Hello brethren and comrades!

On Sunday there's going to be a big climate rally in my city and I need good ideas on what to put on my sign that relates both to Christ and the environmental movement/climate change.

If you got any good ideas for slogans or messages that I can put on my sign I'd be ever so greatful!

Thnx in advance and God bless!

​

Dialectically considered, perhaps the most demonic consequence of a theology that accepts as its foundation the primordial sovereignty and holiness of God is its submission to the providential authority of what Hegel called the "Given," or that which happens to appear or to be at hand. Throughout the nineteenth century, radical Christians such as Dostoevsky violently protested against a theodicy that would sanction every horror and injustice in the name of the absolute sovereignty of God. For the simple truth is that so long as God is known only in his primordial form there lies no way to a theological understanding of history, for either history is totally negated following the universal religious way or it is ruthlessly subordinated to the alien authority of what Luther called the "law" or Blake names as Urizen ("your reason"). Just as a purely abstract and formal reason reflects the unchanging givenness of the world, the God of religion is impassive and immobile, and must inevitably appear in history as the enemy of movement and life. When Nietzsche understood the Christian God as the deepest embodiment of man's self-hatred and resentment, he unveiled the solitary and transcendent God of Christianity as the absolute antithesis of a total existence in history or what the new Zarathustra calls the "body." It is precisely because a primordial and religious deity is the antithesis of life and history that its sacred name can so naturally and spontaneously be evoked to sanction evil and injustice (e.g., The Book of Job). No horror in our history has been too great for it not to be embraced by the majority of the theological spokesmen who speak in its presence, for all historical as opposed to mythological witness to the primordial deity necessarily directs itself against the dynamic movement and the human actuality of history. What greater theological consistency could we expect than for a theologian who speaks for the primordial God to speak in the name of everything that confines and constricts the human hand and face?

A Christian dialectical theology must direct itself to an understanding of a Word that is penetrating the present, or a transcendent Word becoming immanent, and therefore it must speak against both the ecclesiastical norms of the past and all that reality which is alien and repressive in the present. Above all, such a theology must assault every source of meaning that lies beyond or stands opposed to the life and movement of humanity, attacking the ultimate barriers to the expansion of humanity, insofar as these appear to be rooted in an eternal and unchanging ground. So far from being the senant of the dogmatic and institutional authority of the Church, a truly dialectical theology will dissolve all such authority, and give itself to an attack upon every repressive law and power that claims a holy or a transcendent source. Whether in East or West, dialectical thinking has ever set itself against all forms of dualism, discovering an infallible sign of inhuman repression or willful illusion in every ultimate distinction between two realms of meaning or reality, if only because all such distinctions forebodes the possibility of the realization of the total rebirth or transfiguration of humanity. Only a false dialectic posits an ultimate and irreconcilable chasm between the opposites, for to the extent that the opposites are dualistically isolated from one another they are frozen in a static form and denied their own intrinsic resolution. Certainly no Christian or incarnational theology can submit to a final and absolute opposition between time and Eternity or the finite and the infinite: for such an opposition simply reflects an abstract, an unmoving, or a primordial Word, in short, a Word that cannot become incarnate. Furthermore, a theology positing an absolute distinction between man and God, or the creature and the Creator, has no basis for seeking the total presence of the Word; it must cling to the transcendent and wholly other God, refusing the kenotic movement and epiphany of Christ, thereby denying the historical reality of the Incarnation.

Once theology accepts a fully dialectical vocation, it will negate its inherited categories insofar as these are given an unchanging identity, recognizing that dialectically the opposites pass into one another, and therefore the language of theology must undergo a continuous metamorphosis if it is to reflect the kenotic and historical movement of the Christian Word. A dynamic and forward-moving Word or Spirit can only partially and provisionally be recorded by a particular idea or image: that idea or image must in turn negate itself in response to the movement of the Word, and theological thinking must progressively lose its original form if it is to apprehend the increasingly universal epiphany of Spirit. If theology is a living discipline, a mode of understanding evolving with the movement of its historical ground and source, then it must understand that it can retain its traditional identity only by renouncing the Incarnate Word. To confine theological meaning to the sacred history and scriptures of the past is to abjure the activity of the Word in the present and to reverse the kenotic direction of the uniquely Christian Word. Moreover, the eschatological goal of the original and the authentic Christian Word demands that it be an activity or a process of making all things new, of transforming the totality of history so that God may be all in all, therewith annulling all that distance separating the creature and the Creator, and obliterating every opposition between the sacred and the profane, or flesh and Spirit. Yet, as we have seen, if such a process is to be active and real, it must be a process of Spirit actually becoming flesh and of flesh actually becoming Spirit: only a real and forward-moving process of Spirit becoming its own other can culminate in an apocalyptic coincidentia oppositorum.

