WWW.JESUSRADICALS.COM
  • About
  • Rock! Paper! Scissors!
    • What's in a Name?
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Call for Content
    • Past Issues >
      • Blog Archives (2005 - 2017)
      • Liberation for Every Body
      • The Movement Makes Us Human
      • Truth, Trust, and Power
      • Art Against Empire
      • Earth, Ecology, and the End of the Age
      • Decolonization, Incarnation, and Liberation
  • Library
    • Add an entry
    • Letter A >
      • Abelism
      • Accountability
      • Ally
      • Anarchism
      • Animal Liberation
      • Anthropocentrism
      • Assimilation
    • Letter B >
      • Base Communities
      • Biblical Exegisis
    • Letter C >
      • Capitalism
      • Catholic Worker
      • Civilization
    • Letter D >
      • Decolonization
      • Direct Action
    • Letter F >
      • Factory Farming
      • Feminism
      • Foraging
    • Letter G >
      • Genocide
      • Globalization
    • Letter H >
      • Heteropatriarchy
      • Humane Killing
    • Letter I >
      • Internalized Oppression
      • Intersectionality
    • Letter L >
      • Liberation Theology
    • Letter M >
      • Marginal Voices
      • Mass Media
    • Letter N >
      • Nonviolence
    • Letter O >
      • Othering
    • Letter P >
      • Pedagogies of Liberation
      • Police
      • Privilege
    • Letter Q >
      • Queer
    • Letter R >
      • Racism
      • Resurrection
    • Letter S >
      • Speceisism
      • Spiritual/Cultural Appropriation
      • State
    • Letter T >
      • Technology
      • Theopolitics
    • Letter V >
      • Voting
    • Letter W >
      • War
      • White Supremacy
  • Iconocast
    • Collective
    • Canvas
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Join Us
  • About
  • Rock! Paper! Scissors!
    • What's in a Name?
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Call for Content
    • Past Issues >
      • Blog Archives (2005 - 2017)
      • Liberation for Every Body
      • The Movement Makes Us Human
      • Truth, Trust, and Power
      • Art Against Empire
      • Earth, Ecology, and the End of the Age
      • Decolonization, Incarnation, and Liberation
  • Library
    • Add an entry
    • Letter A >
      • Abelism
      • Accountability
      • Ally
      • Anarchism
      • Animal Liberation
      • Anthropocentrism
      • Assimilation
    • Letter B >
      • Base Communities
      • Biblical Exegisis
    • Letter C >
      • Capitalism
      • Catholic Worker
      • Civilization
    • Letter D >
      • Decolonization
      • Direct Action
    • Letter F >
      • Factory Farming
      • Feminism
      • Foraging
    • Letter G >
      • Genocide
      • Globalization
    • Letter H >
      • Heteropatriarchy
      • Humane Killing
    • Letter I >
      • Internalized Oppression
      • Intersectionality
    • Letter L >
      • Liberation Theology
    • Letter M >
      • Marginal Voices
      • Mass Media
    • Letter N >
      • Nonviolence
    • Letter O >
      • Othering
    • Letter P >
      • Pedagogies of Liberation
      • Police
      • Privilege
    • Letter Q >
      • Queer
    • Letter R >
      • Racism
      • Resurrection
    • Letter S >
      • Speceisism
      • Spiritual/Cultural Appropriation
      • State
    • Letter T >
      • Technology
      • Theopolitics
    • Letter V >
      • Voting
    • Letter W >
      • War
      • White Supremacy
  • Iconocast
    • Collective
    • Canvas
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Join Us
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

  Archives

      Jesus Radicals Blog 2005-2017

3/5/2015 Comments

Charismatic Public Actions

By: Nichola Torbett
Picture
This is not one of those blog posts in which I share something nifty that I have all figured out. (I should probably be suspicious of those, anyway, as a recovering “knower."  Instead, I’m coming to the Jesus Radicals community with a question that I hope you will help me answer in the comments: What would it look like to invite the Holy Spirit to show up more powerfully and charismatically in our public actions as Christians?

I don’t know about you, but I have been to my fair share of faith-based social justice vigils around any number of social issues, and while I deeply appreciate the opportunity to gather with like-minded people of faith and believe that doing so lends significant legitimacy to the causes we are there to witness to, I almost always leave feeling we have missed an opportunity to bring the full repentance-inducing power of God into the situation—the power to seize people, move them, pick them up and set them going in a different direction . I think about the descent of the Spirit on that first Pentecost—a dramatic public event that could be considered a direct action; certainly it was perceived as a threat to the ruling powers—and how effective it was in calling new people out of collaboration with empire and into participation in the Kingdom or Kindom of God. And isn’t that what we want our social justice actions to do?

