White Niceness

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn RaceLeave a comment

Elle DowdFrom Elle Dowd last month, a guest blogger at FormerlyUnchurched.com:

For white people and white culture, Niceness is a False Idol.  And it’s a False Idol with a body count.  In 2015, unarmed Black people were killed by police at a rate of 5 times the rate of unarmed whites. Yet when our Black siblings are crying out, “Black Lives Matter!” we continue to make human sacrifices to the altar of our bloodthirsty God of Niceness, caring more about our own comfort and security than about children dying in the streets.

Body counts and blood sacrifices don’t sound very Nice.  But that’s the thing about niceness and its dangerous relationship to power; its slippery and like most other things, finds a way to center itself on white ideals, white experiences, white feelings. Continue reading “White Niceness” →

It’s All Worth It

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and TheologyLeave a comment

VillegasFacebook post from Isaac Villegas, pastor at Chapel Hill Mennonite Church, who performed a same-sex wedding a couple of weeks ago:

Tonight I received official word from the Faith & Life Commission of the Virginia Mennonite Conference that they have suspended my ministerial license because I officiated the wedding of two women in my community last weekend.

But it’s all worth it. It’s worth it because of what it meant for Kate Dembinski (one half of the couple I married)–this is from her FB post: “This whole experience with Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship has been very restorative for both of us. We have both been deeply wounded by the church in our own ways, but getting married has done a lot to make us feel loved by this congregation. Y’all stuck your necks out for our sake, and we are genuinely grateful for your sacrifices on our behalf. ‪#‎WeStandWithIsaac‬ ‪#‎StillOurPastor‬ “ Continue reading “It’s All Worth It” →

A Scandalous Shock to the System

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Theological Animation2 Comments

CenturionBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

All the dynamics of this week’s passage from Luke’s Gospel are “wrong.” For instance, how are we to imagine Jewish elders in Capernaum speaking on behalf of a Roman centurion? Further, they paint him as the primary patron of their synagogue. And not only this, but the centurion sends the elders to Jesus, at this point in Luke’s narrative, an itinerant preacher and healer with no official authority at all. Finally, Jesus praises the centurion for having a faith that Jesus has not found among the people of Israel. What could be going on here? Continue reading “A Scandalous Shock to the System” →

Persistent Widow

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Uncategorized2 Comments

valerie.jpgBy Lindsay Airey

2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’”   -Luke 18:2-5

 

To understand why the Persistent Widow jumps off her small passage in the biblical narrative, startles me into attention, and lovingly beckons me to see and follow her, I first need to give some context. I have been in an active process of 12-step Recovery for a little over a year now. This kind of Recovery is a process that, among other things, encourages me to practice loving myself enough to advocate for myself. It’s the kind of Recovery that’s been helping me to unlearn codependent ways—taking false responsibility for people, only to find myself all dried up at the end of the day. Continue reading “Persistent Widow” →

Some Much Needed Good News

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment
Church
Photo: Michael Smith

By Tommy Airey

The Gospel is the proclamation and conviction that there is a Force of good that governs the universe, a Power of Love imminently saturating everything, yet bigger than that too: beyond space and time, deep into a future, animated with hope. It woos, beckons and compels people to join in on a mission that bends everything towards justice, that prefigures that hopeful future into the now. Continue reading “Some Much Needed Good News” →

Indigenous solidarity through a Muslim lens: A conversation with frontline defender Anushka Azadi

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Uncategorized2 Comments

tumblr_inline_o29xpdDMv41twf2ub_500Re-posted from Breaking the Fast

Thanks so much Anushka for taking the time to talk with Breaking the Fast (BTF).

BTF: Let’s start with introductions. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Anushka: My name is Anushka. I am a frontline defender and legal advocate, broadcast journalist, writer, performer, community organizer and all around bad bitch.

BTF: How did you come to doing work with Indigenous land defenders? When did you start? 

Anushka: As an immigrant to so-called Canada, growing up in poverty and fear, in pain and confusion, made me deeply aware of and sensitive to the intersecting oppressions that twisted up, not only my life, but the lives of others as well. I began understanding words like systemic, institutional and I began to understand the horrors that accompanied what was taught to me as the rise of civilization: industrialization, capitalism/free market economies, “democracy”.  Continue reading “Indigenous solidarity through a Muslim lens: A conversation with frontline defender Anushka Azadi” →

The Last Thing We Need

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn RaceLeave a comment

Catherine MeeksFrom Catherine Meeks at the Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries Kinsler Institute, during a Q&A after her presentation, “Facing History with Courage,” on the history of lynching in the context of the continuing legacy of white supremacy, February 17, 2016 (photo: Tim Nafziger):

White people need to learn how to have real conversations with other white people. Don’t spend a second feeling guilty. It is a wasted emotion and it doesn’t serve anybody. Those of us who have lived at the foot of oppression, the last thing we need is white guilt. It just takes up your energy. Don’t choose to feel guilty. Choose to act.

Confronting Neoliberalism

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

George MonbiotAn excerpt from George Monbiot’s recent piece “Neoliberalism–The Ideology at the Root of All our Problems” in The Guardian:

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power. Continue reading “Confronting Neoliberalism” →

In the Land of the Willing

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation, UncategorizedLeave a comment

kenBy Kenneth Sehested, from the new book In the Land of the Willing: Litanies, Prayers, Poems, and Benedictions

This is one of those
old fashioned, free-range,
leap-of-faith callings.
Just when you thought
our climate-controlled,
pension-secured culture
had squeezed all the
chutzpah out of the
believing community-
no more burning bushes,
flaming tongues-of-fire,
scary angelic appearances,
even still-small voices-
the Spirit erupts again
for those with ears to hear
and hearts aligned.