The article stated over the next 13 months Tennessee would carry out 11 executions! It had been over a decade since the last execution. Now, in a relatively short time, Tennessee would murder 15% of the total population of men and women on death row. Not long after I read the article, I heard the Spirit say, “Go to death row.” At the time I did not know where death row was in Tennessee. Knowing I heard God speak, I did some research, made some phone calls, and by the end of that summer, I made my first visit to Unit Two at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the home of Tennessee’s death row. That was almost 10 years ago. While 11 executions over 13 months never happened, over the last five years there have been eight executions. I’ve said goodbye to eight friends, all of which were image bearers of the Divine.

I remember my first visit to death row. It was a Friday, and I was to meet with several of the men in Unit 2 who gathered for prayer at noon. While I had been involved in prison ministry off and on since I was a teenager, I knew visiting death row would be different. I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. What was it like sitting in prison waiting to die? What would we talk about?

After clearing a metal detector, an x-ray machine, several secured gates and metal doors, I walked into a room where several guys in prison uniforms were sitting around a table. The prison’s chaplain introduced me, and before she could finish the introduction one of the men got up from his chair, approached me with a huge smile, hugged me tight and said, “I have been praying for you.” I was speechless. I stood there and wept. It was a holy moment. With that embrace I knew I was accepted and loved. I went to death row expecting to take Jesus with me. Instead, I met Jesus there.

The writer of Hebrews’ words became real, “Remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison.” (Hebrews 13:3)

The name of the man who said he had been praying for me was Kevin Burns, TDOC# 254315. (TDOC stands for “Tennessee Department of Corrections”.) Someone once told me when God gives a gift, God usually wraps it in a person. One of the greatest gifts God has given me is Kevin Burns, also known as “KB.”

KB has been on death row for over 25 years. During much of that time he has served as the chaplain’s assistant to the men in Unit 2. It’s a job in which he gets paid 50 cents an hour. KB and I quickly became friends and co-workers. At least once a week, KB would make his rounds, going cell to cell talking, praying, and encouraging each man on Unit 2. I started join him on these rounds. Over time, through KB, I met all the men on death row. I consider all them my friends. The conversations I have had with each man has been priceless. But the times I have spent talking and praying with KB are treasures I will hide in my heart as long as I live.

One day, after making our rounds, KB and I had an intimate conversation. He expressed how much our friendship meant to him and how all the guys respected me and how I had become the pastor of Unit 2. I told KB how much I loved him and what he meant to me, but I told him he was wrong. I said, “No. I’m not the pastor of Unit 2. You are the pastor to these men. Unit 2 is YOUR church, and you are an excellent pastor.” This time, KB wept.

As I drove home that day, reflecting on my visit, I heard God’s voice say, “Kevin, if you really believe KB is a pastor, you need to ordain him.” Now I’m weeping…uncontrollably. I pulled my truck to the side of the road and just sat in the presence of Almighty God.

I shared all this with the elders of my church. Without hesitation they agreed KB needed to be ordained. Over the next two years we licensed and ordained Kevin Bernard Burns for the full work of the Gospel Ministry. He is now Rev. Kevin Burns and is one of the associate pastors of Franklin Community Church. The first thing KB did after his ordination was to serve communion to the 40 plus people who witnessed his ordination service. There is nothing more sacred, biblical, and appropriate than receiving the Eucharist from a man condemned to die. If that is not a picture of Jesus, I don’t know what a picture of Jesus is. Personally, KB has become my pastor. I have shared my burdens and struggles with him and sought his wisdom and counsel numerous times. In God’s sovereignty, God allowed me to ordain my own pastor.

A few months after his ordination, I told KB we needed to start a church on death row. There are lots of groups and churches who minister beautifully on death row. There are several times over the course of any week where the men of Unit 2 can gather for Bible study, prayer, and group discussions. But there was no “official” church service. I told KB we needed to start a church, not another Bible study or small group meeting, but a church that followed a liturgy of prayers, Scripture readings, songs, communion, and sermon. Our vision was to start a church for the men on death row, led by the men on death row. And that’s what we did. The church is called The Church of Life and has been meeting now for five years. Pastor KB preaches every week. During COVID, there was an 18-month period where all programs stopped inside all Tennessee prisons. During that time no volunteers were allowed inside. There were no classes and no Bible studies. However, on Tennessee’s death row there was a church, with their own pastor, that continued to meet (The Church of Life.) Even the guards call Kevin Burns, “Pastor KB.”

Remember when KB hugged me and said, “I have been praying for you”? One day I asked KB what he meant by that. I asked, “How could you pray for me when you did not know me?”

KB said, “For several months I had been praying that God would send a local church pastor to Unit 2. We have a lot of good church volunteers who visit us, but there was no Senior Pastor who came to visit us. I prayed for God to send us a Senior Pastor. That day, when you walked into the room, God said to me, ‘This man is who you have been praying for. I have sent him here for you.’”

