peace – Red Letter Christians

America is exceptional — in its addiction to violence and war

Shane Claiborne — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 09:50:59 +0000

Editor’s Note: This piece first appeared on the RLC blog on April 6, 2022 but is perhaps even more relevant two years later. We share it again in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the the 57th anniversary of his death.

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Those are the words of Dr. King in 1967, in his historic speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” delivered at Riverside Church in New York City.

This past weekend dozens of faith leaders gathered at Riverside, putting our voices together to read King’s words on this 55^th anniversary of the speech. The group that gathered at Riverside for the event — a collaborative effort, sponsored by Red Letter Christians, LIVEFREE, the United Church of Christ, the Black Church Action Fund and the Quincy Institute — included bishops, authors, pastors, activists from around the country and Dr. King’s daughter, the Rev. Dr. Bernice King. Also participating was Bishop Herbert Daughtry, who was present when King delivered the speech in 1967.

Over the course of the evening, we were reminded multiple times how controversial and how courageous the words were … and are. Many of King’s peers deserted him for taking a stand against the war. His board turned against him, except one board member, the Rev. Otis Moss II. In the speech itself, Dr. King mentions all those who question his judgment in speaking out against the war in Vietnam and connecting it to all the other issues of his day. He was increasingly unpopular, and it should not be missed that he was assassinated exactly one year after the Riverside address, to the day.

So what’s so controversial about it?

Well, for starters, Dr. King refers to America as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He names America’s “triplets of evil” as racism, extreme materialism and militarism. He calls out the hypocrisy of telling young people “in the ghettoes” that violence will not solve their problems while condoning our government when it resorts to violence. He names the sad irony that we are sending Black kids to fight for liberties thousands of miles away that we haven’t even been able to guarantee them here at home. And yet, just as the speech is filled with hard-to-hear truth, it is also full of hope.

Many folks appreciate the sanitized King and would prefer the “I Have a Dream” speech. You don’t see many monuments with quotes from the Riverside sermon. Bishop Daughtry noted that he doesn’t think a single quote on the King memorial in D.C. comes from this iconic speech.

Before we write off King’s assessment of the U.S. as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, dismissing it as extreme or exaggerated, consider this:

Of the 196 countries in the world, only nine of them have nuclear weapons. And 93% of the nuclear weapons of the world are owned by only two countries — the U.S. and Russia. We are the only country that has ever used them, and we did it twice in one week, killing hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We now have bombs 100 times more lethal than the Hiroshima bomb. And the U.S. arsenal has the capacity of over 100,000 Hiroshima bombs. We have the biggest stockpile, and we have the largest military budget in the history of the world. The Pentagon spends more in 3 seconds than the average American makes in a year, reminding us of King’s words at Riverside: We are approaching a spiritual death.

It is easy for us to be critical of Russia’s violence in Ukraine right now, and we should be. The Riverside speech, however, invites us to get the log out of our own country’s eye.

There are many who speak of “American exceptionalism” — and by that they are referring to America being a beacon for freedom and democracy, the last best hope on earth, God’s anointed messianic force for good. This is a notion King continually challenged with increasing passion all the way to his death. In fact, the sermon King was writing when he was killed, that he never got to preach, was entitled: “Why America Might Go to Hell.”

It’s not hard to see why King’s words were hard to hear and why he was opposed by so many, even by former friends and board members.

But truth sets us free. There is another version of American exceptionalism. We are exceptional in our embrace of violence. Using violence to try to get rid of violence. Among all the world’s nations, we are one of only a handful of countries that continues to practice capital punishment. When it comes to the number of executions, we are always in the top 10, and often in the top five.

SIGN: RED LETTER CHRISTIAN PLEDGE

America is exceptional in our infatuation with guns. With only 5% of the world’s population, we own nearly half of the world’s civilian-owned guns. There are five times more gun dealers in the U.S. than McDonald’s restaurants. We produce about 9.5 million guns a year, 26,000 guns a day, one gun every three seconds. We have an exceptional problem when it comes to violence. Just as there are companies making millions of dollars off gun sales, we also have corporations like Lockheed Martin that are profiting from war. Over 150 countries have had arms contracts with U.S. companies. After 9/11, the U.S. went to war with Afghanistan and Iraq, even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia is still our biggest buyer of weapons, using them to destroy so many lives in Yemen. Dr. King saw all of these connections in his own time, and that is why he had to “break the silence.”

“Live by the sword, die by the sword” — those are the words of Jesus, Dr. King’s inspiration and savior, and we have proved those words to be true again and again and again.

That is the real American exceptionalism — we are exceptional in our addiction to violence.

In addition to this month being the anniversary of the Riverside speech and of King’s death, it is also the anniversary of the most ambitious and horrific bombings in history. In 2003, the U.S. and coalition forces launched the “shock and awe” bombing campaign, dropping more than 900 bombs a day on Iraq, killing thousands upon thousands of people. More recently, in 2016, when Barack Obama was president, we dropped 26,000 bombs, an average of three bombs per hour.

