John Nugent, Branson Parler, Andy Alexis-Baker, and Kate A. K. Blakely are editing an exciting 3 volume book series and we need your help finding titles for the series as a whole and for each volume. John Howard Yoder was one of the most innovative Christian thinkers of the 20th century, but most of his published works are too academic for most people to appreciate. We want to get his best insights into the hands of the average person, so we put together a 3 volume collection of sermons and essays that were intended for non-academics, yet still pack the powerful punch that caused so many academics to step up their commitment to Christ. Since us eggheads gravitate toward egg-heady titles, we really need your help to find titles that appeal to non-academics. Please help us by filling out a four question survey and by encouraging others to do the same.

For facebook users, follow this link:

http://apps.facebook.com/my-surveys/p2j9tnu9

For non-facebook users, follow this link:

https://docs.google.com/a/glcc.edu/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGVhMEp1aE1RQTV4R3pCYVg5Ni1zaFE6MQ

Karl Barth is reported to have once said “the clasping of the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of this world.”¹ In this two part essay I will talk about Barth’s understanding of prayer as a form of Christian resistance. Barth (1896-1969) was the most prolific and influential Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. I will not attempt to introduce him here. But I hope that what I have written will be accessible and helpful even to those who have only read a little of Barth or never read him at all (or perhaps even heard of him!).

Whether we are interested in Barth or not, the central issue for this essay is significant for everyone. How do we understand the relationship between our private and public lives as followers of Jesus? How is spirituality related to politics? What does prayer have to do with resistance? I find Barth’s thoughts on this to be a compelling proposal for thinking about the unity of prayer and politics. Rather than understanding prayer as a withdrawal from the public square perhaps we should understand prayer as a primary form of worldly engagement. Part one will describe Barth’s understanding of Christianity as resistance. Part two will then describe how Barth understands prayer as a form of resistance.

In his final lectures (published posthumously under the title The Christian Life² ) Barth expressed thoughts on the Christian’s place in the world that Jesus Radicals readers might find intriguing. Barth maps the situation of the Christian in three concentric circles: the world, the church, and the individual. He argues that when humanity seeks to live independently of God a complex set of “lordless powers” is unintentionally let loose.³ (Barth compares this to the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice.) He describes these powers under themes such as Leviathan, Mammon, Religion, Ideology, Technology, and gives them the feel of idols. The forces that are set loose claim our subjective loyalties and conform us to patterns of thought, feeling, and action that create and perpetuate human conflict. The Bible calls these forces “principalities and powers” (Col. 2:9).⁴

These lordless powers create a “kingdom of disorder.” This disordered kingdom is the repetitive and stale condition of the world. It is a world where true freedom cannot be found. The kingdom of disorder tries to create its own freedom yet finds itself in bondage. It seeks constant newness and finds itself trapped in an endless cycle of sameness. The repetitive, stale, enslaved disorder manifests itself in the world, the church, and the individual.

Barth also discusses empire as a lordless power and a form of “political absolutism” that can come in many forms (even democratic forms). The “myth of the state” stands approximately “behind and above all government.”⁵ Hobbes’s Leviathan is the most prominent example Barth uses. Hobbes’s Leviathan is an alternative God-man, an alternative Christ. We find the beginning of the conception of “the idea of an absolute and lordless power concentrated at one point in one hand.” Hobbes’s state is a machine that produces, protects, and perpetuates its own power. In Barth’s view every type of state is infected with this virus: “no state of any kind is or has or will be immune to the tendency to become at least a little Leviathan.” This imperial polity allows only one of three options: 1) intoxication with the myth of the state itself; 2) assimilation without intoxication; or 3) “law-breaking opposition.”⁶ Reading this passage you can appreciate the ease with which some of those influenced by Barth (like Vernard Eller or Jacques Ellul) could find compatibility between Christianity and some form of anarchism.

