Young Anabaptist Radicals

Civilization

Mountainhead Glossary and Further Reading: Accelerationism, Longtermism, Doomers, Decels, Technofeudalism and the Shield of Boringness

Photo of large chess board with three characters from Mountainhead talking around it, HBO publicity

This piece was originally published in Geez Magazine, Spring 2024 issue as “Further reading: Generative AI and Artificial General Intelligence.” I am adapting the piece after watching the movie Mountainhead which references many of the concepts in this piece. Key concepts and terms are in bold and italics.

In understanding Mountainhead, it is useful to distinguish between generative Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Generalized Intelligence (AGI).

Generative AI is an existing technology that creates text or images based on prompts and are often Large Language Models trained on vast amounts of data. ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney are prominent examples of this software.

Artificial Generalized Intelligence (AGI) is a hypothetical future technology that can fully replicate any human mental ability. AGI does not currently exist, but appears widely in movies, perhaps most famously as Skynet in the terminator movies.

As the summaries below lay out, much of the conversations today are about whether current developments in generative AI technology indicates that we are close (or closer) to developing AGI.

Can Humanity Survive AI?, Garrison Lovely, Jacobin Magazine, Jan 22, 2024
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/can-humanity-survive-ai

Lovely gives an up to the minute historical overview of emerging schools of thought around AI.

There are two movements raising the alarm among deep learning scientists and AI leaders that are important to understand.

The first is the AI safety or “doomers” camp that warns AI puts the future of humanity at risk. They are concerned about “an irreversible loss of human control over autonomous AI systems” similar to the plot of the movie Terminator. Last year, Ukraine may have been the first country to use Lethal Autonomous Weapons that kill people without human oversight.

The other AI critical movement that Lovely identifies is the AI Ethics community that is focused on the more mundane ways in which current use of AI exacerbates racism, discrimination against poor people, bad labor conditions and makes the rich richer.

The hyper capitalist school of effective accelerationism (also called e/acc) is pushing for the profit driven development AGI as soon as possible to usher in a post-human future. They focus their ire on the effective altruism, (EA) a movement made famous by crypto tycoon and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman Fried. The EA movement is urging deceleration of AI development and, on this issue, are broadly aligned with the AI safety movement. Accelerationists often derisively refer to their opponents as decels from Decelerationism.

On June 26, 2025, Google search results suggest "Do you mean Accelerationism?" when searching for its opposite: Decellerationism
On June 26, 2025, Google search results suggest “Do you mean Accelerationism?” when searching for its opposite: Decellerationism

AI Won’t Overthrow Us, But It Will Optimize the Capitalist Death Machine, Kelly Hayes interviewing Paris Max, Truthout, Aug 3, 2023 https://truthout.org/audio/ai-wont-overthrow-us-but-it-will-optimize-the-capitalist-death-machine/

Abolitionist writer and organizer Kelly Hayes interviews Paris Marx of the podcast “Tech Won’t Save Us.” They lay out the AI Ethics argument that the focus on existential threat AI poses (the “doomers” referenced above) is a distraction from the way that current AI technology is exacerbating capitalism and white supremacist structures today. In other words, stoking the fear of future AI overlords is a distraction from our current billionaire overlords and an attempt to avoid regulation and critical scrutiny of current AI technology. They quote Douglas Rushkoff’s summary of billionaire’s apocalyptic doomerism: “[The ultra wealthy are] afraid the AIs are going to be as mean to them as they’ve been to us.” (Original source of quote: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/28/artificial-intelligence-doug-rushkoff-tech-billionaires-escape-mode )

Hayes and Marx unpack the trendy philosophy longtermism as a sort of “tech religion.” Longtermism focuses on existential risks to humanity and the well being of future humans. Marx and Haye argue this is often at the expense of current humans. Longermism is closely tied with the Effective Altruism movement described above.

The interview looks at a number of other problems with current AI technology. The massive data centers of “the cloud” that ChatGPT and other generative AI models run on are having major negative climate impacts. There is also a lack of transparency in the training data for generative AI. At the end of the day, Hayes argues, “the so-called revolution that AI offers is really a hardening of the status quo.”