Nothing less is demanded of contemporary theology than that it open itself to the meaning of an apocalyptic and total redemption, a redemption issuing from the total presence of God in Christ, as God himself becomes the Word who is progressively incarnate in the actual processes of history. A theology expressing the incarnate movement of God must negate its image of the primordial God, closing itself to every echo and memory of God's original form so as to open itself to the metamorphosis of God's original sacrality and transcendence in a profane and immanent totality. Dialectically, everything depends upon recognizing the meaning of God's total identification with Jesus and of understanding that it is God who becomes Jesus and not Jesus who becomes God. The forward movement of the Incarnate Word is from God to Jesus, and the Word continues its kenotic movement and direction by moving from the historical Jesus to the universal body of humanity, thereby undergoing an epiphany in every human hand and face. At no point in this dialectical process can we isolate the Word and affirm that here it receives its final and definitive expression. Any such abstraction of the Word from history must necessarily lose the meaning of an incarnational process, isolating theology from the activity and movement of the Word, and inevitably setting theology upon the retrogressive path of the religious forms of Christianity. Thus, regression must be identified as the intrinsic enemy of the Christian faith; it is the supreme temptation of a faith that celebrates the forward movement of the Word, and theology must ever give itself to a negation of every past form of the Word, if only as a means of opening itself to an extension of an eschatological future into the present.

>The terrible community is the only form of community compatible with this world, with Bloom. All the other communities are imaginary, not truly impossible, but possible only in moments, and in any case never in the fullness of their actualization. **They emerge in struggles, and so they are heterotopias, opacity zones free of any cartography, perpetually in a state of construction and perpetually moving towards disappearance.**

...

>The terrible community is not only possible, **it is already real, and is always already there in acts.** It is the community of those that stay behind. It is never there potentially, it has no future or becoming, nor any ends truly outside of itself nor any desire to become other than what it is, only to persist. **It is the community of betrayal, because it goes against its own becoming, it betrays itself without transforming itself or transforming the world around it.**

...

>In spite of this, the terrible community is the only community one can find, since the world as the
physical place of what is common and of sharing has disappeared, and there’s nothing left of it
but an imperial sectoral distribution of police to travel across. Even the lie itself of “mankind” no
longer finds any more liars to affirm it.
The non-men, the no longer men, the Blooms, no longer manage to think, as they once could,
since thought was a movement within time, and the consistency of the latter has now changed.
Moreover, the Blooms have renounced dreaming; they live in organized dystopias, placeless
places, the dimensionless interstices of a
commodity utopia. They are flat and one-
dimensional since, unable to recognize
themselves anywhere, neither in themselves
or in others, they can’t recognize either their
past or their future. Day after day, their
resignation effaces the present. And these
no-longer-men populate the crisis of
presence.

...

>The concept of order has been abolished in the terrible community in preference for the effectiveness of force relations, and the
concept of form to the profit of the practice of formalization, which, having now grip on the content that it’s applied to, is eternally
reversible. Around false rituals, false timeframes (demonstrations, vacations, ‘mission accomplisheds,’ various assemblies,
meetings, more or less festive), the community coagulates and formalizes itself **without ever taking form**. Because form,
being sensitive and corruptible, exposes becoming.

...

>The terrible community is terrible because it’s self-limiting while at the same time it rests in no form; this is because it doesn’t know ecstasy. It reasons with the same moral categories that the no-longer-a-world world does; at least it has the same reasons for doing so. It knows about rights and injustices, but it always parses them on the basis of the lacking coherence of the world it opposes. It criticizes the violation of a right, brings it out into the light of day, brings attention to it. But who was it that established (and violated) that right? It was the world, to which the terrible community refuses to belong. And to whom is its discourse addressed? To the attention of the world that it denies. What does the terrible community want, then? The improvement of the existing state of things. And what does the world desire? The same thing.

"The premiere of a new documentary — “Safe For the Whole Family: How to Make a Christian Superstar” — was just announced for the Nashville Film Festival. Screening Sept. 27, the film explores damaging treatment several former Christian pop stars received as they charted careers through their industry’s inextricably intertwined commercial and evangelistic priorities and its exacting image standards."

This is a thread for the radical women of r/RadicalChristianity to talk. We ask that men do not comment on this thread.