Our military spending is not a partisan issue. Obama raised Bush’s military budget. Trump raised Obama’s budget. Biden raised Trump’s budget. What would King say to that? Probably exactly what he said in 1967: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching a spiritual death.”

We have work to do to continue to “break the silence.” As our world is increasingly plagued by violence — not just in Ukraine but also in the streets of America — we must continue King’s legacy of nonviolence. We, too, must keep breaking the silence.

This piece first appeared at Religious News Services.

Subversive Peace for this Christmas Season

Joel Jackson — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 11:00:18 +0000

Editor’s Note: this post first appeared on the RLC blog on December 30, 2020.

Throughout the Gospel and the second volume of Acts, the author of Luke sets up a distinct contrast between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. He specifically sets up this contrast between the kingdom of Rome, the primary political entity in Israel and the greater Mediterranean region, and the kingdom brought about through the coming of the Messiah. The unfolding drama of the Gospel presents this contrast from the outset.

In Luke 2, the familiar story of the birth of the Christ child subtly, but poignantly sets up this contrast. As the story opens, Luke informs us that Caesar Augustus has issued a decree for a census throughout the entire Empire. This seems to place the spotlight on Caesar and the Roman Empire. Luke does this because he desires his readers to think of all that Caesar Augustus the Empire he established represents.

Caesar Augustus was considered one of the greatest leaders of Rome. Tradition states that Augustus’s birth was proclaimed as good news because of the coming of a savior. He was also proclaimed as Lord. His reign brought to end the many civil wars that had plagued the Roman Republic. During his reign the Empire enjoyed an unprecedented time of peace and prosperity. This peace came to be known as the Pax Romana – Peace of Rome. This peace, as with many kingdoms of this world, was upheld through military might. It also was not true peace as there remained squabbles and small rebellions throughout the Empire. People did not experience the true harmony, compassion, and provision that should come with peace. Rather, they experienced oppression, heavy taxation, and limits upon their ability to flourish. The author of Luke secretly highlights this by mentioning the census. These censuses were used for one purpose: to have a count of the subject peoples in order to evaluate taxation. In other words, they served as tools in order to further establish the authority of Rome.

Luke quickly shifts the spotlight from the grand halls of Roman power and enforced peace to a different kingdom in which true peace can be experienced. As the scene at the manger in Bethlehem unfolds and the various characters take their places the peace that God intends for all people emerges. Joseph takes his betrothed Mary for registration in response to the decree of the Roman Empire. While there, Mary gives birth to her firstborn—the labor we celebrated once again last week.

Then a curious scene emerges in the shadows of Bethlehem. Somewhere on the outskirts of town a group of shepherds have gathered. Shepherds were a despised people within Israel due to the fact that shepherds’ work often precluded them from participating in religious activities. Shepherds were among a select group of social reprobates who could not serve as witnesses or judges in a trial. They were generally viewed as vagabonds and thieves. They are a people often rejected and ignored by the world, left to their duties of tending sheep. It is to this group of social outcasts that God chooses to make an announcement of astonishingly good news—good news in which God declares a true peace that subverts the ways of the Empire. By coming first to these shepherds with this message of good news, God declares that this good news, this peace, is for all people, especially those cast out from society.

READ: Kingdom of God, Kingdoms of Men

Luke chooses to announce the good news by deliberately contrasting Christ the Lord with Caesar Augustus. As mentioned, tradition developed that Augustus’ birth was declared as good news. Augustus was also declared as Savior and Lord. The angel that appears to the shepherds uses the same phrasing. Thus, Luke subverts the Empire, declaring the Christ child as the true king. The good news is that Christ is Savior and Lord, not Caesar Augustus and the militaristic, domineering, destructive policies that came through the kingdom over which Augustus ruled.

After the initial message from heaven in which an angel announces the good news that Christ is the Lord and Savior that the world needs, a large group of the heavenly host appears, declaring God’s kingdom action through the advent of the Christ. That kingdom action is to bring peace on earth. This is not Roman peace enforced through violence, but God’s peace given through the gift of the Messiah, who will sacrifice himself for all the earth.

This peace arrives in the form of an innocent child. Through the work, grace, and love of God, this child grows to bring the kingdom of God to fruition. This kingdom is realized through the willing sacrifice of the Christ on the cross. Through this act, the Christ brings about reconciliation between God and humanity. The peace we need is established. This kingdom is also established through the formation of an alternative community, a community that should stand for God’s peace in the midst of a world, of many kingdoms that seek to create a false peace through dominance, self-centeredness, militarism, and destructive choices. Christ the Lord establishes this community, which has come to be known as the church so that this blessed people might bring about the peace sorely needed in this world.

Those of us who claim obedience to Christ the Lord must discover how to live in an alternative manner. Rather than adopting the patterns of the kingdoms of this world—kingdoms like Rome that rule through division, oppression, and militarism—we need to adopt the patterns lived out and declared by Christ our Lord. We need to view the humble self-sacrificial attitude of our Jesus and discover how to live this out in our world.

