In this interview, Joanna and Jarrod interview Vincent Harding.

This interview is part of the Widening the Circle mini-series.

To more deeply engage a commitment to undoing oppression with seasoned justice-seekers, the Iconocast is launching a mini-series, Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship. Editor Joanna Shenk and the co-hosts will interview chapter authors about their continuing journeys of discipleship, asking questions like: How has their thinking deepened around the themes they wrote about? What do they see happening in the discipleship community movement currently? What is taking shape in their community/organization? What have they let go? In the meantime, make sure to check out Widening the Circle, with stories including from Dr. Vincent Harding, Reba Place Fellowship, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Mark Van Steenwyk, Andrea Ferich, Anton Flores and Jesce Walz.

* * * * *

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is Ella’s Song performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock and All Along the Watchtower as performed by Jimi Hendrix.

In this episode, Joanna interviews Mary and Peter Sprunger-Froese. Since 1979, Peter and Mary Sprunger-Froese have been Mennonite peace activists with an ecumenical community in Colorado Springs. They work with homeless people, refugees, and nonviolence seekers. They find the Anabaptist story deeply sustaining in their Christianized military setting.

This is a part of the Widening the Circle mini-series.

To more deeply engage a commitment to undoing oppression with seasoned justice-seekers, the Iconocast is launching a mini-series, Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship. Editor Joanna Shenk and the co-hosts will interview chapter authors about their continuing journeys of discipleship, asking questions like: How has their thinking deepened around the themes they wrote about? What do they see happening in the discipleship community movement currently? What is taking shape in their community/organization? What have they let go? In the meantime, make sure to check out Widening the Circle, with stories including from Dr. Vincent Harding, Reba Place Fellowship, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Mark Van Steenwyk, Andrea Ferich, Anton Flores and Jesce Walz.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is All Along the Watchtower as performed by Jimi Hendrix.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is All Along the Watchtower as performed by Jimi Hendrix.

In this episode, Mark interviews Jin Kim. It is included both as a podcast and vidcast.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is All Along the Watchtower as performed by Jimi Hendrix.

In this episode, Joanna and Nekeisha interview Ashanti Alston Omowali.

Ashanti is an anarchist activist, speaker, writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and a former political prisoner. He was also the co-chair of the National Jericho Movement (to free U.S. political prisoners.) Ashanti came of age as the political action of the 1960′s was hitting its peak. He recalls struggling through Malcolm X’s biography as a teen and feeling awestruck at the 1967 rebellions that saw numerous American neighborhoods temporarily taken over by the people who lived there, including his home town of Plainfield, New Jersey. He joined the Black Panther Party while still in high school, starting a chapter in Plainfield, and later going underground with the Black Liberation Army. For a while, he straddled the above ground Panther work of selling newspapers and running breakfast programs with more aggressive underground tactics. In 1974 he was involved in a Connecticut “bank expropriation,” captured and imprisoned for 11 plus years. Today, Ashanti is active in the prison abolition movement (Critical Resistance and the Jericho Movement), in Anarchist People of Color organizing, and in efforts to connect organizers of colour in the north with the Zapatistas (Estacion Libre) in Mexico. He is also a loving father to his son Biko and partner to fellow change agent, Viviane Saleh-Hanna.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode, Mark and Sarah interview Shannon T.L. Kearns.

Shannon writes as the anarchist reverend. He is a seminary graduate (M.Div 2009 from Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York) on the ordination path who also happens to be a transsexual man. Many of his theological musings are on the intersection of theology and being trans*. He also writes about Christian anarchism and his dreams for the future.

He is the co-founder and co-director of Camp Osiris, a camp for young adults aged 18-23 to come together and talk about the intersections between their sexualities/gender identities and their various spiritualities. The camp is located in Minnesota and welcomes youth from all over the country.

He is also the founder of House of the Transfiguration, a new church plant in Minneapolis.

He is the winner of the 2008 Queertopia homoletics preaching competition and has preached numerous times in various churches. He has also provided churches and other groups with Transgender 101 workshops and discussions.  The anarchist reverend resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this interview, Mark and Sarah interview Richard Beck.

Richard Beck is Professor and Department Chair of Psychology at Abilene Christian University. Richard is married to Jana and they have two sons, Brenden and Aidan. They also have a dog Bandit who keepsRichard company when he works away on his blog Experimental Theology. Richard’s area of interest is on the interface of Christian theology and psychology, with a particular focus on how existential issues affect Christian belief and practice. Richard’s published research covers topics as diverse as the psychology of profanity to why Christian bookstore art is so bad. He is the author of “Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality”

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode, Joanna and Sarah interview Starhawk–one of the most respected voices in modern earth-based spirituality.

Starhawk is also well-known as a global justice activist and organizer, whose work and writings have inspired many to action. She is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, long considered the essential text for the Neo-Pagan movement, and the now-classic ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing. Starhawk’s newest book is The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups, forthcoming in November 2011, from New Society Publishers.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode, Joanna and Mark interview Calenthia Dowdy.

Calenthia Dowdy is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in urban youth culture(s) and Afro-Brazilian life. She teaches youth ministry and cultural anthropology at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. Calenthia was born, raised, and continues to reside in the city of Philadelphia. She’s a Philadelphia Mennonite affiliate and has a keen interest in intentional discipleship community living and various expressions of the emerging church movement. Since 2003, Calenthia has been an antiracism trainer with Damascus Road, an antiracism education and organizing program.

Recently, she contributed a chapter to Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship, where she addresses issues of race in intentional communities.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode, Joanna and Mark interview Robert Ellsberg.

Robert Ellsberg is the son of Carol Cummings and the American military analyst and whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg. At age 19, Robert dropped out of college, intending to spend a few months with the Catholic Worker Movement. He stayed to become the managing editor of The Catholic Worker for two years (1976-8), a job that would introduce him to Dorothy Day and consequently would allow him to work with Day for the last five years of her life. This life-changing experience prompted him to convert to Catholicism.

In 1987 he began work as editor-in-chief of Orbis Books. He in the author of several books, including All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witness for Our Time, and the Saints’ Guide to Happiness. His book Blessed Among All Women tied a Catholic Press Association record by winning awards for Gender, Spirituality, and Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith. He is the editor of the published diaries and letters of Dorothy Day. He currently resides in Ossining, New York with his wife and their three children.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode, Mark (with an impromptu question from Orrin) interviews Dr. Bruce Levine.

Dr. Levine writes and speaks widely on how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His latest book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite  A practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, he is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and Z Magazine. His articles and interviews have been published in Adbusters, Truthout, The Ecologist, High Times, and numerous other magazines.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

This is the second of a two part interview with Bob Ekblad. For part one, go here.

Bob Ekblad is executive director of Tierra Nueva and The People’s Seminary in Burlington, Washington. Tierra Nueva is an ecumenical ministry located in Burlington, Washington, that seeks to share the Good News of God’s liberation in Jesus Christ with migrant farmworkers, jail inmates, and Skagit Valley gang members. A minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Bob holds a ThD in Old Testament and is known internationally for his courses and workshops on reading the Bible.  Bob and his wife Gracie minister at Tierra Nueva and at their home-based retreat center New Earth Refuge. Bob is the author of Reading the Bible with the Damned and A New Christian Manifesto: Pledging Allegiance to the Kingdom of God.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode Jarrod and Mark interview Bob Ekblad.

Bob Ekblad is executive director of Tierra Nueva and The People’s Seminary in Burlington, Washington. Tierra Nueva is an ecumenical ministry located in Burlington, Washington, that seeks to share the Good News of God’s liberation in Jesus Christ with migrant farmworkers, jail inmates, and Skagit Valley gang members. A minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Bob holds a ThD in Old Testament and is known internationally for his courses and workshops on reading the Bible.  Bob and his wife Gracie minister at Tierra Nueva and at their home-based retreat center New Earth Refuge. Bob is the author of Reading the Bible with the Damned and A New Christian Manifesto: Pledging Allegiance to the Kingdom of God. This is the first of a two part interview.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode Caleb and Joanna interview Alexia Salvatierra. Rev. Salvatierra is the founding director of FaithRooted.org and served as the executive director of C.L.U.E. (clergy and laity united for economic justice), an organization of religious leaders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego. C.L.U.E. supports low-wage workers in their struggle for a living wage, health insurance, fair working conditions and a voice in the decisions that effect them. C.L.U.E. is one of the coordinating agencies of the national New Sanctuary Movement, in which congregations accompany and support immigrant workers and their families facing deportation.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode, Sarah and Joanna talk to thinker and activist Seth Donavan. Seth blogs at confessingqueer.com. Seth’s work in her community focuses on what it means to create new ways of being while honoring the wisdom of our history & stories.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

In this episode, Mark sits down with Nekeisha and Andy Alexis-Baker to discuss the recent decision by Goshen College to discontinue its playing of the National Anthem at sporting events. Since its founding in 1894, Goshen has refrained from playing the anthem at events…until Spring 2010, when it started playing an instrumental version. Due, in part, to a campaign started by Andy and Nekeisha, Goshen decided to reverse its decision in a June 2011 meeting and will, therefore, no longer play the anthem. But this decision–to reverse their earlier decision–has resulted in a backlash–including a deluge of hate mail and some unwelcomed coverage from Fox News.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

In this episode, Mark and Nekeisha interview James Cone, who is considered by many to be the father of black liberation theology. Professor James H. Cone is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Cone is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He is the author of a number of books (including Black Theology and Black Power, God of the Oppressed, and Martin and Malcom and America). Dr. Cone has lectured at more than 1,000 universities and community organizations throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is De Usuahia a la Quiaca by Gustavo Santaolalla.

TRANSCRIPT:

Dr. Cone: In a certain sense, Jesus was an anarchist because he went around and got himself killed as an insurrectionist. In some sense, we have to challenge, we have to be among those small groups of people who are disrupting society, who are challenging what’s going on, who refuse to accept the  status quo as it is and who refuse to work through the channels that these oppressors say we have to work through in order to get the dignity that they’ve taken away from us.

