By Ched Myers The Witness. 11 pp. For the better part of two centuries, modernism has waged a relentless war against narrative ways of knowing. The forces of rationalism, abstraction and science effectively marginalized, suppressed, or destroyed cultures of story. Utilitarian facts were privileged over useful fictions, and the propositional eclipsed the poetic, while narrative…
By Ched Myers The Other Side. 2 pp. Felix is staring out at Santa Rosa Island. We are sitting on ocean smoothed boulders at El Capitan, northwest of Santa Barbara. Only here do we break the unspoken taboo against speaking about our fathers. When we were young our families used to camp along this magical…
By Ched Myers Toronto: Malcolm Lester Books, Crossroads Press. 3 pp There is an old Bible story about King Josiah of Judah, who is told of “a book of the Law” that has been discovered in the basement of the Temple (2 Kings 22). The king summons all his advisors to interpret the meaning of…
By Ched Myers In Apostle of Peace: Essays in Honor of Daniel Berrigan, Orbis Books, 1996. 4 pp. I wish to reflect on Daniel Berrigan’s contribution to my understanding of how to reach and teach and live the Bible. If my appreciation seems like a eulogy, it is because I believe that good words about those…
By Ched Myers (Orbis, 1994). 2 pp. For too long, serious and critical Bible study in the First World has been equated almost exclusively with academic study of the Bible. This is not because ordinary people – particularly those identified with churches or synagogues –are incapable of reading the Bible seriously. Rather it is due…
By Ched Myers The Witness, September 1992. 3 pp. What if we held a war and everybody came? This, it seems, is what we have just witnessed. Those who tried to raise their voices against Desert Storm were officially silenced, and the rest were officially silent, successfully manipulated yet again by opportunistic politicians. Silent in…
By Ched Myers Sojourners, Oct, 1989. [Reprinted in Pilgrims and Seekers: Sainst Without Pedestals. Eerie: Pax Christi, 1995.] 2 pp. Sometimes the advent of death is like a thief in the night, too. Though we are surrounded by its presence daily, on the mean streets of our cities and in the countryside of the imperial…