St. Peters Episcopal Church Detroit

This workshop is led by Word & World, an ecumenical and inclusive project of socially-conscious Christians and other people of faith which seeks to reunite “the seminary, the sanctuary and the streets,” for the sake of social transformation. Over-against prosperity-gospel interpretations of scripture baptizing capitalist accumulation in “heavenly” legitimation, this session will lift up the biblical tradition of “sabbath economics” for an age of neo-liberal globalization. Rooted in Exodus-remembrance of a wild-cat strike of slaves, ritually remembered in communal practices of regular work-stoppage (the weekly sabbath) and releases of land and labor and debt (the sabbath and jubilee years), this tradition is embodied in the Jesus movement of 1st century Palestine in action and parable alike, choreographing popular anger into peasant resistance to land grabs and debt-slavery of the day. This “bottom-up” reading of the tradition will be juxtaposed to a similar uplifting of emerging practices in de-industrialized Detroit among a restive grass roots, organizing localized food production, artistically re-deploying “garbage” as prophetic commentary, resisting foreclosure, and freeing media for popular use under a hip-hop aesthetic.

This workshop will explore the anthropological, theological and socio-political underpinnings of egalitarian societies. Topics will include hunter-gatherer ethnography, anarcho-primitivist/ anti-civilization critique and christian-theological resonance with these lifeways/ critiques. Writers such as John Zerzan, Ched Myers, Layla Abdel-Rahim will provide the basis for our exploration of these topics along with anthropological insights from Richard Lee and James Woodburn. This session will look at how the most primitive human social structure (band society/ hunting and gathering) is also the most fundamentally egalitarian. If we value egalitarianism we would do well to look at these lifeways and how they resonate with Green Anarchist and radical Christian world views.

This workshop is led by Word & World, an ecumenical and inclusive project of socially-conscious Christians and other people of faith which seeks to reunite “the seminary, the sanctuary and the streets,” for the sake of social transformation. Over-against prosperity-gospel interpretations of scripture baptizing capitalist accumulation in “heavenly” legitimation, this session will lift up the biblical tradition of “sabbath economics” for an age of neo-liberal globalization. Rooted in Exodus-remembrance of a wild-cat strike of slaves, ritually remembered in communal practices of regular work-stoppage (the weekly sabbath) and releases of land and labor and debt (the sabbath and jubilee years), this tradition is embodied in the Jesus movement of 1st century Palestine in action and parable alike, choreographing popular anger into peasant resistance to land grabs and debt-slavery of the day. This “bottom-up” reading of the tradition will be juxtaposed to a similar uplifting of emerging practices in de-industrialized Detroit among a restive grass roots, organizing localized food production, artistically re-deploying “garbage” as prophetic commentary, resisting foreclosure, and freeing media for popular use under a hip-hop aesthetic.

This workshop will explore the anthropological, theological and socio-political underpinnings of egalitarian societies. Topics will include hunter-gatherer ethnography, anarcho-primitivist/ anti-civilization critique and christian-theological resonance with these lifeways/ critiques. Writers such as John Zerzan, Ched Myers, Layla Abdel-Rahim will provide the basis for our exploration of these topics along with anthropological insights from Richard Lee and James Woodburn. This session will look at how the most primitive human social structure (band society/ hunting and gathering) is also the most fundamentally egalitarian. If we value egalitarianism we would do well to look at these lifeways and how they resonate with Green Anarchist and radical Christian world views.