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Jesus Radicals Blog 2005-2017
6/25/2016 Comments Experiments in Soil and HopeBy: Nicole Bauman Being a farmer is unpredictable in ordinary times, and only made worse by the erratic weather patterns brought on by global climate change. This spring, one that was colder and wetter than “usual” (whatever that means anymore!), I found myself drawn into what can seem like the unavoidable and existential worries of a farmer, concerned about the endless unknowns that are always outside the farmer's control. When I rose one spring morning for my daily field walk, I was devastated to see that slugs had wreaked havoc on my tomatillo and tomato plants. Yet another “failure” in a long litany of pest and soil problems on our new plot. I was ready to throw in the towel. Enough of this no-till, pesticide-free, heirloom seed-only farming!—I was ready to go out and buy some poison to take care of those slugs once and for all! I didn't buy the poison, but these uncertainties and worries are real. I was able to reground myself, connecting to the intention of holding this latest farming endeavor as an experiment. We won't get as many tomatillos this year. But there is no such thing as failure when we experiment—only endless opportunities for learning, for readjusting, for trying again. As we explore farming without fossil fuels and with using only heirloom seeds, for example, we are called over and over again to lean into this truth.
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By: Ric Hudgens Shawn Sanford Beck’s short, suggestive essay (60 pages) on “Christian animism” is a provocative delight. I want to highlight some of his most salient points and indicate some further directions for those who want to go further. The Rev Shawn Sanford Beck is a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. He lives with his family on an off-the-grid homestead in Saskatchewan. Beck writes:“To say that a Christian can, and should, cultivate a relationship with the spirits of nature, the spirits of the land, is something new. What was natural and somewhat unconscious up until the end of the medieval period now requires consciousness and intentionality.” But can’t we do that without calling it “Christian animism”? Beck argues that we need not fear animism, nor should we see the conjunction of Christian and animist as something so foreign or idiosyncratic. Christian animism according to Beck is “what happens when a committed Christian engages the world and each creature as alive, sentient, and related, rather than soul-less and ontologically inferior.” Christian Animism seems so exotic and frankly eccentric because we have all been indoctrinated into a “cult of reductionism” that reduces the world’s wondrous multiplicity to a series of justs: just a tree, just a rock, just the earth. In my own initial writing about Christian Animism I noted how the voices of creation have been bound and gagged by modernity so that only the human voice can be heard. 5/6/2016 Comments The intertwined history of three American folk songs, 4.3, and the struggle for peace in Gangjeong VillageBy: Seth Martin Note: This article was originally published at Seth's blog, Over the Mountains there are Mountains. Farther along, we’ll understand why…” Today is 4.3, the day when Jeju Islanders gather each year to remember the brutal genocide of their people under post-Japan, US-South Korean leadership, when right-wing youth squads were used to suppress supposed “reds” and communist sympathizers. The end result was a devastated island, with tens of thousands of villagers fleeing to Japan to survive, and between 30,000 and 60,000 innocent villagers slaughtered, either in their homes or after being found hiding in mountain caves. “No special pleading about the exigencies of wartime will suffice to assuage the American conscience,” writes historian Bruce Cumings in his book, The Korean War. “What the formerly classified American materials document is a merciless, wholesale assault on the people of this island.” In almost every village memorials to the slain can be seen. The ghosts are not quiet on Jeju. And the living have not forgotten. In recent years, the South Korean government proudly took part in renaming Jeju “The Island of Peace” as a way of recognizing the terrible heartbreak of Jeju and also to honor the people’s strong efforts to stop future war and violence. Shortly after, the construction of a massive, joint US-ROK naval base began in Gangjeong Village, despite the vigorous protests of nearly all villagers to both the illegal start of the project and the base itself. There are many threads from 4.3 to Gangjeong. This week, after several years of fighting, hundreds of villager and activist arrests, and countless illegal maneuvers by the military and base contractors, the new naval base celebrated its grand opening. The existence of the base is seen as an affront to the villagers’ freedom and dignity, and proof to many that US/ROK statements about peace and Jeju’s autonomy are lies. Villagers and activists are experiencing Gangjeong Village’s transformation, despite their struggle, into a new front line for a potential world war. Here is a song about this struggle. And below the lyrics is a story of where the song came from as well as how its musical roots are intertwined with the current struggle for peace in Gangjeong, which goes back much farther than the illegal start of the base construction. 4/25/2016 Comments Earth Day: Making a Big ImpactBy: Todd Grotenhuis Note: Article originally published on Todd's blog, Groten Stuff. On Earth Day, you are probably going to be overwhelmed with advice on how to save the planet. You’ll hear things like:
These are fine suggestions. They help to limit our negative impact, and perhaps more importantly, they help us train ourselves to be mindful of our choices. Now, some more adventurous sources will have suggestions like:
4/15/2016 Comments If You See Something, Say Something“If you see something, say something.” This line comes to us out of post-9/11 security culture. In places where people normally moved around freely, met one another and perhaps made an unexpected connection, a culture of suspicion took hold. God forbid someone asks you to watch their bags while they walk with their child to look out the airport windows. Feel your blood pressure spike as someone puts their backpack down to run to the water fountain. I’ve seen security called in cases like this. Before you know it, police reports are being filed by witnesses, countless hours and money wasted, people feeling frustrated because their bag was considered “unattended,” and they have to jump through hoops to get it back. What we see as suspicious is filtered through what we perceive as familiar and comfortable, versus what is not. “If you see something say something” can also be turned on its head for those of us who are members of the upside-down kin-dom of God. Building on Philippians 4:8, when we see something beautiful or honorable, we should say something too. I see much to affirm in my travels with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). Our mission to build partnerships to transform violence and oppression leads us to collaborate with those who might be considered suspicious. Getting to know new places and new people in order to work to transform situations of violence and address oppression is a benefit of nonviolence work; we learn to see and say in new ways.
