Category: Subverting Empire

Behind the Scenes

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baptismal
Detroit, MI

By Tommy Airey, a homily preached at The Abbey Church (Victoria, BC) on Sunday, January 20, 2019

“When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from…” (John 2:9a)

Theologian Kelly Brown-Douglas explains that when the earliest slaves in America listened to the reading of the Bible, they heard the voice of “The Great High God”—the free, sovereign divinity they knew well from their African heritage. This was the creator God who was far greater than humans and all “the lesser gods” in the universe. This is the God defined by Steadfast Love in this morning’s Psalm: in this Higher Power, there is refuge and abundance, feasting and drinking from the river of delight. Continue reading “Behind the Scenes” →

Martin Luther King, the Beloved Community and the Socialist Idea

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

obery hendricksA classic from theologian Obery Hendricks, re-posted from The Huffington Post (May 2, 2014).

I speak the password primeval…I give the sign of democracy; By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpoint of on equal terms.
Walt Whitman

Recently on The Huffington Post I explored Martin Luther King’s rejection of capitalist logic and his endorsement of Democratic Socialism as an antidote to the ills and injustices inherent to the capitalist system he so fervently opposed. These include capitalism’s subordination of human welfare to the pursuit of profits; its transformation of greed from Christianity’s Third Mortal Sin to the preeminent capitalist virtue (based on a selective reading of Adam Smith); and its rejection of the biblically-mandated responsibility to “love your neighbor as yourself,” i.e., to care for society’s poor and vulnerable. In addition to the consternation that I would dare to use Martin Luther King and “socialism” in the same sentence, a number of readers also seized on King’s endorsement as confirmation of the old charge that he was a Communist sympathizer. Continue reading “Martin Luther King, the Beloved Community and the Socialist Idea” →

An Indivisible Pedagogy and Theology of Somebodiness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire1 Comment

rubyAnother brilliant epistle from the front porch of Ruby Sales. 

On this day as we remember King please accept this gift of recapitulation, restoration and remembrance of a southern African American story.

Every year I listen in absolute horror as White liberals rob King of his connection and roots to the Black South. His are deep roots as are mine that extend all the way back to the first organized non-violent southern freedom grassroots movement when members of the community of enslaved Africans ran away. He and I descend from enslaved ancestors who fashioned a radical and liberating Black folk theology in southern fields where they were forced under state sanctioned violence to labor like beasts of burden to enrich the economic lifestyles of southern Whites. In the heat of those fields they carved out a theology of pragmatic optimism that blended their transcendental impulse –ancestors’ aspirations — with transactional acts of resistance and accommodation towards citizenship. The folk impulse of our enslaved ancestors radically departed from the White transactional view of us as property to our transcendental view of our being children of God and therefore legitimate heirs of the promise of democracy.
Continue reading “An Indivisible Pedagogy and Theology of Somebodiness” →

The Heirloom Seeds of an Ancient and Profoundly Relevant Faith

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sngBy Rev. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin (right), a pastor, parent, author and organizer in Portland, OR

*This is the third installation of a year-long series of posts from contributors all over North America each answering the question, “How would you define radical discipleship?” We will be posting responses regularly on Mondays during 2019.

As is often quoted within Radical Discipleship circles, ‘Radical’ comes from the Latin: radix, meaning root — getting to the root causes, the root pressures, the roots of our faith. Yes! Let’s get to the roots!

But today as I reflect on what Radical Discipleship means to me, and why it is necessary in the first place, I want to talk about seeds. Continue reading “The Heirloom Seeds of an Ancient and Profoundly Relevant Faith” →

Through the Wilderness

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walzerFrom Jewish political theorist Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution (1985):

So pharaonic oppression, deliverance, Sinai, and Canaan are still with us, powerful memories shaping our perceptions of the political world. The “door of hope” is still open; things are not what they might be–even when what they might be isn’t totally different from what they are. This is a central theme in Western thought, always present though elaborated in many different ways. We still believe, or many of us do, what the Exodus first taught, or what it has commonly been taken to teach, about the meaning and possibility of politics and about its proper form:

-first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;

-second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;

-and third, that “the way to the land is through the wilderness.” There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.

Nature Against Empire

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chedAn excerpt from Ched Myers‘ must-read article “Nature against Empire: Exodus Plagues, Climate Crisis and Hardheartedness.” Digest this taste-tester and then spend time with the entire piece, where Myers weaves together climate science and our sacred Scripture. Join Ched and other theological animators at the 2019 Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute in February.

British theologian Michael Northcott’s important 2013 Political Theology of Climate Change argues that our modern worldview offers no frame of reference for the “politics of slow catastrophe” stalking our history through ecological catastrophe.  He shows how traditional cosmologies, including the Bible, saw climate as political.  That is, the actions of nations influenced the health of nature; when people behaved badly, the earth behaved badly back.  Modernity, however, banished that notion as superstitious and unscientific.  Humans and our technologies are now in control, we believe, while nature is depersonalized, demystified and at our disposal.  That paradigm may have “worked” for a few centuries, but now we are realizing that nature seems to be biting back. Continue reading “Nature Against Empire” →

Water to my Weary Soul

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graceBy Joshua Grace, a pastor, pitcher, parent and DJ in North Philly

*This is the second installation of a year-long series of posts from contributors all over North America each answering the question, “How would you define radical discipleship?” We will be posting responses regularly on Mondays during 2019.

Radical discipleship doesn’t lend itself to the typical rat race towards better answers. We’re trying asking better questions. What does it mean to be a human being in our past, present, and future social and natural locations? How can our practices toward bioregional health shape our approach to faith and how do our spiritualties contribute to the health of the communities we root into? How can we contribute to the mission of God with eyes open to systemic oppressions, levels and layers of privilege, and hearts open to healing? Continue reading “Water to my Weary Soul” →

The Advent of Stars and “Pagans”

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MagiBy Jim Perkinson, on Matthew 2:1-12

So, the stage is set. Matthew has an old horny codger taking up a young nubile teenager (could be a headline on CNN tomorrow) but then discovering he is late to the freshness. She already has a loaf in the oven. He resolves to part in quiet but is accosted by a Dream-Time appearance counseling adventure—the child is Spirit-born, the event is “Emmanuel,” the promise is deliverance. He wakes and tries to stay “woke.” Continue reading “The Advent of Stars and “Pagans”” →

Suffering the Gift: Decolonizing the Holidays

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

winslowBy Luke Winslow, a re-post from The Seattle School blog

Which story? Whose thanks?

In the days surrounding Thanksgiving, I was practicing mindful listening to Native and indigenous activists whom I follow on social media. As a kind of bookend to the emotional harm Native American communities re-experience every fall when the dominant culture still acknowledges days like Columbus Day (rather than its increasing replacement, Indigenous Peoples’ Day), followed by the colonial version of Thanksgiving, I find myself searching for language weeks later for how to translate what I’m hearing back to my own communities.

Although each holiday focuses on different themes (one could say, American and Christian identity formation, respectively), perhaps Thanksgiving and Christmas need to be viewed together, not separately, that with a retrospective, deconstructive view we can look at the ways these holidays mutually inform how and what we celebrate at the end of the year. In short, what does giving thanks and giving gifts mean in the specific context of—for we white and settler communities—being guests on stolen land? Continue reading “Suffering the Gift: Decolonizing the Holidays” →