Counting the Cost of Israel's Violence, Judge Stymies Election Denial, Combatting Conspiracy Theories During Disasters

Plus, a library puts indigenous history in the fiction section

Hi all,

Mark your calendars for our next subscriber chat, which will be October 29 at 1 PM EST! The registration link will be coming soon to the inboxes of our paid subscribers. If you want to join us for that pre-election conversation, become a paid subscriber! These monthly Zoom chats have been really fun, engaging, and restorative. We hope you can join us!

Our highlights this week include:

-        The true financial and human cost of Israel’s genocide

-        Combatting conspiracy theories during disasters

-        A Texas county library classifies an indigenous history book as fiction

-        A judge halts illegal changes to election certification rules in Georgia

-        And Jonathan keeps us grounded with prayer sessions for the election that you can attend!

Jonathan’s Recommendations

Counting the Cost of Genocide

Brown University’s Costs of War Project has conservatively calculated that the US has spent $22.76 billion supporting Israels’ genocide. The institute also released a report about the human cost of the violence in Gaza, which goes far beyond the number of people killed by bullets or bombs. “For instance, 96 percent of Gaza’s population (2.15 million people) face acute levels of food insecurity.” Consequently, starvation has killed an estimated 62,413 Gazans. We must as followers of Jesus push through the media’s smoke and mirrors to call out what is happening as clearly and coherently as possible. There’s no such thing as collateral damage. Every single hurt, harmed, and murdered person is made in the image of God. And every dollar spent on destruction could have been spent on creating justice in the world.

-            Read about the cost of the genocide

Combating Conspiracy Theories During Disasters

It is hard enough to get food, water, and power to those suffering the life-altering aftereffects of natural disasters like Hurricanes Helene and Milton without storms of misinformation to battle as well. But as a recent Vox podcast explains, government officials are fighting all kinds of hurricane-related conspiracy theories. So let’s be clear. FEMA won’t take your home if you evacuate it. And the agency is not refusing to provide more than $750 to people in need. The government is not funneling emergency resources to undocumented people. But Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and others are amplifying those and many similar lies. There is something powerful about truth and truth-telling. Which makes lying—also known as spreading alternative facts or misinformation—powerful as well. I hope that followers of Jesus will take the work of truth-telling seriously in a world of lies.

-            Listen to the podcast or read the transcript

Sy’s Recommendations

Texas Library Classifies Indigenous History as Fiction

A panel that reviews books for the children’s sections of libraries in Montgomery County, Texas has reclassified a book about the oppression of Native Americans as a work of fiction. The book, Colonization and the Wampanoag Story, is by Linda Coombs, a historian from the Wampanoag tribe with three decades of experience. The local context here is important. Montgomery county recently altered the review panel in question to ensure that its decisions were unappealable and its members did not include librarians. And I’ll bet you can guess who championed these changes. Local, hardline Trump supporters vowing to “make libraries great again.” It’s not surprising that this book was one of the first targets for these activists. It explicitly bills itself as the antidote to Euro-centric lies about “discovery,” colonial treatment of indigenous people, and Thanksgiving. Plus, it’s written for kids as young as ten. Ensuring children do not encounter unsanctioned histories is always a goal of authoritarian movements. The superiority of White settlers over the indigenous people we killed and displaced is a load-bearing wall of America’s ideological structure. Without it, we have to acknowledge difficult truths and ask complicated questions about how to make things right. But, as Jonathan noted above, that truth-telling, and wrestling with the moral consequences, must be our practice as followers of Jesus.

-            Read the story about the library

Judge Blocks Georgia’s Illegal Election Certification Changes

Good news for pro-democracy forces in the US. A Georgia judge halted one of the more egregious attempts by Trump supporters to bolster the Republican claims of voting fraud that will inevitably accompany next month’s election if Vice President Harris wins. The state’s board of elections recently voted to implement new rules by which local election officials could launch investigations into voter fraud and refuse to certify their locality’s votes, delaying election results and spreading rumors about voting irregularities. But under Georgia law these options are in the hands of other officials. The judge found that the new rules circumvented the election certification processes established by the state’s legislature, and unequivocally held that local officials could not disrupt the election certification in these ways.

-            Read about the case and the judge’s ruling

Staying Grounded with Jonathan

It can be difficult to ground ourselves in Christ when our culture pushes us to find security in comfort and control at all costs. That push dramatically intensifies during a presidential election that, we are told, will result in the apocalypse if one or the other side is victorious. We need to spend time in prayer, letting the Spirit form us during this time. That’s why I will be holding half-hour, mid-day prayer calls the day before, the day of, and the day after the election. You can register for any and all of these sessions for free, where we will ask Jesus what happens if the election results in our worst fears being realized, how we can stay focused on him if our dreams come true, and how we can actually pray for our political enemies. Because whatever happens, Jesus is on the throne, and we can trust him. Working to prepare these times of prayer was a blessing for me, and I pray they will be for you as well.

-            Register to join us for prayer during election week

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Jonathan and Sy