…

Dr. Cone: Well you know Black Theology emerged out of the Black Power movement and out of the Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s and the early 1970s and it emerged as a Black Liberation theology, and that theology largely emerged out of the African-American community that was struggling for justice in this society–mostly racial justice, economic justice. And largely because there was no Christian voices that took seriously that struggle for freedom, in terms of how they understood the Christian faith. So I’m a theologian. I went to Seminary in order to explore what it means to be a Christian in the world in which we live and that was in the late 60s and 70s. And so the “Black”, in “Black theology” came largely from Malcolm X, who was such a significant figure in the 1960s–largely creating the Black consciousness movement. The “theology”, in “Black theology” comes from Martin King and the civil rights movement. That is the Christianity identity of Black theology.

So what Black Liberation theology was doing was trying to address the justice struggles of black people for their rights in a society that denied them–but also to help them know that their blackness was not something that was alien to Christianity but their blackness was a part of God’s creation of them as human beings. Therefore they should not hate their blackness as this society has proclaimed that they should but they should love their blackness and that is the only way that they could be faithful to Jesus and also faithful to the God that created them.

So Black Liberation theology is a theology that addresses the meaning of the Christian faith from the perspective of black people struggling for freedom. But also, blackness becomes a symbol of all oppressed people who are struggling for justice so that means the Christian faith is not limited to any one group but is applied to all groups. The distinctive aspect of the Christian faith, is that it is always talking about a God that is in full solidarity with the poor and the weak who are struggling for justice in this society. That is what Black Liberation theology is about.

Nekeisha: For me doing theology as a womanist for example when I’m looking at the pressing ethical concerns of today, you know whether to racism, or sexism, environmental degradation etc. I want to look at with, from the lens of black theology. So I’m wondering what you see as some of the pressing ethical concerns of today, some of the things that come to the fore of your mind if those have changed and how black theology comes to bear on how you do ethics around those issues.

Dr. Cone: You know black theology is an understanding of what the Christian faith means today. And it means today the same thing it meant yesterday. It is talking about a God that is in solidarity with those who are struggling for justice, no matter what gender, what sex, what sexuality, what race, what material tradition they occupy. God is a god, who is a God of the oppressed. I wrote a book, “God of the Oppressed”. So God is always addressing problems in today’s society, and yesterday, addressing those who are in need of justice. And where is justice in in need of today? It’s mostly all over the world, where people are struggling for justice. And any place where poor people are struggling for justice, there is where Black Liberation theology is saying God is a God of the poor and those who are struggling for justice. It doesn’t matter whether they are men or women.  So, womanist theology would be addressing the same. That is addressing situations in which where black women are oppressed by black men or by the society, white men or white women or by within their own community. So the only thing that one needs to keep in mind about the Christian gospel is that it’s a God who is concerned about the poor and the weak. You have to use your own brain, your own head which God has given to all of us in order to address those problems and to analyze them so that we would know what do about them today. For me, today, the real serious problem we are faced with we have more than, so many poor people in this society, so many people without health insurance in this society, so many people in prison in this society, so many people being raped and humiliated in this society. Black theology is a theology that addresses all those problems and it proclaims a God who is on the side of those who are weak.

That’s today, yesterday, tomorrow and as long we live.

Mark: Dr. Cone, you say–and when I first encountered I was really shocked by it. But you suggest that Christians can’t understand what’s going on, on the cross until they see through the image of a lynching tree.

Dr. Cone: That’s right, I just finished writing a book about that.

Mark: Could you unpack that a little bit? Because that’s a very visceral image that I think, I could imagine people just sweeping away.

Dr. Cone: Well first thing you have to recognize is, the crucifixion of Jesus was a first century lynching. That is to say, it was an endorsed state-sponsored lynching in which people were shouting, and screaming and enjoying themselves as a spectacle. The place, the crosses were always placed in throughways where people would see them. The purpose of the crucifixion was not so much for the person hanging on the cross. The purpose was to strike fear in the subjugated community and to say to them, “Whatever’s happening to him”–to Jesus in this case–”will happen to you if you rebel against the Roman state.” Well when you look at lynching in this society, in the late 19th and early 20th century and throughout much of the 20th century. It was very similar to a crucifixion. You had mobs lynching black people and doing to black people exactly the same thing that the Roman state did to Jesus.

So my contention is if Christians in this society, in America, if to understand what the crucifixion was about, what the call was about, if they are to understand that in the 21st century they must see that crucifixion in the 1st century through the image of a lynching tree in the 19th and 20th centuries in America because American christians did to black people, the same thing that the Roman state did to Jesus. There is very little distinction between what the white people to blacks in America and what Romans did to Jews in the 1st century. And so if white christians and black christians or any christians in America want to know the powerful theological and historical meaning of the cross, they must see that cross through the image of the lynching because the crucifixion of Jesus itself was a lynching. And so it is making the cross real and not some kind of symbol that you hang around your neck, but it is something that people were nailed to trees for.

Nekeisha: So then, how does then this seeing of the cross through the lens of a lynching tree change how we talk about what salvation means, or how the cross is or isn’t saving? Could you talk about that a little bit?

Dr. Cone: Well, see the cross isn’t saving in and of itself it’s not the tree that saves him, it’s God who saves. It’s Jesus who saves. The cross is a lynching, it is an evil. But God takes an evil and transforms it into a positive something, in which it says that, “that which you do the poor can not be the last word about their meaning in this society”. See, if the lynching or the cross is the last word, then the lynchers have the last word, and God refuses. The Christian gospel means that what people do to poor people can not be the last word about their humanity and about their salvation. It is an evil: slavery is an evil, lynching is an evil but that slavery, that lynching does not have the last word about one’s meaning. That’s why black people sing about the spirituals, the blues. They were trying to say that “I’m a human being and God has a purpose for me that you can’t take away.” So, the cross in the 1st century, the resurrection itself, is a symbol that the cross didn’t have the last word. So, it means, the cross means that God take the worst that people can do to you and transform it into a positive something that refuses to let those who are evil have the last word on what your humanity means.

Mark: You point to prisons as a place of contemporary lynching.

Dr. Cone: That’s right.

Mark: Are there, in what ways are we seeing the crucifixion there and in maybe, what other evils in our society are modern day lynchings? For people who are looking to trying to understand the cross?

Dr. Cone: Well you know, I focused on lynching. If anything that people, you can lynch a person in other ways than just hanging them on a tree. Anytime you deny somebody their rights and deny their humanity and treat them as if they count for nothing and they have no dignity, no meaning. Anytime you treat any person or people that way, anytime the state does that. For any person–they are lynching them that is to say they are denying them the right of their dignity and their worth. And when you do that, you do to them the same thing that the Romans did to Jesus. And what Jesus’ cross and life and death means is that, that does not have the last word. There is a meaning to us that transcends what anybody can do to us in this world.

Nekeisha: And Dr. Cone I want to push this out just a little bit. In the “Risks of Faith” you were talking about in the introduction how in the black Christians at Macedonia were very skilled and deliberate that they were engaging texts really helped uphold a God-created “all people equal” and resisting those texts that would deny their humanity even further. And for one of the things that I’ve sort of struggled with is on the one hand is this sort of rich history and presence of black Christians doing theology in this way, but in my context when it comes to issues of sexuality–sexual-orientation in particular–there seems to be a kind of disconnect or a shift. So that when we, for some black Christians, when we speak to them about liberation around race those kinds of moves are acceptable. But when you talk about liberation for people of different sexual orientation or sexuality, somehow that conversation becomes closed. So I’m interested in hearing maybe your perspective on what some of the distinctions that people are making, or just your thoughts are on that.

Dr. Cone: I think it’s easy for people to always see the evil that is happening to them personally. It’s easy. So when you’re black and you’ve been discriminated against because you’re black, you can easily see that that’s wrong. But it’s hard, black people tend to be very conservative on everything else except race. They tend to be more conservative, “super-Americans” as some people call them. Super patriotic. Against abortion, against that, except race. See it’s easy when the hurt is happening to you and you can see it and it’s obvious. You can acknowledge it. That’s why no one group has the monopoly on what the gospel means, that’s why you just can’t judge it by skin color–[unintelligible] said that. That’s why you just can’t judge it by biology. You have to be able to know that the gospel is something that turns you around and is a turning that everybody needs. It’s not in relation to race or any relation to sexuality. It’s not in relation to sexuality than in to material conditions. There is no one who is not blind and who doesn’t need their eyes opened.

So the gospel of Jesus opens people’s eyes. And when I speak in black churches I tell them, “If you can see race as something as God–racism is something that God doesn’t tolerate! Well you must see homophobia in the same light. And you must see sexism in the same light, you must see poverty in the same light.” So, the problem is that we all need to be saved. We all need to be liberated from something. So the black church and black people most need to be liberated from homophobia, they need to be liberated from all of the conservative reactionary things that happens in this society. And blacks tend to be very, very conservative except on race and that has been true for much of our history.

Mark: Dr. Cone you talk about the need for these different communities who have different perspectives on the gospel to point out these areas. Where’s the place for the white church in creating, and helping nurture the beloved community? Given the tendency that the white church has to not notice the pain that it inflicts on others?

Dr. Cone: Well, you know it’s largely the whites don’t endure racism–they inflict it–that’s why they usually don’t see it. The same reason why, I would say the same thing about black people, some blacks in regards to homophobia or in regards to sexism. So when you don’t experience that hurt you tend to minimize it’s importance. So whites tend to minimize the importance, that’s why they like to talk about “We’re beyond race now. We’re in a colorblind society now.” It’s because they don’t have to deal with it but black people have to deal with a new manifestation of it. And so the white church needs to get liberated. It needs to be, it needs to repent. God is never on the side of the dominant in society. God is never on the side of the powerful. He doesn’t need to be, because it’s got all the power. So the white church, as long as it identifies with those in power–which it’s usually done throughout history–it will never be Christian. That’s why I’ve always called the white church the anti-Christ. Because it’s position in society blinds it to the hurts of those who are not in their community. So the white church, what does it need to do? It needs to repent. It needs to be transformed through the experience of what the black community can teach it and what other communities could teach it that’s not white. The white church needs to learn from others, needs to experience that hurt and that solidarity of what it means to be black, what it means to be on the outside and not on the inside. And if they can do that, they might get pretty close to Jesus.

Mark: Hm. Do you have any stories or maybe examples of white communities or white theologians who are learning those stories and are challenging white supremacy?

