The Word As Resistance

Whew, we had some church in this episode! This week we take on Palm Sunday and Passion texts with contributors to RESIPISCENCE: A LENTEN DEVOTIONAL TO DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY. Listen in! To order the devotional, visit www.transformnetwork.org/bookstore/ To learn more about the SURJ-Faith campaign "Community Safety for All," visit www.showingupforracialjustice.org/faith?pl…ootsuite Here are more...

In this Lenten episode of our podcast, we continue to hear from contributors to RESIPISCENCE: A LENTEN DEVOTIONAL TO DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY. This week, Vahisha Hasan and Nichola Torbett discuss the lectionary scriptures for March 18 with four of this week's writers. To order the devotional, visit www.transformnetwork.org/bookstore/ To learn more about the SURJ-Faith campaign "Community Safety f...

In this Lenten episode of our podcast, we continue to hear from contributors to RESIPISCENCE: A LENTEN DEVOTIONAL TO DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY. This week, Vahisha Hasan and Nichola Torbett discuss the lectionary scriptures for March 11 with six of this week's writers. To order the devotional, visit www.transformnetwork.org/bookstore/ To learn more about the SURJ-Faith campaign "Community Safety fo...

In this Lenten podcast to accompany the devotional RESIPISCENCE: A LENTEN DEVOTIONAL TO DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY, Vahisha Hasan and Nichola Torbett discuss the lectionary scriptures for March 4 with all seven of this week's writers. To order the devotional, visit www.transformnetwork.org/bookstore/ To learn more about the SURJ-Faith campaign "Community Safety for All," visit www.showingupforracia...

In this first Lenten podcast to accompany the devotional RESIPISCENCE: A LENTEN DEVOTIONAL TO DISMANTLE WHITE SUPREMACY, Vahisha Hasan and Nichola Torbett discuss the lectionary scriptures with five of this week's writers. To order the devotional, visit https://www.transformnetwork.org/bookstore/ To learn more about the SURJ-Faith campaign "Community Safety for All," visit http://www.showingupforr...

In this week's episode, Nichola Torbett discusses Jesus' healing miracles as nonviolent direct actions intervening in the social systems that create isolation and suffering. Transcript available at showingupforracialjustice.org/podcast

Rev. Anne goes back to the Epiphany story and wonders what lessons there are for white folk in the mistake the magi make by taking their eyes off the star and talking to Herod. What lessons from Rev. Dr. King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" help us as white folk to stay on the path that leads to freedom for all? Transcript available at http://showingupforracialjustice.org/podcast

The Snatch Back: When Christian Supremacy is Stealing Your God Audio recording of our SURJ-Faith training call on Jan 8, 2018. Our friends at Soulforce explored with participants the important role of the church in reclaiming the Divine from systems of power and violence. We worked together to connect our ethics and theology to a paradigm shift in the imagination of community security. Topics of d...

Reflections from Will on this week's lectionary texts: the call of Samuel and how Jesus calls us to "come and see". It can be confusing and cause great conflict when we are called, especially as we do not know what the future will bring. Transcript available at http://showingupforracialjustice.org/podcast

Renew your faith in resistance by returning to the water where it all begins.

In the season of Christmas, we renew ourselves with joy and recommit to justice. Reflecting with Isaiah, Simeon and Anna helps us to stay focussed on our calling to resist white supremacy and racism.

Several of our contributors got together to chat about what they find to be radical about the Christmas story, including the downward mobility of God, the importance of the particularity of Jesus's identity, and Mary's revolutionary lullabies. Our text for the conversation was Luke 1: 26-56, which includes Mary's consent and the Magnificat. The transcript may be found here: http://showingupforraci...

Bethlehem is real. It is an occupied city in the West Bank of Palestine. This week Blyth Barnow reflects on the city of Bethlehem, after having been able to visit there last year. Below are resources mentioned in the podcast. The transcript for this episode may be found at showingupforracialjustice.org/podcast Additional Reading - Read the Kairos Document by Kairos Palestine http://www.kairospales...

