Wisconsin Walk for Peace and Justice: Nine Arrested at Volk Field

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Just PeacemakingLeave a comment

Let-it-Shine-peace-walk-photoBy Joy First, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance    August 26, 2015

Voices for Creative Nonviolence engaged with a number of Wisconsin peace groups to organize an 8-day 90-mile walk across southwest Wisconsin from August 18-25.  The purpose of the walk was to call attention and make connections between the militarized police violence at home and the military using violence abroad through drone warfare and by other means.  In both cases the victims are people of color, which forces us to reflect on the systemic racism of our society.

The walk began at the City/County/Jail complex in Madison on August 18.  Dane County has one of the highest rates of racial disparity of any county in the country on many issues, including when it comes to incarceration – hence starting the walk at the jail.  In fact, in order to make the prison population match the general population in Dane County, we would need to release 350 Black people.  This is horrific, especially when we understand that so many people of color are in jail for nonviolent crimes and crimes of poverty that could better be solved by more positive interventions.  It is up to all of us to stand up with our brothers and sisters and proclaim that “Black Lives Matter!” Continue reading “Wisconsin Walk for Peace and Justice: Nine Arrested at Volk Field” →

Activism: An Irenic, Inclusive & Intentional Vision

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MLPBy Tommy Airey

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spike into the wheel itself.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Right after Andrew educated me on the elaborate formula he uses to determine his weekly lotto number, Will stared me down intensely, proclaiming “It’s happening and I’m gonna need a ride to the airport.” This was probably the sixth time he’d told me this since arriving in Detroit less than a year ago (so far it hasn’t happened and he hasn’t needed a ride). Eternally glued to his smart phone, he has been taking money out of his monthly SSI check to “invest” in a business that he is utterly convinced will deliver him two planes with $100 million so, as he puts it, he can “get out of this shit hole.”
Continue reading “Activism: An Irenic, Inclusive & Intentional Vision” →

Sacrificed: The Story of Jephthah’s Daughter

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and TheologyLeave a comment
Girls hold certificates stating their new official names during a renaming ceremony in Satara, India, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. Almost 300 Indian girls known officially as "Unwanted" have traded their birth names for a fresh start in life. Given names like "Nakusa" or "Nakushi" _ or "unwanted" in Hindi _ they grew up understanding they were a burden in families that preferred boys in Maharashtra state. (AP Photo)
Girls hold certificates stating their new official names during a renaming ceremony in Satara, India, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. Almost 300 Indian girls known officially as “Unwanted” have traded their birth names for a fresh start in life. Given names like “Nakusa” or “Nakushi” _ or “unwanted” in Hindi _ they grew up understanding they were a burden in families that preferred boys in Maharashtra state. (AP Photo)

This month, we are beginning a year long monthly series on biblical women. Women from around Turtle Island will be honoring the women in scripture with poetry, art, storytelling, and love. This month, Joyce Hollyday starts the series with Jephthah’s daughter. If you are interested in contributing to the series, email lydiaiwk@gmail.com.

By Joyce Hollyday

Judges 11:29-40

Her name is lost to us—excised by the male chroniclers of faith history who understood that to name something was to give it power. And she was about as powerless as anyone could be. Jephthah’s daughter. Young, naïve, and female. Defined, possessed, and controlled by a violent and volatile warrior-father who ended her life in a ritual murder.

So, why launch a series on biblical women with such a tragic tale? Because Jephthah’s daughter is with us still. Her story is present among us in every form of male control: in the assumption that those of us who marry men will take their names and those who choose women must be “set straight”; in domestic violence and discriminatory pay; in denial of education and forced child marriages; in genital mutilation, sexual slavery, and female infanticide. Continue reading “Sacrificed: The Story of Jephthah’s Daughter” →

Dismaland

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

Disma 1From a NY Times piece on Banksy’s latest adventure in England:

The exhibition includes new and old artwork by Banksy, including a pool with mobile boats full of figurine immigrants in what apparently is the English Channel, and a mural-style work in the his signature silhouette style, which shows a fat cat in a suit gorging himself while a gaunt woman with children stands across from him. One installation on the site — billed as only for children — features a trampoline and a stand offering small loans with interest rates of several thousand percent…
Continue reading “Dismaland” →

To Empower Disempowered People

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breeFrom an Essence interview with Bree Newsome, who scaled the flagpole of injustice in Charleston. She is a member of the Tribe, a small group of protestors in Charlotte.

