NEW YORK – LIVE FREE USA joins The Quincy Institute and Red Letter Christians to host: “55 Years Later: Can the Church Study War No More?”

The event comes amid a harrowing war in Ukraine, violent crime spikes in US cities and continued economic distress in communities of color across the country.  This FREE forum will invite people of faith and good will to reflect and commemorate the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beyond Vietnam speech where he calls on all people to defeat the “triplets of evil: militarism, racism and poverty.” National leaders will gather to re-read the historic speech, followed by a panel conversation featuring Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King. Special musical guests Brian Courtney Wilson, Aaron Niequist, and Common Hymnal will perform.

“Violence abroad and violence at home require the active engagement of the church if we are to be agents of peace and justice in these times. We cannot allow our tax dollars to be a slush fund for military contractors abroad or militarization in US cities.” says Pastor Mike McBride.

Adds Shane Claiborne “the prophets call people of God to study war no more! We intend to amplify this call among faith leaders and congregations with an aim to resurrect a faith driven anti-war movement which encompasses the foreign and domestic expressions of state violence: international military actions in Ukraine, Yemen, Somalia and Israel/Palestine; police and state violence including the death penalty; and community gun violence in black and brown communities”.

Executive Director of Quincy Institute Lora Lumps says, “The importance of the faith community, in partnership with bi-partisan policymakers, advocating for peaceful resolutions to violent conflicts at home and abroad has never been more critical. As the Biden administration and this Congress adds close to $100B to already bloated military budgets and private contracts, poor people in the United States and underdeveloped countries around the world are met with death and needless suffering. We cannot not be so committed to funding violence and strength through might.”

This event is April 2 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at Riverside Church, the location where Dr. King gave this historic speech. The event is free and open to the press.

Proof of vaccination or negative PCR test (within 72 hours of event) and masks are required for entry to Riverside Church. 

WHO: Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King, and RLC Leaders, Shane Claiborne, Rev. Michael McBride, Rev. Traci Blackmon, Rev. Todd Yeary (RLC Board Chair), Lisa Sharon Harper (RLC Board Member), Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Jemar Tisby, Sharon Risher,  Michael W. Waters, Erich Kussman, Carlos Rodriguez, Diana Oestreich, Common Hymnal, and Aaron Niequist.

WHAT: MLK Beyond Vietnam 55 Years Later: Can the Church Study War No More

WHEN: Doors open at 3:30 ET on Saturday, April 2; the event will run from (approx.) 4-6 ET.

WHERE: The Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Dr, New York, NY. Live stream can also be viewed on RLC’s Facebook, YouTube, or website.

RSVP: bit.ly/mlkvietnamspeech2022

CONTACT: Katie Kirkpatrick, sc@redletterchristians.org, (856) 477-3277

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For many Americans, though, the opposition to Russia’s invasion isn’t rooted in the immorality of war or imperialism but rather opposition to Russia and support of the West. Unsurprisingly, Putin’s poorly calculated war has resulted in more Western unity and the possibility of NATO growing.

What this showcases is that opposition here is more political than ethical. Our outrage against war is too often rooted in who is doing the invading and where they are invading.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice displayed this blatant hypocrisy when she declared invading a sovereign nation violated international law and order. My jaw dropped when I heard a key proponent and apologist for the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claiming that such invasions were unlawful. I was stunned but also deeply saddened, both by the American exceptionalism of her claim and by the Western and white supremacy in it.

And this kind of incident is not isolated to FOX News broadcasts or an architect of the Global War on Terror.

CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata made revealing comparisons of Ukraine to Iraq and Afghanistan, describing Kyiv as a “relatively civilized,” “relatively European” city, whereas Iraq and Afghanistan are places that have had “conflict raging for decades.” D’Agata apologized, but his comment is emblematic of deeply rooted racism and Western bias and how that influences perceptions of non-white countries. Think of it as akin to saying violence in cities is less concerning than violence in the suburbs because violence is “the norm” in cities.

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These comparisons break my heart, as an Arab-American, the son of Egyptian immigrants. Why is the world united in its opposition to the invasion of a white country? And why did so many Americans find unity in their support of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, especially at the outset of those conflicts?

