Community Counteracts the Seduction of Cynicism

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From Lydia Wylie-Kellermann of Word & World and Jeanie Wylie Community in Detroit:

Cynicism seems an easy road these days. From my own porch, I watch the house across the street burn just days after US bank told us they had no intention to ever sell. On the corner a fifteen year old girl was shot and killed. At the Catholic Worker, I spend more time answering phone calls and turning down desperate pleas for a place to stay that night. In Detroit, democracy slips away as the city is taken over by corporate interests. Wars continue endlessly with no end in sight and growing rumors of more to come. Not to mention the political climate, the environmental climate, the continuing racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia around us. We all have an ever growing list. It is all too Continue reading “Community Counteracts the Seduction of Cynicism” →

The Liberation of Frederick Douglass…and the Bible

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Cloud of Witnesses, Theological Animation1 Comment

I used to attend a Methodist church, in which my master was a class-leader…he could pray at morning, pray at noon, and pray at night; yet he could lash up my poor cousin by his two thumbs, and inflict stripes and blows upon his bare back, till the blood streamed to the ground! All the time quoting scripture, for his authority…
Frederick Douglass, National Anti-Slavery Standard (1841)

When Frederick Douglass ran away from slavery, dressed up as a sailor and boarded a train for freedom with fake papers (undocumented!!!) 176 years ago, it took him 24 hours to get from Baltimore to home base in Rochester. Today, as we officially launch RadicalDiscipleship.Net, we honor Douglass’ underground road trip and, how he utilized the Bible as a radical script to narrate the life of activism he was devoted to. Continue reading “The Liberation of Frederick Douglass…and the Bible” →

RadicalDiscipleship Launching September 3

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I don’t have a minute to hate. I’ll pursue justice the rest of my life.
Mamie Carthan (the mother of Emmett Till)

Tomorrow, on the anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ escape to freedom, Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries and Word & World will be officially launching a daily-updated blog to highlight the unique strand of North American “movement” Christianity. We are committed to being collective (welcoming a multiplicity & diversity of voices), convictional (unapologetically theological), constructive (creating a new world out of the shell of the old) and concrete (covering a range of personal to political practices, from reformist to revolutionary). Continue reading “RadicalDiscipleship Launching September 3” →

On The Idolatry of Hoping for an Easy-Fix With a Hero

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An authentic cross-post from Heidi Thompson, the CEO of Religion News Service:

I’m ashamed to admit that I was a fan of Michelle Rhee when she first arrived.

In 2006 when I got to town, DC schools, like so many of our big city public schools, were (and in many cases, still are) horrible warehouses of despair and corruption. Previous school officials had been found guilty of stealing from the kids they were supposed to be helping. The elementary school around the corner from my first DC apartment looked more like a prison than anything else – bars on the windows and a concrete pad overgrown with weeds for a play area. Close to 40 percent of the kids in the city didn’t graduate from high school.

I wanted someone to kick butt and take names. I wanted a hero, someone who could bring powerful change that would help kids. Looking back, I can see now the sin of my thinking. It was idolatry, plain and simple. It was idolatrous to think that one person could turn around that much neglect and dysfunction.

But the sin I and lots of others committed was even worse than the idolatry of hoping for an easy-fix with a hero. What Rhee and her kind of so-called “reformers” have done is distract all of us from dealing with child poverty. In Rhee’s world, we as a nation can tolerate the astronomical rate of child poverty in this country (something like 20% of kids are in families where there is weekly food insecurity) if we just get rid bad teachers and bad schools. Rhee and her corporate donors would much rather have us talk about anything other than the deep re-ordering of our national priorities it would take to make sure every American kid got an excellent education.

This piece lays it all out. And reading it, I knew the shame belongs to me, too.

Remembering The Context Of Racial Oppression & White Privilege

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A letter pledging solidarity with the citizens of Ferguson, MO from On Earth Peace, a historically white majority organization committed to nonviolence:

August 2014

With grief, indignation, and hope, On Earth Peace asks our community to pray and act in solidarity with the citizens of Ferguson, MO, and anyone who seeks racial justice for all God’s children. Continue reading “Remembering The Context Of Racial Oppression & White Privilege” →

Finding Ourselves in Ferguson

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”–Martin Luther King, Letter From A Birmingham Jail (1963)

On The Run

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“Together, the chapters make the case that historically high imprisonment rates and the intensive policing and surveillance that have accompanied them are transforming poor Black neighborhoods into communities of suspects and fugitives. A climate of fear and suspicion pervades everyday life, and many residents live with the daily concern that the authorities will seize them and take them away. A new social fabric is emerging under the threat of confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust, and the paranoiac practices of secrecy, evasion, and unpredictability.”― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (2014)

A Prayer From/For Iraq

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Lord, 
The plight of our country
is deep and the suffering of Christians
is severe and frightening.
Therefore, we ask you Lord
to spare our lives, and to grant us patience, 
and courage to continue our witness of Christian values
with trust and hope.
Lord, peace is the foundation of life;
Grant us the peace and stability that will enable us
to live with each other without fear and anxiety,
and with dignity and joy.
Glory be to you forever.
Prayer by Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Iraq, His Beatitude Louis Rafael Sako

Proceeding From The Heart

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A written homily on this weekend’s lectionary Gospel passage (Matthew 15:10-28) by Tom Airey.
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We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers From Prison (70 years ago)

Religion gets messy and confusing when we become obsessed with our status before a judging Creator. Are there certain hoops we must jump through in order to be pure, clean & righteous? Is God pissed at us all until we perform the proper transaction, whether prayer or pilgrimage or penance? 500 years of Protestant faith has twisted this concept into even more confusion. We are “justified by faith alone,” the Reformers taught the world back in the 16th century and beyond. “Don’t try to work your way to Heaven,” my Evangelical teachers and pastors taught me during the last couple decades of the 20th century. It’s all about receiving grace, they kept assuring me.

But grace is cheap when it is simply flashed as a badge to meet requirements to be in the Presence of the Divine. Instead of the classic Protestant battle pitting “faith” versus “works,” in this Gospel episode Jesus schleps away any focus on outwardly ritualistic purity & cleanliness for a mission-oriented commitment to what “proceeds from the heart,” a lifestyle void of evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. Twice in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea’s exhortation to “mercy” & an intimacy with God instead of sacrifices and burnt-offerings, classic attempts to curry favor with God over the generations.

Jesus’ focus on the heart was not an altar-call of pietistic regime-change, an invitation to make Jesus the personal Lord & Savior of our hearts. Instead, with the help of God’s strength, energy & wisdom, he was calling disciples to pledge allegiance to the hard work of getting to the root of our sin. This will take a mixture of mindfulness meditation & meetings, not miracles & magic. Prayer & daily surrender are important, but transformation doesn’t just happen. Jesus didn’t want to just forgive the symptoms. He yearned for a complete overhaul of the systems…To keep reading, go here.