Nova Faith Community, 5105 Glendale Avenue, Ste G, Toledo, OH (2026)

10/20/2026

Empire and Christianity

Universal Healing

Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Cherokee theologian Randy Woodley contrasts Western Christianity’s emphasis on salvation through doctrine with the healing work of Jesus:

People who believe themselves to be at the top of a hierarchy must find ways to maintain power. Doctrines can be a handy tool for doing so. If you can convince the masses that a reward awaits them in heaven, you’ve got a way to keep the restive crowds a bit quieter, more compliant. And if you can convince them that they’re actually sinful through and through—and that as sinners, they’ve got to keep themselves in line in order to have a chance at God’s grace—well, you’ve got it made. Your power can continue to expand.

One such doctrine was the belief that all people are born sinful. This is often called the doctrine of original sin … [which] fits nicely with the dominant church’s presumed authority to either grant or withhold salvation….

What Christian theology calls “sin” Native American understandings often describe as imbalance, or broken harmony. These different terms point toward the same spiritual reality. Salvation then, is restoring the harmony and imbalance through healing.

By reducing the idea of salvation to a series of formulas, or disciplines, or prayers, or creeds, the Western church missed the whole point. Salvation … was not something that could be bought with money, power, or obedience to words in a creed. Salvation is about one thing: healing. And not healing for later, in the by and by, but healing for right now.

Even today, many people allow doctrine to determine their idea of salvation rather than understanding salvation as the way God heals us all, including the rest of the community of creation. I would love to see people grasp this important concept: that healing is a much better way to think of God’s greatest gift than salvation is.

Woodley describes how Jesus offers collective healing rather than individual salvation:

When we look at Jesus through the lens of Indigenous and Hebrew understandings rather than imperial American and Roman frameworks, we see that his ministry was fundamentally about restoring wholeness, healing bodies, bringing outcasts back into community, challenging unjust systems, and mending broken relationships…. Healing is the bigger picture of God’s vision that Western Christianity calls “salvation,” and healing is for all of us now.

Perhaps most importantly, healing language better reflects the Creator’s heart for shalom: that comprehensive peace and abundance in which all creation coexists in harmony. Shalom, and the Indigenous visions of harmony, contains a justice and wholeness that extends far beyond individual souls to encompass whole communities, cultures, and the land itself.

The path forward must be about stripping away the imperial distortions to reveal the Jesus who heals rather than conquers, who restores rather than erases, who empowers rather than overpowers. In this understanding, salvation becomes what it was always meant to be: the healing of all things.

Reference:
Randy Woodley, How Western Christianity Got It Wrong: Replacing the God of Fear with a Spirituality of Healing (Broadleaf Books, 2026), 87–88, 97–98, 104–105.

Image credit and inspiration: Bradley Pritchard Jones, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Ynys Llanddwyn, Wales. Unsplash. Like old stones slowly returning to the hillside, the structures of empire fade while the way of Jesus, rooted like the land itself, remains.

10/20/2026

Hope

We are called to be fundamentally a hopeful people. To be bearers of hope for those who sit unseen and unheard outside our gates by using our power to throw open those gates. We are to live out our own hope in the conviction of God’s redemptive purpose for the whole world.

Br. Lain Wilson, SSJE

10/19/2026

Empire and Christianity

The Games of Empire

Monday, October 19, 2026
Father Richard considers how the lens of empire shifted the interpretation of the gospel:

Once Christianity became enmeshed with empire, we could no longer talk about the opening line of the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). Emperors don’t want people who are poor in spirit. They want loyalists. They want people who salute the flag and follow the rules. They want national security states. Any talk of nonviolence frankly goes underground until the twentieth century. That’s how well empire Christianity buried the gospel message. Empires need clear judgments about up and down, who’s in and who’s out, who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s our enemy and who’s our friend.

Here’s an example of how thoroughly it infected the church. In 1054, with no sense of irony, the bishop of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople, representing the Latin church and the Greek church traditions, mutually excommunicated one another. Each side effectively called themselves the winner. This was a triumph of dualistic, win-lose thinking. We had the Holy Roman Empire in the West, and the Byzantine Empire in the East, and they basically stopped talking to one another.

The Holy Roman Empire transitioned into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Similarly, the Spanish Empire brought its version of Western Roman Catholicism to the New World, including my own state of New Mexico.

These empires handed on a reading of the gospel that did not threaten top-down power, war-making, or the accumulation of wealth, but was presumably perfectly aligned with it. That’s why people think I’m a heretic when I critique capitalism. Did you know that until the 1100s, taking interest on a loan was considered material for excommunication? Now, it’s the only name of the game! We are so aligned with our current money-making system that much of Jesus’s teaching, in which he says the top will be bottom and the bottom will be top, doesn’t make a bit of sense to us. (See Matthew 19:30, 20:16.) We don’t agree with it, privately or publicly.

