“The level of 'acceptable' dishonesty we Christians allow to avoid facing uncomfortable truths betrays our ideals as shallowly held.” TruthChristianityHonestyDishonestyShallowness Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
“It's not enough for us to mourn and resist the suffering and oppression of 2SLGBTQIA+ folks. We must also dare to imagine a world in which we are all embraced and celebrated in life-giving mutuality. We must stir our imaginations to conceive of a Church where every member of this vibrant Body is recognized for the divine image we reflect. And before we nod in easy agreement to this truth, we must also recognize that we have been conditioned into a crisis of imagination. We have lost so much of that creative capacity- and we must rekindle it! And one crucial way to do that is to elevate those lives and voices that demonstrate that imagination, found most often among those very people who live under that suffering and oppression. As Walter Brueggemann reminds us, "It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.” ReligionImaginationChurchJusticeChristianityIdentityLgbtqPropheticAdvocacyMutuality Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
“It is a telling contradiction that those who hold a theology that emphasizes the needs of the soul over that of the body also holds to a theology where physical torment is a necessity for eternal punishment.” SoulSpiritualReligionJusticeSinChristianityHellPunishmentTheology Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
“Beware of any theology that emphasizes the needs of the soul over that of the body while also holding to the belief that physical torment is necessary for eternal punishment.” SpiritualSufferingJusticeCompassionChristianityHellTheologyTormentPhysical Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
“When people worship a god who is willing to inflict eternal suffering on others, it only follows that they will be a people who are willing to inflict abusive and oppressive suffering on others in the name of that god and his "righteousness". And they will call it love.” LoveGodDeathReligionSufferingJesusChristianityHellJudgmentOppression Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
“We celebrate the differences among us, even that which we cannot reconcile, not in denial of the absolute, but in the gift of humility that those differences require of us. Without denying our differences, we no longer allow them to categorize or divide us. It is in the diversity that the image of God is most fully reflected in and through us.” ChristianityHumilityDiversity Book:Living Christ Together: Reflections On The Missional Life Source: Living Christ Together: Reflections On The Missional Life
“From the very beginnings of our story as followers of Jesus, we have recognized and honoured the fundamental truth that every person is made in the image of God. Yet, while we are quick to celebrate those aspects of the divine image with which we personally relate, we all too quickly reject and denounce those that are different than ourselves as suspect or lesser than or sinful.” TruthJesusSinChristianityDivineTheologyImage Of GodConfirmation BiasNormativity Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
“The problem is not that people are called to die to their sin, but rather that too many Christians are lined up with hammer and nails ready to help.” DeathSinChristianityHypocrisyJudgmentalCrossJudgmental PeopleJudgmentality Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
“The mission of God’s people is not simply directed at saving people’s souls from a bad life-after-death into a good life-after-death, but it addresses and hopefully touches the injustice and violence around us—poverty, racism, sexism, economic exploitation, war, environmental destruction—where salvation, justice, and peace can merge.” JusticeChristianitySocial JusticeSalvationMissionsMissionMissional Book:Vulnerable Faith: Missional Living in the Radical Way of St. Patrick Source: Vulnerable Faith: Missional Living in the Radical Way of St. Patrick
“In the Christian tradition, the function of the “prophetic” (far from being about soothsaying the future) is about speaking truth to power in the face of injustice. The prophets in the Biblical tradition were disruptive voices in the face of systemic failures to protect the most vulnerable. In our context, the prophetic is a disruption of power and privilege in much the same way as a stick in the spokes- an attempt to immediately stop the forward momentum of harmful and oppressive dynamics. The disruption becomes necessary- even critical- when our mutual and social commitments (including grassroots realities, governmental systems, religious communities, etc.) fail to protect the marginalized- or worse, contribute to their oppression.” ReligionJusticeChristianitySocial JusticeActivismOppressionIntersectionality Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci