Osage Oil after the Credits Roll, Scholastic Book Fair Bans, Blame Capitalism
KTF Weekly Newsletter
Hi all,
Leaving colonized faith requires embodying the belief that every person is made in the image of God, regardless of your politics or policy preferences. We must be oriented toward the flourishing of “the other,” not their destruction or demise. We long for the end of violence and oppression. Right now, that longing is directed at God’s image bearers in Palestine.
Here are a couple things you can do to try and help make that longing a reality. Click here to sign an open letter from Palestinian Christians calling Zionist Western church leaders to repentance. Click here to find a protest for Palestine near you. And here is the Churches for Middle East Peace’s page where you can contact your congressional representative to ask them to support a ceasefire.
And now, to this week’s highlights to help us leave colonized faith for the kingdom of God.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
In this podcast interview, philosopher Dr. David Livingstone Smith argues that dehumanization is a crucial step toward genocide and other forms of mass violence. He lays out how we create and disseminate dehumanizing narratives with a focus on lynching in the US. Colonial powers have always named entire populations as subhuman or demonic in order to seize their land and destroy or dispossess them. With the terrorism against Israelis and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians—in a world full of antisemitism, islamophobia, and White supremacy—knowing how to humanize Jewish and Palestinian people is essential work. If we are to pursue peacemaking, we must resist dehumanizing our human family.
Each year, Scholastic runs book fairs for more than 35 million children around the world. This Rolling Stone article reports that Scholastic recently created a separate catalog for books on race and gender which schools had to opt in to if they wanted the books to be available for children. The idea was to help protect schools now subject to Republican book bans. In the article, author Tanisia Moore says plainly that this upset her because she can’t opt in or out of Blackness. She remembers loving the Scholastic Book Fair as a student, but always wanting more books that spoke to her experience as a Black girl. The new check box lets racist ideologies dictate the terms of engagement, rather than coming up with a creative solution that moves us toward justice and inclusion. Listening to the backlash, Scholastic says they will eliminate the new system in January. I pray that teachers, administrators, writers, and publishers have the courage, conviction, and creativity to continue prioritizing the marginalized even when those in power resist.
Blame Capitalism is a four-part series from Vox’s Today, Explained podcast. The episodes give a survey of capitalism’s many different meanings to different people, and its decline in popularity as an idea in various corners of society. They also outline America’s recent economic history, including this summer’s strikes, years of social recalibration, and decades of rising inequality. The series reminds us that ideologically-justified lust for infinitely-expanding material wealth was not how the West always organized its economies. A new and different world is not just possible, but for followers of Jesus, inevitable and necessary. May God give us visions of a different economy where love for people and our planet trumps greed for property, possessions, and profits.
Sy’s recommendations:
This essay by Palestinian-American author Sarah Aziza left me reeling. It’s an account of how she and her community experienced the early days of the current fighting in Palestine. She vividly depicts her grief—both the entrenched, ever-present kind born of displacement, occupation, and endless oppression, and the acute kind as Israel executes collective punishment, killing her friends and family. Aziza also refuses to limit her grief to her own people, meditating extensively on Hamas’ Jewish victims. She insists on their humanity, even though she “sits inside the crater of certainty that the world will still refuse ours.” This piece is a breathtaking gift of vulnerability, courage, and brilliant self-reflection in the face of vicious hostility and violence. I hope it spurs us to greater compassion and urgent action toward peace. I really can’t recommend the essay enough, but fair warning, I’d get in a place where you’re comfortable crying before reading.
Killers of the Flower Moon came out last week. It’s Martin Scorsese’s film set in the Osage nation during the time of the tribe’s discovery of massive oil reserves on its land and the government-backed takeover of those reserves. This article by journalist Greg Palast explains what happened after the 1920’s, when the movie ends. It covers the beginning of the Koch family’s wealth, made by stealing about $6 billion in oil from the tiny wells that the government still permitted the Osage people to operate. It also discusses the government’s justification for its power over Osage land and wealth today; in the article, Osage Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear produces the government documents that deem him, an accomplished trial attorney, “incompetent.” If you want to support Palast’s efforts to turn this more recent story into a documentary, you can give any amount of money here.
Sojourners published an interview this week with Aaron Rosen, a writer and art curator, about, among other things, the importance of understanding Jesus’ Jewish context. Rosen wants more dialogue between Christians and Jews on the subject both because it tends to decrease antisemitism, and because the spirituality of people from both religions benefit from it. If Christians believe Jesus’ words are important, we need to understand the questions and ideas Jesus and the people around him were wrestling with. And we will do that better in conversation with the people who come from the tradition of that culture. Rosen also points to the tradition of Jewish people gaining much from engagement with Jesus’ wisdom and life under Roman oppression, both of which stem directly from his Jewishness. It’s a great read that points us all to how we might flourish alongside our Jewish neighbors.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Jonathan and Sy