Gratitude is certainly a great thing—a spiritual practice, a discipline of noticing the gifts we receive. Festivals of gratitude honor the generosity and abundance of the earth and reinforce human interdependence with the more-than-human world. They have the power to restore relationship.
In this country, at this time, what we have as a festival of gratitude is Thanksgiving. How does that land for you? How is this holiday for you?
I know that so many of those reading this email are spiritual deep-divers. I’m wondering if Thanksgiving rings hollow for some of you, if you find yourself longing for something with more authenticity and depth.
After digging into the history of this holiday, I’ve come to think that Thanksgiving is “under occupation.”
Another compelling offering from The Alternative Seminary.
Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart is a minister, professor, and movement strategist. Naomi has worked as a faith organizer and director for POWER Interfaith, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and the Mayor’s Office of Public Engagement in the city of Philadelphia. She teaches emerging scholars of religion and theology at Villanova University, Arcadia University, and Harvard School of Divinity. Registration is required. You can register here.
The deadline for registration is November 25.
If you have any questions, please contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com or 267-339-8989. The Alternative Seminary is a program of biblical and theological study and reflection designed to foster an authentic biblical witness in the modern world.
“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.” – William Butler Yeats
When I was twenty-one, I tried to take all of Bill Tuttle’s history courses. He was a middle-aged white guy with bushy eyebrows and out-of-control curls who wore tie-dye t-shirts to class. He was warm, welcoming and had a passion for justice. I was enthralled by all his lectures on the Black Freedom Struggle.
What’s weird is that, at the time, I was a white Christian nationalist.
I was an undergrad at the University of Kansas and I was mastering the art of compartmentalizing. I read Dr. King’s speeches and studied the history of housing segregation. I was learning so much, and yet, I kept all that important information in books, in classrooms, in papers, and in the safe, secure corners of my head and heart.
On June 4, 2025, Leqaa Kordia wrote this statement in Arabic from her cell at Prairieland Detention Center in Texas. Her loved ones translated it into English. #FreeLeqaaKordia
Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of God. Peace be upon you, O Palestine. Peace be upon Gaza, the steadfast and proud.
Peace be upon a people who taught the world the meaning of patience, dignity, and resilience.
Peace be upon the mothers who buried the remains of their children on street corners—and still chose to keep living.
Peace be upon the fathers whose eyes wept for the first time—and oh, what a brutal first time it was.
Peace be upon the wounded, tending to their own wounds with the soothing remembrance of Allah, the Almighty.
Peace be upon our noble martyrs, precious and beloved.
Peace be upon our free, glorious prisoners who are charting the path to freedom.
Peace be upon the sleepless, exhausted doctors—the architects of miracles.
Peace be upon those who pull the living from beneath the ruins, from the darkness of rubble to the light of afar where relief is within reach.
Peace be upon the teacher who truly understands the command of god to “Read.”
Peace be upon you, a people purified through your patience.
To you, the free people across the world, the rebels, the defiant, the unwavering—peace be upon you and my deepest respect.
I write to you from a cold place, hoping my words may carry a little warmth amid the tragedies, the suffering and the unimaginable stories I witness here.
Still, I write with full certainty that we will all be freed from this cruel injustice.
And I believe, with all my heart that I will meet you soon as a free woman—God willing.
From me—a granddaughter of the Nakba—to you, the generation of return and the makers of freedom. Accept my greetings and reverence.
Leqaa Korda Daughter of Gaza, Granddaughter of Nakba survivors from Yafa June 4, 2025 Prairieland Detention Center
Shanah Tovah to all our Jewish comrades out there doing the holy work of tikkun olam. This is from our friends at Jewish Voice for Peace.
This year, may the shofar be a wake-up call for all. As we enter 5786, our commitment to justice is greater than ever.
This sacred time of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur demands that we recommit to the work of tikkun olam, repairing the world. That means doing everything in our power to end the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians and build a future of freedom and safety for Palestinians and all people. And as we work collectively to build Judaism beyond Zionism, we know that the high holidays offer potent rituals to fortify us for the long haul.
This is a moment of collective atonement. As you read this, the Israeli military is starving over two million Palestinians in Gaza to death. We call on the US government to end its support for the Israeli government’s genocide, and we call on all people of conscience to divest from death and speak out in defense of life.
An excerpt from Rev. Dr. Howard-John Wesley’s sermon last Sunday. Listen to whole thing here.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated. But I’m overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land. And hearing people with selective rage who are mad about Charlie Kirk, but didn’t give a damn about Melissa Hortman and her husband when they were shot down in their home, tell me I ought to have compassion for the death of a man who had no respect for my own life. I am sorry, but there’s nowhere in bible where we are taught to honor evil. How you die does not redeem how you lived. You do not become a hero in your death when you are a weapon of the enemy in your life.
