“Radical” is a term as unfashionable today as it was trendy in the 1960s. The notion of “discipleship,” meanwhile, is shrugged off in liberal church circles and trivialized in conservative ones. So why does BCM key on this phrase?
PROGRAMS
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The contemporary RJ movement is re-discovering what has long been practiced among Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Before European colonization, native communities understood justice fundamentally in relational terms. Personal (or tribal) offenses were seen to result either from ignorance or illness of the soul: one required teaching, the other, healing. Today, many tribes in Canada and the U.S. are rehabilitating traditional responses to crime and injustice, using sweat lodges, smudges, healing circles, and the Medicine wheel to work towards restoration, accountability, and forgiveness. It is important for non-native teachers and practitioners of restorative justice to recognize, honor and learn from the older traditions of Indigenous peoples.
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BCM is committed to connecting faith to political and personal issues of economic justice. We have developed an approach called "Sabbath Economics," a phrase we use as shorthand for the biblical vision of "enough for all." Since the publication of Ched’s The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics (2001) we have developed many popular education resources for use by faith communities to “read the Bible economically and the economy biblically.”
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This movement is framed as an intentional “triple entendre’:
- Live as disciples who are fully awake to this watershed moment of ecological crisis.
- Recognize that the essential locus of our discipleship is our watershed, which should fundamentally inform and shape our faith and practice.
- Explore what it means to be disciples of our watershed, building literacy in and intimacy with what classical theology called the “book of Creation".
- Live as disciples who are fully awake to this watershed moment of ecological crisis.
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It is our conviction that the First World church can only be renewed by rediscovering its witness to God’s dream of the Peaceable Kingdom and justice for all. Historically in the U.S., people of faith have been on the forefront of struggles for social change (in our generation this has included movements for civil rights, labor solidarity, immigrant and refugee rights and disarmament). Today, however, we need to help animate a new generation of ecumenical leadership committed both to the gospel and to social change.
Bartimaeus Cooperative Minsitries