Category Archives: dissent and resistance

Daily Riches: Pimping Religion, Confronting Empire – Part I (Dan Clendenin)

Posted on by under Awareness, dissent and resistance, Insiders and Outsiders, Nationalism and Patriotism, Social Justice, The Poor and Disenfranchised, truth and illusion

“Amos wrote 2,800 years ago, but his prophecy reads like today’s newspaper. He lived under king Jeroboam [whose] kingdom was characterized by territorial expansion, aggressive militarism, and unprecedented economic prosperity. Times were good. Or so people thought. The people of the day interpreted their good fortune as God’s favor. Amos says that the people were intensely and sincerely religious. But theirs was a privatized religion of personal benefit. They ignored the poor, the widow, the alien, and the orphan. …Making things worse, Israel’s religious leaders sanctioned the political and economic status quo. They pimped their religion for Jeroboam’s empire. Enter Amos. Amos preached from the pessimistic and unpatriotic fringe. He was blue collar … neither a prophet nor even the son of a prophet in the professional sense of the term. Amos was a shepherd, a farmer, and a tender of fig trees. He was a small town boy who grew up in Tekoa…. The cultured elites despised him as a redneck [and]… an unwelcome outsider. Born in the southern kingdom of Judah, God called him to thunder a prophetic word to the northern kingdom of Israel. And that’s what this rough hewn prophet did. He opposed the political powers of his day and the religious stooges who supported them. With graphic details that make you wince, Amos describes how the rich crushed the poor; the affluent with their expensive lotions, elaborate music, and vacation homes with beds of inlaid ivory; sexual debauchery in which a man and his son abused the same woman; a corrupt legal system that sold justice to the highest bidder; predatory lenders who exploited vulnerable families; and religious leaders who sanctioned it all. …To the priests who defended, legitimized, and justified Jeroboam’s corrupt kingdom, Amos delivered an uncompromising word of warning. After Amaziah the priest informed Jeroboam that Amos’s preaching was unpatriotic and seditious, he tried to run him out of town. …Then Amaziah said something that reveals how completely he had identified religious faith with political power and economic gain. It ought to send a chill up the spine of every religious leader who ever thought about sucking up to political power: ‘Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.’ (7:13). With those words, the religious justification of political empire is complete, and faith is reduced to patriotic cheer-leading. But Amos wouldn’t be bullied. He had a word of his own for every priest who pimped religion for empire:

Amos 7:17

Moving From Head to Heart

  • Is your vision blurred by “good times?”
  • Do you hear a “religious justification of political empire” in your nation?
  • Is yours a “privatized religion of personal benefit?” Benefits upheld by injustice?

Abba, help us recognize those who speak for you in our day.


Daily Riches: Outside the Dominant Consciousness (Richard Rohr and Walter Brueggemann)

Posted on by under Awareness, Being the Beloved, dissent and resistance, Nationalism and Patriotism, truth and illusion

“Authentic God experience gives you another place to stand, another identity, a spacious and gracious place, which invites you to stand outside of the dominant consciousness that surrounds you and that everybody accepts as reality. Authentic God experience liberates you from the usual domination systems, liberates you from needing everything to be perfect or right, and liberates you to be who you really are – ordinary  and poor – just like everybody else. Until you can be at home in the alternative Kingdom of God, you will almost always be completely conformed to the superficial systems of this world, while calling it freedom and independence. Some do it by conforming to styles and fashions of their particular groupthink, while others do it by various conformities to the political correctness of either left or right. Some even do it by conforming to the rebellious group, but that is not freedom either. Gospel freedom allows you to act from deep within, where the Holy Spirit dwells, and not for or against any outside group whatsoever…. Jesus’ announcement of the reign of God was telling us that culture as we’ve created it is on a track toward self-destruction and emptiness. All we have to give up is the utterly false understanding that we have of ourselves from civil society. For some reason that liberation seems to be the most difficult thing in the world!” Richard Rohr

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. …Such utterance staggers and offends among the listeners. But it also opens vistas of possibility where we had not thought to go and where in fact, we are most reluctant to go.”  Walter Brueggemann

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Romans 12:2

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Does your religion determine your politics or do your politics determine your religion?
  • Is the religious instruction you receive making you more of an individual, or more a conforming member of a group?
  • Acting from “deep within, where the Holy Spirit dwells” is difficult but keeps us from bondage to “what everybody accepts as reality.”  Are you learning to do that?

