Gene Stoltzfus (1940-2010) was the Director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) from its founding in 1988 until 2004. He was married to Dorothy Friesen of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. They lived in Chicago for 25 years until his retirement to Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada.

We are so busy congratulating ourselves for moving into poor neighborhoods, for practicing alternative modes of hospitality, for growing our own food and for living simply that we have lost track of the fact that we’re not really making any significant difference.

This is the Iconocast Episode 1: An Interview with Nekeisha Alexis-Baker (aka, Who Would Jesus Subvert).
In this episode, co-hosts Joanna Shenk and Mark Van Steenwyk interview Nekeisha Alexis-Baker (founder of JesusRadicals.com, activist, organizer, and thinker).
From JesusRadicals.com:

When Christians engage with the political arrangements of the world, be it communism, socialism, capitalist republics, they have often claimed that [...]

Andrew Stack was right to call for revolt. And, it isn’t altogether wrong-headed to believe that violence is the answer. After all, unjust systems don’t really change from internal “tweaking;” revolutionary action is required. And conventional wisdom holds that violence is a necessary part of revolt.

“They grow no food, raise no livestock, and live without rules or calendars… What do they know that we’ve forgotten?”
This is an excerpt from the beginning of a National Geographic article on the Hadza, a small hunter-gatherer tribe in northern Tanzania.  Reading this challenged the usual assumptions I’ve had celebrating civilization.  As I read about [...]

i’d love to thank William Lobdell and his book, ‘Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America – and Found Unexpected Peace’ for inspiring this post. While in Indonesia diving, we met a lovely couple from the Bay Area who are currently living in Shanghai, China. She was reading Lobdell’s [...]

In October 2009, I was invited by my friend Luke to an exchange of letters about the reasons for our belief. Here is an index to our letters:

Luke’s 1st letter
My 1st letter
Luke’s 2nd letter
My 2nd letter
Luke’s 3rd letter
My 3rd letter

Here’s Luke’s 4th Letter:

Mark,
In my third letter to you, I asked you to clarify (1) what [...]

Editor’s Note: In the first half of 2009, almost 1.9 million foreclosure filings have been reported. Millions more are at least one month behind on their home payments. If foreclosures continue at current rates, over 9 million homes will enter foreclosure by 2012. While there are some indications of an economic rebound, with unemployment [...]

As we remember the eighth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, we join our voices with the psalmist in a cry of lament: “How long, O Lord, until Abel’s blood stops crying, until justice rolls down like waters, until the lion can lay down with the lamb in a restored creation?” We lament the violence [...]

I’m a new father. My son is almost eights months old. Our little family has finally emerged so-to-speak. Julissa, my wife, is from Peru (the second largest country, one of the most impoverished, in South America). She and I have many things in common and many things not in common. It would be dishonest, I [...]

On this day 64 years ago, the US vaporized thousands and poisoned hundreds of thousands with radiation in Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb (nicknamed Little Boy) was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Over 70,000 residents were incinerated. Several days later, on August 9, a second bomb (nicknamed Fat Man) [...]

As you may know, I am a part of an intentional community. Our community does the usual intentional community things: we have a big garden, we dumpter-dive, we ferment stuff, we rant against war, and we hang out with other radicals like us. One of the groups we sometimes hang out with is Food Not [...]

Sundays when I was little, our beleaguered mother — divorced, in school, raising three kids — put us on the church bus, put a roast in the crock pot, and settled in for a couple of hours of respite. She got a much-needed sabbath, we got some churchin’.
And churchin’ we got, at some sort of [...]

Our friends at Jesus Radicals are putting together what promises to be a very worthwhile conference. They have a grat lineup of speakers and sessions.
New Heaven, New Earth: Anarchism and Christianity Beyond Empire
August 14 & 15, 2009
Caritas Village
2509 Harvard Avenue, Memphis, TN 38112
The 2009 Jesus Radicals Anarchism and Christianity conference will look squarely at the [...]

In a tragic twist of irony, the venue in the Christian faith that was intended to unify believers of diverse stripes and beliefs has actually divided and split the church in untold ways.
I’m referring to Communion. The Lord’s Supper. The Eucharist. The Table.
It goes by many names, and has been practiced many ways. [...]

It started with Facebook. A friend of mine, a diehard conservative who once brought a Walkman to a monastery retreat so that he wouldn’t have to miss Rush Limbaugh, posted this article, with a comment that read “waterboarding saved lives, suggests the evidence,” which makes it sound a little like a seat belt. We can [...]

Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, is the first day of Lent.  Traditionally, Lent is the 40 days of fasting leading up to Easter. I’ve been missing the point of Lent my entire life. Since I didn’t really come into the Christian faith until I was a teenager (and since my earliest Christian experiences were among Charismatics) I [...]

“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” – The True Believer, Eric Hoffer, p 86
Movements are all-too-often fueled by anger rather than hope, by hate rather than love, by fear rather than faith. In my last article, I talked about the way Christian radicalism [...]