God came to live among us in order to bring about peace on earth for all people. The kingdoms of this world and loyalty to those kingdoms will never bring about God’s peace. Instead, we must bow to the Christ, like lowly shepherds. Even though we might be cast out from the powers of this world, we can come and worship. Then we, like the shepherds finding the acceptance of God’s grace and peace, can glorify and praise God.

Our acts of worship can then be lived out through sharing the good news of God’s peace, of God’s kingdom with all whom we encounter. Instead of sowing attitudes that bring about division and hatred we sow attitudes that reconcile people, drawing them into healed relationships. Instead of following after leaders who enforce “peace” through their violence and rhetoric, we follow our Lord and Savior who guides us into the peace he establishes.

The Kingdom Is Yours

Common Hymnal — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 10:30:17 +0000

Editor’s Note: originally published on RLC blog on August 23, 2022.

”The Kingdom Is Yours is a song for everyone who thought God left them when he was needed the most. The opposite is the most true. God shares his hope and kingdom not with the elite, but with the lowly.” (Dee Wilson)

“The Kingdom Is Yours is a song of hope and a reminder that the poor in spirit will inherit the earth. God honors the heart willing to lay its brokenness at his feet, and the soul that responds to violence, abuse and loss with the love of Christ. Society has its own standard of success, but God still honors faithfulness, humility and love when they’re hardest to do.” (Brittney Spencer)

“In a dog-eat-dog world, where only the strongest survive; where your brother may betray you in order to climb the next ring of the ‘corporate ladder,’ where loneliness threatens to be your closest friend, where abuse seems routine, and hope sounds like a fairy tail, Jesus speaks. He says his kingdom is at hand. He invites us in. It’s a place where the poor forever reign, where the pure finally win, where the peacemakers can rest, and where the persecuted rejoice. ’The Kingdom is Yours’ is a song of hope for those living in the tension of these two realities. It’s a reminder of what is to come.” (Micah Massey)

“The Kingdom is Yours is an encouraging reminder from Jesus’ beatitudes that the kingdom of God belongs to the unlikely: the grieving, the vulnerable, the hungry, the persecuted.” (Aaron Keyes)

VERSE 1
Blessed are the ones who do not bury
All the broken pieces of their heart
Blessed are the tears of all the weary
Pouring like a sky of falling stars

VERSE 2
Blessed are the wounded ones in mourning
Brave enough to show the Lord their scars
Blessed are the hurts that are not hidden
Open to the healing touch of God

CHORUS
The kingdom is yours, the kingdom is yours
Hold on a little more, this is not the end
Hope is in the Lord, keep your eyes on him

VERSE 3
Blessed are the ones who walk in kindness
Even in the face of great abuse
Blessed are the deeds that go unnoticed
Serving with unguarded gratitude

VERSE 4
Blessed are the ones who fight for justice
Longing for the coming day of peace
Blessed is the soul that thirsts for righteousness
Welcoming the last, the lost, the least

CHORUS
The kingdom is yours, the kingdom is yours
Hold on a little more, this is not the end
Hope is in the Lord, keep your eyes on him

VERSE 5
Blessed are the ones who suffer violence
And still have strength to love their enemies
Blessed is the faith of those who persevere
Though they fall, they’ll never know defeat

Written by Terrell Wilson (BMI), Brittney Spencer (BMI), Micah Massey (ASCAP), Aaron Keyes (ASCAP)
© 2017 Common Hymnal Digital (BMI), The Wilson Songbook Publishing (BMI), BSpencer Publishing (BMI), Common Hymnal Publishing (ASCAP), 10000 Fathers (ASCAP) (admin by IntegratedRights.com). CCLI 7109354

It’s Time for a Franciscan Renaissance

Brian McLaren — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 11:00:37 +0000

Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in TRENDS in Global Grassroots Organizing, December 2022 issue.

We live in a time of conflict and polarization — in the church in its various forms and in the world at large. In fact, our religious and secular challenges are so enmeshed as to be inseparable.

In the world at large, the planet is in crisis. From global warming to the great global insect die-off, from the impending tsunami of extinctions to multifaceted ecosystem collapse, the earth is suffering under the burden of too many people demanding too many resources while pumping out too many wastes. As Pope Francis said in Laudato Si, we are sowing filth and destruction into the earth rather than life and beauty.

The poor are also in crisis, as a tiny minority of super-rich global elites control a larger and larger percentage of power and wealth, leaving the poor farther and farther behind to survive on leftovers. Simply put: the wealth rises to the top and the troubles (what economists call “externalized costs”) trickle down to the folks at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

In addition to the crises of the planet and the poor, we face a crisis of peace. Arrogant nationalism, ignorant racism, shortsighted militarism, and post-truth propaganda empower the Putin’s of the world to bomb innocents into rubble while the NRAs of the world proliferate guns. As we pump more and more weapons of increasing kill-power into human societies, as we dump more and more carbon and other pollutants into our skies and seas, as we redistribute more and more wealth and power away from the struggling masses and toward the elite upper classes … we create a perfect recipe for misery, for us, for our children, and for generations to come.