“God’s design” is something entirely new. It reflects a God who “will always be new to us.” God’s design is an “unthinkable thought” beyond human imagination that can only “come” through God’s unique act. Jesus is the “the new thing.”⁷ In Jesus we see lived out the primary and proper Creator-creature distinction. As Christians assume this stance of creature (not Creator), the presence of God becomes “actual” in the world. This stance embodies humanity’s proper place as creatures under God’s care and provision, faithfully learning to live without anxiety. The “Christian attitude”⁸ expresses itself in faith, obedience, and prayer. They are part of the “basic forms of the Church’s ministry.”⁹ They are distinct but never separate, and prayer is the most fundamental of the three. For Barth the Christian attitude forms the action-based foundation for theological reflection. In other words, theology is rooted in politics and spirituality.

Christianity is resistance. The Christian attitude exerts a counter-imperial force. It is the form that Christian resistance takes to the disordered, lordless powers that rule over the world, the church, and the individual. The Christian practice of faith, obedience, and prayer also represents a worldly and material concern. Barth even refers to Christians as true “humanists” because the nature of their “militant revolt” works in favor of all humanity and does not discriminate between friend and foe. Christians share in the guilt and oppression of the world and recognize that their own righteousness is “imperfect, fragile, and highly problematical.” Christians express their solidarity with all of humanity in the struggle for justice. The call to faith is part of this struggle, but the Christian task cannot be limited to that. Christians must stand in solidarity with humanity by, in my words, “being there.” This will be a discerning “being there” that will sometimes affirm humanity’s efforts and sometimes question them; but it can never become so concerned with Christian purity (of whatever kind) that the “being there” becomes a “not” being there.

Barth’s understanding of Christian resistance is humanistic, engaged, and non-sectarian. The church is the Holy Spirit in community but never confined to the community. Christian resistance is never merely for the sake of holding out against a majoritarian culture opposed to its values and purposes. Christian resistance is witness that works for social transformation. The church lives out the demonstration of God’s own partisanship for humanity. Just as God will not abandon creation, so Christians can never abandon their neighbors.

Finally, the Christian attitude is not just resistance “to” the lordless powers and their malformation of human subjectivity. It is resistance “for” or better yet “towards” the “kingdom come” that Jesus commanded us to pray for. The second petition of the Lord’s Prayer “thy Kingdom come” is for Karl Barth a call to Christian resistance. That call will be examined in part two.

—–

This is not a dream to be decoded
But beyond the withering bushes
Of a strangely familiar mountain
Where all roads and trails come to
A cold end, where sweat and blood
Are frozen together, a purple lightning
Has stricken open a boulder-like tree stump
Bound with a band of iron or bronze

There, close to the thickest root
Sprouts up an unstained red bud
Getting ready for great growth again; will
It bear fruit for every herbivorous creature? Will
It offer shades to each wondering soul?

I should have known it was a trap—it was too good to be true.

The senior minister at my church was preaching through a series called “Shocking Statements of Jesus” and he had tapped me—his education minister who happens to be a former Marine—to preach from Matthew 5 on loving our enemies. He knew about my commitment to nonviolence (developed since being honorably discharged from the Marines and becoming a Christian) and I was surprised he had asked me to preach this text. Nonetheless, I was excited to deliver a sermon on what is perhaps Jesus’ most shocking statement, especially because my church denomination had formerly been a peace church movement but had largely abandoned that position following World War I.

It would prove to be the one and only time in my ministry career when I would throw-up before a sermon.

The sermon itself was fairly straightforward. I followed the Matthew 5 thread of nonviolent enemy love through the library of the New Testament, from Matthew to Revelation, and articulated what I saw to be the consistent nonviolent witness of scripture. I then intentionally put the message of enemy love in contradistinction with Walter Wink’s work on the Myth of Redemptive Violence. I labored to show how common the message is that violence “saves” and is a religion in its own way. I intentionally chose not to preach a “both sides of the story” type of sermon where you make the case for nonviolence and then make a case against it (the “benefit” being that this calms those folks on both sides of the issue and keeps you as the preacher out of hot water). I think Matthew 5:38-48 is an imperative and in my opinion the cowardly move would be to lay it out in a way that obviated its power over us. In other words, I preached the sermon as if Jesus really meant what the Evangelist recorded.

