An Outlaw's Theology
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012 Not to be copied or circulated without permission of the author. AN OUTLAW’S THEOLOGY Francis X. Kroncke [email protected] 608-606-9419 ©2012 1 Wednesday, May 30, 2012 AN OUTLAW’S THEOLOGY ............................................................................................................. 1 Preface............................................................................................................................................. 4 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Pathway #1: Outlaw .................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 1: How did I become an outlaw? ..................................................................................... 11 Chapter 2: Teilhard made me do it! .............................................................................................. 29 Chapter 3: “Slave of the State” ..................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 4: Peacemaking Theology ............................................................................................... 44 Summary of Pathway #1 ............................................................................................................... 65 Pathway #2: Subhuman .............................................................................................................. 67 Chapter 5: Inside discoveries ........................................................................................................ 76 Chapter 6: Outlaw theology ........................................................................................................ 120 Chapter 7: Captive Sad and Captor Glad Story ........................................................................ 141 Chapter 8: Martin Luther King, Outlaw Theologian .................................................................. 185 Summary of Pathway#2 .............................................................................................................. 203 Pathway #3: Earthfolk .............................................................................................................. 208 Chapter 10: Four Shadow stories ................................................................................................ 208 Chapter 11: The Bomb and Earth-America ................................................................................ 223 Chapter 12: Imagining other people as beloveds ........................................................................ 230 Chapter 14: Imagining the Earthfolk .......................................................................................... 245 Summary of Pathway #3 ............................................................................................................. 270 Afterword .................................................................................................................................... 274 “It’s the worst of times…it’s the best of times! .......................................................................... 274 Appendix A ................................................................................................................................. 276 Appendix B ................................................................................................................................. 281 Resources: Pathway#1 ................................................................................................................ 283 Resources: Pathway#2 ................................................................................................................ 289 Resources: Pathway#3 ................................................................................................................ 296 2 Wednesday, May 30, 2012 Martin Luther King This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind …I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response…which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. … We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co- annihilation. We must move past indecision to action…If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response… The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. “Beyond Vietnam,” 1967 John Lennon Imagine there’s no heaven… Imagine all the people living for today… Imagine there’s no countries… Imagine all the people living life in peace… Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people sharing all the world You, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I'm not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will live as one “Imagine,” 1973 3 Wednesday, May 30, 2012 Preface I chose to go to prison. I not only raided government offices and stole and destroyed Selective Service files of men about to be inducted into military service and sent to Vietnam but I publically flipped-off the government by raising the clenched fist of Resist! It was a time when shouting “Resist illegitimate authority!” and attacking the government was the only way to be patriotic. I destroyed tens of thousands of 1-A draft files. I also stole blank cards and classification rubber stamps and took them to Toronto enabling military deserters, draft resisters, and war exiles to return to the US with official proof of having fulfilled their military obligation. Every day I preached and taught and roared Resist! on college campuses, to families in the pews, and joined with returning Vietnam Veterans Against the War to attack the government’s war machine at every turn. Little known to many, it was the returning Vietnam veterans who blew us away with their battlefield experiences and got us war resisters off our individual and collective asses to up the ante, to bring the battlefront home, into the streets and suites, especially into the draft offices all across America. From 1968 onward, hundreds of draft boards were being raided across the country, in vast metropolitan areas and small rural towns. Indicative of that fact was that in backwater Minnesota’s federal court district over half of the pending cases were for draft violations. This latter fact is an untold story, but only a sideline note to the one told here. By the time I, as one of the “Minnesota 8,” was caught, in July of 1970 by J. Edgar Hoover’s finest—who bumbled about trying to infiltrate the anti-war Movement like Keystone Kops led by the Three Stooges—the government didn’t know what to do with us. Quietly bury us and keep us out of the public eye? After all, at the time, the infamous “Chicago 8” courtroom debacle had shown the feds that even if they might get a conviction against radicals that they’d lose their case in the media. All praise to Yippie, Abbie Hoffman and Black Panther, Bobbie Seale! But they gave it another go. Charged us with “sabotage of the national defense,” a ten year sentence. Plus set a $50,000 bail which kept us in jail for a week as the streets of Minneapolis teemed with protesters and rioters, more arrests, and until the bail was lowered. But you can anticipate the ending. Realize, I chose to go to prison. Now how fucking stupid was that? It was me against the United States of America, and in the end I lost big time—and not only on the legal front—which 4 Wednesday, May 30, 2012 is the story I will tell you here. But remember the times: my five year maximum sentence elated “Tricky Dick” Nixon—“Leader of the Free World!”—who was soon disgraced as a bungling crook and rightly judged as corrupt to the core. I went into prison in the spring of 1972 just in time to catch the evening news report that for the first time ever a United States Attorney General, John N. Mitchell—“America’s Top Cop!”—was being indicted for crimes. It was academic at the time to ask, Who are the real criminals? History has exonerated me and condemned them. I find little solace in that judgment. So, I kicked some government ass, aided in the ending of the Vietnam War, and stood proudly upon my conscientious convictions. Good for me, right? Fuck! I’m still classified as a “violent felon” for destroying paper and not killing humans. In the current war of paranoia, I’d be listed as a domestic terrorist, but that’s not of concern right now. Why? Because when I heard “Five years in a federal prison,” another battle was just beginning for me, right here on American soil. Now this is when the story of “An Outlaw’s Theology” really begins. Like a green, battlefield “grunt” on his first foray in-country in Vietnam I found myself locked-down in an upside-down world of savagery and darkness that no one had ever told me even existed. Sure, I had been