Violence is something that a lot of people claim to understand; there are many anthropological and sociological studies about its causes. But, the truth of the matter is that violence is a mystery that comes with being human. I can’t say that I actually understand how violence works. What I can say, is that I am in search of a better understanding of violence in order to also understand peacemaking and conflict resolution. In most of the communities where we work, violence is a constant. What is interesting to me is the result of the violence I see: Internal violence usually ends in suicide and external violence usually ends in murder.

One sunny afternoon in 2005, my friend Brady (who is from Knoxville, TN) and I were hanging out with Clemente, Kevin, and other kids from a slum in zone 3, Guatemala City. Most of them teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19 years old, with the exception of five-year-old Rigo and his seven-year-old brother. Rigo and his brother were playing with marbles on the floor. Chepe and I were talking with the kids, cracking some jokes and having a good time laughing at the “gringo” with the funny accent. For some reason, one of the two brothers lost his marbles and wanted the other one to give him his. I assume Rigo was the one who had the marbles, but I do not know that for sure. Out of nowhere the atmosphere filled with violence and the next thing I saw was a fight between the two little kids.

I have seen kids fighting for toys before, but this time it was just vicious. Rigo’s brother was on top, with his fists closed, beating Rigo down. I do not even know if I have the words to describe the scene, but the fight was brutal. The guys we were hanging out with were fueling the fight, cheering and yelling “Come on! Come on! Harder! Harder!” Brady and I could not intervene. We did not know what to do. I was really afraid the little kids were going to hurt themselves for real. I did not know how to react and stop the fight. Somehow, Rigo made it out of the beat-down and saw his mom walking down the street. Dropping his marbles on the floor he ran as fast as he could to embrace his mom’s legs. He was looking for protection. For a moment I thought, thank God she just showed up, now I do not have to stop the fight! Amazingly, when Rigo hugged his mom’s legs, instead of finding care, security, and love he found a kick right into his belly and an angry voice yelling, “Don’t be such a pussy! Go fight your brother like a man! That is how you learn dumb ass!” I could not believe what my eyes were witnessing. It felt like being right in the middle of an intense Flannery O’Connor story.

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Our obsession with food in this country hits a fever pitch this week as we celebrate Thanksgiving. Yet according to the National Resources Defense Council, Americans throw away $165 billion (yes with a B) worth of food every year. Sam Wells provides a thoughtful reminder that probably won’t make the gastronomic headlines this week.

Food is Politics. The food industry is the largest manufacturing industry in this country. Anyone who disputes the description of agriculture and animal farming as an industry has not been outside lately. The reality is, the old distinction between food on the one hand, which was about the country and the soil, and industry on the other, which was about the city and the factory, has broken down. We all go to the supermarket and shop for groceries. But did you know that the average item of food in a grocery store has travelled 1500 miles? This means that putting food on our dinner plates is a global project.

It has always been so. The outer reaches of Tiberius’ Roman Empire had one central purpose in the imperial economy: and that was to be a breadbasket and source of other agricultural surpluses. If you lived in an Italian villa and your taste was fish paste, olive oil, or wine, then Galilee was your key supply base. Consider the kinds of diseases carried by those drawn to Jesus. You will find that most of them are connected in some way to malnutrition. The politics of food dominates the gospels just as much as it dominates today’s global economy. When Jesus set about transforming human reality, he went to the core of the culture: the production and consumption of food.

Most of Jesus’ talking about food comes in his parables. It is often supposed that Jesus was a simple agrarian figure telling homespun yet subversive stories of small-town folk, a kind of cross between Huckleberry Finn and John Denver. But when your eyes are opened to the politics of food, the parables take on a new dimension. When we read the story of the landowner who built bigger and bigger barns, we start to ask, “Whose land had now come into his possession and why? Was he in the Romans’ pocket or simply exploiting his fellow Jews?” In other words, it is no longer just a parable about greed but also a story about the politics of food. Think again about the parable of the sower. The stony ground and the thistles are not just figures of speech. They are agronomic reasons why peasant farmers remained in grinding poverty. And when the good soil produced a hundredfold, this is not just some kind of Middle Eastern penchant for exaggeration. This is saying at last this struggling peasant famer could pay his taxes, pay his debts, and finally buy his own land and be free of bonded oppression for good. This becomes Jesus’ image of salvation, of the kingdom of God – the ability to have more than enough food in a culture of extortion and exploitation.

