Segundo Galilea: The Power of Christian Contemplation

"Authentic Christian contemplation, passing through the desert, transforms contemplatives into prophets and heroes of commitment, and militants into mystics. Christianity achieves the synthesis of the politician and the mystic, the militant and the contemplative, and abolishes the false antithesis between the religious contemplative and the militantly committed. Authentic contemplation, through the encounter of the absolute of God, leads to the absolute of one's neighbor." 

- Segundo Galilea, from Liberation as an Encounter with Politics and Contemplation

Non-Violence: It's Not What You Think It Is

I hear a lot of voices advocating for non-violence without understanding what non-violence is. Non-violence is not passivity or a willingness to tolerate evil. Non-violence is a type of warfare that is waged strategically with weapons of the spirit. Proponents of non-violence must be willing to die in battle just as any other soldier in warfare. The basic thought of non-violence is that the love-ethic modeled by Jesus is the most powerful force in the human sphere, and perhaps in the sphere of the known material universe. If our ultimate goal is social change in the direction of genuine shalom then non-violence is the best and, perhaps, only methodology. Non-violence rooted in the love-ethic of Jesus finds its antecedents in the mystical elements of radical protestant reformation and Catholic counter-reformation. American transcendentalists and abolitionists began to shape these thoughts but it was Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, who began to shape these strands into a genuine idea. The idea of non-violence rooted in Jesus' love-ethic moved from being an idea to an actual practice through the work and genius of Gandhi who studied Tolstoy deeply. The non-violent strategies of Gandhi were handed on to Howard Thurman and other black American pastors, mystics and theologians in the 1930's. It was this moment that brought the various strands for social justice together in what we now broadly understand to be the Civil Rights movement. Non-violence should be distinguished from pacifism which generally avoids provocations and conflict while non-violence seeks out strategic prophetic acts that deliberately provoke and unmask unjust power structures. Non-violence should also be distinguished from non-violent communication and consensus building. Non-violent communication and consensus building are methods of communication that seek to build community within a bonded social set. Non-violent communication and consensus building are essential building blocks of a non-violent community capable of living out a strategy of social change through non-violence. However, practitioners of non-violence understand that they cannot be shamed into silence and non-confrontation when supposed allies seek to quiet them with the need to use non-violent communication. It is worth noting that non-violence is not the only path serious leaders for social change have followed. The Civil Rights movement split over the nature and limits of non-violence. Malcolm X decided against non-violence but later in life softened in his stance towards it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer began as a pacifist, moved towards non-violence, but late in his life struggled with the limits of it and ultimately rejected it. In America the greatest practitioner and most widely known proponent of non-violence was Martin Luther King, Jr. However, it has become something of an American pastime (especially among white Christian folks) to throw out a quote or two about how "Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that" without reckoning with how relentless MLK was in confronting hatred head on. If you listen to MLK's final sermons and speeches it is plain that he deliberately provoked and unmasked hatred to the point of his eventual martyrdom. King did not whitewash evil. He did not want everybody to get along while injustice and violence were the structures of society. He did not tell the marchers to stand down. Non-violence teaches us to keep getting up and keep getting our skulls cracked open while polite society shouts, "By confronting hate you are hateful. Hate can't drive out hate, only Love can do that!" Non-violence teaches us that through confrontation we unmask not only those who are filled with hate, but also those whose love has been stunted by cowardice, ignorance and selfishness. Non-violence teaches that through sacrifice and spirit-based combat there is a new humanity and a beloved community that is worth dying for.

For a deeper dive I recommend beginning where Gandhi started, Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You.

Get Radical

About 16 years ago my dear friend Jack Kooreman and I had a chance to ask our mentor and hero, civil rights leader Dr. John Perkins, what one piece of advice would he give as we were about to enter full time ordained ministry. I will never forget his answer, four words:
"Get radical. Get radical."

