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This guest post is written by Eliza Stewart. Eliza (she/her) is a young South African with a USA passport taking a year between high school and the rest of her life to do some travelling, learning, and listening.  What does it mean to travel to a place, not to consume it, but just to be there? I don’t want to go somewhere because I feel entitled to because my mom was born within the borders of the “USA” and I have access to it legally because of my passport. I want to think about the places I’m going beyond what they can do for me and my gap year. I will grow more from my gap year if it is not completely focused on me, which might seem ironic to those of us who’ve been taught gap years are meant for us to find ourselves. I just finished reading Harsha Walia’s book Border & Rule, a book which investigates the function of borders - politically, socially, culturally and economically. And as a South African currently traveling in the USA so much around me has me thinking about borders. Thinking about how easily I move through borders. Thinking about why I am, because of my identity as a white person and a USA citizen, permitted to move so easily through borders. Thinking about the whole system. As a child you don’t really think about countries and borders and the whole system as anything but natural, but Walia and others have shown me a different way. Walia explains that the function of borders is to restrict the movement of people, while the movement of capital and goods is ensured. People are declared illegal, while the surplus value they produce never is. Humans and land are turned into commodities (made for exchange). The conversion of land into property is directly related to the conversion of people into property. Movement across borders, legal or illegal, is used in service of capitalists to accumulate capital. The border does not work against globalised capital, it works in service of it. Free capital requires bordered and immobilised labour. She says: Borders do not protect labor; the border is a bundle of relations and mode of governance acting as a spatial fix for capital to segment labor... Simply put, borders manufacture divisions within the international working class. Borders are exploited by the class-conscious ruling class through outsourcing and insourcing to weaken collective bargaining rights and working-class resistance to transnational capital and its austerity measures. One of my favourite YouTubers, Saint Andrew, quotes in his Abolish Borders video “The border is not just a wall. It’s not just a line on a map. It’s not any particular physical location. It’s a power structure, a system of control. The border is everywhere that people live in fear of deportation, everywhere migrants are denied the rights accorded citizens, everywhere human beings are segregated into included and excluded. The border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world, and the border is tearing it apart… In our ‘free’ and ‘post-colonial’ world what was once the norm is now criminalized...There is nothing necessary or inevitable about borders.” One example where this is happening is in Hawai’i. Indigenous Hawai’ians have been saying that they don’t want tourists on their land, especially right now. Hawai’ians are being asked to reduce their water usage due to intense water shortages while tourists are allowed to move freely over the land consuming and consuming. Hawai’i is seen as nothing but a pretty backdrop, and the people props, for vacations. It is the most basic level of respect to not travel to Hawaii right now, yet thousands of tourists are. I don’t want to be like them or think like them that I am entitled to go somewhere just because the border allows me to. (This is an amazing video from Haunani-Kay Trask that shows her response to the US American occupation of Hawai’i and her identity as a Hawai’ian). When I am old, I will tell you I remember learning about freedom beyond anthems and passports. And how we never went back once we knew the kind of love bound only by shorelines, prairie skies, and forest floors.” How do I travel through the world as one member of the tiniest group that has open access to the world’s borders? How do I travel not just being aware of the power I have because of how I am racialised, but as someone humbly coming into spaces as a guest? How do I interact with the world with all of these thoughts of borders, and entitlement, and division coming together? I don’t want to be an entitled traveler. I don’t want my gap year to be predatory. I don’t want to gain my own feelings of independence and growth through the harm of others. I don’t want people and places to just serve as props for my journey. I just don’t really know how to do this well. “In this new space one can imagine safety without walls, can iterate difference that is prized but unprivileged, and can conceive of a third, if you will pardon the expression, world ‘already made for me, both snug and wide open, with a doorway never needing to be closed.’ Home.” If you have thoughts about any of this, I would love to hear and discuss, email me [email protected] or message me on IG @lizatiser.
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 Unbelonging uncovers the stepping stones that are invisible in belonging. Every time we are excommunicated, pushed away, pushed out, or told we don’t fit in. Every time we feel angst over the social boundaries we’re told we must abide by, we have begun the journey to see these stepping stones that give us a new perspective of Christ. For Christ, belonging is never transactional. Belonging has always been unconditional.