The final application portion of the sermon proved to be the most controversial. My feeling was that a handful of proposals followed logically from the nonviolent witness of the New Testament and those needed to be stated explicitly. Therefore, I did just that and concluded with the following:

• First, the Church should expose the Myth of Redemptive Violence as a demonic lie fitting only the kingdoms of this world. Not only that, we should expose the Myth of Redemptive Violence and tear it down regularly with the Word of truth as an ongoing part of our prophetic mission to the world.

• Furthermore, the Church should quit robbing Jesus’ command to “love our enemies” of its power by explaining it away, or worse, ignoring it completely in its practice.

• We as the Church need to do a much, much better job helping our young men and women who are interested in military service understand the stark differences between the ethical practices of the military and that of the followers of Christ. As a young Marine, I encountered terrible tensions between Jesus’ teachings like “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” and institutional military messages such as “Kill ‘Em All and Let God Sort ‘Em Out.” Quite frankly, the ethical culture of Christ’s Church and the U.S. Military is not the same—it’s just not. And we need to be able to talk about this. To my knowledge, these kinds of conversations are so difficult they are almost impossible. We need to construct a conversational space where good, faithful, theological reflection can take place on these important topics.

• The Church needs to quit being confounded by the “What about Hitler?” question when it considers whether or not to obey Jesus’ command to nonviolent enemy love. “What about Nero?” and “What about Domitian?” didn’t stop the early Christians from loving their enemies and transforming the entire Greco-Roman world with the gospel.

• In light of the New Testament peace witness, the Church needs to examine why Christian commitment to pacifism and nonviolence is a deeply marginalized minority position instead of the majority. There are those who might suggest we mischaracterize the peace witness of the New Testament or perhaps misinterpret Jesus’ command to the love the enemy? But what if we haven’t?

• Finally, we as the Church must recognize that our “weapons” for world transformation are the gospel of Jesus Christ and our unwavering commitment to the “Jesus ethic”—loving the “Other” as ourselves. Thus we should freely admit that politics, military power, or any other system of force used by the kingdoms of this world will not “save” us.

The reaction from the sermon was perhaps predictable. Our denomination is no longer a peace church movement so lots of people were upset with the message. The great irony that a message on peace could result in so much anger was not lost on me. But the lessons I’ve learned since that sermon have been invaluable. I share them here in case others might benefit from my experience.

• Depending on your denominational context, preaching a sermon on nonviolence might be quite controversial. If that is the case, there are a number of considerations to address before preaching such a message. Primary among these considerations is whether or not you have invested yourself in the community deeply enough to challenge them in this way. In my particular instance, I have ministered in my community for nearly six years, during which time they have come to know me as well as my great love for the church and for the scriptures. This preliminary work gave me some license to preach a difficult word because of the trust I have earned in this community. Therefore, when I engaged people who were critical of my sermon afterward, I did so with common ground and relational experience to help us work through our disagreements.

• At the same time, preaching this sermon meant I was taking a personal risk. Would the church still be open to my teaching ministry? Would the elders dismiss me because I had offended a prominent member of the congregation? The answers to these questions were unresolved when I preached prophetically. However, as I reflect on the sermon after the fact, I realized that the church was willing to take the risk with me—even if they ultimately disagreed—precisely because of my pastoral investment. I realize now that the church also risked being open to a message that was contrary to their views because they knew the messenger loved them and was trying above all else to faithfully exposit the Jesus ethic in Matthew 5. Of course, “risk” can mean different things for different pastors, depending on their social context and the realities of the denomination in which they serve. What is “risk” for you? Is your church willing to risk being open to a difficult and challenging message? Have you done the necessary foundational work to both aid your prophetic witness and encourage the congregation to hear a prophetic word?