Abba, help me to hear your prophets today and not be offended by them or stagger at their voice. Lead me where I have not thought to go and been reluctant to go.

For More:  The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and he seeks you. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: Inconspicuous Piety and the Santification of Trifles (Abraham Heschel, Teresa of Avila, William Wordsworth, and Aldous Huxley)

Posted on by under "Being" with Jesus, Being and Doing, Contemplation and Activism, dissent and resistance, Learning Your Proper Place, Social Justice, The Poor and Disenfranchised

“The path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses.” Aldous Huxley

“We are ready to applaud dramatic struggles once a year in Washington. For the sake of lofty principles we will spend a day or two in jail somewhere in Alabama. But that prosaic demand for housing without vermin, for adequate schools, for adequate employment – right here in the vicinity of Park Avenue in New York City – sound so trite, so drab, so banal, so devoid of magnificence. …The [Hebrew] prophets field of concern is not the mysteries of heaven, the glories of eternity, but the blights of society, the affairs of the market place. …The predominant feature of the biblical pattern of life is unassuming, unheroic, inconspicuous piety, the sanctification of trifles….” Abraham Heschel

“The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” William Wordsworth

“Let there be no disappointment when obedience keeps you busy in outward tasks. If it sends you to the kitchen, remember that the Lord walks among the pots an pans.” Teresa of Avila

“Among my people are wicked men
who lie in wait for victims like a hunter hiding in a blind.
They continually set traps to catch people.
Like a cage filled with birds,
their homes are filled with evil plots.
And now they are great and rich.
They are fat and sleek,
and there is no limit to their wicked deeds.
They refuse to provide justice to orphans
and deny the rights of the poor.”
Jeremiah 5:23-28

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • When is the last time you carefully read the Prophets? Have you drunk deeply enough there to be aware of their “field of concern?”
  • Are you committed to heroic, “dramatic struggles” on behalf of the poor or others? Does that keep you from “remembering the Lord among the pots and pans?”
  • Are you engaged in spiritual practices? Is your aim something like “inconspicuous piety?” Does that keep you from activity to address “the blights of society?”
  • What, in really concrete terms, would it mean for you to practice the “sanctification of trifles?”

Abba, balance me on the path which is a knife-edge between abysses.

For More:  The Insecurity of Freedom by Abraham Heschel

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: The Christian as a Citizen of the World (Judith Valente, Robert McAfee Brown, Cornell West, and Marilynne Robinson)

Posted on by under Awareness, dissent and resistance, Loving Well, Nationalism and Patriotism, Social Justice, truth and illusion

“Sister Janelle plays ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ on the organ, but no one belts out the words. I do not think this is because the sisters are unpatriotic, nor do I think they don’t love and bless this country. But to be a monastic is to live as a citizen of the world. It requires love for every country on the planet.” Judith Valente

“The nation is the most pervasive of all the gods, in any time, in any culture. True patriotism is not worship of our nation but rather, in the light of our worship of the God of justice, to conform our nation’s ways to justice. …We can insist on a distinction between our country and our government. …Let it be clear: it is because we say Yes to what our country ought to represent (“liberty and justice for all”), that we must say No to what our government has come to represent (“truth… on the scaffold, wrong … on the throne”). When a government traduces the ideals of a country, it is an act of loyalty to oppose the government. Let us never concede that because people have been elected to public office they are exempt from challenge and critique; on the contrary they are more than ever subject to challenge, and critique, because they now speak and act not just for themselves but for all of us….”  Robert McAfee Brown (1986)

