#propheticwitness — Public Fediverse posts

Dialogue: The Unarmed Prophet and the Armed World

A conversation between Girolamo Savonarola and Niccolò Machiavelli

Florence. Night. The Piazza della Signoria is empty, though the stones still remember fire. The ghost of Girolamo Savonarola stands near the place where he was hanged and burned. Niccolò Machiavelli enters, older now, carrying a manuscript beneath his arm.

SAVONAROLA:
You return to the place of ashes, Messer Niccolò.

MACHIAVELLI:
Florence has many places of ashes, Fra Girolamo. Yours is only the most famous.

SAVONAROLA:
And you have made use of it.

MACHIAVELLI:
I made use of what happened. That is not the same as rejoicing in it.

SAVONAROLA:
You wrote that I was ruined because I was unarmed.

MACHIAVELLI:
Were you not?

SAVONAROLA:
I preached repentance. I called a city to righteousness. I turned hearts toward God.

MACHIAVELLI:
For a time.

SAVONAROLA:
Truth is not false because men grow tired of it.

Read the full Dialogue at PeaceGrooves.

The Decisive Revolution

“Jesus is risen. The decisive revolution in world history has happened – a revolution of all-conquering love. If people would fully receive this revealed love into their own existence, into the reality of the ‘now’, then the logic of insanity could no longer continue.”

There are some lines that feel less like commentary and more like a struck bell. Rudi Dutschke’s Easter words are like that. They do not merely describe resurrection; they announce it as a historical detonation, a rupture in the order of things. They refuse to let Easter remain tucked away in pious sentiment, safe sanctuary ritual, or abstract doctrine. Instead, they cast resurrection as revolution. Not one revolution among many, but the decisive revolution in world history.

That is a breathtaking claim.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves:

https://peacegrooves1.wordpress.com/2026/04/28/the-decisive-revolution/

Made a Mural of Me

I have walked streets where the walls remember
better than the governments do.

I have stood beneath the painted faces
of the disappeared, the assassinated,
the catechists, the campesinos,
the students, the mothers,
the ones whose names were spoken once with terror
and now are spoken with flowers.

I have seen their eyes in plaster and pigment,
their halos done in cheap color,
their mouths half open as if the wall itself
were still trying to tell the story
of what was done to them.

In Central America,
I learned that a wall can become a gospel
when the newspapers lie.
A wall can become an archive
when the official files are burned,
when the generals call murder peace,
when the empire calls bloodshed stability,
when the poor are told to forget
for the sake of moving on.

But the wall does not move on.

The wall says: here.
The wall says: this happened.
The wall says: this child had a name.
This priest had hands.
This woman had laughter.
This union worker had a mother.
This martyr did not die in abstraction,
did not perish as an example,
did not vanish into a sermon illustration.
They were flesh.
They were breath.
They were somebody’s beloved.

And I have seen it elsewhere too.

Not only there, where memory was brushed onto concrete
beneath the long shadow of rifles and oligarchs,
but here,
in this empire’s marble reach,
in this capital of speeches and signatures,
in neighborhoods of D.C. where color rises up
against erasure,
where the dead look down from brick walls
and ask the living what exactly we are doing
with the testimony they left us.

I have walked those streets too,
where murals bloom like wounds that refuse to close,
where every face says both remember
and why again?

That is the ache of it.

Because a mural is beautiful,
but it is also an indictment.

A mural is what happens
when grief runs out of sanctioned places to go.
When cemeteries are too quiet,
when courtrooms are too compromised,
when history books are too polite,
when churches would rather canonize the dead
than stand beside the threatened living,
someone climbs a ladder with paint
and says:
You will not make us forget.

And yet even that holy act contains a heartbreak.

Because every new mural is also a confession
that we have failed again.

We say we honor the martyrs.
We paint them large.
We ring them with light.
We write their names in careful letters.
We tell their stories to our children.
We call them seeds.
We call them saints.
We call them witnesses.

But if we must keep making more walls,
if there is always another name,
another mother,
another child,
another prophet with blood on their shirt,
another journalist, another dreamer, another body,
then our memorials are not only songs of praise.
They are laments.
They are accusations.
They are unfinished prayers.

I do not want a world
where we become very skilled
at decorating the aftermath.

