On the Trail Together: Confessing Resonances in Anti-Oppression Work

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cara curtisBy Cara Curtis. Cara Curtis took part in Word & World’s 2011-2012 mentoring program. A former resident of Philadelphia, she now studies and centers her activism at Harvard Divinity School.

During my years at an elite, majority-white, social justice-oriented liberal arts college, I joined many of my fellow students in a process of awakening that many call “unpacking the invisible knapsack.” Coined in a landmark 1988 article of the same name by Peggy McIntosh, this phrase refers to a process of learning and re-evaluation in which people of privilege—economic, sexual, gender expressive, or in McIntosh’s case racial—begin to realize the ways that their lives are made easier solely by virtue of belonging to a dominant group. With practice, people also become vocal about calling out this privilege when they see it. They actively try to minimize their dominance in order to create greater opportunity and space for folks with non-dominant identities to thrive. Continue reading “On the Trail Together: Confessing Resonances in Anti-Oppression Work” →

Self-Portrait

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Bob Two BullsRobert Two Bulls is the RadicalDiscipleship.Net artist of the month. “Self-Portrait” (below) is a piece that Two Bulls utilizes to creatively confront stereotypes. He explained this piece five years ago, “I chose the war bonnet and red blanket images in profile because it’s a well-worn, universal image … an image used famously by Hollywood,” said Two Bulls. Although such images date back more than a century, they persist in contemporary culture “as images most folks will now conjure up when thinking of what an American Indian looks like.”
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30 Years Later: William Stringfellow

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StringfellowFrom William Stringfellow (April 26, 1928 – March 2, 1985), lawyer for the least of these and writer for the rest of us:

I believed then, as I do now, that I am called in the Word of God–as is everyone else–to the vocation of being human, nothing more and nothing less. I confessed then, as I do now, that to be a Christian means to be called to be an exemplary human being. And, to be a Christian categorically does not mean being religious. Indeed, all religious versions of the Gospel are profanities. Within the scope of the calling to be merely, but truly, human, any work, including that of any profession, can be rendered a sacrament of that vocation.

Godly Play

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Redeemer1From artist Katherine Parent of the Redeemer Center for Life:

These are collaborative icons made by my coworker Helen Collins and I with Sunday School children at Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis. We are using the Godly Play method of Sunday school, which involves storytelling and responding to stories through art as sacred practices. Our creative, lively multiracial church is housed in a hundred-year-old building full of stained-glass images of a blond white Jesus–but we as a congregation have many more ways of seeing our savior. Continue reading “Godly Play” →

What is Radical Discipleship?

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John August SwansonBy Ched Myers, excerpted from “What Is Radical Discipleship? An Introduction to the Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute,” Ventura River Watershed, Feb 16, 2015

Radical Discipleship is NOT a dope slogan, or a mobilizing soundbyte, or a hip brand, or an ironic twitter handle. Hell, these terms aren’t even cool anymore. “Radical” is a term as unfashionable today as it was trendy in the 1960s. The notion of “discipleship,” meanwhile, is entirely shrugged off in liberal church circles, and trivialized in conservative ones. So let me explain why this is the handle of this Festival, why we insist on using the phrase. The etymology of the term radical (for the Latin radix, “root”) is the best reason not to concede it to nostalgia. If we want to get to the root of anything we must be radical. No wonder the word has been demonized by our masters and co-opted by marketing hucksters, and no wonder no one in conventional politics would dare to use the word favorably, much less track any problem to its root. Continue reading “What is Radical Discipleship?” →

Cannibals

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Micah IconBy Tommy Airey

…you who hate the good and love the evil,
who tear the skin off my people,
and the flesh off their bones;
who eat the flesh of my people,
flay their skin off them,
break their bones in pieces,
and chop them up like meat in a kettle,
like flesh in a cauldron…
Micah 3:2-3

*This is the third installment in a series of seven pieces on Micah posted every Wednesday during Lent.
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Surely, Micah wasn’t winning any popularity contests by openly comparing political and religious leaders to Jeffrey Dahmer. The prophet homed in on two socio-economic atrocities. First, the decisions that social, corporate, political and religious elites make have a direct effect on the livelihood of everyday people. Masses of people are trying to survive slave conditions. Many live and work in toxic and hazardous environments. Those who can do something about this almost always don’t.
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Love Story to Narnia

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narniaBy Lydia Wylie-Kellermann (First published at http://www.dlmayfield.wordpress.com)

Frustrated he said, “Well what would you do if you were trying to convert someone?” He had been following my mom around campus for months trying to convert her to be a Crusader for Christ by following the 5 spiritual laws of conversation. Without needing a minute to think about it, she said “I would ask them to read the Chronicles of Narnia and then invite them to talk about it.” Continue reading “Love Story to Narnia” →

The 38 Tears of Bishop Whipple

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Bob Two BullsSeven or eight years ago when I lived and served in the Diocese of Los Angeles, I began teaching a class on Art and Spirituality and the marketing of Native American Indian Art. From these two experiences, coupled with my own art-making, I found that individual minds are opened by art. Art can transform the individual. When Native artists create art that is not necessarily tribally themed, non-Native viewers often voice surprise. Continue reading “The 38 Tears of Bishop Whipple” →