We could wish that the leaders of our Christian faith were paying attention to these crises. A few are. But many — too many — are obsessed with preserving their power, protecting their privilege, and perpetuating their institutions. They obsess over liturgical gnats while ignoring existential threats, and we wonder why younger generations are turning away!

The young see our churches as being fueled by theologies of separation, shame, punishment, and damnation. They experience our liturgies as being obsessed with individual salvation, appeasing a demanding God so our individual souls can assure their ticket to heaven when we die. They encounter our institutions as being more concerned with their own power, privilege, and survival than with the common good. Many feel frustration and hopelessness.

Younger generations know the reality articulated early in the last century by Teilhard de Chardin: “Evolve or be annihilated.” They know the reality articulated late in the last century by Thomas Berry: “We will go into the future as a single sacred community, or we will all perish in the desert.”

When they read the gospels, they hear a resonance between Teilhard’s call to evolve and Jesus’ call to repent. And they hear a resonance between Jesus’ good news of the kingdom of God and Berry’s “single sacred community.”

When they hear or recite the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer most frequently prayed by every denomination of Christianity, they hear the words, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” They see what so many of us miss: Jesus’ prayer is not an evacuation plan, praying to get our individual souls from earth down here to heaven up there. This prayer is a transformation plan, bringing God’s good will down here to earth from up there in heaven. The prayer asks us, “How do we join Jesus in his concern for God’s good desires to become actualized on earth?” The prayer directs us to address this world and its injustices, joining God in God’s healing work within this world.

The Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee says, “The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness.” Younger generations wish they could say more in our Christian communities helping to lead the way to bring healing and hope to this “suffering wholeness.”

We have a proposal that addresses both the crises in the world at large and the crises in the Christian church: the possibility of a Franciscan Renaissance.

The first biographer of St. Francis, Thomas of Celano, described Francis’ return to God as reclaiming that which would free him both from a sinful nature and from a perverted society which was Christian in name only. Thomas of Celano could just as easily be describing the state of our world and religion today.

Neither of us are professed Franciscans. Our deep love and understanding of Franciscan spirituality came from our work and relationships with Franciscan sisters and friars in the US and across the World. When we talk about a Franciscan Renaissance, we are not referring to otherworldly piety and escapist rituals or propping up the status quo of Franciscan institutions. Rather, we advocate a Franciscan Renaissance centered in the spirit of St. Clare and St. Francis, embodied in their examples, further explored in the works of brilliant Franciscan theologians like Blessed John Dun Scotus.

This renaissance is needed because dominant forms of Christianity are stuck. The Catholic Church is stuck; all the many forms of Protestantism are stuck. Whether you are Catholic, Evangelical Protestant or Mainline Protestant you’ve probably watched with horror from a distance as many of your leaders and fellow members were so easily sucked into Trumpism. It breaks your heart to see how many Christians have wandered into white supremacist backwaters, into QAnon and other conspiracy theories, where they’re in many ways ruled by nostalgia, dreaming of a mythical idyllic past when life made more sense to them.

Yes, there are beautiful pockets of light and growth and redemption in all our Christian traditions. But so many are stuck in deep ruts, hardly able to see outside. Even when they know they’re in trouble, it’s so much easier to live in denial and keep on with liturgy as usual. Along with ruts of routine, so many of us are stuck in our silos, just worried about our little group. So, Lutherans are worried about renewing Lutheranism and Presbyterians are worried about renewing their Presbyterianism, just as Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox can act as if their group is the only group that matters.

Every week, more and more people, especially young people, leave the stuckness and stagnation, joining the 70 million-plus adult Americans who grew up going to Church but who no longer do. The failure of retention of younger generations brings us closer every day to what we might call a demographic cliff.

If Christianity were in trouble only because it’s stuck in ruts of routine and silos of sectarianism, that would be bad enough. But we also have to acknowledge that there are dominant forms of Christianity that have become dangerous. Too many preach that Jesus is coming soon, so we don’t need to worry about the environment. Too many preach, ‘The Bible says that the end is going to be terrible, that things are getting worse. That just tells us that we are closer to the end. And after that it is heaven and then we will all be able to party.’ Too many preach an intoxicating cocktail of Christianity and white supremacy, Christianity and nationalism, Christianity and unregulated capitalism. As a result, the earth suffers, people of color suffer, the poor suffer, and ultimately, everyone suffers.

The words of the prophet Jeremiah (8:8) echo in our ears:

“How can you say, “We are wise,

for we have the law of the Lord,”

when that law has been falsified

by the lying pen of the scribes?”

The vision of Francis and Clare are exactly what we need at this moment of peril and opportunity. Why is that legacy so precious at this moment?