Dr. Cone: Yes, yes. You know, one of the best stories is the civil rights movement itself. Did you see that film on the freedom riders? That film on the freedom riders showed that half of the freedom riders were white. So whites can make it. Most of the whites who went down and died down in Arkansas, and Mississippi and Alabama–they died! So it’s not impossible for whites to make that turns towards solidarity with the victims–they’ve already done it: John Brown did it, you know, the abolitionist did it. Quite a few people did it, during the civil rights movement and quite a few people are doing it now–not so much in an organized way but mostly in individuals. I’ve seen individuals do it: they go all over the world. I’ve seen individual whites all over the world making solidarity with those who are weak and helpless. In Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. So it’s not impossible, they just need to get religion.

Nekeisha: Dr. Cone, I want to sort of move back just a tad. One of the things that you said was that, “People within the black church tend to be very conservative–”

Dr. Cone: Yes, they do.

Nekeisha: On issues of sexuality, but also politically.

Dr. Cone: Politically yes, except on race now. It’s always radical on race.

Nekeisha: Well, right. And so, one of the things that I’m wondering is for me giving up a little bit of hope, or a lot of hope, that the government is going to be able to solve some of these issues around poverty, around different kinds of oppression. And taking on kind of anarchist political perspective, that raises tension with other people of color who are more conservative on that. So I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on anarchism as a political theory, anarchism as it relates to black theology of liberation–if that has sort of crossed your theological spectrum.

Dr. Cone: What do you mean by anarchist?

Nekeisha: Well anarchism being primarily interested in, like black theology, in liberation: sort of deconstructing hierarchies, having greater equality, consensus among people, organizing ourselves as small groups rather than as nation states.

Dr. Cone: Oh yeah, yeah you know the civil rights movement itself was that. It went outside of the law. It broke the law intentionally in order to draw attention to the injustice that was in this society. So, you know, almost all Christians have to be anarchists, that is to say we always have to challenge.

We just can’t obey the law… the law is not right because it’s the law. So I mean, read, you know in a certain sense, Jesus was an anarchist because he went around and got himself killed as an insurrectionist. In some sense, we have to challenge, we have to be among those small groups of people who are disrupting society, who are challenging what’s going on, who refuse to accept the  status quo as it is and who refuse to work through the channels that these oppressors say we have to work through in order to get the dignity that they’ve taken away from us! So there’s a certain degree of being an anarchist that everyone has to do in a situation where there is injustice, and it’s legalized.

Nekeisha: That’s great. Thank you so much, that’s great.

Mark: Dr. Cone, I feel, as I’ve gotten older–which I’m only thirty-five–but I’ve noticed that the far right has become increasingly more comfortable invoking the name of Dr. King.

Dr. Cone: Yes.

Mark: I’ve even heard Rush Limbaugh liken himself to being the heir apparent to Dr. King’s legacy.

Dr. Cone: Yeah, I heard that.

Mark: So this is an interesting phenomenon. It’s very ok for people to embrace Dr. King. But Malcolm X anathema. In your book where you talk about Martin and Malcolm in America and how both these men started moving more towards each other. I’m just wondering if, maybe you could share a little bit about, what it is about the Dr. King that America’s accepted, that we’ve forgotten about Dr. King? And what is it about a Malcolm X that people don’t know? Because it seems like they’re both stereotypes in our consciousness and we don’t really talk about the reality of either man.

Dr. Cone: Well I think what we need to remember about Dr. King was that Dr. King was far more radical than anybody of his time. Nearly as radical as Malcolm X and in some ways more radical than Malcolm X.

Mark: More radical?

Dr. Cone: Dr. King disrupted the society. He could command a following so that a city or a segment of a society could not even function. He did that in Birmingham, he did that in Montgomery. He created a group of people who had agreed to break laws because they were unjust, and thereby disrupt the society and force the society to change it’s laws. Somewhat like what the Freedom Riders did, and what the sit-in people did, and King did too. And King was one of the first to do that with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. So King was far more radical than we have him out to be. And in fact, by the time of the end of his life he was one of the few people who was coming out against the war in Vietnam that is, in such a radical sense, that even Johnson had to declare that he wasn’t going to run again. So King is the Amos of our day, was the Amos of his own day. Now, Malcolm was fighting–King and Malcolm were fighting for the same day–see King was more radical in changing the social, political and economic life in this society. So he took down the signs that humiliated us. He enabled people to vote who were not permitted to vote before now. So King transformed the social and the political and the economic situation of black people in this society.

But Malcolm X did a different kind of transformation. Malcolm X transformed how we think about ourselves. Malcolm didn’t change much social-political. He changed our spirit, he changed the way black people thought about themselves. We were negroes before Malcolm came along. But we became black and that’s why the black, in black theology stands for Malcolm X. King didn’t call himself black, he called himself a negro. But Malcolm changed our minds. He was a revolutionary of the spirit. While King changed the social-political aspect of our lives. We need them both because if you have black studies in colleges and universities now, that’s because of Malcolm X not because of Martin King. See, Malcolm taught us to love our blackness, to love our heritage. King taught us that we ought to be Americans, we ought to have the same rights as anybody else in this society. Malcolm taught us, that we love ourselves first and white people second. King taught us to love whites, assuming that we already loved ourselves–didn’t recognize how much we hated ourselves. Why did he think that? Largely because King came up in the middle-class church in Atlanta. And he was, you know, his father was pretty well off. He went to seminary, never had to pay anything. Because his father paid full-way. When the seminary gave King the scholarship, his father gave it back to the seminary saying, “He doesn’t need it, give it to somebody who does.” When King graduated with an MDiv degree, which was then a bachelors of divinity degree from Crozer Seminary, his father, gave him a brand new chevrolet as a gift. So King didn’t experience the hurt of being black in society as deeply as did Malcolm X.

So Malcolm saw blackness, that is thinking well of yourself as a black human being, and Malcolm saw that was as important as being able to go where you want to go and do what you want to do, in this society. You must first love yourself, and everybody else second. King changed the social life, Malcolm changed our inside. He was a revolutionary of the spirit.

Nekeisha: The one thing that I’m really moved by the comparison and the contrast between Malcolm and Martin here, I’m wondering who are the Martins or the Malcolm Xs of our day? And I’ll articulate real quick. It seems like that we need that revolution of the spirit within black culture, within black churches. There is just so much within our society in which people are willing to sell themselves–whether it’s for Hollywood or the music industry or whatever–and keeping how we represent ourselves and sometimes it just feels like there is a need for another revolution of the spirit. We have some of the social gains but don’t always value ourselves and love ourselves and so, what is your take on that? Who do you see maybe calling us to that in the present, practicing black liberation in a particular way?

Dr. Cone: Yeah that’s, you know it’s hard because most people think that Malcolm X did nothing. Because you don’t see it in an obvious way in the political life, or social life or economic life. And they can see pretty clearly what King did. But Malcolm was to change how black people thought about themselves, that’s what I call a revolution of the spirit that is a cultural revolutionary. That’s what Malcolm was, that’s why we became black. See, it’s important to think well of yourself because if you can’t think well of yourself–you can’t do anything, you can’t have self-confidence. I know real bright people, real smart people that have no inner self-confidence they can’t do anything. And I’ve known people who are not as bright, you know, IQ but who have inner self-confidence and they can succeed–high–much more than the person who is very bright. So that inner self-confidence, that loving yourself is crucial.

Now, unfortunately America is very good at teaching black people not to love themselves. And they have all these images on the TV and in the media and advertisement that makes us think, that if we can be like this one or that one, we are alright. But you see there is a meaning that people have that is much more deeper, much deeper, than what one can see on the outside: it’s not the clothes you wear, it’s the spirit that you have inside of you. And [unintelligible] how to get that, you have to dig deep into your culture, into your history and learn to know yourself well. People who don’t know themselves, cannot know what to do in the present or where they’re going in the future. See now black people have not, you know, we have not unfortunately paid much attention to really emphasize how much we need to know our history and our culture–that’s why it’s so easy for us to be slaves by this one or that one that comes along.

When you look at a people that are very successful in any place in the world: they are a people that have their own language, their own culture, their own sense of who they are. And if you don’t have that, you can’t know what you ought to do and you can’t know what you’re going to become and how to get where you want to go in the future. So that revolution of the spirit, that cultural sense of who I am–is as indispensable, it’s the starting point and what King contributed is the second point. Malcolm is the starting point, King is the next step. See you need, without Malcolm, without that loving yourself and inner salvation–without that–you can get social-political justice and you still won’t be worth anything as a people. So Malcolm is indispensable, he’s not an afterthought.

In this episode, Joanna and Mark interview Joyce Hollyday.

Joyce is a co-founder and co-pastor of Circle of Mercy, an ecumenical congregation in Asheville, North Carolina as well as a founder of Word and World–an experiment in alternative theological education bridging the gulf between the seminary, the sanctuary, and the street. She served for fifteen years as the Associate Editor of Sojourners magazine and is the author of several books, including Clothed with the Sun: Biblical Women, Social Justice, and Us and Then Shall Your Light Rise: Spiritual Formation and Social Witness.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Blink” by Blue Scholars.

In this episode, Joanna and Mark interview Jonathan Moyer, co-founder of the Groupee.

The Groupee system is an alternative medium of exchange created by a community of Mennonites in Denver, Colorado for the broader church. The Groupee is a wooden token that is exchangeable for the time, labor and materials of other members of the community to facilitate mutual support. The Groupee system creates space for members of the Groupee Community to ask for and receive help. It embeds a piece of community productivity in an alternative to standard society and state-based mediums of exchange that have roots in violence and often promote the misappropriation of surplus value. The Groupee is rooted in an Anabaptist understanding of stewardship, community, social-justice and peacemaking.

Jonathan Moyer is a dissertation level PhD candidate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. His research focus is on the future of interstate relations, and emphasizes both domestic and dyadic conflict. His dissertation explores future trends and pressures on international conflict (global power transition, climate change, demographic shifts, state failure and peak oil). Jonathan also retains an interest in event data models of instability, and co-created the news aggregating site BuzzChurn.com

If you’d like to explore starting something like the Groupee in your community, you can contact Jonathan at jonathanmoyer [at] gmail.com

For more information about the Groupee, visit theGroupee.com or check them out on Facebook.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Blink” by Blue Scholars.

In this episode, Mark talks with Teka Childress and Carolyn Griffeth.

Teka has been a member of the Karen House Catholic Worker community for over thirty years. Carolyn Griffeth (with her husband Tery) are the founders of Carl Kabat House Catholic Worker community. Both houses are part of the vibrant catholic worker expression in St. Louis, creating a new society in the shell of the old. Listen in as they talk about community life, the challenges of founding communities, and the changing shape of the Catholic Worker movement.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Blink” by Blue Scholars.

