Category: Theological Animation

Exposed

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By Tommy Airey

I am re-reading Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham jail.” MLK wrote the letter 60 years ago to white Christian and Jewish leaders. He lamented their lukewarm acceptance of the racist system. He lamented that they were more interested in order than justice – and that they were content with a kind of peace that forced the oppressed to accept their plight. MLK explained that the nonviolent actions that got him arrested were not creating tension, but simply bringing to the surface the tension that was already there for too long.

This letter is coming to life in those resisting the occupation of Palestinian land and the genocide of Palestinian people. MLK wrote that the movement for Black freedom was turning the monologue into a dialogue. The old Zionist monologue that mutes and cancels anyone with an opposing perspective is fading fast. People of faith and conscience are demanding a real dialogue about this situation. They are breaking the rules of what can be talked about in their families, faith communities, campuses, corporate media outlets and the Democratic Party.

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A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians

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Originally posted here. Click on and sign the petition.

“Learn to do right; seek justice; defend the oppressed” (Isa 1:17).

We, at the undersigned Palestinian Christian institutions and grassroots movements, grieve and lament the renewed cycle of violence in our land. As we were about to publish this open letter, some of us lost dear friends and family members in the atrocious Israeli bombardment of innocent civilians on October 19, 2023, Christians included, who were taking refuge in the historical Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza. Words fail to express our shock and horror with regard to the on-going war in our land. We deeply mourn the death and suffering of all people because it is our firm conviction that all humans are made in God’s image. We are also profoundly troubled when the name of God is invoked to promote violence and religious national ideologies.

Further, we watch with horror the way many western Christians are offering unwavering support to Israel’s war against the people of Palestine. While we recognize the numerous voices that have spoken and continue to speak for the cause of truth and justice in our land, we write to challenge western theologians and church leaders who have voiced uncritical support for Israel and to call them to repent and change. Sadly, the actions and double standards of some Christian leaders have gravely hurt their Christian witness and have severely distorted their moral judgment with regards to the situation in our land.

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Capitalism and Christianity are Incompatible

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Three years ago, we interviewed Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn (above), an ordained Baptist minister, pastoral psychotherapist and Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and the author of Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age (Palgrave, 2016). “Neoliberalism,” he writes, “has become so encompassing and powerful that it is now the most significant factor in shaping how, why, and to what degree human beings suffer.”

This is why Bruce presses for a “post-capitalist pastoral theology” that empowers people to resist the system (instead of adapt to it), to embrace communion and wholeness in relation to others and the earth (instead of functioning in accord with the values of production and consumption) and to pursue interdependent reliance within the web of human relationships (instead of accepting shame-based personal responsibility narratives).

Above all, Bruce prods pastors, therapists and social workers to identify the source of personal distress in the social and political environment instead of within the individual (he rejects what he calls “sophisticated exercises in blaming the victim”). Oh—one more thing about Bruce. All of his work is informed by his deep roots in southern Appalachia.

This is an excerpt from the beginning of our five-part conversation. See this for Part I, this for Part II, this for Part III and this for Part IV.

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Neoliberalism is simply an awful word. It is almost inevitably misleading. When I first encountered this expression, I imagined it was designating some new (“neo-”) form of political or theological “liberal.” But, actually, the term originates from economic philosophy. Its first proponents—the so-called “German Ordoliberals”—coined the name during the 1930s. Today the word is used, almost exclusively by its critics, to refer to the current phase of capitalism. This phase gained political traction in the USA and the UK in the 1980s, during the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, and by the mid-1990s was the dominant way of thinking and believing that guided global economics, politics, and culture.

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Incomplete Without the Other

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By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

Humanity is naturally separated by language, geography, culture, race, existential narratives, and many other cultural accents that make us uniquely different. We are divided ideologically, politically, racially, by class, belief, faith, and theology. Each group and sub-group has its own ways of expressions and customs, but unfortunately, in one way or another, each group and sub-group claims that its ways and thoughts are uniquely more significant than everything and everyone else in creation. This is human nature where the familiar becomes the norm, and our norms becomes the vehicle by which we evaluate everything and everyone else. For example, in Christianity, Jesus is the way and there is no other way. In Islam, there is no god but God, and Muhammad (Peace be upon him) is the Messenger of God. Historically, Judaism believes that there is only one God who has established a covenant, or special agreement with those of the faith (or traditions). Buddhism believes that life is one of suffering, and that meditation, spiritual and physical labor, and good behavior are the ways to achieve enlightenment, or nirvana and to overcome. In general, Hinduism believes that there are four goals in human life – kama, the pursuit of pleasure; artha, the pursuit of material success; dharma, leading a just and good life; and moksha, enlightenment, which frees a person from suffering and unites the individual soul with Brahman. There are many other cultural- religious understandings in the course of human thinking and they all grapple with the meaning of life, how to effectively live life, and how to live righteously in the human community. Each cultural-religious perspective emerges out of geography and context that frames language, perspective, and understandings.

