Category: Theological Animation

Offering Cultures, Sacrifice Cultures, and Us: Behind the Abraham and Isaac Story: Gen 22:1-19

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By Jim Perkinson (above), a sermon preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit last weekend. Click here to check out (and suscribe to!) Dr. Perkinson’s new Substack newsletter.

I’ll begin retrospectively.  A month ago, we had a lectionary passage from Genesis about humans being given “dominion” over the animals and plants of the planet.  Four days before that I had just gotten back from leading a bible study at Kirkridge Retreat Center in eastern Pennsylvania, 544 miles one way by car from Detroit.  And I could not help instantly relating the two things—the scripture passage and my “passage” to and from Kirkridge.  As I had driven east on I-80 to get there, I counted the number of deer, lying in grotesque postures, killed by autos careening across the landscape.  I stopped at 26.  That is our dominion over deer. 

And with every one of them that I passed at 78 miles per hour—staying just under the speed at which I know police would pull me over in a 70-mile-per-hour zone—I loathed my behavior.  If I really lived what I believe, I would not dare pass by such a supine body without stopping and at least burying the departed one with appropriate ritual, if not more respectfully skinning the body, gathering the bones, preserving the back strap and ligaments, removing the horns—making sure every feature of that magnificent creature was being honored and lived up to in gratitude for its unwilling gift.  Instead, I held myself responsible to cry out to each and every one I passed—as well as all the smaller-sized little ones also lying by the side of the road—“I’m so sorry, I lament my kind doing this, please go over to the Other Side, be healed, find peace!”  And in every instance, I would find tears flushing my eyes and often dribbling down my cheek. 

And then after the Kirkridge time, I came back to a Motor City in full levity, celebrating the Grand Prix auto fest.  We use the French pronunciation to give it seeming status, but I would rather pronounce the “x” in “Prix” as an English “x.” Pricks”!  Yes, celebrating the Grand Pricks, the Big Dicks, the high-tech MFs plundering the planet for ever greater speed, going . . . around in circles (the planet is round after all)!  Even when we are already energy-strapped and facing fuel crises!  What could be more indicative of our insanity!

I don’t believe in dominion.  But I live it.  I drove to church today.  I lament much of what I do every day—but I don’t stop doing it. I am part of the plundering and killing of the planet. 

Continue reading “Offering Cultures, Sacrifice Cultures, and Us: Behind the Abraham and Isaac Story: Gen 22:1-19” →

The Madness of Grace in a Fallen World

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A new online course offering from The Alternative Seminary. Tuesday evenings, July 7-28 (7:00 – 9:00 p.m).

The Southern writer Flannery O’Connor once offered a wry variation on a theme of Jesus: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.”  Her fiction, set in her rural Southern culture, is a world of oddness, weirdness, madness, misfits and murderers, corrupt preachers and moralistic hypocrites.  It is also a world of the sometimes harsh and shocking intrusions of grace into flawed and fractured humanity.

The Alternative Seminary is offering an opportunity to explore O’Connor’s fiction in an upcoming online course.  For four weeks, we will read and discuss some of her most challenging stories. We will pay particular attention to what she might be saying to us in these strange and troubling times – which includes wrestling with her complex views and fictional portrayals of race.  Join us for some provocative (and fun) literary and theological adventures.

The course will be led by Will O’Brien, coordinator of the Alternative Seminary.  The cost for this course is $50 (or whatever you can afford).  To register, go to https://bit.ly/FlanneryOConnor26

For more information contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com or 267-339-8989.

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

post-evangelical

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By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his Substack newsletter.

Charles Cha and I joke that we were evangelical Christians before it was cool.

In the early 90’s, we attended a bible study for high school students sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ. It was basically a training camp for evangelizing students, teachers, administrators and coaches at our public-school campus in Orange County, California.

During our junior year, Charles and I invited friends to join us in Mr. Leander’s classroom during lunch so we could get them saved. We utilized a tract called “The Four Spiritual Laws,” which was created by Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright back in the 60’s. 

Charles had the whole thing memorized.

He used the whiteboard to scrawl out bible verses from the Book of Romans.

He drew images to show how our sin will send us straight to hell – and also how God’s grace builds a bridge to heaven for those who make a decision for Christ, whose death on the cross makes us clean.

None of our friends bought that bridge.

Continue reading “post-evangelical” →

Bones, Beads, Belonging, and the Bible: Just Where are We Standing?

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By Dr. Jim Perkinson, a sermon for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit (03.22.2026) – pictured above at the annual Nakba Day march in Dearborn, MI (photo credit)

37 The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones. 2 And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, thou knowest. . . . 11 Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel (Ezek 37:1-3, 11-12).

I’m going to start weird and way out—something new for me, right?  But walk with me for a moment.  We need some background.

First, I want to suggest that this story of Ezekiel prophesying to bones is ultimately about bones in the right place of burial.  And its opposite is bones out of place.  If we read just two chapters further on in Ezekiel, we encounter another strange little vignette about bones in or out of place that reads thus:

They will set apart men to pass through the land continually and bury those remaining upon the face of the land, so as to cleanse it; at the end of seven months they will make their search. And when these pass through the land and anyone sees a man’s bone, then he shall set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Manon-gog (“Multitude of Gog”) (Ezek 39:14-15).

