A final message from Mariam Abu Daqqa, who was murdered by Israel this week.
Anarchist Christianity: The Sermon on the Mount in Action
Another compelling offering from the Alternative Seminary.
AN ONLINE GATHERING: Saturday morning, September 6, 2025 from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm EST
What fellowship has anarchy with christianity?
Empowering small communities of people to take care of their own needs at the local level. Rejecting rulership and making decisions by consensus through face-to-face deliberation. Constructing societies in which people are placed above profit and systems are built on solidarity and mutual aid.
It is no coincidence that this describes both the historical movement of anarchism and the early church as described in the Acts of the Apostles.
In this gathering, we will explore the history, philosophy, and practice of anarcho-communism and how they cohere with the teachings of Jesus and the practices of the early christian communities. We will dive into how theologies touching on God, humanity, divine-human interaction, the Bible, and more can be illuminated and faithfully reformulated through an anarchist lens. And we will chart a christian praxis based on voluntary cooperation, the goodness of all people, and faith in God. We can build an ethical world – one built on structures of care – and anarchy might just be the unlikely key.
The Rev. Terry J. Stokes (he/they) is an anarchist theologian who seeks to foster political and spiritual radicalization through his writing and speaking. He holds degrees from Yale University and Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained as a minister of word and sacrament by Park Avenue Baptist Church. He is a youth worker and associate minister in Trenton, NJ, and a group facilitator at The Wooden Shoe anarchist infoshop in Philadelphia. Their latest book is Jesus and the Abolitionists: How Anarchist Christianity Empowers the People.
Registration is required. Click HERE to register.
The cost is $10 (or whatever you can afford).
The deadline for registration is September 2.
The Facebook page is HERE.
If you have any questions, please contact Will O’Brien at willobrien59@gmail.com or 267-339-8989.
The Alternative Seminary is a program of biblical and theological study and reflection designed to foster an authentic biblical witness in the modern world.
A Sophisticated Art Form
An excerpt from Ched Myers’ commentary on this week’s Gospel text in Luke. The entire post is well worth reading, as it is every week. Check out Ched’s blog for his weekly comments and subscribe to his emails here. Also, check out his recent release (above) Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy.
There are three main problems with how church folk have been socialized to encounter scripture:
- We handle texts as fragments, rarely grasping the narrative whole and flow;
- Our habits of “fast food Bible study” allow only limited time and attention to “get to the point,” which fosters either overdependence upon an authority figure to tell us what the text means, and/or a settling for vast simplifications;
- The focus of interpretation is almost always “personal application,” quite apart from social and historical context (ours and the text’s)—treating the Bible as an “answer book” or doctrinal rulebook.
The problem is, ancient storytelling was not simplistic, but a sophisticated art form using a variety of techniques to educate, preserve culture, and explore the human experience.
Click here to read the rest!
Free Leqaa Kordia
From the Free Leqaa Kordia IG Page
On March 13th, on the 523rd day since the start of the genocide in Gaza, Leqaa was kidnapped and sent to Texas.
Today is day 678 of the genocide that has taken almost 200 of Leqaa’s family members lives and day 155 since Leqaa has been confined at Prairieland Detention Center for speaking out against the genocide.
This page was created by Leqaa’s loved ones to ensure that her story and the reason why she was confined — for protesting the ongoing genocide of her family and people in Gaza — does not fall through the cracks. We must stand up for Gaza and for Leqaa.
Leqaa is currently represented by Texas Civil Rights Project (@txcivilrights), CUNY CLEAR(@cuny_clear), Muslim Advocates (@muslimadvocates), Waters Kraus Paul & Siegel, and Boston University School of Law Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. Leqaa’s Official page: @freeleqaakordia
Artwork by: @shirien.creates
The First Step Toward a Healthy World
By Caitlin Johnstone, re-posted from her newsletter
Nicole on Facebook writes, “I would love to hear you explain how Palestine is the moral question of our time. Why it’s so important. How it’s related to every movement and should be a concern to everyone.”
Palestine is the moral question of our time because the abuse of the Palestinians is the most glaring, in-your-face symptom of the imperial disease. You can see the effects of so many of the empire’s abusive dynamics in how this thing is playing out, from racism to colonialism to militarism to war profiteering to mass media propaganda to empire-building to government corruption to suppression of free speech to ecocide to the heartless, mindless, soul-eating nature of the capitalist system under which we all live.
But there’s more to it than that. The primary reason to place Palestine front and center as the moral issue of our time is because if we can’t sort out the morality of an active genocide backed by our own western governments, we’re not going to be able to sort out anything else. Stopping the Gaza holocaust and bringing justice to the Palestinians is the very first step toward a healthy civilization.
Continue reading “The First Step Toward a Healthy World”The Heartbeat of Every Free Person
By Anas Al-Sharif, who was assassinated by Israeli missiles yesterday
This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.
Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came first, and His decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.
I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.
