A Litany of Resistance

Litany of Resistance

composed by Christian Peacemaker James Loney.


Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
Have mercy on us
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
Free us from the bondage of sin and death
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world
Hear our prayer. Grant us peace.

For the victims of war
Have mercy
Women, men and children
Have mercy
The maimed and the crippled
Have mercy
The abandoned and the homeless
Have mercy
the imprisoned and the tortured
Have mercy
The widowed and the orphaned
Have mercy
The bleeding and the dying
Have mercy
The weary and the desperate
Have mercy
The lost and the forsaken
Have mercy

O God — Have mercy on us sinners
Forgive us for we know not what we do
For our scorched and blackened earth
Forgive us
For the scandal of billions wasted in war
Forgive us
For our arms makers and arms dealers
Forgive us
One: For our Caesars and Herods
Forgive us
For the violence that is rooted in our hearts
Forgive us
For the times we turn others into enemies
Forgive us

Deliver us, O God
Guide our feet into the way of peace
Hear our prayer.
Grant us peace.

From the arrogance of power
Deliver us
From the myth of redemptive violence
Deliver us
From the tyranny of greed
Deliver us
From the ugliness of racism
Deliver us
From the cancer of hatred
Deliver us
From the seduction of wealth
Deliver us
From the addiction of control
Deliver us
From the idolatry of nationalism
Deliver us
From the paralysis of cynicism
Deliver us
From the violence of apathy
Deliver us
From the ghettos of poverty
Deliver us
From the ghettos of wealth
Deliver us
From a lack of imagination
Deliver us

Deliver us, O God
Guide our feet into the way of peace
We will not conform to the patterns of this world
Let us be transformed by the renewing of our minds
With the help of God’s grace
Let us resist evil wherever we find it

With the waging of war
We will not comply
With the legalization of murder
We will not comply
With the slaughter of innocents
We will not comply
With laws that betray human life
We will not comply
With the destruction of community
We will not comply
With the pointing finger and malicious talk
We will not comply
With the idea that happiness must be purchased
We will not comply
With the ravaging of the earth
We will not comply
With principalities and powers that oppress
We will not comply
With the destruction of peoples
We will not comply
With the raping of women
We will not comply
With governments that kill
We will not comply
With the theology of empire
We will not comply
With the business of militarism
We will not comply
With the hoarding of riches
We will not comply
With the dissemination of fear
We will not comply

Today we pledge our ultimate allegiance… to the Kingdom of God
We pledge allegiance
To a peace that is not like Rome’s
We pledge allegiance
To the Gospel of enemy love
We pledge allegiance
To the Kingdom of the poor and broken
We pledge allegiance
To a King that loves his enemies so much he died for them
We pledge allegiance
To the least of these, with whom Christ dwells
We pledge allegiance
To the transnational Church that transcends the artificial borders of nations
We pledge allegiance
To the refugee of Nazareth
We pledge allegiance
To the homeless rabbi who had no place to lay his head
We pledge allegiance
To the cross rather than the sword
We pledge allegiance
To the banner of love above any flag
We pledge allegiance
To the one who rules with a towel rather than an iron fist
We pledge allegiance
To the one who rides a donkey rather than a war-horse
We pledge allegiance
To the revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free
We pledge allegiance
To the Way that leads to life
We pledge allegiance
To the Slaughtered Lamb
We pledge allegiance

And together we proclaim his praises, from the margins of the empire to the centres of wealth and power
Long Live the Slaughtered Lamb
Long Live the Slaughtered Lamb
Long Live the Slaughtered Lamb

Unsettling America

I am kind of cheating on this post.
I first came across it on Br. Tom Murphy's blog, "Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky."

Grant Wood’s 1930 painting of a pitchfork-wielding farm couple heralds our return to Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. How to interpret this portrait? How to interpret American Gothic, which to my mind means the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Through the lens of The Unsettling of America, an interpretation becomes clear; these farmers have disappeared, have sold their land to an agribusiness, and have longed ago moved to the city. If there is a land ethic in their faces, that has been replaced with specialists. In Chapter 2, “The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character,” Berry focuses his attention on a main culprit “in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive.”
Read the entire post here: magicfishbones.com

Christianity and The Survival of Creation

from Wendell Berry's essay "Christianity and the Survival of Creation," found in his book  Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community.

