The Baptist’s Radical Critique of Entitlement: Repentance as Radical Discontinuity

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

LentzJohntheBaptistBy Ched Myers, the 3rd Sunday in Advent (Luke 3:7-18)

Note: This is one of Ched’s occasional comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year C, 2015-16.

The third week in Advent lingers on Luke’s portrait of John the Baptist, in which we get our most substantive glimpse into this wilderness prophet’s message (right, icon by Robert Lentz, 1984). This reading cuts sharply against the grain of the holiday season, so often defined in corporate-sponsored Christmas culture by commercialization and commodification of all things religious. But the Lectionary’s wisdom seeks to restrain the manic rush into what a young Jewish friend calls “the days of craze,” insisting rather on a sober look at the travails of empire.
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The Time is the Time of No Room Raids on the Unspeakable

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merton-pbsBy Thomas Merton (+December 10+)

We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration. Continue reading “The Time is the Time of No Room Raids on the Unspeakable” →

Introducing: The Feminary

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Grace ABy Grace Aheron

This winter, five young women and myself are embarking upon an online adventure of alternative theological education. We’ve been dubbed “the feminary” and will be participating in a study cohort following the Bartimaeus Institute’s five-month online series. The seeds of the feminary were planted by a few voices crying out in the wilderness— crying for a radical feminist space where we could study scripture, history, and bible at a low price point and in community with like-minded people— and Ched and Elaine’s faithful response.
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Abundant Community

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Uncategorized, Watershed DiscipleshipLeave a comment

Scouts_readingThe following is the third post in a series by Kate Foran about exploring an alternative kindergarten education for her daughter Sylvie.

This picture was taken last November at a harvest gathering (note the bowls of squash soup) that I participated in with other children and parents. At the time, I was still wrestling with whether to enroll Sylvie in school or not, and the moment captured in the picture stands out for the way it tipped the balance toward “DIYing” her education instead. It was in some ways a typical preschool group story time (I think we were reading Curious George), but in other ways it was remarkable, because it was not a moment I organized. Instead, a child handed me the book and asked me to read it. And soon the other children crowded around, piling onto my lap and leaning on my shoulders. I was aware at the time of the great privilege of having the trust of these children, and it occurred to me that the spontaneous connection and even the physical closeness was not something that could easily occur in an institutional setting.   Sylvie was a bit ruffled at having to share her mom, but she was satisfied when I explained to her that I got to be a teacher to these other kids the way that their parents got to be a teacher to her. Continue reading “Abundant Community” →

Healing the Open Wound: Imagining Christian Border Ethics with Gloria Anzaldúa

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Border at NightBy Justin Ashworth, first published in The Other Journal

Border encounters occur every day in our global and globalizing cities.[1] We consume food touched by people born outside the United States; we purchase things from non-citizens, brush shoulders with them as we go to work. Some of us kiss immigrants goodbye as we head out the door for the day, while others of us are non-citizens ourselves. Our daily lives are filled with border encounters like these, that is, with economic, political, cultural, and personal interactions between citizens and foreigners.[2] But what should be the marks of these encounters? In asking this question, I am not concerned primarily with how cosmopolitan bigwigs interact with each other but rather with how the images of the border that citizens carry around in their heads influence their interactions with border crossers. Are our border images accurate, and what type of ethic do they imply? Continue reading “Healing the Open Wound: Imagining Christian Border Ethics with Gloria Anzaldúa” →

When Some of the Less Famous Leaders Took Their Turns

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GuellahAn excerpt from Rebecca Solnit’s recent dispatch “Calculated Risk” from the climate summit in Paris, originally posted on the Harper’s Magazine blog:

Obama spoke of his summer trip to Alaska, whose melting permafrost and burning tundra are “a preview of one possible future”—though it’s the present, not the future, for Alaska. Still, Obama did acknowledge one of the central facts of the day: “We know the truth that many nations have contributed little to climate change but will be the first to feel its threats.”
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ISIS Has Little To Do With Islam, and Everything To Do With War

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ISISBy Sheldon Good & Cyrus McGoldrick, originally posted to Huff Post

In the wake of the recent attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Baghdad, the majority of people in the U.S. believe we should take part in a military response, including the use of increased U.S. airstrikes and ground forces against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This would not only be ineffective, but exactly the trap ISIS has set (yet again). If there’s anything we should have learned since 9/11 and the “War on Terror,” it is that violence against the Muslim world cannot defeat terrorism or anti-Western anger; only respect for human rights and sovereignty will work. But before discussing that topic, one must deflate another majority belief in the U.S.: that ISIS is somehow mainstream among Muslims, or that the West is at war with “radical Islam.” Continue reading “ISIS Has Little To Do With Islam, and Everything To Do With War” →

The Most Interesting Woman in the World

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

samaritan womanBy Rose Marie Berger. Continuing series on badass biblical women.

Have you seen the Dos Equis commercials starring actor Jonathan Goldsmith as “the most interesting man in the world”? “People hang on his every word,” the narrator intones, “even the prepositions.” Though the ad is clever and funny, the “Stay thirsty, my friends” tagline makes clear that what’s being sold is unquenchable thirst.

Contrast this with the Samaritan woman Jesus meets at the well. What’s on offer in John 4 is “living water.” But obtaining it requires a more daring leap than the short-term gains of “Interesting Man’s” carpe diem philosophy.

Who is the Samaritan woman with whom Jesus holds his longest discussion in the gospels? First, let’s clarify what she is not. She is not a whore, nor promiscuous. She’s not spiritually dead or “hopelessly carnal,” as some male interpreters have claimed. Continue reading “The Most Interesting Woman in the World” →

Welcome to the Cult

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Theological Animation2 Comments

WesBy Tommy Airey

Here’s an easy way to figure out if you’re in a cult: If you’re wondering whether you’re in a cult, the answer is yes.
Stephen Colbert

Not too long ago, in the years of early adulthood, I was attending a church in Southern California with weekend attendance in the tens of thousands. This was Respectable Religion. The pastor prayed at Obama’s inauguration. But something dreadful was percolating inside of me as I took inventory of what was happening all around me.
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