This morning, 37 year-old ICU Nurse and citizen, Alex Pretti, was shot dead at point blank range by a Federal Agent in Minneapolis while attempting to help a woman who had been pushed to the ground by another agent.

Just yesterday approximately 50,000 people marched through the streets of Minneapolis calling on ICE to leave the state.

My friend, Valarie Kaur, was present. She flew from Los Angeles to answer the call of the local clergy organizing group, M.A.R.C.H., to come and support their cause. At a press conference, before an audience of hundreds of local and national clergy, Valarie offered this poignant and prophetic message.

I want you to listen to every word.

- Lisa Sharon Harper, FreedomRoad.us

January 22, 2026 - Minneapolis

My name is Valarie Kaur, and I lead the Revolutionary Love Project, a national movement to reclaim love as a force for justice in this country. I come to you from Los Angeles, my home city; I come to you in solidarity and witness.

LA was the first city this government chose to target, sending a force of masked men with a budget that exceeds that of the militaries of most nations on earth, into our streets to abduct our neighbors, rip apart our families, and terrorize our children. When we as faith leaders put our bodies between protestors and machine guns, flowers in our arms, our protests were met with astonishing military force. In the face of batons and rifles and tear gas and flash-bang grenades, I saw my neighbors maimed, beaten, trampled by cavalry.

LA was only the beginning. Across the country, from Chicago to Portland, we have seen an escalation in cruelty and lawlessness. But what’s happening here in Minneapolis is a new ground zero for the scale of brutality this administration is willing to inflict on immigrants, on people of color, and on the neighbors who stand to protect them.

After Renee Good’s murder, her wife tells us: “Renee was a Christian who knew all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”

So when faith leaders invited me to bear witness here, it was important for me as an American, as a Sikh, and as a mother to be here. What I have seen here this week… has brought me to my knees. A dazzling display of humanity. Everyday people creating networks of care, block by block, heart to heart, with a speed, proficiency, and creativity unlike anything I have seen in my life:

Minnesota, we see you — teaching children in hybrid underground schools because schools are not safe; delivering groceries and supplies for families in hiding, because stores are not safe; providing midwifery to mamas and babies because hospitals are not safe. This morning, we heard that an attendee was late because they were delivering breastmilk to a three-month-old whose mother was abducted.

Minnesota, you have created an underground civil society, a web of people who care. And it looks like all of us– queer and straight, religious and secular, people of all colors and backgrounds. And you could do this, because your relationships were already deep—forged in the wake of the murders of Jamar Clark and Philando Castille and George Floyd, forged in the fight for queer rights and equality, forged in protecting our earth and climate, forged in solidarity with the Dakota peoples who survived genocide on this soil and show us how to carry each other through the impossible.

We carry each other through the impossible.

Revolutionary Love is the choice to see no stranger – to leave no one outside our circle of care, to risk ourselves for one another, to show up with whistles when they have guns. And that love is a force that this administration cannot defeat.

So I say, we say, to this administration: You can arrest us. You can beat us. You can gun us down in the street. But you cannot end us, because we are part of a song of love that began long ago with our ancestors and will only get louder.

We are the majority. The more you come after us, the more we will grow. Because this movement is more than resistance. We are practicing the world we want in the space between us– we are living into the dream of a world that is green and whole, safe and free, where I see your child as mine, and you see mine as yours. Our dream is more powerful than your nightmare.

To immigrant families: We see you. We love you. We will keep fighting for.

To people across the country: What is happening in Minneapolis will come to your community, if it hasn’t already.

Minnesota, we will follow your lead. And take your blueprint of love back to our people.

And because no one is outside our circle of care --

To ICE agents everywhere: You have a choice. Revolutionary Love means blocking your actions with one hand, and extending the other with the hope that you will one day take it, or your children will take it, for the brief high of domination is nothing compared to the infinite love and joy of true community.

MARCH Minnesota

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The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Black woman
Behold, the Clearing
Hear Baby Suggs Holy charge the women,
“Cry.”
They hold bones that ache
From 246 years of battle
They weep.
Then they dance
“On bare feet in grass.”
“Love your neck,” Baby Suggs directs.
And “Love your dark liver.”
They won’t love it.
So, you must.
Then the Holy one dances
And her movements become words.

Lift your head
Meet eye with eye,
Sacred one.
Chin? Up.
No shame in struggle
Political bombs drop
On your kitchen tables
And that is their shame
You lift face to light
Open your chest
Breathe deep
And push your whole being toward, “Yes.”

Yes! You are beloved
Yes! You are more brilliant than diamonds in moonlight
Yes! You are beauty’s avatar.
You are the spun dreams of your ancestors
Pure power
When re-membered.

They fear your power
So, they try to erase you—to block you—to shrink you
Don’t let them.
Rise and Re-member.
246 years of land and labor theft
Has shriveled capacity
Like Saran Wrap
Under a magnifying glass.
They stand hidden beneath the mask called “Supremacy.”
But under the mask, dilated pupils spin, hopped up on the rush of conquest.

Re-member the taste of freedom
It is coming again
Freedom to bless with abandon
Freedom to rise into genius
Freedom to serve in any office
Freedom to move through the world without masked men ripping us from our lives.
We will taste freedom again

The kind of freedom that struts across the Grammy stage to claim Best Country Music Award
The kind of freedom that writes, produces, and directs our hit stories in our own voices, with our own eyes, and our own souls, in our own way.
We will taste freedom again.

Black woman
Chin up
This too shall pass
And when it does, you will stand stronger
Inner core reinforced by your dance with Baby Suggs Holy
600,000 will rise from the Clearing
Like Queens
Standing taller than Charlotte’s swan-lined lavender wigs
We will re-member the feeling we’ve never been.
Then we will be it.

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President and founder of FreedomRoad.us, Lisa Sharon Harper is a writer, podcaster and public theologian. Lisa is author of critically acclaimed book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World—And How To Repair It All.

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The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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There it is. Clear and simple. This is domination for the purpose of increasing the coffers of American oligarchs.

For months, the world has watched the Trump regime target Venezuela with escalating action and webs of justifying lies. First, we bombed fishermen in a small boat and called them drug dealers. Next, we moved our military into Venezuelan waters. Then we chased and seized oil tankers in Venezuelan waters. Finally, overnight, we deposed their leader. All while rounding up Venezuelan asylum-seekers and shipping them to torture camps in El Salvador.

Nicolas Maduro was a dictator. Vice President to Hugo Chavez, the leader who defied the Western powers when he nationalized Venezuelan oil, Maduro rose to presidential power after Chavez died in 2013. After squashing protests in 2017 and rewriting the constitution, Maduro stole the 2018 election. He has entrenched his regime’s power through an intricate web of institutions, including paramilitary forces that rule the streets with brutal inhumanity. Eight million Venezuelans fled Maduro’s Venezuela over the next decade.

But unlike American stories, there are no cops and robbers in this story—no good guys and bad guys. “We’re gonna run it,” he said. In other words, we’re gonna seize it. We’re gonna colonize it. We’re gonna exploit it. We’re gonna extract from it. We’re gonna do what we do; We’re gonna capitalize on it by crushing the will of the brown people whose land it is.

Oh, America. Here we are—again.

Remember Mohammad Mossadegh. Eisenhower’s 1953 Operation Ajax tapped the CIA to foment a coup of the democratically elected reformer, Mossadegh. This illegal intervention laid the foundations for the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and every ounce of conflict between us since then.

Remember Ngo Dinh Diem. The first president of South Vietnam, President Kennedy, ordered his ouster in 1963, opening the door to decades of undeclared war in Vietnam, leaving more than 50,000 Americans and one million Vietnamese dead.

Remember the Iran-Contra scandal. The Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran and used the cash to fund the Contras’ war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. The Contras fought on behalf of the U.S. to recapture Nicaragua for U.S. exploitation and extraction of resources. This illegal aggression laid the foundations for decades of Civil War and instability across Central America, pushing streams of refugees and asylum seekers into the U.S. from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Here we are—again.

The Tenth Commandment echoes in the air today: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house;…or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

This is not just a nice suggestion. It is God’s spiritual Bill of Rights. In God’s governance, nations, households, and individuals are commanded not to covet. It stands to reason that they also have a right to maintain their own boundaries. They have a right not to be stolen from. They have a right not to be dominated. They have a right to safety, self-determination, and flourishing on their own terms. This is God’s kind of governance, according to the scriptures.

To covet is to unleash hell on earth. From Cain and Abel to the Roman occupation of Israel to Gaza and Venezuela, covetousness leads to the domination of the image of God in “the other” on earth. Thus, crushes the capacity of individuals and people groups alike to exercise their own agency and steward the world. Covetousness leads to the declaration of war against the image of God on earth.

Worse, Paul proclaims to the Athenians—the grandfathers of western imperial thought: “From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and [God] allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live…” Thus, to breach the boundary is to raise arms against God.

That is what happened in the wee hours of the night last night.

Our Christian Nationalist regime not only broke international law, which protects the sovereignty of nations. We also declared war against God’s sovereignty—God’s ability to set the boundaries of nations. In essence, we said to God: You don’t know what you’re doing. We’ll take over from here.

This is not faith. It is imperial folly.

Here we are—again.

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President and founder of FreedomRoad.us, Lisa Sharon Harper is a writer, podcaster and public theologian. Lisa is author of critically acclaimed book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World—And How To Repair It All.

