Susanne Johnson, Part 1 of 8

Susanne Johnson, PhD, Associate Professor of Christian Education, Perkins School of Theology, SMU, discusses "Subversive Spirituality in Ministry at the Margins: Youth Resisting Empire"

Saturday, August 7, 2-3:30pm, Northaven United Methodist Church
Associate Professor of Christian Education, Perkins School of Theology, SMU

discusses

"Subversive Spirituality in Ministry at the Margins:
Youth Resisting Empire"


Northaven United Methodist Church, 11211 Preston Road at Northaven

American Empire specifically, many scholars agree, is the decisive and defining social problem of our present era. It is a reality--actually a set of interlocking realities-- which bears social, economic, political, religious, and even ecological ramifications. Working-class youth and families, who comprise some 62 percent of the U.S. population, bear the worst brunt of negative fallout. Yet despite the pain, deprivation, and exclusion that so-called at-risk adolescents often experience, innumerable groups of such young people across the U.S. are defying the odds against them, and are engaging in stunning forms of transformational ministry at the margins, amidst people and places abandoned by Empire.

Below the radar screen of conventional mainline churches, working-class young people, especially immigrants and youth of color, are doing this through a strategy known as faith-based youth community organizing (YCO). Through this practice, marginalized, impoverished teenagers, along with their adult mentors and community partners, organize and use their collective power to hold public leaders, elected officials, and community institutions more accountable to the needs and wellbeing of underserved, underrepresented young people. YCO groups provide a context and means through which teens develop a spirituality that not only uplifts and sustains them personally, but which also gives public expression to faith, and contributes to the common good of their respective neighborhoods and communities.
By attending to remarkable narratives of the resistance, transformation, and hope of poor and working-class young people-who are all too often invisible to the dominant church--potentially we can learn ways to rethink and revitalize how congregations go about youth ministry in the mainline context. At the very least, we stand to gain newfound reverence and respect for God who works in and through Jesus Christ to redeem and renew creation 'from below'.




As the apostle Paul suggests, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are" (I Cor. 1:27-28).

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