Category: Theological Animation

Soul Care for Weary Activists

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

A potent word for this particular moment from Rev. Dr. Edgar Rivera Colón (above). The intro is re-posted here from Sojourners.

LIKE THE AUTHOR of the First Letter of John, we are living in a time for “testing the spirits.” That is, we must discern the forms of freedom, or unfreedom, offered to us as we read the signs of our historical moment — a time in which the catastrophic is often our daily bread.

Many of us have made homes in religious traditions where we have found collective love, care, community-building, and resilience. But so much of what passes as spiritual in the United States — churches who only see their work as therapeutic, prosperity gospel proponents, white evangelical nationalists, New Age movements — is commodification by other means. John warns us against false prophets who, through quick fixes and distorted spiritual comforts, foster division and confusion in the service of lucrative self-aggrandizement.

I am an ordained minister in the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, and I work as a movement chaplain in Los Angeles. I was trained as a spiritual director, and I have been doing ministry with faith-rooted activists since 2016. My work is informed by my primary training as a medical anthropologist and community researcher. I know that Jesus said that we humans are of more value than many sparrows, but I’ve found that we are a lot like them. We need refuge and sustenance. We need shelter. We need to nest somewhere. But with whom shall we do this for the short and long haul? And where shall we build our nests?

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Edgar Rivera Colón, a movement chaplain, spiritual director, and medical anthropologist, teaches health justice and the history of racism in U.S. medical institutions at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.

Level Ground

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Ched Myers, a reflection on Luke 6:17-26, re-posted from Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. We are eagerly awaiting the release of Ched’s newest book on Luke’s Gospel Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy (above) in early April. Pre-Order it here.

In the gospel text for the Sixth Sunday in Epiphany, Luke brings Matthew’s Sermon on the  Mount down to “level ground.” Its rhetorical fire “raises up” the poor and “brings down” the rich, just as the Magnificat promised.  

David King’s 2022 Reclaiming the Radical Economic Message of Luke is one of the few other contemporary studies of Luke’s radical economics out there. He points out that Jesus’ opening lines to the Sermon on the Plain contains curses which parallel the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Plain. “Damn you rich! You already have your consolation. Damn you who are well-fed now! You will know hunger”… It is part of the standard theme of reversal, but it is also an acknowledgement of God’s disdain for wealth.

As such, it is truly a text of terror for contemporary middle class readers. (For a recent sermon that faces squarely the “discomfort” this text brings to middle class ears, see here).

Continue reading “Level Ground” →

Spiritual Genius

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

The opening paragraphs of “Communities of Care and Concern” by Rev. Dr. Nick Peterson, an assistant professor of Homiletics and Worship at Christian Theological Seminary in Indy. As a practical theologian, Nick interrogates how intentional and unintentional practices shape Christian identities and configure worldviews. Click on The Political Theology Network here to read it in its entirety.

Oppression overwhelms. Its incessant dehumanizing and dishonoring practices work together to undermine human dignity and quench the spark of hope that dreams of otherwise possibilities. Surviving and overcoming oppression require what Mother Ruby Sales has coined “spiritual genius.” This genius represents a determined refusal to surrender one’s value and worth to the deformed imagination of the oppressor.

Sales describes this genius as conscience-making work, where the fundamental narratives that make life meaningful affirm self-love without requiring hatred of others. For Sales, spiritual genius requires intimacy with the Creator and the ability to never let hate take root in the heart.

Similarly, Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday is on the 15th,  said in his final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?,

“The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of [their] intellect, [their] racial origin or [their] social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God.”

The ultimate problem with oppression is its intention to profane – to render the oppressed beyond divine relationality – to violently desacralize the human subject.

Click here to keep reading.

Altadena

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Re-posted from Word in Black, a ground-breaking collaboration of ten legendary Black news publishers.

As the rapidly-spreading Eaton wildfire in Los Angeles crept closer to the home he’d lived in for nearly six decades, Rodney Nickerson, 83, wasn’t going to panic. Despite the pleas of his worried daughter and anxious neighbors, he was staying put. 

It apparently made sense for him to hold on: he bought the house in 1968, back when it wasn’t easy for Black people to own property in L.A., much less in a great neighborhood like Altadena. To Nickerson, a retired engineer who clocked in at Lockheed-Martin for almost half a century, there was no reason to panic. He would ride it out. 

“He said, ‘I’ll be fine,’” his daughter, Kimko Nickerson, told a reporter for KCAL, a local TV news station. “He said, ‘I’ll be here when you come back and the house will be here.’” 

Tragically, he miscalculated: when she returned to the house, Kimko Nickerson found her father’s body in the charred, smoldering ruins. 

Continue reading “Altadena” →

No Matter What the Colonizers Say or Do

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation3 Comments

White Christians and Jewish Americans have been socialized to be scared of images like this. But isn’t this is pretty much what Mary the Palestinian Jewish teen mother of Jesus would have looked like?

In the Gospel of Luke, it says that Mary prayed to a God who brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. A God who has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty!