First, at this time of ecological crisis, the Franciscan legacy is powerfully ecological. Living as we do at the precipice of an environmental catastrophe; we need a spiritual vision that integrates love for God and love for our neighbor with love for the earth — exactly the vision of St. Francis and St. Clare and the movements that they gave birth to.

Francis’ famous friendship with a wolf and his preaching to the birds are easily reduced to cute little tropes, birdbaths if you will. But the ecological vision of Francis was about more than birdbaths. It was about the interconnectedness of all creation, so that we see every creature as sister or brother. As Sr. Ilia Delio OSF wrote in her book, A Franciscan View of Creation, “Francis’ respect for creation was not a duty or obligation but arose out of an inner love by which creation and the source of creation were intimately united…” Francis saw himself as part of creation, as being in relationship with creation, and not having dominion over creation or even stewardship of creation.

Second, in this time of violence, this time of school shootings and war in Europe, this time when many politicians seem to believe that the more guns, we have the safer we’ll be, or the more bombs we have the safer we’ll be, we need St. Francis’ message and example of nonviolence as never before. If we follow the path of maximum armament … believing that we can never have too many guns and bombs … we will discover that this is a suicidal trajectory for our species: as Jesus said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” We need a spirituality that is deeply nonviolent not just in words but in our action.

It is difficult to preach nonviolence when so much of our religion is focused on the wrath and fear of God. In fact, to many Christians today, world salvation means being saved from an angry God. Carl Jung, one of our greatest 20th century psychologists, once said, “If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder, our chief emotion will be gratitude.” Over the centuries, many forms of Christianity have become religions of fear. But Christianity wasn’t always like that. It began as a nonviolent peace movement, a community known for love, a community gathered around a table of fellowship and reconciliation, a people armed with the basin and towel of service, not the bomb and gun of violence. A Franciscan Renaissance would invite us to become, in the language of St. Clare, not violent warriors, but nonviolent mirrors of Christ for others to see and follow.

Third, in addition to being ecological and nonviolent, the Franciscan vision is deeply economic. Today, a larger and larger percentage of wealth is being concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals and families. In spite of calling ourselves democracies and free market economies, many of our nations are returning to a kind of feudal oligarchy, where a small number of powerful families exert great power over governments and collaborate with transnational crime syndicates … all while collaborating with religions that give them cover. St. Francis arose in the early stages of modern capitalism, and he saw its potential dangers. He exemplified an alternative value system where the poor, the leper, and the outcast matter more than money, luxury, and power. Our current economic model places no intrinsic value on creation, except as a source for raw materials that we consume. In so doing, it reduces us to consumers, and values us based on our productivity measured in money. A Franciscan renaissance would help us “redeem” — which means to re-assess and revalue — everything, so we rediscover the priceless beauty of the earth and its creatures, including our neighbors and ourselves.

Fourth, we live in a time of exclusion, division, classism, racism, and religious prejudice. We need the example of St. Francis and St. Clare, who clearly modeled deep inclusiveness and solidarity. In the iconic paintings of St. Francis embracing a leper, we do not see a shallow inclusiveness that says, ‘We’re elite and we’re going to bring a few of you as tokens into our exclusive club.’ No, we see in St. Francis profound solidarity with the last, the lost, and the least, with the other, the outcast, the outsider, and even the enemy. In this spirit of solidarity, I see that my life and your life are interconnected. I refuse to settle for my own happiness, because my life is in solidarity with yours as my neighbor.

The relationship between Francis and Clare modeled this: we’re all equal — male and female, rich and poor, healthy and sick, well-clothed and clothed in rags, Pope and Bishop and lay person. Francis even teaches us to refuse to discriminate between Christian and Muslim, Jew and Atheist, for we all are beloved by God. We see this interfaith solidarity when Francis ventures without weapon or threat into the Sultan’s camp in Egypt, bearing a message of peace – a heart for peace. This vision has been tragically lost in so much of our Christian faith. More than ever at this moment, we need the vision of Francis and Clare for an interfaith solidarity.

We have experienced this inclusive solidarity. Neither of us are professed Franciscans but we both have been welcomed within the Franciscan community. Not only that: in our work and travels we both have encountered Muslims, Jews, Hindus and even atheists who have a deep respect for St. Francis, his life and works. A Franciscan Renaissance will expand beyond the traditional three Franciscan orders to a fourth order — of Franciscan-hearted people.

A Franciscan Renaissance would be ecological, nonviolent, economic, and inclusive. It would also be creative theologically. Too many Christians still imagine God as a big white guy on a throne in the sky, a cosmic dictator and Zeus-like despot and who will subject people to cruelty if they don’t honor his magnificence appropriately. Looking back over the last eight centuries, it is clear that the Franciscan theological instinct was right, and we need it more than ever.