Having established that fundamentalism cannot be understood as a literal interpretation of religious texts or religious extremism, can it be understood as a strict adherence to a set of beliefs? This answer seems the most plausible to me, but I have yet to hear anyone explain exactly what this “set of beliefs” is and why it is universal to all religious (and secular) fundamentalists. At this point, we need to shift our focus to comparative mythology, as my background in this field has guided me in exploring this question. For those unfamiliar with comparative mythology, it is the survey of mythological archetypes, beliefs, stories, themes, and narratives from across many different human cultures in order to discover possible continuities and shared experiences between them. In other words, the comparative mythologists are trying to find common myths and beliefs which are shared by many human cultures. This is fascinating and important work because it reveals the basic mythological framework that underlays all our beliefs about the world, which holds implications for every single field of science and academic inquiry. Every ideology in the world—philosophical, religious, or scientific—can also be understood as a set of basic beliefs, or myths. When a comparative mythologist looks past the surface of an ideology and examines these basic myths, comparing and contrasting them to other ideologies, some very interesting discoveries happen; many opposing ideologies are revealed to be almost identical in their mythology, while other seemingly similar ideologies are revealed as having vastly different mythic structures. For example, the ideologies of capitalism and communism have been widely presented as polarities—two opposing political and economic worldviews. The Cold War(s) were financed and fought under the guise of these two ideologies duking it out on the global battlefields of history, and many people still believe this narrative. As a comparative mythologist, I see these two ideologies as almost identical in all their basic myths. Both ideologies accept the basic logic, structure, and processes of industrial civilization, they both employ rigid hierarchies to maintain their order, they both rely on Modernist assumptions of Science, and they both use oppressive State power to accomplish their ends. Neither of them question the institutions of Patriarchy or anthropocentrism, the role of technology, the realities of industrial agriculture, or the feasibility of building a system of production predicated on infinite growth while living on a finite planet. They both accept the constructs of linear time, a market economy, and private property, and the only areas where they actually diverge are in their interpretations of how this market should be regulated and how this property should be distributed. When these two ideologies are broken down into their basic myths and compared to other human myths, the differences are hardly discernible. By: Joshua Kercsmar As a historian who studies slavery and agriculture, I’m interested in probing the mutual oppression of humans and animals. Doing so has potential to offer new ways of understanding the past, and also to help us think more deeply about justice for humans and animals in the present. Toward that end, my current book project traces how the treatment of animals and slaves intersected on plantations in Virginia, South Carolina, and the Caribbean during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We might think of the 1600s and 1700s as the beginning of modern industrial farming. This was a period that saw rapid modernization in many realms of agriculture, from crop rotations, to processing technologies, to animal breeding. Planters in North America and the Caribbean, who often grew crops like tobacco, rice, and sugar, and who needed livestock and slaves to keep their enterprises going, were caught up in these transformations. While they didn’t always or everywhere adopt new agricultural methods, they did so enough of the time to allow us to test whether agricultural modernization influenced planters’ treatment of animals and slaves.