• Realize that sermons such as the one I preached are a little like those subjective Rorschach (ink-blot) tests. After preaching a sermon on nonviolence many people will accuse you of saying things you didn’t say because they are reading things into your sermon subjectively—just like a Rorschach test. Be prepared for this and be patient.

• Be ready for lots of angry conversations. People will be confused because you hit them square in the middle of the most sacred cows they possess. If there is any time to be patient as a clergy member it is at this moment. Try to understand their position and defend your own position—graciously.

• Don’t be surprised if some of your most ardent supporters are former military members. It is only those who have served in combat who know the true horrors of war. Many veterans who have seen combat will appreciate Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 5 to break the chain of violence. Your tendency might be to avoid veterans in your church after preaching or teaching on nonviolence. Fight that urge, and you might reap a valuable ally ready to stand alongside you and defend your convictions on nonviolence.

Mobilizing and Organizing from Below Conference

June 1st – 3rd, 2012
Baltimore, Maryland * 2640
Mobilizing and Organizing from Below will be a gathering of activists and organizers, workers and parents, revolutionaries and militants and radicals and dissenters, dedicated to increasing our ability to come together and challenge the systems of exploitation and oppression that have taken hold of the world. The conference will be a weekend of intensive, horizontally-organized political education, in which we can share skills, analyze the problems we face, and pose difficult questions. It will also provide a space for people from different traditions to come together and recognize the depth of our similarities and the richness of our differences; a space for reflection and discussion, distinct from both the chaotic excitement of spontaneous mass actions and the intense demands of long-term organizing work.

MOBConf hopes to facilitate conversations across generations, across cultures and subcultures, and across the commitments to different sets of tactics which can divide us. How do we build our capacities to intervene and act on a rapidly changing historical terrain? What kinds of long-term infrastructure do we need to build to make this happen? Can we sharpen our theoretical understanding of the situation we’re facing? And how can we carry all of this into our everyday lives, making a movement truly grounded in care and sustained by solidarity? Our goal is to begin answering these question in a gathering as participatory and horizontal as the movements it will draw upon, and we hope you’ll join us in Baltimore to help make this happen.

www.mobconf.org for more info or to register.

(A poem for the El Salvador Martyrs, killed on Nov. 16th, 1989).

At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary must be guided by great feelings of love.” —Che Guevara.

Revolutionaries
are wise as serpents
but innocent like doves.

Revolutionaries
are not merchants
who trade in hate instead of love.

Revolutionaries
must be humble
and always serve the people.

Revolutionaries
are like Jesuits
with minds as sharp as needles.

Revolutionaries
can conquer hell
but often live as poor as dogs.

Revolutionaries
rise like prayers
and find their way to God.

Revolutionaries
though often mocked
are forgiving to a fault.

Revolutionaries
are nailed to crosses
and their bodies left to rot.

But revolutionaries
are resurrected—
the tyrants piss themselves in fear.

You can kill a revolutionary
but the truth won’t disappear.

Over the past few years traffic to the Jesus Radicals website has steadily increased, leading us to use a hybrid dedicated server to host the site. Although it has leveled off a bit in the past year, we still have to use the more expensive hosting. That means our costs are about $1,500 per year to keep the site up. We are grateful that last year donations covered all of the hosting costs. We have to raise funds again for the coming year. Please consider a donation to the site upkeep.

This summer we will be looking at ways to redesign the site again and also to try to contain the bandwidth that new traffic might bring so that our costs don’t go up further over the next few years. But we expect there to be annual costs of upkeep that exceed the personal budgets of Nekeisha, Andy, and Mark who primarily upkeep the site.

Again, if you have some funds to spare and would like to support the Jesus Radicals network and the work we have been about, we could use your help. You can help offset our costs by going to the donations page.

