Theological Animation

Ched Myers

Theological Animation: Part Two | About Ched | Ched's Curriculum Vitae
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About Theological Animation: Part One

For the last twenty-five years I have sought to respond to the discipleship call in a variety of ways: as an activist, writer, community builder and popular educator. It is my conviction that the First World church can only be renewed by rediscovering its witness to God’s dream of the Peaceable Kingdom and justice for all. Historically in the U.S., people of faith have been on the forefront of struggles for social change (in our generation this has included movements for civil rights, labor solidarity, immigrant and refugee rights and disarmament). Today, however, we need to help animate a new generation of ecumenical leadership committed both to the gospel and to social change. In the metaphor of Jesus, we must be willing to "address the mountain" of injustice (the image above is a print by my mother, Charlotte Myers, that adorns the cover of "Say to This Mountain": Mark's Story of Discipleship).

Over the past ten years I’ve traveled around North America and abroad in pursuit of this vision. I have moved among a wide cross-section of faith-based groups and parishes teaching, listening, challenging, encouraging and networking. I have developed a holistic pedagogy of “theological animation” that integrates the disciplines of popular education, evangelism, political organizing, pastoring and theological reflection.

At the center of my approach is the practice of relectura: a “rereading” of the Bible in light of concrete struggles against violence and oppression. I believe that the Judeo-Christian tradition of sacred story is older and deeper and wiser than we are, and that it has the power to transform our lives and our history. But only if we can overcome its domestication under the dominant culture. Our churches – conservative and liberal alike – are often inhospitable to the gospel’s invitation to the cross, to solidarity with the least, and to Sabbath Economics. Our task is thus to rebuild literacy in which the Word and world are brought to bear on each other at every turn.

When and wherever this has happened throughout the history of the church, communities of discipleship, creative celebration, healing and solidarity with the marginalized have been created or re-created. The same holds true for our time. I have heard from participants countless times exclamations such as these:

“Why haven’t we heard this before in church?”

"I’ve been waiting my whole life to encounter this gospel!”

“I’ve long suspected there was more in that text than I was being told!”

Such responses express at once both frustration and hope, and indicate how hungry our people are for an integrative approach to faith and politics.

My work has three goals:

To recover the vocation of evangelism grounded in Jesus’ call to radical discipleship, engaging communities of faith across the ecumenical spectrum in critical conversation about the shape of discipleship today.
To help rebuild a movement of faith-based witness for peace and justice by supporting, encouraging and interconnecting diverse local, regional and national expressions of faith and action.
To promote and nurture biblical literacy and social analysis among Christians by helping groups re-ground their perspectives in sacred stories and discern how those visions can be embodied in our contemporary contexts.

Read more on how I do my work.

To invite Ched to work with your community please email us.

About Theological Animation: Part Two

People often chuckle when I describe my work as "theological animation." Apparently this is seen as a contradictory rubric: the serious endeavor of theology is perceived to have little in common with something as fun-loving as animated cartoons. This, of course, is part of the problem. So I very much like the double entendre of "animation," and use it intentionally. I've explained the first meaning above--helping facilitate a "coming to life." Here's the other meaning.

One of the cultural founts from which I draw inspiration is early American animation. Years ago my brother Grob turned me on to the work of cartoonist Max Fleischer, whose animated short features pre-dated (and profoundly influenced) Walt Disney. I am particularly drawn to his "Out of the Inkwell" series. There were two very cool things about Fleischer's pioneering animated filmmaking.

For one, his cartoons rolled to jazz music--at a time jazz was still very much edgy and underground. This manic, free music cohered perfectly with Fleischer's rubbery, weird Vaudevillesque cartoon characters (especially Koko the Clown, pictured above). Jazz also fit with Fleischer's non-agonistic, non-linear stories. That is, there were no good guys or bad guys, and no plot crises in this fabulated toon-world; just characters bumping along to the music, doing random things and having a good old time. Theologically speaking, then, this early art form represented a sort of utopian dreaming, the imagining of a world in which characters never die or suffer, but do alot of laughing and dancing. (Fleischer invented the time-honored cartoon convention in which characters bounce right up from any and all toon-mayhem.) A vision, in other words, of heaven.

No accident perhaps that Fleischer and many of his colleagues were Jewish immigrants: they were, like the jazz players they were drawn to, brilliant artists marginalized by racial-ethnic codes. I think of their early cartoons as midrash on America, reflecting a longing for life-after-transfiguration: goofy, happy, all good.

Any theology that loses sight of that sort of mystical vision of the world-as-it-should-be cannot hope to struggle for redemption in a all-too-real world that could not be further from a Fleischer cartoon. And that's why I strive to practice theological animation.

About Ched Myers

Ched, a fifth generation Californian, lives in Los Angeles. Over the past two decades he has worked with several peace and justice organizations and movements, including the American Friends Service Committee, the Pacific Concerns Resource Center and the Pacific Life Community. With Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries he focuses on building capacity for biblical literacy, church renewal and faith-based witness for justice.

Ched holds a Bachelors degree in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley (1978) and a Masters degree in New Testament Studies from the Graduate Theological Union (1984). He has served as adjunct faculty at Memphis Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary and Claremont School of Theology (where he was the 1998-99 Fellow in Urban Theology). Other schools at which he has recently taught include: Ecumenical Theological Seminary (Detroit), the Seminary Consortium on Urban and Pastoral Education (Chicago), Maryknoll School of Theology (New York), Loyola University (Chicago), Virginia Theological Seminary, Phillips Theological Seminary (Oklahoma), Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley), Toronto School of Theology, Vancouver School of Theology, Churches of Christ Theological College (Australia) and Tamilnadu Theological Seminary (India).

Ched’s books include: Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus (1988), Who Will Roll Away the Stone: Discipleship Queries for First World Christians (1994), and Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (1996, co-authored), all published by Orbis Books. He writes regularly for Sojourners and The Other Side magazines, and has published more than 100 articles and essays in those and other periodicals in the U.S., England and Australia. He also works with other writers and publishers as an editor and manuscript evaluator.

Ched travels throughout North America and abroad giving seminars and retreats, teaching, preaching and facilitating gatherings. He works with Catholic, Protestant and Anabaptist parishes and diocesan/denominational offices, as well as with ecumenical organizations. He is particularly committed to faith-based peace and justice efforts such as Christian Peacemaker Teams, Borderlinks, the Catholic Worker movement, Witness for Peace, and the Servant Leadership Schools.