Serving at the intersection of Faith, Healing and Justice
Sharing my meditations as I travel the road to becoming Rev. Rolle.
Today, my heart wants to believe that help is coming. That the tide is turning. That trends are changing. That the organizing and the protests and the advocacy and the public education and the communications and messaging strategies are working.
I want today to feel like hope.
But honestly, I just feel tired.
Read MoreCrucifixion was a political death, akin to dying by firing squad or public lynching.
So, help me understand how a religion whose foundation is based upon the crucifixion of Jesus and his rising again after such a death can consider itself apolitical?
To divorce politics from the faith is to carry a shrunken gospel.
Our savior died a revolutionary’s death, so I am committed to the revolution.
So often, looking at our circumstances logically and practically could lead us to believe that we’ve already lost. If faith is the substance of things hoped for, then the decisions to organize, to move forward against powers that seek to destroy you, to build when you know some force is already plotting to tear you down, to run the campaign even though you know you’ll be outspent and double crossed are decisions based on hope. This radical faith is the will do something about the world that we hope for until it manifests. Hope for something different drives us to keep showing up. Hope is at the core of that kind of radical faith. It is the desire for something better.
Over the past fourteen years much of the work I’ve been involved in, I’ve been able to consider it a ministry. Community outreach and social justice in its intent and practice is, indeed, ministry. However, what I’ve come to notice is a need to minimize the politics and polarization of these things and increase the focus on the human aspects of the work. So often, jaded activists and political strategists are crafting the messages and mechanisms for positive change that most directly impact who the Bible describes in Matthew 25:40 as the least of these. Unfortunately, these efforts are frequently lacking the necessary spiritual and personal components of social change. The disconnect between the urgency for change and the love, affirmation and wellness needed to reach, mobilize and transform aggrieved communities and individuals is great. In essence, we are sending wounded soldiers back into battle with no care or restoration. I've been fortunate enough to use my time of study to help create a vision and a practice for bold, faith-rooted, transformational social justice that helps to empower and make whole those who are broken, even while we challenge structural and societal oppression. I believe the opportunity to engage in deep, analytical and critical study of the scriptures, devoid of a hegemonic, patriarchal lens allows us to develop an approach to God’s social mission that speaks to the underserved while creating spaces for the personal and societal healing needed to help break down the spiritual walls that block our communal advancement.