“My understanding of Jesus Christ went like this: Everything comes beneath the cross – nationalism, tribalism, patriotism, networks, even kinships. The cross is that critical juncture where catastrophe defines our condition and offers salvation, not in the name of a specific ideology or theology, but in the simple name of love. It is love that saves us from the tyranny of chauvinism and its many manifestations.” Cornell West

“I am the sort of Christian whose patriotism might be called into question by some on the grounds that I do not take the United States to be more beloved of God than France, let us say, or Russia, or Argentina, or Iran. I experience religious dread whenever I find myself thinking that I know the limits of God’s grace, since I am utterly certain it exceeds any imagination a human being might have of it. God does, after all, so love the world. …Making God a tribal deity, our local Baal, is embarrassing and disgraceful.” Marilynne Robinson

  “Render … to God the things that are God’s.”
Mark 12:17

 Moving From Head to Heart

  • Is your patriotism ever questioned?
  • Does your faith save you from “the tyranny of chauvinism and its many manifestations?”
  • Is your God a “tribal deity?”

Abba, guide our allegiances.

For More: Unexpected News by Robert McAfee Brown

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Thanks for following and sharing “Daily Riches!”  – Bill

 

 

 

Daily Riches: Religion and Established Privilege (Thomas Merton)

Posted on by under Contemplation and Activism, Contemplative Prayer, dissent and resistance, Nationalism and Patriotism, Social Justice, truth and illusion

“Of course, it is true that religion on a superficial level, religion that is untrue to itself and to God, easily comes to serve as the ‘opium of the people.’ And this takes place whenever religion and prayer invoke the name of God for reasons and ends that have nothing to do with him. When religion becomes a mere artificial facade to justify a social or economic system – when religion hands over its rites and language completely to the political propagandists, and when prayer becomes the vehicle for a purely secular ideological program, then religion does tend to become an opiate. It deadens the spirit enough to permit the substitution of a superficial fiction and mythology for this truth of life. And this brings about the alienation of the believer, so that his religious zeal becomes political fanaticism. His faith in God, while preserving its traditional formulas, becomes in fact faith in his own nation, class or race. His ethic ceases to be the law of God and of love, and becomes the law that might-makes-right: established privilege justifies everything. God is the status quo.” Thomas Merton

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is –
his good, pleasing and perfect will. “
Romans 12:1, 2

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Does your religious experience “deaden the spirit” rather than invigorating it? Does it squelch individuality and produce conformity? Does it discourage imagination and curiosity?
  • Does it tend to prop up some unjust “social [or] economic system? Does it support the “status quo” as a way that is out of step with the Bible’s insistence upon justice?
  • Has your faith in God become “in fact faith in your own nation, class or race?”
  • Has your religious ethic somehow become something other than the “law …of love?”
  • Are you comfortable with your answers to these questions? If not, what can change?

Abba, help me to speak to the status quo instead of being shaped by it. Strengthen me to question established, unjust privilege and work to undo it. Work in me your earth-changing “law of love.”

For More: Contemplative Prayer by Thomas Merton

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: Nonconformity to Idolatry (Robert McAfee Brown and Abraham Heschel)

Posted on by under dissent and resistance, Nationalism and Patriotism, Social Justice, The Call to Change, truth and illusion

“Religion begins as a breaking off, as a going away. It continues in acts of nonconformity to idolatry.” Abraham Heschel

“In the eyes of their contemporaries, the prophets were mad. Hosea, Elisha, and Jeremiah were all considered demented, individuals who …should be put ‘in the stocks and collars.’ (Heschel) “We call people ‘mad’ when they see things from a perspective different from our own. We have a vested interest in doing so, for it they are right, we are wrong. Since we do not gladly entertain the notion that we are wrong, we are more than ready to denounce such people as crazy, mad fools. To be sure, the prophets do engage in some very strange activities: they call kings to account for injustice, which is a very unhealthy things to do in a royal society; they excoriate religious leaders for being co-opted, which is equally unhealthy in a society that allows religious leaders to deal with their own deviants; they announce the fulfillment of God’s will through pagan leaders, which is considered unpatriotic by leaders of both church and state….” Robert McAfee Brown

“If the prophets Isaiah and Amos were to appear in our midst, would they accept the corruption in high places, the indifferent way in which the sick, the poor, and the old are treated? …Would they not be standing amidst those who protest against the war in Vietnam, the decay of our cities, the hypocrisy and falsehood that surround our present Administration, even at the highest levels?” Heschel (1979)

“O my people, your leaders mislead you;
they send you down the wrong road….”
Isaiah  3:12b

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • In what areas do political or religious leaders today need to be “called to account for injustice?”
  • Would voices of dissent more likely originate inside or outside traditional structures like your church? Do you think such critics would fare better in our day than prophets like Jeremiah did in his?
  • Are there prophets today? If so, have you dismissed them as outliers? as those who should be “in stocks and collars?”
  • How will you avoid reflexively rejecting criticism from those “with a perspective different than ours?” …who may be offering a divine perspective?

O Lord, we confess our sins, we are ashamed of the inadequacy of our anguish, of how faint and slight is our mercy. We are a generation that has lost the capacity for outrage. (Heschel)

For More: Saying Yes and Saying No by Robert McAfee Brown

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and he seeks you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: Detaching Religion From Power and Money (Hans Küng and Richard Rohr)

Posted on by under Community & the Church, dissent and resistance, Downward Mobility, Ego Issues, Learning Your Proper Place, Social Justice, The Poor and Disenfranchised, The Upside-Down Kingdom
“Jesus turns with sympathy and compassion to all those to whom no one else turns; the weak, sick, neglected, social rejects. People were and are always glad to pass these sorts by. …And the devout monks of Qumran (and similarly up to a point the rabbis), faithful to their rule, excluded from the very beginning certain groups of men: ‘No madmen, or lunatic, or simpleton, or fool, no blind man, or maimed, or lame, or deaf man, and no minor, shall enter into the Community….’ Jesus does not turn away from any of these …but draws them to himself….” Hans Küng
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“We see in the Gospels that it’s the lame, the poor, the blind, the prostitutes, the drunkards, the tax collectors, the sinners, the outsiders, and the foreigners who tend to follow Jesus. It is those on the inside and the top who crucify him (elders, chief priests, teachers of the Law, and Roman occupiers). Shouldn’t that tell us something really important about perspective? Every viewpoint is a view from a point, and we need to critique our own perspective and privilege if we are to see truth. …Once Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire (313), we largely stopped reading the Bible from the side of the poor and the oppressed. We read it from the side of the political establishment and, I am sorry to say, from the priesthood side … instead of from the side of people hungry for justice and truth. No wonder Jesus said, ‘I did not come for the healthy but for the sick’ (Mark 2:17). This priority has the power to constantly detach religion from its common marriage to power, money , and self-importance.” Richard Rohr

  “If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes
and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’
but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there”’
or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet,’
have you not discriminated among yourselves
and become judges with evil thoughts?’”
James 2:3

 Moving From Head to Heart

  • Wow, James sounds like his famous half-brother! Is there a “pecking system” in your church? Is anyone treated better than anyone else – given more honor, attention, or influence – because of wealth?
  • Will you support Jesus’ agenda to “detach religion from its common marriage to power and money?”
  • Are you able to read the Bible “from the side of the poor and the oppressed?” What is your “view from a point?”

Abba, may I learn from you a bias for the bottom.

