Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

"The Bright Daybreak of Peace and Brotherhood" (MLK) - Bradley Jersak

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."
                                                               - MLK in the s/Spirit of Jesus

Reading/listening to Martin Luther King Jr. and his daughter Bernice (who writes and speaks in the same spirit), the relentless, cruciform love they preach is never about the passive acceptance of injustice to keep the pseudo-peace with people who look and live like me. Rather, they teach me to identify love with overcoming evil through active, nonviolent resistance to external oppression, inequity & exclusion and to internal enslavement to fear, deception & hatred. Their interpretation of Jesus is best verified by its proximity to the Cross and its deliberate recollection of the Exodus.

To my white brothers and sisters, whatever we say on MLK Day to honor his memory will no doubt appear to be performative virtue-signaling as if “ally” were some identity we can claim for ourselves. I accept that. We did that to ourselves. But let us at least avoid making our engagement blatant hypocrisy by co-opting the man’s own words to oppose his call to the work of justice—which included public opposition to all death-dealing via racism, war & executions. Better to at least remain silent in the guilt of our complicity. But far better still to hear and heed God’s voice through his Black prophets—and not merely one token day per year.

While we brag or complain about our 'deconstruction,' consider their gospel, forged in the furnace of Egypt, Babylon, Rome, and America over many millennia. While our cultured despisers cheer the end of faith in the West, I would ask, "Since when did Black faith not count? And why would we hope for and serve in its erasure? How “progressive” is that?" Rather, Rev. Thurman and Rev. MLK’s “religion of Jesus” (the gospel of nonviolent justice and anti-othering love) is, for me, a (final?) beacon of the Jesus Way amid the church’s broader meltdown. They have my full attention.

Jim Forest: Crooked Yet Straight - by Ron Dart

Ron Dart with Jim Forest

Jim Forest: Crooked Yet Straight

Jim Forest crossed the river, unexpectedly, January 13 2022—he was 80 years of age. Many were the seeming crooked paths taken and yet each was his paradoxical straight trail home. Jim and I met, initially, when I was on staff with Amnesty International in the 1980s and he was on staff with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Many a handwritten and typed letter crossed the ocean from Holland to Canada and back in those years and as emails became the standard way of communicating, they became our dependable bird of delivery.

Most who know Jim are acutely aware of his journey as a “red diaper baby” to the military, to Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker, friendship with Thomas Merton and Daniel Berrigan (he wrote biographies of each of them). Then Jim’s turn to Orthodoxy and founding of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, the “Peace” vision ever held high. Such a straight yet crooked line pilgrimage is tracked, in a compact way, in his autobiography of sorts, Writing Straight with Crooked Lines: A Memoir (2020). Jim’s final book was on Thich Nhat Hanh, Eyes of Compassion: Learning from Thich Nhat Hanh (2021). There were also the many intricately illustrated children’s tales and book on the Beatitudes which are must-reads. There is so much that could be said about Jim’s living and written journey, his wife, Nancy, as he said in Writing Straight “one of my editors long before it ever crossed our minds that we might marry each other” (322)---such a lovely photo of  Jim and Nancy together on page 322.

I have been on the National Board of The Thomas Merton Society of Canada (TMSC) for more than 20 years and the TMSC invited Jim to Canada to speak on Merton a few times, Jim’s photographs of each visit more than worth the heeding and seeing. The fact that Jim lived in Holland many a decade, Erasmus was from Holland, Erasmus was, probably, the most significant “peace theologian” of the 16^th century and Erasmus an icon for mine, meant we had much in common on the Erasmus journey. Jim sent me many a photo of Erasmus from Holland, and we were invited to write a book together, by Orbis, on Erasmus. We never did do such a book but many were our affinities with the crown prince of “peace theology.”

It was just a matter of time before Jim and I were on the same path again with the American Beats. Merton had an interest in them, Jim did also and I published a book, Thomas Merton and the Beats of the North Cascades (2008) that Jim wrote a kindly “Foreward” to. It is, though, the many walks (when Jim was on the west coast of Canada, he bunked in with us), conversations, extensive correspondence, generous vulnerability, and life lived with its crooked yet straight line homeward that will forever massage my soul, mind, and imagination---rest well my dear friend, well done.

amor vincit omnia

Ron Dart             

Becoming Neighbors" - Kinship with Refugee Claimants - Anika Bauman with Ron Dart

CLICK HERE to order your copy of Anika Bauman's Becoming Neighbours: Five Values for a World of Welcome. 

