Dear White People

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn RaceLeave a comment

melanieBy Melanie Morrison, Executive Director, Allies for Change

DEAR WHITE PEOPLE: Difficult as it may be, you and I MUST listen to and grapple with the words that Dylann Roof spoke as he began shooting the people who warmly, graciously welcomed him into that Bible study circle at Emmanuel AME Church: “You are raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.” Those words are a mirror for us as a people – as white people. Those words are not only the isolated rantings of a tormented soul. We can’t simply scratch our heads and wonder how someone could be so hate-filled. We can’t only conclude that we need stricter gun control. We don’t need to interview his family and friends to understand where those words came from. The words Dylann Roof spoke are quite literally the white narrative that has undergirded and sustained systemic racism for centuries. That narrative continues unabated. Those words represent the fears and stereotypes that undergird present day racial profiling, state sanctioned violence, and mass incarceration. Those words feed anti-immigrant hysteria. Those words ring out in the chant, “Give us our country back.” Dylann Roof’s words are a mirror we must face as a people — as white people — if we are going to do the deep work required of us. None of us is exempt from this work. You and I and all of us must do this.

60 Years Later: Roberto Clemente’s Rookie Season

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses2 Comments

ClementeAnytime you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on earth.
Roberto Clemente (1934-1972)

It was six decades ago that Roberto Clemente–black and Puerto Rican–made his major league baseball debut. Throughout his career, he endured discrimination and hatred based on his skin color, ethnicity and nationality. It was so bad that, in 1960, Clemente led the Pirates to the World Series title and the MVP was given to Bobby Richardson, a white player from the losing Yankees.

After the ’72 season, a vicious earthquake devastated Managua, Nicaragua. Clemente immediately began organizing relief efforts, sending plane loads of basic necessities. When he discovered these goods were being diverted by the corrupt Somoza government, he chartered a jet and joined the mission. It plunged into the ocean almost immediately after takeover on New Year’s Eve.

WHAT IS EVANGELISM? STRANGER AT HOME, AT HOME AMONG STRANGERS

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

LessonsBy Ched Myers, the 6th Sunday of Pentecost (Mk 6:1-13) 

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.

At this point in Mark’s narrative we are given some background on each of the three major “protagonists” of this story: Jesus (6:1-6), the disciples (7-13) and John the Baptist (14-29, the gospel for 7 Pentecost). These three episodes each concern “rejected prophets,” which opens up a central theme of the second half of the gospel: the cost of discipleship.

This narrative sequence begins with Jesus’ return “to his own country” (6:1). For a third time, he teaches in a synagogue on the Sabbath (see 1:21ff; 3:1ff), and for a third time he encounters opposition. But this time it is not from the authorities, but from his neighbors and kinfolk. They are suspicious of this local boy’s notoriety, objecting that he has no distinguished lineage (6:3). Because of the domesticating constraints of nationality, kinship and household expectations (6:4), the “prophet without honor” is unable to effect change in his hometown, and returns to his itinerant mission (6:5f).
Continue reading “WHAT IS EVANGELISM? STRANGER AT HOME, AT HOME AMONG STRANGERS” →

The Good News on Masculinity: There is Another Way

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

jim harbaughIn patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an anti-patriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.
bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004)
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Lydia Wylie-Kellermann and Tommy Airey, co-editors of RadicalDiscipleship.Net & “backdoor neighbors” in Detroit, are both white and both come up solid INFJs on the Myers-Briggs personality test. When it comes to the Enneagram, Lydia is a 2 with a 3 wing. Tommy is a 3 with a 2 wing. But the similarities may end there. Lydia grew up in Detroit, is in a traditional same-sex marriage, the mother of a 2-year-old, a disciple of the Harry Potter series, an avid gardener and knitter. Tommy grew up in suburban Southern California, is scandalously married to a former student, an avid distance runner and starts every morning sipping on home-roasted coffee, journaling and reading the sports page and academic theology. Below is the transcript of an eDialogue we recently had on the current state of North American masculinity.
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TA: I’m not sure if you are familiar with Jim Harbaugh (photo above: in a recent game of shirts and skins). He might be the most popular white guy in Michigan right now. The University of Michigan recently signed him to a $7 million per year contract to be their football coach. He’s coaching football clinics all over North America to try to recruit the best players to play in your native Michigan. I came across this quote last week: Continue reading “The Good News on Masculinity: There is Another Way” →