I do not want justice outsourced to artists
because legislators are cowards,
because police departments close ranks,
because borders harden,
because markets consume,
because nations baptize their violence
and then ask poets to clean up the silence.

I am grateful for the murals.
God, I am grateful for them.
For the ones who paint the saints with brown hands
and tired eyes.
For the ones who make a wall preach.
For the ones who turn an alley into a liturgy.
For the ones who refuse the second death,
the death of being forgotten.

But I am tired of needing them.

Tired of standing before another radiant face
and knowing radiance came at the price of a bullet.
Tired of admiring the colors
while knowing the color had to cover over grief
too large for speech.
Tired of telling the story again
because the engines that made the story
were never dismantled,
only rebranded, relocated, repainted.

That is the terrible genius of empire.
It learns to tolerate memorials
so long as the machinery of martyr-making stays intact.

Put the face on the wall.
Name the school after the slain.
Hold the vigil.
Light the candle.
Share the quote.
Then fund the weapons.
Protect the system.
Discredit the witness.
Fortify the border.
Ignore the neighborhood.
Silence the poor.
And when the next body falls,
commission another mural.

No.

There is something obscene
about praising the courage of the dead
while refusing the cost of solidarity with the living.

There is something blasphemous
about loving Romero on the wall
but not listening to prophets now.
About cherishing painted martyrs in San Salvador
and neglecting crucified people in Washington,
in detention centers,
in poor towns,
in Black and brown neighborhoods,
in places where the state still knows how to kneel
on a neck,
how to disappear a future,
how to call a human being illegal
before making them dead in spirit.

So yes,
I have walked among the murals.
And yes,
they have taught me.

They taught me that memory is resistance.
That color can be a form of defiance.
That beauty can tell the truth
when official language becomes a mask for murder.
They taught me the communion of saints
sometimes looks less like stained glass
and more like chipped paint on cinder block.
Less like cathedral windows
and more like public walls under open sky.

They taught me that the martyrs are still speaking.
Not only from heaven.
From brick.
From alley.
From barrio.
From the side of a building everyone passes
on the way to work,
on the way to school,
on the way to forgetting.

And they taught me to shudder.

Because sometimes, standing there,
I have had the strange and terrible thought:

One day they could make a mural of me.

Not because I seek glory.
Not because I imagine myself noble.
Not because I think suffering makes a person pure.
But because in a world like this,
where truth still threatens power,
where solidarity still has a price,
where loving the crucified too closely
can still get you crucified,
any one of us who dares enough
might end up as paint.

Made a mural of me.

Put me on a wall with the others.
Give me a background of sunburst gold,
or deep blue,
or the red of blood transfigured into witness.
Paint my face calmer than I ever was in life.
Smooth out my fear.
Make me look brave.

But if you do,
let the mural say I did not want this.

Let it say I wanted fewer murals,
not more.

Let it say I wanted children to know these names
without needing to inherit their wounds.
Let it say I wanted nations to repent
before artists had to remember for them.
Let it say I wanted churches
to become sanctuaries of the endangered
instead of galleries of the already slain.
Let it say I wanted the wall
to go blank someday,
not from amnesia,
but from justice.

That is my prayer now.

Not that we stop honoring the martyrs.
Never that.
Paint them.
Sing them.
Tell them.
Teach them.
Write them in the streets and on the doors
and in the marrow of the young.

But also:
stop making so many of them.

Let there come a day
when the painters have to find another subject.
When the ladders lean against walls
for festivals instead of funerals.
When color is used for delight
and not only for defiance.
When remembrance is no longer emergency labor.
When the living are protected enough
that martyrdom becomes rare,
and rare enough
that every new death shocks us again.

Until then,
the walls will keep preaching.

And I will keep listening
with gratitude and grief,
with reverence and anger,
with hope cracked open but not empty.

Because every mural is a promise
the dead make to the living:

We are still here.
We are watching what you do next.
Do not honor us
by becoming connoisseurs of tragedy.
Honor us
by ending the thing that killed us.

And until that day,
the paint will keep drying,
and the faces will keep multiplying,
and the walls will keep learning names
they should never have had to learn.

And I will stand before them,
heart broken open,
thinking:

this wall should be empty by now.

