Back to the source

Through bringing change to situations of injustice we draw on Christ-centred spirituality as the source for our energy. We want to bring together the personal and the social in a holistic way.

Resisting injustice is also about us being transformed as people so we can apply principles of justice and love in our own lives. SPEAK seeks an inner transformation as well as outer transformation, believing that our outer landscapes largely reflect our inner landscapes.

"As business, politics and religious institutions need to return to their spiritual roots, so too the environmental and social justice movements need to embrace a spiritual dimension. At present most social change movements concentrate on negative campaigning. They present doom and gloom scenarios and become mirror images of the institutions they criticise. The real impetus for ecological sustainability and social justice stems from ethical, aesthetic and spiritual visions… The basis of all campaigning is reverence for life, and this is a spiritual basis. There is no contradiction between pragmatic campaigning and a spiritual overview. Mahatma Gandhi's political programme was founded upon spiritual values. Martin Luther King's Civil Rights Movement was rooted in a spiritual vision. Contemporary environmental and social justice movements also require that broad worldview rather than be limited to the science of ecology and the social sciences."

Satish Kumar’s lectures in Bristol (Resurgence Magazine, March-April 05)

Many campaigners and activists are recognising the importance of having
a spiritual source for energy to bring change in order to sustain
ourselves. Henry Nouwen reflects:

"When our protests against social injustice, segregation, war, do not reach beyond a level of reaction, a world degenerates into a desire for quick results and our generosity is soon exhausted by disappointments. Only when our mind has descended into our hearts can we expect a lasting response to our innermost self...

...If any criticism can be made of the sixties it is not that the protests were meaningless but that it was not deep enough in that it was not rooted in the solitude of the heart"

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out p.35

Inspired By Celtic Spirituality

We have been inspired by Celtic spirituality, which recognises the interconnections between social justice, the earth, and spirituality.

"This discovery of my own Celtic roots means that I have become more aware of many other traditional peoples. I have found that much in the African or Native American experience speaks much the same language as the Celtic, has a shared common resonance. For I have found in the Celtic understanding nothing of the highly individualistic, competitive, inward looking approach common in today’s society. Here instead everyone sees themselves in relation to one another, and that extends beyond human beings to the wild creatures, the birds and the animals, the earth itself. This has brought a sense of us all as part of a whole web of being. There is something here in the breathing together of all things. As Teilhard de Chardin put it, something of the mystery of co-inherence which Charles Williams writes in his novels. The new science speaks much the same language of mutual interdependence. Here is the promise of a more holistic approach to the world of healing of the many fractures that maim and corrupt each of us and the world in which we live."

Esther De Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer (Hodder and Stoughton, 1996)

SPEAK Spiritual Practices

In recent years we have been exploring the practices of:

* physical meditation
* meditation
* contemplation

We also want to bring together our meditation with dance and music. Part of these explorations have been meditation sessions for activists called 'Contemplatives and Activists'. These are open to all, and happen roughly twice annually. For more information email here.

Inspirations

We have been inspired by the writings and practices of Monastic movements ancient and modern including, Taize, the Christian mystics, Henry Nouwen, and hermit monk Thomas Merton who challenged the injustice of the Vietnam war in the 1960s in his writings and spent long periods in contemplative prayer as well as writing poetry. The activist theologian Walter Wink is also a major part of the thought life of SPEAK.

The crawling monk who stood for justice
The voice that sings when only the rhythms of war surround
Theologians that do not flee from controversy
But stand bravely with what they have found that they know
Open handed, ready to be wrong again

Those who know the home of silence
Those who open up and speak

SPEAK Faith Sharing

SPEAK wants to offer our Jesus-centred faith to others as a source for energy in the struggle for social justice.

We don't want to offer the Christian faith in its current institutional/cultural form, which is largely a prop for western middle class suburban lifestyles. Instead, the lifestyle we aspire to live and to share is activism, where we draw on Jesus as our source and rely on him in our campaigning.

We seek to create spaces of love, freedom and community in the intentional community of local SPEAK campaign groups. It is our hope that searchers can find something of God's love in these spaces.

We seek to build informal relational networks of intentional community through which people can receive support and solidarity. We seek relationships with people from a diversity of ages and cultural backgrounds, where we can learn from, and be encouraged by, them. We seek spontaneous gatherings as well as rhythmic gatherings, aspiring to be careful that the rhythm doesn't soon become merely habit. If it does, we are committed considering finding a different rhythm.

We take inspiration from people like Martin Luther King and William Wilberforce. We seek to learn from others as well as share as we offer our faith. Early Celtic pilgrims went to share their faith in Christ and as they went, they knew that as well as having a vital message to give, God had things to say to them through those to whom they were sent. The journey wasn't just a journey on which they gave, but also one from which they received.

We recognise in SPEAK that many people may be angry at Christians and the Christian faith for good reasons, including the links between the church and colonialism, the church establishment in England and it's connection to slavery, the crusades, etc. Today there are ongoing links between Christians and political leaders and policies that oppress the majority world. Many leaders directly representing oppressive systems, aggressively polarised beliefs, and irresponsible treatment of the environment, have Christian groups lending their support publicly in the name of being a Christian. We find this shameful and difficult, and thereby it becomes slightly awkward for us to say we also want to share our faith. We would see this as an area where we need to call for renewed repentance and faith, and for people wearing the name 'Christian' to be brought into a fuller conversion, as well as seeking to offer the faith to searchers.

There are additional problems that people rightly raise about institutionalised church, organised religion, power structures and Christian culture which are also awkward for us when saying we want to share our faith.

We see the original essence of the 'pearl of great price' hidden in some mud, and that seeking to grasp hold of that pearl means we need to scrape off all the unnecessary soil that has surrounded it. This takes us back to something we believe is originally good, where is God is known as a liberator of the poor.

We believe the original message to be deeply and profoundly revolutionary. It even gives a different view on subverting power where Jesus seeks to change us by giving up his power on the cross and not seeking to seize it, but at the time transforming the present domination system.

Rise in Consciousness

For many people, the journey to a lifestyle of activism in emerging social movements has also involved an increase in spiritual consciousness. This has involved an increase in interest in meditation and eastern spiritualities. We also want to point to the spirituality and meditative practice present in the Christian tradition through the lives of many activists and also radical nuns and monks down the centuries. The early desert fathers and mothers formed monasteries in the desert to come apart and be separate from the power structures imposed by the alleged conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine*.

Many of these meditations and practises, as well as centring on Jesus as source, can add a lot to people's spiritual journeys.

*Constantine laid the foundations for many of the problems we have today in the relationship with church and state, by using the cross as a symbol for oppression and murder in war, rather than liberation from sin and injustice. This is how the message became corrupted and the pearl of great price obscured in the mud.