Thanks a lot in advance for helping out.
The Jesus Radicals Team

Well, hello attractive person who is also clearly attracted to me.
Yes, I agree, this is a really great party.
Speaking of parties, who are you going to vote for this fall?
Who’s that, Ron Paul?
Why? Because you want weed legalized? Oh,
I want pot legalized, too.
Would I like a beer?  No, no thank you.
I don’t drink.  Why, you ask.
Well, let me explain using this poem I happen to have.

The name of this poem is “The Revolution Will Not Serve Budweiser”.

I shouldn’t have to explain why I’m sober
because maybe I used to get messed up
by my fucked-up father
when I was a scared small child who cried
when I smelled Papa’s liquor.
Or maybe a drunk driver
head-on killed my mother
when at 90 miles an hour
he drifted into the other lane and severed her
body in two!  Right after
she picked me up at a party I wasn’t even supposed to be at.
You see, I should not have to explain why I’m sober
because maybe my big sister
got way too drunk
after some frat-boy-flirt
slipped a date-rape that sunk
to the bottom of her glass and went
straight to the top of her head
causing her to drink her soon gang-banged body
so full that in the morning we’d find her dead.

Or maybe I just don’t like the taste.

But even if that’s the case,
I should not have to answer to your
potentially-painful, wound-opening, prodding peer pressure.
Now, I am sure you are curious
so I will answer you just once, very serious,
with the reason, no!
the reasons why I am sober:

When we talk about hunger in Uganda,
Burma, or Brazil,
as we sit at a fine dining table and consume our hard-earned fill,
we’re not speaking of backwards
savages, dumb and untrained, who failed to find
food the year it never rained.
When we talk about hungry children, all proper and rational,
that we see on commercials for compassion international,
we are talking about stolen capital.
Taken from the hands of aboriginal people
by the long arm of the multi-national and the complex-
military-industrial.
So when I stare the obese in the face
baffled by the simultaneous overconsumption
and starvation of the human race, I
want to ask, although it might be rude,
“Why in the world is there not enough food?”
Why do the hungover Sunday-pew-aisle-sleepers
sing “Gloria!”
while the malnourished multitudes suffer
and starve in Somalia?
You see, I should not have to explain why I’m sober
when farmers forgo sowing
body-filling,
healthy crops
by planting
lucratively-profitable,
cerebral-cell-killing
hops.
So when you ask why I don’t consume,
like it’s the elephant in the room,
I’ll show you the true elephant, and
it’s a billion people living on less than a dollar a day
forced into sobriety by an economic prohibition of nutrition.
Meanwhile, mono-cropping wheat sets
our soil on the path to destruction,
and the planet’s on the brink
so we can have more cheap beer to drink. Yeah,
we could feed the world over and over if
we were all a little more sober.
It’s not like these are new situations,
or it all happened accidentally.
Fire water proliferated then devastated
the first American nations
and tore apart their families.
But who brews this beer and why?
A group of investors making millions off our bad habits,
by showing our mothers, sisters, daughters in
photo-shopped, bare-all-skin,
and prostituting them as sexual doorways
with the bottle as a man’s way in.
How objectified must women become
strutting between Super Bowl plays, half-naked
falling in 30-second-love
with men who are fat, lazy, and dumb
before we stop buying the drug?
These problems are not disconnected.  The abuse by the agricultural capitalist
is the rape by the commercial chauvinist.
Oh, we say we want revolution, yet how
can we revolt when the radical still drives a car but even worse,
pays two to four bucks a can, at the local bar,
for the Miller-owned PBR?
My pre-licensed therapist serves spirits to pay her bills. And
she says the saloon solicits $3000 a night
on weekend nights alone.  That is $9000
in taxes paid to king booze on its bubbling throne.
Multiply that by 50 weekends a year, and we see
$450,000 spent on wine, liquor, and beer.
Multiplied by a conservative 1000 bars in L.A. County
equals 450 million spent drinking annually.  Pretty
bad?  It gets worse, as you might guess,
450 mil. is half the national budget used to solve homelessness.
And what about the vets?
Especially the ones with PTSD,
the Army doesn’t want to pay for their psychiatry,
and you can bet they don’t teach
the healing process of transcendental meditating
making the six-pack the last form of self-medicating.
After fighting and dying for the profit of the elites,
we give 40 oz. for medicine before
putting trained killers on the streets.
So there’s something you should know,
the alcoholics sleeping in tents down on skid row
are sealed-and-stuck to their fate
by the alcoholic culture we all help create.
But wait,
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry,
you wanted to know why I’m sober.
Well, I guess, I just don’t like giving money to a
sexist-homophobic-jingoistic-racist-environmentally-destructive-exploitative-ageist-family-breaking-addictive-capitalist-classist-economic-structure.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

