KTF Weekly Newsletter: White Nativity, Black Girlhood, Indigenous Economics
Hi everyone,
A very warm welcome to the subscribers joining us after the sale last week. We appreciate your support, and really couldn’t do any of the work we do at KTF without you all. Thank you so much! And without further ado, here are this week’s highlights to help us leave colonized faith for the Kingdom of God.
Sy’s recommendations:
Since we’re approaching the new year, everyone should sign up for the Equal Justice Initiative’s free daily email to get each day’s entry in the “A History of Racial Injustice” calendar (you can also buy the physical 2022 calendar here). The calendar will give you a regular rhythm of stories of racial injustices which pervade American history up to this day. It may sound like an exhausting thing to have around, and there are days I don’t read it. But it’s a powerful, well researched tool for helping us confront the idolatry of America that we consistently face with truth. And I learn things from the calendar I’ve never heard elsewhere: like that American women couldn’t marry Asian men without losing their citizenship from 1907 until the 1960s, or that the population of Idaho was one-third Chinese until a successful ethnic cleansing campaign, or that many American companies refused to participate in the war effort during WWII because it would have meant integrating their workforce. The examples go on and on.
This article on Robert Jones’ Substack blog last week reflects on race and the incarnation of God. He tells the story of a painting of Mary and Jesus depicted with brown skin — the baby intentionally resembling George Floyd — which thieves took from the Catholic University of America Law School in Washington D.C. Jones discusses the implicit racism of the painting’s many, many detractors who petitioned for its removal before the theft. He reflects on American nativity scenes full of white people, and how their message differs from the ethnically specific nativity scenes found around the world. And he further argues that racism is a negation of the incarnation itself. Just some really powerful and true words that you probably won’t find in your Advent devotional.
An artist named Andrea Bowers created a temporary monument called the “Black Girlhood Altar” that has been traveling around to various Chicago neighborhoods in recent weeks. A New York Times article from Tuesday reported on an event where friends and family of the young women to whom the monument is dedicated gathered to support each other and collectively mourn. You probably know some of the young women’s names from headlines — Breonna Taylor, Rekia Boyd, Ma’Khia Bryant. But their loved ones gathered intentionally apart from the national political fights to stop and be present with each other in a much more humane setting. The description of the event is a moving example of how good justice seeking includes attending to our need for community, beauty, and emotional healing.
Jonathan’s recommendations
Killing is wrong, including when it’s done by the state, says Shane Claiborne in this interview on The Russell Moore Show. Often in Christian circles in America, we hold strong positions but don’t have personal relationships with those impacted by our beliefs. Shane is an exception to that reality. His deep-seated resistance to violence of any kind is grounded in names and faces. He has actually formed genuine connections with those awaiting execution. They are not hashtags or names on a petition. He reminds us that those people are just that – people. His advocacy — going back and forth from electric chair to pulpit to governor’s mansion — exemplifies the beauty of the incarnation, the ministry of presence, and bids followers of Jesus to take biblical teachings of radical grace more seriously than we already do.
“Only an intentional rejection of excessive consumerism can silence the call to constantly upscale lifestyle norms,” says author Joshua Becker in this article for Forbes. Becker gives us an easily digestible breakdown of the ways being less consumerist can help both us as individuals and our society. And he also provides practical steps to move toward a simpler lifestyle. Followers of Jesus looking to make the move from consumer to steward, as God intended, must untangle our identities from our ability to accumulate. This is especially true this Christmas season when consumption is front and center, occupying space in our hearts and minds meant for the incarnate Christ.
Jesus was unshackled to imperial systems, including their economic structures. He desires to free us as well. But for that to happen, we must be able to imagine a different world. The Upstream Podcast “invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics.” And a recent episode featured an interview with Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta of the Appalech Clan in Australia, who is a university lecturer about indigenous thinking. His and his people’s wisdom can awaken our imaginations to a world where accumulation is not our purpose and destiny, independence is the default position, and greed melts away because it’s simply less desirable than the beautiful alternative.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team