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Jesus Radicals Blog 2005-2017
For this month’s post, we decided to respond to people’s requests for more specific details and examples by sharing anonymous stories we solicited from people of diverse sexualities and gender identities. One of our aims was to highlight the often invisible diversity that exists in our communities and movement. We know from the Gospel parables that Jesus conceptualized the Kingdom of God as an unexpected infiltration that brings renewal from the margins. In a sweeping act of rewilding, a weed diversifies a monocultural wheat field; an unclean culture infests and transforms a hard cracker into something more satisfying. Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew (13:31-33), “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come make nests in its branches.” He then tells another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” That which has been excluded, including non-normative sexual experiences and people of marginalized identities, is often a crucial missing ingredient for realizing the kingdom.
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Those who don’t feel this Love pulling them like a river, those who don’t drink dawn like a cup of springwater or take in sunset like supper, those who don’t want change, let them sleep. This Love is beyond the study of theology… I’ve given up on my brain I’ve torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away -Rumi The comments to our first post were both confirming and challenging, and we will continue tailoring this series based on people’s responses. One question that emerged last time was, how does wildness include accountability in relationship? There is a growing trend in Christian moral theology to discern systems of sexual ethics that are less act-based and more relationship-based. The growing consensus among progressive Christians is that the substance or content of a sexual relationship (ex. consent, mutuality) is more important than its form (ex. gender, marital status). (For a good example of this, see Just Love by Margaret Farley of Yale Divinity School.) Theologians are also questioning secular liberalism’s respect for individual freedom held against the Christian norm of community. (Ex. Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics by Lisa Sowle Cahill of Boston College.) Before proposing a new framework of sexual accountability of our own, we need to tease out what individualism and community look like from a specifically ecological Christian perspective.
The ideas of civilization and the acts of colonization that seek to domesticate and control that which is inherently wild and good in God’s creation, depend on a mass of binaries—complexities of the natural and social world systemically and robotically reduced to digestible “opposites”. The opposites—male/female, straight/queer, white/black, rational/erotic, human/animal, among others—are assigned values in ways that serve to justify domination. Hierarchy first splits, then ranks; in the aforementioned set, it is clearly the first part of the binary that has been valued and the second that has been devalued. As those who identify in some way with the Judeo-Christian tradition, we belong to a legacy that has participated in the construction of a dominant culture that legitimates these binaries and therefore devalues sexual and gender multiplicity, non-white peoples, non-human animals, women, the erotic, the body and unmediated creation in general. The oppression has been naturalized by the nation-state and claims of divine ordination. We also, thankfully, belong to a legacy of renewal, re-wilding, resurrection and total liberation. This is what we hope to reclaim and understand together. We believe this process involves examining and dismantling all aspects of ourselves and our world that have been infected by the logic of civilization, including our sexuality. By: Frank Cordaro I have wanted to read this book for many years. It just was not written yet. Now that it is, we Catholic Workers and faith-based-nonviolent-resistance-to-the-USA-Empire type folks owe Wes Howard-Brook a debt of gratitude. Not since reading Ched Myers’s ground-breaking Binding the Strong Man has a book so influenced my reading of the scriptures. What Myers did with the Gospel of Mark, Howard-Brook does for the whole Bible by laying out a template for reading it. Come Out, My People! addresses two major issues that have plagued my reading of the Bible. The first is the seeming great divide between the New and Old Testaments, or what we Christians have called our “Jewish question.” James Carroll’s book Constantine’s Sword, documents this tragic misreading of the scriptures and the bloody history that has followed. The current political discourse surrounding the State of Israel shows that these issues are still very much with us and not going away anytime soon, My second issue surrounds the question of violence in the Bible. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer’s book Jesus Against Christianity highlights this perplexing issue well. Nelson-Pallmeyer asks the question, how are we who believe in the nonviolent Jesus and the unconditionally loving God of unlimited forgiveness with the violent deeds attributed to God and God’s people in the Bible? Nelson-Pallmeyer‘s answer is a bold and liberating one. If we really believe in that Jesus and that God, then where ever God is portrayed as violent in both the New and Old Testaments, the violence is human pathology imposed on the text. I find Nelson-Pallmeyer’s answer very appealing. It rings true in my spiritual guts. Yet it is somehow too convenient, too easy a solution. It does not adequately or systematically deal with the Bible’s violent biblical texts. 