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.

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More from @KaitlynSchiess

4 Apr
Happy Easter!

Here's the ending to my favorite Dorothy Sayers essay, an appropriate exhortation for this morning:

“Let us, in heaven’s name, drag out the divine drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashing sentiment heaped upon it...
and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some kind of vigorous reaction.

If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much worse for the pious – others will pass into the kingdom of heaven before them.
If all men are offended because of Christ, let them be offended; but where is the sense of their being offended at something that is not Christ and is nothing like him? We do him singularly little honor by watering down his personality till it could not offend a fly.
Read 6 tweets
24 Jan
I heard a LOT about being willing to die for my faith in youth groups from many of the same people who are currently terrified of losing political or social power.

It’s a reminder for *all* of us that we might be cultivating a counterfeit courage instead of the real thing.
I don’t say that last part lightly. I spend a lot of time thinking about how any of us younger evangelicals will be able to find our own biases and blind spots before it’s too late.
This thought also brought to you by a week of reading various early Christian writings on non-violence, full of language and ideas that would be horrifying to many in our churches today.
Read 4 tweets
13 Feb 20
Someone was talking about fear in a class today, and they mentioned how much more fear there is when you get married and have kids, because you have more people relying upon you. And while there is no doubt something true in this, it bothered me. Here’s why:
Our isolating and elevating of the nuclear family has led to this kind of thinking, that the only people that should demand something of us are our nuclear family members. We don’t need to shoulder anyone else’s burdens or feel responsible for them.
The NT, however, speaks much more frequently and strongly about the church, the new family of God, than the nuclear family. We are responsible for one another and bound to each other in ways that transcend and relativize our commitment to our immediate family.
Read 10 tweets
12 Jan 20
There's something I've been noticing in some peers and definitely in myself: the idea that we should wait until we have influence/authority to say hard things.

But I'm increasingly convinced that many of us who think this is "wisdom" will end up with influence but no courage.
My friend @SHoddeMiller says in her book NICE that courage is a muscle you have to use in order to strengthen it. It takes practice. You don't become the leader who can act or speak courageously if you aren't practicing it before you have the position.
@SHoddeMiller There is certainly wisdom in building trust before you say something hard. But I fear that some of us are just afraid. We know what we should say or do and we keep telling ourselves that next time we'll have enough relationship or trust to do it. But we won't.
Read 5 tweets
10 Nov 17
I had a class on Men's Ministry today, and ya'll - I have some thoughts.

1. I'm tired of classes that rely on tired gender stereotypes for an easy laugh or simplistic analogy, instead of robust and nuanced analysis of gender differences.
Such as:
-Men don't care about frilly lady things like centerpieces. Maybe flower arrangements aren't your thing (they aren't mine), but the appreciation of beauty is something we should value, recognize, and cultivate in all people, not just women.
- Men are incompetent when it comes to cooking, emotions, or relationships. LOL look at these videos of men who can't change diapers or LOL insert joke about men forgetting the napkins for their breakfast meeting
Read 13 tweets

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