What is Radical Discipleship?

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

From Ched Myers, posted to social media last week in eager anticipation for the Second Festival of Radical Discipleship in Bangor, PA over this so-called “Memorial Day Weekend.”

I want to offer the edited and abbreviated version below of a “rant” I gave at the 2015 BKI Festival for Radical Discipleship here in Oak View, as a paean to this work and to the vision of radical discipleship that animates our mission at BCM, which will be celebrated this weekend at the Second Festival at Kirkridge Retreat Center. May this tradition carry on!

What is Radical Discipleship?

The etymology of the term radical (from the Latin radix, “root”) is the best reason not to concede it to nostalgia. To get to the root of anything we must be radical. No wonder the word has been demonized by the elite and co-opted by marketing hucksters, and that no one in conventional politics dares use the word favorably–much less track any problem to its root. It is also curious and revealing that the notion of discipleship is so marginal in our churches. Curious, because discipleship is unarguably the central theme of the gospels. Revealing, because it shows how wide the gulf between seminary, sanctuary and streets has become in North America.

The prevailing expressions of faith among Protestant churches—evangelical decisionism, mainline denominationalism and fundamentalist dogmatism—are each problematic in a society that is mired in dysfunctional politics, delusional economics and a distractive culture. Faith as discipleship remains the “road rarely taken” here at the heart of empire. We have yet truly to reckon with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous warning, delivered under the shadow of fascism, that “cheap grace is grace without discipleship.” Radical Discipleship thus calls us to a double commitment: to reveal the roots of personal and political pathologies that continue to shape our imperial society, and to recover the roots of our biblical tradition: the messianic movement of rebellion and restoration, of repentance and renewal, and of a “Way out of no way” that has been going on since the dawn of resistance to the dusk of empire…

Read the entire post here.

Saoirse don Phailaistín

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Earlier this month three women from Palestine Action disrupted and confronted a large plane contracted by the US Military at the Shannon Airport in Ireland. Planes such as this one carry Troops, Weapons and Military Equipment that carry out War Crimes in Palestine, Yemen and many other war zones that the USA is involved in. This goes directly against Irish Neutrality and the will of the people of Ireland. This is a statement from one of the Palestine Action Éire activists.

Our government is literally fueling genocide. The government continues to allow troops and weapons through Shannon against the democratic will of the people! Over the last year and a half I’ve realised that the only way to disrupt the war machine is through Direct Action. I’m doing what is necessary to save innocent lives because when I am older I want to be able look back and say I did everything I could to stop this genocide.

Saoirse don Phailaistín

We are in the Spirit

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

An excerpt from Jim Perkinson’s sermon on John 6 during the Summer of 2018 called “I Am Wind.”

“God” in Hebrew writ, as we have it from Genesis to Malachi, is double-named, a hyphen-Deity, Elohim of the cool, wet coastal mountains, YHWH of the hot sands south and east. And this is likely because Israel was a hyphen-people, a mixed lot, a creole crowd, partly composed of pastoral nomads following Moses and Joshua, coming into Canaan from the forty years of desert wandering, once crossing the Jordan from the east, joining with rebelling Canaanite peasants, going feral up in the central highlands from seaboard cities on the Mediterranean to the west. A motley crew, each group bringing their God into the stewpot, a Midianite-Canaanite mix, worshipping a YHWH-Elohim amalgam of deities. YHWH is a dust-storm deity encountered by a renegade herder horde on a Sinai desert mountain in lightning and thunder. Elohim is a rain-storm deity encountered by an outlaw peasant crowd on a Canaanite coastal mountain in lightning and thunder. One flashes over the vastness of sand; the other over the expanse of sea. And though the name YHWH comes to predominate, Elohim remains in use more than 2500 times in the Hebrew text.

We could go on if there were time. The word for Wind in Hebrew is “ruach,” which also means “Air,” “Breath,” “Spirit.” Gendered female.   These are not fully separable ideas. For many indigenous and antique peoples, the Spirit-World is the Natural World, especially in its fluidity as Air, Wind, Breath. It is not so much the case that the Spirit is in us, as it is we are in the Spirit. It moves through and among us all the time.

Everything is breathing Spirit, in and out, every second. And the bodies that navigate the realm of air, the bodies exquisitely attuned to sense every nuance of wind wafting, whispering, upwelling, down-blowing, scudding or sheering—birds—are quintessentially Spirit-Messengers in culture after culture. We, in the biblical tradition, just freeze-frame them and call them “angels”—winged creatures that sing, and bring messages from heaven!