I am humbled how God has allowed me to minister to the men on death row, and how they have ministered to me. Recently, the men on Unit 2 gave $500 to my ministry to people experiencing homelessness in my city. These men, all created in the image of God, have changed my life. I will never be the same.

This year, during Lent, reach out to those behind prison walls. Not because they need you, but because you need them.

“May the groans of the prisoners come before you; with your strong arm preserve those condemned to die.” (Psalm 79:11)

Living in Jubilee, Haiti this was a familiar story to me. I heard it several times a month. Desperate mom, rent was due and she had no way to pay it so she was about to lose her home and her kids. So I read this familiar passage as I’ve never read it before. It had my FULL attention. 

 The widow comes to the prophet with her impossible situation. Needing help. Needing to be rescued. Needing some cold hard cash. But what does he say? How does he respond to this desperate situation?  

“Lady, what do you HAVE?” 

This is what you say to someone in a dire situation? This!?!?

 What do you HAVE? 

 I’m thinking, dang. Man’s got some kind of nerve! Because the only question I was asking day and night was, WHAT do you need?  

 But never this question. Never, What do you HAVE!   

 I read on. 

 And she replies, “Nothing.”

I can hear the Haitian mamma say it. Pa gen anyen. The Kreyol way of saying, I have nothing, as she slaps the backs of her hands to her palms. Over and under. The universal sign for Anyen. Empty. I got nothing.   

 And then these few cautious words slip out of her mouth.  

“Except I do have a tiny smidgen of oil.” 

Great! I can practically see the prophet’s face light up with too much hope. An explosion of joy. You DO have something. More importantly, you can SEE that you do have something. And we can work with that. 

“Here’s what you do,” said Elisha. “Go up and down the street and borrow empty jugs and bowls from all your neighbors. And not just a few—all you can get. Then come home and lock the door behind you, you and your sons. Pour oil into each container; when each is full, set it aside.

She did what he said. She locked the door behind her and her sons; as they brought the containers to her, she filled them. When all the jugs and bowls were full, she said to one of her sons, “Another jug, please.” He said,“That’s it. There are no more jugs.” Then the oil stopped. She went and told the story to the man of God. He said,“Go sell the oil and make good on your debts. Live, both you and your sons, on what’s left.”

I’d like to point out a few things here:

1. Point for the missionary/helper/prophet person. This is not an easy question to ask of someone in need. It does not make them adore you or depend on you or include you in their testimony of how their life was changed. Other fellow helpers can misunderstand you or judge you or call you selfish. It happens. 

 2. Point for the widow. She had to have eyes to see that she did have something. I am a firm believer that the economy of heaven is both abundant and at the same time never wasteful. Extravagant and Responsible. Seems we need to use what we have before receiving more. And we can’t use what we have if we don’t see and admit that we have it. She saw. 

3. Point for the kindness of heaven. A mom’s greatest terror is losing a child. Can you even imagine how terrified this mom was when the authorities were threatening to take her sons and make them slaves until she could pay her debt? Being a mom of many, I know that that threat throws your psyche into a whole new universe. It is the last thing. 

I love the way the story is so particular to point out that he said: 

“Then come home and lock the door behind you, you and your sons. 

Instead of losing them, they were pulled in close and started a family business together! Oh, how I love this.

 4. Another point for the widow. She listened to the advice. And she took it. She didn’t give up. She threw herself into action. What faith! Surely the neighbors shook their heads, whispering “bless her heart” as they watched the drama play out. She likely looked a little unhinged collecting her neighbors’ empty Tupperware containers but she did it anyway. 

Shop for justice based products on the RLC Missional Marketplace

And the result? The oil couldn’t help itself. It multiplied in that environment. I think that is the way of heaven. Standing on tiptoe at all times waiting for an opening. Any tiny opening to pour into. The woman cracked open the door and the sweet ways of heaven rushed in. She filled all the containers. Sold them back to her community and paid her debt. 

She likely then launched her own Oil business, hired several single moms, franchised to Egypt, and sent her sons to good schools in Mesopotamia. 

The big takeaway from this story for me is that when we change the question from what do you need to what do you have, it flips everything. It shows respect. It acknowledges that everyone has something.  

I think it is the single most important thing I have learned. 

And I think it is a critical piece for the world of helpers and the helped today. 

Until we as helpers understand that the person across the table from us needing help has something of value to bring to the equation, we will most likely do harm with our helping.  

Please understand I do not mean when we are doing relief work after an earthquake or storm. In those situations, we are giving, giving, giving! Generously, quickly and with great intention. I am talking about communities that exist in systemic poverty, in generational situations of perpetual need.  

We must begin to change the question.

From:  What do you need?  

To:  What do you have? 

I had the honor of sitting with the two talented artisans who oversee one of the basket guilds. They are brother and sister and have been making baskets for over 20 years. I wish everyone could sit and look into their faces and know them a little. 

The basketmakers. 

They called me into a meeting and asked if we might be able to raise the price a bit on a few of the baskets, citing the cost of materials had gone up and gotten more difficult to find in the aftermath of a destructive hurricane.

