KTF Newsletter: Putin’s Religious War, Slurs on Our Landmarks, When the State Steals Your Baby
Hi everyone,
As promised last week, we have additional resources on Ukraine (including some thoughts from Suzie on how differently everyone is talking about this war), and lots more. So, let’s get right into it. Here are this week’s highlights.
Sy’s recommendations:
Any time a society goes through periods of particularly trying circumstances, those on the margins face uniquely awful challenges. Existing inequalities magnify in intensity and their consequences often become desperately painful. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is creating such a scenario for many of Ukraine’s international students of color as they try to flee the violence and get home, or at least get somewhere safe. As this article and TV news segment highlight, many African and Indian students are reporting harassment and racist treatment by border officials and even some fellow refugees. Moreover, many people who had just recently fled to Ukraine from other conflicts in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere now find themselves on the run again, facing bureaucratic hurdles due to their lack of official paperwork. As we pray and take action regarding this new conflict, remember those having to face even more than the horrors of war simply because of who they are or where they were born.
Kenneth Watkins had a child with a woman who had a long history of the foster care system taking her children. Watkins, however, had no such history. Moreover, he was perfectly willing and able to care for their child. A couple days after his baby’s birth, child protection workers asked him to come to their office to discuss the mother’s case. Before the conversation, the workers asked Kenneth to hand his son to another employee so they could speak more easily. During the meeting, Watkins learned that the state was taking his days-old baby away, and they had just tricked him into doing the hand-off. The story continued as these stories do: indifferent child protection workers, attorneys who are clueless or MIA, endless bureaucratic hoops, condescending foster parents, etc. This one ends in a family reunion, but the trauma remains, and nobody will get an apology from the state. Stories like these are tough to read, but love requires us to be immersed in them sometimes. This one also happens to be quite well-written.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
An ever-lengthening list of corporations and countries have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Kenya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani, laid out the post-colonial case against Russia’s unprovoked attack, and it was thought-provoking and sobering. His remarks were brief but they highlighted the choice that African nations made to accept the boundaries drawn by colonizers in the “metropoles of London, Paris, and Lisbon” in an attempt to prevent endless territorial wars. His call to “complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression” is poignant and timeless. I believe there is much here for followers of Jesus to contemplate especially as we seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly after God.
On February 22, the Department of the Interior announced that “more than 660 geographic features with the name 'sq___,’” must be changed. The S-word “was officially declared a derogatory term as a result of Secretary’s Order 3404.” The meaning and history of the “S-word” in the Native community is a contentious topic writes Vincent Shilling who is the Associate Editor of Indian Country Today. As a follower of Jesus, I wonder what other places and situations are waiting to center the realities of those whose oppression is enshrined in public spaces. I invite us to wrestle with this question because Jesus was willing to disrupt what seemed acceptable and familiar for the sake of those on the margins. I pray we are willing to do the same.
Suzie’s recommendations:
Western news coverage of the conflict in Ukraine demonstrates how the logic of racism and white supremacy can still lurk behind concern for victims of armed conflict. This recent post from Al Jazeera is not so much an article as a curation of social media protests against double standards in reporting. Certainly, the answer is not to care less about the loss of human life in Ukraine, lest we give in to the logic of scarcity and dehumanization. So, let us stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, but also sit with the discomfort of asking, where is the outrage over reports of genocide and famine in Tigray? Why is it a crime to support a movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions on behalf of Palestinians but not Ukrainians? Why does someone’s skin color or passport dictate the reception they receive as a refugee crossing Ukraine’s borders?
In the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “religion is fire— and like fire it warms but it also burns.” While analysts have rightly suggested that it is a fool’s errand to expect to fully understand Putin’s thinking, one of the motivating factors behind his invasion of Ukraine is undoubtedly religion. This motivation, moreover, is one that is less frequently presented and generally poorly understood by the secular media. However, this blog post by historian Diana Butler Bass does a good job of illuminating the Orthodox schism playing a significant role in Putin’s war. Bass additionally reveals how the religious undercurrents of this power play are not entirely disconnected from the religious right’s grab for power under Donald Trump. Lord, let our zeal for you never become so distorted and misguided that we pursue war in the name of the Prince of Peace. Help us to repent of the ways that we seek worldly dominion in your name to the destruction of others.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week!
The KTF team