There are, of course, the outliers, those who remained outside of empire. In the Catholic world there were the desert fathers and mothers, the Celts, and the mendicant orders. In the Protestant world, non-imperial Christianity was probably best illustrated by the Anabaptist movement, which led to groups like the Mennonites, the Amish, the Waldensians, the Bruderhof, and even the Quakers (although the Quakers aren’t really Anabaptists).

These forms of Christianity emphasize things like a simple lifestyle, non-participation in war, not taking oaths to governments, and not saluting the flags and systems of this world. These groups were never established by any state whatsoever, nor did they enjoy the privileges that came from being the established religion of the Roman, Spanish, or British Empires. This is actually to their benefit because once you’re established, you have to be careful! Your ability to speak truth will be highly limited. There’s a whole bunch of things you cannot say anymore.

Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Christianity and Empire,” Conspire 2018 (Center for Action and Contemplation, 2018). Youtube.com.

Image credit and inspiration: Bradley Pritchard Jones, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Ynys Llanddwyn, Wales. Unsplash. Like old stones slowly returning to the hillside, the structures of empire fade while the way of Jesus, rooted like the land itself, remains.

10/18/2026

Empire and Christianity

Insisting on Winners and Losers

Sunday, October 18, 2026
Father Richard Rohr points to the creation of winners and losers as a sure sign that an “empire consciousness” is at work:

There is an overall paradigm that I’ve been calling “empire thinking,” which is a zero-sum game. And in a zero-sum game, one can only win by causing another to lose. Unless that assumption is stated very clearly, we don’t realize how often it’s at work. It will not really be a game where I have a wonderful skill to share or a gift to be highlighted. I just have to defeat the other side. We could also call it the win-lose worldview. I want to say as strongly as I can that the win-lose worldview, the expectations of the zero-sum game, are absolutely dominant in the minds of most people.

This game of winning and losing is a tragic way of defining reality. A zero-sum game demands losers. Surely it isn’t true that the only way we can really “win” in life is to make certain that others lose? It’s amazing how we take some kind of happy delight in this. Just look at the enthusiasm communities have for their sports teams! We like that framing of reality. At this point in our history, we like winners and losers so much that, whereas Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am,” the American mind now says, “I win, therefore, I am.” That is not an exaggeration. “I win, therefore, I am” is at work in our economics, politics, global policy, social media, religion, and even our personal relationships! We’re not considering the other side of that equation: Whenever we think that way, there have to be losers.

Christianity quickly adopted that interpretation of the gospel, though the four Gospels in no way validated it. After several centuries of persecution by the Roman Empire, most Christians felt quite happy, excited, and even liberated when the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the established religion in 313 CE. We moved from the bottom to the top, from the losers to the ultimate winners.

Ascending, top-down religions love a top-down, win-lose worldview. Protect the top, make sure the top is winning, and it just so happens that a lot of other people lose. Unless we’re transformed by grace, we can’t even recognize that we’re doing it. Without grace, we really don’t know how to think in terms of “win-win.”

That type of win-lose thinking is associated with a high degree of Christians today, and it’s not even really our fault. No one ever taught us to think differently. Presenting heaven and hell in the first grade offers a nice, dualistic explanation to keep little children from misbehaving—but does it have much to do with the teachings of Jesus? I don’t think so. But when we frame reality and the whole world that way, that’s the way we frame the gospel.

Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Christianity and Empire,” Conspire 2018 (Center for Action and Contemplation, 2018). Youtube.com.

Image credit and inspiration: Bradley Pritchard Jones, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, Ynys Llanddwyn, Wales. Unsplash. Like old stones slowly returning to the hillside, the structures of empire fade while the way of Jesus, rooted like the land itself, remains.

10/18/2026

Strength

We may feel overwhelmed in the face of what God is asking us to do. We may be tempted to look for a way out. God’s response to our anxiety is always the same. As God says to Moses, Jeremiah, and Mary: “Do not be afraid. I will be your strength in weakness. The work is mine; I will do this work in and through you.”