In this episode, Mark and Joanna interview Eda Uca-Dorn. Eda is director of Hosanna! People’s Seminary. A first generation American of Turkish and Arab descent, she has participated in intentional communities and movements of the Catholic Left/anti-war variety. Eda is currently editing an anthology of Catholic Worker writing for Rose Hill Books. Her great theological passions are in the realm of anti-racism/anti-oppression work as it relates to what she calls “mission in the round”. She currently lives in New York with her husband and best friend Mike.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Blink” by Blue Scholars.

This is the Iconocast, episode 25, March 3rd, 2011 “Murphy and Ed on the Road, part 2.”

This is the second of a two part interivew with Murphy Davis and Ed Loring. In part two, Joanna and Mark interview Eduard Loring. Ed, along with his wife Murphy Davis, have protested the death penalty, worked for housing the homeless, spoken out against racial injustice, sought justice for the poor, and fought against war. They are founding partners of the Open Door Community–a diverse residential Christian community in downtown Atlanta. For over 30 years, they have lived in community with the homeless poor, former prisoners, and others who have come to join the struggle for justice in the midst of a death-dealing culture.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

This is the Iconocast, episode 24: “Murphy and Ed on the Road, part 1.”

This is the first of a two part interivew with Murphy Davis and Ed Loring. In part one, Joanna and Mark interview Murphy Davis. Murphy Davis, with her husband, Ed Loring, have protested the death penalty, worked for housing the homeless, spoken out against racial injustice, sought justice for the poor, and fought against war. Davis and Loring are founding partners of the Open Door Community–a diverse residential Christian community in downtown Atlanta. For over 30 years, they have lived in community with the homeless poor, former prisoners, and others who have come to join the struggle for justice in the midst of a death-dealing culture.

Picture by Robert Shetterly.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, Sarah and Mark interview Ragan Sutterfield.

Ragan is a writer, teacher, and farmer in Little Rock, Arkansas. He has written on food, the environment, and culture for a variety of publications including Plenty, Gourmet, Men’s Journal, Paste, Books & Culture, Fast Company, and Spin. He is also the author of Farming as a Spiritual Discipline. Ragan has eight years of sustainable farming experience and is one of the founders and operators of a farm at Felder Academy, a public charter school for troubled youth.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, Joanna and Mark have a conversation about power, leadership, and decision-making in communities.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Father Richard Rohr. Listen in as they talk about the Enneagram, the relationship between spirituality and activism, the relationship between movements and institutions, and more.

Father Rohr is a Franciscan priest. He founded the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1971, and the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1986, where he presently serves as Founding Director.

Through writing and speaking, Father Rohr explores issues such as Scripture as liberation, the integration of action and contemplation, community building, peace and social justice issues, male spirituality, the  Enneagram, and eco-spirituality.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this interview, Jarrod and Mark interview Father John Dear. Dear is a Jesuit priest, peace activist, lecturer, and writer of twenty books on nonviolence.

He has been arrested many times in the course of his activist career. His longest period of incarceration lasted eight months, plus nine months of house arrest, following his participation in a Plowshares Movement disarmament action.

Father John Dear received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award in September 2009 for his solidarity and leadership in nonviolent resistance, vegetarian life style and Gospel living. He was chosen for the 2010 Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize by Desmond Tutu.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this interview, Joanna and Jason interview Anton Flores.

Anton Flores is one of the founders of the Alterna Community. Alterna is a Christian missional community comprised of U.S. citizens and Latin American immigrants devoted to the ancient practices of accompaniment, advocacy and hospitality.

Find out more at www.alternacommunity.com.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, co-hosts Mark and Sarah interview Becky Garrison. Becky is a religious satirist and freelance writer. She is author of Jesus Died for This?: A Satirist Searches for the Risen Christ, The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail, Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church, and Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church. She is a regularly contributes to Sojourners, Killing the Buddha, Religion Dispatches, and Geez magazine.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, co-hosts Mark and Jarrod interview Stanley Hauerwas. Dr. Hauerwas is a Christian theologian and ethicist. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame and is currently the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law.

Among his many books are Resident Aliens, Living Gently in a Violent World, The Peaceable Kingdom, and Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Jarrod interview Rita Nakashima Brock. Dr. Brock is Founding Co-Director of Faith Voices for the Common Good, an organization dedicated to educating the public about the values and concerns of religious leaders and organizations. She also works with The New Press in New York as Senior Editor in Religion.

She is the author or co-author of a number of books including: Journeys By Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, & the Search for What Saves Us, and, most recently, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, co-hosts Eliacin and Mark speak with one of America’s most celebrated and controversial public intellectuals: Dr. Cornel West.

Dr. West is an African American philosopher, theologian, author, critic, actor, and civil rights activist. West currently serves as the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University, where he teaches in the Center for African American Studies and in the department of Religion. He is the author of a number of books including: Prophesy Deliverance! An Africo-American Revolutionary Christianity, Race Matters, The Future of Race, Democracy Matters, and Hope on a Tightrope.

In the interview, we talk to Dr. West about being disinvited as a keynote to the CCDA conference, his relationship with Barack Obama, the rarity of social movements, the power of love, the difference between charity and justice, and much, much more.

Special thanks to Jarrod McKenna…who stayed up all night in Perth, Australia to be a part of this interview but (due to upsetting technical difficulties with Skype) was unable to participate (listen to the end of the podcast–at around 56:45) to find out more…

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

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Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

Transcription by Kristofer Smiley:

Transcription

Dr. West: But I know that you all have asked also to interview me because I was coming into Chicago on September the 7th, right?

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark talk to Onleilove Alston, a native Brooklynite and student at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University School of Social Work. Onleilove has worked with and studied emerging intentional communities and brings some helpful insights to potential blindspots folks in such communities have about race. She is a regular contributor for Sojourner’s Magazine.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Jarrod interview Carol Rose, Co-Director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams. Christian Peacemaker Teams is a living answer to the question, “what would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?” Carol has served with CPT in Colombia, Iraq, Palestine, Arizona and Kenora. She has been an active peacemaker since the late 1970′s.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, Mark sits down with Seth Martin and the Menders for a few songs, a few laughs, and a conversation about folk music, prophets, and revolution.

Seth is a folk singer who brings together the deep spirit of American folk, anarchist thought (in the vein of Ammon Hennacy), a love for creation, and Quaker spirituality. He has travelled all over the country (when his car is working) to share his music (often on the fringe). He’s also spent time in Palestine with the Christian Peacemaker Teams. When he isn’t on the road, he lives in the Portland area.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna, Mark, and Sarah discuss gender, sexism, and community. For most of its history, the church has NOT been a safe place for women to develop as whole and healthy people. As a result, men also struggle to know what it means to be healthy males.

The conversation explores:

The way women and men both lose out in a sexist society.

The importance of community in finding a better way to think about gender.

The fact that “Rocky 3″ is, perhaps, the most “manly” movie ever made.

Sexism in film.

Cookies.

And much, much, more.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Richard Horsley.

Richard Horsley is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts. He is a prolific author with twenty New Testament studies to his credit. He has edited or authored such words as In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder, and most recently, Covenant Economics: A Biblical Vision of Justice for All.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music for this episode is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/iconocast-an-interview-with-richard-horsley/feed/ 20 Economics,Empire,Iconocast,jubilee,podcast,richard horsley In this episode of the Iconocast, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Richard Horsley, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts. He is a prolific author with twenty New Testament studies to his... In this episode of the Iconocast, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Richard Horsley, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts. He is a prolific author with twenty New Testament studies to his credit. He has edited or authored such words as In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder, and most recently, Covenant Economics: A Biblical Vision of Justice for All. the Iconocast Collective no 1:00:00 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=4280-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-9-interview-with-brian-mclaren/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-9-interview-with-brian-mclaren/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:38:26 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=4256

In this episode, co-hosts Sarah, Mark, and Jarrod interview Brian McLaren. Listen in as they explore the nonviolence of God, the state of the world, and our relationship to Empire.

Brian is an internationally known (and controversial) evangelical pastor, speaker, and activist. He is the author of numerous books, including his latest book, “a new kind of Christianity.”

For more information about Brian, visit www.brianmclaren.net/archives/about-brian/

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-9-interview-with-brian-mclaren/feed/ 14 In this episode, co-hosts Sarah, Mark, and Jarrod interview Brian McLaren. Brian is an internationally known (and controversial) evangelical pastor, speaker, and activist. He is the author of numerous books, including his latest book, In this episode, co-hosts Sarah, Mark, and Jarrod interview Brian McLaren. Brian is an internationally known (and controversial) evangelical pastor, speaker, and activist. He is the author of numerous books, including his latest book, "a new kind of Christianity." the Iconocast Collective no 59:21 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=4256-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-8-interview-with-wes-howard-brook/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-8-interview-with-wes-howard-brook/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:16:17 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=4073

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Wes Howard-Brook.

Their conversation covers, among other things: the “argument” within Scripture between advocates of the “religion of Empire” and the “religion of Creation,” the ethic of love (rather than nonviolence in the New Testament) and the anarchic impulses within Scripture.

Wes is adult educator, writer, and co-founder of Abide in Me Ministries. His book  ‘Come Out, My People!’: God’s Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond, is now scheduled for Fall 2010 for publication by Orbis Books. His other books include John’s Gospel and the Renewal of the Church, Becoming Children of God, The Church Before Christianity, and Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now (co-written by Anthony Gwyther).

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-8-interview-with-wes-howard-brook/feed/ 18 Empire,Iconocast,nonviolence,revelation,scripture,wes howard-brook In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Wes Howard-Brook. - Their conversation covers, among other things: the "argument" within Scripture between advocates of the "religion of Empire" and the "religion of Creation, In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Wes Howard-Brook. Their conversation covers, among other things: the "argument" within Scripture between advocates of the "religion of Empire" and the "religion of Creation," the ethic of love (rather than nonviolence in the New Testament) and the anarchic impulses within Scripture. the Iconocast Collective no 45:24 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=4073-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-7-interview-with-mary-jo-leddy/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-7-interview-with-mary-jo-leddy/#comments Thu, 27 May 2010 16:41:48 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=4018

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Mary Jo Leddy–Canadian writer, speaker, theologian and social activist. Leddy works alongside refugees at Romero House in Toronto.

