Tag: decolonizing

Celebrate MLKJ with a special (online) gathering

Celebrate MLKJ with a special (online) gathering

Cherice Bock

What a week it’s been! Epiphany indeed shed light on toxic white supremacy, challenging us to go deeper in our discipleship of decolonization and racial justice.

As we prepare for our upcoming Bartimaeus Kinsler Institute 2021 online next month, we invite you to the second of two pre-Institute “stepping stone” programs: celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. this Sunday, January 17, 2021 from 3:30–4:30 PST.

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Decolonizing Thanksgiving

Decolonizing Thanksgiving

Cherice Bock

As we head into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the United States, it’s great to think about all the things we can be grateful for. It is good to have a time to pause and reflect, to participate in the seasonality of gratitude for the year’s bountiful harvest, and to gather with family and friends. (We’ll ignore the über-consumerism of the day following Thanksgiving…)

Many of us probably know by now, however, that the story many of us learned in school about the first Thanksgiving is rather inaccurate at best, and racist and paternalistic in many ways, with a focus on the Manifest Destiny idea of the divine mandate for Europeans to conquer the “New World” in the name of Christ and country. Read more →

Indigenous People’s Day

Cherice Bock

Today is increasingly being recognized as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and in honor of that, we would like to share a few links about ways that people are working with the Indigenous people of their area through watershed discipleship. Christianity is about loving God, and loving our neighbors as ourselves: in short, about reconciliation and creating right relationships. Through watershed discipleship, we recognize that the work of reconciliation before us in this time and place (especially as American descendants of Europeans) includes reconciliation with God, creation, and the people around us whose land our ancestors settled. This is not easy work, and can feel daunting, at least to me, so here are some resources on what it looks like to do this type of reconciliatory work.