racial justice
In an age when both explicit and implicit biases are becoming legitimate justifications to curse the image of God, it is time for the church in the U.S. to face itself. It is time to repair the broken fabric of our nation. It is time to interrogate the stories we tell our selves about ourselves by immersing ourselves in the stories of the other.
Restoration and reconciliation with God is the ultimate goal. It is the incarnate Jesus who provides the way back for humanity to be restored and reconciled to God. This is the essence of the Christian faith.
Image via Ms Jane Campbell / Shutterstock
But more deeply than that, framing Terence’s last gasp of life in the texture of local challenges shows the frailty of black Tulsa’s dream of equal treatment. We need to ensure Terence does not become another note on a scale of the pain felt by countless black and brown lives. It’s only been seven months and the voices of those affected by this history have been diminished.
Deaf white ears, children. Deaf white ears. That's what we have. Freedom is freedom for all or it's simply not freedom and Jesus still hangs on that cross today just as truly as he did all those years ago.
Photos by JP Keenan / Sojourners
Here’s how: We have been living according to different stories of America’s past. As a result, we interpret the present differently. In turn, we dream a different future.
Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Rajdeep Singh Jolly with the Sikh Coalition, and Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) (from left to right) urge the Trump administration to treat hate violence seriously.
The shooting of two Indian men in Kansas is one of the most recent examples of an increase in racially motivated violence in the U.S., and the Trump administration must rigorously investigate and prosecute the perpetrators, a group of Democratic members of Congress and South Asian-American advocates said Friday at a rally outside the Capitol.
Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C. in 1926.
The only answer to the racial divide among Christians — evangelicals in particular — is to go much deeper into what racial equity and healing will require. America’s Original Sin was written for such a time as this. It is a book written to and for white Christians and white churches — to help lead them to new conversations with black and brown Christians and their churches. It could be that studying racism in congregation after congregation, and especially between congregations across racial lines, could be a fundamental building block for genuine racial reconciliation in America.
Image via JP Keenan/ Sojourners
America is beautiful because we have the power to define what it means to be American.
Too often, we immigrants define what is "American" by what white culture tells us it should be. We internalize colonialism and let it run thickly in our veins: We give our offspring English names because we’re embarrassed of our language, or afraid that our children won’t be accepted with anything too “exotic.” We eagerly give up a culture that so proudly raised us. I’ve watched as we villainize black people and turn our backs on undocumented immigrants.
Image via Cathleen Falsani.
Some of the boys involved in carrying out those acts in December we know, and we know their parents. The parents we do know are not frothing-at-the-mouth bigots. We can’t imagine their sons learned racist ideas at home.
But they learned them somewhere.
Racists and bullies aren’t born. They are made.
America rests on a foundation of sin. Its body is strong but its soul is dead. Yes, America provides so much freedom and benefits so many lives. But woe to us if we look at this country’s glass as half full when so many of our fellow citizens barely have water at all. Woe to us if we praise the calm in our lives while failing to give the distress of others’ lives the full attention it needs.
Any speech about America that fails to look at this nation’s current state with the realism and gravity it deserves is speech about a country that doesn’t exist. The America that President Obama spoke of, in his farewell address, is an America I barely recognize.
Image via Google doc/SURJ-DC.
“Remember that this isn’t the only conversation/interaction you’re going to have,” writes Christena Cleveland.
The New York Times had Clinton supporters and Trump supporters ask each other these questions. Listen to their results here.
If all efforts at engaging have stalled, SURJ has a holiday hotline to help. “Get stuck? Simply text SOS to 82623.”
Halloween has passed and people are still scared out of their minds. The ghoulish costumes, haunted houses, and spirits, just don’t compare to the future of this country set to unfold over the next few days. Separatism, sexual assault, and scandal have set the stage. The anxiety of what is to come is chilling. I see it everywhere.
Image via betto rodrigues/Shutterstock.com
The reality of our privilege is that it makes many truths of systemic injustice unclear to us. We fumble around with murky awareness and bump into our own ingrained racism and ignorance. As allies, the question for us is not if we will screw up, but how we will move forward when we inevitably do.
“The vast majority of evangelicals support Donald Trump.” We’ve heard that statement so often during this election season that it’s all but assumed fact. But there’s a problem with that line and with how we talk about “evangelicals” in this election.
One critical lesson from the environmental justice movement is this: Racial inequity and economic disparities are intertwined fault lines running in different directions, crisscrossing the everyday lives of people of color. History shows by what means the two interact and the consequences. These crisscrossing forces downgrade the quality of life and narrow opportunities for health, housing, and financial stability. Meanwhile whole communities suffer. Remember Flint, Mich. Consider the Sioux Nation’s historic push against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Parks and monuments tell our nation’s stories and shape our collective memory. Our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are where we learn, play, and pray. We treasure these places of beauty that reveal the wonders of our Creator. And today, on the centennial celebration of the National Park Service, we must pass on their spiritual and cultural significance from generation to generation.
Unfortunately, many people in the U.S. do not yet find their stories reflected or protected in our system of national public lands. While there are plenty of sites that honor military leaders or white historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Edison, there are far fewer sites that honor Native American, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, or women’s history.
At Washington National Cathedral on Sunday, an interracial group of clergy gathered to discuss the role of the white church in perpetuating racism. And what the church might do to heal the wounds. A tough subject, but dealt with unflinchingly
Why We Can’t Wait is the familiar title of Martin Luther King Jr.’s book from 1964. The volume includes his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (written April 16, 1963) and makes an argument to recognize 1963 as the beginning of “the Negro Revolution” while extolling the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance.
King’s “Letter” issues a call for urgency. He wrote it as a response to eight local white clergymen who had criticized his activities in Birmingham and appealed for a more patient and restrained approach to lobbying for civil rights. The “Letter” expresses King’s deep disappointment with “the white moderate,” who “paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.”
This week Asian-American women leaders at American University in Washington, D.C., released a video of local Asian Pacific Islanders reading a letter of solidarity in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The collaborative letter was drafted online last month as Asian Americans across the country responded to the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, black men killed recently by police officers.
Image by JP Keenan for Sojourners
I want to encourage us to consider the ways we can engage our neighbors beyond an effort to provide a sense of comfort or peace. I believe we are called, in whatever small way we can, to not only accompany them in their grief, but also to acknowledge, validate, and recognize the injustice or atrocities that occur — and to seek to take action to address this within our own sphere of influence.