September on Freedom Road
We see what God considers to be good... It is our radical, interdependent connectedness.
Connectedness
We see what God considers to be good. It is not our perfection. It is our capacity to love God, love ourselves, love others, love the rest of creation, and love through our governance. It is our radical, interdependent connectedness. —Lisa Sharon Harper, Fortune, P. 84
Available wherever books are sold
Hurricane Helene Relief
Nothing reminds us of how much we need each other than when disaster strikes. Hurricane Helene has brought category four winds to Florida and Georgia, and then devastating rainfall to western North Carolina, east Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, and eastern Kentucky, hitting rural mountain areas already economically depressed and overlooked. The river levels of the Nolichucky in east Tennessee and the Swannanoa in western North Carolina reached levels not seen over 200 years, or ever in one case. Appalachia needs our help. This is evidence of the ongoing climate crisis: we need to help in the immediate sense with relief and aid to this region, and in the long term by voting for candidates who take the climate crisis, infrastructure, and disaster relief seriously and will actually help.
Episcopal Relief and Development
In this Newsletter
Lisa Sharon Harper at the Seattle School
Heretic Happy Hour: How to be Anti-Racist
Nevertheless She Preached
On the Freedom Road Substack
The Gaza Call
Truth Listening Webinar now available
On the Freedom Road Podcast
Build a Better World
Subscribers Calls
Global Writers Group
Fly
Lisa Sharon Harper at the Seattle School
From Lisa’s Instagram: As Israel extended its colonial death march into Lebanon yesterday, we had a powerful night @theseattleschool considering “Gaza and the Kin-dom of God”. I shared a 50 min lecture that brings together my intersectional thinking on Gaza over the past year (theology, history, international law, and Christian ethics).
Following the lecture, I engaged in deep, vulnerable conversation with Dr. Dwight Friesen @orthoparadoxy and Dr. Paul Hoard. I’m still holding some of the pearls dropped in this dialogue, which seemed to take place in tender liminal space.
I was blown away by the depth of the conversation following the event. One couple on their first date happened to wander in. The young man shared that he came in discouraged by the church and agnostic about God. This conversation gave him reason to consider Jesus again. A young Palestinian man shared a list of reasons he was grateful for my talk and the conversation that followed. He said he’d never heard the history articulated so comprehensively and yet so succinctly by a Christian leader. And I was deeply blessed by a woman who follows our work here on IG. She shared vulnerably about her struggles with faith and hope. We talked about the source of hope—action and connection. Connect and engage in small ways each day.
The Seattle School will post the video of the event. I highly recommend clicking in and watching the whole discussion when it drops.
In the meantime, I want to say “Thank you” to President and Provost, Dr. J. Derek McNeil @j.mcneil.9 for inviting me to speak on this tender, brutal and critical subject. And “Thank you” to Crystal Silva-McCormick for your warm hospitality. 🙏🏽
Lisa Sharon Harper on Heretic Happy Hour: How to be Anti-Racist
Nevertheless She Preached
On the Freedom Road Substack
A Confession of Evangelical Conviction
Lisa Sharon Harper is a proud initial signatory of this Confession of Christian Convictions on how we are to engage the political arena as evangelicals.
On the Freedom Road Podcast
Election Thoughts
Don’t miss Lisa’s ongoing takes and information on the upcoming election on her instagram.
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.
2024 Subscribers’ Calls
Every quarter, Lisa sits down with our subscribers and patrons and chats about different things going on in the world.
If you are a paid subscriber to Substack or a Patreon patron at the James Farmer level or above, you are invited to participate in a quarterly call with Lisa Sharon Harper.
If you aren’t a subscriber or Patron, upgrade your subscription today, or join our Patreon!
Mark your calendars now, and you’ll get an email prompting you to register closer to the each date:
November 14, 2024 at 8pm Eastern
Fly
Download Fly now on Apple or Amazon Music or stream on Spotify and take it with you wherever you go!
There is a Truth That Can Heal Us...
In 2023, we released the video of the new anthem, “Fly (aka Fortune’s Song)” to the world, announcing that “there is a truth that can heal us if we let it.” We have been overwhelmed and astounded by the response to the song! The video has been shown in communities around the world to inspire people to lean into the call of truth-telling and repair. Peo…
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.
Connect
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