We are stepping away from our series to bring you a couple special episodes of the Antioch Podcast, before returning to our series on the book of Acts.
Pursuing racial justice can be exhausting work. Many people have been feeling the strain in a more intense way since the shooting of Michael Brown (the anniversary of which just past a couple weeks ago), an event that in many ways signaled the beginning of what has become the second civil rights movement in the United States. For those of you who have been long-time listeners, this podcast started in part, to illuminate how the scriptural call for all Christians to do justice (including racial justice) is a mandatory way that Christianity is to be lived out individually – and systemically – in a world where churches and institutions are more often concerned with pursuing compositional diversity, as opposed to striving for racial justice.
This is long, slow, taxing work. It can be tiresome. If you pursue this long enough, you will want to give up at times. It is important that those who hear the call to seek Biblical Antiracism find ways to replenish our hearts, souls and minds so that we can continue in the long work of shaping our institutions to look more and more like the beloved community both in composition, and action – where we have policies and personal conviction to love our neighbors as ourselves, seek the welfare of the city, welcome the stranger etc.
In this episode, our team of antiracism educators and friends talk about how we find this kind of sustenance as we have a conversation about our personal self-care practices – developed through experience – as we pursue Biblical antiracism.