If you want to be able to fight injustice and experience hope, resilience, and joy in spite of it, you need a faith and a God that are acquainted with suffering and oppression. Continuing our series “God of the Oppressed”, we learned this week from BLC’s Barbara Cunningham about oppression and the God who responds to it from a Chilean perspective -- a story of dictatorship, political suppression, and being told what and how to think.
Read MoreCivil rights hero Fannie Lou Hamer said "Nobody's free until everybody's free." July 4th is meant to be a celebration of freedom, but freedom is not experienced by all equally in America, so we set aside this service to pray for change in our country, and for our church as we seek to do our part in that change.
Read MoreBLC’s old friend Joey Rodil joins Vince & Kyle to discuss more queer insights on God & faith, like the ability to love more readily, and seeing the parallel between Jesus speaking up for the marginalized and drag queens speaking up for the queer community.
Read MoreIn honor of the weekend many would have been participating in Chicago’s Pride Parade if not for COVID-19, Rebecca Janvrin joins Vince & Kyle to discuss queer insights on God and faith. This kicks off our new series of discussion: God of the Oppressed. We’ll be immersing ourselves, one at a time, in various different marginalized perspectives on Jesus and faith and the Bible. Really, we can’t come to a proper theology and understanding of Jesus at all if we’re not trying to do that from marginalized perspectives, because Jesus was a marginalized person.
Read MoreWe need help to persevere, to resist the temptation to take the foot off the gas on anti-racism and revert back to the status quo, even if the news is moving on to “the next story”, and even if we feel some exhaustion. Kyle and Vince share what’s inspiring them to persevere, including a recent panel from Christian Community Development Association: https://ccda.org/justice-initiatives/catalyzing-the-moment/
Read MoreOur experience has been that Jesus is on the side of the marginalized, always. But what do we do with competing views of Jesus out there? Kyle and Vince discuss the way competing views of Jesus cause internal and external strife in our lives and relationships, and workshop ways to navigate that well.
Read MoreWhat are your personal next steps toward anti-racism? Should you expand your quarantine circle? For our individualized questions when there is no one-size-fits-all wisdom, we’re big believers in listening to God for in-the-moment guidance. But, often in religious settings, glib or unexamined references to “hearing God” make many feel deficient (when they’re really not) or feel like “that’s for other people but not me”. Kyle, Vince, and Christina try to cut through that…
Read MoreVince processes his experience participating in a protest this weekend and not participating in another, Kyle wonders how to speak to his kids about systemic racism and protest, and the two of them discuss both the complications and power behind the protests on the Northside of Chicago this past weekend meant to be in support of Black Lives Matter.
Read MoreIf we use oral health & hygiene as an analogy, becoming anti-racist isn’t taking your tonsils out, it’s brushing your teeth — we have to commit to ongoing, everyday work.
Read MoreThank you to Jen Conant, Linda Kim, Christina Culver, Elizabeth Bertrand, and Kevin Williams for sharing.
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