Immigrants Won't Eat Your Pets, Cheney Endorses Harris, Back to Middle Earth
Plus, a new confession of allegiance to Jesus
Hi everybody,
In case you missed it, please consider signing the Evangelical Confession of Conviction, and sharing the reel we created to promote it! Plus, please sign up as a paid subscriber so that we can make our work here sustainable beyond this election season. Get the bonus episodes of our podcast, monthly Zoom conversations with Jonathan and Sy, and more!
Our highlights this week include:
- The misinformation and racism behind Trump’s comment about pet eating
- What Dick Cheney sees of himself in Kamala Harris
- The Belhar Confession and transforming the American church
- Rebecca Cheptegei and femicide
- Sy keeps us grounded with the latest from the world of Tolkien
- And a preview of tomorrow’s episode of Shake the Dust
Sy’s Recommendations
The Misinformation and Racism behind Trump’s Comments about Pet Eating
Catch that part of the debate on Tuesday where Donald Trump said there were immigrants in Ohio kidnapping and eating people’s pets? Wonder what he was talking about? For days now, stories (most generous word I can use) about the Haitian immigrant population in Springfield, Ohio eating people’s cats and dogs have spread around right-wing corners of the internet. J. D. Vance boosted the misinformation, and several prominent members of his party followed suit. The Springfield mayor, city manager, and police department have all said there is no evidence of these claims. Listen, I understand there are cultures around the world where animals we consider pets can be seen as food. But I can tell you from extensive personal experience as someone who married into a Haitian family, Haiti is not one of those cultures. The idea of eating dogs or cats is as foreign to them as it is to most Americans. Trump, Vance, and everyone else are relying on their audience’s ignorance, disgust with immigrants, and racism toward Black people to bypass the need for proof of these claims. The sad thing is, their reliance will prove well-placed with millions of people. Fortunately, you can do something positive here. My wife Gabrielle, an advocate for Haitian immigrants who you may remember from a few different episodes of Shake the Dust, spoke to people from the Haitian Community Support and Help Center in Springfield this week. They were lovely, and Gabrielle (and I) would encourage donations via PayPal to haitianhelpcenterspringfield@gmail.com to support their work providing services for the Haitian community and facilitating (some obviously necessary) cross-cultural education.
- Read about the misinformation about Springfield
What Dick Cheney Sees of Himself in Kamala Harris
Also at the debate, Kamala Harris touted her hundreds of endorsements from Republican politicians, highlighting Dick Cheney. A particularly insightful Substack column from Hamilton Nolan asks the simple question Why would Cheney endorse Harris, and hits at some deep truth about American politics and foreign policy. One thing that never changes from president to president is a fierce commitment to American supremacy. Presidents always use power and violence to make sure we do not lose our comfortable way of life. This creates a nightmare for people across the globe, but American voters and politicians have never wanted to exchange comfort for justice. Cheney has assessed—accurately in my opinion given Trump’s incompetence, nationalism, and isolationist tendencies—that Harris is the better option for American supremacists. Nolan wisely does not offer solutions to the discomfort his analysis might bring up. We are not at the point in America where proposing solutions would be useful. We simply need to get as many people as possible to be willing to acknowledge this truth and sit with it. Then maybe one day we can be in a position to do something about it.
- Read about Cheney’s endorsement
Jonathan’s Recommendations
The Belhar Confession and Turning the American Church toward Justice
In the 20th century, various branches of the Dutch Reformed Church tradition created the theological justification and covering for colonization in South Africa and the system of Apartheid. In 1986, the Dutch Reformed Missionary Church, a denomination within South Africa, adopted the Belhar Confession. I would encourage you to take a moment to read and reflect on it. As we spread the Confession of Evangelical Conviction today, it is my fervent prayer that the American Church is at a similar point. I hope that our cultural tide will turn against the ruling political norms of White American Folk Religion. And that the work of prophets like Desmond Tutu and so many others could break through here, calling Christians back to our commissioned roles as ministers of reconciliation, seekers of justice, and speakers of truth.
Ugandan Runner’s Murder Highlights Scourge of Femicide
(Content warning, misogynistic violence) Rebecca Cheptegei was a successful distance runner representing Uganda with strength and courage. After competing in the Paris Olympics, she travelled to Kenya where a man with whom she was in a relationship doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. She died days later. African activists have been raising the alarm about femicide increasing in Kenya and other African nations. And Cheptegei is not the first female athlete to be a victim of this gender-based violence in Kenya. My fervent hope for you as you process this story is that you would take a moment to pray for the flourishing of women, the fall of patriarchy, and the provision of resources for reconcilers and activists participating in renewal and transformation around this issue. We pray peace for Cheptegei’s family, protection for female athletes, and conviction for men to preach and practice justice for those downstream of patriarchy and misogyny.
- Read about Rebecca Cheptegei
Staying Grounded with Sy
So I know the reviews of The Rings of Power, Amazon’s prequel to the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, have been mixed. But I think the show’s overall excellent. The showrunners, actors, and composer of the score are all being incredibly thoughtful about how they transport the themes and characters of Tolkien’s world into this lesser-known stretch of time in Middle Earth. Consequently, there is ample material for you to chew on about the nature of good and evil in the world, how our individual choices can both create and be pre-determined by sin, and how abstract ideas like truth, beauty, oppression, and fear play out in our personal relationships and systems simultaneously. And you get to contemplate all this in a beautifully-rendered fantasy world that gives you (hopefully) a satisfactory amount of distance from the anxiety of how all those things play out in the real world. So give it a shot! They’re half-way through season two right now, so there’s not too much to catch up on, and it’s slotted for 5 seasons right now.
Shake the Dust Preview
Tomorrow, we talk about the reasons KTF got involved with promoting the Evangelical Confession of Conviction, the strategic and spiritual significance of the movement, the inflection point in American church history it reflects, and more. Plus, in Which Tab Is Still Open? hear them discuss Trump’s trip to Arlington. We’ll break down what happened when Trump momentarily forgot a lot of his followers actually believe in the Christian nationalism that he uses for personal gain. This episode’s a great one. Don’t miss it!
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Jonathan and Sy
Just as an FYI: When you play the Substack audio for this post, "Hi everybody" is the only thing that came through. :) No worries, I was still able to read it.