The Friar Who Became the Vatican’s Go-To Guy on A.I., Jason Horowitz, NY Times, Feb 9, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/world/europe/italy-artificial-intelligence-ethics.html

Self identified geek, Father Benanti, has worked with Pope Francis and the president of Microsoft on AI ethics. Benanti says that the Pope started paying more attention to AI after an AI generated image of him in a white puffer coat went viral. Francis was less interested in the technology and more in what he can do to protect the vulnerable from its negative impact. On January 1, 2024, the pope called for an international treaty to avoid a merciless future in which “inscrutable algorithms decide who is granted asylum, who gets a mortgage, or who, on the battlefield, lives or dies.”

New AI app lets users ‘text with’ Jesus and other biblical figures, Fiona André, Religion News, August 7, 2023 https://religionnews.com/2023/08/07/new-ai-app-lets-users-text-with-jesus-and-other-biblical-figures/

For $2.99 a month you can talk to a generative AI (like ChatGPT) trained to impersonate Biblical characters. In case you were worried, schlocky Christian digital tchotchkes are part of our AI future.

Justine Bateman thread, Twitter (currently known as X), May 13, 2023
https://twitter.com/JustineBateman/status/1657476895972413440

Bateman is a writer, actor and software developer. During the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike in the summer of 2023, Bateman wrote to her fellow union members about a possible future in which actors aren’t needed anymore, but their likenesses are used by generative AI software to create movies.

Disinformation reimagined: how AI could erode democracy in the 2024 US elections, Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian, July 19, 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/19/ai-generated-disinformation-us-elections

A catalog of tools that could be used by malicious actors in elections: deep fake audio and video of candidates, chatbots posing as voters, more fake news, more sophisticated voter suppression campaigns and AI driven variations on Cambridge Analytics social media psychoprofile hacking.

The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, Cory Doctorow, Verso Books, 2023. https://truthout.org/audio/to-fight-big-tech-we-must-seize-the-means-of-computation/

Doctorow is a tech realist who sees positive and negative roles for tech while centering the problem on capitalism and the big tech companies seeking maximum profit. He is very critical of what he calls technofeudalism in which consumers sign our rights over the walled gardens of tech companies in exchange for protection. He points out how Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon will only protect their customers when it is in their best interests.

He argues that the shield of boringness is used by tech companies to avoid effective regulation. In other words, the tremendous effort required to understand tech and laws enough to advocate deters effective advocacy to hold big tech accountable. I also recommend Kelly Haye’s interview with Doctorow in September, 2023: https://truthout.org/audio/to-fight-big-tech-we-must-seize-the-means-of-computation/

Honorable Mention

How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work – No technology in modern memory has caused mass job loss among highly educated workers. Will generative AI be an exception?, Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, Jan 20, 2023 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/chatgpt-ai-economy-automation-jobs/672767/

Conservatives Are Panicking About AI Bias, Think ChatGPT Has Gone ‘Woke’ – All AI systems carry biases, and ChatGPT allegedly being “woke” is far from the most dangerous one. Motherboard by Vice, Jan 17, 2023
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93a4qe/conservatives-panicking-about-ai-bias-years-too-late-think-chatgpt-has-gone-woke

Team Human vs. Team Posthuman—Which Side Are You On? How Silicon Valley billionaires intentionally muddle public conversations around human extinction., Emile P. Torres, Truthdig, April 4, 2024 https://www.truthdig.com/articles/team-human-vs-team-posthuman-which-side-are-you-on/

No AI tools were used in generating these summaries or writing this article.
Featured image is an HBO publicity photo from the Mountainhead movie

June 27, 2025 Civilization, Corporations, End Times, Technology, Wealth, 0 Read more >

What if we let subversive play leak into our lives?

Carnival de Resistance spread in Geez Magazine December 2015

This article was originally published two years ago today in Geez Magazine two years ago today. The photos in the spread above and the slideshows below are from my role in the the Carnival de Resistance as resident clown and constantly conflicted documentarian. The Carnival is coming to Philadelphia, PA in July and August 2018!

If life is a broken record and the only tune we play is the song of the empire, this past September I jumped out of the groove for 10 days when I joined a theatre troupe called the Carnival de Resistance.

See a big version of the Carnival spread above here.

The Carnival is a project that has been experimenting in re-wilding in the way of Jesus since 2013, with month-long residencies in Virginia and a shorter presence at the Wild Goose Festival in 2014.

(more…)

December 22, 2017 Art, Civilization, culture, Music Read more >

Hope in the face of apocalypse: A review of Inhabit movie

This review was originally posted two years ago on radicaldiscipleship.net

8 years ago, I showed “What a Way to Go” to my family. I hope they would, as the movie tag line says, come to grips “with Peak Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot and the demise of the American lifestyle.”

