LIBERATION LECTIONARY ~ NATIVE HERITAGE MONTH

“We exist, not as wholly singular, autonomous beings, nor completely merged, but in a fluctuating space in between…my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong together in a bundle of life.’” - Mia Birdsong, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

God’s Earth in The Exodus

Lesson

Remember last week we talked about how God made the earth? When God made the very first humans, our stories tell us that they were created from the earth. And God created all things on earth as connected with each other! All humans have a very special, important connection to each other and to the earth. One of the ways that we can study and remember that connection is to resist any idea or force that tells us we are not connected to one another, or to the earth. Look at how God’s two major acts at the end of creation were to ) command humans to care for earth, and 2) to rest from all the hard work of Creating! It is so strange and difficult to imagine that the book of Genesis and the books that follow are often used to destroy people and creation. From this story, we can perceive that God’s priorities are mutual care for creation and human flourishing. Anything that goes against these signature themes is not part of God’s story; even if people claim that their actions are for God’s glory.

Do you recall the story in the book of Exodus? The history of the Israelites’ bondage provided a relatable biblical narrative to the black population of the Civil War era. Some enslaved people created a common source of ethnic pride as they placed themselves into the Israelites’ biblical history, by relating it to their African heritage. The God of the Bible was on their side. God’s word said that Black people were not subhuman, as their oppressors would have them believe; they were God’s chosen people and

deserved a life free from torment. This divine truth allowed them to retain a sense of identity throughout hundreds of years of oppression under people who claimed to know God and the bible better than they did. 

In addition, identifying with the Israelites also provided the promise of eventual liberation from slavery, despite how grim conditions might have seemed, because the Israelites face countless years of persecution before their release from bondage. So the belief in freedom’s inevitability gave the enslaved hope and further incentive to align themselves with the Israelites during the hundreds of years when liberation seemed impossible. 

In modern times, this narrative is taken out of context, and applied to the reasoning of Israel’s colonizing the land of Palestine rather than liberation of the same. Many Palestinian Christians do not use the Exodus narrative as a supporting scripture for liberation work, because the modern day state of Israel has claimed that their scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament) justifies their conquest of Palestine - since Exodus refers to the region as the “Promised Land” where the Lord would settle the people delivered from Egypt. 

About 25,000 African migrants live in the Israeli state today, mainly refugees from Sudan and Eritrea, who say they fled conflict or repression. Israel recognizes very few as asylum seekers, and says it has no legal obligation to keep them. Under international law, Israel cannot forcibly send migrants back to a country where their life or liberty may be at risk. In September this year, Netenyahu ordered a plan to remove all of the country’s African migrants. The modern day state of Israel does have the same name and religious affiliation as the ancient nation, but there is no biological relation or historical throughline connecting the sovereign state of Israel today to the ancient Palestinian people who were descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

The three Cs of Colonialism have been dubbed Civilization, Commerce, Christianity. Each of them was a necessary factor in taking over land that was already inhabited. The true 3 C's are Catastrophe, Chaos, and Carnage. As evidenced by European nations frantic rush to “grab” land in Asia, the Americas, and Africa. The history of subjugating must be healed by mutual care and stewarding. Many - if not most - white Christians have literal biological connection to a nation that used the name and story of God to justify abused of Black and brown people around the world. This does not mean that all white people believe they have a divine right to subjugate all people of color. Jewish people of goodwill, peace and conscience are much the same.

Imperialism used as a God-given excuse to abuse

Last week we learned the definition of hegemony. And we talked about the claim that God gave some people the right to exercise hegemony over others. When the holy, real, creational truth is that under God, hegemony does not exist! This week let’s learn how to identify, discuss and decry imperialism. 

Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing not only hard power (military and economic power) but also soft power (diplomatic power and cultural imperialism). Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.

Examples of Imperialism in Africa

Portugal in Central Africa 

French in Cote D'voire (the Ivory Coast)

British Empire in Nigeria, Kenya

Dutch reformed church in South Africa 

Because of natural resources, the Dutch viewed South Africa as the new Eden that God had given to them as a paradise apart from their European lands. The continent of Europe was often plagued with overcrowding and epidemic health issues like flu and famine. Causing the public health crisis of mass deaths requiring dead bodies to be stacked in city streets. During these desperate times, practice of cannibalism became almost common because of the threat of starvation. 

According to the clergy who blessed the genocidal acts of Dutch East India Company, God created apartheid right away after the beginning, and so preached a generation of 18th, 19th and 20th-century clergymen in South Africa's Dutch Reformed Church. They taught God-fearing Calvinists that race segregation was more than desirable. It was God's will. The United States copied this as well, Many religious people still insist it is fact. 

The answer to imperialism is ecowomanism.

faithful inclusion is the antidote to religious oppression. 

Ecowomanism predates oppression. It seems to be a new idea but its researchers and the people who coined the term understand it to be part of the very roots of humanity.

Ecowomanism reconnects all human life to the shared, sacred ground. The essence of this view point is that ending oppression requires earth-grounding. If the British and Dutch and Portuguese and other colonizers cared more about the earth they would know to honor the people who tend it. If the American presidents who legalized massacre of native nations cared at all for the earth, or saw themselves as PART of the earth, they would feel more connection to the tribes of people who God placed on these lands as experts to care for them, and as people to be highly honored.  

Ecowomanism reminds us we were made to steward and not to subjugate.

It builds upon an environmental justice paradigm that also links social justice to environmental justice. Ecowomanism highlights the necessity for race-class-gender intersectional analysis when examining the logic of domination, and unjust public policies that result in environmental health disparities that historically disadvantaged communities of color. 

Melanie Harris is a professor, author and theologian who coined the term “Ecowomanism.” Ecowomanism says that African American women make distinctive contributions to the environmental justice movement. Black women who do theology (or study and learn how to describe God.), and practice spiritual healing, and come into religious understandings about human relationship with the earth. 

Dr. Harris writes about the importance of Black people within environmental history and thought. She also highlights the natural earth honoring wisdom within African and African American history and culture. She says we must reject the assumption that people of color are too distracted by other justice issues to care very much about the environment. And reframes the activism of Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and other exemplars of African American prophetic justice as leaders in the struggle for earth justice. Moreover, she argues, earth justice is an important component of the movement for Black lives.

Ecowomanism reminds us that we cannot experience Exodus without Genesis and the creation story, because the command to and example of stewarding care for our planet is innate to God’s zeal in caring for us. God sees us as part of this planet. Since we all came from the same ground, that is where we must do our connective work. If none of us is higher than the other, we can stay close to the earth and learn how to care for one another as we care for our home, and God’s home, together. 

Discussion

• We have discussed the ways that the Exodus narrative is important for enslaved descendants of African people. How did you experience the warning from our Palestinian siblings about discussing the story and its links to abuse of scripture? 

• Think about the ways a Native american might process a reading of Exodus. How might a perspective from the Indigenous tribes of the Americas resemble or differ from the above?

Scripture Readings

Genesis 1. 26 through 2.3

26 Then God said, “Let Us make humankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let humans rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” 27 So God created the first humans in God’s own image - at this time, God created a man and a woman. 28 Then God blessed the humans; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, garden, tend, and steward it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31 And God saw all that They had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

CHAPTER 2.1 And so the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their heavenly lights. 2 By the seventh day God completed the work which They had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work which They had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it God rested from all work which God had created and formed.