The Malady of Militarism

On April 7, 2018March 29, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

By Weldon Nisly, originally posted in Hospitality (April 2017), the newsletter of Atlanta’s Open Door Community

Militarism is “a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit” revealing “America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” With this prophetic proclamation a half century ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., named the sin-sickness of America’s warring violence. Dr. King was preaching to America from the Riverside Church pulpit in New York on April 4, 1967.

On that consequential night fifty years ago, Dr. King declared, “A time comes when silence is betrayal,” and boldly revealed the interconnected violence of America’s “giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” His sermon forever connected civil rights, poverty, and war arising from a malady deep within the American soul and psyche. Continue reading “The Malady of Militarism” →

Treacherous Machinations Around the Globe

On April 6, 2018March 26, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

After George W. Bush was elected in 2000, Alice Walker said in an interview: “I know that Martin Luther King would have felt very saddened because he gave his life for a very much larger vision.” During the Obama years, Walker was asked in an interview with an Israeli publication what Dr. King would have thought of Obama’s America and what should be done to fulfill his vision. This was her response:

Martin Luther King was a leader, a person of conviction. He would find it difficult to comprehend, as I do, why Obama is incapable of standing up to Israel and why, whenever he tries, he soon collapses again. I believe Obama started out in the presidency as a good and decent person. With much ambition, but that is not a crime. However, killing people in distant lands by drone attack is, in my opinion, a crime. Condoning Israel’s crimes makes him an enabler of criminal behavior and complicit in the misery Israel causes to poor and frightened people. This is almost unbearable to face, because I, like so many others, love Barack. But we have lost him to the US government machine that is only running true to course in its treacherous machinations around the globe. Continue reading “Treacherous Machinations Around the Globe” →

Plowshares on King’s Anniversary

On April 5, 2018April 5, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just Peacemaking, Uncategorized1 Comment

From Ellen Grady

Seven Catholic plowshares activists were detained early Thursday morning at the Kings Bay Navel Base St. Mary’s Georgia.

They entered on Wednesday nightApril 4. Calling themselves Kings Bay Plowshares, they went to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command: “beat swords into plowshares”. Continue reading “Plowshares on King’s Anniversary” →

A Day that Directly Confronts the Sorrows and Death We Must Forever Negotiate

On April 4, 2018March 26, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From the preface to Michael Eric Dyson’s April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death and How It Changed America (2008):

When Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered, I was a nine-year-old school boy. I had no idea who he was, had never heard his name or seen him in action. Just as technology had allowed him to speak at his own funeral, it offered me my first glimpse of King’s oratorical magic. Like so many folk born after he died, I first met King on television. I was sitting on the living room floor of my inner city Detroit home. “Martin Luther King, Jr., has just been shot in Memphis, Tennessee,” the newsman announced, interrupting whatever program we were watching. My father sat behind me in his favorite chair. He was barely able to utter “humph.” It was one of those compressed sighs that held back far more pain than it let loose. It came from deep inside his body, an involuntary reflex like somebody had punched him in the gut… Continue reading “A Day that Directly Confronts the Sorrows and Death We Must Forever Negotiate” →

Remembering King’s Assassination 50 Years Ago

On April 3, 2018April 2, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Race, Identity, and History, Uncategorized2 Comments

By Bill Wylie-Kellermann

I remember precisely where I was when I got the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination. It was my freshman year in college, a midwestern liberal arts school, and I’d just walked into the lounge of my dormitory when a bulletin broke into regular TV programing. The lone other student, whose face and name I mercifully do not recall, was seated high on the back of an overstuffed black leather chair. He muttered, “Somebody finally got that n****r.” I remember running the length of hall to the pay phone booth and calling my folks in Detroit, weeping into the receiver. In those tears, something shifted in me vocationally that day which bears on who I am. Continue reading “Remembering King’s Assassination 50 Years Ago” →

Crossing the Desert

On April 2, 2018April 1, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized1 Comment

reed By Dee Dee Risher

The aboriginal people of the Kalahari desert break and bury ostrich shells in the sand. The extreme temperatures cause condensation inside the eggshells. As the nomads move over the desert, they survive by drawing drops of moisture from these shells with reeds.

You must prepare well,
Rise in the knowing dark,
Go down to the river,
And listen to the reeds.
A single one will call you.
Listen. Continue reading “Crossing the Desert” →

If We Aren’t Willing to Tell the Truth

On April 1, 2018March 29, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From Jyarland Daniels, the executive director of Harriet Speaks:

April 4th will be upon us soon, and we will read articles like this for days. I want to ask (read: beg) you to remember language matters.

This article says, “50 Years After Dr. King’s Death…” “Death” is also used throughout the article. If we stop and think about the word “death” for a moment we see history is being sanitized and re-written before our very eyes.

You see, “Death” is the word we use when someone does of old age, or perhaps after a battle with an illness, or even an accident. But Dr. King was MURDERED. And not only that, but we now know that this government was complicit in his murder.

Language matters. Words matter. If we aren’t willing to tell the truth and use the right language for how King died, then we aren’t ready to talk about what his life meant.

Holy Week Actions!

On March 30, 2018March 29, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Whidbey Island (WA) based spiritual director and activist Marcia Dunigan reports that earlier in the week, she threw in with about 60 others (including small children) witnessing at a Table Turning event (right) in Seattle in front of the ICE administration building in the rain and cold. This is from the Table Turning website:

Tragically, institutional Christianity in the U.S. has become aligned with nationalism and capitalism. So the aims of Table Turning are:

Reclaiming the subversive tradition of Jesus in the public sphere
Centering marginalized voices to tell their own story and define their own identity, while interrupting a culture that allows only the powerful to be heard
Increasing participation in faith-based social justice activism
Repentance and realignment of our own lives away from oppression and toward liberation

Continue reading “Holy Week Actions!” →

Wild Lectionary: Wonder and the True Easter Lily

On March 29, 2018April 1, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

Easter, Year B
Acts 10:34-43
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
John 20:1-18
Mark 16:1-8

By Jessica Miller

Across the northeast of North America at this season, a wonder is happening. The flowers of Symplocarpus foetidus have begun emerging and blooming from swamps and wet places. These true Easter-lilies—members of the same family of the Calla ‘lily’—are more commonly known as skunk-cabbage. Varieties of the plant also grow in Japan, where the red robe-like blossoms resembling a monk’s hood have gained it the name Zazen-sou, or Zen meditation plant.

Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Wonder and the True Easter Lily” →

Ratzlaff Review: Justice & Only Justice

On March 28, 2018March 29, 2018 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

Another short and sweet book review-summary from legendary pastor Vern Ratzlaff, posting up on the Canadian prairies, pouring his heart and mind into anti-imperial theology and soul-tending.

Justice and Only Justice. Naim Ateek, Orbis, 1989.

Ateek is (Anglican) canon of St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem and pastors its Arabaic speaking congregation. The claim for security for the one people, the Israeli Jews, has been purchased at the expense of the just claims to the land of another people, the Palestinians. In Ateek’s words, the Israeli Jews seek peace with security, and the Palestinians seek peace with justice. Continue reading “Ratzlaff Review: Justice & Only Justice” →