Hi everyone,
Some good news to start this week: a court stayed the execution of Melissa Lucio that Sy wrote about last week. She remains on death row, but has a new opportunity to present evidence of her innocence. Thanks to those of you who signed the petition or wrote something on social media! Please continue to pray. And now, here are this week’s highlights.
Suzie’s recommendations:
We have talked a fair bit at KTF Press about the US’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and some of the tragic fallout, including the horrific treatment of Afghan minors in the US. One encouraging development, however, has been the emergence of sponsor circles to aid in welcoming Afghan refugees in America. The Sponsor Circle Program allows ordinary citizens to supplement the work of resettlement agencies gutted under the previous administration. The US State Department launched the initiative, and a number of faith-based and other community groups chose to participate. In this article, The New Yorker’s Eliza Griswold shares about her experience as a sponsor, as well as the story of two young Afghan women who found aid through the program. In the long run, the best outcome would be the rehabilitation and expansion of the US refugee resettlement architecture, but this is a helpful stopgap to support Afghans who have already suffered so much.
As Christians, we need to take seriously our calling to stewardship of the earth. In observance of Earth Day last week, journalists, activists, and concerned citizens posted a lot of helpful resources which can help us do just that. This article by Vox, in particular, does a good job of pointing to practical steps that you can take to help care for the environment and combat climate change, while providing the clear-headed assessment that the impact you can have depends largely on your ability to influence systems and structures through collective change. Rather than banning books and carrying out crusades against those who are unlike us, this is the kind of culture-shaping to which followers of Christ should aspire.
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Dennis Wayne Hope is in solitary confinement in Texas. He has been in a nine-by-six-foot cell for 27 years, more than half his life. In this episode of The Daily, Journalist Adam Liptak illuminates the reality that more than 500 people in the United States are like Mr. Hope, having spent more than a decade in similar conditions with few human interactions. Hope has petitioned the Supreme Court to end his time in solitary on grounds that it is cruel and unusual punishment. As I listened to this show, I found myself again reflecting on the reality that Jesus identifies Himself with those who are incarcerated. God made Hope, who has had very little contact with other human beings for almost three decades, for relationship in the image of God. It is my prayer that the court hears Hope’s case, grants reprieve, and makes this torturous practice of confinement illegal.
With Elon Musk on his way to buying Twitter, Jeff Bezos shuttling celebrities into space, and the constant chatter about taxing assets instead of income, the conversations around wealth and billionaires grow louder and more complex every day. Willy Staley’s New York Times article, “How Many Billionaires Are There, Anyway?” gives us a brief history on the accumulation of wealth in the world, and the accelerating rate of those attaining the billionaire status. He also notes in detail just how far the distance is growing between the top and the bottom of the economic ladder. Followers of Jesus committed to leaving colonized faith must rebuke an identity rooted in our possessions, refute the lie that greed is good, and resist the temptation to pursue wealth at all costs. But we cannot resist a system which we are unwilling to learn about or interrogate. This article is a step towards knowledge and action.
Sy’s recommendations:
This recommendation is short, so I will be too. It’s a poem called “The Unsung Song; A Sadness” by a writer named Sharifa Stevens. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful lament for languages and other parts of culture lost because of European kidnapping and enslavement of African people, but seen through the promise in Revelation that all tongues will speak praise in the Kingdom of God. Stevens is a great writer, and she’s on Substack, like us, so you will have no problem subscribing to her posts if you want to hear more.
Buzzfeed has an excellent, long, investigative article on child abuse registries — one of the many systems consulted when schools, churches, and many other institutions run background checks on potential employees and volunteers. The problems with these systems are numerous. The bar for getting your name on them is so low that in many cases, parents have actually done nothing at all. Often, people don’t know they are on these registries until an employer rejects their job application. There is no right to legal counsel to challenge a registry’s determinations, though the vast majority of people who do manage to navigate the complex appeals process are successful. And Buzzfeed’s own multistate analysis of these registries — a first of its kind — demonstrates the predictable but still infuriating racism in the way they operate. I very briefly touched on these issues at the end of our podcast about the foster care system, and this article is a great place (one of relatively few places actually) to learn more.
Shake the Dust Preview
This month, our bonus episode for subscribers is on the ways that middle- and upper-class churches often function in ways that exclude poor people and reinforce classist structures. We also talk about how to operate congregations more in line with God’s vision for the Church. Jonathan couldn’t make this one, and we definitely missed him, but we also have Gabrielle Apollon back on the show as a guest host. It’s a great episode with a lot of helpful tips and personal stories. Enjoy!
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team