Journeying toward Repentance

The United States has had many “Jonahs” throughout its history. People who have traversed our cities telling us to repent of our sins so that we might receive God’s grace rather than the judgment we deserve for our racism. Rather than emulating Ninevah and listening to the prophets God has sent our way, however, we have often rejected the message brought by these prophets. Indeed, we’ve too often killed and imprisoned the “Jonahs” sent our way when they have spoken directly about the need for repentance of the peculiar evil of American racism.

Day 23: Separate, Unequal, and Hostile

The Urban League of Cincinnati recently published “The State of Black Cincinnati 2015: Two Cities.”[1] At 150 pages of careful statistical analysis, the report describes itself as a “bleak, possibly overwhelming snapshot of Cincinnati’s African American community and its economic and social challenges.” From health care and education to employment and incarceration, the picture of “Black Cincinnati” is bleak indeed, and not a little overwhelming to this white reader and citizen.

Day 22: Questioning a Theology of Possession

White America’s interpretation of today’s reading has rendered it a text of terror with destruction in its wake. The idea "that you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you" (Deut. 4:1), provided scriptural warrant for Christians to claim the land that would become the United States. This presumably God-given blessing provided powerful symbolic justification for conquest, echoing throughout Christian reasoning to dispossess First Nations peoples and build America as a white Christian nation.