Category: Subverting Empire

The Seminary, The Sanctuary & The Streets

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Valerie Jean
PC: Valerie Jean

By Bill Wylie-Kellermann

There are a number of sweet connections between Word and World and the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. As the campaign heats up in the midst of these 40 days of action and witness, it’s worth remembering a few of them.

In 2003, we did one off our Peoples’ Schools, a week-long institute in Philadelphia. It was framed around a close study of Dr. King’s Riverside Church speech, “Beyond Vietnam: Breaking the Silence” which focused his national call for a “revolution of values.” In addition to the Plowshares Movement, that school included attention to the Kensington Welfare Rights Union in Philly, specifically their homeless union tent city which subsequently, as winter approached, broke open and moved into a boarded up Catholic Church, St. Edwards. Continue reading “The Seminary, The Sanctuary & The Streets” →

This Travesty of Whiteness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

RubyFrom a recent Ruby Sales “Front Porch” post to America (May 25, 2018)–in response to a report that federal agencies lost track of almost 1,500 migrant children:

We are in the midst of radical evil and spiritual malformation and social pathology that live in the fabric of a socially constructed diseases called Whiteness.

Whiteness is evil and distorts the human soul. We are in the grip of radical White evil. And our silence makes us co participants. People have you allowed yourselves to become numb? Continue reading “This Travesty of Whiteness” →

The Undoing of Theodicy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

BillFrom Bill Wylie-Kellermann’s newest release Dying Well: The Resurrected Life of Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann:

…in the course of Jeanie’s illness and death, I’ve not really found myself angry with God. I never really raged against the locked doors of heaven, or demanded to know why the Divine should permit such bad things happening to one so good as she. I suspect a reason for this that is theological. I wager it has to do with our shared biblical view of the powers. Continue reading “The Undoing of Theodicy” →

The Greatest Patriotism

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SackclothA Memorial Day message from Rev. Dr. William J. Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Co-Chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Dear Movement family,

As the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival prepares for our third week of direct action, the nation pauses for Memorial Day weekend. Listening to many, including veterans in this movement, we chose to focus this week on our challenge to militarism and the war economy as well as the proliferation of gun violence in the US. We believe the greatest patriotism for moral agents is insisting that America become a more perfect union. Continue reading “The Greatest Patriotism” →

Conflicting memorials: The Lord’s Table of Remembrance vs. The Nation’s Vow of Preeminence

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Ken SehestedBy Ken Sehested (right), the curator of prayerandpolitiks.org

Violence is evangelism for the Devil

My earliest memory of Memorial Day is of my Dad, puttering in his garage shop (he was a mechanic and jack-of-all-trades fixer-upper) on a rare day off from work, listing to the Indianapolis 500 car race on a portable radio. On one of those occasions I remember using a hammer, and the concrete garage floor, helping him straightening nails for reuse. Continue reading “Conflicting memorials: The Lord’s Table of Remembrance vs. The Nation’s Vow of Preeminence” →

Somebody’s Hurting Our People and It’s Gone On Far Too Long

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

BarberA Bible Study designed by Benjamin Isaak-Krauss, for the Poor People’s Campaign

Comments for facilitators:
This Bible Study is designed to be interactive and collaborative. Timeframe: 90 minutes

Objectives:
– Provide low-key way for religious folks to connect with Poor People’s Campaign, build community
– Highlight biblical tradition of care for the poor & resistance to oppression
– Frame civil disobedience as expression of faithfulness to God & our moral values as well as a strategic means
– Invite reflection on what our faith demands of us. Continue reading “Somebody’s Hurting Our People and It’s Gone On Far Too Long” →

Praying and Preying

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

BarberThis week Rev. William Barber was asked about the preacher who was asked to pray at the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. The white Southern Baptist pastor has spoken out against Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, gay men and lesbians, Mormonism. Barber’s response:

That same group of people will go in and pray—P-R-A-Y—with President Trump and his other allies in the Congress and bless them, while Trump and his allies are preying—P-R-E-Y-I-N-G—on the poor and the broken and the hurting and the least among. It is sad. It is theological malpractice. It is costing people their lives. It is mean-spirited. And the world should stand up and speak out against it. And clergy and people of faith should speak out against it. And we should stop, in the media, assigning “Christian” and “evangelical” to persons like this. If we say it, we should say it in quotes, or we should call it what it is. It is not Christianity. It is not evangelicalism. It is not the religion of Jesus, who, in his first sermon, said to follow Jesus was to preach good news to the poor, to care for the brokenhearted, to provide liberty and healing to the bruised, and to declare the acceptable year of the lord. Nothing in that says endorse killing, endorse hatred, endorsed meanness.

Graffitis, Curses and Inscriptions

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

ParisNext week marks the 50th anniversary of the volatile period of civil unrest in Paris during May 1968, punctuated by demonstrations and massive general strikes, as well as the occupation of universities and factories across France. The unrest began with a series of student occupation protests against capitalism, consumerism, American imperialism and traditional institutions, values and order. These are some “graffitis, curses and inscriptions of May 1968” from a [free] little book called Boredom Weeps published May 1, 2018 by Black Ink and Interference Archive.

Hijack life then rewrite its user’s manual.

Talk to your neighbors.

Patriotism rhymes with Fascism. Continue reading “Graffitis, Curses and Inscriptions” →

They’ll Return Week After Week

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PPC, MassachusettsYesterday, more than a thousand people of faith and conscience were arrested nation-wide in acts of civil disobedience in front of state capital buildings.  The Poor People’s Campaign has returned and will continue for forty days.  It’s not too late to join up and throw in with this movement that comes with specific demands for lawmakers: federal and state minimum wage laws “commensurate for the 21st century economy”, relief from student-loan debt, a repeal of the 2017 GOP tax cuts legislation, restoration of the Voting Rights Act, an end to mass incarceration, a fracking ban, protection of public lands, a cessation of US military involvement and universal healthcare.

This is from co-director Liz Theoharis on Democracy Now yesterday:

…in almost 40 states across this country, there are people, impacted folks, poor people, who are taking action together. And we were in Marks, Mississippi. We were in Lowndes County, Alabama. We were in El Paso, Texas. We have traveled around this country, because this campaign is a deep organizing drive amongst people who need to have their voices heard, need their stories to be told, so that we hear that there are 140 million poor people in this country, that in this country there are 38 million poor children. Almost half of this country’s children are poor. And this is unacceptable. And so, people are taking action together, and not just today, but they are deep-dive organizing in their communities. They’ll return, week after week, for this 40 days and into the future, as we build a deep moral movement to turn this country around.

Resurrecting Ancient Wisdom & Worldview

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

1491By Randy Woodley, re-posted with permission from the Ethnic Space and Faith blog

There are stark differences between the worldviews of Indigenous peoples and those whose worldviews developed with the influence of Western Europe. The “age of discovery” brought the Europeans to our Indigenous shores. Many of those theologians and discoverers attributed their discoveries to God and then immediately acted in the most ungodly manner. I am willing to concede that the Creator had a hand in the meeting of the two worlds but I think it has been largely misinterpreted by the Western nations and Western religious bodies. These so called “discoveries” created not only wealth by extraction in previously co-sustained Indigenous lands, labor and resources, but they also created perverted national myths and twisted theological accounts of conquest. These myths have continued to be told time and time again, and with each generation they are reified, built upon and codified into our society’s collective mythologies and memories. Continue reading “Resurrecting Ancient Wisdom & Worldview” →