Made a Mural of Me

I have walked streets where the walls remember
better than the governments do.

I have stood beneath the painted faces
of the disappeared, the assassinated,
the catechists, the campesinos,
the students, the mothers,
the ones whose names were spoken once with terror
and now are spoken with flowers.

I have seen their eyes in plaster and pigment,
their halos done in cheap color,
their mouths half open as if the wall itself
were still trying to tell the story
of what was done to them.

In Central America,
I learned that a wall can become a gospel
when the newspapers lie.
A wall can become an archive
when the official files are burned,
when the generals call murder peace,
when the empire calls bloodshed stability,
when the poor are told to forget
for the sake of moving on.

But the wall does not move on.

The wall says: here.
The wall says: this happened.
The wall says: this child had a name.
This priest had hands.
This woman had laughter.
This union worker had a mother.
This martyr did not die in abstraction,
did not perish as an example,
did not vanish into a sermon illustration.
They were flesh.
They were breath.
They were somebody’s beloved.

And I have seen it elsewhere too.

Not only there, where memory was brushed onto concrete
beneath the long shadow of rifles and oligarchs,
but here,
in this empire’s marble reach,
in this capital of speeches and signatures,
in neighborhoods of D.C. where color rises up
against erasure,
where the dead look down from brick walls
and ask the living what exactly we are doing
with the testimony they left us.

I have walked those streets too,
where murals bloom like wounds that refuse to close,
where every face says both remember
and why again?

That is the ache of it.

Because a mural is beautiful,
but it is also an indictment.

A mural is what happens
when grief runs out of sanctioned places to go.
When cemeteries are too quiet,
when courtrooms are too compromised,
when history books are too polite,
when churches would rather canonize the dead
than stand beside the threatened living,
someone climbs a ladder with paint
and says:
You will not make us forget.

And yet even that holy act contains a heartbreak.

Because every new mural is also a confession
that we have failed again.

We say we honor the martyrs.
We paint them large.
We ring them with light.
We write their names in careful letters.
We tell their stories to our children.
We call them seeds.
We call them saints.
We call them witnesses.

But if we must keep making more walls,
if there is always another name,
another mother,
another child,
another prophet with blood on their shirt,
another journalist, another dreamer, another body,
then our memorials are not only songs of praise.
They are laments.
They are accusations.
They are unfinished prayers.

I do not want a world
where we become very skilled
at decorating the aftermath.

I do not want justice outsourced to artists
because legislators are cowards,
because police departments close ranks,
because borders harden,
because markets consume,
because nations baptize their violence
and then ask poets to clean up the silence.

I am grateful for the murals.
God, I am grateful for them.
For the ones who paint the saints with brown hands
and tired eyes.
For the ones who make a wall preach.
For the ones who turn an alley into a liturgy.
For the ones who refuse the second death,
the death of being forgotten.

But I am tired of needing them.

Tired of standing before another radiant face
and knowing radiance came at the price of a bullet.
Tired of admiring the colors
while knowing the color had to cover over grief
too large for speech.
Tired of telling the story again
because the engines that made the story
were never dismantled,
only rebranded, relocated, repainted.

That is the terrible genius of empire.
It learns to tolerate memorials
so long as the machinery of martyr-making stays intact.

Put the face on the wall.
Name the school after the slain.
Hold the vigil.
Light the candle.
Share the quote.
Then fund the weapons.
Protect the system.
Discredit the witness.
Fortify the border.
Ignore the neighborhood.
Silence the poor.
And when the next body falls,
commission another mural.

No.

There is something obscene
about praising the courage of the dead
while refusing the cost of solidarity with the living.

There is something blasphemous
about loving Romero on the wall
but not listening to prophets now.
About cherishing painted martyrs in San Salvador
and neglecting crucified people in Washington,
in detention centers,
in poor towns,
in Black and brown neighborhoods,
in places where the state still knows how to kneel
on a neck,
how to disappear a future,
how to call a human being illegal
before making them dead in spirit.

So yes,
I have walked among the murals.
And yes,
they have taught me.