It is the Wind-Spirit that hovers, Dove-like, over the Great Waters of Chaos in Creation in Genesis 1. It is that same hovering Spirit-Wind-Dove that blows back the Red Sea waters for the escaping slaves. It is the Wind-Cruising-Dove that Noah sends forth from the water-bound ark to find land. It is that Dove-Bodied-One who falls on Jesus coming up from Jordan waters, as the Holy Spirit incarnate, says Luke. God as Dove-Animal, shaped by Wind-Air-Breath, tutoring the Messiah in his wilderness vision-quest and then accompanying him at every step along the way as that Spirit-Bird-Familiar by which he confronts demons and exposes Principalities. Spirit-Wind, if you want, as the Third Person of the Trinity, moving in and out of us and of every other living thing on the planet, at every millisecond!

Normalize

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his Substack newsletter

Last week, I wrote about how the social construction project of empire hammers away at our humanity with all sorts of destructive norms. This week, I woke up on Monday morning to the jack-hammering of a construction project two blocks north of us on Rosa Parks Blvd, right across the street from Greater Faith Missionary Baptist Church.

It’s Spring in Detroit. These days, the jack-hammering goes into overdrive.

My Celtic ancestors called this season Beltane, a whirling dervish of planting, budding, birds and bees, a time to celebrate abundance, fertility and fresh ideas. Beltane, which begins on May 1, literally means “bright fire.” My deep ancestors on the Emerald Isle cleansed their souls and sparked the land back to life by jumping over bonfires. They did this every year before they drove their cattle out to pasture.

Speaking of pasture, Psalm 23 comes up in the Western Christian lectionary this weekend. This ancient Hebrew text, famously read at funerals, describes the divine as a shepherd who restores our souls by leading us out of imperial construction projects, into a wilderness of green pastures and still waters. This feral Force, overflowing with goodness and steadfast love, is greater than empire itself.

Continue reading “Normalize” →

Ancestry Ain’t Activism

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

From Dr. Stacey Patton, a journalist and professor at Howard University. Re-posted from social media.

Deep sigh.

So there’s chatter over a genealogist’s discovery of the new Pope’s Black relatives. The sudden excitement over a drop of Black ancestry in his bloodline is… weird.

As if that one ancestral thread is going to cleanse centuries of colonization, genocide, child abuse, and anti-Blackness woven into the very fabric of the Catholic Church. This institution literally weaponized Christianity to justify slavery, declared entire continents heathen wastelands, and baptized the whip before it struck the backs of Africans.

Do people think that a sprinkle of melanin in the papal family tree is some kind of moral redemption arc?

The Catholic Church has always been a war-mongering, imperialist machine. It funded conquest. It erased Indigenous cultures. It turned confession into control.

And it’s not like Black Catholics haven’t been sitting in pews for centuries, watching themselves be erased from religious iconography, leadership, and liturgy, all while being told to forgive white supremacy in the name of Jesus. But suddenly, because this Pope’s great-great-great somebody might have been Black, people think the Vatican might finally be about justice?

This is racial symbolism theater at its worst. Ancestry ain’t activism.

Unless that Black ancestry shows up as radical disruption, reparations, reformed doctrine, and full-throated repentance this is meaningless. Symbolic Blackness in a sea of institutional whiteness is just seasoning for white supremacy.

We Need More Than Apologies

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

A Message from the Standing Bear Network, re-posted from social media.

They say his name is Pope Leo XIV, and that he is the first to come from the United States. But to us, the First Peoples of these lands — the ones whose stories stretch back to the rivers, stars, and stones — we do not judge leaders by their titles, but by their relationship to the truth.

And so, we look closely.

Before the white smoke rose in Rome, Robert Francis Prevost spent years in Peru, walking among Indigenous peoples in the Andes. He was a missionary there — a man of the Church bringing his teachings into communities that already had their own ways of praying, healing, and knowing the land. Some say he offered education and support. Others know the weight that always follows when priests arrive with crosses in one hand and promises in the other.

He is no stranger to our communities — not by name, but by role.

A missionary.

Continue reading “We Need More Than Apologies” →

The Revolutionary Jesus: Living the Reign of God in a Time of Fascism

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

Another compelling offering from our friends at the Alternative Seminary. 