Reflections on the Close of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Jingle dress dancers at the Heart Gardens Ceremony, Rideau Hall, Ottawa, Canada. June 3, 2015
Jingle dress dancers at the Heart Gardens Ceremony, Rideau Hall, Ottawa, Canada. June 3, 2015
By Jennifer Henry

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
Mary Oliver

Now, almost a month away from the closing ceremonies of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), there are two images I can’t get out of my mind. One is a word picture painted by Commissioner Marie Wilson who asked those pressed into rooms to hear the findings of the TRC to think of “graveyards where there should have been playgrounds.” She was speaking of the 6000 estimated deaths at residential schools (odds of dying almost identical to those of Canadians serving in World War II) and the dehumanization of unmarked graves and families who still do not know what happened to their child. She was speaking of the 150,000 children whose childhood was robbed when they were forcibly removed from their families, subjected to neglect and child labour, denied their language and culture, taught they were inferior, and, in many cases, abused by the people who were charged with their care. It is an image that should have made every Canadian hold their breath. Children not allowed to be children. Children who never made it home.
Continue reading “Reflections on the Close of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation” →

Our Children

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

ruby salesFor people of all colors.

In all of our conversation about Charleston, we have not focused on the children who witnessed this terror and how this traumatizes them. I know the trauma of being young and witnessing a white supremacist murder of a friend. Our children like all other children must have the space to grow up without having to raise their hands and say do not shoot. Black people if we do not stop this terrorism of our children, no one else will. Nor will they respect us or trust us not to abandon them. We must gather around them and let the world know that young Black lives matter. Either we protect them or they will protect themselves and trust me,it won’t be pretty.

This is an American problem, and people of all colors must stand up and declare that Black children deserve to be safe and grow up with the confidence that they can move freely in the world with the abandonment of youth.

Ruby Sales

Working Out Our Salvation in the Wake of Charleston

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

charlestonBy Lindsay Airey, LMFT

In the wake of the Emmanuel A.M.E. massacre, it’s hard not to succumb to the dueling poles of cynicism or despair, grandiosity or silencing shame. It is so easy to feel powerless and hopeless in the face of widespread white denial. Or exasperated and enraged at a grandiose white culture that wants to dismiss this as “not a race issue.” It’s about mental illness, they say. Or easy access to guns.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for gun control. And, as a licensed marriage & family therapist, I most certainly want policies and practices in American culture that lead to more compassionate, empathic & constructive understandings of and responses to mental illness. Taking refuge in culture war issues in the face of the horrific slaughter in Charleston, however, only pours more emotional salt in the gaping wound of a people who, around every corner in American history, has had to deal with the deadly consequences of white denial in all its subtle, and not so subtle, forms. Continue reading “Working Out Our Salvation in the Wake of Charleston” →

“TALE OF TWO WOMEN”: The Priority of the Marginalized

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation3 Comments

Jairus DaughterBy Ched Myers, for the 5th Sunday of Pentecost (Mk 5:21-43) 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. In Mark’s tale of the Gerasene Demoniac (Mk 5:1-20), Jesus brings dramatic liberation to a man “occupied” by the spirit of Legion (i.e. Roman imperialism) on the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee. Frustratingly, this powerful story is again deftly avoided by the Revised Common Lectionary (but you can read my comments on it here in “Sea-Changes: Re-Imagining Exodus Liberation as an ‘Exorcism’ of Imperial Militarism” in Challenging Empire: God, Faithfulness and Resistance, edited by Naim Ateek et al, Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center). Jesus then returns across the sea to “Jewish” territory (5:21), where the next episode dramatizes how the poor were given priority in the ministry of Jesus. Mark 5:22-43 is yet another example of “sandwich-construction,” which wraps a story within a story in order to compel the reader to interrelate the two. The setting of the first half of this narrative sequence seems to be the “crowd” itself (5:21,24,27,31). Jesus is approached by a synagogue ruler who appeals on behalf of his daughter, who he believes to be “at the point of death” (5:23). Jesus departs with him on this mission, and we fully expect this transaction will be completed. On his way, however, Jesus is hemmed in by the crowds (5:24). The narrative focus suddenly zooms in upon a woman whose condition Mark describes in great detail (5:25f) with a series of descriptive clauses: Continue reading ““TALE OF TWO WOMEN”: The Priority of the Marginalized” →