And this is the most radical, controversial, mind-blowing aspect of Christianity — the abundance of God in belonging. There are no prerequisites to begin the journey or even along the way. There is abundance of belonging for every step, every misstep, every part of the journey. Scarcity and prosperity have no room in Christ’s kingdom, because those identifiers are codependent on accolades, possessions, and checklists. And those identifiers dichotomize the whole of the human race: you either have it and are prosperous or you don’t. God’s abundance redefines what identity even is, and every unbelonging unveils more and more of this truth. But it requires a deep letting go of the things we thought we did for ourselves. We cannot hold onto our trophies, our accomplishments, our belief systems, or our good deeds. Authentic, abundant belonging has no relation to those measurements. This is absolute freedom. And, absolute sadness simultaneously to people whose identity is so wrapped up in accomplishment that the Good News of this abundance is deeply difficult news to their egos. It is in the unbelonging, we learn to truly belong to Christ, who is always bent toward us. The question is, will we lay down our bent toward prosperity so that we can accept this true belonging?  For workers struggling to find pay, struggling to find consistent work, struggling to move beyond survival, extra stressed by their circumstances, reveal your presence to them so they know they don’t walk alone.
Be their Jehovah Shammah. Lord, hear our prayer. For those out of work, struggling to find it, feeling underwater as their dignity and identity are so closely connected to the reality of having it, be their Jehovah Bore, Elohim, and remind them that their worth comes from the dignity You’ve already given. Lord, hear our prayer. For workers being exploited — sexually, economically, racially, because of immigrant status or otherwise, Lord protect them. Hedge their intrinsic value, their families, their bodies and minds. Be their Jehovah Sabaoth. Lord, hear our prayer. For children, spouses, and friends, siblings, and parents who depend on these workers, Lord, provide for these families. Be their Jehovah Jireh. Change laws & oppressive policies, infuse empathy in those who have power over these. Be Jehovah Nissi, make yourself known to the workers, their families, their employers and politicians. Lord, hear our prayer. For the dignity innate in every human being For the everlasting love you so freely give, Lord, let these workers experience and know and feel-- You are near and You are love; You care, and You lead to green pastures. Be their Jehovah Rohi. Lord, hear our prayer. And for those who can advocate on their behalf, work toward their communal good, open up opportunities for flourishing, connect resources and networks — equip them for this good work. Energize them with your ever-flowing love, forgive them of any haughty thoughts, and let them learn as much as they teach, receive as much as they give, challenge as much as they encourage. Be our Jehovah Adonai. Lord, hear our prayer. Amen  If you struggle during this season to stay focused on Christ and his birth because of all of the distractions of commercialism starting with Black Friday and leading right up to December 25, Covid logistics for get-togethers, the perfect presents for every so-and-so, you are not alone. I used to get so frustrated during this season because it seems to not be about Christ at all (I wrote a blog post in my early 20s called why I hate Christmas.) But then I learned about Advent — and the church calendar in general — and it's given me a way to stay focused on Christ.
I've created a Nouns & Verbs Advent 2020 calendar as a mini morning devotional for 25 days leading up to the day we celebrate Christ's birth. Little prompts to go with each day. I'll be sending it out December 1 in my monthly newsletter, so sign up by November 30 on my homepage: genathomas.com  A prayer for the [Christian] political other--
Lord bless the Christian who votes differently than me. Open their—I mean our—eyes to see the bigger picture. Teach me not to dehumanize Teach me not to judge their humanity while opining on their choices. Lord bless the one who votes differently than me, and help me to mean this prayer. Yes, help me to mean this prayer. May I see Your Imago Dei in him, and may he see it in me. But even if he doesn't, Lord bless the one who votes differently than me. Let both of us use our votes for your goodness, for communal flourishing, and let our lives speak the sermons that move mountains. Give both of us wisdom to draw boundaries, but not build walls. Yes, Lord bless the Christian who votes differently than me, and bless me with this desperately needed grace. Amen.  Don’t wait until you have thousands of followers, a large platform, publishers that automatically say yes before you do these things. DO THEM NOW. If we wait till we are famous, we are adding to the injustices of the publishing world. Let’s start now in changing our culture. If we don’t learn to strive for everyone’s flourishing prior to our own “success” it will be so much harder when we get to wherever we are trying to go. So if you only have 20 followers, you’ve come at the right moment. And as you continue on this journey invite others to do the same.
I’m not perfect in any of these things. I’ve messed up, I’ve forgotten. I’ve not been intentional. But these are the things I’m striving to do, and send me an email if you think I can do better with specific steps for me to follow. If you have more ideas on how to do so, and you don’t mind me publishing your name, please share in the comments or email me. I will add them!
 History is a wise ancestor who leads us, if we let her.