The prevalent theology during the time of St Francis was centered around the idea of substitutionary atonement. In this view, the purpose of Jesus’ incarnation was to suffer and die as a sacrifice to appease an angry God. But for Franciscans, Jesus didn’t come to appease an angry God; he came to reveal a loving God, as Sr. Ilia Delio, OSF, says in her book, Franciscan Prayer: prayer “begins and ends with the Incarnation. It begins with encountering the God of overflowing love in the person of Jesus Christ and ends with embodying that love in one’s own life, becoming a new Incarnation.” This fresh vision of God leads to a fresh vision of everything everywhere.

Thomas Berry wrote in The Dream of the Earth. “The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation.” We are experiencing that crisis today, in the world and in the church. A Franciscan Renaissance will not come easily; it will be costly, challenging, even disruptive. After all, if renewal were cheap, easy, and convenient, it would have happened already. If we are willing to count the cost, commit to the challenge, and persist through obstacles, we can be agents of a true Franciscan Renaissance.

Greeting the Prince of Peace 10 Years After Sandy Hook

RLC Editor — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 16:45:23 +0000

Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared in Religion News Service.

The Christmas season makes room for commemorations of violence done against the innocent.

It’s now been 10 years since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 26 students and teachers were killed, 20 of whom were 6- and 7-year-olds. In the aftermath of that shooting, like many of us, I had hoped the horrific tragedy would be a wake-up call for our society and finally lead to meaningful gun reform.

Instead, our leaders did so little that “thoughts and prayers” has now become synonymous with a lack of empathy and offensive to many, perhaps even to God. As theologian Miroslav Volf puts it plainly, “There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem that you are unwilling to resolve.”

During the pandemic, gun violence became the No. 1 cause of death for American youth. More kids are dying from guns than from car accidents or cancer. We have continued to see mass shootings at schools, shops, houses of worship and workplaces. The pace of gun violence spiked in U.S. cities in 2020 and 2021 even as nonviolent crime continued its decades-long fall. As a Philadelphian, I know too well how our city has experienced this epidemic of gun violence, with more than 2,300 people shot last year and on pace for a similar number this year.

While Congress finally passed legislation this year in the wake of the terrible shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the mentality that prevented progress in the decade between the shootings in Newtown and Uvalde retains a firm grip over much of the country.

The good news is that an overwhelming majority of Americans, and gun owners themselves, want to see common-sense changes like a limit on the rounds a gun can fire, a limit to the number of handguns one person can buy per month, raising the minimum age and preventing domestic abusers from arming themselves.

As an evangelical Christian, I’m getting ready for Christmas, when we remember the birth of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. We sing carols about peace on earth and goodwill to all. It’s a good season to renew our commitment to peace and to life.

There are common-sense ways to reduce gun violence in our country. America is the only country where mass shootings are a fact of life. Each year, 40,000 people die of gun violence in America, and while we cannot prevent all crime or eliminate hatred, we can take the tool of violence out of the hands of those who intend to harm themselves or others. Background checks, permitting requirements for concealed carry permits, red-flag laws and other mechanisms can reduce gun violence.

The Christmas season, despite the widespread focus on peace and goodwill, includes commemorations of violence done against the innocent. The day after Christmas is St. Stephen’s Day, remembering his martyrdom after a life of serving widows, and on Dec. 28 the church remembers the Holy Innocents — the children killed by King Herod in his search for Jesus in an attempt to cling to power.

A central theme at the heart of Christmas and the “Good News” of Jesus is that he is born into a violent world. The Prince of Peace becomes a victim of violence, from the moment he is born homeless in the manger until he is executed naked on the cross.

Jesus was a holy, direct confrontation to a world full of violence — and still is. In his teaching Jesus laments that society does not know where peace can be found and says that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. He teaches that we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

But we, as a society and also as Christians, have failed to allow these teachings to shape us. Jesus shows that it is possible to disarm hate without becoming violent ourselves.

Jesus continues in the Jewish prophetic tradition of turning instruments of violence into instruments of growth. Isaiah and Micah speak of beating “swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks.” We all have a societal mission of taking the dangerous and violent elements of our society and shaping it into something new and better.

I have been working with a group that seeks to make this work tangible. RAWtools is an organization that seeks to reverse tools of war into garden tools. We disassemble guns and convert them into spades, trowels and jewelry. We want to show that God, working through humans, can take ugly, horrible things and make them beautiful.

This Christmas, as we celebrate God coming to Earth to “preach peace to those who are far off and those who are near,” as the Apostle Paul wrote in his Letter to the Ephesians, we should consider how we too can be an interruption to the violence. We need to be instruments of peace, and one way is to work for an end to gun violence in all its forms.

Let’s do it in honor of all the Holy Innocents who have lost their lives: in Judea, in Newton, in Uvalde and in our streets.

(Shane Claiborne is an activist, author and co-director of Red Letter Christians. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service.)

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Magnificat: The Mothers of Advent

Kelley Nikondeha — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 16:53:05 +0000

Mary didn’t fight; Mary sang. She stood in the tradition of Deborah, wise judge and mighty warrior, singer of the oldest song in scripture. She channeled the canticles of Hannah and Judith and the mother of liberation, Miriam. Following in the footsteps of her ancestors, she composed laments, victory songs, and the range of traditional choruses in between. Songs were her work of resistance, her response to the injustice she witnessed and likely suffered in Nazareth.

