Liberating Evangelicalism

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

HarperFrom the Twitter account of Lisa Sharon Harper, Founder and President of Freedom Road and Senior Fellow at Auburn Seminary. It was posted on March 18, 2019.

To all the people, designated White by colonizing nations, who are becoming disillusion by your evangelical or Christian faith: When you walk away from Jesus you are not #woke. You are operating out of the white supremacy you say you abhor. #LiberatingEvangelicalism

When you walk away from Jesus and Christian faith to be “woke” you are walking away from a faith that sprang from brown, indigenous, colonized people. You’re walking away from faith born on the underside of empire in the context of oppressed peoples. #LiberatingEvangelicalism Continue reading “Liberating Evangelicalism” →

How Making Friends with Indigenous People Changed My Life

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By Joshua Grace, originally posted at Red Letter Christians

I’m a Polish-American settler. I didn’t choose the conditions of my birth or my original family. However, I do choose to actively undermRandyine the systems and lies beneath those conditions of various levels of privilege.

Ignorance of our nation’s history, and the systems that our national narrative myth supports, only perpetuate injustice and maintain roadblocks to our greater healing. I was fortunate that in the process, my own Western worldview got challenged and I realized it needed to be overcome. I could not and probably would not have put the work in without supportive community — the Indigenous friends, teachers, and relatives who offered a healing sense of belonging. Continue reading “How Making Friends with Indigenous People Changed My Life” →

Wild Lectionary: Thomas, Bodies, Touch, and Violence

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Hold Fast by Thor (Creative Commons License)

Easter 2(B)
John 20:19-31

By Laurel Dykstra

“Doubting Thomas” it’s the name we call someone who demands hard evidence, who won’t accept what we say or who doesn’t share our beliefs.

There are all kinds opportunities in the church use that name against someone. All sorts of differences in the beliefs of faithful Christians: angels, auras, miracles, marriage, dinosaurs, women disciples, Adam and Eve, Noah, what prayer is, what happens during a sacrament, what salvation means, what parts of the creeds we say with confidence and, perhaps most pertinent here, how we understand the resurrection. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Thomas, Bodies, Touch, and Violence” →

Saying Hello and Goodbye

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542ad78c3b0cd.imageBy Linda Johnson Seyenkulo

Culture is a funny thing.  You do not know it is there, until it is not.  What I mean by that is the culture to which we are born is so much a part of us that we are not aware.  Someone said, “It is the air we breathe.” Or if we were fish, it would be the water we swim in.  Culture allows us to live and move without having to think about everything we do.

I’m a white, educated, western woman living in a West African country where many people do not have much education.  Me being white, educated and western is part of my culture and my privilege.  I do not think about it much, but in being all that, I carry with me an expectation that the way I live and move and have my being is normal; how things should be.  I often function that way not thinking about what it means for those around me. Continue reading “Saying Hello and Goodbye” →

Jesus’ Ministerial Vision

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

SistersA Holy Week rebound from Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (1993) by Dolores Williams.

The image of Jesus on the cross is the image of human sin in its most desecrated form. This execution destroyed the body, by publicly exposing his nakedness and private parts, by mocking his ministerial vision as they labeled him king of the Jews, by placing a crown of thorns upon his head mocking his dignity and the integrity of his divine mission. The cross thus becomes an image of defilement, a gross manifestation of collective human sin. Rather, Jesus conquers the sin of temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11) by resistance–by resisting the temptation to value the material over the spiritual; by resisting death; by resisting the greedy urge of monopolistic ownership. Jesus therefore conquered sin in life, not in death. In the wilderness he refused to allow evil forces to defile the balanced relation between the material and the spiritual, between life and death, between power and the exertion of it. Continue reading “Jesus’ Ministerial Vision” →

Jesus Still Goes Before Us

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BindingAn excerpt from Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (1988), reflecting upon the open tomb ending of the first Gospel.

We should not be surprised that the women are overcome with “fear.” The disciples have in fact been described as “fearful” (phobeisthai) at several important “passages” in their journey with Jesus: both stormy boat crossings (4:41; 6:50), his transfiguration (9:6), the portents of his execution (9:32), and the journey up to Jerusalem (10:32). And does not this closing scene represent the most difficult passage of all? For in it the martyr-figure beckons the disciple to take up the journey afresh, to return to the beginning of the story for a new reading-enactment. The young man’s invitation ought to provoke trepidation in us, if we take it seriously. As Bonhoeffer paraphrased Mark 8:34 in Cost of Discipleship (1953), “When Christ calls a person, He bids them to come a die.” Continue reading “Jesus Still Goes Before Us” →

Wild Lectionary: Disappointment as Easter Hope

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Finding Light in the disappointment, walking the path together.

Easter Year C

Luke 24:13-35

A café in Toronto is to us, what the town square was to locals and travelers alike in villages in first century Palestine. Taking a quick detour from my compulsive list of daily activities, I deke into the café at the corner of King St. East and Jarvis. Filled with other delightful misfits and strangers I find solace in their company. As I snuggle up onto the only remaining seat on a bench with my earl grey tea, a young woman smiles at me.

Breaking news at the top of the hour is alarming: “The former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould and the former Minister of Indigenous Relations Jane Philpott have been removed from the Liberal Caucus!” My neighbor and I begin to talk. A woman at another table is moved by our animated conversation: “What has happened?” she presses. Seemingly the only three in the café that know the events of late, our debate begins. We agree, at the heart of the “SNC-Lavalin” matter is not just a personal misunderstanding, but rather the power of corporations to define the overarching political and economic landscape above public interests. I am ever more incensed with the reality of corporate power when the news continues with the coverage of Canada’s climate change. The report is “beyond grim.” It warns that Canada’s climate has been warming at roughly twice the rate of the rest of the world!  In Northern Canada, it’s even higher.” As our communal lament continues, a man with his back turned to us as he leaves, snaps: “I am tired of this conversation they should just move on, this is the way the world is.” His aggressive afront is disheartening, even as he leaves without the respect of listening.  It’s the deadening silence from so many others who remain fixed to their phones though, that fuels my disappointment more. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Disappointment as Easter Hope” →

Call for Pitches: Climate Change and Climate Justice

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Camp Ashland FloodingGeez magazine has a Call for Pitches out on Climate Change. We hope that with Geez’s new move to Detroit that there will be a powerful mingling of RadicalDiscipleship and Geez communities. We encourage you to submit a pitch.

Deadline May 10, 2019

“Adults keep saying ‘We owe it to the young people to give them hope” But I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel everyday. And then I want you to act…I want you to act as if your house is on fire. Because it is.”
~Greta Thunberg, 16 year-old Swedish climate activist

“Mother Nature — militarized, fenced-in, poisoned — demands that we take action.”
~Berta Caceres, Indigenous Honduran activist, assassinated in March 2016

This isn’t an issue about the science. This isn’t an issue that debates just how many years human beings have left on the planet. We know the science is out there and that it is dire. This is an issue about how we live in its midst. Continue reading “Call for Pitches: Climate Change and Climate Justice” →

Our God Is One

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indexBy Will O’Brien

Last Sunday, I was deeply blessed to be able to attend the Interfaith Freedom Seder +50 in Philadelphia.  This unique gathering was a commemoration of the original Freedom Seder in 1969 organized by Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia.

Along with several hundred Jews, Muslims, and Christians (and likely folks of other faith traditions or even no religious), we paid homage to the original Freedom Seder and, acting out of that powerful tradition, forged a liturgy and celebration that spoke directly to the political, economic, moral, and spiritual challenges we face today. Continue reading “Our God Is One” →