David Leong, Ph.D., is associate professor of missiology at Seattle Pacific University where he directs a program in global and urban ministry. His latest book, Race and Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation explores themes of exclusion and belonging in urban spaces.
Posts By This Author
Christians Must Challenge the Selective Memory of #NeverForget
Photo of Ground Zero "Steel Cross" by Carlos Restrepo via Shutterstock
What does it mean, now two decades past this traumatic event, to “never forget” 9/11? And why are we simultaneously encouraged to “move on from the past” when it comes to other great American tragedies, like the genocidal erasure of Indigenous peoples, or the horrific violence against Black people from chattel slavery through Jim Crow?
The Theology of a Collapsed Condo Building
The partially collapsed Champlain Towers South residential building in Surfside, Fla., on June 29, 2021. REUTERS/Joe Skipper
If we want to understand this tragedy, we must see more clearly the failure of these physical and social structures that we have built and continue to build. For too long, the Christian imagination has divorced our identities and social worlds from geography, as if we exist in the abstract, apart from the land and the built environment we inhabit. But what if who we are — and especially who we are together — is completely dependent on the everyday spaces we inhabit, like high-rise condos and retirement communities?