Category: Subverting Empire

A Debt

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This ceasefire agreement brings some relief to Palestinians in Gaza. We pray that, against all odds, it will be permanent – and that it will lead to the end of the occupation.

Israel and the West have assassinated more than 250 Palestin1an journalists since October 7, 2023. Despite their best efforts, there are still heroes like Abdulruhman Ismail (above) bearing witness from the ground in Gaza. In this fragile moment, let’s meditate on his words:

This time, joy is incomplete, not like the celebration of the previous ceasefire. Our people suffer from a deep and painful anguish, for this enemy has proven to be more brazen, vile, and despicable than we ever imagined. Every tear of joy that falls from one eye, is met by a tear of sorrow on the opposite side. Therefore, we believe that the global political struggle must begin and intensify after the ceasefire, not before. A worldwide popular coalition must be formed to halt the war, and to support the people of Gaza with humanitarian, psychological, financial, and material aid. Every free person must feel a debt upon their shoulders toward Gaza and its people, a debt that can only be discharged by the complete removal and dissolution of this occupation. May God have mercy on our righteous martyrs…

Memory

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From Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa, the author of many great books like Mornings in Jenin. Re-posted from social media.

one of the most overlooked and underestimated forms of resistance is memory.

we must all remember, because, Israel is banking on their zionist tentacles in tech to scrub their crimes from the internet;

on the tentacles in media to justify, obfuscate, spin, and mystify their crimes;

on Hollywood and entertainment tentacles to brainwash another generation;

on political tentacles to criminalize the truth and truth-tellers;

on academic tentacles to promulgate another invented history;

so make sure you remember everything you’ve seen in the past two years. believe your own eyes and ears. believe your own heart that knows evil, because everything around you will gaslight you into believing you didn’t see what you saw, that you didn’t hear what you heard, that your heart is wrong, that conscience is bad and the wholesale slaughter of children and defenseless families was necessary. remember, and save the files, organize and categorize those files, date them, and geolocate them.

memory is our revenge. truth is our revenge. and eventually, the laughter of our children in a liberated Palestine is our revenge.

Choose Life

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Shanah Tovah to all our Jewish comrades out there doing the holy work of tikkun olam. This is from our friends at Jewish Voice for Peace.

This year, may the shofar be a wake-up call for all. As we enter 5786, our commitment to justice is greater than ever.

This sacred time of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur demands that we recommit to the work of tikkun olam, repairing the world. That means doing everything in our power to end the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians and build a future of freedom and safety for Palestinians and all people. And as we work collectively to build Judaism beyond Zionism, we know that the high holidays offer potent rituals to fortify us for the long haul.

This is a moment of collective atonement. As you read this, the Israeli military is starving over two million Palestinians in Gaza to death. We call on the US government to end its support for the Israeli government’s genocide, and we call on all people of conscience to divest from death and speak out in defense of life.

Continue reading “Choose Life” →

Of Quest and Daring and Growth

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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.



A Weapon of the Enemy

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An excerpt from Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley’s sermon last Sunday. Listen to whole thing here.

Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated. But I’m overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land. And hearing people with selective rage who are mad about Charlie Kirk, but didn’t give a damn about Melissa Hortman and her husband when they were shot down in their home, tell me I ought to have compassion for the death of a man who had no respect for my own life. I am sorry, but there’s nowhere in bible where we are taught to honor evil. How you die does not redeem how you lived. You do not become a hero in your death when you are a weapon of the enemy in your life.

Our Radical Desire for Common Good

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

By Kiese Laymon, re-posted from social media.

Flags lowered for the death of the worst of white folks is pretty on-brand for this great again place. We are not in the midst of a coup, or a dictatorship. This has always been an offering under the guise of decorum. Peep the supposed left today genuflecting to a man who preached, “Black women do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.”

I wish that man was not killed. “Killing’s some wack shit.” But, more than that, I wish that man considered a public and private love for the most vulnerable parts of himself and his nation before he died. I wish the same for all of us. Please do not offer your good to great gobblers of grace. They eat suffering. They eat grace. They eat good. They bust us in the heads, gleefully dismantling the few protections the vulnerable have left.

But they got heads too.

Do not let them take our radical desire for common good. Please.

We Shall Return

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

By Salman Abu Sitta, a Nakba survivor and the founder and president of Palestine Land Society, re-posted from Facebook on 9/3/25.

A MESSAGE TO AN AMERICAN JEWISH PROFESSOR

Dear Prof xxx
For many years you wrote scholarly “moderate” articles on Zionism and Israel.
Yesterday you wrote that “Israel has a right to exist” is not in question.

As a Palestinian who was born in Al Ma’in Abu Sitta, I ask a simple personal non academic question: will this state exist on my land?
If yes, I do not agree, never did, never will.

My family was attacked by Zionist militia on 14 May 1948 and our landscape was destroyed. We became refugees ever since. Four kibbutzim were built on my land.

Continue reading “We Shall Return” →

Anarchist Christianity: The Sermon on the Mount in Action

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Another compelling offering from the Alternative Seminary.

AN ONLINE GATHERING: Saturday morning, September 6, 2025 from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm EST

What fellowship has anarchy with christianity?

Empowering small communities of people to take care of their own needs at the local level. Rejecting rulership and making decisions by consensus through face-to-face deliberation. Constructing societies in which people are placed above profit and systems are built on solidarity and mutual aid.

It is no coincidence that this describes both the historical movement of anarchism and the early church as described in the Acts of the Apostles.

In this gathering, we will explore the history, philosophy, and practice of anarcho-communism and how they cohere with the teachings of Jesus and the practices of the early christian communities. We will dive into how theologies touching on God, humanity, divine-human interaction, the Bible, and more can be illuminated and faithfully reformulated through an anarchist lens. And we will chart a christian praxis based on voluntary cooperation, the goodness of all people, and faith in God. We can build an ethical world – one built on structures of care – and anarchy might just be the unlikely key.

The Rev. Terry J. Stokes (he/they) is an anarchist theologian who seeks to foster political and spiritual radicalization through his writing and speaking. He holds degrees from Yale University and Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained as a minister of word and sacrament by Park Avenue Baptist Church. He is a youth worker and associate minister in Trenton, NJ, and a group facilitator at The Wooden Shoe anarchist infoshop in Philadelphia. Their latest book is Jesus and the Abolitionists: How Anarchist Christianity Empowers the People. 

Registration is required. Click HERE to register.

The cost is $10 (or whatever you can afford).

The deadline for registration is September 2.

The Facebook page is HERE.

If you have any questions, please contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com or 267-339-8989.

The Alternative Seminary is a program of biblical and theological study and reflection designed to foster an authentic biblical witness in the modern world.