Halfway through the movie my sister walked out. It wasn’t so much that she was opposed to the message of the movie. She just couldn’t take how relentlessly depressing it was.

I suspect all of us in the radical discipleship movement have been there at one time or another. We go through some form of the transformation that Tommy is documenting in his post-evangelical series. In one way or another we begin to grasp that catastrophic path our civilization is on. Which begs the question: How do we get others to recognize it to?

Broadly speaking, this is a question of pedagogy, or how people learn. Watching an accurate, though deeply demoralizing documentary was not the way to go for my sister. Messages of doom just aren’t that effective at winning converts.

The producers of the new documentary Inhabit clearly understand this. As one person interviewed in the film puts it, focusing on catastrophe has limited change potential. Their documentary is a lush, alluring opposite to “What a Way to Go”in many ways except one: the message is the same: ultimately industrial agriculture will destroy us all and we need an alternative.

From there the two films diverge dramatically: Inhabit opens by focusing on the hopeful, human-centered framework of regeneration: putting positive things back into the land. “We can actually be healing forces,” says permaculturalist Ben Falk.

“What could it be like if humans could make this place sing with life?” asks Lisa Fernandes, director of the The Resilience Hub. “That gets me really fired up.”

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July 30, 2017 bioregionalism, Civilization, empire, extinction, Permaculture Read more >

Babel No More

Crossposted from A Bible and a Bat’leth

Sermon preached on May 5, 2013 at Mississauga Mennonite Fellowship. In my introduction, I acknowledge the land and the many nations who have used, shared and lived on it since time immemorial, especially the Mississauga people. I introduce Christian Peacemaker Teams Aboriginal Justice Team and thank the congregation for inviting us to speak.

The following scripture texts have already been read: Genesis 11:1-9 and John 8:31-43

In her 2009 TED talk, entitled The Danger of the Single Story, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie, starts by identifying the stories she read as a child. Growing up in Nigeria, she began to read early on, and she read the books she could get; British and American children’s books. At the age of seven she began write her own stories.
“All my characters were white, blue eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. And they talked a lot about the weather. How lovely it was that the sun had come out. Now this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria, had never been outside of Nigeria. We didn’t have snow, we ate mangos, and we never talked about the weather because there was no need to.”

The stories she read as a child only featured foreigners, so she wrote about foreigners, without even thinking that literature could be about Nigerian children until she encountered Nigerian writers.

Later, attending University in the USA, her roommate is surprised that she speaks English so well, that she knows how to use a stove. When she asks to listen to some of her tribal music, the roommate is disappointed to be given a cassette tape of Mariah Carey.

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July 15, 2013 bioregionalism, Civilization, Indigenous, Peace & Peacemaking, Stories, The Bible Read more >

The practice of bioregional discipleship: herbalism, murals, bible study, permaculture, and Wolf’ems, oh my!

It’s been a month since Charletta and I arrived in the Los Angeles airport direct from our time with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Colombia. Now that we’ve caught our breath, I wanted to share with you a window into our first two whirlwind weeks here in the Ojai valley working with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. Charletta and I were part of preparing for and hosting the July Bartimaeus Institute entitled “Rooting Faith: Theology and Practices of Bioregional Discipleship.” I focused on documenting the week for a wider audience through photography and video. This is my first experiment in Youtube journalism. Rather than write a lot about the week, I’ll give a basic introduction and then share the videos that I created:

Gathered round the fire

On the first night of the institute we gathered around the fire to sing songs and talk together at dusk (above). Aside from lodging, the event was hosted by Ched Myers and Elaine Enns in their house and their yard, which is entirely given over to vegetables, fruit trees and native plants. Mornings were spent doing Bible study and studying permaculture and afternoons were spent doing hands on learning of permaculture techniques in the garden. Evenings were practical workshops on a variety of subjects. Chris Grataski and Melissa Shank taught us about permaculture and herbalism.

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July 30, 2012 bioregionalism, Civilization, Discipleship, Permaculture, The Bible Read more >

Save Buddhism from Christian Missionaries: A Manifesto

Love, compassion, joy, and equanimity are some of the hallmarks of the teachings of Jesus. But those concepts didn’t originate with Jesus.

He found them tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the Torah. Almost every saying in the Sermon on the Mount is a commentary on passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. The genius of Jesus was the way in which he put his own “spin” on the Scriptures, highlighting and elevating the positive aspects of God’s personality, while ignoring and rejecting the negative aspects.

