I SCROLLED THROUGH the “Moving Mountains” columns I’ve plunked out on laptop keyboards over the past decade. Each title marks a particular threshold in my own journey and understanding. As titles roll from top to bottom, one thing becomes clear as crystal: I have shared my life and my heart with you. This column has largely served as sacred space to reflect, from the perspective of a Black woman follower of Jesus, on the mountains we face, the strategies and tactics it will take to move them, and the faith it takes to move our feet at all. I am grateful to you, the Sojourners community, for all your emails and tweets. Thank you for reading my words.
A recent New York Times article, “Can This Amusement Park Be Saved?” did a deep dive into the fate of the Clementon Park and Splash World, located just across the Delaware River from my home in Philadelphia. Seeded by Civil War veteran and New Jersey Assemblyman Theodore B. Gibbs in 1907, this New Jersey amusement park found its heyday in the late ’40s and early ’50s, but fell into disrepair, refinance, and repossession, finally being auctioned off this year. Indiana-based developer Gene Staples won the auction with a bid of $2.37 million and aims to restore the amusement park to its former glory.
Reporter Kate Morgan writes, “the true draw, [Staples] believes, is the nostalgia itself; the promise that you can go home again, and when you get there, you’ll recognize the place.”
Our shifting world is decolonizing. What does that mean? It means it is quickly becoming unrecognizable to people of European descent. Yet, from the perspective of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, it is becoming more recognizable every day. We have survived, found ways to thrive, or floundered and died under the hegemony of European-descendant cultural norms, mores, and worldviews. Against that backdrop, we are no longer accepting the centering of whiteness. Across the globe, we are saying “No.” As we should.
We are human beings, too, after all. We have histories that do not begin with the first European explorers. We have cultural mores, disrupted by colonization and enslavement, but preserved and passed down by the griots in our cultures. We are returning to our own stories in order to find ourselves, our power, our call to exercise dominion in the world. And we need to do this. In 2045, we will be the majority peoples within the United States. We cannot receive the mantle of leadership wearing the emperor’s armor. It does not fit.
We have seen where the roadmap of white supremacist colonization leads: to de facto or de jure ethnic cleansing—in the name of Jesus. We reject that path.
People of European descent have a simple choice. People deemed “white” in the U.S. can continue their war for supremacy with God, attempting to dominate the image of God on earth. They can retreat into nostalgia. Or they can lean fully into the moment. They can renounce the scaffolding of human hierarchy they have built to protect their status.
They can join hands in the circle of humanity—the beloved community. I pray you choose beloved community.
Lisa Sharon Harper, a former Sojourners columnist, is the founder and president of Freedom Road and author of Fortune and The Very Good Gospel. You can follow her work at lisasharonharper.com.
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