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The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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In the middle of writing a piece about how the demographic breakdown of the Blue Tsunami reveals the enduring need for DEI in the Democratic Party, eight white and white-presenting Democratic Senators broke with the party’s bid to force Republicans to include a one-year extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits. As I posted on Instagram, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. In the shadow of the bluest blue wave election in recent memory, these Dems sided with Republican Senators to end the shutdown, effectively snatching medical insurance from up to 10 million Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The result will be more people using Emergency Rooms as their primary point of care, doubled, tripled, and quintupled premium rates for those who can afford to keep their insurance coverage, and hospital closures in small towns across the country. These eight Democrats helped to dismantle America’s health system through their vote.

For days, people asked, “Why would they do it?”

Their answer? “It wasn’t working,” said Independent Senator Angus King, who votes with the Democrats. In multiple press conferences and interviews, the defecting Dems echoed King, saying, “The Republicans said they wouldn’t extend the ACA Tax Credits.” One by one, they repeated the mantra with exasperated indignation: “After 40 days, it wasn’t working.”

Forty days? The foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement absorbed the pain of the Montgomery Bus Boycott for 381 days. The White Citizens’ Council said they “wouldn’t do it,” either. Can you imagine if MLK and the Montgomery Improvement Association had given up after 40 days, because the opposition opposed their demand? That is the point of nonviolent resistance--to break the will of oppressive powers to do evil through economic and moral pressure. That takes time.

But, according to The Lever News, the money trail tells another story. It wasn’t that the shutdown wasn’t working. They likely did it for cash, like Judas. The eight defecting Democrats are awash with cash from the Airline Lobby. Air travel was taking a beating – a sign that the shutdown was working. Pressure was mounting on Republicans, but the Lever reports, these eight Senate Democrats likely broke ranks to save their election coffers from the loss of donors, or worse, the deal added money to their coffers. Either way, their deal, sans spin, will mean vulnerable Americans will die—and our healthcare system will be tossed into a tailspin.

So, what did these eight Dems, and their fearful leader Chuck Schumer, lack that the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement possessed?

1. Perspective and Empathy. Let this be a warning to Dems who find themselves standing with any all-white “gang,” even one that includes a white-presenting Latina. Your monochromatic front is a sign that something critical is off kilter in a party whose base is majority people of color. It is a sign that your flank lacks both necessary perspective and empathy—essential qualities of effective leadership. Without perspective and empathy, you will inevitably lack the critical data to make the most well-informed and effective decisions.

2. A thick view of human dignity. A generous view says the white gang prioritized the temporary pain of the professionals of the airline industry who were working without pay and being furloughed, over the more than 10 million working-class Americans in danger of permanently losing access to healthcare. A less generous view says they were completely disconnected from the pain of the masses, blinded by the lust for money. At its heart, this demonstrates an operational hierarchy of human belonging. The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement opposed this exact hierarchy every time they walked rather than rode the bus; every time they sat down at a segregated lunch counter; every time they risked losing their jobs, their homes, or their lives by participating in nonviolent resistance. The white Democratic gang obeyed the same haint of human hierarchy that haunted the American South—only now the terror is ubiquitous. Our leaders need a thick view of human dignity. A thick view does not obey the boundaries of class, color, or religion. It does not look at a Mamdani and say, his ethnicity or religion excludes him from leadership in America. It does say all humanity within our jurisdiction is created to flourish. And a thick view of human dignity does not sell the vulnerable downriver to protect the protected.

3. Belief in a God who intervenes. The people sat in church pews across the South. They sang shoulder to shoulder with people who took every word as life in the moments before they confronted possible death. Every march began with praise and preaching. This essential recalibration reminded every foot soldier and every general that God was in this struggle. They were reminded of God’s intervention in Egypt. They were reminded of God’s intervention in jail cells. They were reminded of God’s interventions for Elijah and Elisha and Peter and Paul and mother Mary. They were reminded that the same God walks and sits-down and bleeds with them today. And that God will make a way. That God will intervene. That God takes sides. I do not advocate the establishment of official religion in Congress. But I do believe it will be impossible for our leaders to resist the asymmetrical structural demands of mammon without accountability to and faith in a higher power. So, our leaders must cultivate their own thick faith if they are to give anything more than lip service to the idea of resistance before they cave again.

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President and founder of FreedomRoad.us, Lisa Sharon Harper is a writer, podcaster and public theologian. Lisa is author of critically acclaimed book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World—And How To Repair It All.

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Connect with Freedom Road: Institute Courses | Patreon | Podcast | Instagram | Threads

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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November is Lisa Sharon Harper month at The Community Table. We’ll spend more time with Brian McLaren in December, in advance of a live conversation I’ll be having with him shortly after the new year, but I just completed my second course withFreedom Road, Lisa Sharon Harper’s consulting org, and themes of identity, lineage, and ancestry are top of mind and heart. Especially in light of my film, True Believer, now being widely available (get your tickets here!), I’d like to introduce you more deeply to one of my favorite people and one of the most profound wisdom holders of our time. If you’d like to see Lisa and I in action together, please check out this interview we did about the film last year.

I met Lisa in 2018 and interviewed and filmed with her multiple times over the course of several months. Lisa opened up my world beyond the idea of deconstruction to the work of decolonization. Lisa challenged me to see beyond my own wounding from the church to also consider the harms done by me, simply by existing in a white body within a toxic system of faith. The harms done to people of color within the white evangelical subculture are just now getting properly acknowledged, and whether we’ve left the church or still reside in it, as white people in relationship to people of color, I believe we have a responsibility to examine the roots of the supremacy we inherited and were taught within white evangelicalism. Some of the voices I’m listening to in addition to Lisa’s are Jemar Tisby, PhD, Malynda Hale, and Tori Williams Douglass.

If you pay close attention while viewing True Believer, you’ll receive an invitation from Lisa to begin doing this work as well. About halfway through Lisa shares that we, “Have a responsibility to examine the stories we’ve been told about who we are and how we got here.” I took that urging to heart, and even though I no longer view my faith or the Bible as I did upon that meeting, I hope you will, too. Here’s part one of my time with Lisa Sharon Harper that didn’t make it into the film. This is an excerpt from a sermon she gave in Costa Mesa, CA, on April 29, 2019:

“A few years back, I think it was about 16 years ago, I took a journey, I took a pilgrimage. And this pilgrimage literally changed my life. I was working with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, I don’t know if anybody here has been a part of those fellowships. I was working with them as their director of racial reconciliation here in Los Angeles, actually. And I was invited by the national team to be on the advisory board, and then also, to help put together something called the pilgrimage for reconciliation. And this pilgrimage of reconciliation was meant to help us to figure out, how does this racial reconciliation stuff work? How does it work?

We did the pilgrimage and it took us across 10 states. The first was the northern south and then, the deep south. In the northern south, we retraced the Cherokee Trail of Tears. In the deep south, we retraced the African experience in America from slavery to civil rights. And the whole time we’re doing this, we were asking a critical question, what does the gospel have to say to this? That’s the question. What does the good news of Jesus Christ have to say about this? Now the thing is that in my own family, my family literally lived both of these histories. According to oral tradition in our family, we have family members who were on the trail of tears. And then, according to DNA evidence, census data, and family story, our family was most likely sold into slavery in every state in the south. Every state. Somebody say, family separation. Hello, somebody, right?

So I get to the end of this journey and I am rocked by this question, if I were to go up to my third great, great, grandmother, Leah Ballard, and I were to ask Leah or go knocking on her door and say, “Great, great, great grand mum, Leah, I have good news for you.” And I was to give her my understanding of the good news of Jesus Christ as it was then, which was, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, but you are sinful and therefore, separated from God. But Jesus died to pay the penalty for your sin. So all you need to do is to pray this little prayer at the back of the gold booklet and you get to go to heaven.” And I asked myself the question that rocked me, which was, would Leah receive this as good news? Leah who had 17 children, because she was most likely a breeder. It was her job that she did not get paid for, to breed money for her master. Would that news cause Leah to jump and shout, hallelujah? And the thing that rocked me was, when I was really just gut level honest, I knew that the answer was no. And the thing is, as an evangelical, my understanding of the gospel is the center of my world.

So, if my understanding of the good news of Jesus would not be received as good news by my own family, then what was it? You know what I mean? It’s kind of like, the way that I’ve come to put it is, if the good news of brown, colonized, indigenous Jesus is not good news to brown, colonized indigenous people, then maybe it’s not Jesus’ good news.”

Come back next week to receive more of Lisa’s sermon. And if you want to go deeper into her work, I highly recommend reading her books, The Very Good Gospel and Fortune.

In Solidarity,

Kristen

If you’d like to learn more about my work, please follow my documentary, True Believer, on Instagram and Facebook, and watch it now!

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President and founder of FreedomRoad.us, Lisa Sharon Harper is a writer, podcaster and public theologian. Lisa is author of critically acclaimed book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World—And How To Repair It All.

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Connect with Lisa: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | Linked In

Connect with Freedom Road: Institute Courses | Patreon | Podcast | Instagram | Threads

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Stop saying Trump’s federal invasions of sovereign states and cities represent a crackdown.

They do not.

Crackdowns correct when benevolence gives too much.

Authorities crack down when breaching the boundaries of the law becomes as normative as breathing.

Parents crack down when children receive failing grades.

This is not a crackdown.

The regime claims it is cracking down on crime-riddled cities.

But Chicago logged a 25% drop in homicides and a 31% drop in shootings this year.

In 2024, violent crime in DC hit a 30-year low.

So, what is the goal of the cracking?

The goal of their “crackdown” moniker is legitimacy.

“Crackdowns” carry assumptions of just cause.

They mark a strict return to order after a period of chaos.

