Hi everyone,
There’s a new Shake the Dust coming out tomorrow — more on that below. But let’s jump right into it — here are this week’s highlights.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Do we need to tear down all of the monuments to white supremacists, slave owners and other controversial historical figures in America’s past? The answer is yes. But the reasons are deeper and more substantive than I thought. The episode “The Rise and Fall of America’s Monuments” from Vox Conversations features a candid discussion with host Jamil Smith and a professor who studies art crime, Erin Thompson. They dive deep into Thompson’s book about why smashing the statues remains a controversial issue and discuss the significance, impact, and intentions of these structures. For followers of Jesus interested in seeing His Kingdom come, we must understand and embrace that our kingdoms must fall. This is especially true when those kingdoms endorsed corporate injustices like chattel slavery and genocide. Because these injustices have no part in heaven, we must interrogate the role that memorials play in commemorating those in power, and this podcast does just that.
The single most important sermon I ever heard on prayer and intercession was Sunder Krishnan’s talk on prayer at the 2009 Urbana Student Missions Conference. The sermon, entitled “Pray Big and Pray Bold,” highlights scriptures that show God to be a creator, revealer, and actor when He is responding to our prayers. Pastor Krishnan drives home the important point that prayer is not about getting results but about getting God. In a time where many people throw out the phrase “thoughts and prayers” after every tragedy, it is worth examining the content and purpose of our actual thoughts and prayers to discern who they are shaping us to be. This is because, as Pastor Krishnan points out, consistent prayer may not change our circumstances, but it will transform us.
Suzie’s recommendations:
Like many, I was inspired last week by the footage of Steve Kerr demonstrating lament and speaking truth to power following the devastating shootings in Uvalde, Buffalo, and Southern California. The only thing was, not being much of a sports fan, I didn’t know who Steve Kerr was. But, as someone who studied and lived in Lebanon, I did know about his father, Malcolm Kerr, and was surprised to learn that the two are related. Malcolm Kerr was the ninth President of the American University of Beirut. Unidentified gunmen assassinated him on campus in broad daylight in 1984. I couldn’t help but wonder how such a tragedy, as well as growing up with a father who was willing to take on a high-risk job and relocate his family to a war zone, shaped Steve’s character and convictions. This New York Times piece tracing the history of the Kerr family reminded me of the power of moral courage.
It is so easy in the United States to get caught up in our own religious controversies and expressions of faith, but the body of Christ exists and thrives far beyond our borders and across the globe. That is why I found Christianity Today’s first ever Globe Issue so important and refreshing. As Americans, it pushes us beyond our innate ethnocentrism as we catch glimpses of God working through his people all over the world. And it is Christians from those diverse places who gift their wisdom to us, allowing their unfiltered stories to shape our understanding. I highly encourage you all to wade into these deep waters. One particularly poignant piece is “My Playground, A Wasteland,” by an acquaintance of mine in Lebanon. It follows her journey of finding unexpected hope in the most desolate of places.
Sy’s recommendations:
This article is from 2017, but it’s worth dusting off right now. It profiles the company that manufactures the gun the shooter used in Uvalde, and that company’s founder. He believes the Second Amendment is divinely ordained, and therefore says, “We are in business, we believe, to be a supporter of the gospel.” The article came out just after the deadly Las Vegas shooting, where the killer used the same company’s guns. The author also notes that Georgia’s growing gun manufacturing business benefits from politicians who like the money the business brings their state. And mass shootings are good for that business because so many people purchase guns as self-protection in the wake of each new horrifying event. Calling yourself a “supporter of the gospel” for participating in this system of ever-metastasizing death is self-delusion on a colonial scale. But it is useful for us to understand these political and theological patterns, the inner workings of mass idolatry. I also hope this leads you to pray, like it did for me, over the ways so many churches in the US have utterly failed at discipleship.
The gunman in Uvalde threw up a number of red flags online before the shooting. He made countless violent threats toward other teenagers, directing particularly gross vitriol toward young women. This Washington Post article reports on several instances where kids tried reporting him to social media apps for this behavior, but they never saw a response. The article explains that, because the culture of online misogyny is so prevalent, and because tech companies do so little about it, many teenage girls have simply accepted that no one is interested in their wellbeing, and there’s nothing they can do to change that fact. Normalizing hatred and apathy toward vulnerable people stops us from detecting real dangers, all while we make massive efforts to ensure white children don’t become even mildly uncomfortable in history class. We have to ask ourselves whose discomfort or pain matters to us, and why. And then compare those answers to the teachings of Jesus.
Shake the Dust preview
Tomorrow, we interview Dr. Mika Edmondson, the Lead Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church Koinonia in Nashville, Tennessee, and the author of The Power of Unearned Suffering: The Roots and Implications of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theodicy. We discuss how Dr. Edmondson sees and resists colonized church practices in his context, his theological library of marginalized voices, how to stay uncompromising and hopeful while working in white church spaces, and a lot more! This conversation is packed with deep wisdom, and we know you all are going to love it!
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team