November on Freedom Road
Human Hierarchies of Belonging Broke America
“The fastest and surest way to limit or crush human flourishing is through oppression or poverty. Human hierarchies of belonging are the precursor to both. They are the source of shattered societies and broken people groups and economic disparity. They are antithetical to faithful protection of the image of God on earth…. Human hierarchies of belonging broke America to the bone through the establishment of inequitable dominion–disparate capacities to exercise agency and impact the world. Therefore the process of repair matters as much as the intent and the amount of restitution. The process must recognize, engage, and submit to the agency of the broken ones. These broken ones must determine the requirements of their own flourishing.” —Lisa Sharon Harper, Fortune, pp. 199 and 200
In this Newsletter
Lisa’s latest trip to Palestine
Globlal Writers’ Group Annual Showcase
On the Freedom Road Substack
On the Freedom Road Podcast
Build a Better World
Subscribers Calls
Global Writers Group
Fly
Lisa’s Latest Trip to Palestine
I just returned home from a weeklong solidarity pilgrimage through Israel and Palestine. I committed to hold all posts until I returned home for security reasons. I’m back in the states now. So, here is my first reflection.
This observation deck sits about one mile from the northern Gaza border; the area experiencing a genocide within a genocide right now. The kibbutz of Sderot was directly impacted by the Hamas attack on October 7. The deck stands as a memorial to the members of their town who were killed or taken hostage that day.
In silence, our group climbed the steep hill to the deck. Facing Gaza an iron monument rose from the concrete with Hebrew words carved across its face. To the left of the monument, an Israeli flag waved in the wind alongside two other flags.
Between the flags and the monument smoke plumes rose from Gaza. For those who wanted a closer look the deck provided binoculars —the kind that sit atop the Empire State Building. For only a few shekels one could see if they could see people running or dying in the distance.
But mostly it was distant, sterile—a convenient backdrop to ethno-nationalist indoctrination.
Young Israeli kids on a school trip joined us on the platform. One young man pumped his fist in the air, mimicking Arsenio Hall, as he celebrated the smoke rising from the genocide. Another boy flipped his middle finger to Gaza as he joined his friends.
I walked past the kids to the edge of the platform—as close as I could get to the journalist @wizard_bisan1 who I’ve been following for more than a year. It felt surreal to be so close and yet feel so distant from the slaughter of the innocents happening below.
So, I lifted my arms to the sky, palms facing Gaza. I closed my eyes and sent prayers to the fathers hunting for their children under fresh rubble. I projected my solidarity across the electrified fence to the mothers and children trudging south. To the barely alive dying between concrete slabs. To the doctors and humanitarian workers languishing in concentration camps—torture camps.
With arms lifted to the sky, my body bore witness to the distant death of Palestinian bodies.
And I wept.
Global Writers’ Group Annual Showcase
Join the writers of the Freedom Road Global Writers’ Group for our annual showcase as we explore what resilience looks like together.
On the Freedom Road Substack
On the Freedom Road Podcast
The Gaza Call
Dear Fellow Disciples of Jesus,
We are a community of Christians from around the world who are writing to you with heavy hearts. From our countries, we are watching with horror as a crisis has unfolded in Palestine/Israel. Since October 7, 2023, 1,139 Israeli Jews and more than 37,000 Palestinian Gazans have been killed. In the West Bank, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including many women and children. We condemn all of it. And yet, we see again and again how Christian leaders, theologians, institutions, and churches around the world have not only failed to call out their governments, which support Israel’s military, but also have been incapable of calling Israel out for what is clearly the utter devastation of Gaza and the dramatic loss of life there. Followers of Jesus in Palestine, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice have identified Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank as ethnic cleansing and a plausible genocide. The Pope named Israel’s assault on Gaza as “terrorism.” We are appealing to you, imploring you to ask how God sees this litany of destruction and death, and what Christ requires of you…
Read the rest and add your name to the open letter here!
Build a Better World: A Learning Community from Freedom Road
Have you read one of Lisa Sharon Harper’s books? Or one of the books from our Global Writers’ Group authors? Have you been a part of one of Freedom Road’s Webinars either live or purchased one on demand? We have just launched a learning community on Facebook for anyone who wants to chat with like-minded people about the material they’ve been reading or watching.
Join us today and we will grow together to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly into a better world!
Join the Facebook Group
To make things easier in these difficult times where everything seems to be more expensive, we have lowered our individual pricing on all our courses to make them accessible to more people. And don’t forget there’s a couple of free offerings to get you started as well! Check out our institute page and the course archive now.
Rather read a book? Check out The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can be Made Right or Fortune: How Race Broke my Family and the World… and How to Repair it All both by Lisa Sharon Harper.
Or check out the list of books written in our Global Writers’ Group here.
Fly
Download Fly now on Apple or Amazon Music or stream on Spotify and take it with you wherever you go!
Global Writer’s Group
Since April of 2020 as the world closed down, the Global Writer’s Group has been meeting via zoom every Saturday, with time off only for Christmas and New Years. Early in our time together, Lisa Sharon Harper charged the group with the task of “writing a new world into existence” and over time we have truly seen this in action. We have taken on the task of changing the world, and of course what changed first was ourselves. We as a group have become better writers over this time, but also better people, finding true community in the sacred sharing of ourselves with each other and the world.
We accept members on a rolling basis: it’s never too late to join the community. Prepare to find your life changed for the better as you sharpen your writing skills and prepare to bring your words to the world.
Collectively, we have published six books, have several writers who’ve recently become agented and/or are under contract for upcoming books, and many, many journal articles over the past three years with several more books in the works.
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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