“Crackdowns” require additional force to rein in the wilding ones.

Since the administration invaded DC, their “crackdown” language has reinforced the racialized representation of citizens, beset by random violence, begging for a savior.

Worse, lower thirds, pundits, and news anchors have repeated the term. With authoritative urgency, each mention lends gravitas to implicit and explicit bias.

This is not a crackdown.

The administration claims each city needs additional military force to push back the hordes clamoring at the gates of civilization.

But in DC, people are line-dancing on K Street.

In Portland, people are dressed up in Darth Vader costumes and unicycling with blow-torches to make cool reels.

In Chicago, faith leaders are praying for those in detention with both arms raised.

So, what is the point of military force?

Terrorism is the point.

This is not a crackdown. This is the violence of a government against its own citizens.

Nameless, badge-less, marked-car-less, warrantless agents of a lawless state are practicing Desert Storm-grade Shock and Awe on American cities.

They are snatching anyone they perceive as a possible enemy of the regime—not the law, not the Constitution, not perpetrators of violence—enemies of Donald Trump, the orange one who fantasizes about pooping on U.S. citizens—the same one literally tearing down the White House.

They are snatching mothers, grandmothers, children, fathers, grandfathers, Black, Brown, Asian, White, day-laborers, asylum-winners, journalists, teachers, pastors, and parishioners—without cause.

Citizens and non-citizens alike walk their dogs, walk to the store, walk from their cars—moving past vans, sedans, and hatchbacks that whiz by. The people don’t know. You don’t know. The car passing right now could be the car that stops and snatches you from your life—forever.

The people are terrified.

This is not a crackdown. It is terrorism against Americans, by America.

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President and founder of FreedomRoad.us, Lisa Sharon Harper is a writer, podcaster and public theologian. Lisa is author of critically acclaimed book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World—And How To Repair It All.

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Connect with Lisa: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | Linked In

Connect with Freedom Road: Institute Courses | Patreon | Podcast | Instagram | Threads

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Approximately 2000 No Kings Marches filled streets, boulevards, and avenues across the U.S. on President Donald Trump’s birthday, June 14, 2025. An estimated 5 million marchers took to the streets in protest of Trump’s limp attempt at a North Korean-style military parade. The masses marched in the spirit of the Civil Rights movement, but this time, most dissenters were white. They marched to state capitals, city halls, and town squares. They marched in protest of voter suppression, destructive DOGE cuts, the end of the rule of law, and newly minted tariffs. Marchers were angry. They were creative. They were organized. And they were non-violent, with few exceptions. At the time of this writing, the No Kings organizers project nearly doubled attendance for the second March.

Today’s marching public is fairly green. They are rising to the call to fill the streets with a tacit understanding that democracy needs them to survive. There is safety in numbers. Plus, the majority is shielded by white skin, so they are less likely to suffer white nationalist violence—or so the thinking goes.

But, a critical event happened between June 14^th and today. Charlie Kirk, founder of the far-right college recruiting arm of the MAGA-verse, Turning Point USA, was gunned down while speaking at a college event. In the wake of his murder and subsequent Christian Nationalist memorial service, the MAGA movement has framed Kirk’s death, not as a senseless murder, but rather as the first shot in a holy war. The religious war framework offers justification for political violence against opponents. Only in this new era, MAGA’S opponents are not only those who pose a threat to white supremacy within a democracy, but those who threaten MAGA’s vision of a Christo-fascist nation. Opponents are all those who do not read the scripture as they do, all who revere the U.S. Constitution, and all who seek to restore and protect democracy. Democracy needs the rule of law. The democratic rule of law is a mortal threat to authoritarianism.

As time marches on, the MAGA movement is revealing its pure core. This core burns with the embers of book-burning bonfires and cuts with the shards of Kristallnacht’s broken glass. This core spews the same theology that justified antebellum slavery and Jim Crow lynchings, separation, and peonage. It was violent then. It is violent now. And that violence will not be limited to Black and Brown bodies. Should protesters expect the absence of violence in their dissent? No.

From 1882 to 1968, 1297 white people were lynched, mostly Latino, mostly near the Texas border. But, included in that number, sprinkled across the South, several non-Latino white people were also lynched, usually for trying to protect people of color.

The non-violent Civil Rights Movement was not actually non-violent. Participants were trained to encounter the violence of unbridled hate. They learned to absorb it into their bodies and metabolize it through their systems. Rev. James Lawson trained young people to take a punch. CORE members had to write their wills before boarding the Freedom Ride buses. Civil Rights dissenters were beaten by mobs, jailed for months, whipped by mounted police, and turned up dead—on the side of a road or buried in an earthen dam. The violence of the opposition was expected, prepared for, and absorbed by the foot soldiers of the mid-20^th century’s non-violent struggle for Civil Rights.

Likewise, non-violent organizers of the Abolitionist movement expected violence and were not deterred when they came face to face with rocks and fire. In 1838, the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia raised one million dollars to erect the majestic Pennsylvania Hall to house the second-ever Convention of women abolitionists. A white male mob, angered by the mixed-race female leadership, with men in the audience, broke all the windows and burned the Hall to the ground on the second day of the Convention. Undeterred, the women moved their convention to a local school and carried on.

Can you imagine carrying on today? I can barely imagine it. We would be shocked by that level of violence. It would drive us to paralysis and finger-pointing, as it did in the days following the carnage in Charlottesville. That was one town, one event, one act of wanton violence. What will we do when lethal fascist violence comes, not from the lone civilian, but from the government, as it was levied on the bodies of Civil Rights dissenters? Will we be able to carry on? Or will fascism win?

Nonviolence is not the absence of violence. It is a rooted commitment to a non-violent future with flourishing for all. Nonviolence stands in the cesspool of fascist violence, southern slavocracy, and Jim Crow mobs, and it calls us to live the future we want right there—surrounded by the sulfuric stench of present-day barbarism. Nonviolence understands that the path determines the destination. We build the world we envision with each step through vicious terrain. The ethics of our march will lay the foundations for the world we win.

Nonviolence understands that violence ensnares us in the narrative of our oppressor. If we struggle as objects within our oppressor’s story, we cannot win. By definition, it is their story. They are the protagonist. They are setting the terms and shaping the terrain. Rather, we must extricate ourselves from the oppressor’s story and become our own protagonists through creative nonviolent action.

Paul wrote from jail: “I appeal to you therefore, brother and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1)

The tactics of Rome were brutal. According to the Jewish historian, Josephus, the year Jesus was born, a Roman General squashed a rebellion by marching through Northern Galilee and crucifying 500 people per day. Rome salted the land it colonized to starve the indigenous peoples. This made them dependent and compliant. Jesus lived and moved in this context of violent suppression. When Peter drew his sword, he commanded him to put it back. “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword,” he said. Jesus demanded non-violent intervention.

In Charlottesville, we were warned by the organizers: “If you march on the streets with us, we cannot guarantee your safety.” Scores of faith leaders took a moment to consider the cost of their symbolic resistance to the rise of Christo-fascism. Each leader was offered the opportunity to gracefully stay back. And some did. Eighty filed out of the church one block from the now infamous park where mayhem exploded hours later. They took their place in formation on the street.

I was torn. What would my mother do if I died? She was sick and needed me to be there for her. How would my death impact my family? They need me, I thought to myself. I sat with my head in my hands, bowled over in prayer on the front pew. Then I heard it. It was a whisper in my bones. “Take up your cross and follow me,” the whisper said. I understood the call. This was the substance of actual faith—not intellectual belief, but kinetic, embodied, grounded faith.

I joined the faith leaders’ formation, and we walked. Locked arm in arm, each step was an actual prayer. We approached the park and fanned out to flank one full block. Militia men stood opposite us, carrying AR-15s to block us from entering the park.

We faced off with the opposition for two hours, singing every Freedom Song we could remember. “This Little Light of Mine” was our favorite. This dainty Sunday school song expanded in the space between us, matching firepower with moral power. In the middle of the singing I looked in the eyes of my counterpart. His eyes hard, his stance at the ready, I called to him. He ignored me. Filled with the truth of the presence of God in the present moment, I called to him: “I love you.”

He looked at me, stunned.

“I know,” he said.

I rejoined our collective declaration: This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine!

The Trump regime is building up ICE and military presence in cities across the country, snatching Black and Brown people from their beds, the streets, their jobs, and their court appearances. People are disappearing into a lawless prison and deportation system. As the regime attempts to establish the pretense to declare martial law, the United States of America faces the prospect of a future that echoes fascist dictatorships of the past.

During the rise of the Third Reich, there was a window when nonviolence had a chance to win in Germany. There came a time when Jewish and international non-violence only protected and prolonged the Reich’s capacity for violence. In those nascent years, in the face of fascist takeover, the only people group with the ability to mount effective non-violent resistance was the Germans themselves. Only they possessed the social and political power to stand up en masse and say “No.” En masse, they could have laid down their arms. En masse, they could have challenged the direction of their nation. They could have marched and gotten in the way. But not enough did. Too many obeyed fear, not faith. Thus, the only way to stop the slaughter became war.

In the Trump era, White Americans, especially White Christians, possess the same social and political power to present their bodies as living sacrifices. They are best positioned to engage nonviolent resistance in the struggle to stop the march of fascism in the U.S. and around the world. But people in bodies deemed white in the U.S. are not well prepared to absorb state violence.

Beloveds, it is time to prepare. When the moment comes, we need you to be ready. We need you to be able to look violence in its dead eyes and sing to it: This little light of mine.

