10 People Doing the Awesome Work of Racial Justice & Reconciliation

by Rebekah Mays

If you’re like me, you weren’t able to take your eyes off your Twitter feed a few weeks ago. If you’re like me, you still feel grieved and overwhelmed by what you’ve seen in Ferguson, and maybe even a little cynical that it’s ever going to get better.

But here’s the good news. We may not be aware of it, but many people are already doing everything they can to help heal our country’s deep racial wounds. They are slowly changing the world with their sermons and homeless ministries, their blog posts and youth mentorship programs. Please reflect upon the words of these ten individuals, organizations and churches who are all doing the beautiful, often messy work of racial justice.

1. Rev. Willis Johnson of Wellspring Church  
Ferguson, Missouri

Rev. Johnson is the pastor of Wellspring Church in Ferguson, on the very street where so much national attention has been fixed the past two weeks. During the protests, someone captured a photograph of Johnson laying a hand on 18-year-old Joshua Wilson. In a powerful interview on NPR, Johnson describes his identification with Joshua’s anger, and breaks down in tears as he describes his own son he’s trying to raise. “This is a not a race issue,” Johnson says, “this is a human issue.” Listen to the interview here.

Church website: http://www.wellspringchurchstl.org/
Twitter: @FWillisJohnson

2. Christena Cleveland
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Christena Cleveland is a social psychologist and the author of the book Disunity in Christ. She speaks about racial reconciliation around the United States and is an associate professor of reconciliation studies at Bethel University.

Her website is a treasure trove of thought and practical advice on overcoming cultural divisions. In a recent post, “The Cross and the Molotov Cocktail,” she writes:

“It’s relatively easy to see the suffering Christ in black men who are already dead and aren’t threatening to hurt anyone. But can you see the suffering Christ in black men who are still alive and might hurt someone? Can you see the suffering Christ in violent responses to injustice? Can you see the cross in the Molotov cocktail?”

Website: http://www.christenacleveland.com/ 
Twitter: @CSCleve

3. Austin Channing-Brown  
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Austin Channing-Brown speaks and writes about racial reconciliation and leads diversity trainings around the country. In a fascinating post on Rachel Held Evans' website, Channing-Brown thoughtfully responds to several questions about implementing multicultural initiatives in Christian communities. Read her answers here.

Website: http://austinchanning.com/
Twitter: @austinchanning

 
4. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove 
Durham, North Carolina

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of many spiritual books and articles and a leader in the New Monasticism movement. He has also started a “house of hospitality” for the formerly homeless and recently began coordinating content for the blog Red Letter Christians, which strives to take the “red letter” words of Jesus seriously.

Read this wonderful piece he recently wrote on God’s gracious commandment for Americans to “go to hell.”

Website:  jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com
Twitter: @wilsonhartgrove

5.  A House on Beekman 
Bronx, NY

A House on Beekman serves the neighborhood of Mott Haven, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. The house provides long-term spiritual, educational, economic services to the neighborhoods’ residents and hosts a number of summer camps and after-school programs for local youth. The House is directed by Sara Miller and supported by Trinity Grace Church in New York City.

Watch “Sara’s Story,” the director’s beautiful testimony about dedicating herself to the renewal of the South Bronx.

Website: http://www.ahouseonbeekman.org/
Twitter: @ahouseonbeekman

6. Daniel Hill and the River City Community Church 
Chicago, Illinois

Daniel Hill is the founding and senior pastor of River City Community Church, a vibrant, multicultural body of believers. Hill is deeply committed to bringing both spiritual renewal and social justice to Humboldt Park of Chicago.

In a recent interview in which he discusses the choice Christians have to be brave or to be safe, Hill says, “If we actually have the luxury of choosing between safe and brave, then we are living in a far more comfortable existence than most of the world … That is just one more reminder of what has always been true – safe is not the goal of a believer!”    

Website: http://www.rivercitychicago.com/
Twitter: @danielhill1336, @rc3chicago

7. Mihee Kim-Kort

Mihee Kim-Kort is a PCUSA pastor and the author of Making Paper Cranes and Streams Run Uphill. Her prose is gorgeous and emotive, often grappling with the issues of racial and gender equality in the church. Read her compelling post “#BlackLivesMatter and Vigilance.”

Website: http://miheekimkort.com/
Twitter: @miheekimkort 



8. By Their Strange Fruit 
Columbus, Ohio

“By Their Strange Fruit” is a blog that facilitates conversations about racial divides and renewal and is edited by Kaitelin Hansen. The blog is extraordinarily well-researched and informative – a great starting point for anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of racial injustice.

