I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.
Martin Luther King, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1964
Continue reading “The Nobel To King: 50 Years Later”
Category: Subverting Empire
End of the Year Appeal
Two months ago, Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries and Word & World officially launched RadicalDiscipleship.Net, a daily-updated blog designed to chronicle and animate expressions of “Movement” Christianity in North America. The two organizations have had a deep and long history, partnering in the challenge of bridging the gulf between the seminary, the sanctuary, the street and the soil.
Headquartered in the Ventura River watershed of Southern California, BCM animates and builds capacity for communities of discipleship and justice through the work of theological animation and restorative justice, drawing on the giftedness and expertise of Ched Myers & Elaine Enns, respectively. Over the past decade, BCM has been experimenting with week-long institutes (twice per year) and webinars (once-a-month), in addition to mentoring, lectures, sermons & keynotes given around the world.
Through schools, retreats, and mentoring, Word and World draws faith-based activists from various movements into a community of discipleship focused on social & cultural analysis and biblical reflection for social transformation. The goal of W&W is to encourage and strengthen disciples to become “radically biblical and biblically radical” in their work for peace and justice. Since 2001, W&W has hosted a number of schools drawing on the depth of the Civil Rights movement (photo above), liberation theology, the peace movement and faith-based feminist, womanist, mujerista, and LGBT movements.
BCM and W&W are excited for two upcoming events in 2015 that will provide participants unique opportunities to wrestle with scripture, social analysis, movement history and discipleship practices “between the seminary, the sanctuary, the streets and the soil”: Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries’ Festival of Radical Discipleship in the Ojai Valley of California (February 16-20) and Word & World’s Land & Water School in Detroit (July 15-19).
Of course, virtually every community committed to radical discipleship finds itself, this time of year, staring wide-eyed at their dwindling budgets, asking: where will our financial resources come from this year? Indeed, to be conscience-strident is to be cash-strapped. In order to curate a truly community-and-gospel-rooted learning experience, we ask that you consider making a year-end contribution to either (or both) of these organizations. Thank you for participating in the Movement, in this blog project and for spreading the word.
In Loving Solidarity,
Lydia Wylie-Kellermann & Tommy Airey
Co-Editors, RadicalDiscipleship.Net
Click on to donate:
Words to Our Children…Part 2
Leah and I have had a rich correspondence as we have both tried to grapple from our different social locations with the power of racism in our lives. The grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown left us both feeling outraged and hamstrung, with the question, what do we do now? And what do we tell our children? Leah has a daughter, Dance (10 years) and two boys, Michael and Gabriel (3 years). I have a daughter, Sylvie (4 years). I asked Leah what she would tell my child, and Leah asked me what I would tell hers.
Kate Foran, November 2014.
Tuesday we posted Leah‘s letter. Today we post Kate’s. Continue reading “Words to Our Children…Part 2”
Words to Our Children…Part 1
Leah and I have had a rich correspondence as we have both tried to grapple from our different social locations with the power of racism in our lives. The grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown left us both feeling outraged and hamstrung, with the question, what do we do now? And what do we tell our children? Leah has a daughter, Dance (10 years) and two boys, Michael and Gabriel (3 years). I have a daughter, Sylvie (4 years). I asked Leah what she would tell my child, and Leah asked me what I would tell hers.
Kate Foran, November 2014.
Today, we post Leah’s letter and tomorrow we will post Kate‘s. Continue reading “Words to Our Children…Part 1”
Who Will Roll Away The Stone? 20 Years Later.
A theology of reclamation is about redemption–the healing of our individual, but more importantly our collective, humanity. It is thus, in the North American context, fundamentally concerned with the struggle to become a non imperial people, neither grandiose nor ashamed. It is about practicing discernment, honesty, dignity, community, and simplicity.
