A House for All Peoples? Embracing the Immigrant

By Ched Myers Sojourners. 4 pp. There have always been two Americas: that of rich and poor, of inclusion and exclusion. The America of inclusion found expression in the ideal of “liberty and justice for all,” and has been embodied whenever Indian treaties were honored, and in the embrace of civil rights, women’s suffrage, or…

Easter Faith and Empire: Recovering the Prophetic Tradition on the Emmaus Road

By Ched Myers In Getting on Message: Challenging the Christian Right from the Heart of the Gospel, ed. by Peter Laarman, Boston: Beacon Press, 2006, pp. 51-67. 9 pp In the first-century Pax Romana, Christians had the difficult and demanding task of discerning how to cling to a radical ethos of life – symbolized preeminently…

The Gospel of the Cross Confronts the Powers: Mark’s Passion Narrative

By Ched Myers Chapter in Consuming Passion: Why the Killing of Jesus Really Matters. Edited by Simon Barow and J. Bartley, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, pp. 61-73. 7 pp. The most concise thing I can say about my reaction to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is: I loved the book,but hated the…

The All Saints Triduum: Remembering as a Household Practice

By Ched Myers Published in Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries E-News. 4pp. Elaine and I have experienced a lot of loss over the last two years. The death of loved ones leaves a hole in our hearts and souls, one that can be salved only with memory. We North Americans, however, are not very competent at the…

Re-engaging Religious Teaching on Consumption: Ched Myers and Sabbath Economics

By Gary Gardner, Worldwatch, pp 26-30. 5 pp. In his book God’s Politics,evangelical minister Jim Wallis describes an episode from his seminary days when a fellow student took scissors and snipped out of an old Bible every verse that focused on poverty and wealth.The remaining text was tattered and fragile,reports Wallis;these economic themes occur in…

Pentecost, Part I: Cultural Insurgency and Gospel Liberation: Reflections on Jazz, Pentecostal Faith, and the Church

By Ched Myers Talk at Presbybop’s “Jazz and the Church” Conference, New York. 11 pp. Azusa Street today is a garbage-strewn lane tucked away in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, about 5 miles from my home in East L.A. The teeming tourists and transients are ignorant about its historical significance in the history of…

Pentecost, Part II: Reflections on Socio-economic Redistribution and “Half-heartedness”

By Ched Myers Versions of this article appeared in two parts in the Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries E-News, May and September, 2005. 5 pp. On the feast of Pentecost, Christians re-narrate the “birth” of the church in the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet what sort of practice the Spirit empowered at the first Pentecost, and…

Was Jesus a Practitioner of Nonviolence? Reading Mark 1:21-3:19 through Martin Luther King

By Ched Myers Bible in TransMission (U.K.). (Note: A short version of “The Radical Nonviolent Witness of Jesus, May 2009). 9 pp. Rev. James W. Lawson, a retired Methodist minister in his 80s now, has been a major figure in faith-based activism in the U.S. One of Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest colleagues in the…

Foreword to Ross and Gloria Kinsler, editors, God’s Economy: Biblical Studies from Latin America

By Ched Myers Orbis Books. 3 pp. There is an extraordinary story in Jeremiah 36 that the great Jesuit radical Daniel Berrigan drew our attention to not long ago in a retreat with Christian peace and justice activists. It concerns how the prophet’s condemnation of Judah’s economic and military policies earned him an official “cease…