She is the author of such books as Say to the Darkness We Beg to Differ, Reweaving Religious Life: Beyond the Liberal Model, At the Border Called Hope: Where Refugees are Neighbors and Radical Gratitude.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-7-interview-with-mary-jo-leddy/feed/ 6 activism,Empire,Iconocast,mary jo leddy,podcast,refugees,romero house,toronto In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Mary Jo Leddy--Canadian writer, speaker, theologian and social activist. Leddy works alongside refugees at Romero House in Toronto. In this episode, co-hosts Joanna and Mark interview Mary Jo Leddy--Canadian writer, speaker, theologian and social activist. Leddy works alongside refugees at Romero House in Toronto. the Iconocast Collective no 47:38 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=4018-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-6-interview-with-jim-douglass-part-2/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-6-interview-with-jim-douglass-part-2/#comments Fri, 14 May 2010 02:02:39 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=4006

This is part two of a two part interview with Jim Douglass. Recently, Mark spent time in Birmingham Alabama, where he sat down with Jim, an activist, and noted author on nonviolence and Christian theology.

He and his wife, Shelley Douglass, founded the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1997 the Douglasses received the Pacem in Terris Award.

Douglass’ latest book, JFK and the Unspeakable, explores how JFK was martyred as a peacemaker by forces within the Government. He is also the author of such books as The Non-Violent Cross and The Non-Violent Coming of God.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-6-interview-with-jim-douglass-part-2/feed/ 9 gandhi,Jesus,jfk,jim douglass,mlk,nonviolence This is part two of a two part interview with Jim Douglass. Recently, Mark spent time in Birmingham Alabama, where he sat down with Jim, an activist, and noted author on nonviolence and Christian theology. This is part two of a two part interview with Jim Douglass. Recently, Mark spent time in Birmingham Alabama, where he sat down with Jim, an activist, and noted author on nonviolence and Christian theology. the Iconocast Collective no 38:41 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=4006-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-5-interview-with-jim-douglass-part-1/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-5-interview-with-jim-douglass-part-1/#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:24:30 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=3975

Recently, Mark spent time in Birmingham Alabama, where he sat down with Jim Douglass, an activist, and noted author on nonviolence and Christian theology.

He and his wife, Shelley Douglass, founded the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1997 the Douglasses received the Pacem in Terris Award.

Douglass’ latest book, JFK and the Unspeakable, explores how JFK was martyred as a peacemaker by forces within the Government. He is also the author of such books as The Non-Violent Cross and The Non-Violent Coming of God.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-5-interview-with-jim-douglass-part-1/feed/ 24 jfk,jim douglass,nonviolence Recently, Mark spent time in Birmingham Alabama, where he sat down with Jim Douglass, an activist, and noted author on nonviolence and Christian theology. Recently, Mark spent time in Birmingham Alabama, where he sat down with Jim Douglass, an activist, and noted author on nonviolence and Christian theology. the Iconocast Collective no 37:22 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=3975-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-4-interview-with-waziyatawin-part-2/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-4-interview-with-waziyatawin-part-2/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:00:50 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=3935

In this episode, we (Sarah Lynne Anderson and Mark Van Steenwyk) continue our interview Dakota scholar Waziyatawin. Be sure to check out part one. In this part of the interview, we continue to grapple with how Christianity needs to come to terms with its imperial history. We need to repent with more than just words. Our ecclesial bodies (especially denominations with land holdings) may want to ask themselves “what does justice look like?”

We know that, until this podcast, most of you have never heard of Waziyatawin…but this interview raises more questions (in a starkly eloquent way) than any interview with a high-profile Christian provocateur. Please take the time to listen–we promise that it will mess with your head in amazing ways.

You might be interested in a series that has developed as a response to the challenges Waz issues to Christians in the interview: Christianity is Empire. That series will engage the imperial nature of historic Christianity and seek, we hope, to offer a chastened, faithful, alternative.

Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota.

Waz currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria (British Columbia). Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities.

She is the author or editor of: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives, Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook, In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century, and What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-4-interview-with-waziyatawin-part-2/feed/ 28 Christianity,civilization,dakota,imperialism,Justice,reparations,waziyatawin In the conclusion of our interview with Waziyatawin, we continue to grapple with how Christianity needs to come to terms with its imperial history. We need to repent with more than just words. We must ask ourselves, "what does justice look like?" In the conclusion of our interview with Waziyatawin, we continue to grapple with how Christianity needs to come to terms with its imperial history. We need to repent with more than just words. We must ask ourselves, "what does justice look like?" the Iconocast Collective no 39:41 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=3935-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-3/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-3/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:01:01 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=3842

In this episode, we (Sarah Lynne Anderson and Mark Van Steenwyk) interview Dakota scholar Waziyatawin. This is the first of a two part interview. For part two, go here.

This is an intensely challenging two part interview (part two will air in two weeks); we discuss how Christianity is intrinsically unjust, how justice requires the entire dismantling of civilization, and how denominations, if they are sincere in their apologies to Indigenous peoples, should take the first step of handing over unused lands to the tribe upon whose land they occupy. You’ll definitely want to forward that to your denominational headquarters.

Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota.

Waz currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria (British Columbia). Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities.

She is the author or editor of: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives, Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook, In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century, and What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-3/feed/ 48 civilization,dakota,indigenous,Justice,occupation,waziyatawin In this episode (part one of two), we (Sarah Lynne Anderson and Mark Van Steenwyk) interview Dakota scholar Waziyatawin. Among other things, we discuss how Christianity is intrinsically unjust, how justice requires the entire dismantling of civilization, In this episode (part one of two), we (Sarah Lynne Anderson and Mark Van Steenwyk) interview Dakota scholar Waziyatawin. Among other things, we discuss how Christianity is intrinsically unjust, how justice requires the entire dismantling of civilization, and how denominations, if they are sincere in their apologies to Indigenous peoples, should take the first step of handing over unused lands to the tribe upon whose land they occupy. the Iconocast Collective no 35:01 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=3842-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-2/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-2/#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:10:51 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=3810

In this episode, co-hosts Sarah Lynne Anderson and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz interview Ched Myers, activist, educator, and the author of a number of books–inclucing “Binding the Strongman”.

Ched, a fifth generation Californian, lives in a small intentional community in Oak View, CA, an hour and a half north of Los Angeles. Over the past three decades he has worked with many peace and justice organizations and movements, including the American Friends Service Committee, the Pacific Concerns Resource Center and the Pacific Life Community. Today with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries he focuses on building capacity for biblical literacy, church renewal and faith-based witness for justice.

If you like the Iconocast, please make a donation to make more episodes possible. Each episode takes tens of hours of pre-interview prep, in-studio recording, and post-interview editing and engineering. Since each episode of the Iconocast involves multiple hosts often in different locations (as well as guests who are often on the other side of the country), recording and editing offers unique challenges. New episodes depend upon your generosity. Click here to donate.

Subscribe to the Iconocast via iTunes or RSS.

Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

Below is a transcription of the interview. Special thanks to Kristofer Smiley for your hard work transcribing this episode.

* * *

Ched: The book being referred to, Binding the Strongman: A political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus, was published in 1988. It is a really just a commentary on Mark’s gospel. I guess what gave it legs were a couple of things. One was that it was an attempt to brew, to take an approach to scripture that was fundamentally liberationist. And that is not unusual in Latin America and other pars of the Third World. It is however, and really was unusual twenty years ago. The other thing I think that was different was about that book was it attempted to speak from a context of radical discipleship communities in North America and it was very explicit about that social location and about the aspects of discipleship that were the lens through which we read the gospel.And so, I think that book was picked up by both those who were interested in the approach political hermeneutics, by which I mean a way of approaching the gospel that looks at the Jesus story in the context of a real world of power and privilege and domination. A real world that in first century Palestine was every bit as contested and conflictual as our own. For that reading of Mark really tries to highlight the social and economic and political aspects of Jesus’ life and witness, and again that was a little unusual twenty years ago and I think that there are, there were, and continue to be many people who want to ask those sorts of questions about the scripture. So, this book was an attempt to systematically read the gospel as opposed to just pick certain themes, which were convenient—which had been the approach of a lot of first generation liberation theology. But I was to read the gospel from beginning to end using the narrative approach and to see how that story was deeply political in its own time and continues to be in ours.

The last unique thing I guess about that book was when it was explicitly Ghandian in its political approach and read Jesus as a practitioner of nonviolence—of radical nonviolence. So for all those reasons, that book made an impact across the ecumenical spectrum, both among academics, but more importantly to me among different radical discipleship communities and it’s a happy occasion for me that a new generation of radical discipleship communities which is represented by people like yourself, some of those folks are rediscovering that book and picking up on it. So that’s good, that people are finding that because I think one of the deficits of the newer discipleship communities, emerging church and so on, I think the overall biblical literacy is relatively low and there’s a lot of culture critique and a lot of discussion about culture and theology but overall the willingness and ability to be do close readings of scripture, in my impression of traveling in these newer circles, needs to be developed some. So hopefully there can be some inspiration in that book about the fact that it is possible to read scripture closely and faithfully and ask a lot of the public questions that we all are interested in to ask those questions of the church.

Eliacin: I have two questions that are common to me right now. One is more personal and the other one have to do with the fact that that book is twenty years, twenty-two years now and it still reads as if you’re just talking in 2009-2010. First of all, I’m interested in always stories of people. I want to know how did you found, what draws you to liberation theology to begin with? And the second is, taken into consideration that the book is twenty years—are you at all going to—I don’t know I can see how it would be disappointing if I am writing about this subject twenty years  and then coming up after that amount of time I’m realizing that in reality not much has changed. So yeah, I’m interested in hearing from you, about those two things.

Ched: Yeah. Thanks. My exposure to really two—two major influences on me in the 1970s. And one was liberation theology, which at that time was really just trickling up North America. It was sort of getting published through translations. You know, those who had ears were hearing I guess and that was certainly everybody by any means in the North American church. There was a significant minority of us who were trying to pay close attention to what was not only being written, but was being written about what was being lived in Latin America, Asia, Africa, Pacific Islands and so on. Now, the other thing that was important in the 1970s was the Radical Discipleship movement.

Now there was, and there continues to be, a network of people who were drawn to discipleship in a more engaged vein: people trying to renew the church, people trying to do public witness, and that includes people like Tom and Christine Sine and the Mustard Seed folks. You would know the original edition of the Mustard Seed Conspiracy in which he talks about a number of these communities around the country and the community I was living in at the time was one of those communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. So we [were] part of a network of communities which included Catholic Worker community and Radical Peace communities, Charismatic Renewal communities, Sojourner’s people, The Other Side Magazine people and folks like that who all for the most part were living in community—many of us were living in inner city neighborhoods—trying to do organizing around racial and economic justice, a lot of direct action types of things.