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President and founder of FreedomRoad.us, Lisa Sharon Harper is a writer, podcaster and public theologian. Lisa is author of critically acclaimed book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World—And How To Repair It All.

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The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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I know this is a painful time for many people caught in the middle of this government shutdown. In my ears I hear the clear words of Andrew Young ringing like a bell.

He stood before us at the Underground Railroad Museum in Ohio and told us what led the people to boycott and organize in the Civil Rights era. He said:

“We refused to be party to our own oppression.”

That is how I understand this current moment. If the Dems voted for the full passage of the Big Monstrous Bill they would be party to the oppression of their own families, communities, and voters—plus millions of middle-class and working Americans in red states. The only way to stop this monstrosity is to get in the way!

The Montgomery Bus Boycott called on everyday Americans to dig deep and pull together to win against the White Citizens Council of their day.

Today, the GOP is our proverbial White Citizens Council, but their Big Monstrous Bill is taking aim at all Americans—Black, Brown, white, rich, poor, and in the middle. Cuts to Environmental Care, Healthcare, and Education, as well as the $100 billion increase in ICE militarization of our society will impact all of us. ALL OF US.

We can’t stop it all. That’s what elections are for. For now, we do have one lever—the budget process. In this break glass moment, we MUST pull the lever.

So, I applaud the Democrats’ boycott of the Big Monstrous Bill with one big demand: Restore Healthcare funding! Without that adjustment in an already brutal economy the majority of the nation will left without the most basic safety net. The Dems are getting in the way.

Stand fast, beloveds. We see you. We are with you. We are praying for us all.

No healthcare. No vote.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Pundits are calling Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Cobert “canaries in the coal mine” of American fascism. No. They are not. They are white men working in the cave, surrounded by dead canaries at their feet. And now the toxic fumes have taken them down.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled in the context of American fascism. He struggled in the pre-Civil-Rights-Act, pre-Voting-Rights-Act American South. Southern freedom fighters marched in towns where the Dred Scott decision was the law of the land—a Black person had no rights that a white man needed to respect. White men had protection of the law, but people of African descent could not vote, could not say the wrong thing, could not look a white person in the eyes, could not challenge exploitation or abuse without losing their livelihoods—or their lives. The law was whatever a white man said it was. And if the case ever made it to the courts, juries and judges alike placed thumbs on the scales, giving white skin the benefit of the doubt and protection from conviction—why? Because whiteness = impunity.

The canaries have long been dead. The year after passage of the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, the noxious fumes of fascism wafted across the South. Southern state houses found new ways to block Black votes and Black flourishing by gerrymandering, new restrictions, and refusing federal oversight. Moderate legislators on Capitol Hill watched the Civil Rights Bill of 1966 rise to expand protections granted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They killed it.

So, by the time MLK sat down to write his final book, Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, in 1967, urban centers across the U.S. were burning. This was the context within which Dr. King gave his oft-quoted 1967 Stanford University address titled “The Other America.” He bellowed: “Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. ... But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard.”

Poor people are not stupid. They simply lack resources and voice. But they know when their livelihoods, their families, their children, their health, and their lives are under attack. There in the shadow of Johnson’s Great Society, while major poverty cutting measures were being passed, other wins were being pulled back, and poor people knew it. They knew it, because their bodies absorbed the blows. People of African descent and Indigenous peoples are the actual canaries in the mines of northern slums, southern segregation, and western reservations.

Before Colbert lost his job, 319,000 Black women had lost theirs—since February.

Before Jimmy Kimmel lost his job, the Black unemployment rate was twice that of white people.

Before Disney and ABC caved to government pressure to oust two white males from Late night television, Native nations were facing the prospect of losing $24.5 billion in “health care, law enforcement, education, and key services” due to the administration’s proposed federal grant freeze.

To call Colbert and Kimmel the canaries is to misread our current moment. We are not standing at the beginning of something dire. We are experiencing the full measure of the toxic violence that is endemic to our way of being together in the world.

Let us look at our red-white-and-blue-socked feet—surrounded by dead canaries.

Now is our last chance to heed the canaries’ cries and choose another way.

We can choose love over fear.

We can choose listening over domination.

We can choose connection over fragmentation.

It starts with what we allow ourselves to see.

We must choose to see the dead canaries—all of them.

We must listen to their banned songs.

We must fly in the direction they have been pointing—to true freedom.

Or we can continue to erase them from our view, stepping over and on them as we misdiagnose the nature and strength of the toxins in the proverbial mine of America. In the name of “saving democracy,” we will forfeit the wisdom of the canaries’ songs.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between theThe Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Adapted from my talk at the Church at the Crossroads Conference

What do you picture when you picture freedom? Do you picture the struggle to attain it? Children playing in the street? Dancing in the street? Freedom of Religion? Freedom from ableism? Beyonce’?

We were created for freedom and flourishing. Bearing the image of God (Gen 1:26-27) means that we are called by God to exercise radah (stewardship) of the world. But the truth is we have fashioned a world where only some are thought to be created to rule–others were created to be ruled. We build walls of separation, containment and control, as well as systems to protect the rights of some to exercise dominion; while others are locked out.

But, sometimes it takes too long to wait for the walls to come down. Sometimes you have to fan the flames of freedom in the dark.

What does it look like to “fan the flames of freedom” on the dark side of the wall?

Let's talk about The Bleeding Woman (Mark 5:21-34).

First, she was a woman. In Jesus’ time, the Pharisees woke every morning and prayed a simple prayer: Thank you, God, that I was not born a dog, a gentile, or a woman. The Bleeding Woman had no rights. In this patriarchal society, she could not buy property, or work for her own keep. What’s more, during her monthly menstruation cycle she was supposed to separate herself from society. This woman had been hemorrhaging for 12 years straight. For 12 years she was isolated and begging for help from doctors who only left her worse.

Now, consider her political situation. She and her people were colonized by supremacist Rome​. The ancient historian Josephus tells us a Roman general came through the region and squashed an attempted insurrection and crucified 500 people per day. No family would have gone without having lost someone to the cross—the ultimate instrument of terror.​

There is a concept called Radical Subjectivity that comes to us from Womanist Ethics. In her book, Mining the Motherlode, Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas explains that dominated people groups live their lives as objects in the stories of their oppressors. The dominant ones get to be the subjects of the story. They are the protagonists of the story. Everything that happens in the story happens for their good. Everyone else in the story is an object.

Think: Tarzan.

Think: Gone with the Wind.

Think: M.A.S.H.

Even think: To Kill a Mockingbird.

How would these stories be different if told through the eyes of the dominated?

What would it look like to tell the story of Tarzan through the eyes of West African people?

What would it look like to tell the story of Gone with the Wind through the eyes of Mammy played by Hattie McDaniel?

Can you see M.A.S.H. through Korean eyes—or through the eyes of Corporal Klinger?

Can you see To Kill a Mockingbird through the eyes of Tom Robinson, or Atticus Finch’s maid, Calpurnia?

Radical Subjectivity calls the dominated ones to center their own stories in an act of radah—agency.

Rome and the Sanhedrin saw the Bleeding Woman as an object in their stories. She was a thing to be manipulated for the personal gain of doctors and the taxable gain of Rome. She existed on the margins of their stories or she did not exist to them, at all.

In her treatise, Womanist Ethics and The Cultural Production of Evil, Dr. Emilie M. Townes explains the concept of “Is-ness”. In the eyes of empire, she says, the oppressed have no “is-ness” (no actual “being”). This was the case for the Bleeding Woman. She had no "is-ness". In the eyes of those who contend with God for supremacy, she had no “is-ness.”

Christian Zionism is an ideology of control. It seeks to control the world by centering its own narrative. Claiming the narrative comes from God,in actuality, its tyranny of certainty is levied on God–God's self. The world is controlled. The image of God is controlled. And ultimately God must be controlled by this narrative for the narrative to prove true.

Let us consider the moral situation of the Bleeding woman. She dragged herself past the city gates into the center of that crowd. In the doing she broke the Levitical law. The law said bleeding women were supposed to remain separated from everyone until they had 7 clean days in a row–lest they make others unclean. The penalty for breaking this law was further separation from society.

But the scripture tells us of two other law-breakers: Abram and Sarai.

Abram tells Sarai to lie. “Tell Pharaoh you’re my sister,” he says. Pharaoh had passed a law that said the husbands in married immigrant couples should be killed and the wife would be taken into the king’s haram. To lie is to break what would become one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” (Ex. 20:16) Sarai lies and Abram’s life is spared. He makes out like a bandit. He gets new wives, concubines, land and oxen. Sarai gets taken into Pharaoh’s haram and raped. Who does God hold responsible? God says nothing to Abram, who told Sarai to lie. God says nothing to Sarai who told the lie. Rather, God places the judgement squarely on the shoulders of the ones who created the laws and systems that made images of God twist and deform themselves in order to survive. God judged Pharaoh.

In this text, this brown, colonized woman looked the lie of the ethics of erasure, which Miroslav Volf explains in his treatise, Exclusion and Embrace, in its screaming face. Then she practiced freedom on the dark side of the wall.

We don’t know what scripture she drew from. All we know is that she stood on the dark side of the wall. And she decided to crawl past the gate. She crawled her bleeding body through the unseeing crowd. They did not see her “is-ness”. They believed themselves utterly justified before God, for their acts of erasure!

