Bearing The Brunt of Climate Change

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment
The John Amos coal-fired power plant is seen behind a home in Poca
The John Amos coal-fired power plant is seen behind a home in Poca, West Virginia on May 18, 2014. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

By Leah Wiste & Bob Chapman, Michigan Interfaith Power & Light

This July, the African Methodist Episcopal Church—the oldest Protestant denomination founded by African Americans—became the latest religious body to pass a resolution on climate change.   

Many religious groups have issued statements about the urgency of environmental stewardship in an age of global warming and the need for action on behalf of those who suffer most: the world’s poor—the “least of these” in the language of Christian scriptures. Continue reading “Bearing The Brunt of Climate Change” →

An Unusual Wedding Gift

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Uncategorized1 Comment

outhouse.jpgBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

I spent the summer building an outhouse.
I spent the summer building an outhouse for my sister.
I spent the summer building an outhouse for my sister because she was getting married.

Forty-eight hours before the wedding as darkness fell and rain poured, even the groom was still drilling and cutting.

Lucy got married at our cabin in a pine grove a short walk from where my mom is buried. In order to accommodate 150 people for the service and thirty campers on our shallow, illegally plumbed crock well, we needed an outhouse. Continue reading “An Unusual Wedding Gift” →

10 Years Later: The Greensboro Truth & Community Reconciliation Project

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NelsonFrom Nelson Johnson, pastor of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, NC and co-founder of the Beloved Community Center and Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project (which concluded in 2006)–quoted from Ambassadors of Reconciliation, Volume II (2011, Enns and Myers):

A public discussion about a historic event that focuses only on culpability—who was right, who was wrong, or whether the government was involved—isn’t enough. These are important moral questions, and I am fighting to answer them, but at the end of the day the TRC must lead to a therefore: If this be true, what shall we do?   People will not rush to embrace something that doesn’t make any difference for their lives. That would be like having a good discussion in church about the Bible, but when the flood comes everybody drowns anyway. If behavior doesn’t change, if people are still starving, if their children are still going to jail, TRCs will not be embraced. In order for TRCs to avoid becoming domesticated, as have so many other great political innovations, they must stay connected to real life. Continue reading “10 Years Later: The Greensboro Truth & Community Reconciliation Project” →

A Tremendous Spirit

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

From Swoon Studio: Portrait of Nyurapayia Nampitjinpa, also known as Mrs Bennett, who helped shape the Aboriginal women’s painting movement. This shot is from 2011, when I was working inside the church in Braddock, using it as a studio for the summer because it was an interior space big enough to carve a piece on this scale. I had just been to Australia and met Mrs. Bennet, spent the day sketching her, watching her paint, listening to her stories and songs and enjoying the wildly mischievous grin she would give me. Such a tremendous spirit. She passed away a couple of years later, and I am still honored to have gotten to spend some time with her while she was alive.

Swoon Studio

Rizpah

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

rizpah.jpgThis 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

By Adella Barrett

The king took the two sons of Rizpah…whom she bore to Saul…and the five sons of Merab… and gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they impaled them on the mountain before the Lord. The seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of barley harvest. Then Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it on a rock for herself, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell on them from the heavens; she did not allow the birds of the air to come on the bodies by day, or the wild animals by night.

2 Samuel 21: 8-10

It was during the time of the dry winds,
the barley white for harvest, the apricot and almond trees in bloom.
It was when the land began to ripen,
when the hands of the people were ready for gathering,
that Rizpah lost her sons. Continue reading “Rizpah” →

Adventures in Recovering the Telos

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire2 Comments

CatonsvilleBy Tommy Airey

It was a cool Tuesday night in mid-June, four hours north of Detroit and forty-five days after the death of Daniel Berrigan. Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann gathered an intergenerational group from among original members and friends of the Detroit Peace Community–so named by members of Jonah House back in 1980 during a week of civil disobedience at the Pentagon. This night’s topic was the Catonsville Nine action of 1968, the mid-day, non-violent storming of the Catonsville, Maryland draft board: they took 378 draft files and set them on fire with homemade napalm in the parking lot and then waited in prayer and song for the police to show up. It sparked hundreds of similar actions all over North America. After Bill’s introduction and historical context, we read The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, a reworked transcript of the trial, put to poetry by Berrigan. I was struck by how coherently these nine spoke about the theological and spiritual motivations for their hit-and-stay action. They were all speaking the same compelling language. Continue reading “Adventures in Recovering the Telos” →

Marry

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

t and lReaders may not know, but Tommy and Lindsay Airey are ending their time in Detroit this month. It is a serious loss for those of us in Detroit, but we trust it will mean wonderful things for http://www.radicaldiscipleship.net as Tommy and Lindsay continue to write, reflect, and place their feet in new places. This is a goodbye poem for them written by Bill Wylie-Kellermann.

This old world to that beloved Word
this watershed to discipleship
roots, sweet and thirsty, to the road;
in radical vocation, wed disciple to disciple
as time to time
(What kairos is it on the chronos of Detroit?
the nation, the planet, our hearts?) Continue reading “Marry” →