There are many reasons for this, but the most personal to me is that brown nations are seen as less human, less worthy of dignity, and less deserving of peace. Further, this line of thinking implies that brown people are less capable of self-determination and need to be rescued by white saviors. It is dehumanizing, like the world is saying, we are not worthy of life, and we are not capable of our own liberation.

These poorly conceived wars – fought on false pretenses in the case of Iraq – did wane in popularity over the decades. But, it wasn’t how the U.S. ripped the countries apart that spurred Americans’ disdain; most Americans just didn’t want American soldiers making those sacrifices any longer.

I am grateful for their opposition, but it still did not have to do with my dignity, with our dignity. In fact, President Biden’s haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan showcased as much as Afghans were left defenseless. Even more sickening is how many more Americans say they would support bringing Ukrainian refugees to the U.S – 74% were in favor in one recent poll. Compare that to the portion of Americans who supported allowing Afghan refugees, other than those who helped the U.S. government, seek haven from the Taliban in this country. An Associated Press poll published in October found that only 42% of people were in favor of allowing that category of refugees to come to the United States, even after they had passed security checks.

Not only is this hypocritical, it is racist.

The dehumanization of brown people wasn’t limited to those living in Iraq or Afghanistan. I felt it at home, too. I grew up in a predominantly white town in exurban Pennsylvania and witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as a sophomore in high school. The wars with Afghanistan and Iraq that followed profiled me and my family as enemies of the United States.

REGISTER: Faith Forum on White Discomfort – March 17th at 7pm EDT

We were forced to assimilate, to wear American flag pins, to demonstrate our patriotism conspicuously to try to evade racialized harassment. I remember the names classmates called me; one of them even likened my appearance to that of Osama bin Laden. The racism I experienced is exactly why it was so easy to justify the invasions at the time – the people the U.S. was bombing didn’t look like white Americans.

The vile propaganda that furthered the racism I experienced galvanized support for the wars. And it is not dissimilar to the propaganda that Putin is selling to support his own unlawful wars. In both cases, the warring nations are creating an enemy to convince their own populations to support an immoral invasion. In the case of the U.S., much of that enemy was already created by Western media, TV, and cinema. Brown people, specifically Arabs, have been the bad guys for a long time in our media.

In Ukraine, Putin is commanding Russian soldiers to kill and fight people that look like them, that sometimes speak the same language. The kinship that Russians and Ukrainians share makes the actions of the conflict apparently evil. There is nothing wrong with that on its face. It is clearly wrong to kill family. But I long for a world where people who look like me are seen as siblings in that family, where it is equally unconscionable to invade our countries. I long for a world where we are bold in our opposition to armed conflict, and not only when it serves our national interests or when its victims look like us.

This article was originally posted by PhillyVoice.com.  

Melissa has been on death row for fifteen years for the alleged murder of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah, who fell down a flight of stairs and died of brain injuries two days later. In January 2021, Melissa received her execution date. Melissa’s lawyers believe in her innocence and are working against the odds to get a fresh look at the evidence. The only evidence against Melissa is her confession, which was given under duress after seven hours of police interrogation in the middle of the night. Melissa was pregnant with twins, and instead of being able to grieve her daughter’s death, she was accused of a crime.

The hope is to advocate for a new trial. Last year, a panel of judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned her conviction and death sentence, which should have resulted in a new trial. Instead, the State of Texas appealed to all 17 judges on that court, which voted 10-7 to reverse the order, reinstating the conviction and death sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the case.  

LISTEN: RLC’s Faith Forum on the Death Penalty

As the lawyers try everything they can, the only option left is the court of public opinion, which is how Melissa’s son, sisters, mother, cousins, and others came to be sitting in our church. We provided a space to screen a film about the case, The State of Texas vs. Melissa, and Sabrina Van Tassel, the film’s director, led a conversation about the current situation. 

The death penalty is complicated. I get that, and many Christians either have really hardened views on the topic or avoid it completely. But we as Christians need to address the topic of the death penalty and have deeply nuanced approaches to it because Scripture takes it seriously. On the one hand, the Bible does speak on capital punishment (Gen 9:6). On the other hand, it says a great deal about the certainty of guilt (Deut 17:6; Num. 35:30), intent (Numbers 35:22-24), and due process (Numbers 35; Deut 17). We cannot just wholesale argue that Scripture permits or prohibits the death penalty. Instead of having a heavy hand bent toward capital punishment, we must weigh the factors of each incident and respond accordingly. 