I said I would look and see how it would affect our customers and get back to them.

I did. 

And I began to feel this tension.

If we paid them more, it would cause our customers’ price to go up too. How would that work? Most people that shop with us are stretching their dollars as it is.

These talented artisans were very happy to have orders coming in. They would continue to work at whatever price we said we could pay. It is the nature of living at the “bottom of the pyramid.” It is why companies take their work “offshore.” Labor is plentiful and it is as cheap as you want it to be.

It is as cheap as you want it to be. 

Are you weeping yet?

Because I really am? 

It’s no wonder ancient texts warn us, the rich, about taking advantage of the poor. Because we can. And God, the father of all of us, feels pretty strongly about that kind of behavior.

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I sat with them and decidedly told them:

If we aren’t walking justly, we need to close our doors. Period.

So I asked that they be open with me about the time it takes to make them and what is a good and just price. They talked and I took notes.

I went back into our inventory system and I looked. I saw how these changes would affect our customers. These people chose us when there were cheaper brands of baskets out there.  

And I worried a little, will we keep selling them? The last thing I wanted to do was to bring fewer orders to this group of skilled makers. 

I decided to do it. I decided to raise the price so we could pay the artisans more. So we could pay them what they believed was a fair wage. I believed it too. 

A few days later we made this announcement to our customers:  

We’ve raised our prices on our baskets! 

The bargain for our customers was that when they bought one at the new price, they knew that they were paying a just price. A fair wage. And I was betting that is actually what our customers wanted from us more than anything else. And I was right.

Content taken from Painfully Honest: The Tale of a Recovering Helper by Kathy Brooks. Used with permission. Kathy is the director of 2nd Story Goods, one of our partners on the RLC Marketplace.

Find justice based gifts that make a difference at the RLC Marketplace of Missional Businesses. Mother’s Day is April 8th and you can shop from the special gift guides at 2nd Story Goods and Thistle Farms. 

I am beyond excited to share this with you.

Several years ago, some of the men on Tennessee’s death row embarked on an ambitious collaborative project. They decided to create original paintings of the “Stations of the Cross.”

The Stations of the Cross are a series of images portraying the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the events leading up to his execution. For hundreds of years, Christians have reflected on images like these, especially during Lent and Easter. These particular images are compelling because they were painted by men who have also been condemned to die.

As we release these publicly, we hope that you will use them and share them. You are free to post and print them, but the artists have asked that they not be sold or reproduced commercially.

May these paintings open our hearts up to the profound depth of God’s love, and may they stir in us a passion for extending that love and grace to others. It is our hope that contemplating the execution of Jesus does something to us, in us. We pray that as we reflect on the love of God, it transforms us into people who are merciful and who are committed to ending the death penalty.

Here is a quote from one of the men who helped create these images:

This piece of art is a commentary on the continuing battle for our collective moral worldview. It is a collaborative effort with several of my fellow artists, all of whom reside on Tennessee’s death row. Not all are Christians or even religious. Several chose to be anonymous. I asked my fellow community members to help create this project to begin a conversation about what Justice looks like. 

When Jesus was executed, Justice looked different than it does today. However, Justice today has some of the same components as it did back then. The guilty, as are the innocent, are subjected to this state-sanctioned process. As we understand it, state-sanctioned means that “We the People” — collectively speaking — uphold this system of Justice. So, based upon our support, this system of Justice reflects our community’s sense of morals and values. 

One of the biggest issues my sense of the “Christian” world has is dealing with the fact Jesus was not caucasian. This is also true here on death row, a microcosm of the larger “free-world” community. So we decided not to limit one another’s understanding of Jesus’ death or appearance. 

During the two-plus months it took to complete this project, we accepted criticism and positive critique from other non-participating community members. Some were fellow prisoners. Some were religious and secular volunteers. Some were correctional officers. It turned into a true community project. 

I do not know how many opinions we changed inside during this project, but the dialogue was open and honest, beyond what even I imagined. Safe, open dialogue is a prerequisite for the community model created on this death row. We invite dialogue from anyone on how to change the paradigms of our collective lives with those that promote healing and reconciliation within our diverse communities. 

In the Spirit of Love, Mercy, and Forgiveness,

Derrick Quintero 

If you are interested in hosting an exhibit of the Stations of the Cross, please complete this form. We will follow up with more details!

On Sunday, April 17th from 1pm-5pm, we will meet in Nashville to protest the death penalty and scheduled execution of Oscar Smith. Join us for the March4Mercy and special Easter service at the state capitol.

He was an absolute legend. He was one of the kindest, grooviest people I’ve ever met (he liked the word “groovy”). We spent a lot of time together these last few years. I sure will miss him. 

He was 87 and had been battling pancreatic cancer. He also just got baptized and was so at peace with everything. I talked to him on the phone a few days before he died. He smiled as he told me he would probably be dying soon, but everything was just fine. He was fearless and such an inspiration. He sent me the original photos he took of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. In fact, I have a whole box of his photos here in my office. They are like gold – better than gold – and I’ll post some of them from time to time.  