What does it mean that the "Son of Man coming on a cloud with great power and glory" is not white? (Because He's not.) What if we really took that seriously? How would we spend this Advent? How might we reorient our lives? The transcript for this episode may be found at http://showingupforracialjustice.org/podcast Join Nichola Torbett in this exploration as we enter into this first week of Advent...

On this week's special episode, 3 of our podcast team talk together about how they learned the true history of "thanksgiving" and how we as white Christians can imagine and practice alternatives to perpetuating a narrative that legitimizes colonization and erases genocide. "I also was thinking about the fact that this idea of coming to table is so deep within Christian tradition, and that the Euch...

Rev. Will Green considers the story of Deborah in the Book of Judges and finds resources to offer white people being called in to fight racism. "Think of the chant you might have learned in the streets, “When Black Lives are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” The answer to that call “When Black Lives are under attack” is not, “we ask the leaders to use less violent sounding phrasi...

On this week's episode, Rev. Anne Dunlap looks at the lectionary texts and wonders why the reading from the Wisdom of Solomon doesn't seem to fit in. "What if Lady Wisdom is meant to be at the center, Casting the other texts into contrast with Her, Instead of the other way around, Where She is compared with the patriarchal center And found wanting?... But what if Lady Wisdom is meant to be at the...

In this podcast on Matthew 23:1-13, Margaret Ernst reports back on counteractions to white supremacist rallies in Tennesee - and calls us to question the gospel of Matthew's prejudices against the scribes and Pharisees to evoke a deeper vision of what it means to be a "servant," or "diakonos," to movements for liberation. You can find the transcript with links to actions and resources here: http:/...

Allyn Steele on Matthew 22: 34-46 -- "There are some interpersonal and structural things among white people that I think are worth acknowledging in light of this text. If you’ve ever been in activist spaces where white people are trying to work through steps to take, then you’ve experienced—either personally or in someone else—the thick anxiety of “having to offer the right answer.” But the notion...

"Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor?" In this week's podcast, Margaret Ernst draws on the gospel of Matthew and Psalm 96 to stretch our imaginations about what it means to "Give to God what is God's" and to turn away from the idol of whiteness in the context of colonization and white supremacy. "This text intends to question our allegiances in all places. It intends to not let us be satisfie...

Rev. Anne reflects on freedom, the Exodus story of the Golden Calf, and the 10th anniversary of an anti-columbus day protest in Denver. "And in no way is it easy. In no way is it a one-time-deal. Over and over Israel freaks out in the wilderness. Over and over we will too. How will we stay safe? How will the babies eat? How will we ever get home? Those are real questions. And the temptation to tur...

This week Blyth explores the parable of the "wicked" tenants, who may not be wicked at all. How does the way we title things shape them and change them? What is really behind words like Lone Wolf, Explorer, and Wicked Tenant? Here are some resources for this weeks podcast: - Information on the West Berkeley Shellmound : http://ipocshellmoundwalk.homestead.com/West-Berkeley-Shellmound.html - Articl...

In this episode, Nichola Torbett examines the "meat pots of white supremacy," the survival benefits we receive in exchange for participating in injustice and explores what would be required to walk away from them. "The meat pots! I want to talk about these meat pots because they feel so familiar me! They stand in for something that at some level I think we all know about. The meat pots represent t...

This week Rev. Anne reflects on her recent trip to Puerto Rico, and the discoveries she made about her own limited imagination while there, and what that taught her about this week's lectionary texts. "I began to imagine, Not only defending the fort, But also how you’d ever go about Trying to breach it. You’d need mortars on ships, I thought, Not just cannons, To bomb the interior of the fort, A d...

Blyth Barnow reflects on Matthew 18: 15-20 and her experience of being in her Ohio hometown when the Charlottesville protests happened, and the importance of being persistent in our resistance. "We have many strategies at our disposal. If one doesn’t work, try another. And then another. In continuing to try we build new muscles, we learn, we grow. Gentle persistence, a persistence rooted in holy l...