But I shouldn’t have to explain why I am sober.

There was a point in my life when, after encountering a liberation theory like that of James Cone or Rosemary Radford Reuther, that I would take up those arguments and causes as if the basic framework presented to me needed no further explication or had no underlying problems. For many people, black theology, feminist theology, animal rights, pacifism, or any number of identity politics and theological stances become the single most important issue around which folks move and breathe. Take the inspiring stories of the Berrigan brothers who spent their lives resisting warfare. Phil Berrigan spent many years in prison. Dan Berrigan still inspires young left-leaning Christians for his refusal to turn himself in to the law; his outlaw status has made him a folk hero. Despite this wonderful work, however, they have never seemed to branch out into other issues. Of course, they connected war to racism, and to that extent worked against both. But war remained the foremost issue. For many others it is a different issue centered around some kind of identity: race, sexual identity, or gender usually top the lists.

Yet often the people who argue for these particular identities end up reinforcing the very thing they have set themselves up against. For example, feminists have done a wonderful job raising consciousness around issues of male dominance and female subordination in theological language. So feminists like Sallie McFague argue that we should see God as a mother, who gives birth to the earth, and other related imagery. But this sort of language can end up reinforcing the very gender-based politics that she wants to overcome. For in this type of discourse, the female body is valued in theological language by its ability to preocreate. But what of all those females who cannot give birth or who choose not to do so? And, doesn’t this exclude most of a woman’s life outside of motherhood? Moreover, McFague and others equate rational thinking with the male, not females. Are women not good thinkers too? So the the very attempt here to include women by re-gendering God ends up making essentialist arguments that reinforce the very patriarchy they wish to debunk. The same could be argued of various liberation theologies, including black theology and animal rights-based work.

I want to take aim at the latter in particular. Tom Regan is perhaps the best example. He has sought to demonstrate that animals are in essence the same as human beings in that they are beings with a life, who have preferences, desires, feelings, and interests in their treatment. So they should have “rights.” Yet he admits that this way of speaking about animals only applies to some of those creatures we would call animals. Despite the fact that he would like to see his analysis expanded to all creatures, he remains constrained by the human rights discourse he employs. If he wants a hearing at all, he has to use the concepts and modes of argument that rights-based theorists use: the same discourse that has been used for centuries to deny any moral standing at all to those same animals. Instead of calling into question some of our fundamental beliefs and concepts, animal rights language, in the mode of Tom Regan, ends up reproducing those same beliefs. It is a form of identity politics that feeds off the existing structures.

Over the years I have read critiques from Marxists of this identity-based politics. They rightly point out the ways in which these foci tend to fragment the left into isolated and relatively benign issue-based activism rather than any coherent politics. The proliferation of this type of differentiation and focus on particularities has not led, and does not necessarily lead to a radical political program. Thus, philosophers such as Alain Badiou, whose work I admire, argues that all these different particular foci need to be sewn together. It is the universal that matters, and this means we cannot exclude. To the extent that we have identified those who are excluded, we work for their inclusion in the name of saving the universal, not the particular itself. We work for the inclusion of minorities in the name of the universal machine that will save us.

