I can foresee other useful micro-micro-applications like this. I think something like “am I in hell.com” could calculate the answer based on the balance of probabilities, given the current global situation, and answer YES or NO. Or “Did I take the blue or red pill.com” could assess whether reality was a better or worse situation than my current predicament, and answer simply “RED” or “BLUE”.

http://www.icanw.org/news/nuclear_umbrellas

Sorry age but I can’t get out of everything to be there tomorrow…. I hope that the protest goes well and is picked up correctly by the media!

Fin, noggin..duuuude.

Christian anarchism is one of the oldest anarchist philosophies, arguably dating back to the early Christian church. Christian anarchists emphasise non-violence and oppose the state as God is the only legitimate source of authority. Key thinkers include the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.

Christian Anarchist 95%
Anarcho-Communist 80%
Anarcho-Syndicalist 65%
Anarcha-Feminist 50%
Anarcho-Primitivist 45%
Anarcho-Capitalist 45%

Ideally the activist a faith community ‘adopts’ would come from their community. The risk, support, resistance and challenge of the faithful discipleship needs grounding… not just funding.
So very similar thinking.

BTW- Ciaron was one of activist conversations that helped this idea bubble along in my brain.

Not to adopt an activist exactly, but enabling and resourcing Christian communities to see themselves as communities of resistance (ala Jonah House, etc), in order to carry out sustainable resistance to empire…as Ciaron O’Reilly often says (and I don’t always agree with Ciaron, but on this I do) if just 1% of those who marched against the war went into nonviolent civil disobedience and the other 99% fed their cat, put up with the hysterical parents, etc. then we’d have a viable anti-war resistance. I’d ideally like to see at least one person from every faith community prepared to risk arrest, and the rest support them (ambitious? you bet!). Imagine what a witness for the Kingdom that would be.

So like you I’m not all for making arrestable actions the new legalism for disciples, but I am for encouraging more people to see it as one way to be faithful to the gospel in a world of violence and empire (an undoing of our power and privilege), and as necessarily done within the context of a community in order to be sustainable.

Currently I’m working on implementing this around Talisman Sabre…keen to get as many Christians involved as possible, and to resource their faith communities to see themselves in this light.

the horses mouth seems to be pretty normal to me (maybe a bit boring)…. in fact he refers continually to Jesus as the authority of his a rational liberal position - new faith thing. Also he seems to refer to God, life and love as being within and part of all of life and the universe. Then affirms the creeds.

So “substance of the faith” from the horses mouth is not very different - particularly for the UCA. However, what he says does seem very different from what was reported. ie. “Jesus the Jewish peasant who certainly was not God. No God, in the usual sense of an interventionist deity” these do seem to be in “the substance of the faith” realm and would make affirming the creeds tricky.

For those of you who share a common opinion of “the substance of faith”, you find other differences easy to cope with. The only problem comes when there are differences of opinion on what constitutes the substance of faith.

This guy obviously thinks the substance is still there. You may disagree. The Basis of Union at least gives you a framework to engage with another opinion, and for the congregation, at least, to accept the minitstry of their pastor.

If the fact of his engagement is cause for you to celebrate, then you’re in the right movement; if not, then perhaps you should be part of a church movement which doesn’t seek to unify, and which is happy to draw a distinction on which ever issue or belief defines you.

This is the both the strength, and the weakness, inherent within the Basis of Union. Take your pick

It seems to be a reduction of God from creator, sustainer, redeemer, hope etc etc to stuff that is good, tender which of course is part of a christian view but I think God is more than we know and not seek to reduce God’sself further - For God to be truly God/ holy other etc God must be more than we comprehend. We are all wrong.

I am wondering…. Following or not following Jesus the nothing special peasant as a minister in the Christian Church for at least 37 years. It begs the question why stay inside the church? Why take the pay and the Church building? If your beliefs are outside the christian church then cool - go be that faith just like everyone else of different faiths. ??? Walk the talk… plenty of people hold and practice similar views but most don’t ask another religion to support them. Seems strange.

Again I don’t know the truth of the reporting…… it has raised good questions and the UCA expects diverse and conflicting views to be in our mix - so we will see. I think the UCA response and links have been good - they look at the theology and seek to care for the people involved.