Josiah Daniels has a strong voice and an interesting story. It’s very interesting the role faith, ideals, institutions all play in a person’s evolution. The imperative to beg and the wounds it causes is a hard bite of strong medicine.
Here’s the link again, with my endorsement of a good read.
http://sojo.net/articles/no-more-begging-our-humanity
Our Burning Bush is a burning cop car?
This is a good read.
I lived/worked at Sojourners for seven years. Raised our kids in community.
I’ve not prayed since 2016. I’m still a Christian. I’ve not put my pain to paper in that same time. I’m still a writer. But praying and writing remind me of the days when I would beg. I’d beg people to see my pain; I’d beg God to do something about it.
As an adult, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time respectfully trying to convince Christians and their institutions that my black life matters. I’ve taken that same approach when advocating for a more just society, a society in which policing and the carceral state are abolished. I’ve petitioned God to intercede toward that end but it seems we are stuck at verse 12 of Job 24: “The groans of the dying rise from the city, and the souls of the wounded cry out for help. But God charges no one with wrongdoing.”
Begging for one’s humanity to be recognized is painfully humiliating . Healing from that pain requires therapeutic outlets where that trauma can be expressed privately. Healing also requires publicly demanding the pain of black bodies be recognized by God, country, and the church. Demanding black people’s humanity be seen is liberating not only for black people, but humanity as a whole. But making demands is a right that black people have routinely been denied. And so, as Malcolm X predicted, the chickens are making their way home to roost.
Malcolm was not a popular figure at my liberal seminary with predominantly white faculty. Black people peacefully protesting were looked at with ire, so you can imagine what many of them thought about an “any means necessary” approach. I began seminary in 2013 as a pacifist of the Martin Luther King Jr. variety. I graduated as something else. I lived on Chicago’s West Side for the duration of my master’s program, from 2013-2016. My community was heavily invested in the Black Lives Matter movement and so was I. What I couldn’t understand was why my high-profile, white professors, who waxed poetically about “faithful presence” and “the radicality of Jesus,” were not also invested.#####
Burning down America, including Black communities, Black businesses, Black social housing, Supermarkets visited by Black people mostly.....is worse.
Looked at with more than just ire.
Everyone in the world is looking after self first.
It has to be "any
legal means necessary."
Black people have to fix their communities from the inside.
Black people can make any demands they like...just like everyone else.
Policing and carceral state abolished? no thank you. Get away with that in America, next thing you know they'll be trying it on in Australia..."that's what they're doing in America!"
Poll
5 (45.5%)