Before going much further, I should locate myself in this conversation. I am a relatively new convert to Christianity (within the past eight years), and I was recruited into the Kingdom project in the context of a faith community led by an African American lesbian pastor who brought to her leadership both a radical social analysis and a deep love of the embodied, charismatic worship of the black Pentecostal church.  I realize that that is not everyone’s experience and that many have had hurtful experiences in Pentecostal churches ranging from attempted exorcisms for being gay to unbridled and unquestioning nationalism and militarism to quiescence and apoliticism. 

It’s just that, having experienced the power of the Holy Spirit to literally move people’s bodies, to say nothing of their minds, hearts, and souls, I can’t help but feel that we are losing something by throwing the charismatic baby out with the homophobic, nationalistic, and overly personalized bathwater. 

Bob Eckblad, one of the founders of Tierra Nueva, an advocacy and healing ministry in Skagit County, Washington, has spoken frequently about the power of the Spirit in his own work. In the early 1990s, he reports, he was suffering from deep depression after years serving and advocating for black and brown people who were systematically criminalized and seemed to end up back in the criminal justice system over and over, no matter how earnestly they tried to change their lives. He frequently spoke with his brother about this depression, and his brother told him, repeatedly, that he didn’t have enough Holy Spirit in his work to help in counter the demonic prison-industrial complex and systematic oppression his people faced. Bob resisted this idea, associating the Holy Spirit with political conservatism, nationalism and militarism, but finally he agreed to go to a charismatic gathering in Toronto (joking that he thought there at least he would be safe from American triumphalism). At that gathering, amidst the expected right-leaning rhetoric, he had a personal encounter with the Holy Spirit that literally knocked him onto the floor, brought him deep personal healing, and gave him power for his work that was of a totally different magnitude. His writings now are full of dramatic stories of healing and restoration among the incarcerated migrant workers he serves.

While Bob’s story further convinces me that we need the Holy Spirit in our ministries, it doesn’t yet address this question of what the Holy Spirit wishes to do in our public actions.

Last week, at the Festival of Radical Discipleship hosted by Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, I saw people, seized by this same Spirit, leap out of their chairs and run to the dance floor to move their bodies, and there was so much power in it. I wonder, again, what would it be like to bring that power into our public actions?

Confession: I ask this question as someone who did not jump up to dance at these moments. I was too self-conscious. I believe self-consciousness is the enemy of the Spirit and also that it is systematically instilled in us by the dominant culture in order to guard against Spirit-induced rebellion and disruption of the status quo.

Can I be honest here? I think we resist the power of the Holy Spirit and fail to bring it into our social justice actions because it embarrasses us.  Let’s admit it: a lot of us (at least a lot of us white folks with enculturated middle class aspirations) suspect deep down that speaking in tongues is unsophisticated, that moving our bodies too much is undignified, that shouting and singing at the top of our lungs is inappropriate, but I have to ask: “What does this so-called sophistication, dignity, and appropriateness serve?” Are we really so invested in being respectable through the eyes of those in power? Or are we willing to risk being fools for God, being accused of being drunk, as were the earliest followers?

Please understand that I am asking this question of myself as much as or more than of you.

A small group of us here in the Bay area are working on a public justice-oriented liturgical action for Holy Week, and this is a question I intend to bring to our planning of that action: How can we most effectively create an opening for the inrushing of the Holy Spirit that is nothing short of the “militant presence of the Word of God…acting incessantly and pervasively to renew the integrity of life in this world,” to borrow from William Stringfellow?

I covet your insights as we struggle together to rehumanize ourselves and each other in the face of widespread systemic dehumanization.

Picture
Nichola Torbett, the founding director of Seminary of the Street,  longs to participate in the movement of God's Spirit as it is manifesting in growing resistance to the spiritual and often physical deathliness of American culture under corporate capitalism. She walks dogs for a living and participates in justice work to stay alive.
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

    RSS Feed

    Disclaimer
    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.

    Categories

    All 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


    Contributors

    Nekeisha  Alayna Alexis
    Amaryah Armstrong
    Autumn Brown
    HH Brownsmith
    Jarrod Cochran 

    Chelsea Collonge
    Keith Hebden
    Ric Hudgens

    Liza Minno Bloom
    Jocelyn Perry
    Eda Ruhiye Uca
    Joanna Shenk

    Nichola Torbett
    Mark VanSteenwyk
    Gregory Williams

    Archives

    October 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    July 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    June 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    October 2008
    August 2008

Home  |  About  |  Blog  |  Iconocast  |  Library  |  Gatherings  |  Donate  |  Contact  |  Comrades