They taught me that memory is resistance.
That color can be a form of defiance.
That beauty can tell the truth
when official language becomes a mask for murder.
They taught me the communion of saints
sometimes looks less like stained glass
and more like chipped paint on cinder block.
Less like cathedral windows
and more like public walls under open sky.

They taught me that the martyrs are still speaking.
Not only from heaven.
From brick.
From alley.
From barrio.
From the side of a building everyone passes
on the way to work,
on the way to school,
on the way to forgetting.

And they taught me to shudder.

Because sometimes, standing there,
I have had the strange and terrible thought:

One day they could make a mural of me.

Not because I seek glory.
Not because I imagine myself noble.
Not because I think suffering makes a person pure.
But because in a world like this,
where truth still threatens power,
where solidarity still has a price,
where loving the crucified too closely
can still get you crucified,
any one of us who dares enough
might end up as paint.

Made a mural of me.

Put me on a wall with the others.
Give me a background of sunburst gold,
or deep blue,
or the red of blood transfigured into witness.
Paint my face calmer than I ever was in life.
Smooth out my fear.
Make me look brave.

But if you do,
let the mural say I did not want this.

Let it say I wanted fewer murals,
not more.

Let it say I wanted children to know these names
without needing to inherit their wounds.
Let it say I wanted nations to repent
before artists had to remember for them.
Let it say I wanted churches
to become sanctuaries of the endangered
instead of galleries of the already slain.
Let it say I wanted the wall
to go blank someday,
not from amnesia,
but from justice.

That is my prayer now.

Not that we stop honoring the martyrs.
Never that.
Paint them.
Sing them.
Tell them.
Teach them.
Write them in the streets and on the doors
and in the marrow of the young.

But also:
stop making so many of them.

Let there come a day
when the painters have to find another subject.
When the ladders lean against walls
for festivals instead of funerals.
When color is used for delight
and not only for defiance.
When remembrance is no longer emergency labor.
When the living are protected enough
that martyrdom becomes rare,
and rare enough
that every new death shocks us again.

Until then,
the walls will keep preaching.

And I will keep listening
with gratitude and grief,
with reverence and anger,
with hope cracked open but not empty.

Because every mural is a promise
the dead make to the living:

We are still here.
We are watching what you do next.
Do not honor us
by becoming connoisseurs of tragedy.
Honor us
by ending the thing that killed us.

And until that day,
the paint will keep drying,
and the faces will keep multiplying,
and the walls will keep learning names
they should never have had to learn.

And I will stand before them,
heart broken open,
thinking:

this wall should be empty by now.

The Worst Kind of Freedom

Dediticii of the State, Paroikoi of the Kingdom:

On Christian Nationalism, False Freedom, and the Pilgrim Church

There is a freedom that sings loudly and yet is already in chains.

There is a freedom that waves a flag, quotes a verse, demands a prayer in the public square, and calls itself holy. There is a freedom that speaks the name of Jesus with one breath and the language of domination with the next. There is a freedom that insists it is under threat whenever the neighbor is also allowed to breathe, speak, worship, live, vote, belong, or flourish. And that freedom is no freedom at all. It is fear dressed in patriotic robes. It is anxiety holding a Bible. It is the oldest lie of empire baptized in civil religion.

Christian nationalism is built upon that lie.

It says, “We must take the nation back.”
It says, “We must restore Christian order.”
It says, “We must defend our way of life.”
But underneath all of its grand language is a smaller and sadder confession: we do not trust the way of Jesus to be enough unless Caesar kneels beside him. And once the church begins to think that way, it has already bent the knee to another throne.

That is why the old Roman word dediticii has such prophetic force here. In Roman usage, deditio was surrender, and dediticii were those marked by that surrender, those living under the terms of a conquering power; in later Roman legal usage the term could also refer to people whose liberty was degraded, curtailed, a kind of freedom beneath full belonging.  What a terrible phrase that is for the church to deserve: not merely conquered, but living in the illusion of liberty while shaped by the chains of empire.

And that is the tragedy of Christian nationalism. It imagines itself strong, but it is surrendered. It imagines itself sovereign, but it is already owned. It imagines itself defending the faith, but it has accepted the terms of a lesser kingdom. It seeks power in the way Rome seeks power, order in the way empires seek order, peace in the way fearful nations seek peace: through threat, hierarchy, exclusion, privilege, and force. It calls this righteousness. It calls this prudence. It calls this realism. But the gospel calls it what it is: temptation.

