A Post-Evangelical Pilgrimage, Part I

evangelical TimeBy Tommy Airey

*The first in a three-part series exploring more compelling ways to follow Jesus.

…the essence of Christianity is itself an essentially contested concept.
James McClendon, Doctrine (1992)

I was inducted into North American Evangelical Christianity in 1983 while attending the Christian elementary school where my mom got a job teaching 5th grade. I was in the 4th grade and my teacher, whom I loved, rhythmically proclaimed:

God said it, I believe it and that settles it.

This was after daily prayer and Bible readings in class. End of conversation. No debate or diversity. It’s settled. Period. I remember the rush of certainty and triumph that would flood my heart and mind.
Continue reading “A Post-Evangelical Pilgrimage, Part I”

A Seven-Month Honeymoon Sabbatical: Our Journey with BCM and Spiritus Christi

Sarah and MyraBy Sarah Holst

We got married on August 30, 2014 in a park in Duluth, Minnesota. The sun came out just in time for the service. A butterfly joined us on the altar. A flock of seagulls flew over our heads. We had a mixed gender wedding party, a blessing with Lake Superior water was given by our mothers, friends read from Job and Matthew, John O’Donohue and Rumi, and we printed a special acknowledgment in the program to the indigenous people of the area in regards to use of the Lake Superior Watershed, their home.
Continue reading “A Seven-Month Honeymoon Sabbatical: Our Journey with BCM and Spiritus Christi”

The War on Drugs Fails

gabor mateFrom Gabor Mate in In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction (2009):

The War on Drugs fails—-and is doomed to perpetual failure—-because it is directed not against the root causes of drug addiction or of the international black market in drugs, but only against some drug producers, traffickers, and users. More fundamentally, the war is doomed because neither the methods of war nor the war metaphor itself is appropriate to a complex social problem that calls for compassion, self-searching insight, and factually researched scientific understanding.

How an 85-Year-Old Nun, Activists Infiltrated Top U.S. Nuclear Site, Exposing Dangers & Urging Peace

Transform NowVideo and report from Democracy Now!

Three peace activists who infiltrated a nuclear weapons site have been freed from prison after their convictions were overturned. In 2012, the self-described Transform Now Plowshares broke into the Y-12 nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Known as the “Fort Knox of Uranium,” the complex holds enough uranium to make 10,000 nuclear bombs. The activists cut holes in the fence to paint peace slogans and threw blood on the wall, revealing major security flaws at the facility, which processes uranium for hydrogen bombs. The break-in sparked a series of congressional hearings, with The New York Times describing it as “the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex.” The three were convicted of damaging a national defense site. After two years behind bars, a federal appeals court recently vacated their convictions, saying the prosecution failed to prove the three intended to “injure the national defense.” All three were released this weekend until their resentencing on a remaining charge of damaging government property. They have likely already served more time than they are set to receive under their new sentencing.
http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2015/5/19/how_an_85_year_old_nun

Pentecost: Divine Polyculture vs. Imperial Monoculture (Genesis 11 and Acts 2)

pentecost1By Ched Myers

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

How is it that we heard, each of us, in our own native tongue?
Acts 2:8

Since the dawn of colonization, the Americas have been defined by the struggle between dominant culture ideologies of conformity imposed by those in power, and grassroots cultural diversity among those on the margins. This tension between fantasies of racial supremacy and realities of racial diversity remains one of the supreme challenges facing the U.S., and thus our churches, today. The future of North American society depends upon our ability to live peaceably and justly with human diversity — and the same can be said of the human experiment as a whole. The question is whether we can, in church and in society, forge models of coexistence-with-congruence rather than unity-by-uniformity.
Continue reading “Pentecost: Divine Polyculture vs. Imperial Monoculture (Genesis 11 and Acts 2)”

Carnival de Resistance

CDRBy Todd Wynward

It was night, the circus tent was steamy, and I was in the middle of a twenty-eight-foot long whale puppet, swimming our way through the wide-eyed crowd. A bit earlier in tonight’s show, when a group of women were dancing ecstatically and waving blue veils to the beats of wild drums, I was invisible off-stage taking my turn on one of the stationary bikes that generated the electricity needed to power the amps. But right now it was my turn to be under the spotlight. Human-sized Raven and Dove had set the week’s tone with their prophetic theatre during the Air show last evening; the Fire show was coming tomorrow; right now, we were still deep in Water.
Continue reading “Carnival de Resistance”

When they turn off our water..

water stationWritten by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann for the Detroit Peace Community’s Stations of the Cross. This week the City of Detroit has resumed shut offs to 30,000 homes.

When they turn off our water, prohibiting us from cleaning our clothes or our bodies, they strip us of our dignity.

When they turn off our water, leaving us unable to care for medical needs and sewage backs up, they strip us of our health.
Continue reading “When they turn off our water..”

A Letter to Vietnamese Prisoners

Tiger CageThis poem was written by Daniel Berrigan during his imprisonment after the Catonsville Nine action, published by Fellowship Magazine & The Merton Center. It was, later, memorized by Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann during his participation in a protest of “tiger cages” used for torture by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War in the summer of 1973 (right). Wylie-Kellermann recited it from memory yesterday at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, to honor the Catonsville Nine activists.

Part 1.

Dear friends, your faces are a constriction of grief in the throat
your words weigh us like chains, your tears and blood
fall on our faces. Prison; Vietnam, prison; U.S.
prison is our fate, mothers bears in prison,
our tongues taste its gall, bars spring up
from dragons’ teeth, a paling, impaling us. Continue reading “A Letter to Vietnamese Prisoners”