But this Bleeding Woman crawled through the legal and physical checkpoints of her subjugation. Like the people of Gaza who crawl toward the day of their freedom–freedom from the physical barriers to flourishing erected by the hegemonic Christian Zionist imagination. That imagination has shaped the world of the Bleeding Women of Gaza with a Wall, with barbed wired fences, with drones, bombs and checkpoints, with death beneath rubble, with systematic rape during wrongful imprisonment, with humiliation, and with indignity. Like the hegemonic story of purity in the Bleeding Woman’s time, the Christian Zionist story claims it is the subject of the global story—and crushes anyone who dares to challenge it.

So the bleeding woman crawled her way to the center of her own story! ​She snatched back the narrative from empire. She exercised agency. She reached out and touched the hem of Jesus’ garment writing her own story as she did, from her own point of view on the dark side of the wall.​ And her story does not end there!

With rich Jairus looking on, positioned at the center of power, desperate for Jesus to heal his daughter, Jesus makes Jairus wait. He calls in the bleeding, brown, colonized, destitute, erased-among-the-excluded woman.

“Who touched me?” Jesus says. Then, after listening to her whole story, Jesus calls this woman, “Daughter.”

Jesus centers the bleeding woman’s story, and in the doing, Jesus fans the flames of the bleeding woman’s “is-ness.” He fans the flames of the image of God in her. And he does it on the dark side of the Wall!​

Now, how do we fan the flames of “is-ness”, of flourishing, and of freedom on the dark side of the wall, in the face of the hegemonic imagination of Christian Zionism? We look it square in the face, and we simply say: "No.”

Then we step back and make space for the bleeding women and men of our world to take their space at the center–the center of their own stories. We agree with them when they declare, they are the subjects of their own story, not the objects of someone else’s.

Then, we turn to the ladder of the human hierarchy of belonging–and we burn it to the ground. We boycott, divest from, and sanction every pillar that upholds the Christian Zionist story. We applaud, draw attention to and champion Palestinian historians, theologians, journalists, and everyday people who are telling their stories.

Finally, we form a circle. And around that circle, we look into each other's eyes–past their eyes. We look for the image of God in the bleeding women and we see their humanity. We see their divine call and capacity to make decisions that shape the world.

And, as we stand in that circle, the Bleeding women of the world look into our eyes. They look past our eyes and they speak what they see:

“Daughter…son, your faith has made you well.”

Amen.

Call to Action:

Here is a letter written in response to the Palestinian Christian leaders’ plea to denounce Christian Zionism. Drafted by the Church At The Crossroads Conference organizers and speakers and signed by all who wish to stand in solidarity.

Sign Petition Here

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Charlie Kirk, leader of Turning Point USA, was shot dead today, while speaking on campus at Utah Valley University. Freedom Road mourns the depth of national division and derision that has led our nation to this point. I wept when I heard the news. I never met Charlie Kirk, but I know his work. I spent 10 years as a college minister. Kirk and I would certainly have been on opposite sides of the stage if we ever met. My work directly counters the vision of our nation that he worked to realize. But violence against one is violence against all.

Charlie was not my enemy. His ideas were my enemy. Charlie was a fellow human being, made in the image of God. An image of God was killed today in the same way that more than 100,000 images of God have been obliterated in Gaza.

Our nation is sick beyond measure right now. I don’t say this because Kirk was killed. Rather, it is clear to me: Kirk was killed because we have normalized an ethic of genocide and erasure in our politics.

My prayers go out to Charlie Kirk’s wife and children. May they be held close by Creator.

And may the rest of us—especially people who claim faith—ask this critical question of our own hearts: Do we actually value the image of God on earth?

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Cross-posted from The Truth Is…

What to write when the heart is overwhelmed with grief and terror? The grief of the loss of the world as I knew it. The loss of stability—a measure of it—measures of it. The terror of Big Brother risen from the dust of white men’s imaginations and formed into hardened masked flesh with a record 75 billion dollar budget bump.

What to write when I’m overwhelmed with thoughts that try to understand this moment we’re in, but a sage friend says the work that will be needed when the world falls apart—and it will—completely—is not the work of understanding what happened, but rather the work of making meaning from it—the work of chaplaincy—the work of theology and ethics—the work of my dissertation—the work I have been assigned for this season. Hard work to do right now in the season of the crumbling—the season before new birth—the season of dilation, disorientation, and dystopic pain. But this is the work.

So, why do I keep trying to find other work?

Because I want to feel relevant—now.

But in the striving to feel relevant now, I will forfeit being relevant then. And I will rob the world of that which only I could bring—the benefit of the perspective offered through eyes that have seen all that I have seen.

It feels haughty to say—egotistical or full of hubris. But it is not. Rather, it is humility. It is agreeing with God about the unique call and capacity of each and every human being. It recognizes I am no more than a human—and no less. I do have a divine call and capacity to impact the world. And my call right now—is for then.

So, what must I do today? I must practice making meaning.

Amen.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Enegrecer means “to become Black” in Portuguese. June 21, 2025 I spoke at the Enegrecer Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil with a celebrated host of Black Brazilian and international theologians, ethicists, and justice practitioners. Convened by Brazil’s Black Evangelical Network and hosted by the largest church in South America, Igreja Batista de Agua Branca (IBAB), Enegrecer brought together 500 in-person attendees and thousands that streamed online from every corner of the continent. To understand the significance of this moment you must first understand how race works in Brazil.

On Brazil’s Census, there are 37 racial designations to count oneself as a shade of Black, but not Black. Meanwhile, there is only one designation for White. By consolidating White power and disaggregating Blackness, Brazil’s Census is designed to protect the power of the former slave-holding class. The disaggregation of Blackness also plays on the internalized white supremacy within the souls of descendants of the most heinous slavocracy ever to exist on planet Earth; offering them 37 ways to avoid the stigma of blackness.

Consider this for perspective: Less than 400,000 Africans were hauled into U.S. ports over the course of the 246-year U.S. slave trade. Yet, at the time of our abolition, 4 million people of African descent were enslaved in the U.S.. This exponential population growth is largely due to the institution of “slave farms” after the outlawing of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Worthy of its own in-depth examination, this heinous history brings its own intergenerational trauma. Consider the impact of one rape on one family system. Now, imagine the impact of systematized rape of multiple generations of women. Now, compound the pain by the forced separation of the children born from that trauma. Add to that the pain of the whip and the shackles, themselves. Slavocracy in the U.S. was evil to the core.

Let’s pivot to Brazil—by the numbers: Brazil hauled 4.8 million Africans from West African nations over the course of its 365-year slavocracy—10 times the number brought to the U.S., over one hundred years more. Yet, upon abolition in 1888, the last slavocracy on the planet only had 4 million people of African descent—the same amount as the U.S.. These numbers tell a story. The story’s title is: Death. Black Brazilians labored under treacherous conditions on Sugar plantations that lined Brazil’s eastern coast. Death by disease and systematic torture constantly depleted Brazil’s enslaved population. But Brazil is the closest nation to the continent of Africa in the Western Hemisphere. The Middle Passage to Brazil was crossed in only 1-2 weeks, compared with 6-8 weeks to the U.S..

So, while the U.S. bred enslaved people, Brazil used them up and went back for more.

Blackness was and is exploitable in the U.S. It was and is expendable in Brazil.

Some Black Brazilians defied white hegemony. Self-emancipated men and women escaped deep into forests and mountain regions where they established Quilombos—maroon societies—free Black towns off the grid. Quilombo faith typically brought Christianity into conversation with various African spiritualities present in the communities; forsaking imperial faith, exercising reparative sovereignty over African identity, and restoring healing practices and values located in African indigenous ways.

Following slavery, eugenics took hold and shaped Brazilian public policy. Black Brazilians were forced into the hills and outer edges of society in ungoverned shanty towns called favelas. Appeals went out to European nations to immigrate to Brazil and “whiten” the population. Whiteness was formally celebrated while Blackness was contained.

White missionaries declared African faith systems “demonic,” leaving only the white Catholic church—the seat of the former slaveholding establishment—and white Protestant churches—the seat of Confederate faith (see “Dethroning Whiteness” Part 1)—as the only legitimate spaces for Black spiritual formation in Brazil. Spiritual formation outside of these white and western supremacist structures was shamed and the people who practiced them were socially, economically, and politically disenfranchised.

On the heels of eugenics came “Racial Democracy”—a corrective without correction. Conceived by white elites, Racial Democracy imagined and declared a color-blind Brazil, within which all people groups could thrive. A corrective by degrees to the erasure of ethnic cleansing, color-blindness allows the people to remain, while erasing from public view the oppressive situation the people survive every day.

Thus, under Brazil’s brut and cunning brand of racism, the nation never experienced the birth of the most critical corrective force to rise up within the U.S.—the Historic Black Church. Black consciousness was only allowed to live within the contained ones who practiced African religions. No Black Church rose up and demand abolition in Brazilian history—no Absalom Jones, no Richard Allen, and no James Forten rose to establish separate incorporated and empowered churches and denominations within which Black people could discover their own unique relationship with Brown, Colonized Jesus. No, Black Church rose up to form Freedmen’s Bureaus, Historic Black Colleges and Universities, the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Council, the Congress on Racial Equality, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—all of which were powered by Black faith and faith communities.

In fact, within Brazilian Christianity, there was no recognition of Jesus’ North African/West Asian brown flesh. There was no recognition of the serial enslavement and colonization of his people. There was no recognition of the fact that not one word of the Bible was written by Europeans—not one word. And none of it written in the Enlightenment era—the era of Transatlantic slavocracy. No. Instead, Black people in Brazil were subsumed within the white Catholic Church—immersed in White imperial consciousness. As a result, uniquely liberative Black Christianity was never conceived in the land of Racial Democracy—until now.