2/23/2011 Scared of ScarcityBy: Jocelyn Perry With the recent uprising in Egypt and the current protests in Wisconsin, the playbook for “struggle” is being tested. The paradigm of institutionalized oppression is being challenged with direct-action based on peaceful resistance. We as people of faith also must continue challenging the structures that keep us from growing into the “Body of Christ” as we are called to become. As “transforming our swords into plowshares” answers the question of how to practice transformational struggle, the Gospel story of loaves and fishes gives us a model for challenging conventional economics. But we have fear. Our fear of clearly listening to the needs of others and to our own hearts hold us back from bending our knee, sitting in the grass, and giving thanks and sharing. We are scared of Scarcity. John 6:10-13 tells us, “Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’ There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand people were there). Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.” By: Ric Hudgens At the beginning of the twentieth century it was theologian Karl Barth who first raised the question of a domesticated God: a God tamed, confined, and muted by humanity’s drive to control and domination. Only a few years later Europe saw that the progressive domestication of God did not lead to freedom but to the furnace and the gulag—not to the heavenly city of the eighteenth century Enlightenment philosophers, but to the hell of the twentieth century totalitarians. The church has been just as afraid of an undomesticated, wild God as the world has been. When Moses heard the voice of the Lord in the desert at Sinai and asked for a name he was told, “I will be who I will be”—deal with it! When Jesus tried to talk about the basileos of God he had to reach for verbal and enacted parables because this movement’s exact outlines could never be fully anticipated. When the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost the early church began an unpredictable “wild goose” chase, starting new Jesus-communities everywhere they were led. By: Eda Ruhiye Uca “Community”, “Radical Discipleship”, “Prophetic Witness”: An urgent and self-giving Christianity has taken hold of the imaginations of a new generation of the faithful. Group houses of sincere young folks earnestly desiring to live for Christ and serve the poor are springing up like daisies after a summer rain. It is humbling to witness the movement of the Spirit in their work. Yet it is mournfully apparent that the language, aims, and means of our Christian communities are often defined by a narrow contingent of the movement or what might be the movement if our communities were accountable to anti-oppression work and in solidarity with those under the foot of kyriarchy in its many forms. In fact, the voices of women, queer people, people of color, those of immigrant or non-North American status, the economically disadvantaged, and the disabled are often secondary to the voices of celebrated white heterosexual North American men. And while certainly, our God’s cause is the cause of the poor, there is something troubling about our communities’ rhetoric and movement “to the margins”: it is a dangerous sense of entitlement that gives some of us the notion to obtain property and create ministries and services- often while lacking training or outside accountability. Many community houses have been started without the members having first developed a meaningful relationship with the community leaders and projects already underway, without having been invited to come nor having undertaken a serious analysis of the kinds of unjustly gained power that make some service providers and others receivers of services. Yes, our God’s cause is the cause of the poor and the inspiration to give one’s life for God’s people- especially the most obviously vulnerable among us- is right and good. But the desire to give one’s life must not overcome a commitment to give that gift with a holy indifference that might lead one another way. (I am reminded of priests on foreign mission returning home, having been told that it was in disarming U.S. imperialism that they could best care for their beloved congregations abroad.) And while the lack of representation- and accountability- in our movements is casually acknowledged by many (“Sure, we’re mostly white, middle class, and male”), acknowledging it without committing to changing it perpetuates the unexamined privilege that underlies so many of our communities. It feeds the supremacy of whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality and class privilege in our most compelling “radical” North American Christian experiments and recreates the dynamics of oppression we name as sin. 1/11/2011 Comments Digger's AgapeBy: Keith Hebden The 1650s heralded Britain the ‘Commonwealth’ instead of the Kingdom as Oliver Cromwell’s supporters did the theologically-unthinkable and removed the head of God’s representative on earth – King Charles I. The national experiment didn’t last long but it’s legacy in local religious uprisings lives on in constantly renewed experiment. Among the dissenting radicals were the Society of Friends, or Quakers; the Levellers, the Fifth Monarchists; the Diggers; the Ranters. For a wonderfully written treatment of notorious ranter Abiezer Coppe read Peter Pick’s chapter in Alex Christoyannopoulos’s ‘Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives’.1 I fondly remember hearing Pick dramatising Coppe’s words although I don’t remember which words he quoted, but they lend themselves entirely to unfettered, playful, and terrible ranting: Behold, Behold, Behold, I the eternall God, the Lord of Hosts, who am that mighty Leveller, am