Six New Things – Week of October 21, 2024
This post is only relevant if you care about the planet, humans, freedom, or anything else of holiness or value to the human heart.
Here are six urgent calls to celebrate diversity, overwhelm hate with love, engage peoples’ hurts and hopes, encourage votes for truth and democracy, and urge people to set aside perfection, greed, and grievances. Let’s dismantle supremacy, nationalism, and fear as we build up hope and joy.
ONE
There is little more joyful than a young person dancing. Lupita’s Brown Ballet Slippers (Beaming) – based on the author’s own experience as a Latina dancer – celebrates intersectional identity and determination as it teaches readers about the history of ballet slippers and ‘crucial changes the industry has seen for dancers of all races and ethnicities’.
Find more inspiration for young Change Makers in our lib guide.
TWO
For people of any and all identities, from all races and ethnicities, to thrive in this country, we must learn How to End Christian Nationalism (Broadleaf). This ‘essential guidebook for Christians alarmed by the rising tide of Christian nationalism’ includes, ‘practical ways to protect faith freedom for all’ ranging ‘from strategies for faith-rooted organizing to guidance for holding hard conversations with loved ones’.
Find more on Christian Nationalism in our lib guide.
THREE
If you’re not sure what all the fuss is about:
- Discover why White Evangelicals Must Lose in November
- John Pavlovitz‘s ‘desperate plea from a former [Bible-belt] pastor who knows what’s coming’.
- Read historian Heather Cox Richardson’s, Letters from an American – October 13, 2024
- Which helps us understand that, ‘Demagogues appeal to a disaffected population… Such people are willing to follow a leader who promises to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again.
[T]o cement their loyalty, [that] leader has to give them someone to hate. Who that is doesn’t really matter…’
- Which helps us understand that, ‘Demagogues appeal to a disaffected population… Such people are willing to follow a leader who promises to return them to their former positions of prominence and thus to make the nation great again.
FOUR
AND:
- Visit Minnesota’s ‘disaffected people’ with Rev. Angela Denker’s Ghosts Don’t Vote, But Haunted People Do…
- …in which, ‘a visit to rural Minnesota — and its plentiful Trump signs — brings up memories of grief and loss, and the connection between them all’.
- Expand personal, historical, and biblical awareness with Walter Brueggeman’s, Don’t Vote for Kudzu!
- which states that, ‘if good people are solely preoccupied with personal matters, public policy and practice go readily to nefarious forces that are self-serving and self-seeking in their avarice.’
This week’s Courageous Yard Signs Great Idea offers ways to turn all of this week’s Elections-related resources – along with flyers, postcards, posters, and other community-facing downloadable resources – into congregational engagement and action.
FIVE
I am emboldened to go this in-depth on elections and voting by Diana Butler Bass, whose brief Standing Up for Truth, included her September 16, 2024 sermon, Wisdom Cries Out in the Streets… And Nobody Is Listening, and the ELCA’s Conference of Bishops’ powerful statement of October 1, 2024, which Emphasizes the Need to Speak the Truth.
In her introduction, Bass writes, ‘Because this is a sermon, I carefully followed the legal strictures of no campaigning for particular candidates and no directive to vote in a partisan manner from the pulpit. This is an issue-based sermon on Christian morality regarding wisdom and the power of words. The method and structure was inspired by Karl Barth’s old suggestion that preachers should hold the text in one hand and the newspaper in the other.’
Find additional wisdom for Preaching about Voting/Elections in our lib guide.
SIX
While voting is essential to the long-term well-being of our nation, we fall short of Beloved Community if we cannot simultaneously embrace and affirm our fellow human beings who will be most deeply effected, should nationalism win the day.
In affirmation of and solidarity with our Indigenous siblings, you might share Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation (Beacon), a ‘stunning full color and accessible… graphic adaptation of the American Book Award winning history of the United States as told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples—perfect for readers of all ages’ and By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land (Harper), which braids pieces of history together – particularly forced removal from homelands and a small town murder – leading to ‘the 1990s Supreme Court ruling reaffirming Native rights to that land more than a century later’.
Hopefully, this Native American Heritage Month (November) we will all be able to give thanks for the rule of law and the rights, responsibilities, and freedoms of democracy.