Capital punishment is a decision that should not be taken lightly. When someone on death row pleads their innocence, we should pay attention and not simply give the system the benefit of the doubt. We should investigate, research, and get involved, especially if it’s a case in our state. Yes, many folks on death row say they’re innocent, but some of them really are. Over 1500 people have been killed on death row since 1976, and at least 186 people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have now been exonerated and freed. That’s approximately 12%!

READ: Buddy Stouffer’s Execution Was the Last of 2021. Will It Be the Last to Be Proved an Error?

Church, we cannot be silent if an innocent person’s life is at risk. We must raise our voice to demand due process and indisputable evidence of guilt and intent. There are times when we must fight for retrials and new trials. We must be sure. These are image-bearers we’re talking about.

You can sign Death Penalty Action’s petition asking the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott to watch the film, The State of Texas vs. Melissa (available on Hulu and Amazon Prime). You can also call the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles at 512-404-5852 and Governor Greg Abbott at 512-463-2000 with the message: “Please watch ‘The State of Texas vs. Melissa” and grant her clemency.” 

We are still learning about Melissa’s case. But I encourage you to go to FreeMelissaLucio.org and learn too. Then pray. Pray for God’s justice to be done and for TRUTH to be made clear. God has created the church to be an institution for social good, so we must also put our faith into action while we pray. To advance God’s kingdom on earth and pursue his vision of holistic shalom means we cannot avoid what’s happening on death row. 

Visit FreeMelissaLucio.org to rent the film, host a screening, sign the petition, print fliers to share, and contact the Texas authorities who can halt this injustice. An in-person screening sponsored by Hope Community Church & Death Penalty Action, will be held at 7pm CST on Tuesday, March 8th, at Memorial UMC, 6100 Berkman Dr. in Austin, TX. In honor of International Women’s Day, the film may also be seen for free at FreeMelissaLucio.org on March 7th & 8th.

One of the most perplexing realities of January 6th for me as a Christian minister was that many protestors proudly identified as followers of Jesus Christ. When I read about the life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, I learn of a radical, renegade Rabbi who resisted corruption not through violent insurrection but through grassroots organizing, through empowering individuals and communities to create a more just world through subversive acts of justice in their own daily lives. The Jesus I sought to follow was fundamentally different from whatever Jesus the insurrectionists had pledged their allegiance to. 

As I reflected on the insurrection and the entire Trump Presidency, it became clear that what was driving this violent behavior by white Christians was a deep-seated fear of losing their place of power and privilege in our country. As the national conversation around racial justice has progressed, as the disease of white supremacy continues to be exposed, and as the population of white people is surpassed by the multi-cultural array of diverse peoples that make up modern America, many white Christians are seeing the “promise” of a “Christian nation,” which really means a white, conservative, Christian nation vaporize before their eyes. 

READ: “Nothing New Under the Sun”: Opposing Racism Today

And yet, as a white Christian pastor myself, I have a strange feeling that losing privilege and power may be precisely what is required to save the souls of white Christians. After all, one of the central images of Jesus in the New Testament describes Christ as “emptying himself” of his own status and power to bring about redemption to the world. (Philippians 2:7) In Christian theology, Jesus rejects using his divine power for his own self-interest but leverages it only for the good of those around him. Following this example, the early Christians believed that only through following Jesus’ example could they experience the redemption of their souls and the world at large. 

The heart of Jesus’ message in the Gospels is to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Yet, white Christians have far too often been known for how we marginalize our neighbors of different religions, cultures, and sexualities. Jesus leveraged his power for the good of even those perceived as his “enemies,” and yet white Christians are known for spending millions to get proximity to power and secure our own self-interests. In short, white Christianity has far too often chosen to worship the idol of our own privilege and power than the one who gave it all up for the salvation of the world and calls us to do the same. 

REGISTER: Join us on February 27th at 7pm EST for a special “Race in America” event with Michael W. Waters

What white Christians have failed to see is that losing privilege and power isn’t actually a loss- instead, it means that our society will begin to function more equitably for everyone. It means that people’s ability to get ahead will not be based on the color of their skin or the religion they belong to but on their merit. It means that the Christian worldview will not be the assumed worldview in various settings throughout our pluralistic nation, but that doesn’t mean that the Christian worldview will somehow become suppressed. As the Prophet Isaiah writes, when the “valleys are exalted, and the mountains made low,” then “the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together.” (Isaiah 40:4-5) In other words, only when the playing field is leveled will the world experience the love and light of God together. 

