January 2011

Pirates Big and Small: Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

by Graham Cameron 31 January 2011

The pirates of Somalia had a busy year, seizing 49 vessels and 1,016 hostages in 2010. Of those 1,016, eight were killed and 13 wounded over the year. It is a lucrative business. Figures are difficult to come by, but the pirates have seized cargoes worth many millions of dollars, and ransom money is frequently [...]

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A New-Old Call to Radical Christian Community

by Eda Uca-Dorn 27 January 2011

“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 [...]

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The Blessed and the Cursed

by Joe Turner 25 January 2011

I recently came across a very ancient idea – or it might have just been in a book by Terry Pratchett, I forget. The idea was that there is a direct link between one person being blessed and another cursed. So for every person that lives in luxury, there is an equal an opposite person [...]

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The Power that Springs from Weakness

by Boyd Collins 18 January 2011

Parables such as “The Laborers in the Vineyard” (Matt. 20:1-16) have long been used to justify worker’s oppression by sanctioning the role of owners. So ingrained are interpretations supportive of the owners that even radicals instinctively identify the owner of the vineyard with God. Such an identification invokes divine sanction for the supremacy of the [...]

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The Violent Martin Luther King, Jr.?: Setting the Record Straight

by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy 18 January 2011

I don’t know if the Ministry of Truth and its Newspeak Department in Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four would have had the chutzpah and insolence to try to cleverly demean, diminish and transvalue Martin Luther King, Jr.’s truth and legacy the way the Uncle Tom—who today shamelessly serves the big plantation owners’ of the White House he [...]

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Born (Again) in a Manger

by Ben Adam 17 January 2011

The ties between the U.S. Empire and the Roman Empire are incredible. Before I go any further, we need to put forward some very plain truths. First, the U.S. itself is an empire. The movement from the Atlantic coastline to the Pacific was imperial. People lived on the west coast before the fledgling U.S. committed [...]

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Digger’s Agape

by Keith Hebden 11 January 2011

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 [...]

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Becoming Anabaptist: A Protest to the Mennonite Church

by Andy Alexis-Baker 9 January 2011

When I joined the Mennonite Church over 10 years ago, I did so because of its pacifist convictions, its commitment to discipleship and community, and its commitment to radical Christian living. One of the first things that I did as a new Mennonite was take part in a Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) delegation in Vieques [...]

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The Absence of God

by Don Whitman 9 January 2011

In our time, communities that claim to follow the gospel have given up revealing Jesus and Yahweh in public. In civil disobedience actions, vigils and courtroom testimony, communities focus on secular leftist positions. In doing this they break their covenant with Jesus.
The only reason for followers of Jesus to witness in public is to reveal [...]

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Icononcast Episode 22: An Hour on Power

by the Iconocast Collective 6 January 2011

In this episode, Joanna and Mark have a conversation about power, leadership, and decision-making in communities.
Download this interview for 99¢ suggested cost. However, you can give as much or as little (even zero) as you choose.
Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.
Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

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