A Prophetic Imagination: Right Here, Right Now

On March 11, 2015March 11, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

By Tommy Airey

…they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
Micah 4:3-4

*This is the fourth installment in a series of seven pieces on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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As we travel the Lenten road of death and resurrection, we continue to inventory both the personal and prophetic. The more we pursue the personal the more we realize that the addiction, abuse and alienation in our homes are symptoms of the wider systems in our world—the social, economic, political and religious structures that organize and, ultimately, pulverize our lives.
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What is Radical Discipleship?

On March 5, 2015March 5, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Ched Myers, excerpted from “What Is Radical Discipleship? An Introduction to the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute,” Ventura River Watershed, Feb 16, 2015

Radical Discipleship is NOT a dope slogan, or a mobilizing soundbyte, or a hip brand, or an ironic twitter handle. Hell, these terms aren’t even cool anymore. “Radical” is a term as unfashionable today as it was trendy in the 1960s. The notion of “discipleship,” meanwhile, is entirely shrugged off in liberal church circles, and trivialized in conservative ones. So let me explain why this is the handle of this Festival, why we insist on using the phrase. The etymology of the term radical (for the Latin radix, “root”) is the best reason not to concede it to nostalgia. If we want to get to the root of anything we must be radical. No wonder the word has been demonized by our masters and co-opted by marketing hucksters, and no wonder no one in conventional politics would dare to use the word favorably, much less track any problem to its root. Continue reading “What is Radical Discipleship?” →

Cannibals

On March 4, 2015March 4, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Tommy Airey

…you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin off my people,
and the flesh off their bones;
who eat the flesh of my people,
flay their skin off them,
break their bones in pieces,
and chop them up like meat in a kettle,
like flesh in a cauldron…
Micah 3:2-3

*This is the third installment in a series of seven pieces on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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Surely, Micah wasn’t winning any popularity contests by openly comparing political and religious leaders to Jeffrey Dahmer. The prophet homed in on two socio-economic atrocities. First, the decisions that social, corporate, political and religious elites make have a direct effect on the livelihood of everyday people. Masses of people are trying to survive slave conditions. Many live and work in toxic and hazardous environments. Those who can do something about this almost always don’t.
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The Prophetic In The Face of Plunder

On February 25, 2015February 25, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation3 Comments

By Tommy Airey

Alas for those who devise wickedness
and evil deeds on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
because it is in their power.
They covet fields, and seize them;
houses, and take them away;
they oppress householder and house,
people and their inheritance.
Micah 2:1-2

*This is the second installment in a series of seven pieces on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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This week, Micah takes us from the personal to the political. I write from a church office with a cold, crisp view of downtown Detroit. Just on the other side of the skyscrapers, a man worth $100 million lives in a 14,500 square-foot mansion. He is buying cheap land from the city to plant a tree farm. He is hailed as a job creator and a blight reducer. But there’s more to the story: banks, land developers and young middle-class white folks coming in from the suburbs are targeting certain (poor, black) neighbors through city-imposed tax foreclosure & water shut-offs. These powers (including the multimillionaire tree farmer) are not innocent bystanders. Their intentions inevitably create unintended consequences. They prosper off the misery of poor people.
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Jesus On A Vision Quest

On February 19, 2015July 28, 2017 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

By Ched Myers, First Sunday in Lent (Mark 1:9-15)

Note: This is an ongoing occasional series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B.
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In Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism, the narrative is suddenly invaded by dramatic imagery. Jesus rises from Jordan’s waters to a vision of the “heavens rent asunder” (1:10). This is an allusion to Isaiah 64:1f:
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Full Frontal Prophetic Nudity

On February 18, 2015February 18, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation2 Comments

By Tommy Airey

For this I will lament and wail;
I will go barefoot and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
and mourning like the ostriches.
Micah 1:8

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf

*This is the first in a series of seven pieces on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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Like us, Micah was living during imperial catastrophe and, like us, the reasons for the destruction and dysfunction were contested. In this prophetic leaflet, what Dan Berrigan calls “a torrid, icy mix of threat and promise,” Micah does what prophets do: he comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable in pointed, specific ways. To reclaim a phrase from the Religious Right who hijacked it from Gandhi who resurrected it from Augustine: “He loves the sinner, but hates the sin.”
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Pope Francis: What is your Capacity to Cry?

On February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

by Rose Berger. First published on her blog.

Pope Francis’ press conference on the plane returning from the Philippines was lively as usual. Regarding the Charlie Hebdo murders, he elaborated on the nuances of “freedom of expression” tempered by the virtue of prudence. He also expanded his comments on “responsible parenthood” and what it means for Catholics today. As always, he set the “birth control” issue in the wider context of certain prevailing spirits of the age, in this case Neo-Malthusianism (whaaaa?): population control that is enforced or overly encouraged by governments or corporations.

However, what jumped out to me was his response to a question by La Nacion’s Elisabetta Pique:

Elisabetta Pique (La Nacion): … This was a moving voyage for everyone. We saw people crying the entire time in Tacloban [Philippines site of the Supertyphoon Haiyan], even we journalists cried. Yesterday you said, the world needs to cry. … What was for you the most moving moment, because the mass in Tacloban was such a moment and also yesterday when the little girl started to cry?
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The Solidarity of the Crucified

On February 15, 2015February 6, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

From Miroslav Volf in Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996):

All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side. To claim the comfort of the Crucified while rejecting his way is to advocate not only cheap grace but a deceitful ideology.

“God is Like a Mountain” (Mk 9:2-9)

On February 12, 2015July 28, 2017 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation1 Comment

By Ched Myers, for Transfiguration Sunday (6. Epiphany)

Note: This is an ongoing occasional series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B.
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Without wildness, civilization could not survive. The converse does not hold.
Evan Eisenberg, The Ecology of Eden

The Feast of the Transfiguration probably dates back to the late Roman period. A major feast in the Eastern Church, it was not widely practiced until the 9^th century by the Western Church. August 6^th was designated as Feast of the Transfiguration for the whole church in 1456. The Roman Catholic Church today also commemorates the Transfiguration on the second Sunday in Lent, but the Revised Common Lectionary puts the story at the last Sunday of Epiphany, just before Lent. This is done in order to recognize the Transfiguration’s close relationship in the synoptic gospel narratives to Jesus’ journey toward Jerusalem and the Cross.
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A Betrayal of the Disappointed

On February 8, 2015February 6, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

From Dorothee Soelle in “Christofascism,” in The Window of Vulnerability: A Political Spirituality (1990):

At a mass meeting a thousand voices shouted: ‘I love Jesus’ and ‘I love America’ — it was impossible to distinguish the two. This kind of religion knows the cross only as a magical symbol of what he has done for us, not as the sign of the poor man who was tortured to death as a political criminal, like thousands today who stand up for his truth in El Salvador. This is a God without justice, a Jesus without a cross, an Easter without a cross — what remains is a metaphysical Easter Bunny in front of the beautiful blue light of the television screen, a betrayal of the disappointed, a miracle weapon in service of the mighty.