Will D Campbell: Radical Baptist - Theologian of Radical Grace

For reasons that I am not totally clear about I have been dipping back into the life and writings of Will D Campbell a radical Baptist preacher from the south of the USA. If you dip into the history of the civil rights movement you are likely to find him popping up here and there as a fugitive presence. He was an activist, pastor, theologian for most of his life without a formal church position and with a habit of raising difficult questions for theological and social liberals who might have assumed that he was on their side.

For an account of his life check out Will Campbell - A man of the Word.

Richard D Goode has recently edited an anthology of Campbell's work, Writings on Reconciliation and Resistance (Cascade Books, 2009). The book contains some good extracts that catches the flavour of what Campbell has on about.

If prophets are called to unveil and expose the illegitimacy of those principalities masquerading as "the right" and purportedly using their powers for "the good," then Will D. Campbell is one of the foremost prophets in American religious history. Like Clarence Jordan and Dorothy Day and probably Wendell Berry in his own more gentle but nonteheless challenging way Campbell incarnates the radical iconoclastic vocation of standing in contraposition to society, naming the racial, economic, and political idols that seduce and delude. (Jacques Ellul is one of the influences lurking behind the scenes here)

In this anthology Campbell diagnoses a problem afflicting much of the church today. Zealous to make a difference in the world by acquiring the power of legislation and enforcement, Christians employ society's political science rather than the scandalous politics of Jesus. Although well-intentioned, Christians are, Campbell laments, mistakenly "up to our steeples in politics." Campbell's prescription is for disciples simply to incarnate the reconciliation that Christ has achieved. Rather than crafting savvy strategies and public policies, "Do nothing," Campbell counsels. "Be reconciled!"

Yet his encouragement to "do nothing" is no endorsement of passivity or apolitical withdrawal. Rather, Campbell calls for disciples to give their lives of reconciliation in irrepressible resistance against all principalities and powers that would impede or deny our reconciliation in Christ—an unrelenting prophetic challenge leveled especially at institutional churches, as well as Christian colleges and universities.

In sermons, difficult-to-access journal articles, and archival manuscripts and extracts from his books assembled here by Goode, Campbell develops what reconciliation looks like. Being the church, for example, means identifying with, and advocating for, society's "least one"-including violent offenders, disenfranchised minorities, and even militant bigots. In fact, in Campbell's understanding the scorned sectarian and disinherited denizen is often closer to the peculiar Christian genius than are society's well-healed powerbrokers.



Part 2 on Campbell's ecclesiology and Part 3 on Campbell's publications to follow

Waihopai Ploughshares Trial

The legal and moral issues around Australia's engagement in the Iraq war have never been fully debated or tested. The Australian Government has been content to wind down the engagement and have never been substantially pressed on the issues.

In New Zealand action by some anti war activists that is now going to trial is providing a public forum for consideration of these issues.

Bryan Law provides a good account of the debate in these reports:

• Day Four – Waihopai Ploughshares Trial 12/03/2010
• Waihopai Three Trial Focuses Peace Activists 12/03/2010
• Waihopai Ploughshares Trial: Day Three 11/03/2010
• Waihopai Ploughares Trial: Day Two 10/03/2010
• Day One of the Waihopai Ploughshares trial 10/03/2010 
• Day Five

Thinking about Israel and the Palestinians, building, land...

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

- Leviticus 19:33-34

Death, Government and an entitlement mentality

There seems to be an emerging trend in Australian public life that throws an interesting light on the attitude to death. Simplistically put it runs something like this: Australians shouldn't have to die, or suffer injury due to accidents and the government should do something about it and they are culpable if they don't. The media whip up the frenzy with little clarity about who really is or should be responsible for what.

The public storm over deaths related to the insulation installation program is a case in point. It did not actually matter that there was a certain death rate due to industrial accidents related to this sort of activity previously and that the accident rate after the program started was proportionately less than before the program began.

A similar mentality hs been displayed with respect to Australians arrested abroad and Australians subject to delay or discomfort due to natural disasters wile travelling overseas.

It is a bit hard to pin down but their is a sense of privileged entitlement accompanied by whinging on a large scale that seems to say this shouldn't happen to us and the Australian Government should be there immediately to sort it all out.

That life is dangerous and that in the end we do not get out of it alive is a truth that is fast assuming the status of the unthinkeable. Everything should be under control.

That life is a gift that we do not and cannot control but should live with open hands rather than with a grasping sense of entitlement becomes a heresy. The Beatitudes reflect a way of living that represents that awareness that we are not in control and should live gracefully out of control.

Turning the other cheek

Walter Brueggeman article that I missed in Ekklesia first time around. "How turning the other cheek defies oppression. Jesus' teaching in a quick summary is about not retaliating against violence with violence.

Christendom mentality

Thanks to Jon_Bartley

  

Two good articles challenging Lord Carey: Frank Skinner (Times) http://tinyurl.com/yju8x6t Riazat Butt (Guardian) http://tinyurl.com/yjfqj67

This Christendom mentality displayed by Lord Carey former Archbishop of Canterbury is not unknown in Australia.

Destruction of village life in northern Iraq

Christian Peacemaker Teams have released a report on the destruction of village life in northern Iraq up out of the line of sight of mainstream media according to Ekklesia.

Christian Peacemaker Teams, which intervenes nonviolently in situations of conflict and confrontation across the world, yesterday released a 54-page report detailing the destruction of northern Iraqi village life by Turkish and Iranian attacks over the past two years. CPT is calling for an end to this damage to civilian life.

This report documents the impact of an intermittent war waged on an isolated civilian population, the historical context in which the current warfare is occurring, and the international legal implications of decisions taken by various militaries engaged in acts of violence against a vulnerable civilian population in an already vulnerable and war-torn country.

For a full copy of the report go to http://www.cpt.org/files/CPT_Iraq_Bombing_Report.pdf