From Martin Luther King in his last book, The Trumpet of Conscience:
Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level to correspond to heightened black impatience and stiffened white resistance. This higher level is mass civil disobedience. There must be more than a statement to a larger society. There must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key points.
By Tommy Airey
We shall not cease from exploration.
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot
Orange County, CA
Eighty-One Percent of white Evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump earlier this month. This awfully revealing statistic, and my month-long visit to Southern California suburbia, has given me reason to reflect on the white Evangelical Christianity that “saved me” when I was ten, kept me pure in adolescence and then socialized me into early adulthood. It was a passionate faith that I eventually had to unfriend after going on a journey of questioning, praying and studying the deeper, more complex realities of life in both the world and the church. Continue reading “The Evangelexit Strategy”
Advent marks the beginning of a new church year. Radicaldiscipleship also begins a new tradition for the year of posting sermons following the lectionary readings. It is a chance to honor the work of pastors who are part of this circle of radical disciples who spend each week examining the readings and the times.
Sermon by Bill Wylie-Kellermann
Advent 1 November 27, 2016, St. Peter’s Episcopal, Detroit
Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Advent is certainly the favorite liturgical season in our family. My own as well. We embrace the holy in candle-lit darkness as in our Taize services beginning tomorrow evening. In fact, in our household we light the wreath and sing on the eve before – kind of like a Jewish Shabbat service beginning the day at sundown. It’s the hour of prophetic promise. We anticipate the dawn and wait. There is a wakefulness in the dark, like a stiff cold breeze on the face. The stripped down sparseness of the season is so welcome a counter to the commercial shopping season of frenzied anxiety. Not to denigrate gift giving, but to deepen the gift, I commend it more as a season of gift making, than gift buying. In those crafts and constructions are a place for prayer. Continue reading “Advent 1 Sermon”
The following is an excerpt of a fascinating conversation between theologian Mark Baker and Robb Davis (right), the mayor of Davis, CA. We highly recommend reading the full interview HERE:
Mark: It would be surprising to many that an enthusiastic reader of Jacques Ellul would run for political office. How did Ellul’s work factor into your decision to run for city council?
Robb: I’ll start by that saying Ellul arguably is the reason I became involved in city politics. Maybe even more surprising than my claiming to have run for office on the basis of something Ellul said, which many might consider to be paradoxical, is that I am also a Mennonite. I wasn’t just trying to break some molds. I had spent about 25 years travelling the world. I was a technician, dispensing wisdom to many villages and communities all over the planet—45 different countries. I started reading Ellul, and Patrick Deneen, and they started challenging me about living and acting locally. Continue reading “The Day Jacques Ellul & Menno Simons Created a Political Candidate”
From Alfred Delp, a German Jesuit priest and philosopher of the German Resistance. He was arrested, sentenced to death and executed by the Nazis in February 1945 (quoted in Bill Wylie Kellermann’s Seasons of Faith and Conscience: Kairos, Confession, Liturgy, 1991):
Advent is a time for rousing. Human beings are shaken to the very depths, so that they may wake up to the truth of themselves. The primary condition for a fruitful and rewarding Advent is renunciation, surrender…A shattering awakening; that is the necessary preliminary. Life only begins when the whole framework is shaken.
Written by Kate Foran as a wedding blessing this fall.
On this day you invite your beloveds to the feast,
provide meat and drink to do justice to the harvest.
As you attended to every detail of this celebration,
you had a vision of serving the season’s cider
pressed and unfiltered
in the old way–beginning to bubble,
hospitable to the wild yeasts–
the bouquets of microflora that are our ancestors and guests,
making life from decay, enacting everyday Cana miracles.
Generations of households have observed
the domestic mystery of cider, preserving the yield of the trees
in a draught more common and reliable than water. Continue reading “Cider Blessing”
A Thanksgiving Prayer from OUR Walmart, courtesy of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice:
Spirit of Life/Most Divine/God/Beloved Community/Creator,
We give thanks. We give thanks for those of us gathered at table. We give thanks to those who bring us this day our food. We give thanks for the food farmers and workers collected. We give thanks for the hands who helped set this table: factory workers, construction workers, truck drivers, mechanics, stock people, cashiers, managers. Continue reading “Praying for a Voice”
By Deb Anderson-Pratt, October 15, 2012
As a little girl I cried “God”
as thoughts of how i could
end the pain of all abuse
verbal, mental, physical, sexual
Momma’s God held my hand saying
“I am here my child in everything”
As an adolescent I cried “God”
as thoughts of how i could
wipe away the words he told
me as he used my body “you’re
just a dirty Indian, nobody will care”
Momma’s God held my hand saying
“I am here my child in everything” Continue reading “Momma’s God”
On November 3, 524 clergy went in solidarity to Standing Rock as part of a call for clergy to join the struggle. As part of the action, the clergy repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery (which coincidentally is 524 years old). They presented a copy of the doctrine to an elder who burned it.
Below is an excerpt from Kat Friesen’s chapter in Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice where she explores the Doctrine of Discovery.
The Doctrine of Discovery and its resulting “Watershed Conquest” provide an exceptionally relevant case study of the harmful outworking of Christendom theologies. Any work toward reconciliation as mission must take into account these exploitative theologies, and begin with repentance as metanoia. Metanoia, translated from Greek as repentance (e.g. Mark 1:4), carries a connotation of changing both mind and action. Thus, repenting of the theologies of placelessness that persist today means recognizing their error and actively changing direction. Continue reading “The Doctrine of Discovery and Watershed Conquest”
Radical Discipleship 