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11/15/2013 Comments Distress of the PrivilegedBy: Doug Muder Editors Note: This essay originally appeared at The Weekly Sift
In a memorable scene from the 1998 film Pleasantville (in which two 1998 teen-agers are transported into the black-and-white world of a 1950s TV show), the father of the TV-perfect Parker family returns from work and says the magic words “Honey, I’m home!”, expecting them to conjure up a smiling wife, adorable children, and dinner on the table. This time, though, it doesn’t work. No wife, no kids, no food. Confused, he repeats the invocation, as if he must have said it wrong. After searching the house, he wanders out into the rain and plaintively questions this strangely malfunctioning Universe: “Where’s my dinner?”
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7/9/2013 Comments The Misplaced Seminary Part 1American college tuition is rising at twice the rate of inflation.1 The average student loan debt has climbed to nearly $25,000.2 And according to a study cited by Anya Kamenetz in her book DIY U, public university tuition would cost the poorest one fifth of Americans 55 percent of their income.3 Government subsidies for education are championed as the solution to these problems. It is one of Barak Obama’s second term promises that he will be “giving everyone a shot at an education.”4 The truth is the university has developed multiple cost-shifting strategies to handle recession. It is the university’s practice to raise tuition, court out-of-state students, and increase class size when government grants dwindle during difficult economic periods. The modern university has a steady flow of funds but a poor understanding of stewardship. Even by free market standards, the university’s business practices are opaque. People who can afford to go to school can’t find out what their ever-increasing tuition is actually paying for. Recruiters boast that class sizes are being reduced and distinguished professors are being hired. But education watchdogs have found that tuition is often being funneled into marketing departments and new campus gyms while under-paid adjuncts teach to classes of over 100 students.5 If this were any other business and the quality of the product was deteriorating but the cost was rising, the consumer would no longer purchase the product. 7/2/2013 Comments Jesus' bad exampleBy: Charletta Erb Editor’s Note: This satirical piece is a part of the Overturning Tables Project…for more information, visit overturningtables.org. Oh how I wish Jesus had set a better example! Let’s be reasonable here. He should have proposed his prophetic action in consultation with the religious leadership far in advance of the Passover feasts. This would have reduced so much stress for the Pharisees and scribes. He shouldn’t have made his case using sacred scriptures. Too risky, too radical, too much playing his religion card like he knew it all. Why did he have to bring Isaiah or Jeremiah into this, crazy activists claiming God’s house for foreigners, eunuchs and the like! One issue at a time now! How dare he come to the temple with an agenda! By: Kevin Daugherty
I recently visited my mother’s side of the family in Rhode Island. Unlike my father’s side, my maternal family is not your usual white, American Protestant family. For example, while having tea after dinner, my grandparents lectured to my mom about communism, and how authoritarianism is why, sometimes, it goes in the wrong direction. My grandfather compared the communistic endeavors of the early church (Acts 2:44, 4:32), and their eventual failure (Acts 5:1-11), to the failed Bolshevik Revolution. What is interesting about my family is that the day before, a preacher in my family, who happens to wear a Jesus fish belt buckle, was quoting David Barton and talking about America being a “Christian nation.” In my family, I have experienced all sides of Christianity. I have experienced the radical discipleship of my grandparents, the cultural Christianity of my mother, and the hyper-nationalist evangelicalism of my aunt and cousins. Many, however, are not as fortunate as I have been. When many experience Christianity, it is in the nationalistic and oppressive form. On one hand, some experience these negative expressions of religion and stick to them, and perpetuate them. On the other hand, many of the radicals today outright reject Christianity as oppressive and fundamentalist, and then lump religion in general into that category. I have especially found this trend in anarchist communities who dismiss religious anarchism as some sort of oxymoronic, recent invention. The truth of the matter, however, is that religious anarchism has always been there, right beside secular anarchism, and some anarchists even recognize its religious roots. “Lord God, merciful God, our Father, shall we keep silent, or shall we speak? And if we speak, what shall we say?” – Dorothy Day, January 