An activist named Heather flew down from New York to train me. We went to a park and practiced on lampposts, basketball hoops, and then I got to practice on one flagpole. The very first attempt I made…I was just completely winded, thinking, I don’t know how I can climb 30 feet. Once I got the rhythm of it, it was fine. It’s actually more leg strength than arm strength…

What we’re really hoping to do with Tribe and other local organizations is to develop a model for sustainable change and organization. We’re facing a lot of crisis. We don’t see action happening nationally for our lower-income communities here in Charlotte. We can come together as citizens to empower disempowered people who don’t have the agency to do this. It’s not going to be just one person changing the world.

Open Borders!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments

bordersBy Ched Myers, for the 14th Sunday of PENTECOST (MK 7:1-23)

Note: This is an ongoing series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B, 2015.

After a lengthy hiatus in John, the RCL gospel returns to Mark, though it piecemeals this Sunday’s text (I’ll read it whole, and suggest you do as well).
Continue reading “Open Borders!” →

I Need A Hand

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

DSCN3227By Rev. Nick Peterson (right, being introduced by Ruby Sales)

Without this effort, the secret place is merely a dungeon in which the person perished; without this effort, indeed, the entire world would be an uninhabitable darkness.
James Baldwin, Another Country (1962)

My friend was in pain. All the things he held dear and cherished were slipping from his grasp.  In naming his losses he named his desire to grab ahold of something, something to help him live, to help him cope.  I wanted to comfort him, to hold his hand, make some kind of physical contact, to disrupt the isolation he was feeling. But I hesitated, unsure of an appropriate way, a manly way, to comfort my friend.  Truthfully, I was paralyzed by the fear of what my touch might communicate about my identity as a man, my sexuality, and my connection to him.
Continue reading “I Need A Hand” →

Ratzlaff Reviews: The Message & The Kingdom

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VernThe legendary Vern Ratzlaff (right), Canadian Mennonite pastor and professor, was sporting his 5-inch beard long before practically every American white guy under 35 started growing theirs. Vern is spending free time at his outpost in Saskatoon reading dense anti-imperial theology and writing concise summaries for the rest of us. He reported this week of “an orgy of fresh tomatoes” in his garden.

The Message and the Kingdom, J. Richard Horsley & Neil Silberman, GrossetPutnam, 1999.

The Message and the Kingdom is a careful analysis of the religious, political and social aspects of the Roman empire; the world of Jesus and of Paul was not only a spiritual battleground but a landscape of far-reaching dislocation, cultural conflict and political change.

The book points out how the message of Jesus resounded among a people suffering under Roman tyranny. The revolutionary message of Jesus ignited these listeners, infuriating the Roman imperial establishment. Saul of Tarsus had a vision that persuaded him to deliver Jesus’ message throughout the empire.

Horsley’s and Silberman’s book shows how the message of Jesus and Paul was shaped by the history of their time and by the social conditions of the congregations to whom they preached. The book details how the quest for the kingdom of G-d by Jesus and Paul is both a spiritual journey and a political response to the acts of violence, inequality and injustice that characterized the kingdom of humans.

Paul’s writings ‘are extracts from the handwritten journal of a revolutionary work-in-progress—a collection of passionate notes from the underground.’ (p 147) ‘Membership in the kingdom of G-d offered disenfranchised people a means to empowerment.’ (p 153) As implementation of this vision, the Philippian church was in partnership in the form of financial sacrifice (Phil 4:l)(p 154), a situation where ‘community was everything and personal status a thing to be despised.’ (p 155). Sharing their wealth with those with whom they had no blood kinship or political connection, the assemblies committed themselves to self sacrifice and on effecting a particular social change (p 185).

A Reflection on the Wild Goose Festival

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, RaceLeave a comment

By Wesley Morris, Union Theological Seminary and Beloved Community Center, wild gooseGreensboro, NC

I saw two amazing black women Rev. Traci Blackmon and Bree Newsome share time and space yesterday at WGF. Their hug and exchange of words was a course in miracles itself. Cutting through Q and A’s to the grace that only they may know the height and depth of. I am grateful to have heard so many of the presenters and been in concert with the folks at Wild Goose this year. This was and is very important work, but this moment, this reunion of sorts is my lasting image of Christ’s love. Continue reading “A Reflection on the Wild Goose Festival” →