UNDRIP, Christians, and Climate Justice

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

book 2.jpgBy Laurel Dykstra. This piece is part of a new anthology- Wrongs to Rights: How Churches can Engage the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

I am the priest of Salal and Cedar a community in the lower Fraser/Salish Sea watershed whose mission is to grow Christian’s capacity to work for environmental justice. In the language of the global Anglican communion, what we do is “strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.” Continue reading “UNDRIP, Christians, and Climate Justice” →

I Will Pour Out my Spirit on All Flesh!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation1 Comment

CarnivalBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

What transformed Simon Peter, last seen denying his discipleship, into a bold, courageous public speaker and soon-to-be Jesus jailbird? Luke’s exciting, even outrageous, story of the Pentecost outpouring of the Holy Spirit is always at risk of being domesticated as “the birthday of the church.” But heard in the context both of Luke’s two-part narrative and the wider scriptural “religion of creation” story, the Pentecost experience can and must be reclaimed as one of the opening salvos in the confrontation between the Good News of Jesus and the religion of empire. Continue reading “I Will Pour Out my Spirit on All Flesh!” →

Re-Animating Justification, Re-Patterning Our Lives

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Paul

By Tommy Airey

But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is alive because of δικαιοσύνην. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his spirit that dwells in you.
Romans 8:10-11

The Apostle Paul wrote his Romans epistle to a network of house churches pledging allegiance to Jesus in the Empire’s capital city sometime in the 50s, two decades after the death and resurrection of their Leader. The eighth chapter is embedded right in the middle of the lengthy letter that has been cherished by Protestant Christians for the past 500 years. For all of us who first came to view Jesus through a conservative Evangelical lens, Romans has been interpreted through a magnifying glass, focusing on sinners becoming “justified,” neatly explained as “just if I never sinned” so that we can go to heaven when we die. At least, this was how the sincere leaders at Campus Crusade for Christ broke it all down to me using their 4 Spiritual Laws two decades ago. Continue reading “Re-Animating Justification, Re-Patterning Our Lives” →

How Residential School has affected me: a reflection by Sui-Taa-Kii (Danielle Black)

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Identity, and History, UncategorizedLeave a comment

danielle black.jpgRe-posted from Kairos Canada

Sui-Taa-Kii (Danielle Black) is from the Siksika First Nations, which is a part of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Plains people, Treaty 7, and delivered this speech at a recent gathering “Abiding in Right Relations: Laying the Foundations”, a cross border conversation following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Continue reading “How Residential School has affected me: a reflection by Sui-Taa-Kii (Danielle Black)” →

Evicted

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

EvictedFrom Matthew Desmond, Harvard sociology professor and author of the best-selling Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016):

Those of us who don’t live in trailer parks or inner cities might think low-income families typically benefit from public housing or some other kind of government assistance. But the opposite is true. Three-quarters of families who qualify for housing assistance don’t get it because there simply isn’t enough to go around. This arrangement would be unthinkable with other social services that cover basic needs. What if food stamps only covered one in four families? Continue reading “Evicted” →

Mourning a Mentor & Friend

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Uncategorized1 Comment

dan 3.jpgBy Joyce Hollyday

Daniel Berrigan: May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016

I was a young associate editor at Sojourners magazine when Dan Berrigan sent a poem for a special issue sometime in the early 1980s. Accompanying it was a note that read “Here’s the poem—my first on a word processor. Seems a bit jumbled. Might have got a food processor by mistake.” He was not yet a friend, so I wasn’t familiar with the mischievous grin that likely spread across his face as he wrote it. Continue reading “Mourning a Mentor & Friend” →

Proclaiming an Anti-Imperial “Way of salvation”

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

LydiaBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, commentary on the lectionary for May 8, 2016

We offer this reflection in memory and honor of Daniel Berrigan, SJ, who proclaimed and embodied Jesus’s “way of salvation” over the long haul.

This week’s reading from Acts cries out, “In your face, Roman Empire!” Sometimes, Luke keeps his anti-imperial message shrouded in “hidden transcripts,” as when he tells tax collectors basically to quit (by taking the profit out of their hated work, Luke 3.12-13). But in today’s passage, it is all out in the open, thanks to the ironic witness of a slave girl possessed by a spirit not “holy.” Continue reading “Proclaiming an Anti-Imperial “Way of salvation”” →