Website: http://bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @BTSFblog

9. Shane Fast and Rebirth East St. Louis  
St. Louis, Missouri

Rebirth founder Shane Fast first began volunteering with East St. Louis High School’s football team in 2009. Since then, Rebirth has been expanding its support to the young men in the area, and now provides athletic, academic, and spiritual support through a range of opportunities.

Fast recently wrote an excellent essay on CNN iReport responding to the Ferguson tragedy. You can read it here.

Website: http://rebirthesl.org/
Twitter: @RebirthESL

10. Jonathan Walton and the New York City Urban Project 
New York, NY

Jonathan Walton is the director of the New York City Urban Project, a ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship that  works with college students to feed the homeless and fight sex trafficking. Walton has mentored dozens of students through NYCUP’s Spring Break Plunge and Summer Immersion programs and often uses spoken-word poetry to encourage and challenge his listeners.

“Would you say I didn’t deserve to grow up in poverty?

Or would you say, ‘jonathan, yours is such a great story!’”

Read the rest of his poem here.

Website: nycurbanproject.com
Twitter: @foreverfocused

These are just ten of many others working for racial justice and reconciliation. Who are the other leaders who have challenged and motivated you to pursue racial justice? Tell us in the comments. 

Rebekah Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

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The Ethics of Information

by Dominick Dodgson

Currently, there are tens of thousands of human rights violations taking place throughout the world. At the same time, there are over 1.5 million non-profit organizations registered in the United States alone, most raising money for a good cause. I don’t need to know about all of them or their individual missions and concerns. Nor do I need to be involved with the vast majority of them. In fact, if I’m honest, I just don’t really care about most of them.

As finite humans, there is a limit to just how much we are able to care. And because of that, I question many of my friends’ ethical mandates to constantly “be informed.” We can cherry pick the issues we choose to engage until we appear to have a well-rounded portfolio of activist concerns, but we can never be fully informed on every issue that confronts peace and well-being. We can only ever “be informed” about the narrowest of slivers or the cause du jour.

But woe to us, if we are not! I voiced this concern once, wondering why someone’s moral standing was dependant on how much news media they ingested, and my concern was met with rabid rebuttals. “How can we,” they asked, “if we aren’t aware of the world’s atrocities, be sure to avoid them in our own community?” We can’t be sure. But history has shown that awareness of horrors is no vaccine to prevent their recurrence.

So I voice the concern again. I question the mandate to consume news as an ethical duty; the need to know all of the bad things happening around the world. And I certainly question the name-calling and shaming that implicitly happens when we assume that being informed equals a higher level of ethical living, something I have experienced with my more “progressive” and “liberal” friends.

In full disclosure, this conversation is personal for me. My wife doesn’t watch the news. She makes it a point NOT to be on the Internet to find out what’s happening in the world. She doesn’t even have a Facebook account for crying out loud. “What!?” you might be saying, “No Facebook? No Jon Stewart or Colbert? But what about the children?! Surely we must do something to protect the children!” But in spite of all her lack of information, my wife is one of the most caring and ethical people I know. She is concerned about our community and we strive to be actively involved in making it a better place. Somehow she missed the memo that said it was her duty to know what’s happening in the world. And yet, she seems to be doing quite alright, morally speaking.

So, with that in mind, here are my more concrete concerns with an overemphasis on being informed:

1. The very word “Informed,” like most words, is a slippery term wherein a person’s definition typically says more about the person than the term. How much information does a person need to consume before they pass the threshold from “uninformed” to “informed”? Do you know about the anti-gay agenda in Uganda? Okay, here’s your “informed” certificate. Oh wait, you don’t know about the religious violence in the Central African Republic? I’m going to need that certificate back. And who is in charge of those certificates anyway? What makes them the “informed” authority?

Based on the amount of information we now have access to I would hazard a guess to say almost every 5th grader in America is more “informed” about current events in the world than almost every person born before the invention of the printing press. And somehow I don’t think that means every 5th grader in America is less prone to unethical behavior than every person born before the invention of the printing press.

Which leads me to point number two:

2. An overemphasis on being informed can lead to equating the ethical life with simply knowing what is happening, which seems dangerous. Because of the rise of “Causes” on Facebook and the ability to flaunt our enlightened opinions online, it seems many people genuinely think that the greatest test of our ethic is measured by (a) how “disgusted” we are at people who do bad things and (b) how dramatically we can talk about our disgust publicly. The more we know about bad things going on in the world, the more we can verbally condemn them, ergo, the more ethical we must be. Sounds like flawed calculus to me.