The fact is that white Christian privilege will continue to be exposed and lost as our society continues to strain towards justice- this, I am confident, is the reality of our nation. The question is whether white Christians will give it up willingly, following the example of their Savior, or whether they will continue to resist and fight to preserve a world that gives them a leg up at the marginalization and oppression of everyone else. 

This is a moment of reckoning. White Christians have but two options set before us: to walk the narrow road with Jesus in the path of repentance of our exploitation of whiteness and Christian supremacy to ensure our diverse neighbors have a fair shot, or to continue walking on the broad road that exploits our privilege for our own benefit, where everyone not like us is viewed as an enemy to be marginalized so we can flourish. If we continue buy in to that lie, like the so-called Christian insurrectionists of January 6th, we can scarcely claim to be authentic followers of Jesus, and we’re sure to bring about much more destruction, indeed.  

You can hear more about Brandan’s book for youth in the RLC Book Club Children and Youth Edition.

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. 

It should come as no surprise that the announcement of Biden’s decision to right-size the court also generated criticism among right-wing Republicans. Sen. Ted Cruz made the jaw-dropping statement that Biden’s decision to nominate a Black woman was insulting and offensive to Black women. His claims are as loud as they are wrong. But they also reveal an entitlement that is closely connected to the belief that white is supreme. Resistance is also embedded in the notion that only a white person could be qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. 

REGISTER: Race in America: A Conversation with Michael W. Waters on February 27th at 7pm EST

For context, just two Black men and five women have served on the Supreme Court. Of 115 individuals appointed to the Supreme Court, 108 have been white men. Unsurprisingly, Cruz never claimed the appointment of white and conservative males was insulting or inappropriate. He never opposed President Donald Trump’s assertion that he would nominate a woman to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The shock and awe centers around gender and race. 

Additionally, white people have always seen themselves in positions of power, so much so that there is an expectation that they belong in powerful positions. 

But Black women represent a bench of untapped talent. Election cycle after election cycle, Black women have propelled Democrats to office at all levels of the government. We are a reliable voting bloc, yet there has never been a Black woman governor. There has never been a Black woman nominated or appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. There has never been a Black woman to serve as White House chief of staff. In fact, in all of history, there have only been 23 Black women appointed to cabinet-level positions. The lack of appointments of Black women is about one thing: the intersection of gender and race. It is not about competency or qualifications. 

READ: An Excerpt From Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World – And How to Repair It All

This appointment would prove that the administration sees Black women not just as workhouses but as serious minds capable of grappling with the tough issues that will come before court. Not only should Biden move forward with his plan to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court; he should stand by his nominee and refuse to rest until she is confirmed. 

To be clear, this appointment does not obliterate the president of his broader responsibility to the Black community. He still needs to raise the minimum wage and address housing insecurity, the climate crisis, student loan debt and voting rights. But the courts have been stacked with conservative white men for far too long. The pillars of power are calling out for progress, and this is one tangible thing the administration can do to advance justice and democracy. 

The books definitely were not intended for readers as young as I. Every book had at least three hundred pages and occasionally they dipped into adult themes. But I used context clues and grit to figure out the vocabulary and story elements I didn’t understand. 

There were more than 30 books in the series. I read every single one. 

I would spend hours in my room reading chapter after chapter. It became a ritual for my mom to take me to the bookstore to grab the next book in the series. 

It is because I was a reader at a very young age that I became a writer as an adult.

But reading was more than that. I was very shy during elementary and middle school, and I didn’t have many friends. Oftentimes, books would be my only company and comfort in my loneliness. The written word absorbed me into a strange and exciting world where everything else that troubled me temporarily fell away.

Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done as a kid if it wasn’t for books.

For many of us books are not mere assemblages of pages and words, they represent limitless realities into which we have flown, escaped, found solace.

Books contain knowledge that humanizes and horrifies us. Good books—even if we can’t remember every character’s name or every twist and turn of the plot—change us. They become our friends, our conversation partners, our company when we feel isolated and misunderstood.