Monday night, June 24. I joined the Black Consciousness Forum’s Leadership Council of IBAB Church. This vibrant ministry was established in the wake of Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-Black scourge. Filled with powerhouse Black leaders from across Sao Paulo the Black Consciousness Forum invited me to speak with them about the Thresholds of Black Consciousness. I shared from my own experience and from treasures offered within womanist thought. This community of Black Brazilian men and women whose ancestors survived the most heinous enslavement the world has ever seen—this beautiful collective whose families endured eugenics and favelas—this powerful band of Black faith-full was overcome with emotion as we read the words of Toni Morrison’s Baby Suggs Holy in her seminal book, Beloved.

To the community of Black flesh gathered in the sacred Clearing, Baby Suggs Holy, a formerly enslaved Auntie of sorts to the next generation of emancipated families, admonished them: “Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it.”

This beautiful community of Black faith gathered at IBAB had experienced the devaluing of their flesh, their work, their spirits, but on this night, the space became a Clearing and we sat in it—soaked in bountiful Blackness.

I experienced similar soaking with another newer evangelical church, Por Amor, which brought me to speak to its leadership—mostly Black, about how to decolonize our faith. And I experienced it when I spoke with an intimate group that gathered at Casa Sueli Carneiro, a hub of Black feminist theology; established in celebration of Dr. Sueli Carneiro, Brazil’s equivalent to our Angela Davis. And I experienced the Clearing when I spoke to hundreds gathered for the Enegrecer Conference, then sat and listened to scores of Black Brazilian theologians, pastors, and educators—all calling us to recenter ourselves in our own story.

Baby Suggs Holy concluded her Beloved exhortation with this command: “More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”

Dr. Jackson August, the leader of Brazil’s Black Evangelical Network (MNE), sat on the other side of my Zoom screen one week later. He explained the title of his conference, Enegrecer—to become Black. He shared the story of the recent swell of Black consciousness throughout Brazil—the celebration of natural hair styles, the rivers of people of African descent forsaking the other 37 racial designations on the Brazilian Census to claim “Black” as their identity in a subversive aggregation of political power, the active decolonization of Afro-Asiatic Jesus faith, and the rise of formal Black Protestant faith networks. As Dr. August shared the story, images of my time with Brazilians becoming Black washed over me. I saw Black roots embracing bedrock African identity, while Black branches waved unabashed arms in worship of a decolonizing Jesus. And it occurred to me: We are bearing witness to the birth of the Historic Black Church in Brazil right now. And it is beautiful.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Saturday, May 31, I served as a juror in the Philadelphia People’s Tribunal on War Crimes and Genocide in Gaza. For a full day, the diverse jurors— representing a cross-section of the city’s faith, business, academic, and non-profit leaders—considered evidence to discern if war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are taking place in Gaza. Lead Prosecutor King Downing presented live witness testimonies, as well as documentary and video evidence. On July 16, the Jury’s findings and recommended responses were released. Each juror was then asked to offer their own statement about the process and its findings. The following is my statement:

Yesterday, The New York Times published a brave and overdue essay, entitled “Never Again: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I know it When I See It,” by Dr. Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies at Brown University. Bartov grew up in a Zionist home, lived half his life in Israel, served in the IDF, and has spent his life studying genocide . He penned his declaration in The New York Times (an Israel supporting paper). He agrees with the ICC. He agrees with the ICJ. He agrees with Francesca Albanese (UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza). He agrees with us. Israel is committing genocide.

Bartov also issues the same warning that I sounded in October 2023. If Israel commits genocide with impunity, it will destroy the international legal order created to protect the Jewish people (and all others) from suffering the same fate—again. Over the past two years we have witnessed the shredding of the international legal order as Netanyahu has been permitted to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide with impunity. This impunity has effectively stymied our hard won international legal order. This impunity also laid the foundation for the shredding of the basic protections of our own Constitution that we are experiencing right now:

Freedom of speech

Freedom of religion

Freedom of the press

But yesterday, Dr. Bartov spoke out.

It seems the world is waking up.

Now, the question is what are we going to do about it?

In his “Question of German Guilt,” Karl Jasper identifies four types of guilt: political, criminal, moral and metaphysical guilt.

This People’s Tribunal identifies the criminal and political guilt of Netanyahu and our political leaders. But, we citizens of Philadelphia, citizens of the United States, citizens of the world must also engage the question of our own moral and metaphysical guilt. Unless we confess our own collective moral guilt of allowing our leaders to justify genocide and the metaphysical guilt of being citizens of the nation and state that supplied the weapons that have slaughtered at least 58,000 people, displaced 2.3 million, and is currently removing them from their land, we will languish in an authoritarian dystopia forever.

The question now is will we all own our responsibility? And will we repent and repair what our actions and our inaction has wrought in the world.

Download the full Jury Report and Findings here.

For more information on the Philadelphia People’s Tribunal check out this article by Emily Neil of WHYY (NPR Philly).

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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On June 22, I preached the sermon for the 11am service of Igreja Batista de Agua Branca church (IBAB) in São Paulo, Brazil. IBAB is the largest single church in South America—planted by Southern Baptists. There is history here.

Did you know that many confederate soldiers fled south to São Paulo after losing the Civil War? Brazil was one of the last bastions of slavocracy on the planet. By immigrating there they could continue their slaveholding way of life. So, Southern Baptist missionaries began planting churches in São Paulo in 1881. As a result, the majority of protestant churches in Brazil today have Southern Baptist roots.

I spoke at IBAB before, in November 2018, just before Bolsonaro came to power. At that time, the senior pastor, Ed Rene Kivitz, had invited me to speak on a weeknight about my book, The Very Good Gospel. About 100 people showed up in IBAB’s massive auditorium, which seats 2000. With the help of dynamic Brazilian leader and translator, Roseni Welmerink, I delivered a message on God’s call to become shalom-builders.

The audience was moved and provoked. But, I was struck by the conundrum commonly held by pastors of churches as large as some cities: How do they faithfully shepherd their flock toward the peaceable Kingdom of God in a way that doesn’t cause the flock to scatter before they get there? More to the point, how do pastors call their people to protect and cultivate the image of God in all through just public policy when some parishioners are committed to white and western supremacy? These questions cause pastors to freeze and say nothing at exactly the times when the image of God is most threatened in the world.

The number one reason white evangelical pastors tell me that they are afraid to speak up in critical moments is that they fear the power of money–losing it. They are afraid that rich tithers will punish them by leaving their churches. But, Jesus is clear: “No servant can serve two masters…You cannot serve both God and wealth.” (Luke 16:13, NASB)

But is fear of losing money really the reason? Or is there a deeper issue?

A while back, I met my pastor, who was also a friend, for coffee at a local hangout. I wanted to explain to him why I was choosing to leave his fast-growing evangelical church. The church was known for being “multi-ethnic” and justice-minded. But, when Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, was declared not guilty on a Sunday. The following Sunday, Black congregations across the U.S. stood in solidarity with Trayvon and Black men by wearing hoodies to church. But I was the only one wearing a hoodie in my majority white “multi-ethnic” church that day. No one mentioned the political reality that Stand Your Ground laws had proliferated the U.S. and effectively legalized the murder of innocent Black people for the first time since before passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. No one mentioned the trauma the Black community was going through or even stopped to pray for our nation. I sat in a sea of white people worshipping to Hillsong-ish music. They loved the sermon, which focused on how to succeed at work–or something like that. I left that service feeling utterly alone.

Over coffee, my pastor and friend explained to me that he had to be careful about what he speaks out on because there are people in the congregation with different politics.

“They aren’t ready for that conversation,” he said.

“But why are they not ready,” I asked? “They are not ready, because you have not led them.”

I shared that this primary and guiding question betrays a stark reality: His circle of concern was drawn narrowly around the conservative white men and women in his congregation. It did not include me–or anyone like me. I and those like me were being sacrificed on the altar of “but these white people aren’t ready.”

I’m not so sure this is an issue of love of money. I think rather the core issue is that silent pastors are not devoted to those Jesus called “the least of these”--not enough. They lack proximity. As a result, they have no relationship, little empathy, and ultimately no solidarity. This is not true for pastors of churches full of the ones Howard Thurman said live with their backs up against the wall. For pastors of churches full of targeted peoples the call to justice is not theoretical. It is not debateable. It is core to their call to shepherd, because they must engage the lived realities of the targeted ones in their congregations.

This is a great conundrum, indeed. Not only does the silence of these pastors reveal a lack of Christian compassion, but Jesus says: “I am the least of these.” To lack proximity to the immigrant, is to lack proximity to Jesus. To lack empathy for the hungry is to lack empathy for Jesus. To lack solidarity with the thirsty, the sick, the imprisoned, or the destitute is to lack solidarity with Jesus, who was God incarnate. To lack proximity to the least of these is to lack proximity to God.

In 2018, Bolsonaro had just been elected, but had not yet been sworn in. He entered office in January 2019. Immediately, Bolsonaro targeted Black, indigenous, and LGBTQ+ people and he aimed to exploit the Amazon rainforest–drastically reducing the primary source of oxygen for planet earth.

Reflecting on The Very Good Gospel’s call to be reconciled to all humanity and all creation, Pastor Ed Kivitz condemned Bolsonaro’s politics from the pulpit.

Predictably, IBAB lost many of its top tithers.

But, Pastor Ed did not relent. He kept preaching The Very Good Gospel’s call to build shalom on earth as it is in heaven! His words reached the ears of many targeted Brazilians who found their way to IBAB and made the community their own spiritual home. To date, IBAB has gained as many parishioners as it lost.