Br. David Vryhof, SSJE

10/17/2026

Returning Home

Returning Home: Weekly Summary

Saturday, October 17, 2026

Sunday
We are both driven and called forward by a kind of deep homesickness, it seems. There is an inherent and desirous dissatisfaction that both sends and draws us forward, and it comes from our original and radical union with God.
—Richard Rohr

Monday
I think the best way to describe what’s coming next is not “I’m dying,” but “I’m finally going home.” I don’t know what it’s like yet, but in my older age I really trust that it is home.
—Richard Rohr

Tuesday
Spiritual homesickness has been a constant in my life. It was not an everyday experience, but a predictable and always reoccurring desperation to find a sense of sacredness within me, not outside of me: my soul, my home, God in me.
—Brené Brown

Wednesday
Now Odysseus can go home because he has, in fact, come home to his true and full self. He is free to stop his human doing and can at last enjoy his human being, at home in himself.
—Richard Rohr

Thursday
The stories of Jesus and Israel were so tightly woven into the stories my parents told of themselves … that it took me years to separate the biblical figures from extended family members, biblical sinners from the sinners all around us, and biblical places of pain from their places of pain. I was never able to separate biblical hopes from their real hopes.
—Willie Jennings

Friday
The overarching narrative of the Bible is that of humanity searching for home…. It is a powerful story, rich in literary ambiguity—the earth, us, home, and God are almost interchangeable characters in this ancient record of humankind’s aching search to dwell.
—Diana Butler Bass

Week Forty-One Practice
Our Heart’s Longing for Home

In an episode of the Everything Belongs podcast, James Finley reflects on homesickness as part of the spiritual landscape:

Imagine you’re driving home at the end of the day and the sun is setting. At first you don’t pay any attention to it, because the sun sets every night. But on this particular night, it’s particularly beautiful, and you’re prompted to pull over and get out of the car. You sit on the ground, giving yourself over to the beauty of the setting sun, giving itself over to you.

If we meditate on that moment, we notice that it’s a moment of heightened awareness. It’s not lethargic or dull, but it’s also true that in this moment you’re not thinking, or whatever thing you are thinking doesn’t measure up to the richness of the awareness.

So one way to put it is: In this moment, the “thinking you” and all that it thinks is transcended…. In all the eons from the beginning of the universe till now, the sun has never set before tonight, ever. And for all the eons to come, it’ll never set again in this same way, so it’s virginal and new. So, the remembering self and all that it remembers is transcended; there’s just the newness of the eternality of now….

In that moment you experience a deep kind of homecoming, like you belong there, and there’s a resting in this. You’re also not in time, because it’s prolonged. When you get up to leave, you have to look at your watch to see how much time passed, because you weren’t in time.

So you get home and pull the car in the garage. You’re standing in the kitchen, going through the mail, and you remember the moment of the setting sun, and you ask yourself this question: “Why do I spend so many of my waking hours trapped on the outer circumference of the inner richness of my life? I know the inner richness is there, because I experienced it, but it’s like I’m not at home in my own home.”

What is the path through which I can become more deeply at home in God, resting in me, resting in God forever? It’s a foreshadowing of eternal life. That’s what I think of as homecoming, a longing to be at home…. All our ways of living have built right into them opportunities for that kind of homecoming. I think as we move along, a deeper insight is that this longing, this homesickness, is an echo of God’s longing for us. For in the reciprocity of the longing, the longing is consummated.

Reference:
Adapted from Mike Petrow, Paul Swanson, hosts, with Richard Rohr, “Home and Homesickness with James Finley,” Everything Belongs, season 1, ep. 7 (Center for Action and Contemplation, 2024), podcast. Available as MP3 audio download and transcript.

Image credit and inspiration: Andrew Wong, untitled (detail), 2022, photo, Penang, Malaysia. Unsplash. The inner sanctum is always with us, shedding light on who we are, our journey with and to the divine.

10/17/2026

Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is right at the top of those things which make Jesus angry because he knows how very destructive it can be to a person. Keeping up appearances can grow into something corrosive to the soul. If we try to live a life of pretense, in order to be accepted or praised, we run the risk of losing our souls.
Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE

10/16/2026

Returning Home

God Is Our Home

Friday, October 16, 2026
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
—Maya Angelou

Historian Diana Butler Bass emphasizes the importance of “home” in Scripture and different faith traditions.

Home is a central theme in the world’s great religions: Jews seeking a homeland with God; Christian proclaiming that God dwells within our hearts; Muslims facing home to pray; Buddhists find a true home in enlightenment…. Human beings build temples to shelter God’s presence, we mark sacred places with shrines, and we bury, float, or burn our dead that they might find their way home to God.

The overarching narrative of the Bible is that of humanity searching for home…. Throughout, a spiritual interplay emerges: not only did God create our earthly home, but God is our home…. It is a powerful story, rich in literary ambiguity—the earth, us, home, and God are almost interchangeable characters in this ancient record of humankind’s aching search to dwell….

