Early morning, April 4, a shot rings out in the Memphis sky…

As you’re probably aware, on this day 40 years ago Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
Fewer people are aware of this speech he gave 41 years ago, today.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 4, 1967
I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no [...]

Support our troops?

This morning, my grandfather sent me an email “action alert” from the American Family Association urging protest of the recent Berkeley, California City Council resolution that declared the downtown Marine recruiting office “unwanted” and urged the recruiters to leave town. This article does not respond to that issue, but rather to the subject line of [...]

Subverting the rhetoric of American empire

Brandon Rhodes has written an EXCELLENT article at Jesus Manifesto called “Severing the Rhetorical Roots of the Empire“. In it he lists some quotes, inviting followers of Jesus to creatively rewrite them to displace idolatry and blasphemy with subversive truth, just as Paul and other early Christian authors rhetorically usurped Caesar’s place of privilege and [...]

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

This is one of King’s most important speeches and yet one of his most little-known. Delivered on April 4, 1967, exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated, this speech provides a scathing denunciation of the practices of the American government on the world stage, particularly in Vietnam. King extends his methodology of [...]

An actual conversation I had the other day

Me: (sitting at a picnic table in the sun reading Dale Brown’s Biblical Pacifism)
He: Pacifist? You’re a pacifist? At a Christian music festival? (we were at Cornerstone)
Me: Yes, for the first 300 years of the church’s existence they were very nearly universally committed to nonviolence and opposed to Christians participating in the military.
He: How can [...]

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 [...]

He is risen!

Christos anesti!
“Death has been swallowed up in victory!”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
——————————–
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down [...]

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Keeping Tabs on the Peaceniks

This really makes me rather angry. It doesn’t SURPRISE me, not in the least, not after I heard Brian Terrell say “vegetarianism” and “involvement with organic foods” was part of the rationale for investigating him under the FBI Joint Terror task force and that pacifist anabaptist groups were on the terrorist suspect list, but it [...]

2007 Christianity and Anarchy conference

Swords into Plowshares: Anarchism, Christianity, and Principles of Peace, the 2007 Jesus Radicals Christianity and Anarchy conference, will be August 10-11 in Dubuque, Iowa on the Loras College campus.
From the conference web site:
Peace is more than the absence of war. It is more than temporarily [...]