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12/9/2012 Comments The Season of TearsBy: Gregory Williams In the Church where I was baptized, I was taught that Advent was for those of us who are too depressed to do Christmas. Every year, for these four weeks, we were reminded that one of the spirit’s greatest gifts to a Christian community is that community’s ability to live with weakness, to admit its need for grace, to name the absence of God in our lives in the midst of a culture characterized by triumphalism and willful blindness to pain. One year the pastor demonstrated this quite dramatically in a sermon. “There are many Churches,” he said, “that, in order to accommodate those who mourn the loss of loved ones at Christmas or who cannot be with family for other reasons, hold a “blue Christmas” service.” He then held up his (blue) stole and exclaimed, “we don’t need to do that because we already have a blue Christmas. It’s called Advent!” While I have since moved away from this Church, I believe that its emphasis on periods of mourning and lamentation has political significance, particularly for those of us who integrate anarchist praxis into our path of discipleship. One of the major defensive mechanisms of Imperial Religion is its ability to rob us of our tears. We live amidst an interlocking set of globe-spanning political, social and cultural systems founded upon the colonial dispossession of land and displacement of people, particularly low income people and people of color, making room for the capitalist transfiguration of every person place and thing into a commodity to be marketed, used and thrown away. Our life together in creation is also marred by the heteropatriarchal scripting of gender and sexuality that rests on oppressive dualisms of culture and creation, rationality and affect, mind/spirit and body and male and female. This social system is responsible for the deaths of millions, for historic and ongoing genocide and for the near-constant burning of the bodies of children, women and men upon the fiery altars of imperial war.
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10/30/2012 Comments Serving for CitizenshipBy: HH Brownsmith According to the United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration, defending one’s country is one of the responsibilities of citizenship. During the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War black men enlisted with hopes of returning from the battlefield to greater equality in the states. Japanese people joined up during WWII to avoid internment camps. Latino folks have been and are continuing to be recruited for the war in Afghanistan with the promise of an expedited path to citizenship. As disgusting as this bargaining is, the model is not hard to understand. You kill for us and we’ll call you an American (if the political and cultural climate allows for that and you don’t die). But what if you aren’t given the initial “privilege” to enter into battle for the country? Some gay, lesbian, and bisexual people struggled with this conundrum from the creation of the armed services until September 2011. In the lead up to the repeal of Clinton’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Don’t Pursue policy, the debate became unsurprisingly dichotomous. Straight moral conservatives and a couple of churches (the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, namely) issued statements against the repeal. Liberals, including some affirming churches, and mainstream gay activists spent all their energy telling the world that members of the LGB community deserve the chance to fight and die for American interests. Meanwhile, other peace churches were holding their tongues on the sidelines and radical queer liberationists were being ignored, per usual.
Once the sidewalk ends the connection between humans and ground (Latin: humus) becomes primary. To step off the sidewalk is to reconnect with our primal origins as earth creatures created or evolved (take your pick) for life on this particular planet in this particular atmosphere. To step off the sidewalk is to retouch our wild indigenous selves. The classic Christian spiritual disciplines do serve an irreplaceable role in connecting us with the work of God in the world. They are the necessary but insufficient foundation for Christian discipleship in the twenty-first century. But our relationship with our bodily and earthly identity is conflicted in the classic tradition. In the classic tradition the wild, indigenous self is to be feared and therefore colonized and converted. Many people today recognize the false promises and destructive impact of modern civilization. We often do not know what alternatives exist. Most of us have an unsatisfied desire for wildness and mystery that neither school nor church, neither therapist nor pastor can address. For over two hundred years under the flags of modernity and progress our civilization has been diminishing the biotic capacity of this planet. We have already reached the point of no return. Our ability to effectively respond to our dilemma has been perilously handicapped by dysfunctional political systems and societies that can no longer nurture humans to full maturity and adulthood.