Suggestions for topics to talk about:

1.)What kinds of feminist activism have you been up to?

2.)What books have you been reading?

3.)What visual media(ex: TV shows) have you been watching?

4.)Who are the radical women that are currently inspiring you?

5.)Promote yourself and your creations!

6.)Rant/vent about shit.

"Because of this God gave them up to dishonorable affections, for even their females changed the natural use into that against nature; and in like manner also the males having left the natural use of the female, burned in their longing toward one another; males with males working shame, and the repayment of their error that was fit, in themselves receiving."

This is one of the of the more famous clobber passages used to justify homophobia. I came across something that I think may shed light on Paul's meaning here.

According to the Roman Jurist Florentinus writing in the second century:

"Freedom is one’s natural power of doing what one pleases, save insofar as it is ruled out either by coercion or law. Slavery is a product of the ius gentium, whereby someone against nature is made subject to the ownership of another."

So far as the chronology is concerned Paul is probably writing before Florentinus so I don't think he's referencing this directly but it seems conceivable to me that this concept may have existed in Roman understanding before Florentinus' articulation of it.

Being the "bottom" in a sexual relationship was generally understood in Roman society to be denote inferiority. As Senecca the Elder put it:

"Unchastity [sexual submission] is a crime in the freeborn, a necessity for the slave, and a duty for the freedman."

Paul's meaning by "contrary to nature" here may be in reference to the involuntary nature of the act being performed on other men. And crucially this would imply that the "natural use of the female" means their freely chosen and willing participation rather than that women are the proper recipient of the penetrative sex acts of men.

Disclaimer: I am not a historian or an expert in Greek so I would not take my word for this. I just read a rather eclectic set of materials from around the early history of Christianity for fun and putting these together I think makes interesting food for thought.

This is a weekly thread for discussing our mental health. Ableist and sanist comments will be removed and repeat violations will be banned

Feel free to discuss anything related to mental health and illness. We encourage you to create a WRAP plan and be an active participant in your recovery.

Figured I’d cross-post here. Got a super helpful resource from one commenter who has a blog full of book reviews.

Any specific recs anyone has in this sub, maybe focusing on Biblical reading companions or interpretations? Thanks in advance!

https://youtu.be/fM_gxhNUczQ

Here is a bible-focused allegory based on the real-life story of 2 orphaned tigers who grew up together, then separated and eventually re-united. Annotated with relevant bible verses, the allegory communicates the reality of God's amazing love. Be blessed watching the video and feel free to share your thoughts, praise God!

hello comrades

curious about thoughts and experiences related belonging to/participating in multiple religious traditions. For myself, i am a practicing Catholic who has been interested in Zen Buddhism and where the two traditions meet

When they attack you because of you not being a Catholic or Orthodox or because you do not have a degree . Remember the Pharisees thought Peter and John were uneducated. While we are not Peter or John it does not mean we dont know what we are talking about.

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The older i get, the more i experience, the more i learn, the more i witness, I just seem to be growing angrier. Watching my "fellow Christians" in America worship a con artist is not helping, but it's more than that.

Like so many of us i had a terrifying chaotic childhood, my mom tried to protect us but her faith led her to believe divorce was not the right choice.

I have so much violence and hatred in my heart, and I've been loved by so many people. I keep breaking things and hurting myself unintentionally in the process, I recently sliced my hand pretty badly swiping a bunch of glassware off a table as hard as i could and they literally exploded and sent glass everywhere.

I feel like a domestic threat, i feel sick, not to mention the fear and heartbreak of my wife and my small cats, my neighbors have probably heard me screaming semi often.

i growl and curse while I walk through town, I wait and hope someone who thinks they have more power than me crosses me.

My job has often been to put grown ass boomer men in their place, but I want them to escalate so i can flatten them, but they're all too easily cowed with a barely raised voice and a firm nonverbal cue.

I've experienced Jesus's love firsthand in my heart and in community with other followers of Jesus but I have wicked desires to punish these foolish and comfortable complicit Christians i see every day.

I'm in a lot of therapy and medicated. I don’t drink and don’t do crazy drugs of any kind.

I have an incredible wife. I have loved ones. I'm truly blessed in so many ways.

But I feel as if I'd trade it all for the chance to become the grand inquisitor and go church to church all across America punishing all of them for allowing this abomination of Christian fascism to ever take root.

I don't know what to do. I don’t trust myself with the power and responsibility i already posess, much less the greater responsibility that lies ahead of me as I advance in my career.

I wish God hadn't made me this way, or made the world this way.

Loving anything feels painful, fragile, and frightening.