Another compelling offering from the Alternative Seminary.
AN ONLINE GATHERING: Saturday morning, September 6, 2025from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm EST
What fellowship has anarchy with christianity?
Empowering small communities of people to take care of their own needs at the local level. Rejecting rulership and making decisions by consensus through face-to-face deliberation. Constructing societies in which people are placed above profit and systems are built on solidarity and mutual aid.
It is no coincidence that this describes both the historical movement of anarchism and the early church as described in the Acts of the Apostles.
In this gathering, we will explore the history, philosophy, and practice of anarcho-communism and how they cohere with the teachings of Jesus and the practices of the early christian communities. We will dive into how theologies touching on God, humanity, divine-human interaction, the Bible, and more can be illuminated and faithfully reformulated through an anarchist lens. And we will chart a christian praxis based on voluntary cooperation, the goodness of all people, and faith in God. We can build an ethical world – one built on structures of care – and anarchy might just be the unlikely key.
The Rev. Terry J. Stokes (he/they) is an anarchist theologian who seeks to foster political and spiritual radicalization through his writing and speaking. He holds degrees from Yale University and Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained as a minister of word and sacrament by Park Avenue Baptist Church. He is a youth worker and associate minister in Trenton, NJ, and a group facilitator at The Wooden Shoe anarchist infoshop in Philadelphia. Their latest book is Jesus and the Abolitionists: How Anarchist Christianity Empowers the People.
If you have any questions, please contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com or 267-339-8989.
The Alternative Seminary is a program of biblical and theological study and reflection designed to foster an authentic biblical witness in the modern world.
An excerpt from Ched Myers’ commentary on this week’s Gospel text in Luke. The entire post is well worth reading, as it is every week. Check out Ched’s blog for his weekly comments and subscribe to his emails here.Also, check out his recent release (above) Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy.
There are three main problems with how church folk have been socialized to encounter scripture:
We handle texts as fragments, rarely grasping the narrative whole and flow;
Our habits of “fast food Bible study” allow only limited time and attention to “get to the point,” which fosters either overdependence upon an authority figure to tell us what the text means, and/or a settling for vast simplifications;
The focus of interpretation is almost always “personal application,” quite apart from social and historical context (ours and the text’s)—treating the Bible as an “answer book” or doctrinal rulebook.
The problem is, ancient storytelling was not simplistic, but a sophisticated art form using a variety of techniques to educate, preserve culture, and explore the human experience.
By Jennifer Maidrand, a professor of Bible, Culture, and Interpretation at United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. This is re-posted with permission from her social media page (07.29.25).
After spending the last month and a half in Palestine-Israel for research, I feel a clear affirmation in the work that is ahead and found a renewed prayer of sorts for the journey. And now that I’ve returned to the U.S., communicating what I witnessed during my time in occupied Palestine feels nearly impossible to yet urgent. Research aside, what did I see?
A situation more dire than I’ve seen in the last 11 years of spending time in the region
Countless new checkpoints and gates separating Palestinian society (from Israeli society and from itself) and restricting Palestinian freedom of movement—apartheid at work
The manifestation of the U.S. and Israel’s greenlighting of illegal settlements—outposts being built in hours, rampant settler violence and pogroms (protected by the Israeli military), more cars with Israeli than Palestinian plates in the West Bank
Palestinian homes being seized, demolished, and coercively sold left and right
More than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed since October 2023
By Jim Perkinson (above), a sermon for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit (July 27, 2025)
The disciples want to know how to pray. About time, huh? Actually, there is more going on here than we usually register. This is a typical disciple-request of chosen rabbis in 1st century Palestine. They are really asking for the Teacher to distill the heart of his teaching in a pray-able formula. They want the essence, the unadulterated core of what is being admonished. But here the ante is upped.
Jesus has just set his face to take his show to Jerusalem for the high-noon show-down with the Powers-that-be at the end of chapter 9. They are going for broke—like going up into White House today to shut down operations in protest of Palestinian genocide while carrying a green card from some place called “Galilee.” Jesus has just predicted his death in the process in a huddle with his inner circle. The disciples are beginning to entertain the thought that he might not be around much longer. So, indeed, what is it he is saying to do?
The so-called “Lord’s Prayer”—that the Black Church in this country more accurately calls the “Disciples Prayer”—is a stripped-down version of the more lyrical rendition we meet with in Matthew. And its heart is food and debt. “Give us this day our daily bread” is an invocation of the prime lesson of the Exodus walkout from Egypt when escaped slaves were directed to “gather”—as in hunt-and-gather—”manna,” which literally, in Hebrew, means “what the F is it?”
Radical Discipleship 