public housing or some other kind of government assistance. But the opposite is true. Three-quarters of families who qualify for housing assistance don’t get it because there simply isn’t enough to go around. This arrangement would be unthinkable with other social services that cover basic needs. What if food stamps only covered one in four families? Continue reading “Evicted” →

Proclaiming an Anti-Imperial “Way of salvation”

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

LydiaBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, commentary on the lectionary for May 8, 2016

We offer this reflection in memory and honor of Daniel Berrigan, SJ, who proclaimed and embodied Jesus’s “way of salvation” over the long haul.

This week’s reading from Acts cries out, “In your face, Roman Empire!” Sometimes, Luke keeps his anti-imperial message shrouded in “hidden transcripts,” as when he tells tax collectors basically to quit (by taking the profit out of their hated work, Luke 3.12-13). But in today’s passage, it is all out in the open, thanks to the ironic witness of a slave girl possessed by a spirit not “holy.” Continue reading “Proclaiming an Anti-Imperial “Way of salvation”” →

Daniel Berrigan: ¡Presente!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

berriganBy Bill Wylie-Kellermann, “Giving Voice”: a tribute for his mentor Daniel Berrigan who crossed over at 94 yesterday
—————
the heart dares the word dares the page
lest love stick in the throat of this pen,
and go untold

i remember my name
in your voice
echoing down the underground hall
beneath niebuhr place:
come, crack a jar of scotch
come for talk and a minted brew of tea
come to life. wake. arise.
(an ascent follows, sweet and rash) Continue reading “Daniel Berrigan: ¡Presente!” →

Not as the World Gives”: Receiving Jesus’s Gift of Peace

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

DiscourseBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

Readers of radicaldiscipleship.net hardly need to be reminded of the sharp contrast between the pax imperium and pax Christi. It is foundational that Jesus’s messiahship is grounded not in militarism but in love. What it can be easy to forget—or to remember but not practice so well—is the holistic nature of the peace Jesus offers: the “ease of fit” between our inner and outer, our individual and communal lives. Continue reading “Not as the World Gives”: Receiving Jesus’s Gift of Peace” →

Radical Book Recommendations

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

NicholaNichola Torbett of Oakland’s Seminary of the Street recently posted this great question:

Radical Christian friends, what books do you recommend that do deep exegesis of Matthew and Luke of the sort that Ched Myers has done on Mark and Wes Howard-Brook has done with John? And actually, while I have your attention, what are your indispensable go-to books for radical Christian inspiration?

Here are some of the responses: Continue reading “Radical Book Recommendations” →

Dorothy Day’s anarchism is the antidote to disappointing political system

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, UncategorizedLeave a comment

dorothyBy Brian Terrell, Re-posted from NRC Today

“When one mentions Dorothy Day, one thinks automatically of the Catholic Worker Movement, the religious organization that she founded to help alleviate poverty and injustice. But few people know that Dorothy Day was also a committed suffragist who endured torture and mistreatment at the hands of the jailors in Occoquan Prison in Virginia after being arrested for picketing the White House.” So said the Long Island Woman Suffrage Association when they proclaimed her “Suffragist of the Month.” Continue reading “Dorothy Day’s anarchism is the antidote to disappointing political system” →

The Feast of St. Mark

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

St MarkFrom Ched Myers’ Binding The Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (1988):

Mark’s Gospel originally was written to help imperial subjects learn the hard truth about their world and themselves…His is a story by, about, and for those committed to God’s work of justice, compassion, and liberation in the world…to those willing to raise the wrath of the empire, Mark offers a way of discipleship.

Propaganda

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

GreenwaldFrom Glenn Greenwald:

But whatever else is true, if we are constantly bombarded with images and stories and dramatic narratives highlighting our own side’s victims, while the victims of our side’s violence are rendered invisible, it’s only natural that large numbers of us will conclude that only They, but not We, are committing civilian-killing violence. That’s a really pleasing thing to believe, no matter how false it is. Having media outlets perpetrate self-pleasing and tribal-affirming — but utterly false — narratives is the very definition of propaganda. And that’s what largely drives Western media coverage of these terrorist attacks every time they occur in the West.

Look! God’s tent is among humans!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Diane FairfieldBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

Powerful images from the Bible’s closing chapters, Revelation 21-22, are featured in these ongoing weeks of Uprising. We focus here on the entirety of Revelation’s vision of “New Jerusalem,” and will return to John’s Gospel and Acts in coming weeks (painting right: “New Jerusalem” by Diane Fairfield).

No New Testament text reverberates more with Hebrew Scripture than Revelation. Almost every image in John of Patmos’ visionary description of New Jerusalem has a scriptural antecedent. The “new heaven and new earth” which he proclaims is indeed new, but also the fulfillment of all the hopes and dreams of God’s people throughout the ages. Continue reading “Look! God’s tent is among humans!” →

I give them life of the age to come!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

LightBy Wes Howard-Brook & Sue Ferguson Johnson

As we continue through the season of Uprising, the lectionary pulls a passage from John’s gospel totally out of context (John 10.22-30). It finds Jesus in the temple during the festival of Chanukah, the celebration of the military victory of a guerrilla band of Judeans over their Seleucid (Greek) oppressor, some two centuries before Jesus. It is the only mention of Chanukah in the Bible (the books which describe the battles leading to the feast are in 1-2 Maccabees, which are among the Apocrypha and not part of Hebrew Scripture). It comes after a long series of confrontations and challenges in and around the feast of Sukkoth, aka “Tabernacles” or “Booths,” that fills John 7.1-10.21. Chanukah carried no scriptural mandate requiring all male Israelites to journey to Jerusalem, as did the three torah-temple feasts of Pesach (Passover), Sukkoth and Shavuoth (Pentecost), as found in Deuteronomy 16. Thus, we can imagine that those still in Jerusalem during the rainy, winter season would be the “true” Jerusalemites, those most eager to hear a word about a coming “messiah” who would vanquish the Romans with military power and divine authority. Continue reading “I give them life of the age to come!” →