For More: Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily.  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

 

 

Daily Riches: Following Jesus in the Workplace (Robert Lawrence Smith)

Posted on by under dissent and resistance, Social Justice, Success

“For Quakers in colonial days, going into business was often less a choice than a process of elimination. Although they enjoyed very high literacy rates for the period, seventeenth-century Friends were excluded from most universities and from positions in public office. Their testimony against war kept them out of the military and politics. Establishing a small business became a popular option for people devoted to independence, hard work and thrift.  Because Friends always shunned luxury and frivolous spending, the small businessmen of early years focused on providing a limited range of necessities. They were tailors, hatters, printers, booksellers, undertakers. Since trading by ship involved using guns for the protection of goods, they rarely became exporters or importers. Quaker inronmongers refused to make weapons and manufactured much-needed cookware instead. …And because some dyes were the product of slave labor, many Quakers refused to wear or make clothing of colored cloth. Despite these limitations, most of these small businesses prospered. And when they did, Quaker tradesmen began to worry about letting an interest in commerce dominate their lives. Early merchants often wrote of reducing or refusing to expand booming businesses because their enterprises were taking too much time from their spiritual and communal responsibilities. John Woolman, the saintly Quaker abolitionist, was a successful tailor, merchant, and grafter of fruit trees who suffered great anxiety about his worldly success. As he wrote in his journal, ‘The increase of business became my burden.’ He struggled with the problem for some time and finally put the question to God, who ‘gave me a heart resigned to His Holy will; I then lessened my outward business.” Robert Lawrence Smith

“So I strive always to keep my conscience clear
before God and man.”
Acts 24:16

 Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Much has changed since these Quakers lived, but they didn’t “fit in” any more then than they would today. In their day, as in ours, conscience-less business deals and exploiting others was simply doing business. Has your Christian faith kept you from certain business investments, labor practices or careers?
  • Before reading about these Christian businessmen, did taking a moral stand in your business dealings that would cost you money, seem simply impossible or hopelessly impractical?
  • Have you ever wrestled with whether God may want less “worldly success” for you?

Jesus, may we follow you with integrity in all the parts of our lives – no compartments!

For More: A Quaker Book of Wisdom by Robert Lawrence Smith

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

Daily Riches: Today’s Need For an Alternative History (Richard Rohr)

Posted on by under dissent and resistance, Nationalism and Patriotism, Social Justice, The Poor and Disenfranchised

“The political terms right and left came from the Estates General in France. It’s interesting that now we use them as our basic political categories. On the left sat the ordinary people, and on the right sat the nobility and the clergy! (What were the clergy doing over there?!) I think you see the pattern. The right normally protects the community and the status quo. The left predictably looks for change and reform, and there is a certain need for both or we have chaos. In history you will invariably have these two movements in some form, because we didn’t have the phenomenon of the middle class until very recently. The vast majority of people in all of history have been poor, as in Jesus’ time, and would have read history as a need for change. The people who wrote the books and controlled the social institutions, however, have almost always been the comfortable people on the right. And much of history has been read and interpreted from the side of the ‘winners,’ or the right, except for the unique revelation called the Bible, which is an alternative history from the side of the enslaved, the dominated, the oppressed, and the poor, leading up to the totally scapegoated Jesus himself. …He tries to put inside and outside together, but is killed by those entrapped and privileged on the inside.” Richard Rohr

“the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate.
‘Sir,’ they said, ‘we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said,
‘After three days I will rise again.’
Matthew 27:61-63

 Moving From Head to Heart

  • According to your social and economic status today, would you typically be on the left or right? …with the privileged or powerless?
  • Accordingly, if you were to insert yourself into the Biblical story, would you be more likely with the religious and political authorities (preserving tradition and order), or with Jesus (dissenting and challenging authority)?
  • The Bible is clearly “an alternative history” from the perspective of the bottom. Have you read it that way? Does thinking about it that way change the way you see our world now?
  • Can you imagine the reception Jesus would receive if he came today as he did back then? …who would be for him and who against him? …what you would do?

Jesus, may I be found, like you, siding with the weak and poor.

For More: Yes, And... by Richard Rohr

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow and share my blog. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)