coming (yea even at the doores) to Levell in good earnest, to Levell with a witnesse, to Levell the Hills with the Valleyes, and to lay the Mountaines low.2 By: Brenna Cussen Anglada “I urge the advocates of artificial methods[of birth control] to consider the consequences. Any large use of the methods is likely to result in the dissolution of the marriage bond and in free love.” -Mahatma Gandhi, 1925. The recent celebration of the Christmas season has been another poignant reminder for us that since God has become incarnate by entering the material world as a human person, our bodies, as well as all of God’s creation, are holy. As a farmer, I can look out on our bountiful gardens (now in the dormant season, recuperating under piles of snow and hay), the cows in the pastures, the trees in the forest, the creeks that trickle by our window in dry periods and rage and threaten to overtake our home during rainstorms – and I stand in awe at both the beauty in the rhythm of the seasons and the power of God’s natural world. As a woman, I experience the rhythm of my own cycle of fertility, recognizing when my body is ready to create and nurture life, and when it is resting from such a responsibility – and I stand in awe at both the beauty and the powerful capacity God has entrusted to the female form. My husband and I, both because of our respect for the female body and our respect for the ability for the sexual union of a man and woman to generate life, have decided to practice fertility awareness. Through paying attention to my daily temperatures and other physical signs, we have become aware of the fertile and infertile times of my menstrual cycle. We work with the rhythms of my body so that we are aware when a sexual act is likely to result in pregnancy, and when it is not. Understanding our own rhythms empowers us to be able to cooperate with nature, rather than leave the care of my sexuality up to the products of a pharmaceutical company, which, in order to make a profit, would convince me that a certain dose of chemicals would “cure” me of my fertility “problem.” They sell contraceptive pills that falsify the cycles of a woman’s body in such a way that she never needs to be aware – and in fact is never allowed to be aware – of her own fertility. (Not to mention the fact that all contraceptive pills have the potential to, and often do,cause abortions.) Wendell Berry speaks of this phenomenon in his essay, “The Body and the Earth,” where he relates the fertility of women to the fertility of the land: Simply because it became possible – and simultaneously profitable – we have cut the cultural ties between sexuality and fertility, just as we have cut those between eating and farming. By ‘freeing’ food and sex from worry, we have also set them apart from thought, responsibility, and the issue of quality…The pharmacist or the doctor will look after the fertility of the body, and the farming experts and agribusinessmen will look after the fertility of the earth… It is, in effect, to remove from consciousness the two fundamental issues of human life. It permits two great powers to be regarded and used as if they were unimportant.1 In a technological society where we have allowed machines to mediate many of our relationships – to education, to nature, and to each other – fertility awareness is one way we can regain an authentic, unmediated relationship with our own bodies. A common critique of modern technology is that it breaks down communication. Practicing fertility awareness, on the other hand,necessitates communication between sexual partners so that both are aware of the woman’s stage in her menstrual cycle. The partners are compelled to have continuing conversations about their openness to conceiving children at that point in their lives, a discussion that naturally leads to other important topics, such as life goals, vocations, emotional states, and physical changes – the substance behind a healthy relationship. Many practitioners of fertility awareness who, for many reasons stated above, do not wish to control or medically alter the female menstrual cycle, but still wish to prevent pregnancy, will still employ during the female’s fertile times the use of a “barrier method” of birth control, such as condoms, diaphragms, sponges, or jellies. My husband and I have decided against these methods, refusing to allow a corporation to usurp any role in our physical relationship, leaving that as a sacred way for us to be alone together. We instead practice Natural Family Planning (NFP), the method of fertility awareness promoted by Catholics, which urges abstinence during a female’s fertile times (if a married couple, for serious reasons, is trying to temporarily avoid pregnancy.) We believe that during the marital act, when we unite physically, as well as in every other way, it is meant to be a total giving of one to the other. So to block that physical union by using rubber, foam, jelly, or any other synthetic material (especially one made in a factory, marketed, and sold to us in sleek packages), would be, for us, rendering the union incomplete. We recognize our bodies, along with our minds and spirits, to be an integral part of our personhood; and just as we do not want to hold anything back from one another emotionally or spiritually, neither do we want to hold back any part of ourselves physically. Many are rightly troubled by our current over-abundant human population, and do not want to take chances with what they believe would be an irresponsible contribution to the destruction of the planet (though I would probably agree with those who believe it is over consumption, and not overpopulation, that poses the biggest threat to the environment.) Others have legitimate health and financial concerns that could