If the 1960s were a watershed in American politics, they were no less formative a period in political theology, as figures like Jacques Ellul, Karl Barth, Walter Wink, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and William Stringfellow shed new light on the biblical language of "the powers." In these essays, activist pastor Bill Wylie-Kellermann critically appreciates the legacy of these figures and gives an urgent specificity to the theology of the powers, relating biblical concepts to contemporary stru...

Where the Water Goes Around is a biblical and political reading of Detroit over the course of three decades by an activist pastor. Detroit is a place where one can take the temperature of the world. Think on the rise of Fordism and auto-love, the Arsenal of Democracy, the practice of the sit-down strike, or the invention of the expressway and suburban mall. Consider more recently the rebellion of 1967, the deindustrialization of a union town, the assault on democracy in this black-majority...

Daniel Berrigan (+2016+) is most notorious for dramatic anti-war actions at a Catonsville draft board and a Pennsylvania nuclear weapons plant in the '60s and '80s. Indeed, with friends, he was practically devising what's been called "liturgical direct action." Berrigan was also teacher, pastor, and friend to author Bill Wylie-Kellermann. Celebrant's Flame is a well-researched, but personal book, a debt of gratitude--in the end a tome of love to his mentor. Reflecting on aspects of Berriga...

Experience the powerful legacy of Philip Berrigan’s nonviolent resistance to war and empireFrom the battlefields of World War II to the front lines of peace activism, Philip Berrigan evolved from soldier to scholar, priest to political prisoner. Confronting the fundamental nature of America’s military-focused culture, Berrigan took an unyielding stance against societal evils—war, systemic racism, unchecked materialism, and the baleful presence of nuclear weapons. I...

Doing Justice introduces people of faith to congregation-based community organizing rooted in the day-to- day struggles and hopes of urban ministry. Drawing from the authors decades of experience in community organizing ministry and skillfully illustrated with examples, Dennis A. Jacobsen weaves theological and biblical warrants for community organizing into concrete strategies for achieving justice in the public arena and discusses fundamental organizing principles like p...

"The trouble with our state," Daniel Berrigan writes in his great poem, "was not civil disobedience, which in any case was hesitant and rare. . . . The trouble with our state--our state of soul, our state of siege, was civil obedience." This poem, like the many others gathered here together by Daniel Berrigan's friend and editor, Rev. John Dear, continues his famous critique of the American war machine and summons readers to carry on his campaign of nonviolence for the abolition of war, vi...