Trumpeting More Whiteness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race3 Comments

j-perkBy Dr. James Perkinson, Ecumenical Theological Seminary, Detroit, MI

So I am reading the left alt-press for insight on what just happened with the election of Donald Trump, and find myself yet one more time provoked at our white blindness. No less than Glenn Greenwald—whose typically razor-sharp analysis I have relied on so often in the past—quotes Nate Cohn to the effect that “Clinton suffered her biggest losses in the places where Obama was strongest among white voters. It’s not a simple racism story.” And offers further: “Matt Yglesias acknowledged that Obama’s high approval rating is inconsistent with depictions of the U.S. as a country ‘besotted with racism.’” How little we have learned for all of our supposed “learning.” Continue reading “Trumpeting More Whiteness” →

This is the time

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

timwe have been preparing for this time,
we were called, told only to be ready,
and we have been practicing and connecting.

she said that this is not a time for self-doubt and trying to please everyone,
for withholding any gifts, for wasting any time delaying your life’s work.

this is no time for ego, drop into the place where your work becomes divine.
this is the time to unleash all our healer clarity, we are all needed.
-adrienne maree brown

Marcella Althaus-Reid

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

indecent-theologyBy Grace Aheron.

This piece was developed during the first Bartimaeus Institute Online Cohort (2015-2016), aka “The Feminary.”  These pieces will eventually be published in a Women’s Breviary collection.  For more information regarding the Feminary go here.

 “Only in the longing for a world of economic and sexual justice together, and not subordinated to one another, can the encounter with the divine take place. But this is an encounter to be found at the crossroads of desire, when one dares to leave the ideological order of the heterosexual pervasive normative. This is an encounter with indecency, and with the indecency of God and Christianity.”

– Indecent Theology, 2000

While the drum beat of the purity cult of Christianity rings through our bodies and bones, causing our feet and hands and desires to fall in step, there are voices— high and descant, low and elemental— that waken us from the single-file lines of decency. Marcella Althaus-Reid was one of those voices. Continue reading “Marcella Althaus-Reid” →

Confronting Empire with the Word

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation3 Comments

swordBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.” (Daniel 7.13-14)

The final Sunday of the church year celebrates the feast of Christ the King. It is at once a redundant and a confounding claim: Greek christos translates Hebrew meshiyah, meaning “anointed,” marking a person as a king (or priest, in some Jewish traditions). That is, the very label “Christ” for Jesus suggests royal authority. Yet many today reject the image and language of “kingdom” in relation to the nonviolent Jesus, preferring the wordplay, “kindom.” While we certainly embrace the image of the discipleship community as one, big family of faith, we believe that something crucial to who Jesus is—and who we are as radical disciples—is lost when we abandon the notion of God’s “kingdom.” Continue reading “Confronting Empire with the Word” →

Mourning & Memory

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

francis-wellerSome highlights from Francis Weller’s recent article in Utne Reader “To and From the Soul’s Hall:”

We need to create circles of welcome in our lives in order to keep leaning into the world; to keep moving grief through our psyches and bodies, so we can taste the sweetness of life. Modern psychological theory utilizes the terms attunement and attachment. The language has become somewhat abstract and clinical, but what it means is that we require touch in body and soul to help us respond to difficult times with kindness and compassion and also to celebrate the sheer joy of being alive. We need these experiences to feel that we matter—quite literally—that we have matter and substance, that we take up space in the world. When we sense this, we feel that we are worthy of deep and lingering attention and that we can, in turn, offer our caring hearts to others in times of sorrow and pain. No matter who we are, we need the heartening touch of another. Even those of us who are introverted will, at times, require the devoted attention of a friend or a partner who can offer a sensitive ear to our tender woes. Continue reading “Mourning & Memory” →

#NoDAPL Day of Action at Army Corps of Engineers- A Call to be a Visionary Engineer

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

defend-the-sacredToday people across the United States are standing in solidarity with the water protectors at Standing Rock demanding that the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the federal government halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. To find an action in your city, go here (https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/nov-15-nodapl-day-of-action-at-army-corps-of-engineers).

Today is a day for engineers to listen and heed their call as one which honors indigenous voices, protects the waters and earth, and upholds justice in our communities. Below is an excerpt from Erinn Fahey’s chapter in Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregionalism Faith and Practice which discusses her vocation to become a “visionary engineer.”

“Engineers have an opportunity to be visionary: to reimagine our work as a craft that manages the human footprint while also restoring right relationship with the earth; and to create opportunities for people to engage in self transformation. In the Next American Revolution, Grace Boggs calls people to be visionary organizers: Continue reading “#NoDAPL Day of Action at Army Corps of Engineers- A Call to be a Visionary Engineer” →

Like Alchemy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology1 Comment
shelbyBy Shelby Smith (right), in Solveig Nilsen-Goodin’s book What is the Way of the Wilderness?  An Introduction to the Wilderness Way Community (2016):

I don’t believe that one should belong to a certain religion or set of beliefs`. I do believe, from years of trial and error, that for me, a life based on seeking God and It’s will for me is a richer, fuller life, that at times feels downright magical and that without it, life is pretty shitty. I am writing my story in hopes that it can help someone.
Continue reading “Like Alchemy” →

The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just Peacemaking, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Dorothy Day in the Soup KitchenReprinted from The Catholic Worker newspaper, May 2016

The aim of the Catholic Worker movement is to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ. Our sources are the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as handed down in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, with our inspiration coming from the lives of the saints, “men and women outstanding in holiness, living witnesses to Your unchanging love.” (Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer for holy men and women) Continue reading “The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker” →