Category: Theological Animation

Fifteen Years Fermented

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

Little CaesarOn September 12, the brand new $800 million+ Little Caesar’s Arena kicked off with a Kid Rock concert on the southern edge of the Cass Corridor in Detroit. It was the culmination of white billionaire Mike Ilitch’s* fifteen-year “dereliction by design,” scores of properties purchased and left to rot.  Land values were intentionally driven lower so Ilitch could buy even more. One week after the grand opening, prompted by this journalistic prose, Lindsay Airey was visited by a nightmare. Her attempt to relay it in poetry: 

A sea of black faces.
Beaten, downtrodden
by violent displacement,
callous disregard.
Greed turned sick
the souls
of these precious ones’
attackers.
Gluttonous murder,
seeping like poison,
hemorrhaging
out their murdering pores. Continue reading “Fifteen Years Fermented” →

Irma and La Tuna, Charlottesville and North Korea: The Voice Under the Voice, Still Unheard

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation, Watershed Discipleship1 Comment
KidRockTrump
Detroit, Michigan: Six sold-out shows to open up the new $800 million Little Caesar’s Arena

Dr. James Perkinson, Ecumenical Theological Seminary (Detroit, MI)

The signs of our time shout! Harvey hammers Houston and the entire Gulf Coast camps out in a boat or a grave. Then comes Irma with Jose and Katya in Her wake, raking an entire peninsula with rebuke. While fire ungraced with gendered traces of naming, blisters the west. All on top of Charlottesville, itself evoking Trump, chopping restraints militant and policing, channeling a large chunk of the dominant demographic of the country! As I write, Kid Rock readies his concert of hate in downtown Detroit, as front for the Ilitch family take of Motown turf, faking concern, raking in tax dollar support, celebrating white vituperation in the gala opening of a new ice hockey stadium at the core of an 82 % black city. Little Caesar indeed! But what do all of these events have to do with each other? How might a community aspiring to some measure of humanity and morality “hear” what these events sound out? I do not yet even dare to say, “Respond.” Continue reading “Irma and La Tuna, Charlottesville and North Korea: The Voice Under the Voice, Still Unheard” →

Sermon: It’s Like Burning Fire Shut Up in my Bones

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment

roseBy Rose Berger, preached at St. Stephen’s & The Incarnation Episcopal Church (Washington, D.C.)
June 25, 2017

Jeremiah 20:7-13, Psalm 69: 8-11, (12-17), 18-20, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

[Piscataway people on whose land this church stands. Bishop Budde, Pastor Sam, Rev. Linda. The Beloved Community that gathers at St. Stephen’s and the Incarnation.]

The prophet Jeremiah was asked to carry out one of the most difficult tasks ever assigned to any servant of God.[1]

During the last years of the kingdom of Judah, Jeremiah was to prophesy to King and Congress that because of their sin their fragile nation would be subsumed by the Babylonian Empire and they would all forcibly removed to the capital city of Babylon. Continue reading “Sermon: It’s Like Burning Fire Shut Up in my Bones” →

Wild Lectionary: The Riff Raff, the Bedbugs, and the Signs

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized1 Comment

23-PovertyMascotsProper 18(23)

Exodus 7-12

By Laurel Dykstra

Now you know and I know, that lice, mice, roaches, bed-bugs, and rats are no respecters of persons. They invade the house of Pharaoh, the houses of his officials, and of all his people (Exod 8:21, 10:6); they infest the luxury hotels and the welfare hotels. But when the special shampoo costs eight dollars a bottle, and a visit from the exterminator $125, those that can—pay, and those that can’t, or whose landlord won’t—scratch.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: The Riff Raff, the Bedbugs, and the Signs” →

Wild Lectionary: “Fire in the Earth: Burning but Flourishing”

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed Discipleship2 Comments

imagesThirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 17 (22)

Exodus 3:1-15

By Rev. Matthew Syrdal

“There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it was not consumed… “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your shoes, for the place you are standing is holy ground.”

