KTF Weekly Newsletter: The Sociology of Idolatry, Was Jesus Depressed?, Executive Order 9066
Hi everyone,
Before we get started, we want to acknowledge the horrific events currently unfolding in Ukraine. Our hearts mourn with the Ukrainian people enduring this unprovoked attack and tragic loss of life. We are praying for peace and protection, particularly for Ukraine’s 7.5 million children whose lives and livelihoods are vulnerable because of the rapidly escalating conflict. Lord, be near.
We will have more in future newsletters on this conflict as it unfolds. Tomorrow, we are putting out our monthly bonus podcast for subscribers, and there’s a preview of that below as always. Now, let’s get to it. Here are this week’s highlights.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
“A Conservative View of the Vigilante Right” is an episode of WNYC’s podcast, The United States of Anxiety, that features an interview with journalist Mona Charen from the Bulwark and Seamus Hughes, the Deputy Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Rarely in my own media intake and political education do I understand clearly what the conservative perspective is. The tensions conservatives feel with their politically progressive counterparts alongside their committed resistance to Trumpism are foreign to me. As a Black American, neither political party is home. We vote for the folks that we think will cause us less harm. So, this conversation for me as a Christ follower shows me how I can intercede, empathize, and partner with people who do not agree with me or share my same vantage points. The guests and callers also help me to humanize and nuance perspectives that I know about but do not often personally encounter.
Dr. Michael Emerson speaking at the Evangelical Covenant Church’s Midwinter Conference (starting at about 19:25 in the linked video) called out practicing white conservative Christians as the demographic in the United States growing in their disdain for immigrants and their resistance to engaging with the scourge of racism. Simultaneously, he proves with interviews, surveys, and anecdotes that they also firmly hold to the belief that Jesus is the answer to injustice. Thus, his conclusion, backed by solid research, is that they actually practice the Religion of Whiteness, not fidelity to Christ. This is White American Folk Religion by another name. Emerson’s background as a sociologist adds texture to a crucial conversation. Those leaving colonized faith have numbers to back up the realities we experience so often in so many Christian spaces.
Suzie’s recommendations:
If you’re a white American like me, you probably had the impression from a young age that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed shortly after his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Such a misapprehension elides half a decade’s worth of activism including his highly unpopular opposition to economic exploitation. Imani Perry reminds us in her recent article for the Atlantic newsletter, Unsettled Territory, that “Black history is also labor history.” In her piece, Perry draws an important thread between the recent termination of Starbucks workers seeking to unionize in Memphis, and the circumstances of King’s assassination on the very same soil while supporting the strike of disenfranchised sanitation workers. If we are to truly revere people of faith and action like Rev. King, we must seek a deeper understanding of the causes that animated their activism.
The Chasing Justice blog recently published a beautiful post that explores the intersection of faith, embodiment, and mental health. In addition to vividly portraying the physical manifestations of her own mental health struggles, the author, Nya Abernathy, asks some questions of Christ’s incarnation that might make us uncomfortable. Questions like, did Jesus’s brain operate with neurodivergence? And, did Jesus suffer the physiological symptoms of depression prior to his crucifixion? We would do well to sit with that discomfort because it may point us to the very alienation from our own humanity about which Abernathy writes. You can read her thought-provoking reflections, but I highly recommend listening to the accompanying recording of the author reading the piece, which you can also access at the above link. Having an article like this embodied in a voice makes it that much more powerful.
Sy’s recommendations:
Saturday marked the 80th anniversary of the day President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, the beginning of Japanese incarceration in the US. In honor of this day, Ruth Chizuko Murai tells the story of her grandfather’s family during that time and the political context of internment. She explains the concerted efforts of local governments, business, and labor unions to discriminate against Asian immigrants on the West Coast, and the federal government’s attempts to provide both apologies and reparations (actual, monetary reparations) decades later. Her family’s story also highlights the less-discussed costs of incarceration, like the loss of homes, possessions, and community. Many families simply lost their history as their elders’ ongoing trauma suppressed the desire to talk about what happened. The article and Murai’s motivation for writing it are both sad and beautiful.
In our bonus podcast this week, I briefly mention a thread on Twitter by Dr. Amy Kavanagh, a blind disability rights advocate in England. It is about how establishing consent before helping blind people is important, but particularly crucial for blind women because of how many predatory men use offers of help as a pretense for sexual harassment. She ends the thread with this article from the Guardian, which expands on that topic and tells the stories of several women with various disabilities. The article discusses the disproportionate sexual harassment and violence men commit against disabled women, and how that phenomenon is tied up in ableist assumptions about disabled people being both helpless and asexual. It’s not an easy read, but it is vital knowledge to have to more appropriately love and serve our disabled sisters.
Shake the Dust Preview
This month, our bonus episode of Shake the Dust is a discussion about tone policing — what it is, how it shows up in church, the discriminatory ways it’s deployed, the things it suppresses that are beneficial to Christian community, and a lot more. And just like the newsletter the last couple of weeks, Suzie’s back! Also, if you don’t usually listen all the way to the end of the show for our recording bloopers, you definitely should on this one. We’ll just tell you right now: no need to worry — Jonathan will suffer no lasting injuries.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team