How might we embody a Christian politics based on food?

1. Realize that there is nothing more political than what you eat. Let us not get into a fantasy about uncontaminated food. But let us realize that the world’s economy is based on choices about agriculture. The world is what we eat.
2. Ask yourself “Who am I eating with?” Food is both need and pleasure. And when those in need and those you love come together in such a way that they get all tangled up around the meal table, we call it the kingdom of God.
3. If worship is food, could it be that food is worship? Could we imagine how good eating might become a sacrament of reconciliation between human beings and our planet?

The Revd Dr Sam Wells is the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. He has served as a parish priest for 15 years – 10 of those in urban priority areas. He also spent 7 years in North Carolina where he was Dean of Duke University Chapel.

Taken from Come to the Table: A Collection of Recipes celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Congregation at Duke University Chapel. Congregation at Duke University Chapel, Durham, NC

This past month 22 students graduated with a masters degree in Global Urban Leadership and one with a doctorate through CTM’s partnership with Bakke Graduate University.

This celebration was the fruit of much labor and much love. Each student read nearly 15,000 pages, written more than 300 pages and completed at least 10 projects in which they translated principles into practice. These students underwent a demanding process of learning how to do theology from below –  learning how to read Scripture with and for the communities they serve. This was no ivory tower experience. This was theology done in the context in which the leader’s serve. All of their classes were held in informal settlements like Kibera and Mathare.

As graduates they join a very exclusive club. Less than 1% of the world’s population holds a masters degree and a fraction of 1% holds a doctorate. A very rare and seductive kind of power was conferred upon them along with their degrees and they will be called to steward it on behalf of those they serve. They will be tempted, as all people with power are tempted, to use their gift for their own ends, thereby excluding others.

Stewarding power and using one’s voice on behalf of the voiceless is not without its risks. That is why Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, said that if we want to teach and preach a subversive Gospel, “The key is not to be detected too soon.” Why? Because theology from below is often experienced as a threat by those from above. This should not surprise us. Even Jesus’ first sermon ended badly. The crowd became enraged and filled with vengeance when Jesus began to teach about the expansive movement of grace throughout history that made room for the excluded (See Luke 4:16-30).

Recently Street Psalms Press announced  the arrival of our first book, Geography of Grace – Doing Theology From Below by Kris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke.

This project has been several years in the making. It has gone through five major edits, countless rewrites and a change in publishers. We are eager and a bit nervous to see it finally hit the streets. We have no illusions that this will be a New York Times best seller, but as a community, we hope it is a useful tool for those who are hungry to see God at work in hard places.

Authors and leaders like Bob Ekblad, Richard Rohr, Shane Claiborne, Phyllis Trible, Ray Bakke and others have given the book a warm reception. To see what these and other leaders are saying about Geography of Grace go click on the book highlight to the right of this page or go  here.

Fair warning:

We did not set out to write a controversial book, but this book is not without some controversy. We wrote it to honor those who work in the context of poverty and violence, which often pushes leaders to the edge of their faith, and ours as well, if we are honest. As a result, we have taken the “road less traveled,” in our book. Such a road is fraught with danger and all manner of ways to get lost, but as Robert Frost noted, taking the road less travelled “has made all the difference.” We hope it will make a difference with our readers and the communities we serve.

Several who have reviewed the book have recognized and appreciated the risky nature of our journey. One such review comes from Stephan de Beer in Pretoria, South Africa, who writes,

Grace is shared abundantly in the poetic beauty of this book: a grace located in the deepest trenches of human suffering and global urban fractures; a disarming grace, meeting you on every page, robed in profanity, steeped in the incarnation, erupting in surprising, awe-inspiring transformations.

