On August 6th, we held the first LIVE episode of the podcast over zoom with some old friends and new ones. We were joined by Meredith and Bridget as well as Darren Calhoun and Sarah Abbey, who are on the podcast for their first time. They came on to answer questions from a live audience and it was a very rich discussion. It was so good that we had to separate the conversation into two episodes.
A Note From Bridget: “In talking about colorism, I was trying to communicate the ways in which race gets erased from the conversation in many Latin American countries and how colorism plays into that equation, favoring lighter skin tones to darker. My wording wasn’t the best, however, and runs the risk of communicating that Black and Indigenous people don’t exist in Latin America. To clarify, Black and Indigenous people exist up and down Latin America! Their existence and experiences often get erased, however, and colorism often plays into that reality.”
Here is the link to the twitter thread mentioned by Sarah: https://twitter.com/thearmchaircom/status/1048060815780323330?s=12
I also used to think that the role of the church when it comes to social justice was to proclaim Jesus because it‘s all about getting saved and go to heaven. It’s interesting how the gospel message that is predominant in western evangelical churches, penal substitutionary atonement, plays into this. When we rediscover the original gospel message, which is the announcement of the good news that Jesus is king now and that he has defeated the evil forces to set us free so that we could become agents of new creation and to proclaim and demonstrate a new way of doing life which is not based on oppression but justice. Social justice is at the center of the good news of Jesus. It’s not a dangerous liberal idea after all.