The Holy Spirit Roars

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

An excerpt from the Substack newsletter of Dr. Farah El-Sharif (above), a professor of Islamic history at Stanford University. Radical disciples have so much to learn from Muslims fearlessly resisting empire. Read her entire love letter to Jerusalem here.

The Holy spirit—ruh al-quddus—isn’t “moderate” in the face of tyranny. It doesn’t act “nice” with tyrants. It does not “obey” religious rulers who are more afraid of creation than they are of the Creator. Holiness does not bend to the sinister will of powerful “peacemakers” who only sow mischief in the land (Baqarah: 11). The Holy Spirit roars. The Holy Spirit fights back darkness with light. It is so imbibed in Divine love, it becomes a fearless tsunami with a tide so powerful, that it drowns both idols and demons in its wake.

Jerusalem carries herself like a “sitti”, like a wrinkly, beautiful Palestinian grandmother who was has witnessed the ongoing nakba of her people for far too long. Her eyes are lined with the kohl of sadness from witnessing far too many children gunned down and the torching down of her childhood grove’s favorite millennia-old olive tree.

The Efficacy of Protest

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

By Jonny Rashid (above), re-posted from his Substack newsletter

I was one of the organizers for the Interfaith Action for Palestine protest of the CUFI convention. CUFI is a Christian Zionist lobbying group that believes that Israel needs to be restored in order for Christ to return, and God judges the Jewish people they are supposedly advocating for. It is deeply harmful eschatology and also deeply antisemitic. We were organizing for Palestine, against Christian Nationalism and Zionism, and against antisemitism.

We had many meetings, exchanged thousands of Signal messages, and held trainings in person to make sure that our protests went as seamlessly as possible. Our goal was to be organized, effective, and kept everyone as safe as possible. This weekend, hundreds of us gathered with power, enthusiasm, and confidence that we would make our voice heard.

On the evening before our protest, our team left DC proper and went to the National Harbor to do some reconnaissance. Our plan was the enter the hotel hosting the CUFI convention, sing songs, lead chants, blow horns, and drop and display banners that reminded the attendants of the conference that CUFI kills, that God doesn’t bomb children, that Christian Zionism is antisemitic, and that God loves Gaza. But when we got to the hotel, we learned that in order to enter, one needed a room key or a lanyard. We felt defeated at that prospect; it felt like months of organizing just went down the drain.

Continue reading “The Efficacy of Protest” →

Behind the Scenes

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his Substack newsletter. Audio version available here.

Two weeks before Donald Trump bombed Iran under false pretenses to protect an apartheid state’s right to commit genocide on Palestinians and then (true to form) tweeted “now is the time for peace,” the Waymos were burning up in Los Angeles.

Watching that scene from 2,000 miles away brought me back to a Saturday in early Spring, when my friend Sheldon and I drove to downtown LA to march with staff and faculty from UCLA demanding the protection of their international students who have publicly demanded that the university divest from occupation and genocide.

We parked and walked a dozen blocks to the corner of Broadway and Temple. On our way, we were stunned to see our first Waymo, the uber that runs on a Silicon Valley algorithm, now operating in a handful of cities. We struggled to come up with adjectives as we watched this moving car, in the middle of downtown, with no one at the wheel. 

After we drove back to Orange County and had dinner, I was cleaning the kitchen when I heard a horrible crash in front of my mom’s house. Sheldon and I ran outside to find a car up in the bushes of the front yard right across the street.

There was a human driving this car. While we were trying to figure out how he got up there in the bushes, he was revving the engine to the limit, trying to get out. We could see that he hit a parked car next door and then demolished the electric box.

Continue reading “Behind the Scenes” →

no kings, all bricks

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance, Subverting Empire1 Comment

By Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre, a poet and activist cultivating a deeper engagement with social justice issues, one based in both empathy and agency. Re-posted from his website here

I don’t have time/energy right now to share very much commentary; hopefully people are aware of the news here in Minnesota. Our No Kings rally went forward, and even with authorities telling people not to gather, thousands of people showed up. I shared a poem.

Actually wrote and memorized it last week, but because it ended up being about grief, how we carry it, and what we might do with it, it felt appropriate to share today too. Full text below, for the folks who have been asking for it.

ALSO: please check out the latest post in my FREE email newsletter: What’s next? Things to do after a big march

———————-

The ancestor on my shoulder doesn’t tell me to put the brick down, or that the weight isn’t worth it. I’m sure many of you are familiar with that… heaviness, whether guilt, or grief, or just the daily shipwreck of the news, all this information we already know:

How things are bad. How they’ve always been bad for some of us, and how shining a light on the bad thing doesn’t change it… but can be a first step. How a big march like this can be a first step, but is never a destination. How going “back to normal” is going backwards. And how desperately the cowards in power want you going backwards, want you to put that brick down, want you to focus on your job, make money—focus on your family.

Continue reading “no kings, all bricks” →

Idols

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

The beginning and conclusion of Chris Hedges’ latest piece “The Last Days of Gaza.”

This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.

In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them…

…There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardizing their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs. They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols. They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them.

At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.

The Radical Power of the Poetic Word

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann

Walter Brueggemann: A Remembrance (March 11, 1933 – June 5, 2025)

When I was a student at Union Seminary in New York, Abraham Heschel taught at Jewish Theological Seminary across the street. Though he died within my first year, the author of The Prophets, was notorious, it was said, for being the professor who actually believed in God. Something related might be said about Walter Brueggemann who crossed over to the ancestors and saints June 5.

He was an eminent scholar, among those like Norman Gottwald who altered the landscape of biblical studies by bringing sociological analysis to interpretation, and for such reason presided for years in the biblical guild. Yet, as a discipline, he was eminently readable and accessible to movement and church for whom the work was ultimately intended.

Once in a footnote to Israel’s Praise, he cited a 1985 order of the Pretoria regime prohibiting Blacks from singing Christmas carols in the townships because they generated such revolutionary energy. The newspaper report quoted a South African police agent: “Carols are too emotional to be sung in a time of unrest…Candles have become revolutionary symbols.” Which is to say, he could write an analysis of the world-shaking and world-making power of Israel’s liturgy and psalms, but then put out a book of prayers for our own moment. He prayed. He imagined a new world with all his heart. He invited us likewise.

Continue reading “The Radical Power of the Poetic Word” →