As someone who has worked in the anti-trafficking advocacy space for a decade now, most people would be shocked to learn how unglamorous and mundane effective anti-trafficking work actually is. 1/2 Effective anti-trafficking work that creates lasting change isn’t an overnight thing.

It’s a patient, long obedience in the same direction kind of thing.

And if you’re really committed to justice for the most marginalized peoples, you’ll be okay with that. 2/2

“When we pursue diversity, we often get tokenism. But when we pursue justice, we get even more beautiful diversity.”

🔥🔥🔥

https://twitter.com/ZachWLambert/status/1638912554398535680

I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve entered majority white spaces because they said they wanted more diversity - only to realize that they didn’t really want me.

And in the end, they got neither.

When Jesus called loving God with all our heart, soul & mind, “The first and greatest commandment” and then said, “The second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself” - he wasn’t saying that the first was greater than the second.

He was putting both on an equal plane. Context is key here - the people & religious leaders of Israel, for centuries, had neglected the portion of the Law that taught them to love their neighbour - all while claiming to love God.

Jesus was challenging their assumptions by likening loving God to loving neighbour.

Dear Church Leaders:

If your reaction to asylum seekers fleeing violence is, “Absolutely not - we don’t have the infrastructure to let them in”, might I suggest that you might be in the wrong line of work?

Church leaders should think like church leaders; not government leaders. PS: I’m not saying that church leaders should not ask questions about infrastructure.

If anything - church leaders *should* ask questions to figure out how they can support government leaders in expanding infrastructure to support more asylum seekers trying to gain entry.

I find it fascinating that any church leader & Christian historian would rush to the defense of any slavemaster & opponent of abolition like this.

A 🧵:

https://twitter.com/RevKevDeYoung/status/1608090070354894848

DeYoung is representative of a large trend of white evangelical theologians & historians who show more adoration & empathy for slavemasters than for the people they enslaved.

This isn’t just dangerous. It’s un-Christian to its core and a mockery of Jesus’ Good News to the poor.

“The Rich Young Rulers of today aren’t just wealthy folks. It’s also pastors who have been divinely entrusted with privilege, social status & power but are unwilling to risk it when the demands of the Gospel conflict with deeply held political beliefs.”

joashpthomas.substack.com/p/todays-rich-… “The Rich Young Rulers of today aren’t just wealthy politicians or industrialists. It’s also pastors who have been divinely entrusted with privilege, social status & power but are unwilling to risk it by platforming teaching, ideas & vision coming from black & brown communities.”

A white 🇨🇦 Pastor sent me this screenshot of him signing up to be an @IJMCanada Freedom Partner (monthly donor) where he specifically mentions my work here as an influencing factor.

I have no words to share what this means to me. I’m used to having folks complain to my employer (usually my employer’s US affiliate) about my tweets - especially the ones on racial justice. I’ve developed a pretty thick skin on things like this because I’m not the only BIPOC this happens to.

But this just hits different. 😭

A few days ago, I tweeted that if slavery were still legal today, I think most Christian pastors & theologians in the west would still be for it.

I understand why this was offensive to some western pastors & theologians.

But here’s why I said what I said: 1) I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this because even though the Abolitionist movement was at its core a Christian innovation - up until the point that slavery was abolished in the US South, most US churches seemed to have been ok with it.

To whom it may concern:

1. You don’t need a Bible verse to tell you that slavery is wrong to know that slavery is wrong.

2. There have always been Christians opposed to slavery.

3. You can’t be anti-modern slavery & ok learning + teaching theology from slaveholding Christians. To whom it may concern:

If someone today wrote the most beautiful theology on Christology but also happened to be a trafficker, would you be ok with future generations of pastors + theologians quoting his theological works?

Is there really no one else they can learn from?

Did you know that the number of people in modern day slavery has gone from 40 million to 50 million over just the past 5 years?

The reasons for this: COVID, Conflict & Climate Change.

One of the ways we can combat this is by taking on forced labour slavery in our supply chains. Toronto friends:

If you’d like to learn more about this from experts, I’d love to see you at this event this Friday.
ijm.ca/unbound-path-c…

I recently had breakfast with the leader of one of Canada’s most conservative evangelical denominations.

I then had coffee that day with the Pastor of a large Canadian church planted by a US church.

I couldn’t help noticing some key differences between 🇺🇸 and 🇨🇦 evangelicalism: 1) The Canadian denominational leader, while conservative in his theology, needed zero persuasion on how justice connects with the Gospel. He got it 100%.

