Quick update
I apologize for slacking off these last few weeks. Things at the Jubilee Baptist are really picking up. On Sunday we become official as we vote on our new bylaws, but more importantly, bring the church out. We’ll have the logo and website, but also what we’ll do (worship, gather, struggle, liberate), and why we’ll do it (love as if another world is possible). I’ve heard from several of you these last few weeks, and I really appreciate all the support.
I’ve also been doing more writing these last few weeks for bigger pieces so between the church and that, I haven’t had as much time to let my thoughts wander into the kind of stuff I use for this newsletter.
In case you missed it, I had a piece published at Sojourners last week. In it, I finally get to deliver the kind of blow to the books When Helping Hurts and Toxic Charity that I’d always wanted to. These books do not help. They contain bad ideas that Christians should avoid. And yet for about a decade they have been the standard for so many churches right, left, and center on how to think about poverty. You can read the piece here.
Yesterday I started writing a newsletter based on a facebook post I’d made about the book I have read for the last few weeks, Marxism and Christianity by Denys Turner. I realized about halfway through it might make for an interesting pitch so I sent it to an editor I’ve worked with and we’re going to work on it. The post read, “Reading Denys Turner on ideology has been really helpful. He's helped me see why hypocrisy arguments against the religious right won't work: capitalism forces us into routinized, institutional hypocrisy every day. We've all already accepted it in a myriad of ways. "You're a hypocrite!" "Yeah, well we all are. So what?" The religious right has used religious and theological language to create an ideology, a language that can help cover the system of class domination that forces us into the hypocrisies in the first place. We won't beat them by uncovering the hypocrisy, but by laying bare the system of class domination wherever we find its contradictions and presenting a clear alternative we will fight for.”
In addition to that I’m working on a book review of a very bad book with poorly written bad ideas and a longer essay on vocation and work that I’m very excited about.
Next week’s newsletter will be all about Jubilee Baptist. Here we go.