Specific stories also relate tales of us, home, and God. Perhaps none does so more beautifully than the book of Ruth. Ruth, a Moabite woman married to a Jew, is widowed. Instead of staying in her own homeland after her husband’s death, she pleads with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to be allowed to accompany her to Israel to find a new home:

Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried (Ruth 1:16–17)

Home is the relationship between two people, a physical place, and God. This is sacred dwelling. [1]

Butler Bass describes how God dwells with and in us:

Theistic faiths insist that ultimately God is our home. God dwells with us, and we in God. In Judaism, one way of referring to God is shekhinah, meaning the dwelling or settling of the Divine Presence, a word that also is used to describe the nesting of birds. The ancient Hebrew prophet Isaiah spoke of Immanuel, “God with us,” as the promise of shelter and safety for Israel, one of the names that Christians later adopted for Jesus….

The word “dwell” is related to an Old English word for “heresy” or “madness.” Perhaps it is a sort of insanity to believe that God dwells with us. If so, the madness is the long-lingering hope of the human race, the dream to dwell. It is not only a hope, however; it is also hard work, this effort to shelter our souls. Perhaps making a home is both a divine madness and a human one. Ultimately, physical houses go to ruin, but home is an ongoing spiritual promise….

Home, a holy habitation, a sacred space. We do not often stop to consider where we dwell, much less how it shapes us to move about in the world, for either good or ill. But somehow we keep searching for home, looking for a safe haven to reside and return.

References:
[1] Diana Butler Bass, Grounded: Finding God in the World; A Spiritual Revolution (HarperOne, 2015), 169, 170.

[2] Butler Bass, Grounded, 190, 191, 192.

Image credit and inspiration: Andrew Wong, untitled (detail), 2022, photo, Penang, Malaysia. Unsplash.The inner sanctum is always with us, shedding light on who we are, our journey with and to the divine.

10/16/2026

Community

Beginning the Lord's Prayer with the word “our” reminds us that we are not alone in our prayer. “Our” means we pray as part of the community centered around Jesus and his teaching. We pray with Jesus and with each other when we pray the Lord’s Prayer.

Br. Jamie Nelson, SSJE

10/15/2026

Returning Home

Stories of Home

Thursday, October 15, 2026
Feast Day of Teresa of Ávila

Theologian Willie Jennings recalls how his parents cultivated a sense of safety and belonging through stories told at home:

Mary, my mother, taught me to respect the dirt. Like many black women from the South, she knew the earth like she knew her own soul. I came along late. I was the last of her eleven children, born not of the South but of the North, the fruit of the great migration when black folks wearied of the Jim Crow South and, in search of work, pointed their hopes toward northern cities and replanted their lives in colder air. So I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and found myself each spring with my mother, Mary, in her garden in the backyard.

There near the soil Mary deepened my understanding of her life, her history, and her hopes. My mother and my father, Ivory Jennings, were both magnificent storytellers. They told stories the way water cascades over Niagara Falls or runs down the Mississippi, stories that encompassed larger or smaller fragments of people, places, jokes, incidents, sayings, sermons, arguments, clothing, foods, meals, body parts, and prayers. I could never take in all those stories. I had to simply let them wash over me, again and again, until I was able to locate myself in the stream of their historical consciousness.

Mary and Ivory Jennings found their home in Jesus, who sustained them in all circumstances:

Running through their amazing stories were several themes. Like large, immovable rocks that shaped the contours of the water’s flow, these themes carried the keys for understanding every story. Foremost was Jesus. Ivory and Mary loved Jesus. To say they were devout Christians is simply too pale a descriptor. A far more accurate characterization would be, “There were Ivory, Mary, and Jesus.” Woven into the fabric of their lives was the God-man Jesus, who, rather than simply serving as an indicator of their orthodoxy, became the very shape of their stories. The stories of Jesus and Israel were so tightly woven into the stories my parents told of themselves, their lives in the South and in the North and then with their youngest children in the North, that it took me years to separate the biblical figures from extended family members, biblical sinners from the sinners all around us, and biblical places of pain from their places of pain. I was never able to separate biblical hopes from their real hopes. They knew the Bible, but, far more important, they knew the world through the Bible….

As a little girl [my mother] lived with her grandmother, a former slave…. The experience of agricultural labor, life in the dirt, also brought her into a contradictory but very intimate relationship with the land itself.

My parents loved the soil, the earth, the outside, and in their garden I saw the freedom they felt with it. The garden announced to them and the world that they were absolutely free to be themselves.

Reference:
Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale University Press, 2010), 10—11.

Image credit and inspiration: Andrew Wong, untitled (detail), 2022, photo, Penang, Malaysia. Unsplash. The inner sanctum is always with us, shedding light on who we are, our journey with and to the divine.

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