racism
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Non-Violent Protests Are American
We have the Constitutional right to peacefully assemble, to petition the Government to listen to and respond to our grievances, and the right to say what we will without prohibition. (James Madison, primary author of the First Amendment
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On the Existence of Black Folk
We just do not allow Black people in America to just exist. To be. To be learning and growing. To make mistakes and then figure out the way forward. To be children who are innocent and who love fun, who are mischievous and scared and reluctant to admit they’re scared. To boast and exaggerate, to hide and crawl away. To try new things and even reject them. Or to discover their talents and pursue their interests to become fulfilled in life.
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When We Hide the Past in Plain Sight
Jim Crow is an evil, yes, and many of us have a social response of “that’s so terrible.” But we do not want to admit how terrible it was and is again. We are a country of people proud to be Americans but so ashamed of our actual history that we erase it and suppress it from being taught and learned and seen.
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Black and White; Truth and Lies
Some seventeen years ago now a man I didn’t much know but with whom I sparred asked a question of me that changed the course of my life: “You do know that I’m Black?”
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Language and Memory
Yesterday I was talking with my Haitian friends in Haitian Creole for about an hour as we were planning how to set up our class to teach Haitians how to speak American English. Per my request, they talked a little more slowly and with fewer idioms than usual (although they did throw in an idiom that I got right away with my brain rapidly connecting the imagery with cultural aspects of Haiti, and man did that feel good that I did that!).
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When We See Them
I’ve come to know many Haitians who are delightfully unique in their outlook on life as they are in their accents and vocabulary, which gives me no end of headaches as I try to figure out yet another idiom or unique word play I need to understand so that I can grasp their meaning.
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Great Unexpectations
Why does the world exist the way it does that a people confined to a third of an island in the Caribbean are seen as less-thans? How do they grapple with the faith that comes from white people to their land, given to them to give them hope, and yet used as a tool by those same white people to call them despicable names and degrade them?
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When the Pot Gets It Wrong About the Kettle
The oppressing side in its acts of oppression is doing wrong by nature. There is no “just” oppression. Whether it is cruel or superficially “kind,” oppression is wrong and cannot be redeemed either by language or a reduction in cruelty.
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When it is too much to bear but must be borne
How do I make my faith work anymore (and maybe it never did) when such a very Christian nation seems incapable of seeing the violence we are initiating, celebrating, and dismissing, often while claiming the name of Jesus?
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When we resist, we resist completely
You want to terrify politicians? Take away their signs of power which are "respect" and obedience and decorum and complacency. Trip them up, make a point to oppose them at every turn, continuously point out their failures, and continuously refuse to accord them the power to silence you.
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Safety monitors
That Good Samaritan did a good thing to someone in distress, and if the story stops there, then we have learned a good lesson, right? But what the story doesn’t tell us in the background, and doesn’t tell us “the rest of the story.”
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History as Cassandra
Let me bring in a little history for you today. Let’s talk about Haïti . . . Haïti was once called the “Pearl of the Caribbean” because of its beauty and its profit for the colonizers. Of course, that profit came at the cost of human misery, torture, sexual abuse, and death. But that doesn’t matter when profit is the highest good. The original inhabitants were turned into creatures of labor (“slaves”) by the colonial slave-masters and rapidly died off because hey abuse and beating and torture and all the rest ends up killing the people you’re trying to make a profit from. So the slave-masters started importing Black Africans—teachers,…
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, faith, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism, violence
When They See Us—Buffalo Edition
Perhaps white people's thoughts and prayers and good intentions aren't enough when their Black friends are asking for love and dignity.
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Wherefore art thou, Evangelicals?
As America evolved as an independent nation freeing itself from certain connections with Britain such as political and economic control, so did the church, centering itself in the power and people of America who ran the nation, and inescapably represented their cultural values through religious language and theology.
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Recovery, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism
Not Your Place, Not Your Time
White people, do not go into Black spaces to help change the conversation or add your very important opinion. It is just not the time and place for that.
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Making Good in Trouble
“Making good trouble” means stirring things up so that we do not become complacent about our situation and resigned to injustice
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Recovery, faith, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism
Jesus as Emperor
The vision of Jesus for empire Christianity in our Sunday Schools and sermons and theologies is really an irrelevant Jesus who does not match the Jesus of the texts.
- American Exceptionalism, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Recovery, faith, family, history, justice, Life Recovery Skills, racism, remodeling
On Deconstruction
For the vast, vast majority of people, “deconstruction” is a good thing. Deconstruction can result in something far different and, in my opinion, far better than, white Evangelical Christianity.
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To Be Human Again
Sometimes the arts can entertain us. Disney has surely figured out that formula. But sometimes . . . the arts can open something up to us that we didn’t ever think we needed to see and learn.
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REVIEW: Anxious to Talk About It
You will not find this to be the “answer book.” It’s not designed for that. This is a book that invites us to join in the community, in the discussion, in the journey.
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Be Like Betty White
Betty White, a white woman in an industry that empowered only white men, stood up for what's right. It cost her the job that she loved. But she did it, not “anyway,” but “because.” She did it because of her own moral integrity.
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REVIEW: Subversive Witness: Scripture’s Call to Leverage Privilege
The book’s subtitle hints at what’s to come: we are all granted some level of privilege in life that others do have; those who have the most privilege are called to use that privilege
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When the Good News Isn’t So Good
We have to face the fact that Christians often pick up odious behavior traits and exhibit them while singing songs of love and praise to Jesus of Nazareth.
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The Cross and the Gun
A lot of what passes for discipleship and church membership in America is lacking in this demand to lay down our lives before Jesus and to cast aside the devil and all his works.
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REVIEW: Shoutin’ in the Fire
I had to read this slowly, thoughtfully, with many pauses and breaks. There have been books I’ve read through in one sitting, sometimes because they are so fast paced that they demand my continued attention until I am done. Sometimes it’s over a few days. But this book . . . this book was something I’d pick up, read some pages, and then become so full of feelings that I had to put it down. To think a little. Process what was going on. Try to understand what was happening as the part of me I recognize as “me” was encountering this most remarkable book. Danté has written a book…
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When You See Their Truth
Whatever your beliefs are about redemption and salvation and even universalism—Jesus was always with those who are most despised and feared by Evangelicals. They’re the people he had meals with. Their homes were his resting place. They were whom he wept for.
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The White Voice in Black Conversations
There seems always to be that moment when the white participant says something that is simply too much to handle.
