January 14-17, 2011

(Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend)

A conversation about Matthew 5-7 and Anabaptist, Anarchist and Antiracist Expressions of Discipleship

Elaine Enns and Ched Myers

We explored how Jesus' passion for social transformation was expressed in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), and looked at how Christian practitioners of nonviolence have looked to this manifesto ever since.  We honored the King Holiday by looking at what 20th century Anabaptism, the anarcho-pacifism of Tolstoyans and Catholic Workers, and Civil Rights activism have to teach us about faith and nonviolent movement-building.  Ella Baker, Dorothy Day and Anna Schulz (right) were briefly profiled as practitioners of those respective traditions.  In a special session Elaine reported on her recent trip to the Ukraine to investigate the complicated historical lessons to be learned from Maknovists and Mennonites during the Russian revolution.  It was a timely conversation about discipleship and liberation politics!