This book offers all of us who sense an invitation to be on the urban margins, some superb handles for the journey – it is not your typical travel guide, but one written for the connoisseur of urban and human marginality, and, if we read carefully enough, a guide book for opening us up to the poetry and profanity of God’s beautiful grace, a grace more than able to make us over, and also the cities in which we live.

 Stephan de Beer, CEO, Tshwane Leadership Foundation, Pretoria, South Africa

To purchase Geography of Grace: Doing Theology From Below in either paperback or e-book format, go here. (Amazon will have the print version of the book available within the next month or so, but for now the paperback edition is available directly from Street Psalms Press in an equally safe and secure process that actually provides more income for our work.)  

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During my second year of Bible College, working in the informal settlements in Guatemala City, I thought I was going to save the day. All the knowledge I was acquiring at that time gave me a false idea of power and capability to provoke systemic change. The academy had become my reality to the point that I was omitting the reality outside the walls of the seminary, which was fueling my ingenuity. I was so cloistered and my view of life and ministry was so conservative that I thought the experience of a people and their anxieties was not as important as the “message of salvation.” That idea also paved the road for me to ignore God’s work and stop being surprised by His grace.

When I first started serving in the informal settlements in Guatemala City I though that I was going to change my country; I was going to be the liberator for those living in poverty and oppression. To my surprise, I was completely astonished by the magnitude of the issues facing my country. I was a middle class college boy trying to save the low income kids living in poverty,[1] surrounded by violence, pain and suffering.

After one year I realized that Guatemala was too big to change by myself. I decided Guatemala City would be a more attainable target for transformational ministry. I really thought I was capable to affect the city in some way, and that systemic change was possible through struggle against the oppressive structures created by those in power and the ruling social class.[2] As the time went by, I started noticing that change as I expected was not happening at all. The kids I was working with were not changing their lives and following Christ. Instead, they were getting more involved in the organized crime that rules the city. Then, I decided that Guatemala City was way too big, so I chose to focus my efforts in zone 3, which is the section of the city where drug dealers and other kinds of organized crime mix with ordinary hard working people who live in the slums. That didn’t work either and I ended up working in one street of an informal settlement called Anexo Aguilar. The work among people living in poverty and despair pushed me to find a way to ponder and rejoice in God’s work in a way that constantly challenges my worldview.

In my short experience there are four steps that I have taken in order to reflect and celebrate God’s work among the people I serve; and I have to admit that they are very important in my personal process of doing theology. The first step, as Karl Barth would say, is the “astonishment.” It is very important that everything that has to do directly with theology must be vivid, because the theology cannot be something static. Theology always is a history that becomes flesh within the experiences and actions of human beings.[3] Theology must be lived! Therefore, it’s important that the object of every theological study and existential reflection changes its focus from ethereal and abstract ideas to the experience of our people, our relationship with God, and the images of God that are constantly shattered. That is why I need to understand what happens when the theology gets closer to the human being, when it touches me, when it becomes a part of me. Theology astonishes and amazes the human being.[4]

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Editor’s note:  This was first published as a Word from Below email on February 23 2009. At the start of a new year -  a time of hope, a time of resolutions that are often forgotten a few days after they are made, this is a timely reminder of a faith and spirituality that doesn’t call us to a false perfection.  To receive the weekly Word from Below by email, click here.)

For the last 12 years our friends at Northwest Leadership Foundation have been hosting a weekly gathering known as Theological Roundtable. Each week about 15 leaders gather for a conversation that seeks to hold the Bible in one hand and culture in the other. It is a simple and powerful tool for leadership. We have adopted this as part of our strategy for leadership development in the cites that we serve. We have been encouraged to see similar roundtables formed in places like White Center, WA., Camden, NJ, and Denver, CO, Guatemala City, Santo Domingo and Nairobi, to name a few.