The ideals of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity weren’t the unique property of the Judaic tradition, however. They could also be found earlier, and further east, in what is now India, Nepal, Bhutan. In the Fifth Century before Jesus, a man named Gotoma developed a body of teachings based on what are called “The Four Immeasurables”: (more…)

June 18, 2012 Anabaptism, Awesome Stuff, Change, Church, City, Civilization, communication, Community, Contemplation, culture, Current Events, Dumb Stuff., Education, End Times, Ethics, Evangelism, extinction, Foreign Policy, Global Church, God, Group Identity, History, Indigenous, Interfaith, International Relations, Judaism, Love, MCC, Mennonite Church USA, Nonviolence, The Bible, Tolerance, Urban Ministry Read more >

Bruderville 2020: An urban anabaptist odyssey

…
Picture this:

As the new millennium dawns, anabaptists do a new thing in the city: Build a communal neighborhood populated by tens of thousands of simple-living sectarians.

The project is initiated by the Bruderhof and some Old Order Amish, partly for practical reasons: (1) the Amish and Bruderhof population explosions, making it necessary to continually branch out and establish new settlements; and (2) the shortage of affordable farmland, making it difficult to maintain a rural way of life.

More importantly, the initiative stems from a “quickening” amongst these plain people, who realize they’ve lost their ancestral impulse for going into the marketplaces & street corners, inviting others to become co-workers in God’s kingdom. They also realize geographical isolation no longer protects them against worldly influences. So they branch out to the Bronx, where they can influence the world instead.

(more…)

January 18, 2012 Anabaptism, Awesome Stuff, Change, City, Civilization, Community, End Times, Ethics, Group Identity, Love, Nonviolence, Peace & Peacemaking, Sex, Tolerance, Urban Ministry, Wealth, Young Folks Read more >

Mennonites on the Bowery

Photo of Weaverland Choir by CharlieK

There’s a building boom on the Bowery these days. It’s been happening for a while, but the last couple years have witnessed an escalation in development, turning the neighborhood into a hip destination point.

Fifty years ago the Bowery was the largest skid row in the world. There were gin joints and flophouses on every block. That’s all gone now, thanks to the forces of gentrification. In their place are condos, art galleries and upscale eateries. Only one skid-row relic remains: the Bowery Mission.

Some of my earliest memories are of sitting behind the Mission’s pulpit in the 1960s, looking onto a sea of expectant faces while my father preached. In retrospect I realize the men behind those faces were awaiting the sermon’s conclusion so they could get their grub. (more…)

August 22, 2011 Anabaptism, Biographical, Change, Church, City, Civilization, Consumerism, culture, Current Events, Economics, Education, Ethics, Evangelism, Exclusion, God, Group Identity, History, Interfaith, Love, Mennonite Church USA, Mental health, Nonviolence, philosophy, Polarization, poverty, Power, Privilege, Race, Schism, Sex, Spiritual Life, Stewardship, Stories, The Bible, Theology, Tolerance, Tradition, Urban Ministry, Wealth Read more >

The end of the world

In January I saw an article in the Wichita Eagle about a woman who was thoroughly convinced that the rapture and the end of the world would be on May 21, 2011.  At 6pm to be exact.  Well, this Saturday is the fateful day and, as one would expect, the story has been picked up by various news outlets.

Now forgive me if I sound a little cynical, but I know my history.  From the very first moments that Jesus walked the earth people have been predicting his return, and thus the end of the world with it.  So far, no one has been right.

What’s more, I know what happened at Münster.  To recap, a group of Anabaptists violently took over the town of Münster and swiftly began killing people, running around naked and doing a whole bunch of other things all because they were certain that Jesus was coming back right then and there.

That was 477 years ago. (more…)

May 18, 2011 Church, Civilization, culture, Current Events, End Times, Faith, Interpretation, The Bible, Theology Read more >

Now I Understand

This last year our church determined that we would open to shelter the local homeless each time the weather went below freezing, but the city wouldn’t permit other churches to open up. We live in a fairly temperate climate, but the winter was cold, and most homeless weren’t prepared for it. After opening more than 15 nights, the city shut us down. Here is my reaction to my conversation with the city. If you are interested in our church and what our focus is, please check us out at www.NowhereToLayHisHead.org

I had a mysterious conversation with the emergency services manager of Gresham and the fire marshal a couple weeks ago. I was talking to them about the need of people sleeping on the street and how much danger they are in, especially when it gets below freezing. I spoke of Fred, whose leg was cut off a couple months ago because he had slept outside in freezing conditions. I spoke of the sixteen year old girls who have been sleeping outside all winter. And about a father and his sixteen year old pregant daughter who found themselves desperate without shelter.

