Category: Subverting Empire

After 50 Years, Still Recovering From My PTSD

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire5 Comments

By Steve Clemens

Got this in the mail this week- it got me thinking:

December of 1971 was the time I completed my academic requirements to graduate several months early from Wheaton College. 50 years is a long time in looking back at that part of my journey – especially in trying to heal from the religious and theological abuse heaped upon my 21-year-old self from the “evangelical” movement as expressed by the school which prided itself as being the “Harvard” of such. I’ve come to realize in the passing years the damage wrought by what I now see as a form of Post Theological Salvation Disorder (or Delusion): PTSD.

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Kings vs. Kids

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

magiBy Ched Myers, for The Feast of the Holy Innocents and Epiphany (Matthew 2), re-posted from 2016

This reflection offers biblical context for two feasts of the Christian church: one minor (Feast of the Innocents, Dec 28, 2016) and one major (Epiphany, Jan 6, 2017). These two holy days commemorate the narrative of Matthew 2 (though in reverse chronological order), which we read in Year A. In fact, the “Twelve Days of Christmas”—when re-interpreted through the lens of these two feasts—can truly be a gift to us, if an importunate one.  These counter-narratives provide a much-needed corrective to the holiday season’s saccharine sentimentality and cacophonous commercialism, and equally to unreflective year-in-review rituals and banal New Year’s resolution-making. For they demand that we re-center our lives around the testimonies of those who are at risk in a world of imperial violence.  Continue reading “Kings vs. Kids” →

A Radical Understanding of Grace

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From Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk, executive director of The Center for Prophetic Imagination

I find myself increasingly drawn to a particular understanding of “grace.”

Perhaps the most dominant theological definition of grace is “unmerited favor.” Often, this is understood in contrast to merited judgement or punishment. We are so messed up, mired in sin, and rebellious against God that we have earned wrath…either in the form of judgement in this life or in the life to come (hell). Yet, God chooses not to punish his children, because of God’s great love.

Most of us know that this logic applied to our own children is cruel. Imagine telling a child that they deserve to live on the streets without food or care, but because of our own great benevolence, we offer them food and lodging.

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An Indigenous Soul

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An excerpt from Martin Prechtel’s classic 2001 interview with The Sun Magazine.

Every individual in the world, regardless of cultural background or race, has an indigenous soul struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile environment created by that individual’s mind. A modern person’s body has become a battleground between the rationalist mind — which subscribes to the values of the machine age — and the native soul. This battle is the cause of a great deal of spiritual and physical illness.

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Liberating Christmas

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

A note from Will O’Brien, director of the Alternative Seminary in Philadelphia.

Peace On Earth and the Politics of Christmas

A VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Saturday morning, December 11

10:30 am – 12:30 pm EST

Join  the Alternative Seminary on December 11 for a virtual Bible study, “Peace on Earth and The Politics of Christmas” Alternative Seminary coordinator and contributor to RLC Will O’Brien will lead a program reflecting on the “nativity narratives” in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke to see how they express core biblical themes of justice and liberation.  For more information, go to the Facebook page.

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Love

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From James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time.

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth

True Self-Fulfillment

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By Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk, director of the Center for Prophetic Imagination (please consider making an end-of-the-year donation to this compelling organization doing the work of radical discipleship)

You’re under no obligation, whatsoever, to maintain relationships with people who treat you dismissively or disrespectfully.

This idea that you need to embrace self-diminishment in a way that shows love or compassion or empathy towards others is toxic.

Christian folks in particular seems to misunderstand Jesus’ admonition to “take up your cross.” The idea that your deepest fulfilment is at odds with love and liberation of others is false.

Self-fulfillment in a capitalist way is a lie. But true self-fulfillment is bound up in collective liberation.

A Thorn in the Flesh

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By Bayo Akomolafe, originally posted to Facebook (November 13, 2021)

I learned this morning about what some news outlets – referring to the stubborn persistence of the coronavirus despite the exertions of the global nation-state order, the pharmaceutical complex, and our increasingly medicalized lives – are haltingly calling “the fifth wave.” Time Magazine asks, “Is the Fifth Wave Coming?” (https://time.com/6117006/covid-19-fifth-wave/). USA Today, through its interviewed experts, writes – as if in response: Yes, and “we may simply come to call it winter.” From France to Pakistan, numbers are creeping up, new mutations are on the horizon, and worried officials with wrinkled foreheads are declaring that the virus is here to stay – no matter what we do.

Reading these reports, I was reminded of those biblical passages I was hunched over as an obsessed teenager – the letters of Paul, undulating prose cross-textured with a messianic lilt and soft humble whispers of self-deprecating awareness. I once delighted in reading the nomadic evangelist’s notes – often under warm candlelight, and was struck by the similar undertones of pathos and lamentation that entangles his letters to the Corinthians with this morning’s pandemic news. In particular, Paul’s passage about the “thorn in the flesh” came to mind:

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John Brown Broke Rank

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire1 Comment

By Tommy Airey, re-posted from social media and his blog Easy Yolk

For centuries, white people from lower economic classes have been hired as police patrol by the white ruling class. White folks have been given guns and badges to exercise unlimited force on enslaved people, poor people of color and dark-skinned immigrant labor. This power is so intoxicating that white people consistently choose to police vulnerable people instead of finding solidarity with them in a common struggle against wealthy white exploiters. Sure, Kyle Rittenhouse shot white protestors. But his mother drove him to Kenosha to police people of color—and protect wealthier white people and their property. Policing people of color remains common practice in classrooms, curriculums, churches, stores and neighborhoods, where white people do not necessarily need guns and badges to demand “others” know their place.  

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I Would Just Ask People to Challenge Those Paradigms

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation, Uncategorized3 Comments

By Cristina Yurena Zerr, an interview with Jessica Reznicek

“I need to believe that I will continue to contribute making this world a better place, no matter where I am.”

The U.S. climate activist Jessica Reznicek was sentenced to 8 years of prison for her protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. On August 13th she reported to prison in Wascea, Minnesota. In this interview, Jessica Reznicek shares how her Christian faith relates to her commitment to fighting injustice and violence.

What is your relationship to nature?

I grew up in close contact to nature: the river, the trees, the woods. I feel like that really helped to define what became a priority later in life.

My relationship with water in particular was very pronounced. We could swim in the water. There was no concern about health consequences at that time. But it is my understanding that we have mistreated my mother, our mother, in such severe ways that I grieve that deeply.

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