Continue reading “The Heartbeat of Every Free Person”Loaves, Fishes and Forced Starvation
By Rev. Margaret Ernst, on behalf of Christians for a Free Palestine
This past Sunday, I guest preached at a church in Pennsylvania and one of the songs we sang was “Rain Down,” by Jaime Cortez. I swayed to the music, but my breath caught in my chest when we reached the end of the second verse. “God will protect us from darkness and death,” the line goes, “God will not leave us to starve.”
God will not leave us to starve.
Images of Palestinians starving — children, elders, people of all ages — flashed in my mind.
I felt a physical pain in my heart. We sing these proclamations of faith in a God who provides and does not let God’s children starve, I thought silently. Yet Palestinians are starving, right now.
The Bible is full of stories about food. Manna in the desert. Loaves and fishes. Like his Palestinian kin who are known for their hospitality, Jesus is always feeding people. Teaching, yes, but feeding people too.
Continue reading “Loaves, Fishes and Forced Starvation”The Trenches of Civil Society
By Rev. Dr. Edgar Rivera Colon (above), re-posted from social media
I will not be preparing to teach for the next academic year. I’m now an independent scholar. In fact, I’ve not taught at USC’s Keck School of Medicine since the spring semester of 2024. Apparently, while I taught my capstone class in the Narrative Medicine course (during which Palestine was never mentioned), someone was monitoring my social media and decided I was a militant anti-Zionist. They were correct.
Suddenly, two very smart and wonderful Jewish students were removed from my class without even a real explanation. I wish those students all the best. Also, all the part-time faculty who were teaching the required three-semester health justice class were fired (I was one of those faculty) because “the full-time” instructors were interested in teaching the course. This was complete nonsense.
The real problem was that a a Mexican and indigenous community member wore a “Free Palestine!” t-shirt and talked about the connection between land and good health here in East LA and Palestine. These comments upset a couple of white liberal Zionists and the administration went nuts.
Continue reading “The Trenches of Civil Society”A Renewed Prayer
By Jennifer Maidrand, a professor of Bible, Culture, and Interpretation at United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. This is re-posted with permission from her social media page (07.29.25).
After spending the last month and a half in Palestine-Israel for research, I feel a clear affirmation in the work that is ahead and found a renewed prayer of sorts for the journey. And now that I’ve returned to the U.S., communicating what I witnessed during my time in occupied Palestine feels nearly impossible to yet urgent. Research aside, what did I see?
A situation more dire than I’ve seen in the last 11 years of spending time in the region
Countless new checkpoints and gates separating Palestinian society (from Israeli society and from itself) and restricting Palestinian freedom of movement—apartheid at work
The manifestation of the U.S. and Israel’s greenlighting of illegal settlements—outposts being built in hours, rampant settler violence and pogroms (protected by the Israeli military), more cars with Israeli than Palestinian plates in the West Bank
Palestinian homes being seized, demolished, and coercively sold left and right
More than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed since October 2023
Continue reading “A Renewed Prayer”A 40-Day Prayer Vigil
A message from Tommy Airey, co-founder of RadicalDiscipleship.net
This is not a famine. This is forced starvation.
The most faithful thing radical disciples can do is publicly call out Israeli and US leaders for what they have intentionally been doing to Palestinians for decades. We should call out our pastors and priests too – whenever they support it with their sermons, or their silence.
When Jesus prayed “give us each day our daily bread,” he was teaching his disciples to live in solidarity with the slaves who escaped from Egypt, trusting that God would sustain them by sending manna in the wilderness.
The first Christians learned to live on just enough so there would be enough for everyone else to live too. Their personal faith was inextricably connected to collective liberation.
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Over the past eighteen months, I’ve been organizing with a collective of Palestinian Christians – and a few allies – who are committed to the love, compassion, truth and justice of Jesus. We are connecting the dots and telling the truth about how Western Christian dogma dehumanizes Palestinians.
Our collective is strategizing to subvert the destructive biblical and theological underpinnings of an overwhelming number of evangelical, protestant and catholic churches in North America that support Israeli apartheid and gen0cide – in the name of Christ.
We are inviting friends in the Christian fold – and those who are Jesus-adjacent – to join us for a 40-day prayer vigil, starting this Saturday (8/2).
Some of us will fast on different days. Some of us will intercede for Palestine at a certain time each day. Some of us will take in fewer calories, in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings in Gaza. All of us will pray, whenever we feel our own hunger pangs.
We are bonding together for forty days to pray for an end to this forced starvation – and for a free Palestine. We are committed to doing whatever we can to stop this gen0cide and inaugurate a new chapter in “the holy land,” where Palestinians are not only protected and affirmed, but empowered to lead.
As the sacred text says, faith without action is dead. Our hope is that our prayers to a Love supreme will conceive unprecedented levels of spiritual depth, moral clarity and political courage that will give birth to a whole new world. If you feel compelled, click on this link and join us.
Radical Discipleship 