Flash forward to June 22, 2025. Bolsonaro is no longer in office, but Brazil is in a fragile state similar to that of the U.S. toward the end of the Biden era. Fueled by confederate faith, the nation is vulnerable to the backlash of a second authoritarian takeover.

The pastors of IBAB invited South African peacebuilder, Rev. Rene August to offer the sermon in the 9am service and asked me to share the message of the Very Good Gospel for the 11am service. Again, Roseni Welmerink joined me as a skilled translator and I preached before thousands on the “Four Words That Change Everything.” (You can watch the full video above.) It was holy ground.

Over the next week, I met with IBAB’s leaders, its Black Consciousness Forum, and conducted an all-day training on “How to be an Anti-racist” for the Conversas Pastorais program of Instituto Galilea.

IBAB’s leaders and its community of partners are fired up!!

And so am I.

I witnessed with my own eyes what is possible when the church determines to dethrone the power of whiteness and embrace The Very Good Gospel.

This is especially salient for us in the U.S. right now.

Days after I returned from Brazil, Republicans took a machete to those Jesus called “the least of these” (and the middle class too).The enabling silence of white (and whiteness-allied) churches across the U.S., especially megachurches, will result in the desecration of the image of God among us through unnecessary hunger, sickness, impoverishment and death over the next four years. Actual faith in God chooses the ways of God, even unto the cross. Strategic silence coddled money and sold the Gospel down river.

Please pray for Pastor Ed, the rising Senior Pastor Kenner Terra, the leader of IBAB’s Black Consciousness Forum, Pastor José Malua, and the executive director of Instituto Galilea, Fernanda Kivitz. And pray for the church leadership team, and for our translator, Roseni, and the folks at Editora Recriar, the publishing house that translated The Very Good Gospel and Fortune into Portuguese. Their translation work is extending the reach of this restorative message.

And pray for us all that we would finally resolve to dethrone whiteness and walk with Jesus on the road to Freedom.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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We no longer have a federal department running education in the U.S. It went poof—overnight, last week.

I still don’t know how to feel.

I don’t mean I don’t know what to feel. On an existential level I feel rage. But it is an out-of- body kind of rage. It’s the primal scream taking place in the parallel universe next to my placid personage, which stares straight ahead, in survival mode, as word trickles down of Social Security already hobbled and presidential Cabinet members planning wars on Signal.

Surviving. That feels like the goal right now. Survival of the self seems like the most important thing right now. If the self doesn’t survive then the cause will be lost tomorrow.

Survive.

I’m reminded of a climactic scene in the film, The Last of the Mohicans. Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Louis), a white man who was taken in and raised by the last Mohican, Chingachgook, sees that their Huron enemies are encroaching. He is trapped under the lip of a crashing waterfall with love interest Cora (Madelyn Stowe), her innocent-as-a-dove sister Alice (Jodhi May), Chingachgook (Russell Means) and his son Uncas (Eric Schweig). Their only escape is to jump into the screaming waterfall, which drops to a river hundreds of yards below. But the women could never survive the jump; encumbered by their 18^th century frocks. So, Hawkeye commands Cora to do one thing: “Stay Alive! No matter what it takes! Just stay alive! I will find you.”

I can imagine how Cora felt beneath that waterfall watching the enemy’s torch-light round the bend. I feel that impending sense of doom now as we watch Trump’s illegal executive orders overwhelm this nation with the putrid stench of bile-packed backwash. He is killing everything.

But the death of everything has not registered, yet. We’ve only heard word of lockouts, firings, and defunding. We haven’t had the benefit of a funeral where we face the dead bodies lying all around us. It all lives on in our collective US imagination of a past that has passed. Like the phantom limb, it feels like it’s there, but it is not. When we try to move our hand, it feels like we have a hand, but the hacked limb sits on the soil at our feet—motionless. We feel nothing, because we are in shock. Shock wears off. Then comes the pain.

What kind of pain will we feel when we come out of collective shock? I hear phantom future shrieks and moans rising from under-resourced communities across the country. I see the lifeless listlessness of humans trying to carry on daily routines without enough clean water or food or clean air. Like a veteran who goes to pick up his backpack and finds he has no arms, I feel the impotence of school administrators who must fire teachers in schools already packed 50 students per classroom. And I feel teachers’ challenge as they try to prepare unresourced students to navigate the world. Gone are the debates over mandatory federal tests—there will be no federal standards at all. I hear the weeping of disabled grandfathers and grandmothers who lose their homes because they could not access the Social Security they invested in for 60, 70, 80 years. I taste the potato soup and Wonder Bread served to record-long lines of people trotted over by billionaires who cut their jobs to flex their power one Friday night in March 2025.

Our souls’ duty now is to stay alive. God will find us—in time to survive and eventually thrive.

How did we stay alive in the days of White Citizens Councils and Segregation? How did we stay alive in days of our nation’s great depression? How did we survive the days of mass lynchings once Reconstruction came crashing down? Here’s how. We pooled our personal dollars and built one room school houses that gave us the education we needed to send future freedom fighters to Howard, Spelman, Morehouse, and Harvard. We formed community cooperatives that made sure every neighbor had access to food. We lived three generations, per home. We did it to survive.

Something beautiful grew from that soil that felt like slop: We learned we were not alone. And this was not the first time we survived terror. The old-timers seeded their stories of resistance, subversion, and protest into young’uns souls. And in those moments of sacred exchange, they planted the wisdom that shaped a flourishing future.

In these shocking days, reach out. Now is the time. Survive—together.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

Connect

Freedom Road Instagram | Facebook | Threads | Website | Patreon | Podcast

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The following is the text of a speech offered to a crowd of nearly 1000 diverse Philadelphians who came together to demand the release of legal resident and Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, from detention and possible deportation.

Good evening beloveds!

My name is Lisa Sharon Harper. I’m the president and founder of FreedomRoad.us—a consulting group dedicated to shrinking the narrative gap in the U.S. and in the church.

I joined today’s rally because dissent is sacred.

All humanity is made in the image of God. As such, all of us are created with the divine call and capacity to exercise agency, choice, stewardship and protection of the world.

Authoritarian governments limit, kill or corrupt this capacity in their subjects. They suppress the vote. They kill the vote. Or corrupt the vote.

Democracies guarantee and protect citizens’ right to vote. This right is the most basic form of agency in a system of governance: The vote is voice. Voice is agency. Agency is our divine call, according to the first page of the Bible. To be human is to be called and created with the capacity to shape and serve the world.

This is why democracy matters.

Voice matters!

Agency matters!

If they take away our ability to raise our voices then they are squashing the human spirit!

The founders and reformers of our nation knew this!

That is why they established the VERY FIRST AMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution!

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.“

I think of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident of the U.S., locked behind bars in a jail in the deep south—under threat of deportation. Why? Because he used his voice to declare that: He and his people, are created in the image of God and therefore worthy of equal protection of international law. Because he said, “No!” to genocide!

Mahmoud has the right to dissent!

Mahmoud has the right to dissent! ((crowd echoed))

Mahmoud has the right to dissent! ((crowd echoed))

Mahmoud has the right to dissent! ((crowd echoed))

Because dissent is sacred!

Say it with me: Dissent is sacred! ((crowd echoed))

Dissent is sacred! ((crowd echoed))

Dissent is sacred! ((crowd echoed))

If this regime snatches Mahmoud’s right to dissent, then they will have taken a hatchet to the first amendment of our Constitution!

Freedom of Religion is at stake!

Freedom of the Press is at stake!

Freedom of conscience is at stake!

Freedom to assemble is at stake!

And ultimately the human spirit is at stake!

Now, how do we fight?

Authoritarianism aims to fragment society by making us so afraid we scatter and hide! Do not fear!

As the Psalmist says: What can they do to us?

Where can we go from the spirit of God?

They can take us to the depths and God is there.

They can lock us behind bars and God is there.

They can ship us to the farthest country and God is there.

They can unalive us and God is still there!

So, what can they do to us? No-thing! Nothing!

So, let us exercise sacred dissent by joining hands – and refusing to let go!

Let us exercise sacred dissent by showing up for each other!

We will exercise sacred dissent by sharing our burdens and our triumphs with each other!

We push back against authoritarianism by sharing our stories with each other—and becoming a part of each other’s stories.

It’s hard to fragment people who know each other, trust each other, and are committed to each other.

In that spirit, on Freedom Road, we are committed to freedom for the people of Palestine and true peace in the region. We have partnered with Prayers for Peace, Fridays at Fettermans, Red Letter Christians, and the Fellowship of Women Clergy to bring Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac to Philadelphia in TWO WEEKS! On Monday, March 31, 7-9pm, join us in conversation with Dr. Isaac and Professor Noura Erakat about his new book, Christ in the Rubble!

Hold firm, beloveds. Grab the hand of your neighbor and repeat after me—a chant I learned in Ferguson.

It comes from the great revolutionary, Assata Shakur:

”It is our duty to fight for our freedom! ((crowd echoed))

It is our duty to win! ((crowd echoed))

We must love and support one another! ((crowd echoed))

We have nothing to lose but our chains!” ((crowd echoed))

Amen.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

Connect

Freedom Road Instagram | Facebook | Threads | Website | Patreon | Podcast

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What does Donald Trump’s proclamation about the U.S. “owning” Gaza have to do with Christian Zionism? Here’s what.

Dr. Mitri Raheb, Palestinian Christian Theologian and President of Dar Al Kalima University on the West Bank, called the world’s top scholars focused on Christian Zionism and dozens of global influencers to Amman, Jordan in late January to discuss the impact of Christian Zionism on Christians in the Middle East. Sixty renowned Christian theologians, ethicists, cartographers, economists, political scientists, pastors and social influencers spent four days on the banks of The Dead Sea, near the site where Jesus was baptized, presenting Christian Zionism and its impacts as they see them.

