The Antioch Podcast

This is the second week of continuous demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, protests calling for changes in, or the replacement of, police forces in the United States.  The members of the Antioch team are, outside of this podcast, doing antiracism work in various places, spaces and institutions … and when we gathered, we … Continue reading Episode 89: the Antioch Team – &#8220...

Peaceful protests and frustrated rioters are filling the streets now for days all over the United States.  People of color have a lot to feel angry about: the long history of police officers who misuse their power the long history of government systems seemingly ignoring the continued concerns of people of color, resulting in the … Continue reading Episode 88: Lieutenant Terry Dixon & t...

As if it wasn’t enough that Coronavirus was killing people of color in great numbers, for the past several weeks, African-American’s have watched film documenting the killing and harassment of their community. A man gets shot going for a jog, a woman shot while sleeping in their own bed, a man harassed while birdwatching, and … Continue reading Episode 87: Lieutenant Terry Dixon & The A...

I woke up this morning to racism making the news… again.  In one instance,  a white woman felt her life was being threatened by a black man who asked her to leash her dog while he was birdwatching in New York’s Central Park.  When she refused and said she was calling the police, he filmed … Continue reading Episode 86: The Color of Compromise – “The Fierce Urgency of Now.”

On July 18, 2013, President Obama gave a press conference in response to the recent hearing about the shooting death of Travon Martin, an unarmed black teenager walking alone in a neighborhood by the civilian George Zimmerman – an act deemed legal by the courts under Florida’s now-infamous “stand your ground” law. The population of … Continue reading Episode 85: Joy Bonnema, John Willi...

This moment in history is densely riddled with the bullet-holes of racism. In the late 20th Century, many churches became interested in striving to become more racially mixed, a movement prominently led by the evangelical Promise Keepers gathering of the 1990’s. In the early 20th America elected its first black president, and at that moment, … Continue reading Episode 84: The Color of Compro...

This episode of the podcast was recorded following the surfacing of video footage depicting the shooting of another unarmed black man in America. By now most of you listening in real time would have heard of the case of Ahmed Arbery. For those listeners who are finding this recording while listening to the Antioch Podcast’s … Continue reading Episode 83: The Color of Compromise – &#822...

The Antioch Team is resuming our book study in this episode, this time discussing Chapter 8 in Jemar Tisby’s book The Color of Compromise. This chapter focusses on how both the black and white churches responded to the progressive messages of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and the notably more moderate messages on race that … Continue reading Episode 82: The Color of Compromise – “A M...

Every person born into the system of racialization in the United States develops internalized racism. Some are more aware of this than others, but every American has a form of internalized racism. If that sounds shocking, try to think of racism as an infection. Thinking of racism as an infection, our individual racialized internalizations would … Continue reading Episode 81: John Williams &#...

This special edition of the Antioch Podcast was created for STAND AGAINST RACISM 2020, which happened on April 24th. In this episode the Antioch Team is joined by featured guest Pennylyn Dykstra-Pruim. Pennylyn is a professor at Calvin University, co-host of the Story Table project at Calvin University, and the author of a number of … Continue reading Episode 80: The Antioch Podcast Team &#8...

Racism was not a problem strictly limited to the southern United States after the Civil War.  During the period of southern reconstruction, many African-Americans fled the domestic terrorism of the south and headed north in hopes of finding jobs and a better life.  And while their lives were different, it is debatable whether the racism … Continue reading Episode 79: The Color of Compromise...

It is Holy Week 2020. In the United States, as has been the case in many places around the world, the staggering amount of death caused by the Corona Virus hangs heavy. The virus has also impacted racial communities differently. Hate crimes against Asian people have jumped dramatically, stoked by fears that identifiably Asian people … Continue reading Episode 78: The Antioch Podcast Team &#8...

Racism was not a problem strictly limited to the southern United States after the Civil War. During the period of southern reconstruction, northern racism remained relatively unchanged, keeping up with the times, and infecting churches in northern and newly forming western states. In this conversation, Susie, Libby and Eric discuss the first half of Chapter … Continue reading Episode 77: The...