I have yet to truly get radical but I have been on a lifelong journey trying to get there since then. At any rate, if ever there was a time to get radical that time is now.
In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" MLK put it this way:

Shalom and Jesus' Tears

When Jesus looked at Jerusalem, the most religious city in the world at a time of high religious fervor, he wept. He wept because Jerusalem, steeped as it was in 'godliness', despised the work of shalom - an all-encompassing cosmic peace that comprehends and lives out the basic truth that everything and everyone is sacred because everything and everyone bears the imprint of God's love.

"But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. 'How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.'" (Luke 19:41-42)

In both Hebrew and Christian scriptures (Old and New Testaments) the goal of all things is summarized with this word, 'shalom.' Justice and compassion are the tools of God's love that bring healing to a world 'sick unto death' with oppression and hard heartedness so that all things can be made new. Justice and compassion are the pathway to shalom.

Individual salvation is a whole-hearted participation in God's shalom, a welcoming of the process of justice and compassion into the center of one's own being. Individual salvation is not the goal of Christian faith so much as a byproduct. Any form of Christianity that isn't dismantling oppression and overcoming hard-heartedness is profoundly out of line with the teachings of the scriptures. Frankly, most of what passes for Christian faith in America today is simply old fashioned idolatry dressed up in a culture of religious mumbo-jumbo and self-righteousness.

I genuinely believe Christianity in America today needs reform more urgently than in the day of Luther, Calvin and the gang. I genuinely worry that the current religious posture in America is so blinded by the cult of individual salvation and so enmeshed with oppressive structures of racism, militarism and greed that we have become a serious threat to humanity. I genuinely worry that we have thrown shalom in a dungeon and grown so used to calling this state of affairs 'righteousness' that nothing short of a new dawn of the Holy Spirit outside the bounds of the church will bring new life.

The Blues

Listening to Muddy Waters sing, "I am the Blues" and feeling it deep inside. 

I am, ohh I am the blues.
I know the world knows ive been mistreated
And the whole world know ive been misused I am the moan of suffering women
I am the groan of dying men
I am the last one to start
But I am the first one to begin

Ohh I am, ohh I am the blues
Ooh world knows ive been mistreated
The whole world knows ive been misused
I am the blood of peoples wounds, who play and die
I am the the last one to hide
I am the first one to find

Ohh I am ohh I am the blues
The world knows ive been mistreated
The whole world knows ive been used
Well boys somebody help me.
I am the new generation
A prodigy of starvation
I am the arm beyond the door friend
For a new new night and nation

Yeah the world knows I been mistreated
The world knows ive been mistreated
The whole world knows ive been misused
I am the blues
Oh friends I am the blues
I am friends I am the blues
Yeah the world know I been mistreated
The whole world know I been used.

Dorothy Soelle's 'Credo'

I came across this poem/statement of faith early this morning from Dorothy Soelle, a wonderful mid 20th century Christian theologian shaped by the prophetic tradition.  After spending some time with it, I wanted to share it.
(hat-tip http://moltmanniac.com/ @moltmanniac)

CREDO
I believe in God
who created the world not ready made
like a thing that must forever stay what it is
who does not govern according to eternal laws
that have perpetual validity
nor according to natural orders
of poor and rich,
experts and ignoramuses,
people who dominate and people subjected.
I believe in God
who desires the counter-argument of the living
and the alteration of every condition
through our work
through our politics.

I believe in Jesus Christ
who was right when he
“as an individual who can’t do anything”
just like us
worked to alter every condition
and came to grief in so doing
Looking to him I discern
how our intelligence is crippled,
our imagination suffocates,
and our exertion is in vain
because we do not live as he did

Every day I am afraid
that he died for nothing
because he is buried in our churches,
because we have betrayed his revolution
in our obedience to and fear
of the authorities.
I believe in Jesus Christ
who is resurrected into our life
so that we shall be free
from prejudice and presumptuousness
from fear and hate
and push his revolution onward
and toward his reign

I believe in the Spirit
who came into the world with Jesus,
in the communion of all peoples
and our responsibility for what will become of our earth:
a valley of tears, hunger, and violence
or the city of God.
I believe in the just peace
that can be created,
in the possibility of meaningful life
for all humankind,
in the future of this world of God.
Amen.