Category: Theological Animation

Normalize

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his Substack newsletter

Last week, I wrote about how the social construction project of empire hammers away at our humanity with all sorts of destructive norms. This week, I woke up on Monday morning to the jack-hammering of a construction project two blocks north of us on Rosa Parks Blvd, right across the street from Greater Faith Missionary Baptist Church.

It’s Spring in Detroit. These days, the jack-hammering goes into overdrive.

My Celtic ancestors called this season Beltane, a whirling dervish of planting, budding, birds and bees, a time to celebrate abundance, fertility and fresh ideas. Beltane, which begins on May 1, literally means “bright fire.” My deep ancestors on the Emerald Isle cleansed their souls and sparked the land back to life by jumping over bonfires. They did this every year before they drove their cattle out to pasture.

Speaking of pasture, Psalm 23 comes up in the Western Christian lectionary this weekend. This ancient Hebrew text, famously read at funerals, describes the divine as a shepherd who restores our souls by leading us out of imperial construction projects, into a wilderness of green pastures and still waters. This feral Force, overflowing with goodness and steadfast love, is greater than empire itself.

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The Revolutionary Jesus: Living the Reign of God in a Time of Fascism

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Another compelling offering from our friends at the Alternative Seminary. 

A SIX-WEEK ONLINE COURSE

Thursday evenings, May 29 – July 3, 2024

7:00 – 9:00 pm EST

These are perilous times.  In the United States today, we are witnessing the emergence of fascist authoritarianism.  Undergirding this movement is a militant White Christian Nationalism – a dangerous heresy in which “American Jesus” is a gun-toting, law-and-order, pro-military, pro-capitalist, and racist Messiah of the Domination System.

We urgently need to recover the authentic Jesus of the Gospels.  Together we will explore the radical and revolutionary vision of Jesus in the midst of this emerging fascism.  What does Jesus mean in proclaiming “the reign of God”? How can we both prophetically challenge the idolatrous theology in U.S. society and seek to embody a faithful alternative? We will reflect on how the Gospel addresses issues of politics, economics, power, healing, community, and suffering, and how they can empower us to action. We will seek to draw from faith-based resistance movements, including the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany.  We will struggle with how Jesus challenges us to be a Beloved Community in these insane and vicious times. 

Continue reading “The Revolutionary Jesus: Living the Reign of God in a Time of Fascism” →

Confronting Christian Supremacy: Part 2 Anti-Muslim and Anti-Palestinian Racism

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Another compelling offer from Christians for a Free Palestine on May 15 at 8pmEDT. Register HERE.

As Christians who recognize the troubling legacy of Christian supremacy and are committed to the safety and liberation of all people, we have a responsibility for the Christian roots of anti-Muslim hatred, its impact on U.S. foreign policy, and its implications for Palestine. More details to come.

This is the second in a series on Confronting Christian Supremacy. In April we discussed Christian supremacy, antisemitism, and Project Esther.

In Defense of People’s Dignity

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From organizer and theologian Claudia de la Cruz, re-posted from X (04.21.2025).

In November 2016, I participated in the 3rd Gathering of Social Movements in Rome. A process initiated by the @MST_Oficial

Pope Francis shared a powerful message that day which was anti capitalist and centered humanity and the planet as sacred. His message was one in defense of people’s dignity and the right to housing, land and work. He also shared a very humble request – “if you pray, pray for me. If you don’t, send me good vibes!” I couldn’t help but do both, after all, he was speaking these words from The Vatican- a place of power and contradictions.

As it is with many, his life wasn’t a straight line, but it was filled with moments of great courage and love for the people. He stood against blockades, sanctions, capitalism, militarism and genocide. He spoke up for Cuba, Palestine and all who’ve suffered as a result of oppressive and exploitative systems. His faith and convictions moved him in the direction of the people- as it should be.

Words from his speech to the movements who were present in Rome in 2016.

“Who is really in charge, then? Money. How does it govern? With the whip of fear, of inequality, and of economic, social, cultural, and military violence—a violence that breeds more and more violence in a downward spiral that seems never-ending. So much pain, so much fear!

As I’ve said before, there is a foundational terrorism that arises from the global control of money over the earth and threatens all of humanity. Terrorism truly begins when “you have cast aside the wonder of creation—man and woman—and replaced it with money.” That system is terrorist.

This warped system may offer certain cosmetic implants that are not true development: economic growth, technological advances, greater “efficiency” in producing things that are bought, used, and thrown away—dragging us all into a frenzied cycle of waste…

But this world does not allow for the full development of the human being —development that cannot be reduced to consumption, that is not limited to the well-being of a few, but that includes all peoples and individuals in the fullness of their dignity, allowing them to share as brothers and sisters in the wonder of Creation. That is the kind of development we need: human, integral, respectful of Creation, of this common home.”

The Faith of Abused and Scandalized People

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Lynching TreeOn Good Friday, we get back to the basics: an excerpt from James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2013).

The real scandal of the gospel is this: humanity’s salvation is revealed in the cross of the condemned criminal Jesus, and humanity’s salvation is available only through our solidarity with the crucified people in our midst. Faith that emerged out of the scandal of the cross is not a faith of intellectuals or elites of any sort. This is the faith of abused and scandalized people—the losers and the down and out. It was this faith that gave blacks the strength and courage to hope, “to keep on keeping on,” struggling against the odds with what Paul Tillich called “the courage to be.”