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Stained Glass

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A few excerpts from Ken Sehested’s recent Prayer and Politiks newsletter.

The concurrence of two calendars brings together two significant historical episodes.
 
The Sunday morning terrorist bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four children and injured or maimed many others, on 15 September 1963. Bombs targeting the Black community in that city were common, which gave rise to the nicknaming of the city as “Bombingham.” This one, however, was especially hideous.
 
Though the FBI concluded that known members of Ku Klux Klan were responsible, no one was brought to trial until 1977, when the ringleader, Robert Chambliss, was convicted in the murder of one of those children. Not until 2001 were the other culprits convicted.
 
Can you imagine the whipsaw emotions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Eighteen days before he had been the singular figure in the largest demonstration (to that date) in US history, the 28 August March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. His “I Have A Dream” speech is considered by many to be the most important speech of the 20th century.
 
And then he had to pivot to planning funeral services for these murdered children.
 
Sunset on Friday, 15 September, also happens to be the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the opening act of the 10-day High Holy Days of Judaism, ending with Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish liturgical cycle.

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Why Would I Persist to Anchor Myself in Christianity?

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation4 Comments

By Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk

I don’t think it is accurate to call myself a Christian at this point.

My operative theology and spirituality hasn’t changed suddenly or anything.

My relationship with Jesus is fundamentally unchanged.

But several things have made it clear that my relationship with Christianity has changed in such a way that I cannot see myself “in” it. Both in an abstract “universal church” level as well as in particular expressions and institutions that consider themselves Christian.

1) Such a vast majority of Christian communities excludes me at a core level. There isn’t a single denomination that has a thorough and unreserved inclusion of trans women in a consistent way. And though I can name specific congregations, organizations, and particular folks who embrace Christianity and celebrate my transness, I would have no problem being fully embraced in any of those communities as a non-Christian.

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The Accent on Economics

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Walter Brueggemann, re-posted from Labor Day 2020

Covenantal faith in the Bible refuses all dualisms and holds together matters of spirituality and economics. It is always a both/and, never an either/or. In the practice of the church, however, an accent on things spiritual has largely muted the accent on economics that is so prominent in the Bible. In more affluent churches, it is predictable that at times economics will be muted and spirituality made larger. In less affluent churches there is a temptation at times to disregard the heavy burden of economics in the Bible and present instead an extravagant vision of another world to the neglect of this one.

Given that recurring tilt that distorts the Bible, it is my estimate that church leadership now must redress this distortion by paying acute attention to economics in the Bible and in our society.

For many church leaders this will entail not only close, attentive study, but the learning of new interpretive categories and skills as well. Such a redress of energy and attention is not only evoked by our present social circumstance but required by the biblical testimony itself.

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A Way of Perception

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Theological Animation1 Comment

From Dr. Willie Jennings, professor of theology at Yale. This is from an interview he did with The Christian Century in 2021. He was asked what race has to do with theology (photo above from Mara Lavitt for Yale Divinity School).

The modern vision of race would not be possible without Christianity. This is a complicated statement, but I want people to think about this.

Inside the modern racial consciousness there is a Christian architecture, and also there is a racial architecture inside of modern Christian existence. There are three things we have to put on the table in order to understand how deeply race is tied to Chris­tianity. The first brings us back to the very heart of Christianity, the very heart of the story that makes Christian life intelligible.

That story is simply this: through a particular people called Israel, God brought the redemption of the world. That people’s story becomes the means through which we understand who God is and what God has done. Christianity is inside Israel’s story. At a certain point in time, the people who began to believe that story were more than just the people of Israel, more than just Jews. And at some point in time, those new believers, the gentiles, got tired of being told that they were strangers brought into someone else’s story—that this was not their story. They began—very early and very clearly—to push Israel out from its own story. They narrated their Christian existence as if Israel were not crucial to it.

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A Reading List for Repentance

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Tommy Airey

I’ve been working on a book project over the past few years. It has evolved into a series of shorter reflections focused on reconstructing a biblical spirituality committed to collective liberation for those of us who have been in a process of deconstructing fundamentalist, evangelical, conservative Catholic or denominational expressions of Christian Supremacy. This reconstruction project pivots on the Power of love, the only force that can fuel us to live for Something Else. 

I believe that this Something Else is rooted in the radical act of repenting from the American Dream, the corporate-sponsored conventional wisdom that comes at the awful expense of this agonizing statistic: the US and Canada comprise 5% of the world’s population – and consume over 30% of the world’s resources. I am calling the North American context the 5/30 Window, a play on what my white Evangelical pastors referred to as “the 10/40 Window,” the African, Asian and Middle Eastern regions of “unreached” people who live between ten and forty degrees north latitude. I am flipping the script and saying that the souls of dark-skinned Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims who live on the other side of the world do not need to get saved. We do. 

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