One of the many memories I have is when I asked Steve curiously if he’d ever met Abbie Hoffman, one of most eccentric organizers of the anti-war movement in the 1960s, jailed along with seven others as part of the famous Chicago 8 trial. He smiled and said to me, “I photographed his wedding.” Of course he did. 

Steve died last month on Martin Luther King’s birthday, January 15. Now he is with Dr. King in glory land. My heart goes out to his family, Maura, Theophilus, and all whose lives he touched.

Here’s a little more about the life of our brother Steve Schapiro:

Steve Schapiro discovered photography at the age of nine at summer camp. Excited by the camera’s potential, Schapiro spent the next decades prowling the streets of his native New York City trying to emulate the work of French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, whom he greatly admired. His first formal education in photography came when he studied under the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. Smith’s influence on Schapiro was far-reaching. He taught him the technical skills he needed to succeed as a photographer but also informed his personal outlook and worldview. Schapiro’s lifelong interest in social documentary and his consistently empathetic portrayal of his subjects is an outgrowth of his days spent with Smith and the development of a concerned humanistic approach to photography.

Beginning in 1961, Schapiro worked as a freelance photojournalist. His photographs appeared internationally in the pages and on the covers of magazines, including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, People and Paris Match. During the decade of the 1960s in America, called the “golden age in photojournalism,” Schapiro produced photo-essays on subjects as varied as narcotics addition, Easter in Harlem, the Apollo Theater, Haight-Ashbury, political protest, the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, poodles and presidents. A particularly poignant story about the lives of migrant workers in Arkansas, produced in 1961 for Jubilee and picked up by the New York Times Magazine, both informed readers about the migrant workers’ difficult living conditions and brought about tangible change—the installation of electricity in their camps.

An activist as well as a documentarian, Schapiro covered many stories related to the Civil Rights movement, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the push for voter registration, and the Selma to Montgomery march. Called by Life to Memphis after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Schapiro produced some of the most iconic images of that tragic event.

REGISTER: Race in America: A Conversation with Michael W. Waters on February 27th

In the 1970s, as picture magazines like Look folded, Schapiro shifted attention to film. With major motion picture companies as his clients, Schapiro produced advertising materials, publicity stills, and posters for films as varied as The Godfather, The Way We Were, Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, Rambo, Risky Business, and Billy Madison. He also collaborated on projects with musicians, such as Barbra Streisand and David Bowie, for record covers and related art.

Schapiro’s photographs have been widely reproduced in magazines and books related to American cultural history from the 1960s forward, civil rights, and motion picture film. Monographs of Schapiro’s work include American Edge (2000); a book about the spirit of the turbulent decade of the 1960s in America, and Schapiro’s Heroes (2007), which offers long intimate profiles of ten iconic figures: Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Ray Charles, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Barbra Streisand and Truman Capote. Schapiro’s Heroes was the winner of an Art Directors Club Cube Award. Taschen released The Godfather Family Album: Photographs by Steve Schapiro in 2008, followed by Taxi Driver (2010), both initially in signed limited editions. This was followed by Then And Now (2012), Bliss about the changing hippie generation (2015), BOWIE (2016), Misericordia (2016), an amazing facility for people with developmental problems, and in 2017 books about Muhammad Ali and Taschen’s Lucie award-winning The Fire Next Time with James Baldwin’s text and Schapiro’s Civil Rights photos from 1963 to 1968.

Since the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s seminal 1969 exhibition, Harlem on my Mind, which included a number of his images, Schapiro’s photographs have appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide. The High Museum of Art’s Road to Freedom, which traveled widely in the United States, includes many of his photographs from the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. Recent one-man shows have been mounted in Los Angeles, London, Santa Fe, Amsterdam, Paris. And Berlin. Steve has had large museum retrospective exhibitions in the United States, Spain, Russia, and Germany.

Schapiro continues to work in a documentary vein. His recent series of photographs have been about India, music festivals, the Christian social activist Shane Claiborne, and Black Lives Matter.

In 2017, Schapiro won the Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. Schapiro’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Museum, the High Museum of Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum, and the Getty Museum.

I am grateful for Steve Schapiro – our friend and our brother. His images show us how the world is changed. They show us what courage and joy and resilience and defiant hope look like. I will miss him, but I am so thankful for every moment I have had with him. And as I think of the ear-to-ear smile he had when he told me he was dying, I am confident there is a party on the other side welcoming him home. I know he is smiling down on all of us now, alongside his friends John Lewis, Dr. King, James Baldwin, Rosa Parks, and the cloud of witnesses on whose shoulders we now stand.  

Find more information at http://steveschapiro.com. 

Rev Otis Moss III, founder of Unashamed Media Group, asked Common Hymnal to contribute music for “Otis’ Dream,” the Get Out The Vote film he wrote and produced for the 2020 election. More specifically, he asked them to produce a new arrangement of the old spiritual ‘I Want Jesus To Walk With Me’ for the final credits.

