The Best of KTF 2022
Hi everyone!
We pray that you have had a blessed holiday whether you are working, on vacation, or juggling both. We are grateful to God for the coming of His Son and the arrival of another year.
This week we are looking back at our top posts from the past year! In keeping with tradition, each of us will highlight our favorite contribution from each of the other two. Sy is even dropping in before heading back to paternity leave!
So, now would be a great time if you haven’t already to click here for a free month to look back at some of our best recommendations from 2022 OR take advantage of our Holiday Flash Sale and subscribe for $1/month!
But first, here are YOUR Top Picks from the past year:
Based on your clicks, views, and engagement, our most popular articles were a book review of Andy Stanley’s Not in It to Win It and “How to Grieve a Colonizer,” a reflection on the death of Queen Elizabeth II; both by Jonathan Walton.
Our top podcast episode was far and away “Abortion from Exodus to Evangelicalism with Mako Nagasawa,” followed by our episode on “Clarity & Queer Christianity” and our season two finale, “When to Leave Your Church, White Discipleship, More on Queer Christianity — A Season Finale Mailbag.”
And now, here are our newsletter highlights for the best of 2022!
Sy’s favorite recommendations:
From Suzie on February 10: In 2013, an anonymous letter outlining a nefarious plot to “Islamize” local schools in Birmingham, England mysteriously turned up on the desk of a local city councilor. Mayhem ensued. The national media sensationalized the letter and the fallout reshaped education and counter-terrorism policy across the UK. Subsequent investigations destroyed the careers and reputations of several local Muslim educators, and the web of oppressive surveillance of Muslims crafted in response persists to this day. So does the mystery of who actually wrote the letter and why. That is, until a British Muslim doctor-turned-journalism-student and an award-winning investigative reporter teamed up to try to crack the case. The resulting eight-part New York Times podcast series, The Trojan Horse Affair, is a striking portrayal of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that Islamophobia operates. It also evolves into an examination of positionality and the privilege of “dispassionate” reporting. Christ teaches us that we are to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” and understanding the nuances of how bigotry functions in the world is vital to following that teaching.
From Jonathan on May 26: Everything from our daily luxuries to our country’s financial stability are intimately linked with generational exploitation; but rarely are those links made plain for us. The New York Times in its series on Haiti draws clear connections between the opulence of France and the poverty of Haiti. Most notably, the piece highlights the “double debt” where France forced Haiti to pay enslavers for its freedom under threat of invasion following the Haitian Revolution, and then lent Haiti the money to make that payment at predatory rates. This was extortion on a monumental scale that is still happening. We must interrogate, identify, and resist the ways colonization is still at play in the world. This series tells the story of white, Western powers, enraged and terrified, punishing Black people who dared to assert independence, and continuing that punishment without remorse or relief until today.
Jonathan’s favorite recommendations:
From Sy on September 29: I make an effort here to include the little journalism that there is which exposes the relatively unknown injustices of the child welfare system, a misnomer if there ever was one. This week, Mother Jones published this investigative article on how clogged court calendars and underfunding combine to create enormous delays in the emergency hearings Massachusetts judges are supposed to hold when CPS removes children from families. The result is that the system tears apart poor and BIPOC families for extended periods of time, often for no reason. The article tells the story of one Black father who lost custody of his son for about two months, though there was no accusation of neglect against him at all. Child protective services is a system of oppression which people with any amount of wealth rarely encounter, but which haunts the lives of the most vulnerable people. Learning about it and advocating for change is a crucial way to love our marginalized neighbors.
From Suzie on October 6: Last week, newly instated Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today, Dr. Russell Moore, published a piece that declared Christian nationalism to be “a liberation theology for white people.” The implication of this statement is that his readers should think that Christian nationalism is as misguided and dangerous as he thinks liberation theology is. Friends, I am having some feelings about this one. First, Dr. Moore is a privileged white man who held office for years in the Southern Baptist Convention, which was founded to protect slave owners and perpetuates racism on a massive scale to this day. For him to decry the teaching and legacy of theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez and Oscar Romero who lived (and in Romero’s case, was assassinated) in solidarity with the poor and marginalized is abhorrent. And while Moore has, in the past, seemingly taken a stand against far-right fear-mongering around Critical Race Theory, his swipes at Black liberation theologians like James Cone speak volumes. I could go on. Instead I will point you to Rev. Dr. Malcolm Foley’s enlightening critique that lays out the worldview buttressing Moore’s statement. In response, Dr. Foley calls us to an understanding of the Gospel that is both political and liberative because it is robust and relevant for all people.
Suzie’s favorite recommendations:
From Jonathan on November 3: I fear that the same practices that shaped a population tolerant of unspeakable violence in Nazi Germany are at work in the United States today. We can see this in the swift dissemination of conspiracy theories surrounding the bludgeoning of Paul Pelosi or the persistent suspicion that Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s would-be kidnappers were no real threat. There are people and institutions in the United States that are working to bring us to a point where political violence is expected, perceived as inevitable, or even viewed as necessary. Thus, historian and scholar Claudia Koonz’s book, The Nazi Conscience, is worth our substantive engagement. A substantial amount is available here or you can order the book here. If we are to engage in the work of peacemaking, we must understand the calculated process of peace-breaking in which politicians, academics, and even some pastors and theologians engage.
From Sy on June 9: In our Shake the Dust episode on foster care, I talked briefly about the close ties between the juvenile incarceration system and the family policing system, as well as how overburdened the family policing system is. If you’re wondering, most people call the family policing system child welfare, but boy will this article highlight why I object to that name. As WBEZ reports, for years, the state of Illinois has placed foster children for whom it cannot find a home in juvenile jail. This is especially enraging when you remember that the system takes many of these innocent, foster children away from their parents unnecessarily, and that these families, almost without exception, come from marginalized groups. The article reports that this problem began with misguided reform efforts whose advocates failed to understand how little the family police value foster children. It is our belief in the lesser humanity of poor, BIPOC families and the inherent goodness of foster care that produces outcomes like this.
Thanks so much to all who participated in our book giveaway and to all of our new subscribers! Your support makes this possible.
Blessings on all of you as you leave colonized faith for the kingdom of God.
See you in 2023!
The KTF team