Not long ago, the Tacoma group invited a local Catholic priest named Father Lantry, to talk about “Recovery Spirituality.” Each week the group sends out a recap of their discussion. I am including a brief summary of their discussion with Father Lantry. I think it gets at something important for the communities that we serve. Here it is…

…Father Steve Lantry from St. Leo’s Church guided the table through the implications of what it means to take seriously addiction and recovery as it relates to our own spirituality. We talked of addictions in the conventional sense—substance abuse—as well as the more subtle, but no less serious addictions in our thoughts, behaviors, and destructive patterns that control us.

In light of this shared struggle, Lantry suggested that one of the most tragic responses to the reality of addiction is the natural but dangerous attempt to strive toward perfection. He suggested that a spirituality of perfection, which is a seemingly godly endeavor, is destined to leave us disappointed.

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The Church is where natural enemies gather…

Mark Twain wrote of his famous experiment:   He placed a cat and a dog in a cage and to his amazement they became friends.   Encouraged, he added a rabbit, a fox, a goose, a squirrel and even some doves and a monkey.  They too became friends and lived in peace.

In another cage he confined an Irish catholic.  When he seemed tame enough he added a Scotch Presbyterian.  Next he added a Turk from Constantinople, a Greek as well as an Armenian Christian, a Methodist, a Buddhist, a Brahman and finally a Salvation Army Colonel.

He left both cages for two days.  When he came back he found the animals still at peace.  But in the cage of religious leaders he found “a chaos of gory ends, of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh, not a specimen alive.”  Twain concluded that the religious leaders disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

Here at CTM we have learned (the hard way) that attending to “theological detail” and doctrinal distinctives almost always results in “a chaos of gory ends,” especially when doing grassroots theology in hard places.

Whereas theological detail tends to divide us into “a chaos of gory ends,” honest conversation that is done within the crucible of mission has the potential to unite.  We have found that if we raise missional questions high enough and pose them strong enough – I mean to the point where our neat theological formulas fall helpless before the harsh realities of those we serve, we can actually build a table in which the possibility of unity emerges.

Sometimes desperation is not only the best way forward, it is the only way forward.  I am convinced that the overwhelming impossibilities of those on the margins are the key to unity within the Body of Christ.  It takes only a little humility and all of two minutes to learn that when serving among the least, no single spiritual stream is enough. High-risk communities require the best of all the spiritual streams that the Church has to offer, and then some.  Authentic service among the poor creates room at the table for us all and I do mean ALL.  In this sense, it is the poor who hold the key to our salvation.  Perhaps this is why Jesus said, blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of God.

(This was first published as a Word from Below email on June 15, 2009. To receive the weekly Word from Below by email, click here.)

Kris Rocke
Serves as director of Center for Transforming Mission
Bumps into Reality by accident, most of the time
Heard God laugh once

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”
—Hebrews 12:2

Just in time for Lent, a difficult personal situation thrust me into a season of inner turmoil and sorrow over betrayed relationships. Thankfully, a well-knit community of companions has walked through every dark alley with me and other family members.

I’ve got a long way to go toward healing, but at the moment I can breathe again—so I will take opportunity for initial reflection on varieties of religious language used to console beat-up souls like mine. Here I’m not really referring to specific helpful or ridiculous comments people make in the awkward presence of pain. I’ve made plenty of both in my time—surely even in these recent weeks. I’m more interested to explore larger contours of soul care.

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Part I – A three part series on spirituality and humor

I don’t have much in common with Chris Rock. He is a rich, famous, African American comedian who is known for his laser-like wit and politically incorrect humor. I am not rich, famous, black, nor am I very funny. However, I get a lot of attention because we share the same name.

I like being associated with somebody who makes people laugh, even if his humor can be irreverent and crude. Humor is risky, precisely because it leans towards irreverence. That’s its nature. Perhaps that is why I trust it so much. It is really hard to be pretentious and funny at the same time. Pretentiousness leads to spiritual death. A good sense of humor signals a certain kind of humility, which is the basis of all good spirituality.

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“In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”
John 1:1&14

The early Church discovered that when they wanted to see Jesus in all his deified bigness they had to accept him first in all of his human smallness. This is the mystery of the Incarnation. Apparently “less is more” when it comes to God.

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