So that was the other big influence and that was happening in the United Kingdom, that was happening in Australia, New Zealand, that was happening in North America and it seemed like that was an attempt to respond to liberation theology. Liberation theology from the third and fourth world wasn’t interested in being consumed by first world theological consumers. It was interested in calling all of us to account and we felt like our lives were accountable to realities in the South and so these communities were our way of doing that. And so between those two dialogue partners our own movement in the South that was a really important context to read scripture.

The other influence more specifically was at the time that I wrote Binding the Strongman I was hot on the heels working, for six to seven years, with indigenous people in the wider Pacific Basin and with the experience with working with really fourth world communities that made a huge impact upon me in terms of what it means to be really standing in solidarity with [unintelligible]. That’s how I came to it both the interaction with and then also the reading of many of the texts of liberation theology. At that time as well the [unintelligible] movement and the Central American War, [unintelligible] solidarity movements were very much [unintelligible] what we were doing.

Eliacin: Mhm. So that was 1988 and we can see you know Empire was showing its fangs once again. Now we get to the 1990s and 200s and we still see the fangs of Empire showing up and we see all of this radical discipleship communities sprouting around. What was your reaction to that, and do you see similarities? Do you wish these communities to be different? How has radical discipleship evolved?

Ched: Yep, well you know in the broadest picture we couldn’t hardly be discouraged that for the last thirty years, or the span of my life or your lives that we are still struggling with Empire because to be discouraged about that would not, would be to not understand that the Gospel itself is struggling with those things…

Eliacin: Mhm.

Ched: …and people in the Bible were struggling with those things. Look the struggle with Empire has been going on for thousands of years and while it would be nice if we could mark more progress in that struggle, that kind of success is not particularly the scriptures promise. What they promise is that we won’t be alone, that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, that we are stepping into a stream that has been flowing since Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Miriam. So in that sense I don’t feel discouraged—I am however mindful that the, and you know I recently wrote a forward for the twentieth anniversary edition for Binding the Strongman published in 2008. That was a really interesting exercise where I was asking myself some of these same questions.

What’s encouraging to me is that there is new energy around radical discipleship, embodied by some of you all in your communities, by some of the more radical wing of the emergent movement, the so called new monastic folk. All of that is very encouraging because I think it’s safe to say there was a sort of a peak in the late 70s of radical discipleship communities and then there was very much a wane in that movement during the 80s and 90s and so its been nice two and half decades things are waxing again and young people in particular are attempting to embody these things and proclaim these things. So that’s very encouraging. The fact that the American Empire is undiminished, in fact, one could argue that the American Empire is far stronger today than it was twenty, twenty-five years ago and that’s true because it is militarily unrivaled but it is also true that it is probably economically weaker than it was five years ago. So that’s a sort of a new, interesting context.

So no, I’m neither surprised, nor depressed that we are still facing these issues. What I am is delighted that there is a whole lot of new energy out there and those of us from the previous generation who are paying attention, are really trying to reach out and build relationships with you all to try to make common cause and to offer support and encouragement.

Sarah: How has your perspective changed since writing this book?

Ched: Well Sarah, I would say theologically and exegetically that is, how I look at these texts, I don’t think much perspective has changed much.  I did that assessment when I wrote the forward for this twentieth anniversary edition as to whether I should rewrite the book. It felt like it stood up pretty well and the reviews seemed to indicate that the approach I took during the mid 80s, which were considered very edgy and very unorthodox have actually for the most part been vindicated. For example, no one was talking about Empire in the context of the New Testament in the 1980s or very, very few people were. Today at least in the Academy that would be considered a common wisdom or conventional wisdom that would be now talking about Empire and Empire’s a context for reading Jesus and reading Paul. So in that sense I feel like the approach that I took in Binding the Strongman has been confirmed in further works.Now, I did write a sequel to the commentary on Mark that was published in 1994 and the title of the book was Who Will Roll Away the Stone?: Discipleship Queries for First World Christians. And that’s the book in which I more explicitly talk about what I think a reading of Mark means for our practice and that’s fifteen years ago and there are probably some things that I would change in that book simply because things have changed. And yet for the most part what I was talking about in that book around issues—ecological crisis, issues of race class and gender, issues of militarism, issues of the gap between rich and poor. Obviously all of those issues haven’t only changed but need emphasizing. So while that book, because it is so contextually specific, is perhaps a little dated, the themes that it is writing about are not—and so I continued to work from those perspectives and I think those perspectives are the same kind of things the new radical communities are rediscovering.

So on the whole I think these are twenty, twenty-five years isn’t really long in the course of empire or for that matter in the course of gospel faith. So I’m not interested in being nostalgic or being archival, I’m interested in being how we all continue to re-contextualize, our lives, our faith [unintelligible] same issues. You know I think the only thing that has changed for me I guess the older wiser thing that happens as you age and you realize that some of the radical lifestyles that we live in our 20s and 30s are really important in terms of spiritual formation, probably not all that important in terms of changing the world. And so, probably a little more modest in terms of my expectations about what we are able to do but nevertheless I think those expressions of community and solidarity to the poor and the simple lifestyle and all of that continue to be extremely important as nothing less and nothing more than spiritual discipline for people living a first world context.

Sarah: I have another question in kind of a different direction. I was recently reading some articles about you on anarcho-primitivism that were kind of surprising to me, I think it was called The Fall and Anarcho-Primitivism in the Bible and I was interested in this because I kind of started thinking about primitivism while studying anthropology but I know a lot of people consider it impractical and it’s not always engaged by Christian theologians really. So I was kind of wondering how you became interested in this topic and how you began exploring it.

Ched: Right. Well of course any sort of radical departure from mainstream culture is always going to be impractical to those who have not yet been beyond the boundaries of mainstream culture. That’s always the sort of first level of dismissal that if you’re marching to a different drummer then you are by definition not effective or not practical. I think we need to get used to being call that name.

One of the differences between your generation’s movements and my generation’s movements is what we broadly call out flat anarchism’s influences. And that is the way in which anarchist theory and practice was mediated through the punk movement really did influence a lot of people from your generation, whereas our generation was just prior to that. Now some of us through the Catholic Worker influence in particular and the writings of people like Ellul and Vernerd Eller and others through the influence of Anabaptism did and do see ourselves as Christian Anarchists. But the pop cultural movement of punk hadn’t made that widespread. In your circles there seems to be a lot more interest in anarchism because of that. And I think that’s a good thing, but it’s also a little bit of a dicey thing because I think that anarchism is understood by a lot of people in your generation’s movement more in terms of costuming and certain lifestyle habits and less in terms of a comprehensive political and social theory. I think there needs to be more sophistication, more grounding in the anarchist tradition especially the long history of Christian anarchism because it’s really not about how we wear our hair or how we wear our clothes or even about where we live necessarily, much less what kind of music we listen to, and it really is about the politics of syndicalism and the economics of mutual aid and that sort of thing. I am really encouraged that there is more of a conversation around anarchism than there was 30 years ago. I think that’s a good thing in radical Christian circles.

The anarcho-primitivist wing of that conversation is of particular interest to me because Sarah, like you, I read a lot of anthropology and also added [unintelligible] living and working with indigenous cultures. Which really persuaded me that traditional cultures that is to say cultures that have been less impacted by modern-Western civilization have enormous things to teach us about what it means to be human and what it means to be in community. I remember distinctively walking through a village in Melanesia in the mid 1980s and just looking at how, you know I was there for a couple months living with the folk, and here were people living in extended family units, practicing economic mutual aid, working cooperatively under social and political systems that were relatively non-hierarchical. And I thought to myself, and this was after living in you know radical Christian community for twelve plus years, I thought to myself,

“Gee, these folks are doing all the things we’re struggling so hard to do and they don’t have to have five meetings a week to accomplish it.”

Sarah: [Laugh] Exactly…I mean I think we definitely face that challenge in our community. I’m wondering maybe since we don’t have a lot of time left, if you could just expand on the challenges or concerns that you have with people in this movement who are trying to live into the way of Jesus in a more radical way.Ched: I think what you are all are part of is really coming out of, what I would call, the unraveling of portrait Evangelicalism in North America where there was this putative cultural, political consensus [unintelligible] veiled for twenty years or so [unintelligible] a lot of people raised up [unintelligible] Evangelical theology in part. You know there’s been this very significant disillusionment with that, that has given rise to many of these alternative communities. And that’s really important at the same time there’s a lot of unconscious hangover, or holdover of the old Evangelical culture, particularly around issues of race, class and gender. Particularly gender. So my feeling is that that’s a continuing project that all of us need to work on, not least some of these young, radical communities. Just because labeled ourselves radical and we’ve got the blog and the website that keeps telling us we are, that doesn’t mean we’ve done the hard work around gender and around race privilege and around class and so on. So that would be one piece of concern or growth or challenge.

I think a second one would be, and I say this knowing that this is close to Mark, a second part: one of the great differences between now and thirty years ago is this sort of access to instant celebrity and instant media profile. You know the stuff that communities are doing now, whether it be dumpster diving or going to war zones or you know dressing differently, or living in the inner city. That’s all stuff that folks were doing in the 1970s as well, the difference is you know we didn’t have websites and blogs and podcasts to sort of immediately broadcast our inside stories, our practice. And while that means your, the new generation is in many ways more potentially culturally influential than ours was, it also means that the danger of instant celebrity and everything that comes from that sort of you know, the branding and the media over-exposure. Those things are really not friendly to the ecology of radical Christian living. They are corrosive to the spirit and to the community. And while some of it isn’t necessarily evil in a media saturated world, one of my concerns would be that there’s sort of a disproportionate amount of movies and books and websites and blogs that are part of the movement today and I’m just not sure how healthy that is for the long run. Because the way that we judge the enduring value of a radical movement is how long it can sustain itself—and what we don’t need are movements that sort of peak and burn out in five ten or fifteen years. What we need are people who are determined to give their lives to this long generational ethical struggle against empire.