For every freedom built on another person’s diminishment is already a form of bondage.

If I can only feel secure when someone else is excluded, then I am not secure.
If I can only feel righteous when someone else is silenced, then I am not righteous.
If I can only feel free when someone else is less free, then I am not free.

I am merely protected by a cage large enough to mistake for a kingdom.

This is the bitterest irony of all: those who would limit the freedom of others in the name of preserving their own eventually discover that they, too, have become servants of limitation. They must constantly patrol the borders. They must always be on the lookout for enemies. They must keep watch over books, bodies, ballots, classrooms, pulpits, prayers, and pronouns. They must nourish grievance. They must cultivate suspicion. They must remain forever agitated because domination cannot rest. The soul that clings to supremacy must live in permanent alarm. And so the one who promised freedom becomes the custodian of fear.

That is why this is not merely a political error. It is a spiritual deformation.

Christian nationalism is not simply bad analysis. It is bad discipleship. It is the church forgetting what kind of people it is. It is the church forgetting that Jesus did not seize Rome; Rome seized Jesus. It is the church forgetting that salvation did not come through occupying the governor’s palace, but through faithfulness unto death. It is the church forgetting that Pentecost did not create a purified nation but a multilingual people. It is the church forgetting that the Lord’s Table is not bordered by tribe, race, party, passport, or patriotic myth. It is the church forgetting that Christ rules from a cross before he is confessed in glory.

And when the church forgets these things, it becomes available for conscription.

It can still sing.
It can still preach.
It can still quote scripture.
It can still say “Lord, Lord.”

But it begins to sound less like the Beatitudes and more like a millstone. Less like the prophets and more like the court. Less like the crucified and more like Pilate washing his hands while the machinery of death carries on.

Against all this, the New Testament gives the church another word, a better word: paroikoi. The term carries the sense of strangers, sojourners, resident aliens, people dwelling near but not fully at home in the order around them. In 1 Peter 2:11, believers are addressed in precisely that way, as “foreigners and exiles,” those whose lives in the world are real but not reducible to the world’s claims.  And Paul, in Philippians 3:20, gives the church its political center of gravity: “our citizenship is in heaven.”

There is the contrast.

Dediticii are defined by surrender to imperial terms.
Paroikoi are defined by faithful dwelling without ultimate belonging.

Dediticii live under the dictates of the conqueror.
Paroikoi live under the promise of God.

Dediticii accept diminished freedom as though it were normal.
Paroikoi know that their life comes from another commonwealth.

Dediticii are shaped by subjection.
Paroikoi are shaped by pilgrimage.

The church is called to be paroikoi, not dediticii.

The church is called to dwell in the world, bless the world, serve the world, weep with the world, labor for justice in the world, and seek the welfare of the city; but it is never called to worship the city, confuse the city with the kingdom, or surrender its conscience to the rulers of the age. It is called to be near without being possessed. Present without being absorbed. Public without becoming idolatrous. Loving without becoming captive. The church does not need to dominate in order to be faithful. The church needs to remember who it is.

And who is it?

It is a baptized people, not a blood-and-soil people.
It is a Eucharistic people, not a nationalist people.
It is a Pentecost people, not a monocultural people.
It is a cruciform people, not a triumphalist people.
It is a resurrection people, not a fear-governed people.

That is why Christian nationalism is so dangerous. It does not merely propose a flawed strategy. It offers the church a false identity. It tells Christians they are landowners of a sacred nation rather than pilgrims of a holy kingdom. It tells them they are guardians of civilization rather than witnesses to Christ. It tells them their task is to possess the machinery of rule rather than embody the mercy of God. It tells them the neighbor’s difference is a threat rather than an occasion for love. It tells them anxiety is wisdom. It tells them domination is stewardship. It tells them privilege is providence.

And many believe it because it flatters the flesh.

It flatters the longing to be secure without sacrifice.
It flatters the longing to be righteous without repentance.
It flatters the longing to be powerful without being crucified.
It flatters the longing to call coercion conviction and call fear discernment.

But Christ does not flatter the flesh. Christ calls the church to die.

