Category: Theological Animation

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

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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

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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” →

Wild Lectionary: Joseph—God’s Agent or Agent of Empire?

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Field Egypt Farmer PeopleEleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 15(20)

“God has made me lord of all Egypt…” Joseph, son of Jacob (Gen 45.9)

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” Paul of Tarsus (Rom 8.19)

By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

A decade or so ago, we spent two years of our monthly Saturday teaching/retreat series with the book of Genesis. Folks eagerly engaged Genesis’ anti-city perspective and its all-too-human characters. But when we got to the Joseph story, several rebelled angrily against our starting characterization of Joseph, son of Jacob, as a self-absorbed, manipulative power seeker, who “succeeded” by teaching Pharaoh how to manage famine for personal profit. What is it about Joseph that leads so many to want to see him as a heroic expression of faith? Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Joseph—God’s Agent or Agent of Empire?” →

To Step Back & Let New People Direct the Conversation

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AidenAn announcement from our comrade up north Aiden Enns (right) of Geez Magazine:

After much reflection and in close conversation with the board of directors, I’ve decided that now is a good time for me to retire from my
post as editor of Geez magazine. I plan to make the Winter 2017 edition my 48th and final issue.

Geez magazine started 12 years ago under the tagline, “holy mischief in
an age of fast faith” in order to poke and prod at the pitfalls of
mainstream religion. Continue reading “To Step Back & Let New People Direct the Conversation” →

Sermon: Walking in the Way of Righteousness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized2 Comments

IMG_4625By Joanna Shenk

Psalm 85:8-13

A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with a loved one in which they asked me if I thought holiness and righteousness were important… or if I valued them as a Christian. I can’t remember exactly how they said it, but it was said in a way that assumed I probably didn’t think they were important. I explained to them that it was frustrating to be asked the question in that way because it put me on the defensive… like I needed to prove something to them. To their credit, they understood and agreed it made for better conversation if they asked me how I understand holiness and righteousness or what has been my journey with those things. Continue reading “Sermon: Walking in the Way of Righteousness” →

Whose Violence? Which Insurgence?: White Supremacy in the Mirror of Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

Nat TurnerBy Dr. James Perkinson, Ecumenical Theological Seminary (Detroit, MI), prepared comments presented at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church’s “Social Justice Forum,” October 21, 2016 in response to the film

It was a Jewish man, Walter Benjamin, during WWII, who once said, “Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if [it] wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious” (Benjamin, 255)

Nat Turner’s spirit is buried beneath the shouts and cries (Cone, 61)

It is a deep honor to be asked to offer a few words in memory of so courageous and clear a spirit of resolve as Nat Turner. It is an honor doubly difficult to measure up to in that my skin is white and my life circumstance therefore privileged with respect to Turner’s color and condition and the people whose struggle for justice he represented with such determination and daring that it presaged the only resolution of the institution of slavery white people would accept. War. And it is a war that has never yet ceased. And so my standing here today is not innocent. Continue reading “Whose Violence? Which Insurgence?: White Supremacy in the Mirror of Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation” →