Mary was part of the resistance.

As she called on a Power greater than empire, Mary summoned what Palestinians call sumud.  Steadfastness. Standing firm in the face of occupation. Never surrendering their humanity and dignity. No matter what the colonizers say or do.

Here’s to all the courageous young people on college campuses in 2024 who pitched tents and got arrested as they demanded that their campuses divest from companies profiting off of land theft and genocide.

And Every Mountain Brought Low: The Voice in the Wilderness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Jim Perkinson, a sermon on Luke 3:1-6 for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, MI (December 8, 2024)

So, we’ll begin way out in left field.  The indigenous teacher my wife and I have been frequenting for more than 12 years now—half white, half Native, growing up among the Pueblo folk of northern New Mexico, adopted into, trained by, and living among the Tzutujil Maya of Guatemala for more than 10 years before being sent back to the States to keep their traditions alive as the civil war there was destroying their culture and indigenous ways—wrote a book a few years ago called The Unlikely Peace of Cuchumaqiq: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive.  In it, he—Martín Prechtel— recounted his experience of the Feb. 4, 1976 earthquake in Guatemala whose 7.6 rumble on the Richter scale killed more than 22,000 people and displaced some 1.2 million. 

Curiously, Prechtel begins that book with stories of Native kids running 15-kilometer races in area high school competitions, through the canyons near the Pueblo, which they almost always won, but refused to win as individuals.  Rather they would wait for each other before crossing the finish line, so only the entire Native group of kids, not an individual, would be crowned winner.  Or not. Running wasn’t about winning.  It was about running.  Being magnificent in your movement.  Interesting, but why begin a book on a mega-earthquake experience by talking about running?  We’ll get to that later.

Continue reading “And Every Mountain Brought Low: The Voice in the Wilderness” →

An Abiding and Rebirthing Darkness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

From our friends and comrades at Mennonite Action.

This Advent, we are remembering the activist and theologian Barbara Holmes. Over her lifetime, Dr. Holmes dedicated her prophetic voice of contemplative wisdom to call us on The Way with the Incarnate Jesus. Jesus is the one who has come, is always coming, and is ever present, transforming us into the Creator’s image and likeness.

Over the years, we have attended to Dr. Holmes’ voice crying out in the wilderness against the unspeakable suffering of human and non-human creation — suffering inflicted by human hands, heads, and hearts of warring madness. Although Dr. Holmes died earlier this year, her prophetic voice and spiritual wisdom lives on, crying out to be heard and heeded.

She writes, “When there is a crisis, it takes a village to survive” because “it is the village that enters into crisis.” In her book, Crisis Contemplation: Healing the Wounded World, Dr. Holmes explains: “Crises open portals of deeper knowing. When the crisis occurs, the only way out is through, so we take a cue from nature and relax into the stillness, depending upon one another and the breath of life!”

Continue reading “An Abiding and Rebirthing Darkness” →

Advent for Palestine

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Re-posting this beautiful children’s Advent calendar from the Rev. Stands for the Revolution, the Substack newsletter of Rev. Addie Domske, an ordained minister and trained movement chaplain who lifts up queer abundance and Jesus’ rebellious message.

One thing I want to be when I grow up is a cool, radical auntie.

I have been trying to be good at this role for about 15 years now, starting when the first of my four niblings1 was born. I will find out from them in their collective adulthood if I succeeded.

I have lived far, far away from all four of them for their entire lives, so most of my interactions come from mailing them things, (I had the cutest pen pal relationship with my oldest nibling when he was a wee lad.) A few years ago, I started the tradition of sending them all advent calendars each year based on their interests at the time. This year I’m proclaiming that they are all interested in Palestine, because my spouse and I decided to spend all of our Christmas gift funds for our external families on products from Palestinian artisans.2

Continue reading “Advent for Palestine” →

Festival of Radical Discipleship

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

A message from Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, the executive director of Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center.

Dear Radical Discipleship friends,

We are excited to invite you the Festival of Radical Discipleship May 23-26, 2025 at Kirkridge Retreat Center in Bangor, PA.

This gathering is a Collaboration between Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries (BCM) and Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center.

Grace Boggs, Detroit organizer and now ancestor, would ask over and over again, “What time is it on the clock of the world?” We cannot deny that we are standing at an urgent and catastrophic moment. We are witnessing an assault on humanity and all of creation from so many directions. From climate disaster to genocidal militarism, to racial and religious supremacy, and so much more.  

Our souls are hungering for time and community to be asking what it means to live humanly in this moment. We need to create space for listening and discernment, deep study and imaginative organizing, a diversity of voices and stories, and perhaps more than anything else hope and joy. So, dear friends, we are throwing a festival! 

We are hosting the Second Festival of Radical Discipleship- a gathering of kindred spirits rooted in the radical Christian tradition. It will be a time to remember past gospel experiments, discuss current calls to witness and work; and conspire about future collaborations! Come and join the feast. 

Continue reading “Festival of Radical Discipleship” →