And the response I recieved from them is a lot of fire codes, and how we can’t open because we don’t have 200 square feet per person and how it is acceptable to have a standard of only opening churches when it gets below 22 degrees. And they told me, “This is not a social problem,” and they said, “This is not an emergency,” and they said, “You should just let other people deal with this.” This was a foreign language to me, so I spoke of fire code with them, because it seemed to be the only language we could both understand. (more…)

February 17, 2011 activism, City, Civilization, Healthcare, Illegal, Love, Politics, poverty Read more >

Avatar for real: Colonel Quaritch wins, Aka-Bo exterminated

Crossposted from As of Yet Untitled.

In January, Boa Sr died. At 85 years old, she was the last speaker of Aka-Bo. Until the 1850’s those who spoke Aka-Bo were one of 10 Great Andamanese tribes living their traditional life ways in the Andaman islands. Today, there are only 52 members of the remaining Great Andamanese tribes still living.

While the extinction of animal species receives considerable attention, the extinction of human cultures often goes unnoticed. Yet the loss of a people group and their cultural life ways is just as definitive as the loss of a species.

This is a tragic loss for the human family at many levels. Survival International has this haunting recording of Boa Sr singing:

What happened to the Aka-Bo? Hegemonizing civilization happened. It did its best to co-opt, pacify and manipulate the Great Andamanese after the British arrived on the island in the 1850s. When “pacification” of the indigenous people didn’t work, the British killed them by the hundreds and disease killed many more. The civilizing project was wildly successful. Within 50 years, the number of Great Andamanese went from 5,000 to 600. By 1961, there were only 19 indigenous Great Andamanese left. (Sources: Wikipedia and Survival International)

It would be nice to imagine that this cultural arrogance is a thing of the imperial past, relegated to material for the plot lines of Hollywood blockbusters. But the expansion of Western civilization continues at a breakneck pace. Here’s a story from just last year about a resort that is threatening the survival of another Adaman tribe, the Jarawa.

I’m reminded of this quote from Wade Davis:

We don’t think of ourselves as a culture in the West. We think that we somehow exist outside of time and culture. We’re the real world moving inexorably forward: Get with it or lose the train…

… we think that this economic system of ours exists out of culture, out of time, and is the inexorable wave of history when, by definition, it is simply the product of a certain set of human beings: our lineage.

With the death of Boa Sr, another people group died under the train of that lineage.

P.S. If you were looking for a review of Avatar or confused about why its mentioned in the headline, go read this excellent analysis by Nekeisha Alexis-Baker.

February 26, 2010 antiracism, Civilization, extinction, History, Indigenous Read more >

Ancient Paths: The Way Forward

This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.

Jeremiah 6:16

I just returned from the Gathering Around the Unhewn Stone, an event that took place this last weekend in Philadelphia. The purpose of the gathering was to explore the connections between Anarcho-Primitivism and Christianity. Ched Myers was the main speaker, leading us all through a crash course in biblical primitivism. There is so much I could write about, but I know that in this space I can only scratch the surface. Many secular and religious scholars alike are beginning to read the Hebrew-Christian bible from an archeological/historical perspective. Instead of reading the stories as metaphors or “lessons of old,” many are starting to take them more seriously and view them as factual. The Paradise of Eden is then understood not as fable of moral decline, but as a historical recollection of a time when human animals lived in balance with the earth. As ecological disaster ripens, it becomes fascinating to read these stories through this lens. As we look at it more closely, the bible begins to read like a manual of Anarcho-Primitivism. Of course that term wasn’t around back then, but the principles are so similar that it is incredible. For those unfamiliar, Anarcho-Primitivism is a form of anarchism that takes it’s critique of society all the way back to origins, citing civilization as the culprit of our current crisis. This brand of thinking values indigenous cultures and earth-based people groups as teachers and elders who hold wisdom long forgotten (or violently silenced). Our hunter-gatherer ancestors laid out for us a way of being that is truly sustainable. It was the norm forever, until the rise of agriculture, which changed the landscape of things and paved the way for civilization. As the towers rose and power centralized, most people got the short end of the stick. This is the context in which the Hebrew-Christian tradition developed. “We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic”. Numbers 11:5. (more…)