The project’s goal was to combat the wave of voter suppression that was forming in states across the nation despite the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. And encourage black Christians to vote.

The film tells the story of his grandfather, a sharecropper, who was denied the right to vote in rural Georgia in the forties after walking over 18 miles to three different polling locations. Oprah Winfrey first heard the story in the early eighties and has told it in election cycles ever since. She previewed the movie and interviewed Otis on SuperSoul Sunday before the 2020 election. The film was shown in black churches across the country that weekend and will hopefully inspire black Christians to get out and vote for many election seasons to come.

Common Hymnal feels passionate about this issue and plans to support several Get Out The Vote initiatives this coming year. This recording is one of their contributions to the discussion.

Because of the deadline, they recorded the first version in an all-nighter and vowed to re-produce a full version of the song when they had a window of time. The result is this new music video, featuring vocals by The Spirituals, Junior Garr, Niiella, Sharon Irving and Chris Blue, and footage from the film and the animation that Ron Abdou and Zach Stewart created for the original track.

PLEASE visit otisdream.com to watch the story in its fullness, and find helpful resources.

Fortune’s father was enslaved, but she stood in that Somerset County courtroom to face the prospect of indenture precisely because she was not enslaved upon birth. She likely had been able to live free until she was eighteen years old. Why? Because of White privilege.

Lord Baltimore Charles Calvert, grandson of the first Lord Baltimore, brought sixteen-year-old Eleanor Butler with him from England to Maryland in 1681—six years before Fortune was born. Butler fell in love with and married an enslaved man, identified in court records as “Negro Charles.” She appealed to her friend Lord Baltimore to repeal the 1664 law, which required Eleanor’s immediate enslavement and the enslavement of all her children for life, in perpetuity. Calvert immediately moved to repeal the original 1664 race law. It was rescinded and replaced with the 1681 race law, which acknowledged an unscrupulous practice that had developed since passage of the original law. Masters were forcing their White indentured servant women to marry the masters’ enslaved African men. This practice reaped exponential increases in planters’ free labor force over generations. Maryland’s legislature limited the scope of the law to forced marriages between Black men and White women and dropped the requirement that their children be enslaved. The result? As of 1681, all newborn mixed- race children would be born free.

According to Maryland State Park historian Ross M. Kimmel, Butler benefited only marginally from Lord Baltimore’s efforts. She was still enslaved because her marriage took place before the 1681 law was passed. But as a White woman, she was afforded liberties not usually afforded to enslaved people. Still, her children and descendants were born after the 1681 repeal. They should have been born free. The 1681 law provided the children free status regardless of which parent was White. Butler’s grandchildren were enslaved. They appealed to the courts in 1710. Around the time of the Revolutionary War, they finally won.

Fortune’s fate should have been equally clear. She stood before the judge in 1705. The eighteen-year-old girl listed as a “mulatto” in court documents should have been subject to Lord Baltimore’s 1681 law. But in the interim, the Maryland General Assembly soured on Lord Baltimore and replaced his law with a harsher, more comprehensive, racialized legal structure in 1692—five years after Fortune’s birth.

LISTEN: Lisa Sharon Harper on the RLC Podcast discussing her new book, Fortune

The new law protected White women and their children from slavery by removing the financial impetus for their enslavement. They would be indentured to the local parish, not enslaved by the master. The parishes were ordered to transact the sales of enslaved Black men and indentured White and mixed-race servants to White families. The proceeds of those sales assisted poor Whites in the parish.

In essence, at the turn of the eighteenth century, the church itself became the primary auction block in Maryland. The grotesque nature of this arrangement cannot be overstated. The church joined the banks, insurance companies, shipping companies, iron works, and other institutions in crushing the image of God on this land. The church was the principle protector and manager of White supremacy through the trade of enslaved and indentured human beings in America’s second colony.

According to the 1692 law, a child of a White mother could not be enslaved. Period. The race of the mother became the determining factor of slave or free status. But intolerance of interracial relationships hardened in this law. White women and their children could still be indentured as penalty for miscegenation—married or not. A penalty of seven years indenture was given to the woman and twenty-one years indenture to the child if the parents were married—or thirty-one years indenture for the child if the parents were not married.

Standing before the court, eighteen-year-old Fortune was born free and should have remained free according to Lord Baltimore’s 1681 legal turnabout. But of course the application of law is different from the law itself. Fortune’s fate was largely dependent on the judge, especially in this formative period of colonial race law. Would the judge see and honor the legislative merits of Fortune’s fight to stay free? Or would his sensibilities align more with the racialized hardening of the times?

JOIN: The RLC Book Club with Lisa Sharon Harper on February 20th at 7pm

I imagine Fortune, awaiting the judge’s decision, looking out a window to her left, just behind the prosecutor offering his closing argument for Fortune’s indenture. Her heartbeat races. Beads of sweat form on her forehead as she wipes sweaty palms on her dress. She clasps her high yellow hands—the only thing she has to hold on to in this moment is herself. I imagine Fortune thinking of the woman who birthed her, Maudlin.