And we know, when Moses was told,
in the way he was told,
“Take off your shoes!” He grew pale from that simple

reminder of fire in the dusty earth.
He never recovered
his complicated way of loving again

and was free to love in the same way
he felt the fire licking at his heels loved him.
As if the lion earth could roar
and take him in one movement…
-all poetry excerpts from David Whyte, Fire in the Earth

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: “Fire in the Earth: Burning but Flourishing”” →

Sermon: Power of Names

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment
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My Grandma Bea, me, my mom, and my sister Lucy

Preached by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann at the Day House Catholic Worker
August 27, 2017

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Matthew 16:13-20

As I read the opening piece of the text from Exodus, it feels like I am reading a script from the white men who marched on Charlottesville two weeks ago.

It begins with the Pharaoh naming his fear that the Israelites are becoming too numerous and powerful. He is scared they will out-number and over-take him. He orders that they be forced into labor and when that doesn’t work, he orders murder.

It echoes of the treacherous low-wage labor forced on undocumented folks living in constant fear.

It echoes of a prison industrial complex holding captive more black men today than were enslaved in the south. Continue reading “Sermon: Power of Names” →

Charlottesville: A Reading List

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

AlexanderA great list of resources from The New York Public Library’s Gwen Glazer, Librarian, Readers Services (see original post here): 

Events of the past week have left many of us struggling for understanding. In such times, it can help to turn to books and authors to help us see the world through a broader lens.

The Library always seeks to provide information, so we’ve assembled a list of books—on bigotry, white supremacy, racism, anti-Semitism, social justice, freedom of speech, and more—that can lend context to the events in Charlottesville and beyond.

Racism and Anti-Semitism in America

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America by Calvin Trillin

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy Tyson

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman

The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan by Laurence Leamer

The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men by Eric Lichtblau Continue reading “Charlottesville: A Reading List” →

Discipulado de la Cuenca

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Theological Animation, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

JoLo, GreyReyThe following is the first page of a new primer on Watershed Discipleship that has just been translated into Spanish and published by the Universidad Biblica Latinoamericana in Costa Rica. Josh and Grecia Lopez-Reyes (right) are in San Jose, CR today making a presentation at a public event debuting this publication. The booklet will soon be available through www.ChedMyers.org and https://watersheddiscipleship.org/espanol/.

Discipulado de la cuenca*: Una introducción a la fe y la práctica biorregionales

By Ched Myers

Resumen. Este manual básico introduce y explora el discipulado de la cuenca (drenaje natural), un nuevo (y antiguo) paradigma para la teología y la práctica ecológicas que, en mi opinión, es la clave para hacer frente a una nueva (y antigua) crisis que enfrenta la civilización humana.1 Este enfoque es radical en su crítica de los paradigmas políticos, económicos y culturales predominantes, es contextual en su práctica, y es constructivo en sus propuestas alternativas. Continue reading “Discipulado de la Cuenca” →

Sermon: On Charlottesville

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment

index.jpgBy Ross M. Reddick, Pastor
A gospel message delivered to Spanish Fort Presbyterian Church
8/13/2017
Text: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

Today’s scripture lesson is about hatred, and the results of hatred. Joseph’s brothers hated him. The reasons why, while they are important for a full understanding, seem to fade in importance today.

As our session met yesterday in the fellowship hall, as we were laughing together, making plans, praying and visioning, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia…erupted. Violently. As of last night, dozens of serious injuries are being dealt with by the medical community there, and at least three have died–two police officers (in the line of duty), and a 32 year old woman…crushed to death as a car intentionally rammed through a crowd of people.  Continue reading “Sermon: On Charlottesville” →

Imagination

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

BrownFrom adrienne maree brown‘s brilliant new book Emergent Strategy (2017):

It is so important that we fight for the future, get into the game, get dirty, get experimental.  How do we create and proliferate a compelling vision of economies and ecologies that center humans and the natural world over the accumulation of material?

We embody.  We learn.  We release the idea of failure, because it’s all data.

But first we imagine.

We are in an imagination battle. Continue reading “Imagination” →