5 Years Later: Blessed Are The Organized

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BlessedA Summary of Jeffrey Stout’s Blessed are the Organized by Tommy Airey

Democracy, in the sense I am commending, opens up space for minority voices because it is committed both to freedom as non-domination and the avoidance of arbitrary exclusion. Neither of these things can be achieved, according to the tradition of grassroots democracy, unless a lot of ordinary people get organized and actually hold officials accountable. These are things that require action.
Jeffrey Stout

In Blessed Are The Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America (2010), Princeton political science professor Jeffrey Stout recounts a back-and-forth he had with his 20-something son about deeply dysfunctional economic conditions in the U.S. You know the basics: the American worker has been tremendously productive for their company, but isn’t even coming close to sharing the wealth. In fact, since the 1960s, more income went to the top 1% of Americans than the bottom 50% combined. At the end of this casual, fact-filled conversation, Stout’s son proclaimed, “We’re fucked!”
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Why the Empire Needs Terrorism

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Berry FriesenBy Berry Friesen, Originally Posted to Bible-And-Empire.Net

Imagine a political entity that can constantly watch everyone and everything on Earth, listen to/read every digitally-transmitted message, reach into the safety of private homes anywhere and murder the people who live there, incinerate any military/industrial target with the flick of a switch, and fabricate slanders that are repeated publicly a billion times a day.

You’ve just imagined the US-led empire.
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Getting to the Street

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JuliaFrom Julia de la Cruz, a farmworker, an organizer, and a member of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers–this is her response, in an interview with Sojourners Magazine, to the question: Does it help farm workers if consumers stop purchasing products that are grown in bad working conditions?

More and more we hear this idea of voting with your fork: this idea that consumers affect conditions based on how they use their dollar. But the truth is that if somebody chooses to refrain from buying a good, the impact really won’t be felt by corporations such that they’ll be forced to change their policies. But corporations will be impacted and forced to change their policies when a worker-led campaign forces them.

So we’d ask consumers to build consciousness by listening to farm workers and their experience and their analysis of the food system that nourishes each of us. The second thing we’d ask for is commitment—and that can mean a lot of things, but it definitely means getting to the street and protesting the corporations that have turned a blind eye to the abuses they have perpetuated.

Thomas Merton

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merton 2The heart of man can be full of so much pain, even when things are
exteriorly “all right”. It becomes all the more difficult because
today we are used to thinking that there are explanations for
everything. But there is no explanation of most of what goes on in our own hearts, and we cannot account for it all. No use resorting to the kind of mental tranquilizers that even religious explanations
sometimes offer. Faith must be deeper than that, rooted in the unknown and in the abyss of darkness that is the ground of our being. No use teasing the darkness to try to make answers grow out of it. But if we learn how to have a deep inner patience, things solve themselves, or God solves them if you prefer: but do not expect to see how. Just learn to wait, and do what you can and help other people. Often it is in helping someone else we find the best way to bear our own trouble.
— Thomas Merton from his Christmas letter, 1966

An Upside Down World

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upside down worldBy Joyce Hollyday

A frigid wind sent snow dancing and swirling through the streets of Washington, DC, that Christmas Eve. Shopping carts and paper bags loaded with years’ worth of collected string, cans, broken umbrellas, and other street items had been dragged in out of the cold and were parked in the foyer of the church that served as an overnight shelter. The women who owned them were finishing a dinner of soup and bread, made special by dozens of sugar cookies that had been baked and decorated by the church’s children. Continue reading “An Upside Down World” →

Ongoing Direct Encounter

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation1 Comment

Jesus in TempleBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, commentary on readings for the First Sunday after Christmas

Note: This is part of a series of Wes & Sue’s occasional comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year C, 2015-16.

Christmas carols continue to echo around and within us, but Sunday’s Gospel from Luke has Jesus already nearly grown. Only Luke provides any glimpse of Jesus’ childhood. This tantalizing scene, though, offers many hints for how the adult Jesus will subvert both the expectations of his Roman audience and of those hearers who, so far, may be expecting Jesus to become a warrior “messiah like David” (1.32, 69; 2.11).
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Christmas Midrash

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Philippe de Champaigne's The Dream of Saint Joseph painted around 1636.
Philippe de Champaigne’s The Dream of Saint Joseph painted around 1636.
By Ric Hudgens

Well, a mess indeed and Joseph
no fool to think twice before
saying yea. Thereafter,
in the early morning, hearing
a voice from yon olive grove
singing loud as a songbird
born of revolution: “God
hath scattered the proud
in the imagination of their
hearts. Hath put down the
mighty from their seats, and
exalted them of low degree.
Hath filled the hungry with
good things; and sent the rich
empty away” the carpenter
shook his head only once,
believing then the angel,
and declared (in the old style)
“She hath incited a riot in
my heart and I shall ne’er let
this maiden depart from my sight
as long as we both shall live –
or first comes the kingdom
upon this earth.” And so
it was. Thanks be to God.

Mary and Elizabeth

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

mary and elizabeth.jpgBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

Reflection written up from a homily given at St. Peter’s Episcopal Detroit on December 20, 2015.

Luke 1: 39-56

I wonder about the beginning of this reading. “Mary went with haste….” It seems like there are three possibilities for this. First is that she was so excited and filled with anticipation that she fled to a friend she loved. I think this is our most common interpretation. But I think it more likely the second or third possibility. Either she was sent away out of shame and embarrassment for three months. Or as I did more reading, it seems likely that being pregnant and not married with her status was actually cause for being stoned to death. She may have been fleeing for her life. Continue reading “Mary and Elizabeth” →