The memories of the exodus from Egypt and the daily experiences of life in Galilee shaped Mary’s resistance refrains. Accordingly, she wove lyrics together with lament and imprecatory heat. Other verses she filled with praise or gratitude or messianic hope. Pleas for deliverance were common in her songbook. Both trauma and liberation were hallmarks of her hymns. If trauma could be transformed into songs, maybe song could be a part of diminishing the deep distress of Galilean life. Most likely, villagers knew some sacred stories, some psalms and parables from the oral tradition of their culture, but few read or studied all of the holy words. It took time for stories and songs to move among networks of regional villages and to pass down through families. So, Mary in Nazareth began with a handful of old songs circulating in her community, maybe a few from her mother, Anna. Maybe she rehearsed them as she journeyed from Nazareth to Judea’s hills and Ein Kerem.

In the three months Mary spent with Elizabeth, they would have talked about Elizabeth’s descendancy from the priestly line of Aaron, and of Mary’s lineage. Perhaps there were songs Elizabeth taught her—old songs new to Mary. And perhaps Elizabeth helped her learn not only the words of the old songs but also the meanings and histories attached to them. They would have searched and learned together from the matriarchs of Israel, about their suffering and survival and even joys amid struggle.

Together, Elizabeth and Mary reflected on the words of their sacred traditions and likely considered how they embodied the witness of their predecessors now, in their current landscape. The story would continue with them.

When Elizabeth called Mary blessed, in the words of Deborah’s praise of Jael, it wasn’t only the song but the solidarity between the women that pierced Mary’s young heart. Grafted into generations of women practicing liberation through subversive songs and solidarity, Mary was formed by song, and then she composed song, creating a legacy, weaving herself into the unwritten genealogy of women who birthed the sons and daughters of Israel.

She came to see her place among her people, singing, “From now on all generations will call me blessed.”

And as she sang of God’s goodness toward her, she sang also of generations before who met God’s mercy. And she sang for generations to come. Hers was no solitary song, but a prophetic chorus born of solidarity with many matriarchs, and with Emmanuel, working salvation even now through her.

But the song was personal; it sprouted from her own reversal. In the Magnificat of Luke, Mary sings of her low estate, a status typically translated as “poor” or “humble.” But there is a fuller connotation to this word, tapeinōsis, that refers to humiliation or distress. And this can be seen earlier in the Hebrew Bible, as the word is used to connote the sexual humiliation of Dinah, the concubine in Judges, and King David’s daughter Tamar, to name just a few. It might even be that Luke’s use of this word in Mary’s song is an intertextual nod to a passage in Deuteronomy, where the law directs response in handling the seduced or sexually humiliated betrothed virgin. What if Mary sings of her own humiliation and God’s astounding redemption of her shame in this present moment? Instead of punishment, blessing? What if she sings as the first fruit of God’s grand reversal? What if she goes on to sing of God exalting the other humiliated ones with such confidence because she has already experienced the beginning of such holy upheaval herself?

Mary’s anthem tells of those brutalized by the empire, literally and metaphorically, who will know God’s recompense.

Liberation will overcome humiliation and stigma; God’s justice will have the final victorious word for those like her in the world. Mary understands that her own experience of reversal will be shared with all the meek ones. And her song will set a trajectory for the future, where her humiliation is transformed into incarnation in a way that foreshadows how her son’s death by imperial crucifixion, another humiliation, will be transformed by resurrection. This God of Mary’s song upends all the empire’s violent tactics.

With her advent song composed in the hills of Judea, Mary forged a new resistance movement. The Magnificat grew from her time with Elizabeth, from their conversations and robust singing as they walked the uneven roads of Ein Kerem side by side. As their bellies grew, so too did their convictions about God’s coming deliverance. No surprise then that Mary bursts out with this song, braiding together songs of old with her new understanding of God’s work and celebrating God’s mighty deeds among the meek, like herself and her community.

With boldness, Mary declares an astonishing reversal in which the proud will be confused and the mighty dethroned, while the humble ones will be elevated to those vacated positions. Her song envisions a world order where the village elders, once trampled by menacing soldiers and crooked politicians are vindicated. Local leaders will finally manage their own affairs with equity. The hungry, her neighbors in Nazareth among them, will be seated at tables full of good food. They will be able to savor the bounty from their own fields, the fruits of their own labor. And the rich, who gained their wealth through exploitation of her neighbors, will be sent away with empty pockets, now experiencing the pangs of poverty in this reversal of empire economics.

Mary sings out a new social order that upends the status quo as advent begins to turn tables on those who benefit from the injustice of empires and their economies— long before her own son would himself overturn tables, enacting protest in the temple.

Some songs soothe; others become subversive anthems to galvanize radical hope and future action. The song Mary sang was one of change already afoot.