District Judge Gee postponed the order to release migrant children held in detention facilities by ten days with a release date of July 27. DHS, this is your opportunity to intentionally keep families together. To make wrongs right. To carve a new path forward. From 1619 until 1865 we forcibly separated families in slavery. Children were legally allowed to be sold or traded without the permission of their parents. This was America. From 1860 until 1973 we forcibly separated Native American children from their families through boarding schools. Agents were paid a bounty for “rounding up kids to ship to the government boarding schools. Later… parents had to sign papers to let their children go ‘legally.’ Parents who refused could go to jail.” Binary choice made way for forced assimilation. This was America. In the 1930s during “Mexican Repatriation” children were left behind while parents were detained and deported. This was America. A decade later, 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in internment camps. In some cases, family members were separated and put into different camps. It was an executive order that legalized this version of America. In 2018, over 2,700 children were forcibly separated by you under the zero-tolerance policy. District Court Judge Sabraw issued an injunction against the separations in June 2018. International agencies called you out on human rights violations. And the American people were outraged. The America we wanted was not the one we saw. Two years ago, this was America. In each case, the dehumanization of human beings led to forced separation of families in the name of national security and capital gain. So I ask you, DHS, because you hold the power. Will you set America on a better path than her past has projected for her? Fulfill Judge Gee’s order by allowing families to leave detention centers together. Five-year-old Julia, my former foster daughter was separated first in Mexico from her biological mother. Smugglers held her mother hostage and forced her into prostitution. Julia was separated from her stepdad because of zero-tolerance. The power you wielded led to life-long trauma for their family. You have security forces in positions where social workers should be. Securing our safety as a nation involves upholding human rights, protecting our holistic wellbeing, and allowing those who seek safety to be first and foremost treated as human beings “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” When, by July 27, you release these children to sponsorship families through the Office of Refugee Resettlement — which Julia went through — what then? Over half of low-income families in America are economically struggling in the U.S. right now due to COVID-19, and sponsorship families do not get a stipend like foster families do. Imagine taking a child into your home. What stresses would your family go through? Release families together. Let this be our America. Julia ended up in foster care because she was released to a home that was already struggling financially. As a foster parent who parented two American girls prior to Julia, family separation is achingly difficult, even when biological parents have abused or neglected their children. Foster care exists to reunite families as soon as possible with safety precautions around the children: good parenting standards in a safe and appropriate home. Why aren’t immigrant families afforded the same rights? Unless the detained immigrant parents are abusive, children should be released with their parents. Beyond the unnecessary trauma we are inflicting on these families, we know that alternatives to detention cost far less and community-based programming is far more humane than detention. If we separate families in the name of national protection at the cost of our souls, we are still the America we’ve always been. If we separate families for economic gain, how are we any different than the smugglers who do the same? Every time we separate families, we stunt our moral growth continuing our already-too-long legacy of dehumanization. We subject so many to the unnecessary but all-too-familiar trauma of family separation for the sake of an America we don’t want. Let us be an America known for reuniting families, not one that finds more subtle ways to tear them apart.  The first time I met “Daniel” was at his 8th birthday party. The clinic had a birthday party for him and bought him a special bike. He had never ridden a bike before, he was born with a disability. When the doctors put Daniel in his mother’s arms, they told her that the only chance he had to have another birthday was to leave their home for specialized care that his country could not offer him. What would you do for your child?
Nearly 35 million U.S. children have experienced one or more types of trauma. One of the most common causes of childhood trauma is separation from a parent or caregiver. Children as young as 5 months old can remember traumatic events. This can lead to social, emotional, and academic difficulties. Why would we as a nation ever want to contribute to that? Daniel continues to have surgeries, therapy, and complications. He stopped playing at recess because he was afraid he would fall. Imagine being 8 and knowing how much a CT scan costs at the Emergency Department. Last year, Daniel started having seizures. Would you walk across the world if it meant you could keep your child safe? Would you accept the help of friends to find someone to perform brain surgery on your baby? I hope so. Keep families together. Keep children remembering happy birthdays wherever they are. Families will continue to walk across nations to find a better life for their children, we are only responsible for how we treat them while they are in our care. Amy Norbury, MSN,DNP Nurse Practitioner from North Carolina  Dear white Christians,