CLICK HERE to visit kinbrace.ca.

Bruce Fisk with Bradley Jersak - Israel, Palestine and Engaging Christian Zionism

Dr. Bruce Fisk of NEME (Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East) joins Bradley Jersak (Dean of Theology & Culture, SSU / IRPJ) to discuss Israel, Palestine and Engaging Christian Zionism. 

Among the questions we discuss:

1. LIFE ON THE GROUND: What can you tell us about life on the ground in Palestine? 
2. POLITICS: What is the policy of the state of Israel in the occupied territories
3. THE WALL: What? Why? What are the real and perceived threats re: terrorism that generate Jewish fears?
4. THE US: What role does the US play? Are they an honest broker? 
5. CHRISTIAN ZIONISM: What is Christian Zionism? Key beliefs? 
   How do they (ab)use the Scriptures to make their case?
   What has been the impact of Christian Zionism on Palestinian Christians? 
6. BIBLICAL JUSTICE: The Hebrew prophets seem to connect Jewish relationship to the land on two contingencies (1) treatment of the stranger and (2) NOT making military alliances with foreign empires.
7. ANTISEMITISM: When drawing attention to the injustices, there's the threat of being labeled anti-semitic. How do we avoid the perils of anti-Semitism while also addressing concerns regarding human rights, biblical exegesis, and even the Gospels themselves.
8. SOLUTIONS: situation feels hopeless. I see the powerlessness of oppressed people. Is there hope? Have you seen paths to productive dialogue and reconciliation?

 

Reflections on Mother Maria, helping Jews forge baptism certificates - Wayne Northey

I have relatives though who insist, not unlike Trump cultists, that there is “no good thing” (John 1: 46–slightly paraphrased) that comes from Christianity.Ever.

Though I have pointed them to this winsome article, On the Front Lines, by former noted CBC journalist, Brian Stewart. In it we read:

For many years I’ve been struck by the rather blithe notion, spread in many circles including the media, and taken up by a rather large section of our younger population, that organized, Mainstream Christianity has been reduced to a musty, dimly lit Backwater of contemporary life, a fading force. Well, I’m here to tell you from what I’ve seen from my “ring-side seat” of events over decades that there is nothing that is further from the truth. That notion is a serious distortion of reality. I’ve found there is NO movement, or force, closer to the raw truth of war, famines, crises, and the vast human predicament, than organized Christianity in Action. And there is no alliance more determined and dogged in action than church workers, ordained and lay members, when mobilized for a common good. It is these Christians who are right “On the Front Lines” of committed humanity today and when I want to find that Front, I follow their trail.

It is a vast Front stretching from the most impoverished reaches of the Developing world to the hectic struggle to preserve caring values in our own towns and cities. I have never been able to reach these Front lines without finding Christian volunteers already in the thick of it, mobilizing congregations that care, and being a faithful witness to truth, the primary light in the darkness and so often, the only light.

Apparently for my relatives, Christopher Hitchens is their last word on the matter:

Religion poisons everything!

Hence Peter Hitchens’ (brother to the above Enraged One, now deceased) testimonial: The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith.

As all faith-full discover however, God has his ways  . . . (Hint: it helps to be open-minded! . . .) My sister-in-law however, pretty much each time she sees us seems hellbent–pun intended, though there is much on my website about hell that runs contrary to religious fundamentalism–on reminding us that for her part, she is running as fast as she can away from organized Christianity . . . (There are sadly enough, some forms of “eschewable” Christianity dotting the vast 2,000-year-plus, worldwide Christian landscape.)

Would that she eventually discover, like Francis Thompson in the brilliant poem, The Hound of Heaven, that there is nowhere left to run, and give into God’s unrelenting Love! Though while God is indeed relentless, as the poet eventually discovered, to date, my relative seems to be just as obstinate. But the only hell there is, is the fire of God’s ceaseless Love poured out towards us! So there is endless hope! And Jesus of course, like hot knife through butter, descended into hell according to the  great Church creeds, precisely to initiate full Infernal Meltdown–to rid hell’s contents forever! Amen! And Amen!

Bluntly: Love wins!

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