Together, Elizabeth and Mary, the mothers of advent, shaped the infrastructure of peace. Their bodies, metaphors within the songs they sang, spoke about newness God was birthing into the world. In their flourishing friendship, they collaborated to create and embody novel paradigms. They spoke about possibilities and limitations, challenging one another and allowing hope to generate. Together, they did the work of theology, in cooperation and communal engagement, gestating God’s peace, which reversed the unjust order.

So many of the hymns composed during the Maccabean Revolt sang of nationalistic salvation, of revenge and violence. But the mothers of advent teach about disarming in the move toward God’s justice. In Mary’s advent anthem, we see no vindictiveness. And we find that same spirit in future years in her son, when in the synagogue he reads from the scroll of Isaiah the words of jubilee announced there but omits the words of wrath. In the advent trajectory set by his mother to reverse unjust structures, not with a spirit of revenge but restoration, Jesus followed.

In the company of women peacemakers in Israel and Palestine, I hear ancient cadences in work for justice. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian women all sing of a future birthed by nonviolence, love, and justice for all who call the land home. Some have suffered the loss of children to the violence of occupation or the resistance, yet they come together in their grief to lament even as they compose new songs of hope. Others make music with their feet as they march, arm in arm, to demonstrate the desire for justice across their landscape. Still, other mothers share laughter like a song as they make jam, not conflict, together. Their songs are contagious and keep the lyrics of liberation alive in me.

It’s been a week since the Club Q shooting. Let’s not move on.

Shane Claiborne — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 11:00:20 +0000

Note: This piece originally appeared in Religion News Service.

The LGBTQ community continues to bear a disproportionate amount of hateful gun violence in America.

It has been a week since the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, where five people were killed and at least 18 others were injured.

Let’s not move on.

Raymond Green Vance. Kelly Loving. Daniel Aston. Derrick Rump. Ashley Paugh. Let us still keep the names of the dead in our minds.

It can be difficult to keep track of all the lives lost, and it is tempting to move on. Before we could fully grieve the lives lost in Colorado Springs, after all, there was another mass shooting at a Walmart in Virginia, where a man fatally shot six co-workers, then took his own life. Here in Philadelphia, where I live, four kids were shot as they were leaving school. In all there have been more than a dozen mass shootings in the U.S. since the shooting at Club Q on November 20.

But it is important not to move on from the attack at Club Q in Colorado. Here’s why.

The Club Q shooting was a targeted attack on the LGBTQ community, on the eve of Trans Day of Remembrance, a day on which we honor the transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming people who have been (far too often) the victims of violence.

The shooting at Club Q is tragically reminiscent of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando six years ago, where 49 people were shot and killed and 53 others were wounded. It is a reminder that the LGBTQ community continues to bear a disproportionate amount of hateful gun violence in America.

2021 was the deadliest year on record for trans and gender non-conforming people in the U.S., and unfortunately, this trend continues to play out in 2022, especially among trans women of color. While just 13% of the U.S. trans population is estimated to be Black, 73% of the known trans homicide victims were Black women.

Communities that have been historically marginalized, such as African Americans and LGBTQ folks, bear a disproportionate amount of the gun violence. For many years, guns have been the top cause of death of African American children, who are 10 times more likely to die than white kids. But during the pandemic, guns became the most common cause of death of all American children. Anyone who claims to be “pro-life” cannot ignore all these lives lost to guns.

Since 2009, the U.S. has had nearly 300 mass shootings, defined as four or more people shot and killed at one time. But while these mass shootings catch the headlines and capture our hearts, mass shootings account for less than 2% of our overall gun deaths. When you look at the other 98% of the gun deaths in America, which often don’t make the news, you see marginalized communities carrying the weight of the violence.

On December 14, we will remember the 10^th anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. That was a unique tragedy, because it impacted mostly white kids in a New England town, and it broke our hearts, as it should. Twenty-six people lost their lives that day … 20 of them were between six and seven years old. After Sandy Hook, many people said, “Never again!”

But we have let it happen again and again.

Though the victims at Sandy Hook were different from those at Club Q, the two shootings had several important things in common: Both were committed by young, white men in their early 20s, and both were committed using military-style assault weapons, which are still legal on the streets of the United States. These guns are designed for one purpose: to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible, and that is exactly what they keep getting used for.

It’s time for change.

We can’t save every life, but we can save some. We can make it harder for someone filled with hatred to kill. Every country in the world has people who are violent, hateful, mentally ill or racist. But this is where the United States is unique — we allow hateful people unimaginable access to weapons, including weapons of war.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me … but it can restrain him from lynching me.” You can’t legislate love. We cannot make fascism or homophobia illegal, but we can make it harder for people to kill.

So let us pray for the victims in Colorado Springs, and everywhere else. But let us also honor their lives by taking action to end gun violence, for everyone.

The Kingdom Is Yours

Common Hymnal — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 19:44:20 +0000