We know so little of Maudlin other than the fact that she was an indentured Ulster Scots woman married to an Ulster Scot, George Magee, with whom she bore three children. Maudlin’s first child was John Magee, born one year before Fortune. The year after Fortune’s birth, Maudlin and George brought Peter Magee into the world and three years after that she gave birth to Samual. Historian Paul Heinegg cites the judicial record of this court proceeding, as well as land tax records indicating that Maudlin was alive and living with her husband George as late as 1705—the year of this trial. Yet, there is no record of her presence.

With possible moments left in her free life, I imagine Fortune’s thoughts turning to her father, Sambo. He, too, was born free. He, too, was bound and sold as a teen. He, too, lived on the other side of Whiteness, daily surviving the branding iron of legal Blackness. Enslaved to Constable Peter Douty, Sambo and his wife were willed free and given land upon Douty’s death, five years after Fortune’s trial. We know that he and Fortune were close. She would take his surname and later live with him on that land. Evidence suggests Sambo may have been a healer. His son, Harry, was a practicing doctor in 1750. He credited his knowledge to an “old experienced Guinea doctor”—likely Sambo, who was from a region that intersected Senegal, Guinea, and Mali, before national boundaries were drawn. Sambo was a learned man who passed down what he knew to the next generation. It makes me wonder what he passed down to Fortune that was in turn passed down to us.

Fortune stood at the precipice of bondage with only the memories of her freedom and her family to give her comfort. Indenture was just as brutal as slavery. Indentured servants were whipped and maimed as punishment. Fortune did not know what was in store for her, and she had no control over it—perhaps that combination is the essence of the terror of bondage, whether enslaved or indentured. She held within her both this unknowing and a complete lack of control over her own body, life, and family.

When I imagine eighteen-year-old Fortune in that courtroom, I find my own breath shortening in anticipation of the ruling. With short breaths, Fortune likely listened as the judge asked her if she understood her sentence. She was hereby ordered to retroactive indentured service to Mrs. Mary Day until the age of thirty-one years old.

Twenties gone. 

Freedom gone.

Safety for herself and her daughters? Gone, gone.

Content taken from Fortune by Lisa Sharon Harper, ©2022. Used by permission of Baker Publishing.

Join us on February 20th at 7pm EST for the RLC Book Club with Lisa Sharon Harper! You can join live on the RLC Facebook, YouTube, or website. You can also listen to the RLC podcast with Lisa on Fortune.

Click here for more information on #BlackFortuneMonth!

“Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world. Violence is thriving as never before in every sector of American popular culture, civil religion, nationalism, and foreign policy. Violence, not Christianity, is the real religion of America.” -Walter Wink

This is the opening quote of the chapter “In Guns We Trust,” from Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin’s book Beating Guns: Hope for People Who Are Weary of Violence, in which they argue that our American love for guns has become a full-blown idol. The authors refer to Andy Crouch’s insightful description of how idols function, from his book Playing God:

“All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands . . . In the end they fail completely, even as they make categorical demands.”

Later in the chapter, the authors quote historian Garry Wills, who, in a 2012 essay, made a bold and compelling claim about American culture: “The gun is our Moloch.” Moloch (or Molech) is the Canaanite god infamous in the Old Testament for receiving child sacrifices, a practice that the God of Israel abhorred.

Of course, it is easy to spot idols in the Old Testament — or, for that matter, in my home city of Bangkok, Thailand — where people bring physical offerings to lay at the feet of physical statues, hoping to obtain good fortune, security, or relief from life’s troubles. But we Americans are much slower to see the idols of our own times and cultures, along the lines of “greed, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). These counterfeit gods are all the more insidious for their lack of a clear, physical presence. Yet these invisible idols are no less demanding and no less destructive than their visible counterparts.

One of the roles of poetry, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is to help remove “the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude” that causes us to “have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.” In other words, poetry can help people see with renewed vision the reality that has been in front of them the whole time. So I wondered:

What if we could see the invisible idol of gun violence in its visible, physical form?

What if we could see the daily sacrifices inherent in our corporate unwillingness to repent of the status quo of “violence . . . the real religion of America”?

What if we could reframe the tragic, unceasing horror of children’s lives lost to gun violence for what it is: child sacrifices made to a counterfeit god?

Would that vision be enough to make us change?

These are the questions behind this poem of lament, “American Altar.” Before you read it, I invite you to take a deep breath. Then, read it slowly and prayerfully.

READ: Pastor of . . . Doubt?

American Altar

What if, instead,

we had a monstrous steel statue,

a modern-day Molech,

its bloodstained stainless steel

altar rimmed with polished wood,

serviced by priests and acolytes

inviting us, demanding now,

our money and fresh sacrifices

to appease its appetite,

and children were pulled

at random from our streets, 

our parks, our playgrounds,

groups of them, even,

from elementary schools—

but mostly from homes,

led out one at a time

by a family member

or a thoughtless friend,

the child’s cries unheard

beneath the frenzied worship

of that insatiable god?