However, one thing that has troubled me about these Marxist attempts to solve the fragmentation of the left is their anthropocentricism. What is excluded always centers upon that which is human. Their naive anthropocentricism does not generally delve into the way in which the very idea of the animal or the human already tears a rift right down the very middle of each of us, finding that which is human and excluding that which is animal. How we define human never receives interrogation. The universal, in this Marxist solution (not to mention the difference-based politics I already mentioned), is always filled up with the human.

In fact, all of these left-liberationist type movements have as their common ground anthropocentricism, even animal rights approaches. The human demarcates what is and is not worthy or our moral and ethical consideration (this goes all the way back to how we justified slavery, patriarchy and other sorts of oppressions: those groups are not really human). That is why humanism can never really lead to a radical politics. The humanities, humanism, all of these terms won’t really lead anywhere, because the definition of human plays off of what it excludes: the animal. And in Christian discourse all the way through Marxist humanism and anarchist humanism, that line also runs right through the individual (classic medieval theology defined life in three modes: vegetative, animal, and rational. What makes us human is that we have the rational in addition to the other two. Thus, we demarcate what is animal within ourselves to define what is human and can therefore subject the animal within us to our reason). Moreover, “animal” is a huge term that covers over a million different species. How helpful is that term really?

This is one of the reasons why I think theology has to begin focusing on these questions alongside other disciplines such as philosophy, ethology (animal behavior), literature, and other studies. It is not just another identity-based politics that needs to be brought about, but a fundamental shift in critical thinking and in the way in which we conceive of ourselves and ourselves in relation to God. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but this is where my work is taking me. The ramifications for theology seem huge.

For example, in a recent book, On Animals, Volume 1: Systematic Theology David Clough argues that the primary category within which we must see the incarnation is not that the Son became human, but that the Son became flesh: that is, God became a creature. That is the widest horizon within which to see the incarnation. To give too much theological import to God becoming a male Jew, for example, easily leads to patriarchal assumptions and others that the Acts 15 church rejected. But a creaturely theology, where the Son becomes creature, calls into a question a whole set of assumptions Christian have had about God as creator, reconciler, and redeemer. Clough lays some of this out nicely. It is a good beginning, but much, much more needs done in this area.

August 10 & 11, 2012
Charlotte, N.C.

A decade. That is how long Jesus Radicals has been gathering people together in locations across the U.S. to explore the intersections of radical Christian faith and anarchist politics. This year, we will meet again on August 10-11 at Area 15 in Charlotte, NC. We hope you will join in a joyful time of reflecting on where we are going, celebrating where we have been, and inspiring one another to live into and live out God’s in-breaking kin/g/dom.

Registration

Registration is now open for the 10th annual Jesus Radicals gathering. Organizers are in the process of planning two-full days (instead of the usual day-and-a-half) of presentations, workshops, skill-shares and networking opportunities. An initial block schedule (PDF) is available to provide an overview of the weekend. We hope to start posting more details on speakers, sessions and activities at www.jesusradicals.com/conference in the upcoming weeks.

Housing

Tenting will be the primary housing option this year, thanks to the half-acre grassy field at Area 15. Indoor floor space is also available but less abundant. Register soon if you plan to attend and need a place to stay. Activists of all kinds will be flocking to Charlotte for resistance to the Democratic National Convention and space city-wide will likely be limited.

Ride sharing

The comments section on the ride board is dedicated space for those trying to car/van/bus-pool themselves over to the gathering. If you need a ride or can give a ride, that is the place to let people know.

Meet the organizers

This year, the gathering team includes three core-organizers and working groups consisting of past participants and locals from the co-hosting community. We hope this new structure will allow more hands and voices to shape the gathering. Find out who is doing what in the organizers section.