The power of books to create a new reality for the reader means there’s something particularly heinous about banning them.

Banning Books

Right now, the regressive forces in our land are coming up with lists of books that should be banned from our schools because of the ways they talk about racism and white supremacy. 

In one of the most well-publicized instances, Republican state representative Matt Krause, disseminated a list of 850 books he thought needed to be removed from school library shelves.

These lists indiscriminately sweep up literary classics to be tossed on the pile marked “forbidden.” A notorious example includes proposing a ban on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. 

The book speaks in explicit terms about race and sex. But Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize-winning author. She is a legend of literature. Whatever she has written is worth a read. 

On the scale of absurdity, banning students from reading a book by Toni Morrison is off the charts.

I suspect the real purpose of these lists is to get a particular politician or individual in the news. They are meant to spark a reaction, either in support or opposition to their view. It doesn’t matter. In these political games, all news is good news.

The common thread among the books on these lists, aside from the clawing for attention, is they all contain books that talk or teach about race.

LISTEN: Jemar Tisby on the RLC Podcast

How absurd the notion that people in the United States should learn less about race and not more. As if the problem is that we know too much about the subject and not too little.

We should invite more books about race, racism, and white supremacy. We should celebrate educators who can effectively explain the confounding reality of race—its development, its perniciousness, and its ongoing effects—to their students.

Instead, legislators and talking heads pull publicity stunts to draw attention to themselves in hopes of winning an election or raising more funds. They hide their minds from the painful reality of this nation’s love affair with racial prejudice and pretend as if all is past. Then they seek to replicate their ignorance among our schoolchildren.

This Book Will Be Banned

If this trend continues, then one day my book, How to Fight Racism, Young Reader’s Edition, may land on one of these banned book lists.

Geared toward children ages 8-12 years old, I talk about concepts such as racism, white supremacy, race-based chattel slavery, segregation, and Black Lives Matter. 

Almost a quarter of the book is devoted to unpacking the history of racism in the United States in order to help kids understand how we got where we are and ignite in them the desire to do something about it.

Chapter titles include: Confronting Racism Where it Lives; How to Explore Your Racial Identity; and Fighting Systemic Racism.

I encourage kids, to embrace their personal agency and their ability to effect change. I tell them that racial justice is an imperative for a well-functioning society and that even, perhaps especially, as young people they should be involved in the fight against racism.

I tell them, 

“This fight isn’t just for grown-ups. Some of the greatest advances in the fight against racism have happened because kids fight too.”

My hope is that How to Fight Racism, Young Readers Edition inspires a new generation of young people to antiracist action starting right now.

The forces of regression panic when the most disempowered in our society learn to embrace their power. Some will do everything they can to suppress the impulse toward independence. They imprison activists, they burn churches, they make it harder to vote. They ban books.

The way to battle the ban is to lean into love. Lean into that timeless, irrepressible love of books. Lean into the feeling of being transported by an engrossing story. Lean in into the satisfaction of feeding our famished brains with new knowledge. Lean into our notorious affair with the written word.

If one day my book lands on one of those lists of banned books, I’m not worried. You can’t ban people from appreciating words, skillfully assembled, soulfully combined. Even if they write lists of banned books as long as a library’s shelves. it won’t douse the fire, and the will, we have to read words.

This article originally appeared on Footnotes by Jemar Tisby. 

For more information on Jemar’s book for young readers and other resources for teaching kids about Jesus and justice, you can watch the RLC Book Club Children and Youth Edition. You can also listen to the RLC Book Club from January 20221 with Jemar on the podcast or YouTube channel. 

Epiphany is the revelation of hope embodied in One who came to live and serve among us so that we may be one. (John 17: 18-21)

How ironic it is that on this same date in 2021, our democracy was once again challenged by some who profess Christianity and yet fear the very coming together of diverse cultures and faiths across imposed geographical boundaries that our celebration of Epiphany represents. On the grounds of our Capitol, some citizens stormed the seat of our government, waving American and confederate and Nazi flags alongside “Christian” banners conflating God and government, in a failed attempt to thwart the peaceful transition of power for which our democracy is known.

Many watched in horror and disbelief as white vigilantes, spurred on by the inflammatory lies of our former president and the politicians, public figures and preachers who have chosen to follow him, stormed gates, scaled walls, built gallows, and ultimately caused the death of others. They believed they had just cause. That 19 states have passed 34 laws restricting voting rights, and impeding equal representation, reveals they are not alone.

