By Ken Sehested
Almost every breakthrough begins with a breakdown. Goodness is not thereby assured; then again, neither is our breath, day by day.
We hope to be effective; but our perseverance is not hitched to efficacy. We insert ourselves, compassionately and intelligently, because that’s who we are. (Or at least who we are becoming.) Continue reading “More is at Work than Passes for the News”
Rev. Dr. Nick Peterson (right) says he was just shooting from the hip in these posts last week. We say he was shooting straight for our heart.
I mean if we want to talk about looting, let’s talk about the “stolen properties” that structure the entire existence of this horrible project. America is a testimony to the sanctity of white looting. #pentecost
Looting in 1607. That’s when the first “permanent” English settlement was established on the “James” river.
What 4 centuries, not days, of “looting” look like. Continue reading “Looting”
A word from Dr. Catherine Meeks (originally posted to social media on May 17, 2020).
These days for me are just like yours, some of them are far better than others. Today is a better day. So I want to share out of that space with you this morning.
I have been thinking about Dr. Vincent Harding, historian, speechwriter for Dr. King and all around holy man and his vision of us “building up a new world in this country.” These thoughts have been accompanied by my writing and thinking about reparations and all of these thoughts are contextualized by this Covid-19 era and what seems to be a new wave of white violence against African Americans. Continue reading “Diving Into the Wreck”
By Tommy Airey
*Note: I submitted this op-ed to The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Oregonian. None of them printed it. So I submit it to you.
The white Christians marching with their flags and firearms on state capitals and main streets make it clear: they have neither a care nor a clue about how COVID-19 is disproportionately killing non-white populations. While they protest, Black residents in Detroit shelter-in with water taps shut-off, Indigenous peoples attempt to contain outbreaks on reservations with limited access to health care and Immigrants around the country work the front-lines at unsafe meat processing plants mandated to stay open by an executive order. Unfortunately, the spectacle of the fascist few takes the focus off the rest of us white folk—the silent, enabling masses—also careless and clueless. The coronavirus may be novel, but the overwhelming disregard for Black and Brown life is not. Continue reading “A Spiritual Pandemic”
From yesterday’s Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice press conference (Detroit, MI) in response to the white Christian “protest” at the Capitol in Lansing.
My name is Bill Wylie-Kellermann. I’m a United Methodist pastor in Detroit, recently retired from St Peter’s Episcopal Church, and a member of Michigan Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
I speak as a white male Christian outraged at the public display of white supremacy in these demonstrations against the health requirements of Michigan under COVID 19. Continue reading “Racism is a Demonic Possession”
By Ric Hudgens (right)
I just finished teaching a class in Eco-Ministry at Garrett Seminary. My initial (and still favorite) title for the course was a play on John Wesley’s quote, “the world is my parish.” I wanted to call it The Earth is Our Parish. However, the formal title became “CL-621 Earth Ministry for Ecological Renewal.” CL-621 is one of the core courses in the Ecological Regeneration Concentration of Garrett’s new Masters in Public Ministry program.
I’m writing about it here not primarily to promote Garrett Seminary, but because this Eco-Ministry is a growing edge in contemporary ministry. It often has interfaith and eco-spiritual aspects, which are essential. But its placement in Garrett’s new Public Ministry degree gave it a distinctive social and political slant that is sometimes missing. Garrett’s version also featured radical discipleship resources that gave it a particular focused and practical impact. Continue reading “Teaching Eco-Ministry”
From Alice Walker’s autobiography Anything We Loved Can Be Saved. Happy Belated Mother’s Day.
All people deserve to worship a God who also worships them. A God that made them, and likes them. That is why Nature, Mother Earth, is such a good choice. Never will Nature require that you cut off some part of your body to please It; never will Mother Earth find anything wrong with your natural way. She made it, and She made it however it is so that you will be more comfortable as part of Her Creation, rather than less. Everyone deserves a God who adores our freedom: Nature would never advise us to do anything but be ourselves. Mother Earth will do all that She can to support our choices. Whatever they are. For they are of Her, and inherent in our creation is Her trust.
Sheldon C. Good, executive director of The Mennonite, Inc., interviewed Ibram X. Kendi about antiracism and the church by email Sept. 3. The interview, edited for clarity, appears below. The editorial in the October issue of The Mennonite, available here, includes part of the interview.
Kendi is author of How to Be an Antiracist. He won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book Stamped from the Beginning. He is the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C.
1. You make the case in How to Be an Antiracist that the word “racist” has been removed from its proper usage. How did that happen?
The most virulent racists define racist as anyone who uses the r-words, race or racism. They say, racist is a pejorative term, it is the equivalent of saying I don’t like you, as Richard Spencer once said. Anyone who categorizes people by race, who calls someone racist, is the real racist, they say. Obviously, they are deeply defensive, and deeply in denial. As such, they don’t want to be called racist. They shut down and close up when they do. Some racial reformers have agreed and view “racist” as an attack. So they don’t use the term either. But racist is a descriptive term, not an attack. It describes when a person is saying there is something wrong or right with a racial group. It describes when a person is supporting racist policy with their action or inaction. Continue reading “Interrogation of Everything”
Inspired by Ched’s “Easter Faith and Empire” article, Katerina Friesen wrote the following litany for Farm Church (Ventura River Watershed in California) on Sunday, April 26 for an adapted “Bread of Life” communion time.
El Peregrino camina con nosotr@s (The Sojourner walks with us)
When we are confused, disillusioned after hopes of revolution,
Disappointed by loss after loss, Jesus opens our minds. Continue reading “Emmaus Road Litany”
An excerpt from Ched Myers’ classic article “Easter Faith and Empire: Recovering the Prophetic Tradition on the Emmaus Road.” These comments are posted just in time for this weekend’s Gospel text Luke 24:13-35.
Luke tells us that Jesus addresses these fit-to-be-tied disciples as “fools”
(24: 25). But the Greek term anontoi refers simply to those who don’t
quite get it, who find the truth as yet unintelligible (cf. Romans 1:14;
Galatians 3:1,3} He knows their hearts are “sluggish” (Greek, bradeis),
as indeed are ours. Because we, like Cleopas and company, forever refuse to embrace the counterintuitive wisdom of the Hebrew prophets.
The prophets tell us to defend the poor, but we lionize the rich. The prophets tell us that horses and chariots cannot save us, but we are transfixed by the apparent omnipotence of modern military technology. The prophets tell us to forgo idolatry, but we compulsively fetishize the work of our own hands, Above all, the prophets warn us that the way to liberation in a world locked down by the spiral of violence, the way to redemption in a world of enslaving addictions, the way to true transformation in a world of deadened conscience and numbing conformity is the way of nonviolent, sacrificial, creative love. But we who are slow of heart–a euphemism for not having courage–instead remain fiercely loyal to ever more fabulous myths of redemptive violence, practices of narcissism, and delusions of our own nobility.
Radical Discipleship 