Be the Church – Even Now, God Is Still Speaking!

A Post-Election Anti-Imperialist Lament

We are living in a moment of renewed and insidious efforts to destroy true democracy. 71% of people from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds and in every age-range in the United States voted for candidates who verbally assault people of color, immigrants, and women with dehumanizing tropes in their speeches and social media posts. Newly elected officials incite white supremacists and Christian nationalists to move their fear toward hatred, enacting racism, sexism, patriarchy, misogyny, and verbal threats of violence towards people who oppose their ideological beliefs and bigotry. The result of these horrendous attacks is meant to do God’s people who believe in freedom, liberation, and justice for all harm—emotionally, physically, economically, and spiritually.

Also under attack are decades of movement work to enact liberating and equitable legislation and policies advocating for civil and human rights for BIPOC communities and people of African descent since the 19th century. So many of these hard-fought rights and protections are precarious in new ways, because of growing:

• Racism, white supremacy, anti-immigrant actions, including threats of deportations, as well as homophobia and threats to LGBTQIA communities.
• Lack of access for our siblings with differing abilities and needs for mental, emotional, and spiritual health support.
• Threats of violence by the state, federal and local governments with fascist plans for authoritarian rule across the country, supported by militarized police forces.
• Threats to women and girls – especially women and girls of color – and threats to the environment—with deregulation increasing contaminated water supplies, high levels of air pollution, and massive storms fueled by climate change rooted in human greed and ignorance.
• Efforts to dismantle public education with Christian nationalist and white supremacist policies to limit cultural historical education for BIPOC children.
• Conservative propaganda that there is a war on white people and culture, the myth of a “replacement of the white (Euro-American) population.
• Messages of hate, racism, anti-queer and -BIPOC right to exist in the U.S., especially on social media.

Being the Church for Such a Time as This

Despite the result of this election, advocates for justice are continuing to challenge the deeply entrenched fable of the steady forward progress of U.S. history.  We have much to learn from groups that have been on the frontlines of movements for civil and human rights for decades.  Inspired by these movement organizers, past, present and future, I believe people will rise and defend democracy in their hometowns, cities, suburbs, and municipalities.  As churches and people of faith, we have a role to play in empowering our communities to practice democracy in new ways, creating networks of movement-makers who can help us remember what it means to work for collective liberation.

Building up a new world will require people of faith to strengthen their spiritual and emotional courage to develop solidarity movements across all ethnic, cultural, non-binary identities, age, and abilities, same gender loving partnerships, LGBTQIA communities. We must work to advance relationships with global organizations and ecumenical communities with track records of working towards pressuring their governments to end the war in Israel-Palestine, restore peace, and cease from projects of ethnocide and displacement in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and other places where God’s people are being threatened and removed forcibly from their land.

The Journey Ahead

We’ve been here before. Many of our ancestors have given us sacred memories to remain focused during what seems like insurmountable threats from empires. We are stronger together and will build up movements towards liberation and a just world for all!

As people of faith, we are called and empowered by the Spirit of Love and Life to:

• Offer messages of hope and visions of thriving life in our congregations and communities
• Contribute to the vitality and growth of the Body of Christ with commitments to collaboration across Conferences, Associations, and regions, as we work to assure people of faith that God is still with them during government threats
• Keep churches informed with access to policy changes in their states
• Believe in our ability to keep justice movements alive with capacity to strengthen empower and transform people
• Be proactively strategic in analyzing and paying attention to the state of our society so that we can work together with other organizers and movements to create solutions that lead to thriving, care, rest, and communal support

There’s Still Work to Do

The movement toward racial affirms and recognizes we are a beautiful human family with lineages across the globe. Our justice work goes forward in faith with peace, love, equity, and liberation for all, because even now, God is Still Speaking!

Together we are rooted in God’s love building a just world for all.

In Faith,

Velda

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