Our Essential Oneness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just Peacemaking, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

vincentFrom Vincent Harding in Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement (1990):

Who knows, perhaps with insight, courage and serious study we could introduce ourselves and our students of all ages to some of the basic tenets of this nonviolent way, exploring such convictions as:

  1. The fundamental unity of all creation, including our essential oneness with those we call “enemy.”
  2. The deep and often hidden capacities in human beings to become much more than we realize; to approach much more closely the essential oneness of life; to create many more social, political, and economic manifestations of our unity than we dream.
  3. The purpose of true civilization is not to focus on higher and higher technology or greater material wealth; it is to help us live more deeply and grow more fully in the humanizing work of mutual responsibility and respect.
  4. The necessity of challenging anything–or anyone–in society (or in ourselves) that appears to destroy the God-ordained oneness, or which seeks to damage our great capacities for an ever-expanding development of our humanity.
  5. The greatest necessity of all is to seek out and hold firmly to the truths of our oneness, our hope, our mutual responsibility, our capacity to create, our refusal to destroy.  Included here, of course, is a willingness to dies, if necessary, for such truths, but not to injure or kill others.
  6. The constant, disciplined quest for personal and collective communion with the One, the divine and ultimate source of all our unity.

Continue reading “Our Essential Oneness” →

A New Boycott for a New Era

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just Peacemaking, Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

rosa-parksTomorrow, Shaun King and Injustice Boycott will be announcing specifics about an ongoing boycott of cities, states, businesses, and institutions which are either willfully indifferent to police brutality and racial injustice or are deliberately destructive partners with it.  Sign up to join the boycott and get more details HERE.

On this Dec. 5, the anniversary of when Dr. King and others began the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, we are launching our own Montgomery Bus Boycott to show every city, state, institution and corporation in this country that meaningful, reasonable, achievable reforms on police brutality and injustice are not our long-term dreams. They are our immediate emergency priority… Continue reading “A New Boycott for a New Era” →

Ready for Silence

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized1 Comment

By Madeleine L’Engle

snow.jpgThen hear now the silence
He comes in the silence
in silence he enters
the womb of the bearer
in silence he goes to
the realm of the shadows
redeeming and shriving
in silence he moves from
the grave cloths, the dark tomb
in silence he rises
ascends to the glory
leaving his promise
leaving his comfort
leaving his silence
So come now, Lord Jesus
Come in your silence
breaking our noising
laughter of panic
breaking this earth’s time
breaking us breaking us
quickly Lord Jesus
make no long tarrying
When will you come
and how will you come
and will we be ready
for silence
your silence

The Rim

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized2 Comments

silver-rim—Rose Marie Berger

The meaning is in the waiting. —R.S. Thomas

Like a silver goblet, Advent
slips round again      passing through heat

and the End of Days      a darkness
too searing for the lip. Smiths

engrave the old year beneath
the rim.      Tradition keeps memory

gradual. The pedestal base round
as the new year      full of what lies

ahead. Is it hope? Or simply
the exodus of this generation
into the flames of the one coming.

Mass Civil Disobedience

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Just Peacemaking, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

mlkFrom 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.

The Evangelexit Strategy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation2 Comments

trump-evangelicalsBy 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 1 Sermon

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, Uncategorized2 Comments

Advent-1.pngAdvent 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 Day Jacques Ellul & Menno Simons Created a Political Candidate

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as TheologyLeave a comment

robbThe 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” →

Advent: When the Whole Framework is Shaken

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

delpFrom 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.