Navigating America’s suburban sprawl without an automobile is almost impossible as well as dangerous. Without sidewalks (or bicycle lanes) the automobile reigns supreme. The only safe way to avoid captivity in your suburban home is to submit to the imperatives of a fossil fuel economy, risk life and limb alongside speeding traffic, or flee the suburbs for the city or the country. There is something virtuous about sidewalks in providing a safe, effective means for people who prefer to walk rather than drive. However sidewalks have their limitations. Having a sidewalk may be better than not having a sidewalk. The sidewalk may take you where you want to go; but sidewalks only take you where those who poured the sidewalk wanted you to go. As Shel Silverstein reminded us long ago: the adventure begins where the sidewalk ends.1 I want to draw upon Silverstein’s metaphor to explore the practice of spiritual disciplines in contemporary radical Christian practice. Classic spiritual disciplines have their necessary function. They should be taken more seriously than they often are. My thesis however is that the classic practices of formation do not form radical Christians because they were never intended to.
(or: it’s one of many inspirations for present and future) ‘Christian anarchism’ is a label sometimes used in Jesus Radicals circles. In a December 2011 call and response between Amaryah Armstrong and Nekeisha Alexis-Baker, Amaryah asked Nekeisha whether she had to ‘be an anarchist’. She argued that the term ‘does not sit well’ with her because of the ‘irony of Christian anarchy being anti-domination and yet being predicated on domination by White men’, and went on to make her case. Nekeisha replied that ‘it depends on how we define “anarchist”’, and responded to several of Amaryah’s points. Their thought-provoking dialogue touches on the common difficulty of how to define ideological labels in political thought. I’d like to offer some thoughts on this from my perspective – that is, some thoughts on ‘Christian anarchism’ as a label, on why I like it, on problems associated with it, and perhaps on how we can decide whether and when to use it – and this, from the perspective of a white man from an international European background spending unhealthy amounts of time in academic settings. By: Peter Gallagher For a few brief moments on Tuesday, anarchy truly broke out in Seattle. Or at least it felt like it. The occasion was the May 1st General Strike, a day marked to disrupt the flow of capital in order to shed light on the daily injustices and atrocities that are wrought by our spiritually sick society. For me, it was a tragic day, yet very powerful and illuminating. Through writing this reflection, I hope to speak to what some implications might be for Christian anarchists. My experience leads me to believe that there is an immanent need for a soulful and reverent anarchist presence—and that we as followers of Jesus must abide by Jesus’ example of holy militancy: passionate, fearless, and present. May 1st 2012 is sure to go down as one of the most seismic and divisive days in Seattle’s recent history, perhaps since the WTO protests of 1999. The media had a field day; The Seattle Times carried a massive headline reading “Police move quickly to suppress anarchists”, accompanied by a full-page article with pictures of black-clad youth being towed off by cops. The story, according to them, was that on a day usually reserved for peacefully highlighting social justice causes, a violent faction of insurrectionary anarchists dressed in black—colloquially referred to as the “black bloc”—marred it by smashing up several banks, storefronts, fancy cars, and even the Federal Court of Appeals. This resulted in direct confrontation with the police, an executive order from the mayor to detain anyone carrying a large stick or flag, and numerous arrests. 5/31/2012 Comments Food as Spiritual and Political Praxis Part 2: Continuing the Conversation between Autumn Brown and Nekeisha Alayna Alexis
Nekeisha’s note: As Autumn and I engaged in our first intentional exchange about the political and spiritual dimensions of our food choices, we realized that we not only had more to ask and to share than one post could reasonably contain: we also enjoyed our engagement with each other and wanted to more deeply understand the ways our food, politics and faith shaped our divergent eating practices. So we agreed to continue the conversation using the same question and answer model with which we began. Below is our second and final exchange for Jesus Radicals. Autumn: Since I touched on this in my last response, I would return to the question of desire and survival. In our previous conversations, you have indicated that you believe eating meat is only acceptable if it is deemed necessary for survival. In my mind, this sets up a dichotomy of desire vs. survival in which desire is strongly associated with sin. I tend to be wary of direct associations between desire and sin because the church has a nasty history of instilling this kind of belief with psychologically and physiologically destructive consequences to human individuals and families. And while there are traditions within the church of fasting from meat at certain times, my theological study has led me to the understanding that scriptural and patristic teachings with regard to diet are usually about self-denial or mindfulness rather than the assertion that the practice of meat-eating is itself sinful. In your experience and beliefs, what specifically about desiring meat is problematic from a spiritual, theological or scriptural perspective? 5/23/2012 Comments Prayer as Resistance, Part 2
