Hi everybody,
We’re just going to jump right into it this week. Here are this week’s highlights as we seek to leave colonized faith for the Kingdom of God.
Suzie’s recommendations:
As we approach America’s second year of commemorating Juneteenth as a national holiday, we would all do well to listen to and learn from Black people about this celebration that is new to so many of us. Our Daily Bread Ministry’s Rasool Berry will be providing a great resource to do just that and more with ten days of faith-centered reflection on Juneteenth starting on the holiday itself. Rasool is the pastor of The Bridge Church in Brooklyn, host of the Where Ya From? podcast, and contributed a fantastic essay to our anthology. You can sign up here to get Pastor Berry’s reading plan in your inbox.
Every parent builds a world for their children, but few do it from the ground up. Renee Walters, Ashley Scott, and Laura Riley-Cooper are three Black mothers and the founders of the Freedom Georgia Initiative, the collective they formed to purchase a piece of land in central Georgia and incorporate it as a town. Their vision is a pro-Black community that practices sustainable living safe from the scourge of systemic racism manifested in police brutality and health care disparities. While naysayers may view their utopian project as unrealistic, it is worth reflecting on the motivations behind such an initiative and the lengths that Black communities in America will go to take hold of what should have been theirs all along: freedom.
Sy’s recommendations:
In our Shake the Dust episode on foster care, I talked briefly about the close ties between the juvenile incarceration system and the family policing system, as well as how overburdened the family policing system is. If you’re wondering, most people call the family policing system child welfare, but boy will this article highlight why I object to that name. As WBEZ reports, for years, the state of Illinois has placed foster children for whom it cannot find a home in juvenile jail. This is especially enraging when you remember that the system takes many of these innocent, foster children away from their parents unnecessarily, and that these families, almost without exception, come from marginalized groups. The article reports that this problem began with misguided reform efforts whose advocates failed to understand how little the family police value foster children. It is our belief in the lesser humanity of poor, BIPOC families and the inherent goodness of foster care that produces outcomes like this.
Last week, an op-ed came out that was the combined work of an author and photographer. The article discusses the tension between the shared fight of Black and Asian Americans against white supremacy, and the many ways American society has pitted the two groups against each other. The photographs throughout the piece depict Asian American activists, business owners, and others, along with quotes from each of them on solidarity. It’s a hopeful piece — a good reminder that there are so many living in complete opposition to oppressive lies like that of the “model minority,” just trying to find ways to help and struggle with each other.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
In this article in the New York Times, Sam Anderson shares his story of struggling with his weight from childhood to the present day while being honest about how his self-perception and self-acceptance is an ever-present battle. When I listened to the article, I thought to myself, “I am someone made in the image of God — not a machine, beast, or automaton.” So, how do I learn to be content in my own forever fluctuating flab? I also feel like I am in a constant battle with my body weight, and the pandemic did not help. The COVID-19 (19 pounds that is) is a real thing. For a follower of Jesus, leaving a colonized faith where our bodies are subjected to uninvited internal and external scrutiny, abiding as I am in Christ is a recurring challenge. This piece named that tension, helped me put words to prayer, and oriented me amidst disorientation. I hope it does the same for you.
As the title of Jesse Wheeler’s article in our anthology stated, bad theology kills. US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene spread some of that theology this week when she made the case for Christian Nationalism. Dr. Jemar Tisby points out in this post that statements like this compromise our witness, lean toward conspiracy theories, and rely on false claims of supremacy. We must resist the temptation to believe that God made us and the space we occupy somehow more holy, just, and beautiful than other people and places. Tisby’s piece is a quick, clear and focused retort to this false doctrine that is experiencing a resurgence.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team