Breaking a window is violence?

Hitting someone with a club is violence. Funding projects that destroy local economies and ecosystems is violence. Displacing millions of people in order to ravage the countryside to extract resources and build useless consumer products is violence. Denying refugees right of return and bombing their villages when they defy the injustice is violence. Creating social [...]

The opposite of “liberal”

The opposite of “liberal” is not “conservative”. It’s “authoritarian”.
Likewise, the opposite of “conservative” is “radical”.
Continued opposition of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” in the public discourse is likely a carryover from 19th century British politics, where the major parties were the Liberal and Conservative parties, but what we call political “liberalism” and “conservatism” in the [...]

Romans 13:4 and irony

Romans 13 is often invoked (usually somewhat unthinkingly) as an objection to my ideas about Christian political engagement. The argument goes, as best as I can reproduce it here very simply, that Paul says we should submit to authority, the government is here for our own good, and we owe them certain things by virtue [...]

Notes from my Cornerstone seminar

I promised these over a week ago when I was still in Chicago, and haven’t yet got around to it – so here they are, the notes from my seminar, “Sacred Anarchy: The Image of God and Political (Dis)Order”, given on Saturday at Cornerstone.
Sacred Anarchy: The Image of God and Political (Dis)Order
The section on Genesis [...]

Cornerstone seminar

The Cornerstone seminar went really well. The title of my session was “Sacred Anarchy: The Image of God and Political (Dis)Order”. I focused on Wink’s formulation of the Myth of Redemptive Violence, focused on Genesis as subversive to the Myth, and then took a trip through modern political philosophy to demonstrate how the modern state [...]

“What anarchism is not”

I must tell you, first of all, what anarchism is not. It is not bombs, disorder, or chaos. It is not robbery or murder. It is not a war of each against all. It is not a return to barbarianism or to the wild state of man. Anarchism is the very opposite [...]

Speaking engagements and new zine

I have a couple of confirmed speaking engagements coming up and another possible one.
“Jesus and the Anarchists”
Saturday, March 22
7 pm
ASC Infoshop
600 SE 2nd St. (upstairs from Penny Lane Coffeehouse)
Evansville, Indiana
“Sacred Anarchy: The Image of God and Political (Dis)Order”
Cornerstone Festival
Underground/Alternative Subcultures tent
Date and time not yet finalized (festival is June 30-July 5)
And I might do a [...]

Christ-archy and “faithful improvisation”

I do not believe that one has to be anarchist to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
Let me say that again: I do not believe that one has to be anarchist to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
I say that lest I be accused of “theological” divisiveness over my “political” beliefs, as I have been [...]

Greg Boyd and Christian anarchism

Some of you may be familiar with Greg Boyd, senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, open theism advocate, and author of several books including Letters from a Skeptic, God at War, and God of the Possible.
His recent book The Myth of a Christian Nation, challenges the widespread notion in the United [...]

Greetings from Champaign

I’m writing this post from St. Jude Catholic Worker House in Champaign, Illinois. Yesterday I came up with some people from my house for a roundtable on radical Christianity and exploring Peter Maurin’s principles of personalism and the 3 C’s for the possibility of working to create a better world. St. Jude sponsored the roundtable, [...]

article published in Catapult

My article, “Anarchism and Hope“, has just been published in Catapult Magazine, a bi-weekly online publication that’s been creating themed issues for over 5 years with a goal of creating community around holistic Christian faith practice. The current issue theme is “Hope and Cynicism“, and was inspired by the Cynicism and Hope conference at which [...]

A thought about anarchism and Christianity

I’ve been accused before of being “too anarchist, and not Christian enough” by some folks… and “too Christian, and not anarchist enough” by others. I’m not sure there’s much I can say to the latter, other than to reiterate that I believe the most radical act one can commit is that of dedicating one’s self [...]

Ellul works available for download

If you check the Ellul page, you will see instructions on how to access and share the files containing a number of works by French sociologist and theologian Jacques Ellul. These works are not currently in print and there are no plans to put them back into print, though if I find out there are [...]

Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire, by N.T. Wright

article link
The good Bishop of Durham has summed up a lot of things quite concisely in one article that I spend pages and pages on this blog discussing. He goes briefly over passages from Romans and Philippians within the framework of a discussion of the term “Gospel” and Paul’s conception of Jesus as Messiah and [...]

audio available at Cynicism and Hope site

Audio recordings of several of the sessions from the Cynicism and Hope conference are now available at the conference website, including a recording of my session, “Anarchism, Christianity, and the Prophetic Imagination“. The talk is in MP3 format and can either be downloaded or streamed from the site.
I also highly recommend listening to Ric Hudgens’ [...]

First post at Jesus Manifesto

My first post as a co-author of the Jesus Manifesto blog went live this morning. It’s a meditation on Ecclesiastes, “meaninglessness”, and the nature of empire.
There’s some really great stuff being written over there, so please go and check it out. In a couple of days I will be starting a series related to my [...]

Cynicism and Hope conference

I have just been asked to conduct a workshop at at the Cynicism and Hope conference in Evanston, Illinois in November.
The info:
“Cynicism and Hope: Reclaiming Discipleship in a Post-Democratic Society”
November 2-3
Reba Place Church (directions)
Cost is $30, though a reduced rate of $20 is available for those with need. They are also looking for people who [...]

Bakunin on freedom

I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men [sic], far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation. — Mikhail Bakunin
Anarchy is freedom… order without control.

a summary of Christian anarchy

I posted this on an anarchist discussion group a short while ago, and thought it was worth sharing here.
I may be a bit of an oddball, because I actually came to my anarchist views through my religious studies.
I have written somewhat more about my views on my blog, http://propheticheretic.wordpress.com (though I’ve neglected it as of [...]

May 1 – International Workers’ Day

Happy May Day, or as it is widely known, International Workers’ Day.
On this day in 1896 the great general strike for an 8-hour workday (over 350,000 strikers across the United States) that culminated in the Haymarket affair began. Today is an international day of labor recognition in many countries – with the United States a [...]