And what is in view here are the bones of invaders that are not just allowed to lie around wherever they fell but collected and “placed” in a particular domain previously called “The Valley of Travelers,” now renamed “Valley of the Multitude.” In fact, chapters 37, 38, and 39 of Ezekiel are actually one whole piece of interaction between Ezekiel and YHWH concerning a vision of the Great End Times Battle of Gog and Magog, much later taken up in the Book of Revelation as “Armageddon,” the Final Apocalyptic Catastrophe that supposedly ruptures history as we know it (and which right now is being used by U.S. military commanders to motivate their troops to fight Iran as a prelude to provoking the Second Coming of Jesus).  The Valley of Dry Bones episode is actually the Preface to this War scenario.  We’ll come back to that in a bit.  But for now, Ezekiel is wrestling with an implicit question: where do bones belong?

Continue reading “Bones, Beads, Belonging, and the Bible: Just Where are We Standing?” →

Splendor Within Humility

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A word from our comrades at Rabbis for Ceasefire. They are posting these everyday during the 49 days of Omer, which extends from the second night of Passover to the day before Shavuot.

When involved in solidarity movements, it is important that those of us who show up as allies defer to the leadership of those most directly impacted by state violence. So, for example, in Palestinian solidarity work, it is incumbent upon those of us who are not Palestinian and not directly impacted by the actions of Israel and the U.S. to ensure that the voices of Palestinians are centered, whether in our meetings, at events, with the press, etc.

This requires humility. The humility to know that your words are not more powerful or more important than those of Palestinians. The humility to recognize that deferring to the wisdom of those directly impacted is a true act of solidarity. I see splendor within humility as a beautiful mosaic of opening the white spaces between the black letters for the voices of the most directly impacted and marginalized to speak and share their truth and stories—stories that are far too often silenced in a society that awards narcissism and charisma over truth and justice.

From Golden Calf to Sacred Dwelling: Reimagining Jewish Identity Beyond the Nation-State

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By Ariel Gold

When Pope Leo XIV rebuked Pete Hegseth on Good Friday for using biblical language to justify war, it stopped me cold. What was a red line for the American pope — and sparked a “tidal wave” of complaints from active duty U.S. service members — has become so normalized in American Judaism that our siddurim (prayer books) include prayers that the State of Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces, with God’s help, be “crowned with victory” in all military endeavors.

I thought back to the Torah portion of the prior few weeks and the lessons it offers.

In Parsha Ki Tisa, the Israelites build a golden calf while Moses is on Mount Sinai receiving the Torah. Newly freed from bondage in Egypt, anxious and unmoored, they melt down their gold and create an idol to worship.

As the saying goes, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Despite thousands of years of Torah study, we have done it again — given in to fear and replaced our faith in God with the worship of another idol — this time, a nation-state.

When European Jews in the 19th century were allowed out of ghettos and into broader society, it raised a genuinely thorny question: was Judaism, as a religion, even necessary anymore? Like the Jews of biblical times, our emancipation created a void. What rushed in was nationalism. Zionism offered a secular answer — shift faith in God into faith in political and military power. But God was removed from the language while biblical promise continued to drive political action. Messianic longing was not replaced; it was nationalized.

Continue reading “From Golden Calf to Sacred Dwelling: Reimagining Jewish Identity Beyond the Nation-State” →

Not Our End Times

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

Christians for a Free Palestine is hosting another community call this Wednesday, April 15 at 8pmET. Register here.

For more than two years, the U.S. government has enabled and normalized genocide against Palestinians in Gaza with impunity, and yesterday morning, President Donald Trump made overtly genocidal threats “that a whole civilization” could die in order to achieve his military goals in Iran. 

The U.S. and Israeli governments have already committed enormous harm in Iran, including war crimes. Even as a fragile ceasefire in Iran begins, Israel is continuing to bomb Lebanon, dropping bombs in 100 locations in just 10 minutes today. Over the past month, U.S. and Israeli actions in the region have displaced millions of people from their homes.

For years, the Christian Zionist lobby paved the way for this moment. According to them, any violence, war, and destruction can be justified and even celebrated if it is seen to help usher in the end times. That’s why Christian Zionists are cheering on the ethnic cleansing set to take place in Lebanon as a step toward “Greater Israel,” and hailing the war in Iran as the Battle of Armageddon. As Christians, we oppose genocide and ethnic cleansing against any people, and believe in a future for our world grounded in true and just peace— not false peace held up by domination, violence, and empire. 

Our April 15 Community Call, “Not Our End Times” will focus on how Christian Zionism has fueled the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and how we respond. Join us to hear from:

  • Joy Metzler, a military defector and conscientious objector
  • Izzy Mustafa, campaigns coordinator with Adalah Justice Project
  • Tommy Airey, a leader with CFP-Detroit, and member of CFP’s Theo-Politics Team.

We hope to see you on April 15 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT to build community, make sense of this moment together, and continue creative, nonviolent resistance to Christian Zionism, including preparing for this summer’s action to counter Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the largest Zionist organization in the country. 

Let us work together toward the “world that ought to be.”