Finally:

3. Knowing about more injustices than we can possibly do anything about is depressing. It seems cruel to keep shoving more information about problems in our world into heads that can only care so much. We already know more about the world’s ills than we could possibly integrate into our immediate lives, so to keep heaping it on just seems to increase our anxiety and fear; it inspires a feeling of helplessness. Dr. Mark Warr, a sociologist from the University of Texas, says it this way: “People are bombarded with information about crime from the media, which makes them believe the world is a much more dangerous place than it really is. This creates a climate of fear that can negatively affect the way we live, the way we go to work, the times we shop and the precautions we take for our families and children.”

So, if the way to a more ethical culture is found only through the crucible of fear, then by all means, keep the articles and graphic images flowing. But I’m inclined to think a better society comes through love, not fear, what with Paul’s “perfect love casts out fear” and all.

Now, in order to pre-empt those among us who like to swing pendulums from black to white, I am not advocating anti-intellectualism or non-engagement of the issues we face. I am not advocating an ignorant love of feel-good clichés and puppies. I’m not suggesting we bury our heads in the sand. I am simply calling for nuance.

If you feel the need to keep up with all the problems in our world in order to be a part of the solution, I commend your effort. But I ask you not to claim that only such a posture is morally high ground. Perhaps not all of us feel that need. Perhaps there are other ways to be part of the solution and we need to make room for those ways. 

Dominick Dodgson is a professor of philosophy & ethics who consumes pop-culture and pretends it's "research." You can follow him on Twitter @dedodgson and read more posts at www.dominickdodgson.com. 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

Image Credits:
Image #1 via Will Lion 
Image #2 via Jeff Maurone 
Image #3 via Sharon Pruitt 
  

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Looking for the Kingdom Coming Down: The Alternative Reality of the Poet-Prophet

by Hannah Paasch

I was driving full-speed on an empty desert freeway, tumbling words & melodies over & backwards in my head and over my tongue like so many gathered crystals. But all of my hoarded ideas & thoughts were already smooth and clean and sparkling, sharp edges & rivets worn into careful, polished submission - the way that I had always been taught to talk to God; the way that I had been told He talked to me. It was all so neat tidy and well-groomed and careful. There was no fear, no reverence, no passion. There was no tremble. Every thought was safe and worn; transactional and tame.

Angrily I tossed my whole virtual scrap-pile of neat turns-of-phrases and swept them right out the doorway. I decided I’d rather be hungry than full & confused.

I grew up on the vague but hopeful imaginings of Jon Foreman and his “kingdom coming down” - every Switchfoot album released until that point, I had pored over & emotionally dog-eared until they were old & dear friends. They had fueled my hunger; my search for honest, sharp-edged, painful truth - to understand the world as it really was, in order to be able to imagine the world as it could be redeemed. And yet, I realized in that moment that I’d never learned how to talk about God in words that were my own. Worship songs and love songs were the only thing language I had been equipped to spew out, along with every other lyricist who ever lyricized. I love you. You love me. Forget me not.

Forget it.

And then, in a voice that was not my own, they began to trickle in - slowly, decisively, past the lazy battle lines drawn by the insipid but persevering forces of distraction & fear, bringing with them streams of life and relief:

Daughter, do not hide.
You would see you are whole if you stepped into the light.

It was then that I realized that my calling as a writer was not to say what everyone else would; but rather to listen for the words that everyone else likely would not listen for.

Art is not only meant to portray things as they are, but also to imagine things as they could be - and it is my firm belief that behind every activist, there was a poet who first got them dreaming. I'll never forget the first time I read Longfellow's 'Psalm of Life' - and it suddenly occurred to me that there was life beyond the deep paralysis of depression and hopelessness in which I found myself.

Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal - 
'Dust thou art, to dust returnest' was not spoken of the soul.'

With all the clamor of Internet-isms & well-meaning critiques devolving into full-blown character attacks, I have to believe that there are other ways to ignite the oh-so-gradual fires of change, restoration, & redemption in society and culture; I have to believe that the tools given to those imagining better futures are more varied than we tend to allow.

Walter Brueggemann says, 'It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures.' It would seem that prophecy is not for prose alone! Toward that end, I asked a couple poet-prophets I know to tell me how their prophetic voices & their individual creative processes work together.

James McCalkins is J. Poetic, an up-and-coming spoken word poet fresh off an unexpected win at the Justice Conference poetry slam, an event that awakened him to the possibility that art could actually be a lifetime pursuit. While his love for hip-hop & making beats had always been a passion he shrugged off as a hobby, he hopped on that plane and flew to Philadelphia. Suddenly, the call of the Spirit was finally too distinct to be ignored.

