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” →

Orlando

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, UncategorizedLeave a comment

orlandoA song from Ontario-based musician Joshua Weresch, remembering the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting 50 days ago:

This is the lever that moves a world.
This is the fist that packs a glove.
This is the tear that floods a town
And this is a heart without love. Continue reading “Orlando” →

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” →

Dad and Dan

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, UncategorizedLeave a comment

bill r.jpgBy Bill Ramsey. May 1, 2016.

Dad and Dan, an unlikely pair
to walk across heaven’s threshold
a week apart, a world apart.

Way back when Dan’s burning action
kindled my conflicted conscience,
radically realigning my course,
Dad foresaw impending danger,
a tableau of “G-men” ascending
his steep suburban driveway
in pursuit of his willful son. Continue reading “Dad and Dan” →

A Prayer of Kingian Nonviolence

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Just Peacemaking, Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

MLKFrom Matt Guynn of On Earth Peace, a prayer based on MLK’s Six Principles of Nonviolence:

Holy One, singing at the center of my very being, resonating and vibrating me toward liberation and life,

Help me to grow in courage, in persistence, in confidence, in boldness in the face of the violence and harm in our world, our neighborhoods, our streets, our own faith communities. Deepen my ability to dwell moment by moment in the reality that I am enough, that I am beloved. As hard as it is, help me to remember that those whom I detest, dislike and disagree with are also your beloved children. Guide me toward a future in which all are cherished in communities of belonging and belovedness. Give me strength and insight to challenge the forces of evil and injustice which oppress and downpress me, other people and entire communities. Guide me to count the cost of waging nonviolent conflict and to accept sacrifice and suffering when necessary, for the sake of the cause and to achieve the goal. Help me to see clearly the violence in my heart, and to see that, unchecked, this violence can grow into expressions of harm towards myself and others. Strengthen me for this long journey as I lend my hands to yours, bending the arc of the universe towards justice. Amen.

‪#‎KingianNonviolence‬ ‪#‎PrayforPeace‬ ‪#‎PraythePrinciples‬

The Sermon on the Mount Unadulterated

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GandhiFrom Gandhi, in an address delivered at the YMCA in Ceylon in 1927:

The message of Jesus as I understand it is contained in the Sermon on the Mount unadulterated and taken as a whole… If then I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, ‘Oh, yes, I am a Christian.’ But negatively I can tell you that in my humble opinion, what passes as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount… I am speaking of the Christian belief, of Christianity as it is understood in the west.