Young Anabaptist Radicals

Monthly Archive: September 2011

A visit to Occupy Chicago

Yesterday I went downtown to visit the new Occupy Chicago encampment in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The loose gathering of activist began their occupation on Friday and continued through a raining weekend. They were inspired by the Occupy Together movement which started at Wall Street in New York two weeks ago.

On a rainy Monday morning I found them still enthusiastically yelling slogans up through the vast canyon walls shaped on one side by the Chicago Board of Trade building and the Reserve bank on the other. Here’s a slideshow of the photos I took:


Click the full screen button in the lower right hand corner for best viewing.

I’m still pondering this Occupy Together movement. It’s easy for me to get excited about people standing up to corporations, but (more…)

September 27, 2011 activism, Economics, Wealth Read more >

DADT: Why I’m Surprised

So I’m a Christian, a Mennonite: anti-war, anti-violence, anti-military. My Dad would say I’m a good liberal Mennonite (since those two words are, in his mind, synonymous) but I’m also gay. So I was surprised when I watched the video on YouTube entitled “Telling my dad I am gay- Live” (see below) and I was excited for the guy. Sure it’s not strange that I’d be excited to hear a guy, heart racing, scared to death, come out to his Dad and that I’d be even more excited when I heard his Dad say the words “I still love you” and “this doesn’t change our relationship”. The part that surprised me was that I was such a big fan even though this guy is in the military.

I have to admit that since I became convinced of Anabaptist theology sometime after college I’ve never been a fan of any man in the military. In fact I cringe at the thought and I’m very uncomfortable around such people. Even still on Wednesday when I watched this video I was thrilled and encouraged. To be fair my reaction had little to do with the fact that he’s a soldier and more to do with the response he received but nonetheless I became a fan of a soldier.

(more…)

September 23, 2011 LGBTQ, US Military Read more >

Thunderbirds and Airshow Evangelism for Empire

Crossposted from As of Yet Untitled

This weekend has seen the death of 10 people in two different crashes at air shows. My own experience at the Chicago Air and Water show this summer has had me reflecting on this cultural phenomenon and its importance to U.S. patriots. If you want to skip the philosophical background, you can jump to the Thunderbirds as Evangelists section below.

This summer I read the Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. I’ve found his lens of the five moral foundation theory to be a quite useful framework over the last few years for understanding liberal and conservative morality. In this book he looks at the things that make for happiness, drawing on ancient religious texts as well as the philosophical traditions juxtaposed with modern science and changing views of human psychology.

Haidt, a Jewish atheist, also looks at the emotions and sense experienced in conjunction with our sense of the divine, a sentiment closely linked with that of purity. Divinity and purity are contrasted with those things that are disgusting and unclean. This is a vocabulary that is familiar to Christians from the Levitical purity codes all the way through Revelation.

(more…)

September 19, 2011 Military, patriotism, US Military Read more >

tell a story

I was a senior in high school in September 2001. I was to have a cross-country meet that Tuesday evening, the 11th, and the boy’s soccer team at my school was to play its archrival. I remember not being surprised that we were attacked. Previous visits to Africa and Latin American revealed to me glimpses of negative psychological and environmental impact of some US American foreign military and development policy. I saw why people could be very angry. I was coming into consciousness about the injustices in our national system, and I was not particularly happy with the USA either, at that point in my life.

But being raised Mennonite taught me that no matter how mad I was, I was not to use violence as a means to address conflict. So I was frustrated that others had mobilized power in a destructive way…and I was even more sad to hear the US government and many people’s reaction. The healing and clarifying line that emerged for me throughout the next years was that of the families of many of the victims who formed a group to make it clear in the saber-rattling days afterwards: “Our Grief is Not A Cry for War.” This line told a powerful story.

One of the most significant impacts that 9/11/01 has had on my ministry is that I have been challenged to tell more stories instead of making factual, theological, or ideological points. So, I would like to take the opportunity of this post to share a story about a Muslim young man who was a victim of a post-9/11 hate crime. Don Teague, from CBS News, wrote about it (18Jul11) and I quote his article at length: (more…)

September 11, 2011 activism, Anniversary, antiracism, Bigotry, Current Events, Death Penalty, Foreign Policy, God, Guns, Hate, Journalism, Peace & Peacemaking, Terrorism Read more >

Grieving and Honoring 5 years of Young Anabaptist Radicals

Grasshopper with Dew Drops on Clover at Sunrise

Yesterday was 5 years to the day since my first post here on YAR, a week after Eric opened things up.

I was writing a little over a month after I returned to the United States from two and a half years in the United Kingdom, where Anabaptism was a set of values and relationships rather than a bunch of denominations. I longed for something similar in the US. I first started sending emails out to people about the idea of starting a blog in October 2005, when I was still in England. As I said in my first post:

The people I talked with shared an interest in a space where they could explore Anabaptist values and how they apply to broad areas like economics, war and society and more specific issues like abortion, homosexuality and the “war on terror.” They wanted a space to disagree or agree openly with the church,with society and with each other.

This is attempt to build that space.

(more…)

September 7, 2011 Anniversary, Meta (YAR), Sexism Read more >

Who do we want to be?

I’ll admit at the outset–I used to read YAR and comment on post back in the day, but got busy with seminary.  But, now that I’m out of school I’ve had renewed time and interest in reading again.  I don’t feel like I have much of a right to comment on the state of YAR, because I’ve not been back int the blogosphere long.  But, I’m going to comment anyway.

It’s been five years since YAR got started.  When I first started reading, there was a decent balance between men and women commenting and posting.  And there were a lot of questions about who this group was, who it included and excluded, and what this group wanted to be.

Looking at where the group is now, and using my powers of deduction, I see a lot of white, cradle Mennonite guys posting on this site.  I wonder what happened to the women.  I don’t see them posting much.

That’s leads me to my question for this group–when I look at the suggested taglines for YAR, it makes me wonder if these taglines maintain an exclusive vibe to them.  The biggest culprits are the ones that really made me laugh–“Quilting outside the lines” and “Not necessarily naked”.  I almost voted for one of them, but then I realized that this feeds right into the insider problem of the Mennonite church. (more…)

September 6, 2011 Meta (YAR), Sexism Read more >