Such efforts will always ultimately fail, not because God is on the side of one or the other, but, rather, because God is not the Government and the Government is not God. And there is still a light shining in the darkest of moments guiding us toward the pathway to love.

READ: The Heresy of Christian Nationalism

We must always remember the travesty of the violent insurrection that we witnessed during Epiphany last year. It was an attack on us all. As we mourn anew, let us do so with our hearts turned toward the revelatory light of Epiphany. Let us celebrate Epiphany knowing that, while many supported the insurrection, so many more did not. Let us do so remembering that although 19 states have enacted restrictive voting rights laws, 25 states have enacted 54 laws with provisions to expand voting access. Let us do so knowing that on January 6, 2022, tens of thousands of people from all walks a life gathered in more than 350 vigils all across the U.S. to remember and renew together.

Let us also know that our elected leaders can show moral courage by passing democracy protections for all of us: the Protecting Our Democracy Act provides historic reforms that will restore fundamental checks and balances and provide guardrails against future abuses of presidential power; the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act will establish national standards that protect voting rights, and will require federal review of any state law that attempts to discriminate against voters.

Let us celebrate Epiphany not made bitter, but better, by the challenge of so many who lost their way to love. Let us remember the words of poet Lucille Clifton in her poem, won’t you celebrate with me, that “everyday something has tried to kill me and failed.” This Epiphany, let us be reminded to look toward that light and choose rebirth and redemption — over and over again — and let us remember that redemption is possible when we live out love.

Let us learn from the tragedies of our past and move toward the light within each of us fueled by the everlasting power of love, knowing that love is the only thing that never dies. It is toward this light that we are called, and it is only in this light we are all warmed.

The bill purports to “protect individual freedoms and prevent discrimination in the workplace and in public schools.” But it then proceeds to define “individual freedoms” and “discrimination” in ways that are unrecognizable to the plain, historic meaning of those words.

Here’s a quick tour. The bill notes that the State Board of Education (SBE) “requires that instruction on the required topics must be factual and objective, and may not suppress or distort significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the contributions of women, African American and Hispanic people to our country.” So far so good.

But here are the next two sentences:

Examples of theories that distort historical events and are inconsistent with SBE-approved standards include the denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons. Instruction may not utilize material from the 1619 Project and may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.

The magnitude of the contradictions here, separated only by a comma, is jarring. The minimization or denial of the Holocaust is prohibited, but the minimization and denial of America’s treatment of Native Americans and African Americans is mandated.

A critical reading of history has lessons for the Germans, but not, evidently, for Floridians. The systematic oppression and murder of Jews overseas holds lessons for today, but the bigotry and violence toward Native Americans and African Americans at home does not.

Never mind that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime studied America’s treatment of Native Americans and African Americans in their search for models for subjugating and exterminating European Jews. Never mind that the Declaration of Independence’s “universal principles” include a description of Native Americans as “merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.”

The most pernicious part of the bill is its bizarre definition of “individual freedom,” consisting of eight principles plainly written to protect white people. The final one is the most sweeping: “An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” The bill then proceeds to define “discrimination” under Florida state law as a violation of “individual freedom.”

This provision effectively gives any single white person veto power over the content of history curriculum in schools or trainings in the workplace. White discomfort governs historical truth.

As I noted in October (“Shutting Down the Manufactured Critical Race Theory ‘Debate’”), this bill shares a common purpose with the raft of other CRT bills emerging in state legislatures across the country. These bills are political theatre and campaign tools dressed up in the guise of legislation. There simply is no evidence that the problem these bills purport to address—a widespread use of CRT in primary and secondary education settings—exists.

It’s easy to dismiss all of this. But the conjuring of discomfort avoidance as a mark of individual freedom and thereby the grounds of a novel conception of discrimination is revealing.

First, we should answer the question, “Why are we seeing this strategy emerge now?” According to a study by The Brookings Institution, as of November 2021, 9 states had passed, and 20 states had introduced bills that are being promoted as banning CRT.