I know that some of you might get angry that I am even distinguishing us as white, but it's necessary. You might ask why, and I'll answer, but not right now. Right now I want to remind us of the Lord's Prayer. Right now I want to say that if you are looking for a place to start untangling all that you may or may not understand that is happening in the world, start there, with the Lord's Prayer. OUR FATHER Yes, He is all of our Father. Notice Jesus does not say My Father. He says Our. Our is a collective possessive adjective here. We all get to be a part. Not just the sinless One; no, we are family. YOUR KINGDOM COME & YOUR WILL BE DONE This is not about our own kingdoms. This is not about my own family, my own house, my own financial wealth. This is about God's Kingdom Come. And His kingdom is a counter-cultural kingdom, it's an upside down kingdom, it's a shalom-embodied community where everyone is seen as neighbor and everyone flourishes in his/her own way. This is a kingdom where no one is higher on the "worth" scale than anyone else. Everyone is worthy. Everyone has value not because of his/her actions, but because he/she is a HUMAN BEING MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD This is a violent confrontation with the idol of scarcity (or the scarcity mindset) that says there's not enough. There's never enough. How does this play out in what's happening right now? It plays out in privilege. Our privilege mixed with our American Dream mentality tells us (just as Egypt tried to ingrain in the Israelite psyche) that your worth is found in how much you produce, how much you own, how much you hoard, how much you keep. This idol feeds off of individuality. And we feed it so very much. It's ingrained in our very psyches. And we must be reminded every day that God is our provider, that there is enough to go around, and that we can trust the Manna that comes from above. When the Israelites when into the desert, Manna was necessary not just for their physical nourishment but also for their souls. Like them, we have come to believe the lie that there's not enough, we're not enough, our resources aren't enough ... so we hoard. We hoard resources, we hoard privilege, we hoard and build up our own kingdoms rather than building that shalom-filled community. FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES Why is it so hard for us as white Christians to ask for forgiveness? Why is it so hard for us to start with confession? Is it because we think it makes us look weak? Is it because we know confessing our complicity in racism requires that we take a good look at the kingdoms we've built and realize we, just like our ancestors, built them on a foundation of oppression? Is it because it requires us to scrutinize the things we've accumulated, hoarded? Our "successes"? We have trespassed against our brothers and sisters of color and we have trespassed against God. We won't move forward in this fight if we don't confess, not fake confessions of "oh I'm sorry you feel this way" or "I'm sorry if I unintentionally offended you". Nope. Not base-level statements of racism is wrong. That's not true confession. True confession says I WAS WRONG. WE WERE WRONG. WE HAVE SINNED. Full stop. We've perpetuated a horrible theology that says that white lives are more important than other lives, and what's worse, we've used the Bible to do it! Oh no, we've never said *that* out loud, but we say it with our staff makeup, with our bookshelves that have mostly/all white authors, with our constant references to white theologians, with our pulpits and church staffs, with our constant elevation of white thinkers, with the schools we choose for our kids, with the neighborhoods we choose to live in, with our outreaches. WITH OUR VALUES. Let's confess that our values have not aligned with the values of the kingdom of God. It's the internal sins, the sins of omission, the sins of silence, the sins of refusing to scrutinize our own lives that will keep us yelling from the rooftops that we hate racism all the while we're fighting to perpetuate it. Father, forgive us. We know exactly what we've done.  Here is a list of resources I personally recommend on racial justice from a Christian perspective. Please note, this is NOT an extensive list, and it is only of Christian books. There are many books on this topic that are very important to read that aren't included on this list! I also have a to-read section below of books I intend on reading but haven't yet as I am always learning more! I attempted to list them in order of what I would give to someone who has never done any anti-racism work first, but I did not read them in this order and I'm sure my ordering could use some help:
For groups of people, check out the following resources:
On my to-read list from Christian authors:
AND MORE FROM DAVID SWANSON 1. Leroy Barber (2016). Embrace: God's Radical Shalom for a Divided World. InterVarsity Press. 2. Brad Christerson, Korie L. Edwards, and Richard Flory (2010). Growing Up in America: The Power of Race in the Lives of Teens. Stanford University Press. 3. Frederick Douglass (2017). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and American Slave (Bicentennial Edition). Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives. 4. Michelle Ferrigno Warren (2017). The Power of Proximity: Moving Beyond Awareness to Action. InterVarsity Press. 5. J. Daniel Hays (2016). From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (New Studies in Biblical Theology Book 14). InterVarsity Press. 6. Jon Huckins and Jer Swigart (2017). Mending the Divides: Creative Love in a Conflicted World. InterVarsity Press. 7. David P. Leong (2017). Race & Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation. InterVarsity Press. 8. D. L. Mayfield (2020). The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power. InterVarsity Press. (Release Date: August 18, 2020). 10. Brenda Salter McNeil (2020). Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now. Brazos Press ( 11. Brenda Salter McNeil (2020). Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice. InterVarsity Press. (Release Date: June 16, 2020) 12. Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson (2009). The Heart of Racial Justice: How Soul Change Leads to Social Change. InterVarsity Press. 13. Mark A. Noll (2008). God and Race in American Politics: A Short History. Princeton. 14. Adrian Pei (2018). The Minority Experience: Navigating Emotional and Organizational Realities. InterVarsity Press. 15. Jemar Tisby (2021). How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice. Zondervan. (Release Date: January 5, 2021) 14. Miroslav Volf (1996). Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Abingdon Press. 15. Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim (2004). United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race. Oxford University Press. And another list from a different David Swanson: (who wrote the book Rediscipling the White Church) has a constantly-updated reconciliation bibliography. Use the comment section below to tell me what resources you would add. Also check out my published page to see what I have written about racial justice. |
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