Those would be probably my greatest concerns about the movement. It’s pretty dazzling of what you are able to do in terms of communication technology, certainly to an old head like me. But at the same time, I think that is, that is a concern. Last thing I think I would say for your generation’s movement is, that really is different than my generation’s movement in terms of its beginning was that even though Earth Day started in 1974 I think it was, or 1972, the ecological crisis was not primary in the analysis of 70s and 80s Christian radical. Your generation is a generation that is really for the first time in the history of civilization is having to reckon with the end, the collapse, “The End Game” as Derrick Jensen calls it, that flows from the ecological crisis. I do think that as Brian McLaren puts it, “Everything must change”. We—everything has to focus on the ecological crisis that looms over all of us and your generation is the first adult generation that has to really reckon with that.

Elliacin: It seems that we are running out of time—we need to schedule a second one now Ched because all this, because all of us are now going to think, “We need to have a conversation about what does it mean to cultivate the life of a radical disciple?” I want to move from, it seems sometimes that when we talk of Empire we are only talking about what is visible which is the tip of the iceberg, but inside each of us there is this humongous place of occupied place by the Empire that we need to deal with and I would like that discussion later on about, “How do we deal with when we ourselves are occupied by Empire, how do we live daily with that battle- struggle?”

Ched: De acuerdo?!

Eliacin: [laughs]

Ched: The way I would put it is, spiritually is how do we go about exorcising demons that we ourselves are possessed?

Elliacin: Yes.

Ched: That’s a big issue spiritually, socially, politically, relationally for all of us and I would be more than happy to have another conversation with you all if that’s your desire. I know that you have a lot of interesting people to talk to and about but I always stand ready to have conversation with you all.

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconocast-episode-2/feed/ 11 ched myers,Iconocast,interview In this episode, co-hosts Sarah Lynne Anderson and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz interview Ched Myers, activist, educator, and the author of a number of books--inclucing "Binding the Strongman". In this episode, co-hosts Sarah Lynne Anderson and Eliacin Rosario-Cruz interview Ched Myers, activist, educator, and the author of a number of books--inclucing "Binding the Strongman". the Iconocast Collective no 40:15 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=3810-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconcast-episode-1/ http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconcast-episode-1/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:08:01 +0000 the Iconocast Collective http://www.jesuradicals.com/testwp/?p=3711 aka: Who Would Jesus Subvert? In this episode, co-hosts Joanna Shenk and Mark Van Steenwyk interview Nekeisha Alexis-Baker (co-founder of JesusRadicals.com, activist, organizer, and thinker).]]>

In this episode, co-hosts Joanna Shenk and Mark Van Steenwyk interview Nekeisha Alexis-Baker (founder of JesusRadicals.com, activist, organizer, and thinker). Note: this interview was recorded months before the Iconocast became a part of JesusRadicals.com.

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Intro and bumper music is “Politik Kills” by Manu Chao.

Below is a transcription of the interview. Special thanks to Kristofer Smiley, who did all of the transcribing.

* * *

Nekeisha:Ok well I will try and keep it really brief then. I am originally from Trinidad. I grew up in New York City for most of my life. Currently living in Elkhart, Indiana where I was a student at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. I have a Masters degree in Theology and Ethics.I currently work here doing graphic design. and in addition to being married to a really good guy…I do a lot of work with Jesus Radicals, and some local work here and I’m really happy to be the first guest on your podcast. So I’ll throw that into my bio for you.

Mark: Yay!

Joanne: Wohoo!

Mark: So you mentioned Jesus Radicals. Jesus Radicals is for those that don’t know, kind of a network or a gathering together of people that are interested in both Christianity and Anarchism and maybe how they relate. Is that a fair description or is there anything you’d like to add to that:

Nekeisha: No, I think that’s a pretty good description.

Mark: So maybe you could tell us a little bit about where Jesus Radicals came from.

Nekeisha: Sure.

Mark: The origin story if you will of Jesus Radicals.

Nekeisha: Yes. It’s kind of funny how it came together. Whenever I look back on the seven-eight years it’s been in existence. I’m always like, “Well, wow! How did we end up here?”

The first iteration of Jesus Radicals was basically a tribute website to students at Wheaton College who had gone to “Students of America” protest and a way of putting up the photos and telling that story. I think it was the first time that Wheaton students had done that and Andy Alexis-Baker, who was an acquaintance at the time, had helped to organize that. And so the first iteration of the website was “Wow. This radical thing has happened in this particular place and how do we chronicle that?” From that point, the website sort of grew, we thought it would be interesting to have a library on topics related to Christianity and Anarchism. I was not an anarchist at the time but came to learn more about that politics and came to adopt it for myself. In conjunction with the website sort of getting a life of its own, we ended up having a gathering at our congregation just to talk about it and fifty people showed up. Most of them, weren’t from our church, so it was like, “Ok, this is interesting. There are people who are curious about these two topics.”

And that gathering has continued for about, this will be our eighth year. Totally out of our hands. As far as, what it started out as and what it has become.

Joanne: And would you mind telling a little bit about you and Andy, and how you worked together on this and as much as you want to on your background and how y’all connected in the first place.

Nekeisha: Ah that’s an interesting story. I would have to check with him before I got into the finer details of how we met. But as far as religious and political kind of affiliations I think Andy has always been an Anarchist and he adopted Christian faith—he came from a Christian background—but really adopted it for himself as he matured. I kind of grew up in a Roman Catholic background, was rebaptized in an African-American church and became Mennonite later on in life through meeting him. So he was a Mennonite at the time and Anabaptism has a pretty radical history. Within learning about those things and being introduced to Anarchism and those two things sort of coalesced for me. Hopefully that sort of helps with that.

Joanne: Mhm.

Mark: Tell me a little bit about your Anarchist journey. How did this intrigue you? It’s not the normal story perhaps, the typical story for people to—as part of their own faith journey maybe wrap it up with Anarchism. Usually that’s a scary word to people.

Nekeisha: Right, mhm. I think as a person of color coming into a U.S. context from a context that was you know being a Caribbean Island, primarily of people of color and being introduced quite forcefully too the politics of race and the politics of justice I think I’ve always kind of cared about where the underdog sort of fits in the scheme of things. But coming into the context where that became more apparent, made me intrigued about justice issues. My highschool kind of experience as well, I went to a pseudo-experimental public highschool. We were reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” for our history textbook.

Mark: Awesome.

Nekeisha: That has the potential to radicalize you a tad.

Joanne: Yeah.

Mark: A little bit yeah.

Nekeisha: And really I think one of the critical things was really being introduced to the Bible again. I remember reading The Sermon on the Mount for what felt like the first time and feeling like “Geez, who put that in there when I wasn’t looking? Where did that come from?” So the journey into Anarchism really has grown out of my own concerns about justice and my own sort of reformulated thinking. Re-learning what Christian faith is about and the deliberately aspects of that, justice aspects of that, the non-dominating aspects of that and sort of meeting someone who was already Anarchist and had begun formulating those things together and seeing those connections. Those kind of conversations opened me up to that.

Joanne: I’m interested in kind of going off of that background. What it’s been like then specifically with the Jesus Radicals group, as a person of color, as a woman, when—what I know about the Jesus Radicals, being at the conference this past year it’s a lot of white people (Anglos) and I don’t know what the ratio is male to female but often I feel like it’s more white, men, white males that are writing the Anarchist material. What has it been like to navigate that territory?

Nekeisha: I think it’s been a little bit different in the sense of, because it is something that I am doing—maybe not necessarily leading—but because Andy and I are working on it as partners and I’m sort of, for a lack of a better word “in charge” or the one doing the organizing around some of this. That makes it a little bit different than entering into it sort of as someone who maybe just shows up at the conference. So I do realizing that there are some power dynamics there as one of the organizers of it. I would say though, we’ve really become more and more intentional, particularly in the planning of the conference about saying that we need to have voices of people of color, we need to have voices of people present, we need to have voices of secular Anarchist there because there are a lot of us who are entering into this that have a lot to learn from people who have been doing this kind of thinking and political engagement for awhile. In terms of planning the conference we will hold and say, “Ok, we’ve got too many white male speakers on our slot. We’re not proceeding until we start to get more voices from people of color, more voices of women.”

And that has felt empowering to me, I think it’s kind of interesting that you know black women aren’t usually the “poster children” for Anarchism—much less Christianity and Anarchism. So I realize that I’m in a peculiar kind of place.

Mark: Just to jump in here real quick. You know I’m trying to put on my ears from fifteen years ago when I would have been mainstream evangelical, by most people’s estimation.

Nekeisha: Mhm, right.

Mark: Even though there was some radical strands already there. Listening to you talk about things of naming ways, you know different kinds of oppression that happen. You’re talking about the story of people of color or women and trying to undo some of that oppression. You’re talking about Anarchism and how that relates to Christianity and I’m thinking fifteen years ago or even more, or typical Middle-Americana sort of listener, those are things that don’t seem to always naturally connect with Christianity. I know this is a big question, this is a big issue people spend a lot of ink trying to address and write about but what is it about Christianity that kind of flows into these sort of concerns? Authentically flows. Because I’m assuming there’s people that might be listening that think,”Gee, you know, why are you trying to cram two disparate things like Anarchism and caring about blah blah blah oppression with Christianity?”

How do they relate to each other that’s actually natural? Or is it a forced sort of thing?

Nekeisha: Right. Mhm. Well for those people one of the resources that I would recommend is Jacques Ellul’s “Anarchism and Christianity” where he really, how he delves into this sort of stuff is to look at what is happening Biblically and that’s huge. Going back to the point that I made of relearning of how to read the Bible. What, how we understand, for example, the people of Israel. You know we like to focus on King David, King Solomon. We don’t really like to focus on for example 1 Samuel 8 right? Where the people are asking for a king and God is saying, “You’ve rejected me, thank you very much. This is a great evil.”

So what Ellul does is some thinking on how the original tribes of Israel organized themselves, what their  structures were like. It’s anachronistic to call it Anarchist but some of the practices of those groups and the way in which they organized themselves looks a lot like what some Anarchists advocate in far as organizing oneself. As far as leadership did or didn’t work, how the groups sort of coalesced, it’s a lot to try and get into but I would recommend that as a resource. And to say that there are Biblical hints about what it means to be a particular kind of people that looks, that has some similarities to what Anarchism is advocating. In Acts for example, where you know the first church or after Pentecost, people are sharing all of their things in common.

There’s attention of detail paid to making sure that everyone has the same amount of food, same amount of access. What that kind of community looks like is different than the kind of communities we call church now. A relearning of what is in the Biblical texts and seeing things that we might have seen before. I think that has been apart of the process for me.