Part of the answer lies in the unique cultural moment we are inhabiting as a country. As I argued in my 2016 book, The End of White Christian America, the visceral nature of today’s white conservative politics is driven by its desperate need for new mechanisms for ensuring white supremacy amid America’s changing demographics, particularly the loss of a white Christian majority over the last decade. As recently as 2008, white Christians comprised 54% of the population, but that number is 44% today.

More immediately, this legislation lifts language directly from former President Trump’s executive order targeting CRT, which banned the use of so-called “divisive concepts” and introduced the white “discomfort” criteria. Biden repealed this executive order on his first day in office. The Florida bill, like the other bills, are part of a coordinated Frankenstein-style strategy for exhuming and resurrecting Trump’s defunct executive order.

However absurd the premise, the language merits further interrogation.

READ: Unlearning the Gospel of Whiteness

What does it mean to say that the avoidance of discomfort, particularly by those who represent the country’s historically dominant race and religion, is constitutive of individual liberty? And what does it reveal about the health and mindset of white Christians today?1

Let me start with an easy analogy.

What if this bill included the avoidance of individual discomfort not just to Florida’s teachers but to Florida’s athletic coaches? Florida, like most southern states, is obsessed with football. But what kind of football teams would Florida schools produce if players could argue that they were being discriminated against if they were made to feel uncomfortable?

When I was younger, I had dreams of playing soccer at the highest levels. I participated in the Junior Olympic development program, made the high school all-star team for my state, and played Division III NCAA soccer for my Baptist college. Essential to my development as an athlete were coaches who were willing to address both mental and physical conditioning. At the end of a hard practice, One of my most demanding coaches would say, “It’s time to run.” If anyone dared to ask, “How many laps?” or “How long?” his regular response was, “Until I get tired.” Those practices often meant painfully pushing through a wall of fatigue with no end in sight.

My best coaches also relentlessly pointed out my individual shortcomings: tactical mistakes, sloppy play, insufficient leadership, and inadequate strategic compensation for my slight 5’6” 130-pound frame. These criticisms often angered me and certainly made me feel uncomfortable or embarrassed in front of my teammates. But they were necessary for motivating me to be a better athlete.

Spurred by the pandemic, I’ve taken up cycling. As I’ve been inducted into cycling culture, I’ve been surprised to find that the word “suffering” is common parlance. You hear it from amateurs in training and from commentators at the Tour de France. One of the most popular indoor training apps until recently went by the enticing name, “SufferFest.” The accepted wisdom is simple: Victory often goes to the competitors who have befriended suffering, those who can keep the cranks turning even when their quadriceps burn and their lungs feel as if they are about to explode.

At the elite level of sports, where everyone has talent, the winning edge is often the willingness to endure to the far edge of tolerable pain—because discomfort, even extreme discomfort, builds resilience and strength and prepares one for achievement when it matters.

Here’s another analogy, closer to the mark.

What if this metric were applied not just to teachers we entrust with educating our children but to parents? What kind of children would we have if we never wanted them to feel discomfort? Every parent wants to protect their children from pain. But we intuitively know that some forms of discomfort, such as feeling bad about ourselves when we’ve done something wrong, helps us assume responsibility for our mistakes and spurs us to make things right. Sitting with, owning this kind of discomfort is an essential part of forming a strong moral core and becoming a mature adult. Without that unpleasant psychological experience, a person becomes a sociopath, someone who has an inability to care about the feelings or needs of others—someone who lacks a sense of moral conscience.

Discomfort and moral responsibility are also linked in the work we face as descendants. Some of us find ourselves the beneficiaries of intact, generally functioning families that go back generations. But many of us find it necessary to reckon with disfunction, abuse, addiction, bigotry, and other unpleasant family inheritances. There are parts of our heritage we do not want to pass on. In those cases, only by facing these uncomfortable truths do we find the courage to declare, as my parents thankfully did with racial prejudice, that those destructive legacies stop with us.

Finally, what about the role of discomfort in Christian theology? This topic is particularly important, since most of those supporting these anti-CRT bills also wear their conservative brand of Christianity on their sleeves.

Particularly in white evangelical circles, discomfort is central to both salvation and discipleship. In traditional revival meetings, the experience of discomfort was even institutionalized, represented by the “mourner’s bench”—also tellingly called the “anxious bench”—where those wrestling with a newfound conviction of their sins would visibly struggle in prayer, often crying out or wailing as the reality came crashing into their consciousness.