“I always thought I had to do something more ‘spiritual’, and that being an artist wasn’t ‘picking up my cross’,” James says now, remembering what it felt like to try & earn God’s acceptance, as if that was, somehow, something God required. When he finally picked up his beats & his pen again, he found his calling as both a poet and a prophet. It’s rare to find a blend of faith and activism that plays well with art, but James seems to be well on his way to discovering that balance.

“I believe a prophet was and is someone who proclaims a reality deeper than themselves, as well as points to the Creator of reality regardless of the social or physical consequences,” he says, when asked what speaking into culture looks like from where he sits. “[The prophet] sees a situation outside of the box, or outside of the majority opinion, and tries to help others see that reality,” he asserts, adding, with characteristic self-effacing humility, “Whether or not I have a prophetic voice, I have no idea.”

He affirms that it can be hard to act on the same directives of active love in community that he upholds in his poems, and admits that he’s walking the same dark, barely perceptible pathway toward the Kingdom that his listeners are.

J. Poetic is releasing a full-length album entitled Broken Restored later this year, featuring James’s unique voice (Go check him out on YouTube). Look for albums & singles on Noisetrade.

Meanwhile, in the Midwest, a wild-eyed, joyful, loud-mouthed firebrand of a girl has been gaining traction as a performance poet increasingly well-known among evangelical circles, rippling out from Moody Bible Institute where she first realized she could speak her written words aloud & people would like it. Emily Joy Allison studied philosophical theology at Moody - because knowing all the things was more important to her than career marketability. From a little poetry club formed by four unlikely friends (the Friday Night Table also boasted Micah Bournes, another on-the-rise performance poet in evangelical circles) that challenged her to get herself up on that coffee-shop stage, Dichotomized was born. The album is a cry to a God who is not always answering, but always listening, the kind of God you can beat your head against & be held by when your fight gives out.

You can find Emily Joy's work at www.emilyjoypoetry.com, & can (& most certainly should) purchase her album Dichotomized right there as well, for free or a million dollars, depending on how generous you're feeling.

What James & Emily agree on - indeed, almost to the point of answering identically - is that Christians notoriously produce bad art.  You try and write positive, encouraging songs that listeners pretend to need, while pretending yourself that you're the kind of person who could truthfully write them. “The most powerful moment of writing for me is the moment of solidarity. What I want people to take away is the ‘Me too’,” Allison writes. That kind of writing requires a level of vulnerability that most lyricists - and I would venture to say, especially operating within the CCM industry - have not yet had the courage to tap into.

“If one pays close enough attention to my poems, (“Beloved” or “Dichotomized”, for example) there are definitely things I am attacking in each of them,” Emily explains. “Part of your job is to equip people with the language to describe what they’re already experiencing.”

Of course, telling the truth is not always a great way of making friends. “I feel like I say a lot of offensive things,” Allison admits. “But the difference between having a prophetic voice and being a jerk is saying offensive things for the purpose of hope and healing and bringing people out of their apathy. You kinda have to offend people, either way. Why and how makes a big difference.”

Allison writes a good deal about her experiences in Christian dating culture, which misadventures, coupled with her probing mind and theological interests, ended up catalyzing a good deal of her thought on the gratuitous appropriation of misogyny and patriarchy within the church. One of the poems on her yet-to-be-released sophomore album is titled "You're not a princess," dismantling many of the lies that Christian culture has used to indoctrinate young women of the millennial generation. “And then no conservative churches will ever want to hire me and I will be poor!” she exclaims, with a bit of light-hearted mischief.

What we often fail to realize is that our artists and poets carry with them the calling to be watchmen on our walls; seeing and discerning the cracks in our pavement long before we come upon them in our trudging. They fulfill a role of bridging culture as it stands with culture as it should be, functioning within its fortresses while still able to look out on the horizon beyond. They are the awareness-raisers; the tour guides; the Calebs and Joshuas who climb up over the hill & return to tell us, with fire in their eyes, that the land can indeed be taken.

Those who heed their calling as prophets alert us to storms ahead; wars we are about to wage; sunsets we were too busy to notice. In the spirit of the sorrowing Isaiah, they warn us to turn aside from the path we have chosen, comfortably careening toward disaster, reminding us that all is not how it could be - that redemption is real and it is imminent. Imbued with the same grieving love the Spirit-God who first stepped into the Garden to say, “My children! What have you done?”, they remind us to grieve & to turn away from the cesspools of self-absorption in which we wallow and urge us, prod us out of our misery & into the hard work of joy. Planting in our minds dreams of alternative realities to be imagined and created, they are the unassuming signs we are always asking God to write on the sky. They are the worn & withered guideposts along this dark, narrow, barely perceptible pathway toward the Kingdom & glory.

