Hey everybody,
We have some very exciting news for you all — Season 2 of Shake the Dust is going to start next week! Look out for a short intro in your podcast feed early in the week, and the first episode will drop on Friday! We’re so excited to share what we’ve been recording with you all. We know you’re going to love it! But while you wait with bated breath for that, we will of course tide you over with our weekly highlights. Let’s get to it!
Sy’s recommendations:
This article is a long profile of Marjorie Dannenfelser, one of the best-connected anti-abortion advocates in Washington D.C. The author, Kerry Howley, is firmly pro-abortion. But you can feel throughout this piece how she is doing all she can to understand and empathize with her subject. Howley paints the picture of a laser-focused, strategic, and truly ruthless lobbyist. But she also carefully elaborates the thinking, and more importantly, the emotions and passion behind the pro-life movement that lead so many people to Dannenfelser’s absolutist position. By the time Howley asks Dannenfelser what she would do if implementing pro-life policies came at the price of destroying democracy in America, I felt like I really understood why Dannenfelser responded by calmly weighing the pros and cons. If we’re going to resist sin in the way the Church engages government, it is always helpful to read a piece like this which carefully studies the practical, everyday functioning of political idolatry with deep emotional insight.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has set up a surveillance network capable of spying on the majority of people living in America, immigrants or not, regardless of warrant requirements or privacy laws. That is the conclusion of a new report from Georgetown Law after about two years of investigations and Freedom of Information requests by its authors. This article from the Los Angeles Times outlines some of the findings. For instance, ICE has scanned the photographs of about one in three American driver’s licenses into their facial recognition software, and can easily obtain the address of about 75% of American adults through utility records. The article also details some of the strategies ICE uses to find its way around state privacy laws to collect data without authorization or oversight. If you want to read the full report, “American Dragnet,” it’s here.
Suzie’s recommendations:
In the late 1980s, best-selling author Frank Peretti enthralled Christian audiences with his gripping depictions of angels and demons locked in everyday spiritual warfare. Peretti imbued contemporary evangelical culture wars with a cosmic significance, and thus shaped political imaginations through the powerful imagery of his thriller style novels. This article at Vox reflects on Peretti’s lasting legacy, both acknowledging that what he sought to provide was in fact good fiction, and pointing to his enduring sociological and political impact.
Last week, Sy shared some really helpful Twitter responses to the Roe v. Wade leak, including his own thread on the common Christian misconception that foster parents help bring down the abortion rate. This week, I would like to draw your attention to a related thread by Rebecca Nagle that turns white evangelical discourse on adoption and abortion on its head. Nagle reveals that in recent decades adoption demand far exceeds supply in the US. Adoption agencies have therefore been steering their clients toward the foster care system, advertising “foster to adopt" programs as an easier, cheaper option. But this undermines the legal purpose of foster care, which is supposed to be working toward the reunification of children with their biological families. The thread draws on Episode 4, Season 2 of Nagle’s award-winning podcast, This Land. Sy also gave a shout-out to this podcast in a previous newsletter, and having now binged both Seasons 1 and 2, I seriously cannot recommend it enough.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Georgetown University, the oldest Jesuit university in the United States, kept itself from going bankrupt by selling 272 slaves in 1838. Now they want to pay reparations. This episode of The Journal podcast captures the messy process as class differences emerge between descendants of enslaved people who desire cash payments and those appointed to steward funds by setting up a foundation to fight racial injustice more broadly. The conflict highlights the complexity of righting historical wrongs, intra-ethnic obstacles to reconciliation, and just how hard it can be to practice what we preach. For followers of Jesus engaged in the work of justice, we must observe, pray, learn and press on in practical, sacrificial ways to ensure those harmed by the systems and structures are restored. Matthew and Zacchaeus gave the money they stole back in a few sentences in scripture; but rest assured, it was a process. Pray that we are willing to put in the work.
To understand Christian Nationalism in your own country, it can be helpful to look at another country’s heretical mix of faith and politics. The episode of Vox’s podcast Today, Explained, “A Priest Explains Putin’s Holy War” features Father Cyril Hovorun who knew Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, before Kirill’s ascent to power, his alliance with Putin, and his mixture of Christianity with Mother Russia. Followers of Jesus desiring to leave colonized faith must recognize and resist when we try to remake people and places into our visions of maturity and destiny. Otherwise, we risk walking into the same trap in which the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church now finds himself. My hope and prayer for the Patriarch is the same as that of Pope Francis: that he would not become “Putin’s altar boy,” but that he would instead seek to preach and practice the ways of Jesus.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team