The beloved hymn, “Amazing Grace,” captures this dynamic. In the very first stanza, a Christian singing that hymn identifies as “a wretch” in need of salvation. The familiar refrains—“I once was lost, but now I’m found/Was blind but now I see”—begin with lament and confession. Grace is amazing precisely because God accepts us despite our own shortcomings. But we don’t come to salvation, nor do we grow in discipleship, without honesty and this experience of exquisite discomfort.

Moreover, the sacred role of discomfort is not limited to sin in individual hearts. The Bible is replete with language about the sins of one generation being visited down three or four generations (Exodus 20; Numbers 14; Deuteronomy 5; Jeremiah 32). This transmission is not mystical but is both genetic and cultural. Just as abuse begets abuse and addiction begets addiction, prejudice begets prejudice.

In the New Testament, Paul talks about the need to reckon not just with sinful individual nature but with “principalities and powers,” a theological way of describing the impersonal, menacing aspects of cultural and institutional power.

In White Too Long, I summarized some remarkable research demonstrating these effects playing out among southern whites by political scientists Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen:2

Whites residing in areas that had the highest levels of slavery in 1860 demonstrate significantly different attitudes today than whites who reside in areas that had lower historical levels of slavery: 1) they are more politically conservative and Republican leaning; 2) they are more opposed to affirmative action; and 3) they score higher on questions measuring racial resentment. After accounting for a range of other explanations and possible intervening variables, Acharya and his colleagues conclude that “present-day regional differences, then, are the direct, downstream consequences of the slaveholding history of these areas.”

In my own family’s history, I’ve seen these dynamics play out, particularly in two moments of revelation. The first was realizing that my extended family’s Christian denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, was explicitly founded in 1845 as a place where the gospel of Jesus Christ could coexist with the practice of race-based chattel slavery.

The second came just five years ago. While doing research for White Too Long, I discovered the estate settlement records of my sixth great uncle and the namesake of my fifth great grandfather, Pleasant Moon, whose 1815 Bible rests on my bookshelf.

Inventory of the Goods and Chattles of Pleasant Moon Deceased (1815). From state of Georgia digitized archives.

Through the marvels of digital technology, this page moved from a leather bound book in the Twiggs County, Georgia, archives, to the printer in my living room. And then it was in my unsteady hands—an accounting ledger in which four human beings are intermixed with material objects such as a feather bed, a spinning wheel for cotton, and a cow. I ran my finger over these lines, first touching the name, then the monetary value assigned to the person:

1 negro woman name Naomi @ $800

1 named Susan @ $450

1 named Eliza @ $275

1 named Bird, a boy @ $150

I knew my family had been given land the U.S. government had forcibly taken from Native Americans, and I knew there were enslavers in the family tree. I knew that “my people,” even up through my parents’ generation, had benefited from Jim Crow segregation in Macon—with schools, libraries, parks, pools, theaters, jobs, and entire neighborhoods marked “for whites only.”

Still, holding this page in my hands alongside the old family Bible was disorienting. They seemed to hold equal weight. The straightforward pride and connection I had felt to the lineage of people inscribed in the births/marriages/deaths pages of our heirloom Bible became mixed with feelings of shock and shame. How could the same people in my family be reflected in both of these documents?

“Discomfort” is an impotent word to describe the strong emotions these dueling histories have generated in me. But wrestling with the truth of this difficult history has not been debilitating. It has been a source of personal and spiritual growth. And it has freed me from from the delusional fantasy of “goodness” we white Christians feel compelled to defend in every narrative about ourselves and our country.

Most importantly, holding a more truthful understanding of the history of my family, my faith, and my country has given me more agency, not less. The assertion in these anti-CRT bills that white people should not be made to feel uncomfortable because of their race presupposes that unpleasant truths are always debilitating. It also assumes that the inevitable result is that white people will simply feel bad for being white.

But these desperate measures fail to imagine the transforming alternative I discovered along this journey, and the only alternative that will allow us to live into the promise of a multiracial democracy. The discomfort didn’t make me feel bad for being white; it gave me the critical distance that enabled me to continue freeing myself from the power that whiteness has held over my family for generations.

If we white Christians can muster the courage to walk in its company, discomfort with our racial history can be a sacred and saving gift.

This article was originally published on Jones’ Substack #White Too Long.