The etymology of the term radical is from the Latin radix, “root”; if we want to get to the root of anything we must be radical. Radical Discipleship is about nothing more and nothing less than laying bare the roots of the personal and socio-political pathologies of our imperial society and its dead-end history, even as we seek to recover the roots of our deep biblical tradition: namely, the messianic movement of rebellion and restoration, of repentance and renewal, a “Way out of no way” that has been going on since the dawn of resistance to the dusk of empire.
By Simon Barrow. British Journal of Theological Education (12:2) pp 95ff. 13 pp. Ched Myers is not a well-known figure in European church or academic circles. He is a forty-something fifth-generation Californian white male. Los Angeles, a city ‘oppressed by the hucksters of over-development and quick profit’ (his words) is the place he calls home….
By Ched Myers Catholic New Times (Toronto), p. 9. 2 pp. Article link – this will take you to this free article on the Shalom Center website (in a new window). A friend of mine who teaches in the local public school reported that this was the first question asked her by third graders the morning…
By Ched Myers A chapter in The Other Side of Sin: Woundedness from the Perspective of the Sinned-Against, edited by Susan Nelson and Andrew Sung Park, SUNY Press, pp 77-108. 23 pp. “The vocabulary of Christian faith suffers from misunderstanding at every turn, but no one term is as badly understood in both society and…
By Ched Myers Ministerial Formation (WCC, Geneva) . 5 pp. This brief reflection proceeds from the conviction that the goal of theological education in the North American context today should be to equip everyday disciples to overcome their sense of disempowerment and denial in order to engage in the evangelical works of mercy and service,…
By Ched Myers Herald Press. 2 pp. The authors of Set Free: A Journey Toward Solidarity Against Racism advocate that we must all contribute to the struggle to “melt the iceberg of racism.” Similarly, Christina Pacosz concludes her reflection on the shattering impact of lies: “We must chase them to the sun, again and again,…
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 With Elaine Enns. A section in Making Peace with Conflict: Practical Skills for Conflict Transformation, edited by C. Schrock-Shenk & L. Ressler. Herald Press/Pandora Press. 8 pp This chapter looks briefly at the biblical commitment to equality, then examines three aspects of gender conflict today: equal hearing, equal opportunity, and equal respect….
By Ched Myers The Other Side. 5 pp. “This is my body” should lie at the heart of our liturgy— and at the heart of our politics. We have arrived again at the quadrennial rite we call presidential elections. Like so many liturgical forms, the ritual remains long after the substance behind it has atrophied.By…
By Ched Myers The Witness, July-August, 1996, 2 pp. Most of us in the U.S. suffer from a profound alienation from history. In our imperial culture, inconvenient historical narratives have tended to be silenced while legitmating narratives have been mystified. We live with a peculiarly unaccountable, if not amnesiac, relationship toward the past. Whether we…