Joanne: So in some ways it’s like a Howard Zinn approach to the Bible? The people’s understanding of the Bible and the critiquing who is writing the Bible and who are they writing it for.

Nekeisha: Yeah. And also what Jesus is trying to do. What is Jesus’ mission? To free the captive. To liberate the oppressed. The works of mercy, well those are a form of direct action that Anarchist talk a lot about. You don’t wait for a bureaucratic somebody to go out and feed people or clothe people. And the Catholic Worker movement really embodies this—you engage directly with where the needs are and where the people need to be supported. But like you said, it’s a huge question and this might seem like a little picking and choosing, but I think if people do their homework and read the scripture with some good conversations like Ellul or Dorothy Day (who was also an Anarchist) or Leo Tolstoy (who was Anarchist) a lot of things will be uncovered that people don’t necessarily like to look at because it challenges structures that we have put in place.

Mark: You mentioned Dorothy Day and I think for a lot of people their first introduction to this sort of intersection of Anarchistic sorts of thinking and Christianity, a lot of people find that with Dorothy Day. In a way that was my big introduction to, from a kind of typical Mennonite thing to more of an Anarchist thing with Dorothy Day. Could you just maybe talk a little bit about the landscape of Christianity and Anarchism in conversation like post-Dorothy Day. Because it seems like there’s some momentum picking up that’s coming from somewhere and people are finding it more appealing to look at this sort of intersection. Maybe you could kind of just sheep a little bit about that from your perspective.

Nekeisha: Well like I said, Ellul is a big factor in that conversation. I think people finding his work and I would say, even though he isn’t an Anarchist, John Howard Yoder probably is a big entry point. He was a big entry point for me in terms of rethinking the military, rethinking war, rethinking powers and principalities. He has a really good solid critique of structures and how Christians should and shouldn’t relate to the State. And so I don’t know that he would ever have called himself Anarchist, but he and Ellul were in conversation, and his work is influential in this kind of thinking.

There are some newer people who are thinking about this stuff. There’s a newer book that I have an essay in—”Religious Anarchisms”—which looks more broadly than Christianity but there are new Christian writers who are trying to think through some of these things. There is another book that just came out, I’m totally am not remembering the title, but he is also the editor of “Religious Anarchisms” that he has his own book—his dissertation that just came out exploring some of these connections too. So there are newer people doing this kind of work and I think doing some of the Biblical, the scriptural, the theological thinking and sort of mining Anarchist thinking to see where we have points of agreement and where we can sort of learn from that.

Joanne: Mhm. One thing that Id’ be interested in hearing you talk a little bit about is oppression and how we understand what oppression is, or that can be a root of the Anarchist impulse. to saying, “There’s unhealthy power dynamics going on. We need to relate to each other in new ways.” or, “We need to bring transformation and change in new ways.”

I know for me growing up more in a conservative Evangelical environment. When people talk about the oppressed, it was the poor, it was people who were different than me, often times it would be people in other countries. And so, when Jesus talks about letting the oppressed go free, then I would have been thinking, “Ok, how am I sharing the good news with the oppressed?”
and not thinking about like, “How am I the oppressor?” or, “How am I entangled in some of these oppressions.”

I mean this is like again a big conversation topic. I mean you can kind of choose where you want to enter in. But how would you describe in North American Christianity how we engage this topic or this understanding of oppression?

Nekeisha: Hm. I mean I think like you I would have thought oppression as being just really personal relationships—sticking on the personal relationships section. I mean like if I’m not being mean to other people or if I’m not doing bad things to other people then clearly I don’t belong in a category that would put me in “oppressor”. But coming to sort of understand these things as being more systemic which also is the Anarchist critique. There is something in the systems that we create in which it is necessary to the system to have some people who are on top and other people who are not. Capitalism, it’s not with capitalism for example you know we sort of “woe is me” about there are poor people. But capitalism depends on certain kind of class differences. It depends on certain class structures.

The sort of Anarchist anti-civilization critique would even go in deeper. There is something inherent in civilization for example in cities that are inherently oppressive. A city depends on drawing resources from other places in order to sustain itself. A city like Manhattan would shrivel up very quickly if outside sources of food, of energy, etc. etc. were deprived. And so how are you going to supply the city? Well you are going to need to do it as cheaply as possible and that is going to require certain amounts of labor, certain structures that keep people working for as little as possible, etc. etc. etc. And so, oppression not just being about how you and I relate—which is critical—but also being about,

“What are the structures that we create and participate in”
and are those structures ones that depend on certain people being sort of trampled on and certain people being in power and can we start thinking about what it might look like to recreate structures that are more liberating, more equalizing, are less domination as much as is possible. Anarchists get the bad rap that, “Oh you just want chaos.” or, “You don’t want any order at all.”

And I sort of explain it as, it’s not no order it’s a different form of organizing oneself. That’s hard to explain because it is so particular. You’re not going to have an Anarchists The United States of America.

Joanne: It’s not how that works.

Nekeisha: I mean hopefully that gets at some of what I understand of oppression has been broadened.

Mark: Well I see that we’re running close to the end of our time because you have a meeting to get to. This might seem a little abrupt change in direction but I really wanted to spend some time talking about the national anthem. This thing that’s going on for those who don’t know, Goshen College after a long while of not playing the national anthem at sporting events decided, “Hey let’s start playing at least an instrumental version!”

It seems like it was started by some conservative talk show host focusing on this and how I guess Goshen College doesn’t love America. So concerned people starting calling and put pressure on them to get this changed. You’re a part of a kind of counter rallying. Right?

Nekeisha: Mhm.

Mark: I mean maybe you can kind of share a little bit about that and then also talk about why does this matter at all? What is this, do you hate America? What’s going on here, why should we care?

Nekeisha: Right. Well to flesh out a little bit of the background, basically, the college had been thinking about whether or not to play the national anthem before this sort of conservative talk show flare-up although I’m sure that factored into their decision. Having done some talking to people about this, it’s really complicated to how that decision came about. I don’t want to make it seem like the college just woke up one day and decided to do this. That said, they have at least 114 year history of not playing it and why this is important is just a huge theological issue.

For me it’s a question of, what does it mean as a Christian to declare an allegiance. The national anthem and the flag and nations in general—this is not just an issue about America—they demand a certain level of allegiance, a primary allegiance really, from their citizens. It’s nice that you have your religious stuff but it shouldn’t conflict or contradict the ultimate goals of the nation state. It’s symbolic yes the national anthem but theological speaking it’s also formative and it really is who do we hold to be primary within our faith concerns.

We at Jesus Radicals have sort of again stumbled into this resistance, or sort of call to rethink what the college is doing as sort of Anabaptists, Mennonites ourselves so some of this comes out of our denominational affiliation (where we call home). But it’s larger than that. It is an issue that Christian people to be thinking about. You know when we say to ourselves, that our citizenship is bigger than any nation, that we are a transnational body of Christ that extends both borders of nation states but also across time, that something about the Early Church informs who we are, something about the Hebrew scripture informs who we are, the cloud of witnesses that will come after us, that these things are all connected, what does it mean then to, before these sporting events play this hymn to the nation—this worship song to the flag. We have a petition online that has at this point over a thousand people signed to it and we are planning some peaceful forms of witnessing offline for the college around this, not with the intent to shame or embarrass but rather to help people be true to the 114 year old history that they have and to the Anabaptist history that preceded that and to the Christian story, at least the kid of underdog Christian story that came before even that. We invite people to go to the website to check that out as well.

Mark: What is the website?

Nekeisha: It’s JesusRadicals.com is the website and people can find the petition there and some articles and some responses from myself and from Andy articulating why this is a theological issue as much as it is a political issue.

Mark: With our remaining minutes here, talk a little bit more about what is happening with Jesus Radicals, what kind of energy are you spending on different projects that we might want to know about.

Nekeisha: Mhm, well the biggest thing is that our conference, our annual gathering is going to be in Portland, Oregon this year. So I am working with other organizers, three people in different locations: Andrea Ferek, Andy Lewis, a friend of ours that goes by the name of Bison in Portland, to organize the conference there and the theme I believe that we have decided upon is “In the Beginning: Anarchism and Christianity from the root” and so getting at the origins of some of the things that we are resisting. Some of the topics might be things like war, race, how have these things originated and acknowledging that it is important to know the history of stuff if we’re going to actively be able to do something different or enter and resist what’s here. So that ends up being one of the big things that takes up a lot of my time and the other organizers time and then just doing some planning around, some thoughtful and prayerful planning around the actions we want to do to kind of engage Goshen College in a dialogue about the national anthem thing. Those are the main things. We have our forum that people have good conversations and people are invited to join that. I think that’s it. We’ve got some non-Jesus Radicals related things that we do too but that would be a little bit of a list today.

Joanne: And I have some one final question.

Nekeisha: Yes, ma’am.

Joanne: I’m wondering what it’s like being a vegan living in Elkhart, Indiana.

Nekeisha: I don’t know if someone might want to edit that out. It’s very easy to do it at home. It has been pretty easy to talk to people about it, particularly the way I frame it as a theological issue, also as an Anarchist issue as well. But you know when you go out to the local restaurant chain, there are so many of them around here, and you ask if they have vegetarian food and they ask you if you eat chicken. It’s kind of hard to delve into a deeper discussion about not consuming eggs and milk. There is one really good Indian restaurant, that we have a hankering we go out to eat there. But as far as cooking at home it’s been brilliant. I love it. It’s a joyful way of life.

Mark: Well thank you for joining us today, Nekeisha.

Nekisha: Thank you, this has been fun!

 

]]> http://www.jesusradicals.com/the-iconcast-episode-1/feed/ 37 Iconocast,jesus radicals,nekeisha alexis-baker aka: Who Would Jesus Subvert? In this episode, co-hosts Joanna Shenk and Mark Van Steenwyk interview Nekeisha Alexis-Baker (co-founder of JesusRadicals.com, activist, organizer, and thinker). aka: Who Would Jesus Subvert? In this episode, co-hosts Joanna Shenk and Mark Van Steenwyk interview Nekeisha Alexis-Baker (co-founder of JesusRadicals.com, activist, organizer, and thinker). the Iconocast Collective no 37:29 <iframe width="320" height="24" src="http://www.jesusradicals.com/?powerpress_embed=3711-podcast&amp;powerpress_player=default" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>