Mitri Raheb’s latest book forces me to re-appraise my own Christian assumptions from the ground up, not just about Palestine and the most recent escalation of a longstanding practice of settler colonialism, but about my own complicity in settler colonialism here at home, and the ways all of that complicity and blindness is intrinsically related to how I’ve read the Bible and believed as a Christian.
Tens of thousands of Marshallese live in diaspora in the United States. Our own church has discovered that sharing space with our Marshallese neighbors has helped us grow spiritually while providing safe space for a displaced people.
Inasmuch as Christians are a “people of the book,” we need to ask ourselves how being “people of the Internet” can still be an intellectual and spiritual practice that forms us in productive ways.
Ringing in the New Year offers an opportunity for new perspectives. There is the look back and the look forward, a combination of life review and life planning. How can or should we make use of this inflection point in light of Christian faith?
My congregation will begin reading from the NRSVue at the beginning of the new church year, the first Sunday of Advent. I am looking forward to continuing the journey with them with this “update.”