The sense of the holiness of life" is not compatible with an exploitive economy. You cannot know that life is holy if you are content to live from economic practices that daily destroy life and diminish its possibility. And many if not most Christian organizations now appear to be perfectly at peace with the military-industrialeconomy and its "scientific" destruction of life. Surely, if we are to remain free, and if we are to remain true to our religious inheritances, we must maintain a separation between church and state. But if we are to maintain any sense or coherence or meaning in our lives, we cannot tolerate the present utter disconnection between religion and economy. By "economy" I do not mean "economics," which is the study of money-making, but rather the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of Nature. To be uninterested in economy is to be uninterested in the practice of religion; it is to be uninterested in culture and in character. Probably the most urgent question now faced by people who would adhere to the Bible is this: What sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? What, for Christians, would be the economy, the practices and the restraints, of "right livelihood"? I do not believe that organized Christianity now has any idea. I think its idea of a Christian economy is no more or less than the industrial economy--which is an economy firmly founded upon the seven deadly sins and the breaking of all ten of the Ten Commandments. Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable iniquities, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy--which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.

A second reason why the holiness of life is so obscured to modem Christians is the idea that the only holy place is the built church. This idea may be more taken for granted than taught; nevertheless, Christians are encouraged from childhood to think of the church building as "God's house," and most of them could think of their houses or farms or shops or factories as holy places only with great effort and embarrassment. It is understandably difficult for modern Americans to think of their dwellings and workplaces as holy, because most of these are, in fact, places of desecration, deeply involved in the ruin of Creation.

Read the entire essay here.

Prayer from Basil the Great, 4c C.E.

O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship
with all living things, are brothers the animals
to whom thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us.

We remember with shame that in the past
we have exercised the high dominion of [humankind] with ruthless cruelty.
So that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song,
has been a groan of travail.

May we realize that they live not for us alone
But for themselves and for thee,
and that they love the sweetness of life.

Christian Economics

To complete the Associate of Science Degree in Business, I was required to take courses in both Micro- and Macro-Economics.  I was aggravated, to say the least, that all that the economists talk about was the money. While I understand that there are courses for degree programs in Economics that go a bit more in depth, what most college students walk away from these introductory micro-/macro-economics courses is a really poor understanding of economics and all that it entails.

Being the autodidatic person that I am, I began to study economics on my own.  I read E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful in the late 70's, and so I re-read it. I became aquainted with the concepts of Steady-State economics, and during further study read Anabaptist/Mennonite Faith and Economics, edited by Calvin Redekop, Victor A. Krahn and Samuel J. Steiner. From there I was lead to The Economics of Anabaptism, 1525-1560 by Peter James Klassen. I am currently reading David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

What I noticed almost immediately was the different view of debt between Graeber and Klassen. Graeber follows Nietzsche in his analysis of Christianity, which presupposes that all Christianity is related to the state church. Whereas, Klassen views Christianity through the lens of Anabaptism. Not surprisingly this makes a big difference in how each views debt, and salvation.

Graeber points out something that I have seen for awhile. Resistance to empire took the form of pastoral rebellion. Debt-burdened farmers would flee the river valleys of the Fertile Crescent into the "pastoral fringes." According to Graeber, "[r]esistance, in the ancient Middle East, was always less a politics of rebellion than a politics of exodus, of melting away with one's flocks and families -- often before both were taken away" (pp.182-183). This brings up an interesting question: How are we, as God's people, to behave in this world? Are we to continue to function as part of the system that has become the normal expression of society? or are we, like the ancient pastoralists, to just melt into the fringes?

Understanding the history of money, and therefore debt, is essential to understanding our place in this world. In most "primative societies", as the colonialists call them, money is not seen as a form of standard currency. Community runs on obligations to each and every member of the community. Using money to satisfy debt between individuals eliminates the bond between them. It, in a sense is saying, "I have no further need of you in my life." In Book of the Eskimos, author Peter Freuchen tells of returning from an unsuccessful hunt and finding that one of the succeful hunters had dropped off several hundred pounds of meat for him. Freuchen tried to thank the man, and was rebuked with:

Up in our country we are human! ... And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody says thanks for that. What I get today, you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that gifts one makes slaves, and by whips one makes dogs (qtd.in Graeber, p. 79).

