Lamentations’ call to arms

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, UncategorizedLeave a comment

kenA poem inspired by the book of Lamentations (especially chapter three)

by Ken Sehested

Turn off (what passes for) the news.
Boycott the season’s electoral charades.
Don’t give in to Pokémon’s promise of
“augmented reality.” Attend instead to
unmitigated reality: bloodied, stricken
and strewn. Offer grief the hearing it
demands, the voice it obliges, and
the risk it assumes. Continue reading “Lamentations’ call to arms” →

Staying Awake in the Summer

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

St LukeBy Wes Howard-Brook & Sue Ferguson Johnson

In the soporific summertime, it is easy enough to lie back, close one’s eyes, and fall into a tranquil sleep. Indeed, many of us could use more sleep, driven as we often are by the exigencies of empire into never-ending task mode. Perhaps ironically, getting more sleep could help prepare us for Jesus’ word to us this Sunday: stay awake (12.32-40)!

The church cycle offers us Lent and Advent as seasonal opportunities to practice anti-imperial wakefulness. With school out, though, the church year seems to take a break from the call to faithful vigilance. But the lectionary surprises us this week, just as Jesus’ message within the text from Luke gives us images of surprising arrivals. Perhaps equally surprisingly, a close listen to our Gospel text invites us to hear precisely what we are called to stay awake against: the lure of the exploitative, anxiety-ridden, imperial economy. At the same time, we are called to stay awake for the opportunity to be servants to one another and all creation. Continue reading “Staying Awake in the Summer” →

Food as Pre-Colonial Pedagogy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

Bison outside of Fort Wayne IndianaBy Ross Ringenberg

This article was the result of an AMBS class entitled “Theology, Ethics and Spirituality Of Creation Care” taught by Malinda Berry, PhD. The class examined theological aspects of environmental studies, ethical dilemmas we face in pursuing environmental justice, the intersection of place and spirituality, and how these themes shape our creation care practices.

In recent years I have become interested in learning about the people that inhabited my watershed directly before white settlers arrived. The Pokegan Potawatomi lived, and still have a presence in my watershed of Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan. There are many different ways you can educate yourself about native peoples. This past year I’ve been learning about what the Potawatomi ate and the food that nature produced in my watershed (my foodshed) before white settlers arrived not only by reading, but also by cooking! Continue reading “Food as Pre-Colonial Pedagogy” →

Guns for Tots

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just Peacemaking, Uncategorized1 Comment

toy guns.jpgBy Frida Berrigan, Re-postd from TomDispatch

I remember well going to the rodeo at Madison Square Garden in New York City with my six-guns proudly strapped to my hips. I was probably eight or nine years old and those two ivory-handled — okay, undoubtedly plastic — revolvers were probably from a Hopalong Cassidy line of toys. That cowboy character was a favorite of mine on TV and, of course, with my friends I regularly played “cowboys and Indians.” But far more of my war play — we’re talking the early 1950s — came out of World War II, my father’s war, even though the country was then involved in a bloody stalemate of a conflict in Korea. Continue reading “Guns for Tots” →

Precious Little Purchase

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From Mark Van Steenwyk (right: with son Jonas)Mark, co-founder of the Minneapolis Mennonite Worker, in a Facebook post from July 6:

If I lived in a swing state, I might vote for HRC. Thank God, I don’t. I have the luxury of voting my conscience (or non-voting my conscience) without much risk.

But I wish and pray and beg that folks would put the same energy into organizing or campaigning or protesting for justice that they put into this horrible excuse for democracy we call “presidential politics”. Continue reading “Precious Little Purchase” →

A Letter from Open Door Community

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Uncategorized1 Comment

open door.jpgJune 2016

Dear Friends,

This is a letter we never thought we would have to write, and it’s breaking our hearts.

We have come to a time that the Open Door Community cannot move forward in the way that we have lived and worked for the past 35 years. While we plan to continue some parts of our ministry including our newspaper, Hospitality, we anticipate that in January 2017 our house at 910 Ponce de Leon Avenue, the location of our residential community and hub of our ministry, will close. The building will close; some of the ministry will continue. There are three primary reasons for this change. Continue reading “A Letter from Open Door Community” →

A Fool’s Economics

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation7 Comments

DollarBy Ched Myers, Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 31, 2016 (Luke 12:13-21)

Note: This is part of a series of weekly comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year C, 2016.

In Luke’s gospel, the deep memory of Sabbath Economics is shown in Jesus’ wilderness feedings of the poor (Lk 9:12-17), and told in the central petition of the Lord’s Prayer:

“Give us today enough bread” (Lk 11:3).

But nowhere is the old vision more clearly asserted than in Jesus’ teaching in Luke 12:13-34. Continue reading “A Fool’s Economics” →

A Prophetic Week at Proctor

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Race1 Comment

By Tommy Airey

Michael Brandon McCormick
Photo: Ct Carmello

I brought you my son because there is a spirit trying to kill him and whenever it seizes him…whenever it grasps him, whenever it grabs him, whenever it accosts him, whenever it subjects him to force without his consent. Let me try it this way: whenever it arrests him! We’re dealing with folks who know what it means to deal with search and seizure. We are people who have been subject to seizure: seized from Africa, seized and thrown into the belly of slave ships. We’ve had our bodies seized, our language seized, our culture seized, our history seized, our resources seized, our economy seized, our possibilities seized, our hope seized, our dreams seized.
Dr. Michael Brandon McCormack (photo above), on Mark 9:14-29 (the episode of the young man seized by a demon)

Measured by its very spirit and structure, the every-four-year American political party national convention is nothing but an intoxicating religious revival meeting, a well-choreographed (mega)church service. Last week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland highlighted the privilege-blind, fear-based, power-hungry religion of (mostly) white American elites and their Southern and suburban foot soldiers. Imperial chants of “Blue Lives Matter,” “Make America Safe/Great Again,” “Build The Wall” and “Lock Her Up” liturgically scripted delegates into worship. Continue reading “A Prophetic Week at Proctor” →