There are fewer words in the english language as cloaked in ambiguity and steeped in power as fundamentalism. It is a word which completely dominates social discourse, public opinion, and political rhetoric, yet remains undefinable and enigmatic. When pressed to explain what one means by this word, most pundits will allude to “literal interpretations of religious texts,” “religious extremism,” or “a strict adherence to a set of beliefs,” but fail to give any further context or description of what exactly makes one a fundamentalist, why fundamentalism exists, or why fundamentalists of all creeds seem to share so much in common. These are all questions that have fascinated me ever since the moment I realized, many years ago, that I was raised in a fundamentalist family and began to understand the many ways that this upbringing deeply affected me. An essential part of my healing from this traumatic upbringing has been studying the phenomenon of fundamentalism on all levels—sociological, historical, political, and psychological—in an effort to understand how ideas like this are created and perpetuated. As it turns out, my fascination with this cultural phenomenon is shared with many others. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, and especially during the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in the US, perhaps no single word has held public attention so much, as governments around the world have taken advantage of the power that this word holds to create atmospheres of fear and paranoia which in turn allows them to enact draconian laws, create totalitarian surveillance systems, and incite nationalist fervor to an extent that they would never be able to get away with otherwise. Despite the massive amounts of media attention given to this topic and the endless procession of talking heads who attempt to provide answers to these questions, I have found myself continually frustrated and dissatisfied with their answers. In addition to my search for a basic explanation of what exactly fundamentalism is, my most pressing question has been trying to understand why fundamentalists from different religions share so much in common. This strange and terrifying cultural phenomenon seems to not be restricted to any particular tradition but is rather a non-localized personality disorder or sickness which affects people from all across the religious (and secular) spectrum. In the course of my studies in comparative religion, comparative mythology, philosophy, depth psychology, and theology, I have finally started to answer some of these questions for myself, and I think some of my discoveries may be helpful others. But before we explore what fundamentalism is, let's establish what it isn't. By: Gregory Williams GregoryWilliams Arising, as it does, out of a turn towards anabaptist theology by white American evangelicals, Christian Anarchism has often displayed hostility towards multiple belonging. This can be seen in the precise relationship that many of those engaged in it imagine between radical Christianity and the Anarchist traditions on which it draws. For example, in a series of posts based on the Primer on Christian Anarchism that was, at one point, given annually at the Jesus Radicals conference, Mark van Steenwyk writes: [F]rom my perspective, it is better to embrace a Christianity that affirms the anarchic trajectory of the Way of Jesus on its own terms than simply to smash together Christianity and Anarchism into some sort of strained mashup. Often, I meet self-described Christian anarchists who have no real way of putting these two things together in any way that makes sense to them. They simply hold one tradition in each hand, ignoring the conflict they feel until, eventually, they let go of one of them.1 My point here is not to attack Mark or hold him to account for something that he wrote almost half a decade ago. God knows that I have changed a lot since 2011, and I’m sure that he has, too. I’m not trying to do intellectual history here as much as genealogy—a symptomology rather than a diagnosis, that seeks to draw out some of the surface level features of a shared condition without essentializing it, in order to render that condition articulable. This quote, whatever its relationship to any particular thinker or to the evolution of Jesus Radicals as an institutional structure, has the virtue of documenting (literally rendering as text) an idea that has been spoken and unspokenly assumed in this space over the course of many years. This assumption is that multiple belonging, “holding one tradition in each hand,” is untenable and ill-advised. 1/31/2016 Comments To Know the Dark, Go DarkBy: Nicole Bauman Note: This is the first in what will be a series of articles from members of the Red Oak Community House. Red Oak is part of the Prairie Wolf Collective Housing Co-op and is an urban permaculture and community space in Elkhart, Indiana. Red Oak welcomes visitors to their monthly potluck and currently has a couple of rooms open for folks interested in living and actively participating in the community. On a Wednesday afternoon in mid-winter, the sun is already going down long before friends and neighbors start to arrive for our monthly community meal potluck. As we bustle around the house, tidying, adding extra logs to the fire, stirring a giant pot of soup simmering on the wood stove, and welcoming in the early-comers, we also begin to light a few candles. Days are short in this season of winter solstice. The long, dark evenings -- and their need for candles -- start early! More folks bundle in from out of the cold, balancing babies and crock pots and conversations as the fire draws them in close. Night has truly fallen now, and the spacious downstairs of Red Oak Community House is full of friends new and old, bathed in the soothing glow of our latest batch of beeswax candles. We gather to introduce ourselves and the steaming dishes laid before us, entering into an evening of shared food and shared community. When we first began the visioning process around what our commitments and experiments would be at Red Oak Community House, using only candles for light was primarily an ecological decision. Doing so grew out of our desire to reduce our use of and dependency on non-renewable energy. |
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The viewpoints expressed in each reader-submitted article are the authors own, and not an “official Jesus Radicals” position. For more on our editorial policies, visit our submissions page. If you want to contact an author or you have questions, suggestions, or concerns, please contact us. CategoriesAll Accountability Advent Anarchism Animal Liberation Anthropocentrism Appropriation Biblical Exegesis Book Reviews Bread Capitalism Catholic Worker Christmas Civilization Community Complicity Confessing Cultural Hegemony Decolonization Direct Action Easter Economics Feminism Heteropatriarchy Immigration Imperialism Intersectionality Jesus Justice Lent Liberation Theology Love Mutual Liberation Nation-state Nonviolence Occupy Othering Pacifisim Peace Pedagogies Of Liberation Police Privilege Property Queer Racism Resistance Resurrection Sexuality Solidarity Speciesism Spiritual Practices Technology Temptation Veganism Violence War What We're Reading On . . . White Supremacy Zionism ContributorsNekeisha Alayna Alexis
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October 2017
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