Day 11: What’s Religion Got to Do with It?
Greetings friends,
We have a very specific kind of focus today. It has to do with one of the ways white supremacy is showing up in our nation right now.
You are no doubt aware that a version of Christianity strongly aligned with forces of white supremacy is at the crux of our democratic peril. If you weren’t (seems unlikely), the image of the same man who cheered on white nationalists storming the Capitol while waving Nazi and Confederate flags announcing he’s selling “God Bless the USA” Bibles early this spring should do it.
If you plan to watch the presidential debates tonight, be prepared to listen for this entanglement of Christianity and white supremacy. It doesn’t matter that the former president isn’t really a Christian. He’s further seeding a dangerous storm that’s been brewing for a long while.
I’m so grateful for the powerful and long-time work that Dr. Robert P. Jones, founder of the Public Research Institute has been doing to raise the alarm bells and shed light on this dangerous brew.
So many white Americans woke up in 2015 to find out people in our families and communities had voted for a man who spouted racial vitriol and rhetorical violence again Black people, Mexican people, communities of color broadly (as well as vitriol again Muslims, women of different racial/ethnic groups, people with disabilities and so many others). So many of us who were never even remotely tempted to vote for this man, found out that the Christians in their lives—white Christians—were no exception.
Whether you’re religious or not—let alone Christian—those of us who have white Christians in our lives need tools, fodder, narratives and counter-narratives to help us do the persuasive, consciousness-raising work that’s necessary in faith communities all over this nation for our civic well-being.
Dr. Jones’ work is one way to grow your knowledge and ability to engage such folks. Subscribing to his weekly Substack letter is a great way to do that.
Earlier this spring in my hometown paper, a local white pastor wrote of his desire that his young son learn the full story of U.S. history, including about enslavement of African people and dispossession of Native people. He said he would teach his son that Christian faith calls him to “love and repentance to correct racial injustices.”
I was so glad Rev. Eric Rucker wrote this piece! In Iowa right now, for a pastor to publicly speak and reject the false whitening of our national story and articulate a longing to repair racial injustice is courageous and important. The grip of racism in white Christianity runs deep and in Iowa, as in so many other places, it’s being politically mobilized.
We need these kinds of voices being raised everywhere as we move further into election season. We need, ourselves, to be having conversations with our neighbors and family members, within and beyond houses of faith. So, I want to encourage you to similarly be in those conversations—especially the ones where supremacist Christianity is being turned on democracy.
Here’s your action for today. Take stock of whether or where the issue of Christianity and civic life is percolating around you (in your extended family, school board, city) and determine a way you can take a step to engage. Write down three questions or ideas about how you might focus (for example, “Is Interfaith Alliance taking on Christian nationalism locally? When’s their next forum” “Is my church actively talking about this? if now how might we start?” “What’s my version of speaking up the way Rev. Rucker did?”
Thanks for being in this walk. We need each other to speak up and stand up. We need each other so much.
Jen
Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.
Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.
Day 3: Explore through the work of these projects (read about them, watch the videos) Acts of Reparation and the Community Remembrance Project as a way to contemplate generational legacies, learn about current efforts for remembrance and repair, nourish your own moral imagination for where you may be called to plug in.
Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”
Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.
Day 6: Do an audit of where you spend your time and where you spend your money. Identify specific choices you could make to shift where spend your time and your resources from mostly white spaces into Black- and Brown-owned, run or majority spaces.
Day 7: “Spark a conversation with your child or students that inspires and liberates them to be more curious about how they can help dismantle racism” (thank you, Dr. Berry!). If you don’t have a child or students, connect with a friend or loved one who does—share what Dr. Berry got you thinking about and ask them about what they do.
Day 8: Identify at least one racial dynamic that exists in your familial relationship where you haven’t fully “gone home with your antiracist values on your sleeve.” Make a plan for how you’re going to lean in with some kind of interruption (a question? a curiosity? a response that disrupts but strives to stay in connection).
Day 9: Sit down for 5 minutes, take a deep breath, and imagine (maybe write about!) a time you experienced shame related to race. Then go to look White Awake: Waking Ourselves for the Benefit of All. Mark a time you can take one of their courses! They make them time flexible, they’re so so so good, and everything they do is on a sliding scale (we need this kind of approach and we need community—just like Chris Crass talked about on Day 1!).
Day 10: Subscribe and listen to Prentis Hemphill’s last podcast Finding Our Way as well as their new one Becoming the People, which is just dropping now! Pick up their new book What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. Take note of—and start to listen to, read and follow—the other incredible leaders Prentis Hemphill is constantly in dialogue with.
***Save the date: Join me and others who took part in this experience for a live conversation on Tuesday, July 9th at 5:00 PST/6:00 MST/7:00 CST/8:00 EST as a way to wrap up and reflect on our 12 Days of Action.*** Register here.
