Category: Subverting Empire

Dr. King and the Constellating Light

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By Ken Sehested

Admiring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is not the same as being captured by it. Too many find it possible to respect the man but relinquish the mission. It has become too easy to revere the dreamer but renege on the dream. So let us now recall the deep roots of that vision as spoken in ages past:

We remember when Hannah praised God by saying: The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength.

We dream of the day when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb. For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

We long for the day when all shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord.

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To Disrupt Narratives of Oppression

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A word from Rev. Roslyn Murray Bouier (right), re-posted from Unbound: An Interactive Journal on Social Justice.

As an unapologetic Black female, senior clergy, serving on the frontlines as community pastor, advocate, and organizer in a community 200% below the poverty level, in one of the most depreciated and disenfranchised sections of Northwest Detroit, I see the age-old constant appropriation and commodification of bodies and choices. Most especially regarding women of color, and most often by men in power. As uncomfortable as it may be, I challenge each of us to experience this text not as a sacred text but as a window into the life of a young girl of color. This young girl who is grappling with decisions that her young mind should not have too. Having to accept decisions made for her and her body. It is incumbent that the lens that this text be read through be that of a Womanist lens, one of empowerment and liberation.

The deep waters of intersectionality that most women, most especially women of color, are forced to wade in and out is often-times murky, muddy, and polluted. The expectation that is placed upon one person to be the acceptable spokesperson for an entire group is too heavy a weight to bear. Yet we see this continually in our communities, movements, churches, and more so in our sacred texts. Far too often, women have been expected to toe the line and operate in accordance with what others—usually men, more specifically white men – have designated as acceptable behavior. Our originality as individuals with unique lives, thoughts, dreams, and ideas is often-times disregarded for the ‘good of all.’

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The Story Creating Us Still

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By Rev. Denise Griebler, St. Peter’s Episcopal Detroit, January 10, 2021 (Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11)

In the beginning…

In times like this it’s good to turn to the stories that ground us – that remind us who we are, who we are not;  to Whom we belong and to Whom we do not belong. 

The creation story that begins the story of the people of Israel is one of those stories.  In the beginning…

It was written during a time of crisis – their country invaded and occupied, the leaders had been executed and the ruling and professional classes were captured and forceably removed from their homes, land and country and exiled.  It was during exile that the people turned to the old stories to remember who they still were, and to Whom they still belonged.

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Stumbling Into the Kingdom: How the “Share Your Stimulus” Project Is Showing Us God’s Heart

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By Nichola Torbett

Whenever an idea comes to me that does not a) make me look heroic (ego), b) have a high drama factor (also ego), or c) involve a whole pile of complex work that I can lose myself in (addiction), I figure it is probably from God.

That was the case with the Share Your Stimulus initiative. It was right after my prayer time in late December, and I was reading a think-piece someone had posted on Facebook. The piece explained that the $600 stimulus checks that had just been approved by Congress were not effective at targeting relief to those who need it most—those who have lost jobs, don’t have bank accounts, don’t have a relationship with the IRS, don’t have mailing addresses, etc. In fact, many of those people would not get checks at all.

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INSURRECTION AND ITS ALLIES: A CHRISTIAN REFLECTION / PART TWO

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Ric Hudgens (Quarentine Essay #89)

The violence that conservative Christianity embraces is not its only problem. “Guns, God, and Guts” may be their cry, but their reality is also linked to white body supremacy. Violence, racism, and religion, that unholy trinity, are as American as apple pie.

Throughout these essays, I’ve addressed the abiding racial injustice underlying and pervading this crisis. Our health inequalities mirror our socio-economic inequalities, and all of them rest upon a foundation of institutional white racism. Racism is America’s original sin, and white supremacy is woven into the warp and woof of our national fabric. 

The events of January 6, 2021, will become one of those moments we look back on (like the 1965 march in Selma) when America’s racist reality was stripped bare for everyone to see. The battle cry from the Capitol steps to “take back our country” is an anguished cry. It is the cry of White Christian Americans fearful of their freedom to remain dominant over all other Americans who are neither White nor Christian.