A SIX-WEEK ONLINE COURSE

Thursday evenings, May 29 – July 3, 2024

7:00 – 9:00 pm EST

These are perilous times.  In the United States today, we are witnessing the emergence of fascist authoritarianism.  Undergirding this movement is a militant White Christian Nationalism – a dangerous heresy in which “American Jesus” is a gun-toting, law-and-order, pro-military, pro-capitalist, and racist Messiah of the Domination System.

We urgently need to recover the authentic Jesus of the Gospels.  Together we will explore the radical and revolutionary vision of Jesus in the midst of this emerging fascism.  What does Jesus mean in proclaiming “the reign of God”? How can we both prophetically challenge the idolatrous theology in U.S. society and seek to embody a faithful alternative? We will reflect on how the Gospel addresses issues of politics, economics, power, healing, community, and suffering, and how they can empower us to action. We will seek to draw from faith-based resistance movements, including the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany.  We will struggle with how Jesus challenges us to be a Beloved Community in these insane and vicious times. 

Continue reading “The Revolutionary Jesus: Living the Reign of God in a Time of Fascism” →

Be Careful

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

The conclusion of Steven Salaita’s recent piece “Care and Carefulness in Today’s United States.”

People all over the United States are being snatched up, disappeared, imprisoned, and deported. So how can we be careful amid these horrible conditions? Simply put, we can’t. We can be tactically prudent, but there’s no guarantee of safety for anyone serious about Palestine solidarity, or for anyone who is vulnerable by virtue of identity or legal status. There’s no guarantee of safety for anyone, really, in a world that so readily tolerates genocide.

“Be careful” has other uses and connotations. 

For example, I would suggest that you be careful about nostalgia for a democratic polity that never was.  Be careful about activists and organizations appended to the Democratic Party.  Be careful about the podcasters who built an audience by caping for Bernie Sanders.  Be careful about celebrities who moderate support for Palestine under pressure.  Be careful about genocide profiteers in the film and publishing industries.  Be careful about the next shiny young politician who comes out of nowhere to save us.  Be careful about anti-Zionists who ignore Palestinians.  Be careful about anyone who prioritizes the settler’s existential angst.  Be careful about anything that tries to make a place for oppression in this world. 

And, for God’s sake, please be careful about the supposedly radical luminaries interjecting liberal Zionism into conversations about Palestine. 

In these instances, “be careful” isn’t an appeal for you to keep safe; it’s a demand that you seek to protect everyone else. 

Misremembering

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Re-posted from the social media account of Ashon Crawley (above), Professor of Religious Studies and African-American Studies at the University of Virginia

i am an abolitionist. i think naming harm is important so that you can repair. in this political climate, it can feel like the democratic candidate said at an event a couple weeks ago—”i told you so”—but, honestly truly, that’s not what the moment requires. the moment requires clarity and honesty. it is easy to misremember the past especially in times of political and economic tumult but that misremembering don’t change what things happened.

so a reminder:

people were being arrested and fucked up for saying free palestine. artists were losing installations, gallery representation and exhibits for watermelon in bios. professors and folks in other industries were losing jobs for even a suggestion that there should be a ceasefire. college presidents were giving hella milquetoast responses, being hella islamophobic, and still losing their jobs because it was determined they were not serious about antisemitism. people protested at mother emanual the violence palesinians were experiencing to the then-sitting president that was bypassing congress to provide that place with more weapons, and in the church shushed them, said it was shameful, and in the church cheered on biden and “four more years!” and said he and kamala were working “endlessly on a ceasefire agreement,” and this they said as that administration continued to bypass congress to provide weapons and money. my students were brutalized by police. and so many of my friends’ and colleagues’ students were too on campuses across the united states. no pro-palestinian voice was allowed to speak at the dnc, and as they protested by offering names and ages of those that were dying, they were literally laughed at and mocked. there was no general rebuke for this laughing and mocking. if mentioned at all, it was explained away.

and but also just yesterday, april 29, 2025, The Times of Israel periodical published the following: “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period… We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted,” stated by former Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog.

that administration lied. explicitly. and continually. and they tried to suppress any organizing that third party folks were doing. the attempt to embarrass jill stein on the breakfast club, and then the advertisement to discredit her, both happened with these particular lies as the pretext for criticizing her and any third party folks in general. call it voter suppression. but no, the current conditions isn’t the fault of third party voters and leftists.