Would we call

our guns

an idol 

then?

This poem was originally published by PAX on June 8, 2021. You can read and listen to the original poem here.

A cramped, annoying spot. Difficult to get to, because the room was more of a breakfast nook really, and our big clumsy table took up far too much space. Frustrating to clean, because the broom or mop would just clatter around table legs, barely making a notable difference to the aging, stained floor.  

This spot was always the last place I got to when sweeping the kitchen. Always the last corner to be cleaned on “house cleaning” days. It was a weary old spot that had somehow come to hold all my frustrations: all my yawning, gaping exhaustion and the hurt of losing a home. All the shame of being powerless and poor, all the unmet longing for change.  

Of course, myself and I, had never had a conscious conversation about this “spot.” It just sat there, being a corner: disliked, cramped, awkward, and annoying to clean.  

One day, while going about my daily mom-tasks, picking up clothes and washing dishes, absent-mindedly wondering if  something new and good would ever come along, I said out loud (as one sometimes does), 

“Where are you, God?”  

And almost before the thought had gathered itself to become a sentence—almost before it had left my tongue, almost before it was even a question—I knew the answer.  

God was in that spot.  

God was in the most mundane, powerless, painful place. God was here with me, waiting and longing, hoping and aching, experiencing every inch of my humanness with me, dying and crying for change.  

This is the poem I wrote about this “spot” that day:

READ: Roots of Justice

“Between the Wall and the Table”  

Between the wall and the table  

In the last place I sweep  

In the last piece of dirt  

I found you  

And round by the sink  

At my sentry stand  

With suds on my fingers  

Old food on my hands  

Not doing what I love  

Just doing what I should  

There, I found you  

Then, out on the prairie  

Where it’s lovely and wild  

Where no word, or breath, or sigh could

express it Where every color is singing

and shouting  And every bird’s whistle

crushes my heart  The whole Earth

inhales  

And releases again  

And the wind cries ‘low’  

As she sweeps across the valley  

The birds gladly ride it  

To the mountains high  

Where my peering eyes follow  

And I’m blessed, and I’m blessed  

Gulping down love  

Famished babe at the breast  

There, I found you 

In every song that I ever sang  

Ripped clean from my lungs  

Red flesh from my breast  

A ragged sharp edge  

Like the beat of a heart  

Or a butterfly’s wing  

This wild thing  

Comes soaring or whispering  

Out of my soul  

That single note  

Now it rises  

Up in the tower room, when I was a child 

I’d sing the whole hymnal just to cry out your name  

There, and there, and there  

I found you 

In my father’s benediction  

In my mother’s tears  

In the bread and the wine  

Your body for mine  

In my lover’s skin  

In the lush green grass of my children’s laughter  

In my best friend’s mind  

Understanding mine  

There, and there, and there  

I found you  

Between the wall and the table  

In the last place I sweep  

In the last piece of dirt  

I found you

The ancient Scots, my ancestors, believed that in the liminal space of nature, on the night

when one season ends and another begins, the Spirits can be more vividly seen, more clearly

heard; they enter in.  

It’s in the liminal space, when there is both light and dark, both sunshine and rain, that we are

able to see that which is always there. Always there, but normally invisible to the naked eye:

the rainbow of colors from which all light is made.  

It’s in the middle-space of both dying and rising that reality widens out and we see

everything, from one end of the  horizon to the other:  

A God who chooses to be weak with us. A God whose strength is love.  

A God you can be angry at, while you are held, deep in the womb of Her love.  

The Great Love that spans over all and can’t be manipulated or owned, only freely given and freely received.

Picture this: cots are lined 6 feet apart, stretching from wall to wall. Two thousand and three hundred children don KN95 masks and coordinated outfits of navy, grey, and green. Soldier-like, the boys march this way and that – to restrooms, cafeterias, showers. A teen boy sits, protectively, with his arm around the younger boy next to him. They look up, expectantly, but not scared. This is certainly not the scariest thing they’ve seen. Across the room there is a palpable resilience. These boys look just like me when I was in school, though slightly darker and bearing the strength of their shared experience. They joke with each other. They smile and sing along with my songs. They clap along with the beat of my guitar, even as it reverberates through the cavernous room.

When the preacher begins to speak, the boys cheer, their responses continuing to echo his calls. I can’t understand much of what he’s saying, though I desperately wish I could. In this small way, I catch a glimpse of the culture shock that awaits the luckiest of these boys. 

Venga tu reino. Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra como en el cielo.

After praying the Lord’s Prayer, we sing a closing song* and receive a Benediction. But one benediction is not enough. The boys swarm Rev. Gonzales, asking for prayers and blessings and rosaries. They hold up their name tags, reminding us all that their lives matter.