The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, shameful events, instruments of punishment reserved for the most despised people in society. Any genuine theology and any genuine preaching of the Christian gospel must be measured against the test of the scandal of the cross and the lynching tree.

A Critical Conversation

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An important message from Christians for a Free Palestine.

In the coming months, we’re engaging in a series of critical conversations about Christian supremacy and how it affects the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

Our first conversation in this series will take place Thursday, April 10, at 8:00pm ET / 5:00pm PT. We’ll be joined by Ben Lorber, author of “Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism”, Shoshana Brown from the Diaspora Alliance, and Rev. Anne Dunlap from @liberatinglineagescollective for a discussion about Christian supremacy, antisemitism, Project Esther, and more.

Register HERE.

Fallow Trees and Falling Cities

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

A sermon from Jim Perkinson on Luke 13:1-9 (March 23, 2025 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, MI)

13 There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? 3 I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Silo′am fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. 9 And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Lk 13:1-9)

You know me, always trying to get down under the meaning, looking for an unforeseen seed going on journey in the soil, suddenly bursting unanticipated from below ground.  Well, it happened here. In today’s text   We read our bibles in English. Which translates the ancient Latin (Vulgate). Which translates the Greek.  Which translates the Aramaic. Which translates the Hebrew.  We are more than four times removed, more than four cultures out of sync with the text.  We can’t really get back there in any pristine form but can at least muse.  Let some things happen with images that provoke consternation or amusement!  So come with me for a minute.

Our indigenous teacher, Martín Prechtel is always telling us, “Pay attention to the etymology, to the sequence of meanings that a given word harbors over time.”  Underneath this word right here, that seems mundane and boring to you, there is an older meaning, and under it an even older meaning, and then another and another and another.  Follow the root of the word back and down and ultimately you come out in place that is likely ancestral and indigenous and very different than here in the seemingly “ordinary” sense the word now conveys.  There are ancestors and grand mysteries up inside many of our words, but deep under their present appearance and sound—like the hair on the side of a root of a mushroom under the soil, leading into a network as wide as an entire forest. 

Continue reading “Fallow Trees and Falling Cities” →

The Plutocrat and the Prophet

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By Ched Myers, a few comments about the Gospel texts for the 2nd and 3rd Sundays of Lent, re-posted from Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. If you are in Southern California in early April, register to attend the official launch of Ched’s new book here.

In a sequence that runs from Luke 12:35–13:9, Jesus names five examples of brutality endured by poor and working classes who labor and live in the world of wealthy “lords”:

  1. household servants enduring sleeplessness (12:37) and beatings (12:47);
  2. debtor’s prison (12:58–59);
  3. Galileans suffering violence at the hands of Roman authorities (13:1–3);
  4. pedestrians killed by dangerous urban construction (13:4–5); and
  5. oppressive demands on peasants for agricultural production by absentee landlords (13:6–9).

Jesus’s warning to “settle out of court” (2) refers to a judicial system controlled by the landlord class that routinely imprisoned the poor for indebtedness.” Pilate’s massacre of Galileans (3)—perhaps during a Passover pilgrimage, hence the reference to “their sacrifices” (13:1)—could refer to any number of skirmishes between Roman authorities and Judean dissidents during the first century CE, many of which were documented by the Jewish historian Josephus. Urban construction accidents (4) were common, given the notorious working conditions and “code violations” that characterized ambitious and hasty Herodian building projects. Those two incidents might be connected if the Tower of Siloam was part of Roman aqueduct construction, since Josephus reports that Pilate killed a group of Jews who were protesting his seizure of Temple funds to pay for imperial waterworks projects in Jerusalem. . Jesus’s emphatic refrain—“I tell you, unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” (13:3, 5)—implies that unless his people defect from this system, they too would be killed by its oppressions (Luke uses apollumi far more frequently than any other N.T. writer). These are some of many reasons that Jesus repudiates the “peace” of an imperial system that routinely generates such violations (12:51).

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You Will Cry Out Because of Your King

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By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler (above), Pastor Emeritus of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ and Director and Chief Visionary of Faith Strategies, LLC

As a clergy person who has served congregations in the Black and of-color communities in Chicago, Boston and Washington, DC for over 45 years I am acutely aware of the traumas and anxieties that are encountered because of changing political administrations nationally, regionally, and locally, and how they impact families and lives. Politicians and even the media often speak in broad generalities of what a change means statistically, according to the latest poll, and its implications for government and how it may set a precedent or not. But those of us serving pastorally in local communities are called upon to allay fears, to bind the wounds, make meaning out of the meaninglessness, find silver linings amidst the dark clouds, and to identify hope in the despair and confusion. We have done this many times, but at no time has the impact been as stark, devastating, or as frightening as it is now. 

With Trump/Musk/DOGE, and their radical approach to government there are many lives traumatized by the fears and are suffering from the emotional abuse inflicted on those who have worked for the federal government and their families. There are also many contractors and vendors associated with government work experiencing the same high anxieties that comes with the uncertainty and worries associated with the political battering of uncertainty and threats inflicted on families and their sense of stability and security.

Continue reading “You Will Cry Out Because of Your King” →