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INSURRECTION AND ITS ALLIES: A CHRISTIAN REFLECTION

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By Ric Hudgens (Quarantine Essay #88 )

Wednesday morning, January 6, I was elated with the results from Georgia. Two Democratic Senate seats won and a chance for the Biden administration to make some real progress in repairing the past four years’ destruction. I began to write an essay focused on Van Jones’s CNN comments on “Black joy won over White rage in Georgia” (still a recommended listen). The proven impact of both grassroots organizing and the extension of voting rights gave me a glimpse of hope for the American future. Maybe 2021 would not be as bleak as 2020.

But the mob activity in Washington, DC that afternoon, plus the subsequent investigation that revealed some of the intentions of those invaders, left me in agreement with Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic – “It Was Supposed To Be So Much Worse” (The Atlantic, January 9, 2021).

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My church will replace our Black Lives Matter sign. Will America replace its racist myth?

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In case you missed it. This is re-posted from a Washington Post op-ed written three weeks ago by Rev. William H. Lamar IV, the pastor of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington.

Do you hear what I hear? I hear the imperial American myth in the throes of its own death rattle. And I hear a people clamoring for a story by which to order their lives.

The United States does not like to call itself an empire. But it is. Through military and economic force, the United States extends its narrative, politics and culture throughout the globe for good and for ill. The American story to which I refer does not shape our domestic life alone. It shapes the world.

Myths, stories, give our lives meaning. They tell us who we were, who we are and who we will be.

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POWER TO SPEAK | WWJD: KIRK CAMERON, CHRISTMAS CAROL PROTESTS AND COVID-19

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By Tim Nafziger and Ched Myers, re-posted from Ventura County Reporter (Dec 30, 2020)

“Have you ever sung Christmas carols by candlelight in a time when your state governor has prohibited you from doing that? In America?!”  

These are the opening lines of a video by actor Kirk Cameron on Instagram (viewed 80,000+ times) inviting Ventura County residents to join his second “Christmas caroling peaceful protest” at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks. Hundreds of people responded to Cameron’s call and gathered without masks to sing at the mall on the evening of Sunday, Dec. 13 and again on Tuesday, Dec. 22.  A similar “worship protest” is slated to take place in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve led by self-described “missionary, artist, speaker, author and activist” Sean Feucht. The California Poor People’s Campaign, along with many faith leaders, are calling on Los Angeles elected officials to halt Feucht’s events.

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A Conspiracy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation7 Comments

By Tommy Airey

PC: Nijalon Dunn

During this final fortnight of 2020, my mind has been meandering back to Memorial Day and the short life of George Floyd. He and I were born forty days apart, five years after Martin King was murdered. We came up in a split screen society where two totally different games with totally different rules were being played at the totally same time. King called it “the two Americas.” While I was basking in the sunlight of opportunity, George Floyd’s America had a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. While I was coddled, George Floyd was criminalized.

Believe it or not, George Floyd and I both played college basketball. He was a 6’7” power forward from Houston. I was short, white and, as one former coach said, slower than shit rolling uphill. He crashed the boards. I hit the threes. After college, we both came back home. While George Floyd was posting up in the projects of Houston’s Third Ward where unemployment was four times the city’s average, I was in the Southern California suburbs saving up my full salary for a couple years while living rent-free with free meals in the home my parents bought in 1970 for $35,000. Mom still stays there and could sell it for thirty times the amount she bought it for.

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The Angels

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By Rev. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin, a Christmas Eve sermon

[This sermon is a reflection on the biblical stories from the angel’s appearance to Zechariah to the shepherds returning from Bethlehem — stories imagined, acted out and recorded by seven different families with young children from the community.]

Friends, we gather tonight in the darkest time of year, in a year that for so many has been the darkest they have ever known. And right here, right now, in this virtual but very real moment, come the children of this community, like angels bringing joy and delight to our hearts, bringing the ancient and ever-new good news to the people who walked in darkness. Angels, messengers of God of the impossible becoming possible. There are SO. MANY. ANGELS in these stories!

An angel arising from behind the altar where Zechariah was coloring, I mean, doing his work and tending the incense. The mildly maternal-looking angel telling Zechariah how it’s all going  to go down and then giving Zechariah a big long, silent time out for not believing her. 

Another angel with green wings coming to Joseph in a dream!

Another angel descending to sit on the floor next to Mary like best friends with dolls, giving her the news of her unexpected pregnancy, patiently answering her questions, letting her process her feelings until she was ok. An angel doing what a best friend would do.

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