To die to supremacy.
To die to tribal vanity.
To die to the dream of holy violence.
To die to the seduction of being chaplain to empire.
To die to every flag that asks for what belongs only to God.

The church must hear this plainly: when it reaches for power by limiting the lives of others, it does not become more itself. It becomes less. When it seeks freedom through exclusion, it does not enlarge liberty. It redistributes bondage. When it blesses structures that narrow the humanity of the neighbor, it nails its own soul to those same structures. That is the judgment hidden inside the word dediticii: those who think they have secured their place have, in truth, surrendered themselves to a power that can only give them the worst kind of freedom.

But the gospel still offers another way.

Be paroikoi.
Be pilgrims.
Be resident aliens of grace.
Be people whose identity papers are issued in heaven.
Be people who do not need Caesar to certify the lordship of Christ.
Be people free enough to bless without ruling, to serve without controlling, to witness without seizing, to love without fearing.

For our citizenship is in heaven.
And because our citizenship is in heaven, we are finally free on earth: free to tell the truth, free to defend the vulnerable, free to refuse idols, free to reject every gospel of blood and soil, free to stand with those whose liberty is threatened, free to be neither conquerors nor cowards.

The church does not need a Christian nation.
The church needs Christian faithfulness.

The church does not need the illusion of greatness.
The church needs the courage of holiness.

The church does not need to become the soul of the state.
The church must become again the body of Christ.

So let the nations rage. Let the parties boast. Let the demagogues preach their frightened liturgies of invasion, purity, and control. The church must not join their choir. The church must remember its name.

Not dediticii of the state.
But paroikoi of the kingdom.

Not surrendered to empire.
But dwelling in hope.

Not the keepers of a lesser freedom.
But the witnesses of the all-encompassing liberation of Christ.

Underground – RIP MLK 4/4

A Holy Saturday Illustration

Underground – RIP MLK 4/4

A Holy Saturday Illustration

Underground – RIP MLK 4/4

A Holy Saturday Illustration

Underground – RIP MLK 4/4

A Holy Saturday Illustration

Underground – RIP MLK 4/4

A Holy Saturday Illustration

Who Will Be Romero Today?

On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.

Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”

That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.

Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.

And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.

Who Will Be Romero Today?

On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.

Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”

That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.

Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.

And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.

Who Will Be Romero Today?

On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.

Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”

That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.

Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.

And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.

Who Will Be Romero Today?

On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.

Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”

That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.

Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.

And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.

Who Will Be Romero Today?

On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.

Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”

That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.

Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.

And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.

Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.

“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” —Shirley Chisholm #propheticwitness #christianity #morality #commongood #cloverdalebc #surreybc #unitedchurchofcanada #uccan

“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” —Shirley Chisholm #propheticwitness #christianity #morality #commongood #cloverdalebc #surreybc #unitedchurchofcanada #uccan

It is extremely difficult to have a #PropheticWitness for #ClimateJustice when you are willingly and knowingly profiting from the companies that are most responsible for perpetuating the #ClimateCrisis.

It is extremely difficult to have a #PropheticWitness for #ClimateJustice when you are willingly and knowingly profiting from the companies that are most responsible for perpetuating the #ClimateCrisis.

It is extremely difficult to have a #PropheticWitness for #ClimateJustice when you are willingly and knowingly profiting from the companies that are most responsible for perpetuating the #ClimateCrisis.

It is extremely difficult to have a #PropheticWitness for #ClimateJustice when you are willingly and knowingly profiting from the companies that are most responsible for perpetuating the #ClimateCrisis.

It is extremely difficult to have a #PropheticWitness for #ClimateJustice when you are willingly and knowingly profiting from the companies that are most responsible for perpetuating the #ClimateCrisis.

This was an awesome podcast to listen to!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tgc-podcast/id270128470?i=1000595579852

#propheticwitness #church #revival #fidelity #evangelism #churchgrowth #suffering

This was an awesome podcast to listen to!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tgc-podcast/id270128470?i=1000595579852

#propheticwitness #church #revival #fidelity #evangelism #churchgrowth #suffering

This was an awesome podcast to listen to!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tgc-podcast/id270128470?i=1000595579852

#propheticwitness #church #revival #fidelity #evangelism #churchgrowth #suffering