Hi Readers,
A few things to share with you that I’ve been working on for publication in other places:
First, this morning I published a piece at MSNow this morning detailing the cynical reasons behind the arrest of 15 ICE resisters in Minneapolis last week. In my view, this is a desperate attempt from the Trump Administration and the DOJ to seize back the narrative, to stigmatize protesters, and to try and take away the truth: that this movement was motivated by love, inclusion, and protection of our immigrant neighbors.
Here’s a short section of that piece:
I hope people outside the Twin Cities look beyond the headlines and find out more about these 15 people, my neighbors. I hope people remember that while 15 have been charged, many thousands more of us stood together in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors. Millions more people across America are doing the same thing, not out of a desire for violence or chaos, but truly out of love.
They can’t arrest us all.
Please do click over to read the whole thing here at MSNow, and share it as you can.
Secondly, in addition to the news of politically motivated arrests in my hometown, last week also brought troubling news from my own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The South Carolina Synod, during its Synod Assembly June 11-13, had elected a new bishop, who shares the same last name as white supremacist mass shooter Dylann Roof. While no one knows the particularities of their familial ties, the fact that no one in the Synod or the new bishop took time to address the trauma that name holds for Black Americans, nine of whom Roof shot at historic AME Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston 11 years ago last Thursday - is egregious and, in my view, a failure by our Church to live up to to our Gospel calling of truth and love and transparency over and against protecting power or good PR.
Before I share more with you, take a moment to remember and honor those killed at Mother Emanuel on June 17, 2015:
The Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney (41) – Pastor of the church and a South Carolina state senator.
Cynthia Graham Hurd (54) – A Bible study member and branch manager for the Charleston County Public Library system.
Susie Jackson (87) – The oldest victim, who was a member of both the church choir and Bible study.
Ethel Lee Lance (70) – The church’s sexton.
The Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor (49) – A pastor, school administrator, and admissions coordinator.
Tywanza Kibwe Diop Sanders (26) – The youngest victim, a recent college graduate who stepped in to try and protect others.
The Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons Sr. (74) – A pastor who served at the church and previously at Greater Zion AME Church.
The Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (45) – A pastor, speech therapist, and track coach.
Myra Singleton Quarles Thompson (59) – A dedicated Bible study teacher
Amidst the official silence, Black church leaders asked another Black pastor, the Rev. Nelson Rabell, to raise the question of the new bishop’s potential connection to the shooter in an online clergy forum. Rabell made pains to say that he “hopes and prays that (the new bishop) is able to bring racial healing to that Synod.”
Instead of clarification or acknowledgment of the pain of the massacre at Mother Emanuel (Rabell asked this question on the anniversary of the shooting) many white leaders responded defensively and accused him of lying or unfairly judging the new bishop. Of course, many of them had their own pain and trauma connected to the shooting. But I believe, as white Christians particularly, we need to de-center ourselves in conversations about race, especially when it comes to listening and attempting to understand the trauma and pain of Black and brown Americans.
You can hear more about what unraveled as this news became public, and you can see what happens when a majority-white denomination wrestles with its own record on race (even as most people view the ELCA as “liberal,” more than half of the ELCA membership voted for Trump in 2024, and the denomination has historically been the whitest in America).
I talked about this topic for my first video on Brad Onishi’s Axis Mundi Network Daily Brief this morning. I’ll be a regular contributor over there, with a fantastic team of scholars, journalists, and analysts, including Dan Miller, Thomas Lecaque, Holly Berkley Fletcher, Matthew D. Taylor, and of course Brad himself.
I want to emphasize that when I talk about this topic - I’m including myself firmly in the camp of those who have more to learn. This is a log in my/our own eye situation, before we try and remove the speck from anyone else’s.
Here’s the video (you can also find an audio-only version):
A final note that I did reach out to the new bishop last week via email requesting comment or feedback, and I did not hear back as of this morning.
Finally, I’m honored to share with you a link to the most recent edition of the theological journal of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago and Wartburg Seminary, Currents in Theology and Mission. This journal was began in 1974 as a project of Seminex, the seminary formed in protest by pastors who had left the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod during it’s rightward turn; pastors who were upset about the Church’s position on theological issues like inerrancy as well as conversations around race and the ordination of women.
I served as a coeditor of this journal with Dr. Craig Nessan. Here’s what I wrote in the introduction:
One of my goals for this issue was to match the relevance of traditional Lutheran theology, especially Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Luther’s theology of the cross, in resistance to Christian Nationalism. As a Lutheran of German heritage myself, I feel that I have a special responsibility to speak out against the rise of authoritarianism and white supremacy in America, insofar as elements of Christian Nationalism in America mirror the rise of the German Christians (and widespread clergy acceptance of Nazism) in 1930s Germany. A key emphasis of Lutheran theology is humility, and our own need for grace first: our inability to save ourselves. Knowing this, we turn to the first use of the law as a powerful bulwark against a religious and political movement that claims to be salvific in and of itself.
My other goal for this issue was to lift up voices outside the white Lutheran tradition, specifically voices from the Black Church and from Black American Christian traditions, understanding the role of race and white supremacy in the rise of Christian Nationalism, and the historic role of the Black Church in making faithful witness to the Gospel of Jesus in America.
As we get closer to July 4 and America’s 250th Anniversary, we’re going to see lots of misleading political propaganda suggesting that our country’s current rightward turn and the violent rhetoric from people like Department of War secretary Pete Hegseth is all part of making a more “Christian” America. For that reason, I think it’s important to assert again and again 1) the importance of religious freedom and 2) the fact that Christianity is not an indigenous (white) American religion, that it’s rooted in both the Middle East and in Judaism, and 3) that Jesus’ life and message and mission is often diametrically opposed from the kind of mission and language we hear coming from the White House.
For the next two editions of the Sunday Stretch and on July 4 itself, I’ll be sharing some content to help all of us sort through this time - and also remember the times when America did prioritize freedom, compassion, and care for the least of the these.
The Statue of Liberty and the Civil Rights Movement and the defeat of fascism in World War II are just some of those examples. We can hold multiple truths: that many times our country failed to live up to its founding ideals; that the founders themselves were deeply immoral and even depraved in some cases, especially in their treatment of Black Americans - and also that we can do better, and many brave Americans and American Christians have witnessed and given their lives for that cause.
More soon.
Thanks for reading,
Angela
P.S. …
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