Ched Myers, Who Will Roll Away The Stone (1994)
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By Tom Airey
20 years ago, Ched Myers penned Who Will Roll Away The Stone: Discipleship Queries For First World Christians, his promised sequel to Binding The Strong Man (1988), the critically-acclaimed 560-page socio-political reading of Mark’s Gospel. Who Will Roll was an inter-disciplinary bombshell for making sense of how followers of Jesus might live in the wake of “the 1st Gulf War” and the Los Angeles uprisin Continue reading “Who Will Roll Away The Stone? 20 Years Later.”
This Weekend: Converging Upon Georgia
Join thousands at SOA Watch’s 25th anniversary Vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, where we will remember the martyrs and denounce continued SOA violence against our brothers and sisters in Latin America. For all the key info see this.
From School of the Americas Watch Vigil:
One of the most powerful allies of imperialism is division. Division deters communities from working together and confuses our understanding of the past, present and future. Let us recognize – as people from many parts of the world, of many faiths, ethnicities, colors, belief systems, sexualities, gender identities, classes and abilities – that our presents and futures are intertwined, and so too must be our resistance. As a collective of communities we can make a conscious effort to overcome divisions by uniting to denounce the impunity that safeguards Empire. Continue reading “This Weekend: Converging Upon Georgia”
The Freedom Prayer
Delivered by Rev. Melanie S. Morrison
at the Day of Remembrance & Call to Action
November 12, 2014, Freedom Plaza, Washington DC
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O Holy One, known by many names,
I am who I am
Forgiving Love
Fertile Darkness
Fiery Freedom
Liberator of the Oppressed
Lover of All Peoples
As we gather remembering your holy names,
may we also remember that this is holy ground.
For we sense your presence winging near. Continue reading “The Freedom Prayer”
A Day of Remembrance: A Reflection
We who believe in freedom should not rest until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.
Ella Baker
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Tom Airey, Washington D.C.
This week, on a sunny Fall Wednesday at D.C.’s Freedom Plaza, SpiritHouse Project of Atlanta, recognizing that racial justice is both a spiritual and social concept, hosted a “Day of Remembrance” for the “slow genocide of extrajudicial killings” of people of color that continues to plague the United States. This event took the form of a memorial service, a wooden coffin taking center stage, filled with the scrolls of one thousand names of those killed by the police or state-sponsored vigilantes (think Trayvon Martin) since 2007.
Continue reading “A Day of Remembrance: A Reflection”
Today: A Day Of Remembrance
From Ruby Sales of the SpiritHouse Project:
A DAY OF REMEMBRANCE: On November 12, 2014 at Freedom Plaza (14th @ Pennsylvania Ave) in Washington D.C. at 12:30 p.m., SpiritHouse Project and our allies will stand with you to break the silence on this modern-day lynching by holding the first national, public memorial service that includes a public roll call of the 1000 black victims of state-sanctioned murders. Family members from across the nation whom have lost loved ones to these murders will lead a processional into Freedom Plaza. The theme of this gathering, A Charge To Keep: A Movement to Build, reminds us that this is more than a memorial service. It is a call to the living for us to keep our eyes on the prize of racial justice. Continue reading “Today: A Day Of Remembrance”
The Context of Oppression
From James Cone in A Black Theology of Liberation (1970):
Persons who live in the real world have to encounter the concreteness of suffering without suburbs as places of retreat. To be oppressed is to encounter the overwhelming presence of human evil without any place to escape…
…Who can ‘pray’ when all hell has broken loose and human existence is being trampled underfoot by evil forces? Prayer takes on new meaning. It has nothing to do with those Bible verses that rulers utter before eating their steaks, in order to remind themselves that they are religious and have not mistreated anybody. Who can thank God for food when we know that our brothers and sisters are starving as we dine like kings? Prayer is not kneeling, morning, noon and evening. This is a tradition that is characteristic of whites; they use it to reinforce the rightness of their destruction of blacks. Prayer is the spirit that is evident in all oppressed communities when they know that they have a job to do.