Our discussion of the American church’s complicity with racism diverges in the following few episodes to explore how racism infected the church in different geographic regions of the United States during the period following the American Civil War.  Using Jemar Tisby’s book “The Color of Compromise”, the Antioch team converses about how the church in … Continue readin...

While both free and enslaved Africans in America uniformly denounced the institution of slavery as sin, white Christians in the United States were considerably less clear about the matter. Majority-white mainline denominations with congregations in both the North and the South were beset with finding ways to maintain church unity, and ultimately hit upon one … Continue reading Episode 75: Th...

This podcast was recorded on Friday, March 13, 2020. In Michigan, where we are, all schools have been closed and a new law went into effect making it a misdemeanor to gather in public spaces with more than 250 people in response to the Cover-19 epidemic. This has created a steep learning curve for churches … Continue reading Episode 74: An Antioch Roundtable Episode – “Precaution...

In Episode 73 we resume our conversations about Jemar Tisby’s must-read history of racism in the American Church, The Color of Compromise. Susie, Libby, Reggie and I gathered around the microphones to talk about how slavery was made a permanent part of the American way of life legislatively, to institutionalize the “peculiar institution” of race-based … Continue reading Episode 73: The Color...

We are taking a short break from the Color of Compromise to bring you a recent sermon by one of our team-members, resident theologian Libby Huizenga. Justice and righteousness, being the same word in Hebrew and Greek, is an intrinsic part of the gospel message. There is a link in the show notes to a … Continue reading Episode 72: Libby Huizenga – “Inside Out.”

This is a special Story Table episode of the Antioch Podcast. Story Table is an story-telling event developed by Dr. Penny Lyn Dykstra Pruim and regular Antioch Podcast team-member Dr. Michelle Loyd-Paige at Calvin University as a way to promote intergroup civil dialogue. Modeled after similar events at Fuller Seminary, these storytelling events encourage participants … Continue reading Epis...

Melissa Stek is the Justice Mobilization Specialist for the Christian Reformed Church of North America. A part of this work is work to network and encourage justice seekers as they take next steps on their justice journeys. Melissa was a former Legislative Assistant to Representative Luis Gutierrez where she wrote sign-on letters, internal memoranda, and … Continue reading Episode 70: Meliss...

The Great Awakening of the mid 1700’s brought crowds of white and black Americans to revivals, where many people turned their lives over to following Jesus. For many white people, their eyes were opened to their individual sinfulness. Yet, this awakening did not awaken the white population to the sinfulness of institutional slavery, white supremacy, … Continue reading Episode 69: The Color o...

It is an undisputable fact that many of the founding fathers of the United States owned slaves.  But before they agreed to commit lives and resources to revolt against Great Britain, they wanted assurances that any future government would permit them to continue to amass personal fortunes off these privately-held unpaid labor forces.  To accomplish … Continue reading Episode 68: The Color of...

The date was 1609.  Jamestown Colony was established in what some day would be known as the state of Virginia on the Atlantic Coast of North America.  Wihin a few years of the colony’s founding, tobacco was introduced to the colony, and indentured servants from England supplied most of the field labor as a way … Continue reading Episode 67: The Color of Compromise – “The Making o...

God has called all Christians, regardless of race, to engage in the work of anti-racism. At a minimum, we all must continually engage in self-examination, rooting out our biases about ourselves and others, scrutinizing them for the common sin-patterns that beset all of humanity. We need to see how these sin-patterns manifest themselves collectively in … Continue reading Episode 66: Libby Hui...

Today is the second episode in what will be a chapter-by-chapter book study by the Antioch team of Jemar Tisby’s must-read history of the American church The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism.  These recorded conversations of our book study are examples of the kinds of dialogue we hope … Continue reading Episode 65: The Color of Compromise &#8211...