One older boy, bilingual, tells me that he used to lead worship at his iglesia back home in El Salvador. He asks if he can play my guitar, and he starts playing these beautiful songs. Several younger boys crowd around, and I step back. He ought to lead worship next time. A curly haired boy looks back at me with glistening eyes. I meet his gaze and we share a brief moment of humanity that transcends language and culture. 

The logistics of immigration are complicated. Simply getting 2,300 boys showered and fed every day requires many moving pieces. But they wouldn’t be here, cooped up in a sweaty convention center, with resilience and bravery shining in their eyes, if they hadn’t needed to. 

Our closing song was Tú has venido la orilla or, in English, Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore. The boys weren’t familiar with this song, and, afterwards, several of them asked us if we could repeat the lyrics over and over again. They wanted to remember these words, and, looking back, I can see why. I invite you to read these lyrics and pray for these brave young men seeking “other seas.”

READ: A More Holistic Response to the Immigration Crisis

Tú has venido a la orilla

Tú has venido a la orilla

No has buscado a sabios, ni a ricos

Tan solo quieres que yo te siga

Señor, me has mirado a las ojos

Sonriendo, has dicho mi nombre

En la arena, he dejado mi barca

Junto a ti, buscaré otro mar

Tú sabes bien lo que tengo

En mi barca, no hay oro, ni plata

Tan solo redes y mi trabajo

estribillo

Tú necesitas mis manos

Mis cansancios que a otros descansen

Amor que quiero seguir amando

estribillo

Tú pescador de otros mares

Ansia enterna de almas que esperan

Amigo bueno que asi me llamas

estribillo

Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore

Lord, you have come to the lakeshore

looking neither for wealthy nor wise ones;

you only asked me to follow humbly.

O Lord, with your eyes you have searched me,

and while smiling have spoken my name;

now my boat’s left on the shoreline behind me;

by your side I will seek other seas.

You know so well my possessions;

my boat carries no gold and no weapons;

you will find there my nets and labor.

refrain

You need my hands, full of caring

through my labors to give others rest,

and constant love that keeps on loving.

refrain

You, who have fished other oceans,

ever longed for by souls who are waiting,

my loving friend, as thus you call me.

refrain

The emphasis on “purity culture” that came out of the American Church in the latter half of the last century not only produced generations of suppressed heterosexual prudes, it oppressed people with same-sex attractions, gender dysphoria, and abandoned unwed women who became pregnant—arguably when both the woman and the child she carries are at their most vulnerable.

So it’s no wonder that a recent Gallup Poll found that for the first time in our country’s history, less than half of American adults say that they belong to a church, synagogue, mosque or other place of worship. Who can blame them? This “Christian Nation” has time and again demonstrated that its loyalty to its congregants is conditioned on how well they conform to their puritanical standards. It’s a story all too familiar to me because I was one of those who walked away from a church that appeared more interested in policing culture than showing Christ-like love toward it.

READ: Love Your Neighbor: Use Their Preferred Pronouns

But while I walked away from the church, I never lost my faith. In fact, the more I learned about psychology, sociology and other social studies about what it takes for humans to thrive, the more I saw familiarities in what I learned about how Jesus treated people.

Jesus of the Bible was always drawing boundaries around expectations people had of him and he rigidly enforced those boundaries. He was constantly being told what he could or could not do by the religious leaders of his day, and he just as often bucked those standards. Not only did Jesus protect his own identity, but he also regularly stepped between throngs of people trying to enforce conformity on others, allowing them to get away from their tyrannical accusers.

It’s disheartening to me, then, to see so many of my fellow Christians fall into the very same behavior that Jesus combatted when he walked the earth. Can you imagine Jesus reacting the way Conservative commentators did this week in response to Lil Nas X’s latest song and video, “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)”?

Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh and other Christian conservatives have suggested that the video encourages Satanism and devil worship and other worldly temptations. Sure, the video is provocative. Throughout the video the “Old Town Road” star doesn’t wear a whole lot outside of his wigs and makeup, and there are scenes where Lil Nas X dances suggestively on Satan’s lap.

The whole song, however, is a criticism of that very Christian culture that said Lil Nas X and others in the LGBTQ+ community would be condemned to hell if they acted on their sexual proclivities. And rather than sit back, create space, and actually listen to what Lil Nas X is trying to communicate through his art, Conservatives took the bait and played the same old record on repeat by attempting to condemn, er, cancel the rapper.

I’m not saying that breaking that mold is easy. As recently as 2013, you could catch me making Christian apologetic arguments against same-sex marriage. But the more I’ve consumed content by artists like Lil Nas X, the more I realize the church and some of the puritanical standards I parroted end up creating a special kind of hell on earth for those on the receiving end of that condemnation. And for that I am sorry.

As Christians, we have an opportunity to change that story, though, for ourselves and future generations. Jesus showed what kind of transformation in people’s lives was possible when you nurtured and created space for them to show up just as they are.

We don’t have to look at Gallup Polls to know something is amiss. It’s time we stop fighting Lil Nas X for standing in his power and time we start walking in our own.