All creation is pregnant with the redemption that is to come if we are but willing to listen. 

Hannah Paasch was raised on Jesus and adventure. She is a self-styled storyteller, aspiring songwriter, bridge-builder, and bridge-destroyer, as the situation at hand would dictate. You can follow her on Twitter @thesettingsun07 and read more of her writing at her blog.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  
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On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 41 - Justice and the Sacraments w/ Katie Grimes

by Ben Howard

Ben sits down with blogger and theologian Katie Grimes this week to talk about issues of justice and ethics. They'll discuss women in theology and religion, racial issues in the church, the impact of Grimes' Catholic faith on her theology, and the first six months of Pope Francis I papacy. We'll also discuss the great(ish) city of Marion, Ohio where Ben and Katie both grew up and why Katie didn't like Tree of Life (which is basically heretical for a theologian).

Be sure to follow Katie on Twitter and check out her writing at Women in Theology.

If you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes. It's the first step in our secret mission to take over the world.

You can download the podcast by clicking here. Or you can subscribe to the podcast by searching "On Pop Theology" in the iTunes music store.

Also, remember to "Like" On Pop Theology on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @OnPopTheology for all the updates, posts, and links throughout the week.

Finally, if you'd like to stream the podcast, you can do that here: 

Peace,
Ben

If you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to say hi, you can contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.
 
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The Beautiful Illusion of Justice

by Ben Howard

Every once in awhile I listen to this podcast called Hardcore History. It only comes out every few months, but when it does the episodes are often 3 or 4 hours long. I was a history major in college, so this kind of long, audiobook-like podcast is perfect for me.

Yesterday, I found myself listening to an episode about Genghis Khan. A lot of modern historians credit Genghis Khan with connecting China and other Asian societies with the European continent in the 13^th century. In the aftermath of Genghis Khan’s conquest there were great advances in commerce and trade and technology that would not have been possible without the Khan.

This is the accepted historical significance of Genghis Khan. At some point historians will eventually mention, almost as an afterthought, that during the Khan’s 20 year reign he was responsible for the death of between 10 and 80 million people.

You read that right. 10 to 80 million deaths and it’s not the most important thing according to his historical legacy.

We read that, or at least I read that, and think that things must have been horrible back then. Such utter decimation is a travesty, a shocking tale of the reckless warlike past of the human race. To be honest, really honest, we think we’ve advanced beyond that. We’ve progressed and grown and civilized.

Yet 70 years ago, there was a war between all the progressive, civilized, mature countries that had clearly advanced beyond the barbarism of someone like Genghis Khan. And during the course of this war, which lasted just 6 years compared to the 20 during which the Khan reigned, 50 to 70 million people were killed.

I hear it said from time to time, often crediting Martin Luther King Jr., that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Though the sentiment is beautiful, I cannot say with confidence that the universe bends towards justice. Neither can I say that it builds towards progress. I cannot say, with any confidence that the world today is better than it was yesterday or that it will be better tomorrow than it is today. I want to, but there are times when even lovely things, even beautiful things, just aren’t true.

Justice is such a fleeting thing, such an elusive and fickle mistress for us to pursue. Derrida argues that justice is the only thing that we cannot deconstruct, the only thing that we cannot get behind, or beyond, or underneath, or inside of, it is entirely its own. As a result, it is always an illusion and always out of reach.

The simple fact is that even if we cure all of the injustices found in the world today, even if we create a just society where everyone is treated equally and loved and no one goes wanting or needing, tomorrow we will wake up to find new injustices that we never knew existed tucked away in shadows where we had never before looked.

Regardless of what we do, regardless of captives we set free from bondage, the hungry to whom we give food, and the thirsty to whom we give drink, in the cold, harsh light of history our children and our children’s children will look back, shake their heads and say, “How could they have done THAT?”

And we will say that we did not know.

This is not a condemnation. It’s not a tragedy that humanity falls victim to the pitfalls of being trapped in space and time, it just…is. This is also not my way of mocking those who work so ardently for justice. What they do, what we all do, is good and pure and righteous, but it will never be done.

Today, many people across the world are observing Holocaust Remembrance Day. I hope that you will join them, and I hope that along with those who lost their lives during that terrible time, you will also remember the victims of all injustice past, present, and future; those you have known and those you have never met; those you have aided and those you have unknowingly oppressed.

Perhaps the moral universe does not bend towards justice, but it does bend toward hope. And faith. And love.

And the greatest of these is love.

Peace,

Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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