The US-planted church Pastor however seemed skeptical about seeking justice if it wasn’t explicitly done to save souls.

Imagine reading the Gospels and telling people in oppression that *Jesus* only cares about their souls and not their physical bodies + circumstances. Imagine reading Exodus and telling people that *God, the Father* only cares about their souls and not their physical bodies + oppression.

Four ways in which the Majority World Church is different from the US & Canadian Church (🧵):

1. Majority World Christians are much more politically liberal than North American Christians. This is because of their religious minority status and inherent distrust of capitalism. 2. Majority World Christians (apart from some imported traditions from the west) do not subscribe to a disembodied theology where the spiritual is elevated over the physical.

Naturally, justice & mercy are key elements of the Gospel as Jesus is seen to care for the whole person.

What if America is actually Egypt and not Israel?

What if America is indeed Babylon and not Jerusalem? Now imagine a US white evangelical Church that has (for the most part) never faithfully stood against Caesar / Cyrus / Pharaoh for peace & justice.

Shouldn’t they prioritize taking the log out of their own eye (cleaning house) over exporting their dangerous theologies?

I don’t think I’ve shared this here before but I used to be a pro-life lobbyist in the US.

My client was a state advocacy org that exclusively focused on creating the environment needed for human flourishing - specifically by making adoption + foster care easier.

1/4 Unfortunately, the client got radicalized by Trumpism and lost its way after I closed down my lobbying practice.

Still, it gave me a brief glimpse at a different kind of pro-life movement - a more empathetic, whole life & compassionate kind of pro-life advocacy.

2/4

Thread on the Bible, Justice & Star Wars. 🧵

A few years ago, Valentina & I were offered free tickets to watch Star Wars: Rogue One with friends. We’d never watched any Star Wars movies before this.

So naturally, the movie seemed great but we couldn’t make any sense of it. A few years later, we got free tickets to watch Star Wars: Episode 9 so we did that.

Again, great movie - still didn’t make much sense to us.

Then Disney+ came out and we decided to watch Star Wars in chronological order.

So we watched Solo and things made more sense.

Christianity is not a western faith.

So many folks here (including many black & brown folks) are ignorant of the rich Eastern Christian tradition and how many of our black & brown ancestors have been worshiping Jesus since many white folks’ ancestors were worshiping Thor.

1/5 My southern Indian family has been Christian for centuries now. Many of my grand-uncles date our family’s faith back to the Apostle Thomas’ work in Kerala in AD 52 but it could have also come from the Persian Church Diaspora to Kerala around AD 345 through Thomas of Cana.

2/5

To my male ministry leader friends who have started to think, “So many of these trauma victims are just looking for publicity”:

Can I encourage you to get out of your ‘bro bubble’ and to spend more time listening + learning from survivors (especially sisters & people of colour)? If you only spend time with other male leaders, you’re naturally bound to become less and less empathetic to voices on the margins.

Good shepherds will care for their hurt sheep way more than they care for the reputations of their shepherd’s guilds & fellow shepherds.

🧵 on calling out the unjust actions of Christians:

I try to refrain from calling out specific Christian individuals & institutions for unjust actions but every now and then, after weighing it heavily against my conscience, I will call out an institution to do better. 1/5 Will this always be warranted? Probably not. I am after all a human who falls short of the glory of God.

But is this an uncharitable / un-Christian act? Absolutely not.

In fact, advocacy via calling out institutions to do better (even if Christian) is profoundly Christian.

2/5

I appreciate my friend, @JonathanLeeman quoting me in this @9Marks piece. He raises valid concerns on unconscionably deconstructing orthodoxy while trying to critique white evangelicalism. Still, I have to respectfully push back on a few things. 🧵 9marks.org/article/editor… 1) It’s unfair & uncharitable to characterize brothers & sisters like @kkdumez, @JemarTisby & @bethallisonbarr who disagree on secondary + tertiary doctrines on race & gender as ‘leaders of the deconstructionist project’ - especially when they themselves don’t identify as such.

A #July4th Thread 🧵:

What to the Immigrant Christian is the 4th of July?

Allow me to share a few thoughts from the perspective of a Christian who also happens to be an immigrant; one also celebrating 10 years as an immigrant in the US. 1/13 I was born & raised in a loving Christian home in Mumbai, India. I grew up privileged & patriotic.

My privileged upbringing made it easier to love my birth country. I wanted to grow up and work for my country - either in armed services, civil services or the Indian Cricket Team.