Thread by @KaitlynSchiess

A thought about the ways we celebrate a complicated past:

I was in a seminary class once, talking about how I didn’t love our “heritage week” every year because some of the people we honored wouldn’t have wanted me or any of my women or BIPOC classmates at the seminary.

My prof asked if I wanted to get rid of the week, and I said no, I wanted it to include the first women and BIPOC students and professors, the people who paved the way for the rest of us to be there. I wanted it to include graduates who were doing important work for change.

I didn’t want to get rid of the week because I am indebted to those men. I studied in buildings they built, with books they fundraised for, at an institution they created. But I’m more indebted to women who got rejection letters, fought to come, and braved those halls alone.

I heard @ahc say on an episode of @_PassTheMic once that he isn’t “proud” to be an American, but he is thankful. And he’s thankful for civil rights activists and faithful change makers as part of what it means to be American. That’s how I felt about the seminary and my country.

I’d rather celebrate a 4th of July that judges those early documents as *incredibly* rough drafts that generations of creative, courageous people improved upon. I’d rather, when I think about my country, think about her sins and faults AND those people who called her to account.

What a gift a truly Christian account of human communities could give to our nations: not only to celebrate the good and critique the bad, but to widen the bounds of who is celebrated, who “counts,” who deserves our respect and honor for the way they showed us our own sins.