There is no debt established here, and yet there are those connections between members of the community that are not present in consumer societies. Consumer society runs on debts, and those debts are create by the powers. It is debt and the powers that I will be exploring on this blog.


Works Cited
Graeber, David. (2011) Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
    Melville House Publishing:Brooklyn, NY.

Klassen, Peter James. (1964) The Economics of Anabaptism, 
    1525-1560. Mouton & Co.:The Hague, NL.

Prayer for Today

Lord,
Help us be your people.
We have covered the lamp of righteousness,
and have sealed the basket so tight
that the flame has all but gone out.
Help us Lord, to remember
what it is to be your people.

A People on the Move

Abstract

Christian discipleship requires that the faithful are to be a people who are in this world, but not of this world. As such, we are obligated to either allow economic and political immigration, or provide a local equivalent standard of living that is equal to that in North America. We hold in the Light of God’s Word the complex realities of today’s undocumented migration. With our hearts, minds and might, we desire to walk in the wisdom, witness, and humility of Jesus Christ.

el amor de Dios no tiene fronteras

(The Love of God has no Borders)

A People on the Move

As an Anabaptist-Mennonite Christian, who strongly follows the admonition of Paul when he said “And be not conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2), the strongest stand that I can take is that of prophetic witness to power. In the case of immigration reform, the unified statement from Mennonite Church – USA is the witness I have chosen to support.

Mennonite Church-USA published the following principles on immigration:

1. Ensure a legal pathway to citizenship for immigrants currently living in theUnited States, without requiring unworkable fines or “touchback” provisions.
2. Maintain the current family-based immigration system and increase the number of available family visas, so that families can reunite and immigrate together in a legal and timely way. 
3. Create just and fair guest worker programs, along with appropriate oversight mechanisms, to protect labor rights such as fair wages, employer choice and due process protections. Provide the opportunity for immigrant workers to apply for permanent status and, eventually, citizenship.
4. Ensure access to basic benefits and services for those lawfully present, while avoiding policies that seek to deter access to public health and safety services and lead to a culture of fear and isolation in immigrant communities. 
5. Choose border security strategies that protect community rights, human dignity, and the natural environment while opposing policies that contribute to deaths and increased fear in immigrant communities.
6. Address political instability and economic disparity in migrant’s home countries caused, in part, by U.S. foreign policies and trade agreements. Create incentives for sustainable development.
7. End indiscriminate raids and detention for non-dangerous immigrants, while targeting enforcement efforts on drugs, weapons and people smugglers (Immigration Policy Principles, 2009).

People have migrated from place to place in search of a better life for time immemorial. The issue of immigration has many levels that are not always apparent. They include:

• Refugees – those persons seeking asylum in a new land that have been forced out of their homes by circumstances beyond their control.
• Immigrants – those persons who voluntarily have left home to move elsewhere seeking a better livelihood. This includes those who seek short- or long-term residence through established legal means, as well as those who feel that they are forced to go outside the laws of their destination country.
• Internally displaced persons – this includes persons who are forced from their homes by events outside of their control, as well as those who choose to move, but do not leave the country of which they are citizens.

These “people on the move” have significant impact on their home communities, as well as the community that they move into. When an emigré leaves, the loss includes labor and “brain drain,” as well as causing disruption of families (Carroll, 2010, pp. 1-2).  The disruption of community and family left behind is not the only stress placed on the life of the emigré. As it is stated in “Mennonite Church – USA 's Churchwide Statement on Immigration:”

Millions of people are painfully caught in the web of the structures that comprise the United States’  broken immigration system. Long wait lists keep families separated for years and tempt people to circumvent the system; workplace raids create a culture of fear and harm entire communities; and lax oversight of guest worker programs leaves a system ripe for exploitation and worker abuse. Societal discord on the issue has risen and also polarized people within the Church (pg.1).

