bfordham

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” wrote Francis in a letter to U.S. bishops in February. “The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”

Earlier this year, DHS sent a letter to local governments and nonprofits that had received Federal Emergency Management Agency grants for work with migrants, saying they “may be guilty of encouraging or inducing an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States,” and asking them to provide a list of the immigrants they had served and to sign an affidavit they had not violated human smuggling laws.

Emotional support chicken? Source

I've been reading Hanna Reichel's excellent For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional.

Coming out of an evangelical background I've had to rethink my ideas of Christian unity.

Today's reading, "One Body", or Hold onto Unity, is incredibly thought- and hope-provoking.

A couple snippets:

"Conversations over different interpretations of the faith, advocacy for peace and justice, service for the marginalized and poor, and proclamation of the gospel could not be in competition with each other. Their grounding in Christ meant that they should instead deepen and enrich each other."

"Unity is not a claim that we agree on all things, or even the hope of future agreement. Unity is a commitment to grapple with one another, rather than give one another up. Unity insists that we have something to learn from each other, and that our gifts can complement each other. Unity does not mean integrating smoothly or sweeping disagreements under the rug. Unity means curating spaces in which we can challenge one another in a spirit of love."

A link to the book for anyone interested. I highly recommend it.

I'm curious about other people's journeys.

For me, I didn't grow up in a religious household. When I became a Christian my senior year in high school I went to church with folks I knew. That was to a small baptist church in southeast Georgia. I ended up in your stereotypical First Baptist Church, was ordained and preached in various places. Pastored a small church, was an elder in a church plant. This whole time being pretty conservative, reformed, and definitely homophobic.

Mainly, church drama ran me and my wife off, and at the same time I was watching the complete silence from Christians about what was happening in our country (this was around the time of the murder of Tamir Rice, and the start of BLM).

In conversations with people not like me (ie, white and straight) I started learning a good bit. I decided a few years ago to only read theology or philosophy if it was written by a non-white person and/or not a guy. This ended up lasting a bit more than a year, and really impacted me.

I'm leaving quite a bit out, and I feel it's already too long. I'm planning to attend my first Pride event this Saturday (Savannah Pride Festival). My asked what 20 year old me would think. He'd probably hate me.

What about you? What brought you here?