1942 FRIDAY—THE BARE FACTS AND THE CHURCH’S RESPONSE This is going to be a very difficult piece to write and, in all honesty, I do not know if I am going to do a very good job. The region where I live has, in the past few months, witnessed two very heinous acts of violence that were prominently covered in the mainstream media. On December 14 of last year, twenty children and six teachers were gunned down in a school shooting in Newton, CT. Yesterday, three people were killed and 126 wounded when two bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Both of these events are horrific and inexcusable. As followers in Jesus’ way of peacemaking and justice-seeking, I do believe that we are called to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) and to “persevere in prayer” (12:8). In this light, how could we, the Church, not respond to tragedies like these by holding services of commemoration to mourn the loss of life involved in these events? How can we not pray for the dead, the injured and those still in harm’s way? These are, on one level, profoundly understandable responses. Yet, speaking only for myself, I see something else in the response to both of these events in communities to which I belong that I find a lot more troubling. We are not only commemorating these events, we are collectivizing them. We are going beyond saying that the Newtown school shooting and the Boston marathon bombing are traumas--which they are—to the point of saying that they are our traumas. Facebook memes are abounding encouraging people to hug their kids or drop f-bombs about the levels of evil in the world and the like—things that one would normally do not to sympathize with another person but rather to express grief for one’s own loss. In Church, we are singing songs like “I Want Jesus to Walk with me” and “How Can I Keep from Singing?” songs that express a personal sense of grief and loss. 3/27/2013 Comments Take a Walk on the Wild SideBy: Ric Hudgens I’m weary of Jesus talk. In the black church we say “don’t talk the talk if you can’t walk the walk.” You have to be sixteen to drive a car and twenty-one to drink a beer but you can talk about Jesus all you want and no one will call you on it as you long as you say the right things. But what are the right things to say about Jesus? The real Jesus that is—not the plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of your car but the bloodied Jesus knocked in the ditch by our monster truck churches and hit-and-run lifestyles. Flannery O’Connor understood something disturbingly true about the real Jesus. In her novel Wise Blood she wrote of her protagonist Hazel Motes, “He [Hazel] knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher. Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown.”1 1/31/2013 Comments Sources of ViolenceBy: Keith Hebden One of the ways individuals and societies have been shaped by unjust systems is in relation to violence. Violence is that which works to reduce our humanity. This may be physical force, but not all force is violent. It may be any form of coercion that forces one to adopt a position of power over another. Violence is a dominant theme through both the Old Testament and the New Testament. But violence is not the last word even if much of Christian witness might lead us to believe that God’s violence is a moral and practical option. In the Old Testament we often read of a wrathful even genocidal God: one minute sending in agents to destroy everything in a given area (Isaiah 13:15–18) and the next moment espousing love and showering the object of affection with gifts and blessings (Isaiah 14:1–2). In this concept of God, love and violence go hand in glove without a trace of irony (Psalm 136:10). The prophets, to whom we turn for visions of justice, and mercy, are rarely any gentler than the Judges, Kings, and Psalmists. We have already heard from Isaiah’s God but Elisha’s temper and cruelty is hideous yet sanctioned by the divine. The comical brutality is narrated when Elisha was confronted by children calling him ‘Baldy’ and responded by getting God to set bears on them, murdering forty-two of them (2 Kings 2:23–24). By: Derek Minno Bloom Anarchism To be clear, I identify as a Judeo-Christian and a radical, but in the last few years my politics have transformed from anarchistic politics to a more de-colonial politics. In this essay I will explain how de-colonial thought first changed my politics and then my spirituality. When I use the word de-colonial I mean thoughts and ways of living/governing without colonial rule/Western thought. Learning about visions of decolonized futures from different Indigenous folks, I realized that there is not only one way in which decolonization is envisioned. These visions include a return of land and resources, healthy rivers, return of traditional life ways and languages, a return of the buffalo and grasslands and salmon runs, a return to matriarchal societies, abolition of