Building a Movement: Strategy vs. Insularity

On October 23, 2014October 23, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

To be political, then, is not merely to hold or to express political opinions about issues, either as individuals or in groups. Rather, to be political, requires engagement with the terrain of power, with an orientation towards the broader society and its structures…
Jonathan Matthew Smucker

Today, we present a piece by UC Berkeley sociology doctoral student Jonathan Matthew Smucker, passed along by Laurel Dykstra, that is more wonky than the usual radical discipleship fare. Continue reading “Building a Movement: Strategy vs. Insularity” →

The End is Here

On October 22, 2014October 22, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

by tom airey, co-editor, radicaldiscipleship.net
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We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now…
Romans 8:21

Hope, for radical disciples, is intimately related to both our identity and vocaton as “children of God:” those committed to the Way of Brother Jesus, who taught and lived out a dangerous style of love, forgiveness, peace, inclusivity and solidarity with the poor and marginalized. We join a determined God in giving birth to a whole new world. This will take sacrifice and suffering.

Continue reading “The End is Here” →

God’s Domination-Free Order: Reflection from Revival

On October 21, 2014October 21, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and TheologyLeave a comment

Josina Guess is a beautiful writer and lover of Jesus. She lives with her husband and their four children at Jubilee Partners in Comer, GA.

“So what did you think?” We were driving home from the revival that my son’s 6^th grade classmates had invited him to attend and I wanted to hear his thoughts. In the three years since we moved down south this was my son’s first invitation to do anything with anybody born and raised around here. He was excited to see his friends, his “homies” as he affectionately calls them, and I was coming with a little trepidation but an openness to worship with my neighbors. Continue reading “God’s Domination-Free Order: Reflection from Revival” →

Art as Resistance: The Pacific Climate Warriors

On October 20, 2014October 20, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as ResistanceLeave a comment

From the Pacific Climate Warriors, whose climate-catastrophe action on Friday blocked 8 of the 12 ships in a full-day blockade of the Newcastle Coal Port in Australia:

Every morning, we wake up and the ocean is there, surrounding our island. But now the ocean, driven by climate change is creeping ever closer. Unless something changes, many of our Pacific Islands face losing everything to sea level rise. Continue reading “Art as Resistance: The Pacific Climate Warriors” →

Discipleship As Suffering

On October 19, 2014October 19, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological AnimationLeave a comment

From Brian Blount, President of Union Presbyterian Seminary, in Then the Whisper Put On Flesh: New Testament Ethics in an African American Context (2001):

Discipleship is not exemplified by suffering; suffering is the tragic outcome of following this kingdom-preaching Jesus. This is what makes Jesus discipleship heroic. Despite the probability that one will suffer if one persists in imaging the life of Jesus in his or her own life, the disciple goes ahead and images that life anyway.

She is on her way

On October 18, 2014October 23, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

“Our strategy should be not only to confront the empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness- and our ability to tell stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

– Arundhati Roy

Watershed Discipleship: Transformation Through Picking Berries

On October 17, 2014October 17, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Watershed Discipleship1 Comment

Watershed Discipleship Fridays continues with this piece from Kyle Mitchell, who lives with his wife Lynea on the 3rd floor of an old house in Cleveland. They have a couple egg-laying hens in the backyard and tons of red wiggler worms. Kyle spends his days working alongside folks with developmental disabilities on a 2-acre urban farm down the street from his house. In his spare time, he works alongside Lynea in the 2 youth gardens she started in the neighborhood. They are both passionate about growing food, spreading that knowledge, and figuring out ways to get healthy food to folks that don’t have access to it.
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A few years back, I had a dramatic conversion experience. Someone introduced me to the act of picking berries. Continue reading “Watershed Discipleship: Transformation Through Picking Berries” →

The Black Prophetic Struggle Against Injustice

On October 16, 2014October 21, 2015 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire1 Comment

By Tommy Airey
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The great irony of our time is that in the age of Obama the grand Black prophetic tradition is weak and feeble.
Cornel West, Black Prophetic Fire (2014)

The Union Theological Seminary professor & prominent American public intellectual Dr. Cornel West has teamed up with Christa Buschendorf, the professor and the chair of American Studies at Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt am Main, for the newly released Black Prophetic Fire from Beacon Press, a series of extended conversations on six compelling prophetic leaders: Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Ella Baker (above), Malcolm X & Ida B. Wells. It is a well-timed buffet for people of faith & conscience yearning to eat at the table of a nutritious historic tradition that will energize & sustain subversive lifestyles within the context of 21st century American Empire. Continue reading “The Black Prophetic Struggle Against Injustice” →

A Letter to our Churches

On October 15, 2014October 14, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and TheologyLeave a comment

Written by Lydia Wylie-Kellermann in 2012 for the Michigan delegation of United Methodist pastors to General Conference who would be voting on changes to the Discipline around gay marriage.

Dear Delegation,

I have been told by politicians, by laws and disciplines, by bishops, by friend’s partners, by extended family, by neighbors and life long friends, and even by a woman waiting for a bus, that my marriage is wrong. That its mere existence is a cause of harm in this world. Continue reading “A Letter to our Churches” →

Ground the Drones in Michigan- Nov 8

On October 14, 2014October 15, 2014 By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

“We are building up a new world.
Do not sit idly by.
Do not remain neutral.
Do not rely on this broadcast alone.
We are only as strong as our signal.
There is a war going on for your mind.
If you are thinking, you are winning.
Resistance is victory.
Defeat is impossible.
Your weapons are already in hand.
Reach within you and find the means by which to gain your freedom.
Fight with tools.
Your fate, and that of everyone you know
Depends on it.”
-Flobots, “We Are Winning”

Calling all peace activists & nonviolent practitioners within the Great Lakes Region! Today’s blog post is asking for your hands, feet, minds, hearts, time & all the creativity you can muster. Continue reading “Ground the Drones in Michigan- Nov 8” →