Karl Barth once said “the clasping of the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of this world.” In this two part essay I talk about Barth’s understanding of prayer as a form of Christian resistance. Part one described Barth’s understanding of Christianity as resistance. Part two will now describe how Barth understands prayer as a form of resistance. Barth wrote over 500 pages on prayer alone. It has a significant place in every volume of his Dogmatics. It is also crucial to his ethics in that Barth roots human freedom in the practice of prayer. Prayer is the human action that declares God’s freedom as primary and human freedom as a response to God. Prayer is how we enter into God’s freedom and follow it into the world. When we pray we take up a posture that reveals our true humanity, uniting what we do with who we are. Barth’s makes the forceful claim that “prayer is literally the archetypal form of all human acts of freedom in the Church, and as such it must be continually repeated in all other acts of freedom.”1 5/18/2012 Comments Prayer as Resistance, Part 1
Karl Barth is reported to have once said “the clasping of the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of this world.”1 In this two part essay I will talk about Barth’s understanding of prayer as a form of Christian resistance. Barth (1896-1969) was the most prolific and influential Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. I will not attempt to introduce him here. But I hope that what I have written will be accessible and helpful even to those who have only read a little of Barth or never read him at all (or perhaps even heard of him!). Whether we are interested in Barth or not, the central issue for this essay is significant for everyone. How do we understand the relationship between our private and public lives as followers of Jesus? How is spirituality related to politics? What does prayer have to do with resistance? I find Barth’s thoughts on this to be a compelling proposal for thinking about the unity of prayer and politics. Rather than understanding prayer as a withdrawal from the public square perhaps we should understand prayer as a primary form of worldly engagement. Part one will describe Barth’s understanding of Christianity as resistance. Part two will then describe how Barth understands prayer as a form of resistance. There is a very real temptation, when exploring the intersection of Christianity and anarchism to simply force one category into the other. I see this all the time. There are those who simply believe that their Christian tradition is so inherently anarchistic that they can simply “claim” anarchism. They trump all other anarchisms in such a way as to dimiss them entirely. There is a danger in this: it creates theological ghettos increasingly unable to respond to current political and spiritual crises. Theological ghettos simply assume that everyone else should be like them while the world and its people continue to rush headlong towards the abyss. And there are those who see Christianity as a useful tool on one’s journey towards anarchism. They see anti-domination as their true god, and even Christ serves to bring people to this god. The danger of this temptation is that anything sacred becomes scrapped for parts to a cause that will never arrive. The inner transformation necessary for social liberation cannot be obtained simply through structural analysis. There is a reason Marx was never a Marxist. There is a reason why many of my most brilliantly anarchistic friends come off as authoritarian. There is simply more oppressing us than social structures. And more is required for us to embrace our fullest humanity than tearing down oppressive structures and replacing it with our clever utopias. If one is a Christian anarchist, who largely congregates with other anarchists, then it could easily be understood that one’s Christianity is simply their own flavor of anarchism. And, when the chips come down, anarchism is what it’s all about. Likewise, if one is a Christian anarchist, then one could easily feel that one’s anarchism is simply a political affiliation…and that, being in fellowship with militaristic Capitalist patriotic Christians is more important than seeking liberation. Neither appeal to me. |
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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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October 2017
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