Once they arrive here, many immigrants suffer from institutionalized racism. This not only damages the immigrant population, but the community where they have settled.  Marty Troyer (2013, 2014), Pastor of Houston Mennonite Church, identifies this as “racialization,” the acceptance and acquiescence of institutional racism. Troyer wrote in his article “Subverting the Myth” in Sojourners:

The Bible’s overarching narrative calls followers of Christ to become agents of resistance dismantling oppressive and racialized cultural expressions—from its commitment to the dignity of all humans as created in the image of God to God’s liberating action on behalf of the marginalized; from Jesus’ rejection of social discrimination and the creation of a radically inclusive community to Paul revealing the center of Jesus’ work to be “evangelizing peace” by breaking down the walls that divide us (Ephesians 2) and celebrating “oneness” and cultural differences as unequivocal assets to the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12) (2013).

Throughout both the Old and New Testaments, hospitality toward the stranger is a reoccurring theme. A number of Mennonite Theologians have put forth the interpretation that, contrary to popular evangelical desires, the “sin” of Sodom was not sexual misconduct as such, but the mistreatment of the “stranger,” or in today’s terms, the immigrant. The biblical tradition is one that instructs its followers to welcome strangers – as we welcome the stranger, we welcome Jesus. In the parable of separating the sheep and goats, Jesus says, “And the king will answer them,‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:40, NRSV). Yet instead of welcoming and supporting today's immigrants, “immigrants to the United States, whether documented or undocumented, often face a culture of unwelcome: suspicion, isolation, militarized borders, workplace raids, and visa backlogs” (Immigration Policy Principles, 2009, p. 1).  Like their spiritual forbearers in European Christendom, many American Christians hold forth practices towards the “stranger” that the “heathens” would find reprehensible.

From early on, Anabaptist thought held fast to the conviction that the “church was composed of committed disciples who were united in a bond of love”(Klassen, 1964, pg. 26). This left no room for individualism, and lead to the conviction that life only has meaning in relationship between God and fellow-man. There was not true discipleship if there was only the theocentric or egocentric; society around them was essential. The welfare of others has always been a compelling interest for the Anabaptists. It is incomprehensible that there would not be a fulfilling of needs of others that had a corresponding spiritual life. Just as there is no “me”in the Lord’s Prayer, there is an implicit “us” which requires care and concern for others.

Menno Simon wrote:

true evangelical faith is of such a nature that it cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it dies unto flesh and blood; destroys all lusts and desires; cordially seeks, serves and fears God; clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it; teaches, admonishes and reproves with the Word of the Lord; seeks that which is lost; binds up that which is wounded; heals that which is diseased and saves what is sound. The persecution, suffering and anxiety which befalls it for the sake of the truth of the Lord, is to it a glorious joy and consolation (Simon, 246).

With this we are admonished to care for those in need, no matter who they are, where they are from, or their legal status within any country.

For me, as an Anabaptist-Mennonite, there is no issue with immigration. We are obligated by faithful discipleship to allow those in need to come here and to share in God’s bounty, of which we are but stewards. As Peter James Klassen (1964) wrote of the early Anabaptists, “there could be no compartmentalization of the faithful disciple – his whole being, as well as his possessions, must willingly be placed at God’s disposal” (p. 114). Without this willingness, faith is dead.

References

Carroll R., M. D. (2010). Immigration and the Bible. Elkhart, IN:Mennonite Mission Network.  Retrieved Apr 18, 2014 from http://www.mennonitemission.net/SiteCollectionDocuments/Tools%20for%20Mission/Missio%20Dei/MissioDei19.E.pdf

Churchwide Statement on Immigration. (2014). Elkhart, IN:Mennonite Church– USA. Retrieved Apr 18, 2014 from http://www.mennoniteuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Immigration_Statement_2014Feb151.pdf

Immigration Policy Principles. (2009). Washington, D.C.:Mennonite Central Committee.  Retrieved Apr 18, 2014 from http://washington.mcc.org/system/file/immigration_principles.pdf

Klassen, P. J. (1964). The Economics of Anabaptism: 1523-1560. Mouton & Co.:The Hague, NL.

Simon, M. (1983). The Complete Works of Menno Simon. Pathway Publishers:Aylmer, ON, CA.

Troyer, M. (2013). “Subverting the Myth.” Sojourners. Retrieved Apr 26, 2014 from http://sojo.net/magazine/2013/12/subverting-myth

Troyer, M. (2014, Apr 26). “Renaming Racism.” The Peace Pastor. Retrieved Apr 26, 2014 from  http://blog.chron.com/thepeacepastor/2014/04/renaming-racism/