Category: Theological Animation

Peace

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

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

Choose Life

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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.

Continue reading “Choose Life” →

A Weapon of the Enemy

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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.

Anarchist Christianity: The Sermon on the Mount in Action

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Another compelling offering from the Alternative Seminary.

AN ONLINE GATHERING: Saturday morning, September 6, 2025 from 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. 

Registration is required. Click HERE to register.

The cost is $10 (or whatever you can afford).

The deadline for registration is September 2.

The Facebook page is HERE.

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.  

A Sophisticated Art Form

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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.

Click here to read the rest!

A Renewed Prayer

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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

Continue reading “A Renewed Prayer” →

Daily Bread? Or Three Loaves at Midnight?

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

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?”

Continue reading “Daily Bread? Or Three Loaves at Midnight?” →

Behind the Scenes

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By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his Substack newsletter. Audio version available here.

Two weeks before Donald Trump bombed Iran under false pretenses to protect an apartheid state’s right to commit genocide on Palestinians and then (true to form) tweeted “now is the time for peace,” the Waymos were burning up in Los Angeles.

Watching that scene from 2,000 miles away brought me back to a Saturday in early Spring, when my friend Sheldon and I drove to downtown LA to march with staff and faculty from UCLA demanding the protection of their international students who have publicly demanded that the university divest from occupation and genocide.

We parked and walked a dozen blocks to the corner of Broadway and Temple. On our way, we were stunned to see our first Waymo, the uber that runs on a Silicon Valley algorithm, now operating in a handful of cities. We struggled to come up with adjectives as we watched this moving car, in the middle of downtown, with no one at the wheel. 

After we drove back to Orange County and had dinner, I was cleaning the kitchen when I heard a horrible crash in front of my mom’s house. Sheldon and I ran outside to find a car up in the bushes of the front yard right across the street.

There was a human driving this car. While we were trying to figure out how he got up there in the bushes, he was revving the engine to the limit, trying to get out. We could see that he hit a parked car next door and then demolished the electric box.

Continue reading “Behind the Scenes” →

Idols

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

The beginning and conclusion of Chris Hedges’ latest piece “The Last Days of Gaza.”

This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.

In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them…

…There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardizing their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs. They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols. They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them.

At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.