The Race for Presidency Has Begun

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

RubyA recent post from Movement giant Ruby Sales, co-founder of The SpiritHouse Project:

Calling friends and shakers and movers for justice. The race for the presidency has begun. Spirithouse Project wants to make it plain that no presidential candidate will make it to the White House on the back of Black people by using anti Black rhetoric to organize and mobilize White people. Nor will anyone get to the White House without addressing racism as a national problem that feeds state sanctioned murders, economic disenfranchisement and the state of Black youth. The road to the White House will not be built on false issues. Rather we demand solutions to the real systemic issues of the day. Race. Economics. Medical industrial complex. Prison industrial complex. Growing homelessness. Corporate monopolies. State sanctioned violence. War on Black people, etc. ADD YOUR ITEM TO THE LIST.

Ruby vigilantly updates her page Breaking The Silence Against Modern Day Lynching on Facebook, a site that documents and records the issues, comments, articles, photographs of the rising rate of modern day lynchings, beatings, drownings (torture) by White police and vigilantes.

An Easter Vigil Word

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation1 Comment

mary magdalene Preached by Denise Griebler at the Detroit Peace Community/Catholic Worker/ St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Easter Vigil on Mark 16:1-8.

16 When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The other day I cyber-stumbled on a new childrens’ book called Rad American Women from A to Z – it’s a picture book that teaches kid’s a little women’s history along with the ABCs. A is for Angela (as in Davis) – Z is for Zora (as in Neale Hurston). There’s even X for the women whose names we do not know.   It’s a collection form AtoZ of courageous, badass women we want our kids and our grandkids to know. Continue reading “An Easter Vigil Word” →

The Pedagogy of Place: The Art of Coping

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Tommy Airey, the first post of a 3-part series about how we learn from our location about what is truly Divine
——————
Every town has the same two malls: the one white people go to and the one white people used to go to.
Chris Rock

About a month ago, I drove just across 8 mile (the border between Detroit and Southfield) to visit the mall that white people used to go to. I went for one reason: it was closing that week and everything was 60-80% off. I was the only white dude in there. It felt good because it was like I was breaking Chris Rock’s rules.
Continue reading “The Pedagogy of Place: The Art of Coping” →

Just One Request

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

sekouFrom Osagyefo Sekou, Harvard educated theologian, community organizer and active participant in the community resistance in Ferguson, MO:

If I can just make one request. My request of you all in this room is that when this protest doesn’t look the way you are used to it looking, I ask you to look deeper: Yes it’s profane and it’s angry because we have betrayed our children. And so rather than beginning the sentence or conversation with “If they did it this way,” take seriously the way they are doing it. Take them seriously. Take their humanity seriously. I was born again on the streets of Ferguson. I got saved, as we would say in evangelical parlance, by some kids with gold teeth and tattoos and sagging pants, and so I’m asking you to look at their humanity. So when the media start that “They’re violent,” remind them that they’ve been nonviolent for the vast majority of their protest even after America betrayed them on every occasion. I ask that you keep track of their humanity…they are just trying to find their way trying to make sense of it all.

And my other request is that you put your body in the way. Now let’s be clear in this moment, your whiteness will not save you. They shot a white woman with a collar on. So they will shoot you, but you put your body in the way for them because these are your children too. When you feel like you’re losing your way and you don’t understand I want you to think about your baby, yours, lying in the street for four and a half hours. You’re looking at your baby, you can’t touch your baby just lying in the street. They got police dogs around your baby, keeping you from getting to your baby who you brought into the world, lying in the street, bleeding out. They won’t let paramedics get to your baby. And then you will understand why these folks are so angry and we should be celebrating that there isn’t a riot every 28 hours in America. These people called black have been so disciplined, and America betrays them, and they still refuse to shed her blood. We should be celebrating them. Lifting them up. The way you do that is, next time they shoot one down here you show up. You don’t say a word, you just show up because these are your children too. That is what I ask of you on the behalf of the people in Ferguson.

Housing Justice

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

DSC00001From Jill Shook, who is teaching an innovative course this summer on housing–through the lens of biblical Jubilee:

Ever since the Great Recession, low income people in record numbers have been deprived of their assets and displaced from their homes—from land meant to be used in a way so that all can have access to decent shelter. This is a form of systemic violence that violates the principles of Jubilee justice found throughout the Bible, from Leviticus to the Book of Acts. As Christians, we are called to take action to assist not only the refugees from war and violence but also those displaced in gentrified cities, where rents are soaring.
Continue reading “Housing Justice” →

Repenting White Supremacy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, RaceLeave a comment

decolonizeBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann. Originally printed in On the Edge.

I am sorry. I am sorry for speaking too quickly. For saying the wrong thing. Or not saying anything. For speaking unaware out of my own white supremacy.

I am sorry for not learning the history. For the large blind spots I carry. For all the people and creatures hurt along my way.
Continue reading “Repenting White Supremacy” →

Shoah

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of WitnessesLeave a comment

shoahFrom Ken Sehested of Prayer & Politiks:

Yom HaShoah (aka “Holocaust Remembrance Day,” more formally “Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day”) is observed one week after the end of Passover, this year beginning at sundown on Wednesday 15 April, the date linked to the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Increasingly, the word Shoah (“calamity”) is preferred because holocaust has historical roots in the Hebrew word olah, meaning “completely burnt offering to God,” with the implication that Jews and other “undesirables” murdered by the Nazis during World War II were a sacrifice to God…

Sehested included this powerful quote from Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew, Hillesum who died at age 29 in Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp, in 1943:

I have looked our destruction, our miserable end, straight in the eye and accepted it into my life, and my love of life has not been diminished. I am not bitter or rebellious, or in any way discouraged. . . . My life has been extended by death, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.