October 24, 2009 Civilization, Reviews, The Bible, Read more >

Jesus Radicals! Anarchism and Christianity

New Heaven, New Earth: Anarchism and Christianity Beyond Empire
August 14 & 15, 2009

Location
Caritas Village
2509 Harvard Avenue,
Memphis, TN 38112

This year’s anarchism and Christianity conference, hosted by Jesus Radicals, will look squarely at the economic and ecological crisis facing the globe, and point to signs of hope for creativity, for alternative living, for radical sharing, for faithfulness, for a new way of being. We are living in a karios moment that will either break us or compel us to finally strive for a new, sane way of life. The question we face at this pivotal time is not if our empires will fall apart, but when they will fall–and how will we face it? We hope you will join the conversation. (more…)

June 25, 2009 activism, Anabaptism, Awesome Stuff, Change, Church, City, Civilization, Clothing, communication, Community, Conscientious Objection, Consumerism, Contemplation, culture, Current Events, Discipleship, Economics, Education, Emerging Church, End Times, Environment, Ethics, Evangelism, Faith, Family, Gender, Global Church, God, Group Identity, Healthcare, History, Immigration, Indigenous, Interfaith, International Relations, Leadership, liberation theology, Mental health, New Monasticism, Nonviolence, Peace & Peacemaking, philosophy, Polarization, Police, poverty, Power, Prayer, Privilege, Race, Roman Catholic, Spiritual Life, Stewardship, Stories, submergent, Television, The Bible, Theology, Tolerance, Tradition, Travel, Urban Ministry, war, Wealth, Writing, Young Folks Read more >

A Review of After the Mayflower, We Shall Remain

Chris Eyre working with cast while filming at Red Clay. (c) Billy Weeks

adapted from As of Yet Untitled

Sunday evening I watched the first episode of We Shall Remain, a five part PBS series you can watch for free on their website. If you have 75 minutes to spare, don’t bother reading this review, just go watch After the Mayflower, the first episode, for yourself.

Contrary to its name, After the Mayflower starts slightly before the Pilgrims made landfall in Plymouth and provides a brief, but rich window into the way of life for the Wampanoag, the local Native American tribe near Plymouth, before the Pilgrims arrived. What was it like to be Wampanoag, the people of the first light, stretched out along the ocean, clearly aware of your place in the continent, welcoming the sun before all others? We also learn about the broad strokes of their political relationships with other local tribes as well as the plague that arrived just before the pilgrims killing 9 in 10 Wampanoag.

The documentary goes on to span the first 60 years of Native American and English relations, beginning with the first treaty between Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag and ending with King Philip’s war, one of the bloodiest wars in North American history proportional to the population. It offers some challenging questions for pacifists. Especially Christian pacifists.
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May 20, 2009 Change, Civilization, History, Reviews Read more >

Love and Smoke

So I am really in love for the first time in a while. He’s a radical activist. He’s Mennonite. He’s brilliant. He would probably read and write on this blog if he was from the USA. But there is a big problem, he smokes tobacco (a lot). Or is that not a problem? I need your help, my radical friends…to help me think through the issues of smoking and tobacco usage. I can only really take love advice seriously from people who are in the movement for positive social change…people who understand a deep commitment to values that call us to put our “personal” love lives in perspective with the greater struggle of promotion of love and justice all over the world. I listen to others who I feel are be people of integrity on all levels of life.

What follows is what I think about smoking/what I’m struggling with/the questions I have. Please, if you have any wisdom to share…SHARE IT. As a feminist I am willing to put this out in the public because I do believe the personal is political. And I know that the relationships that individuals have also effect the collective.

I realized again that I’m a “God-geek” when I wanted to know something marriage a few weeks ago and so I looked at C. Arnold Snyder’s chapter titled “Anabaptist Marriage” in Anabaptist History and Theology textbook. My point was to see how these young activists handled marriage in the context of an intense social movement. (more…)

May 15, 2009 activism, Anabaptism, Change, Civilization, communication, Community, Conscientious Objection, Consumerism, Contemplation, culture, Death, Discipleship, Ethics, Faith, Family, Gender, Mental health, Nonviolence, Palestine, Polemics, Power, Prayer, Theology, Tolerance, Tradition, Young Folks Read more >