make bringing a new child into the world a hardship. While I take these worries seriously, I don’t believe they are strong enough to claim a “necessity” for artificial birth control, any more than I believe that television is a “necessity” for child-care. Practicing awareness of one’s fertility, while possibly less convenient, is as effective, if not more, of a method than any drug or synthetic fiber you can put in or on your body. Wendell Berry, in the same essay quoted above, speaks of a “natural form of birth control” practiced by the Hunza people of northern Pakistan, as reported in a National Geographic article. The author of the article interviewed a woman living in the harsh climate of the Karakoram Mountains whose children were each spaced four to five years apart: “We leave our husband’s bed until each child is weaned,” she explained. Sexual restraint, not consumption of technology, was her people’s response to their agricultural, ecological, and financial limits. The self-proclaimed “neo-luddite” and outspoken critic of technology Chellis Glendinning includes contraceptives among the technologies that have severely wounded people in modern society. In her book My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization, Chellis speaks of natural forms of family planning found in hunter-gatherer tribes before the advent of agriculture. One of these methods is long-term breast-feeding, which, she says, “not only provided the nurturance necessary for the child’s physical and psychological development, but [could] trigger the secretion of a pituitary hormone that suppresses the mother’s menstrual cycle.”2 Breast-feeding was not the only secret to a small tribal population growth, however. Glendinning also attributes the high-protein diets and strenuous physical activity of a gatherer’s lifestyle, which resulted in extremely lean bodies, to a less frequent menstruation cycle in the female body. She estimates that during the fertile time of their lives, women gave birth once every five, six, or seven years.3 More important than comparing the “effectiveness” of different family planning methods, however, is the recognition that God – not human beings, and certainly not “Trojan” or “Norplant,” or any other for-profit corporation – is the ultimate author of life. In our modern technological age of individual choice, we have come to expect that we (with assistance from the consumer culture, of course) should always be the deciding voice about every aspect of our lives. We want to decide not only what clothes we wear, what job we have, and where we live, but also now what foods we eat and when we eat them (no matter what season it is or how many thousands of miles they have to travel to come to our table), and whether we have children and how many children we have and when we have them4 (not to mention what gender they are or what eye color they have.) Every act of sexual union brings with it the possibility for new life, and the Christian belief is that every human being conceived in this world is a unique and incarnate expression of God’s image. Who are we to doubt that this new life is a gift to us and to the Earth, or to demand that this gift be given to us on our own terms, even when those terms seem to us to be the most financially sound or “ecologically-friendly”? Perhaps instead of clinging onto what our “civilized” minds see as the most responsible choice, we should allow God’s providence to have more of a say in the outcome of our sexuality. 1 Berry, Wendell. “The Body and the Earth,” The Art of the Commonplace, Counterpoint Press, 2002. pp. 128-129 2 Long-term in this case could mean three or four years of on-demand breast-feeding. 3 Glendinning, Chellis. My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization, Shambhala Publications, 1994. pp. 51-52. 4 I am aware of at least one couple who induced labor on December 31st in order to get a tax break for that year. 12/23/2010 The Birthplace of Peace and WisdomBy: Jocelyn Perry “The star they had seen, when it rose, went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the Child was.” The Star of Bethlehem revealed the birthplace and manifestation of peace, grace and humility on Earth—the Christ Child. The beauty of the Christ Child’s birth draws people of faith to the beauty and grace of Heaven. This is a Christmas story for all humanity. The story continues stating that “a great company of the heavenly host appeared . . . saying . . . ‘and on earth peace to those on whom Heaven’s favor rests.’” During the Christmas season, when we reflect on Bethlehem, we must not only hear the call to peace, grace and humility but also the call of the Magi—the call to wisdom. To develop greater wisdom through understanding, the anarchist critique considers how our faith supports soci-economic, political, environmental and cultural discourses. Thus it critically and holistically engages our faith. When considering the anarchical context, we must ask ourselves whether there is peace on earth in Israel, Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank. In spring 2009, an international delegation from Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) journeyed to Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. CPT delegates worked to understand the division and conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and to connect with all people. The CPT delegation met with pastors, social justice activists, educators, farmers and soldiers. From time to time, “the peace that surpasses all understanding” was essential when hearing the difficult lives of Palestinian and Israelis living under a military occupation. |
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October 2017
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