A rudimentary version of Christian Zionism was seeded into my early evangelical discipleship. I sang Larry Norman’s 1969 song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” at full voice with my youth group. I watched the 1972 cult classic Christian horror film A Thief in the Night with the same youth group, then came home and never looked at my father’s electric razor sitting on the bathroom sink the same again. And of course, I devoured the Frank Perretti book series, This Present Darkness (1986) and Piercing the Darkness (1989). It absolutely shaped my understanding of the supernatural holy war being waged in the heavenly realms. All these influences seeded a terrifying belief-system with Jesus’s second coming at its center—a revelatory and brutal return characterized by vengeful torture and death to those who did not bow the knee to Jesus when they had the chance. Never mind that Jesus’s own proclamation of his ethics, The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), runs diametrically opposed to the Zionist warlord of fantasy fiction’s Christendom. Blessed are the meek, and Blessed are the peacemakers, and Blessed are the persecuted, after all.

In this stream of Christian Zionism, the return of all Jews to Israel precedes the second coming of warlord Jesus. According to the story, every Jew will eventually bow to Jesus, acknowledging him as Messiah. Those who continue to refuse will be cast to hell—aka executed—while Evangelicals and/or Pentecostals (depending on who is telling the story) reign with Jesus in his kingdom for the next 1000 years.

So, here are five things I learned about Christian Zionism from the intellectual feast of our four days on the Dead Sea:

1. Christian Zionism is a 400-year-old Western European project. Dr. Robert Smith places its origins in 1646 Europe—not the 33 AD mouth of Jesus, nor in the biblical texts. Christian Zionism is fundamentally a political ideology, not a religious belief; designed to empower and justify colonial and imperial conquest. Think: Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and the creation of the modern State of Israel. They all come from the same source—Christian Zionist belief systems.

2. The story of Christian Zionism is the pervasive myth taught explicitly and implicitly in Evangelical, Historic Protestant, and Catholic churches across the globe. Evangelical New Testament scholar, Dr. Gary Burge, explained Christian Zionism is a political mythology, not a religious belief system. Dr. Timo R. Stewart (Finland), explained the ways the political myth had been protected and entrenched by “gatekeepers of knowledge” who, he demonstrated, had erased whole people groups and geographic regions from maps when their presence didn’t serve the Zionist myth. Thus, in the end, the Christian Zionist story has largely gone unquestioned and unchallenged within most of the Christian church.

3. Christian Zionism is heresy. Dr. Munther Isaac reminded us that Jesus tells us we will know a tree by its fruit. The fruit of Christian Zionism has been genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavocracy, and crimes against humanity. The ideology denigrates the scripture by proof-texting portions and ignoring others to justify all manner of evil. Ultimately, Christian Zionism erases or twists the Genesis 1 doctrine of the Image of God.

4. Christian Zionism is an ideology of control—at war with God for Supremacy. In my presentation, I proposed that Christian Zionism seeks to control God; holding God to a western view of the world and controlling God’s image for the exclusive benefit of western interests. Christian Zionism, therefore, represents a direct attack upon the supremacy of God on earth. For the ancients, the image of the sovereign served as a marker of where the sovereign ruled. The health and abundance of the sovereign’s image on coins or statues indicated the health of the kingdom. Shattered or toppled images of the king indicated a challenge to the king’s sovereignty. In like manner, the image of God in all humanity is meant to serve as a marker of where God rules in Genesis chapter one. I posed this question for the group’s consideration: What if God interprets governance that crushes, binds, or erases God’s image from earth—through genocide, ethnic cleansing, famine, and other crimes against humanity—as a declaration of war against God’s kingdom on earth?

5. Christian Zionism is not only white supremacist. It also dominates women. Aja Martinez and Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon presented separately on the various ways Zionist ideologies lead to particular challenges for women oppressed under its rule. It has led to the justification of rape as a weapon of war, as well as the daily subjugation of women under its rule.

I concluded my presentation with a Womanist reflection on Mary’s Magnificat. This young brown girl gave birth to Jesus in the shadow of supremacist Roman imperial rule. Rome had pushed itself to the center of its story. Mary and her people were simply objects in Rome’s story. Today we look to Gaza and the West Bank, and find Palestinian people living on the same land where Mary walked then. They are considered mere objects in Netanyahu’s (and now Trump’s) story. They can be moved, erased, crushed, displaced—all for the sake of the subject, Israel’s or the U.S.’s interest.

But in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, Mary engaged in a womanist practice—Radical Subjectivity. She sang herself to the center of her own story! She proclaimed to time immemorial: He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. She proclaimed God saw her and called her favored—though Rome called her an object. She proclaimed God was committed to her flourishing in the face of Roman exploitation.

So, it has been one week since I returned from Jordan. In that time, the world has born witness to the objectification of Black people, Poor people, Venezuelan people, children, seniors, veterans, and the Palestinian people. You want to know what Donald Trump’s declaration about Gaza has to do with Christian Zionism? Here it is: the White male rulers of the U.S.—largely evangelical—have effectively furthered the Christian Zionist myth on Palestinian soil, asserting their manifest destiny to rule over holy land.

But, I am heartened today. I am remembering Mary’s faith. In the face of Caesar’s despotic rule, Brown Mary said: God is God. You are not. I say the same: God is God. And God will not be mocked.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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Last night the Grammys recognized the prophetic power and divine artistry of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and I am here for it!!!

Beyoncé won best Country Album and 2025 Album of the Year! I can’t read the minds of Grammy voters, but here is a word on why I believe the universe bent toward justice last night.

With her groundbreaking album, “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé performed a profound act of truth-telling and repair. I once browsed through a seminary bookstore and stumbled across a book entitled, Country Music: The Soul of White Folk. This is deeply problematic because Country Music is a creole creation. Born of African instruments and artistry, English ballads, Irish rhythms, Spanish harmonies—all against the backdrop of Indigenous resistance. Country Music was birthed in the wilderness of America’s creation.

In the foggy hills of North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains, self-emancipated Africans encountered disenfranchised former indentured servants and shared music. In Carter’s context, on the frontier of American expansion in Louisiana and Texas, African-American, English, Irish, Spanish and Indigenous were all present. They were there, shaping embodied Country experience and culture.

To be deemed Country, the music must do three things—and only three things:

1. Tell a story

2. Use acoustic instruments (and/or electric guitar)

3. Use simple melodies, usually built around 3 chords

This is the truth erased by the mythology of Country’s whiteness. To be sung by or for white people is not a requirement.

With “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé performed a divine restructuring of Country Music. She moved Whiteness from the center and replaced it with actual European cultures (English, Irish, Spanish), mostly maintaining the core ingredients of Country music. Then she placed those European cultural influences in a larger conversation with African and African American cultures—all of which were present in the wilderness of Country’s birth.

To listen to “Cowboy Carter” is to imagine the West without whiteness centered. It is to imagine an America where all voices are equal around the circle.

To insist that “Cowboy Carter” is not a Country album—as the Country Music Awards did when its judges failed to include Beyoncé’s genius in a single nomination—is to attempt to protect and maintain the myth of whiteness and its supremacy.

Congratulations, Beyoncé.

And “Thank you.”

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

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By now you’ve heard the news that after 15 months and at least 46,000 dead the U.S. has brokered a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, in collaboration with Qatar. You’ve likely heard the deal will take place in three phases.

* Phase 1: Hostages on both sides released over 6 weeks, Humanitarian aid in, and people can return to their regions.

* Phase 2: Is less clear, but would involve negotiations toward a permanent ceasefire and rebuilding plan.

* Phase 3: would work toward a peaceful shared future in the region.

When I heard the news yesterday, my first response was to thank God—the God who intervenes and cuts the darkness (Gen. 1)

My second response was more sober. Understanding the fragility of any measure of peace in the region, combined with the incoming U.S. administration, I sat still—frozen—unable to allow myself to trust it.

Overnight, we were reminded just how fragile this peace is when hardliners within Israel’s government successfully stalled a necessary vote on the measure.

Biden’s administration says the hostage releases will begin on Sunday, regardless.

In all of this here is what I know: There are Palestinian and Israeli families who suddenly have hope they will see their loved ones again (dead or alive).

There are 2.3 million displaced people who deserve to be able to return to what’s left of their homes and bury their dead.

There are hundreds of thousands who will need medical and psychological care to find health.

Cessation of bullets flying is NOT peace. The Palestinian people are human beings. As such, they have the right to live and thrive and shape their own futures. And beyond rights, the Palestinian people have the divine call of God—as human beings—to flourish. Anyone and any government that hinders that divine call must ultimately contend against God.

So, I lift prayers today—knowing this deal is a first step among many.

Here—in the space between aspiration and hope and often devastating reality—we call on God to raise up peace and justice builders and protect them.

Amen.

The Narrative Gap, as coined by Lisa Sharon Harper, is the distance between the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, including how we got here and what it will take to make things right. In our world today, competing narratives vie for our loyalty, dividing society and the church, therefore making justice impossible. Our mission is help communities shrink the narrative gap, by identifying core issues and building community capacity so they might work toward common solutions for a just world. Here on the Freedom Road Substack, we can converse together on ways to shrink that narrative gap and help ensure everyones’ stories are told.

Connect

Freedom Road Instagram | Facebook | Threads | Website | Patreon | Podcast

Subscribe now