the Prison Industrial Complex, an end to systematic prejudice, racism, and sexual violence, and for their settler neighbors to realize, understand and deconstruct their settler privileges/white supremacy culture (look here for an definition of white supremacy culture), and to recognize each nation or tribes’ right to self determination. Thinking about competition and perfectionism, which are two major forms of white supremacy culture, I started to think of how competitive the activist world is today. It reminded me of the Christian idea of Manifest Destiny that says everything on this land is for settlers, and our ways (Science, Religion and Politics) of life are the only correct ways to live. 12/31/2012 Comments Book Review: A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for AnimalsBy: Katherine Annemarie A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals edited by Andy Alexis-Baker and Tripp York, The Peacable Kingdom Series. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012. A couple months ago, the church I attend held a men’s barbecue event. I can’t remember exactly what was cooked, but it was something that required hours on the grill. The gathering’s host saw this extended time as an opportunity for fellowship. I don’t doubt his good intentions or his generous spirit. However, my husband (who keeps a vegan diet) felt alienated by the event, and we were both troubled and saddened by the deeper implications present. The idea that somehow consuming the flesh of another creature reinforces and bonds masculinity is troubling, as is the fact that a church that has a consistent nonviolent history is still so wedded to traditional dietary practices that are steeped in environmental and intersubjective violence. Yet, we remained silent. It can be difficult to broach this issue because it encroaches normal thinking and behavior and engages people in their own complicity with systems that utilize sexism, racism, speciesism, violence, power, and oppression. I am pleased that a book like A Faith Embracing All Creatures is now available to assist in bridging this divide, offering some assistance, and hopefully beginning some conversations grounded in love and compassion. 12/21/2012 Comments Dorothy Deserves BetterBy: HH Brownsmith Last month, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to move forward with Dorothy Day’s canonization process.1 These proceedings are notoriously slow but Dorothy’s has been rightfully measured. Throughout her life, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement expressed resistance to being recognized as a saint. She had a myriad of reasons for being uncomfortable with the title, including the belief that all people are called to be saints and that the canonized are easily written off. She feared sainthood would both trivialize her work and make it seem impossibly difficult. For a long while, members of the Catholic Worker movement made her opposition to canonization known and fought against the process. However, in the last 15 years some Workers have stepped forward to promote the cause of canonization with the reasoning that what is done posthumously is not for the dead but is for the living. I find this reasoning irreverent and as a person who spent time living in a CW house I strongly oppose canonization for Dorothy. But I do not intend to expound on her “Don’t call me a saint” quotes. Dorothy was clear about her wishes. The histories and motives of clergy members who have promoted Dorothy’s formal recognition are in need of further analysis. National Public Radio touched on this topic briefly last week but failed to go into detail about the lives of the late Cardinal John J. O’Connor and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan.2 Both men have done substantial work to put Dorothy in the Church spotlight. |
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The viewpoints expressed in each reader-submitted article are the authors own, and not an “official Jesus Radicals” position. For more on our editorial policies, visit our submissions page. If you want to contact an author or you have questions, suggestions, or concerns, please contact us. CategoriesAll Accountability Advent Anarchism Animal Liberation Anthropocentrism Appropriation Biblical Exegesis Book Reviews Bread Capitalism Catholic Worker Christmas Civilization Community Complicity Confessing Cultural Hegemony Decolonization Direct Action Easter Economics Feminism Heteropatriarchy Immigration Imperialism Intersectionality Jesus Justice Lent Liberation Theology Love Mutual Liberation Nation-state Nonviolence Occupy Othering Pacifisim Peace Pedagogies Of Liberation Police Privilege Property Queer Racism Resistance Resurrection Sexuality Solidarity Speciesism Spiritual Practices Technology Temptation Veganism Violence War What We're Reading On . . . White Supremacy Zionism ContributorsNekeisha Alayna Alexis
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